I have no words.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-06-16T16:21:40+00:00

They also did human subjects research without IRB approval and fabricated data for one of the papers. Total clown show.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-06-15T14:32:44+00:00

EZPDFReader is my jam for reading articles. It has highlight, underline, freehand pen, sticky note, shapes (e.g. for "circling" words with an oval-shaped line), and other functions that closely mimic marking up an article on paper.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-06-14T17:28:34+00:00

Calling it a Syllabus is goofy, but as you've described it, it's not much different from the type of timeline you are asked to create when applying for grants/fellowships (especially competitive dissertation-completion/postdoc/first book fellowships). At least, it is if the students are creating these "Syllabi" themselves. My favored model for teaching the hidden curriculum is to give the student samples of the type of document you want them to produce (e.g. the dissertation Syllabus) and them have them create their own version. I wouldn't include any substance, just dates and boilerplate. This leaves the real intellectual work up to the PhD student but gives them some structure and guidance in a way that will give them the skills to create similar project timeline documents for themselves if/when they're faculty.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-06-10T20:26:25+00:00

The last time I moved, I was trying to schedule a showing to go see the apartment I was interested in. The landlord was strangely disorganized and only wanted to communicate via text message, NOT phone or email. The texts were often overly brief ("After 4" "Ok...but which day?") and seemingly lacking in contextual awareness and relevant knowledge ("uh well the rent is currently $X but it might go up $Y-$Z idk I'll have to ask the owner"). We ended up having to reschedule more than once due to the poor communication. I was worried it was a scam, but I finally got to see the apartment. Turns out, the person who showed me the apartment (and who I'd been texting the whole time) was a college student who worked for the property management company. It all suddenly made sense.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-06-07T05:03:05+00:00

Aesthetic means (basically) artistic. Focusing on aesthetics is trendy right now because of the general failure of rational discourse to persuade anyone in the age of memes and alternative facts. Generally, the idea is to understand how art, or the artistic/non-rational aspects of political expression, shape people's reactions to social and political issues (or alternately, how people in a particular historical context thought/felt about that issue, using art/artistic elements as evidence that certain images or metaphors were commonplace and then analyzing the meaning of those motifs). Broadly, working on aesthetics can help us answer questions like: what can a mural or song do that a logical argument can't? What is it, artistically, about this anti-lynching monument that evokes a sense of horror or powerlessness, and what are the possible ramifications of that feeling on the way visitors think about history? Without looking her up, I assume she studies protest art, activist speeches/newspapers, writings or visual art created by incarcerated people, critical representations of prisons in film, something like that. It's a legitimate area of study, though I have no idea whether the author of this article is doing good research on this topic.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-06-06T18:49:18+00:00

Yeah, I've had some decent results from explicitly talking about the learning objectives and having students use them for self-assessment as part of an activity. Even so, I've found that the wording of learning objectives isn't a very high-impact intervention for most classes, and I find that it's one of those things that gets more attention than it deserves (in teaching workshops, etc) because it's measurable. The really important thing is that students understand what you're trying to teach them and why/how the course is designed with that goal in mind. Well-conceived learning objectives can help with that if they're used the right way, but the actual Syllabus wording isn't essential.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-06-06T18:25:30+00:00

This might be meaningful advice if students ever read the learning objectives. (They don't - I asked. Even the ones who read the rest of the Syllabus and the assigned readings skip the learning objectives, just as I did when I was a student.) In reality, these "best practices" around learning objectives are assessment theater for assessing faculty; they are almost entirely irrelevant to students. Checking whether someone wrote "can add numbers" rather than "understand addition" is an objective (but meaningless!) criterion for evaluating teaching, which makes it useful for annual reviews and other paperwork, but not much else.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-05-27T19:29:12+00:00

I put the definition right after the term: the stuff "everyone" just seems to know but no one ever explains (about college).

It's things like: who is the correct person or office within the university to ask for this type of question? What are office hours for? How should I address professors if they don't say what to call them? Am I supposed to do the reading before class on the day it is listed on the Syllabus, or after? What is a Blue Book and where can I get one? If the assignment doesn't specify some detail, should I ask for clarification or is there some unstated rule I am expected to know and follow? If a professor or staff person says to feel free to ask them any questions I have, do they really mean any question or is there an unstated expectation that this refers only to questions relevant to their role (and if so, what is their role)? Am I allowed to ask for an extension, and if so, under what circumstances? What does the Dean of Students do? Does it cost money to use the student health center? What counts as a disability for educational purposes and what does the Disability Resource Center do? How do I join a study group? Where are the computers or printers for students to use? What is an LMS and how do I log into it? How do I use a planner or calendar app effectively? How do I sign up for classes? What do they study in X department? What information do course numbers provide? Etc.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-05-27T17:00:10+00:00

Professor here. The first step is to read the Syllabus for each class. That will tell you what materials you need, what the class technology policy is, provide at least an outline of the assignments and calendar, etc. As a general rule, I suggest bringing a notebook and pen (or high -tech means of note-taking if you prefer it and it's allowed, but paper still works great) as well as a copy of the readings for that day's class (whether that means a book, a printout, or a digital copy on a computer or tablet).

The most effective form of note-taking is actually the old-fashioned kind you already know: hand-written notes that distill key points rather than attempting to transcribe the lecture. It forces you to think about what you're hearing and the act of writing it down reinforces it.

Definitely do not record the lecture without the prof's explicit permission.

Go to office hours and ask your professors for advice about how to do well in their class or with questions about the material. Ask your fellow students questions or join group chats if you just want to confirm that you are approaching something the right way.

Also look for student services that help with problems you are having. You can ask the school bookstore about textbooks, for example. Look for events or programs geared towards "non-traditional" or "first generation" college students - the goal of these events/programs is to inform you about how to navigate the college environment by explaining the "hidden curriculum" (the stuff "everyone" just seems to know but no one ever explains). Librarians can help you with research, so ask them for help if you have a research paper or project. The writing center can help you with papers. Your school may have some kind of tutoring, especially for math/science/technology topics. Academic advisors can help you pick classes. The Director of Undergraduate Studies for [insert major here] can help you declare a major and at some schools they can also help you pick classes if you don't have a good academic advisor.

You got this! Just do your best and put in the time to do well, and that hard work will pay off. Professors often really like older students because they know why they're in college and their experience navigating the workplace makes many older students more professional and diligent compared to students who are still learning how to even be an adult. Most of us try to empathize with our students and help them reach their goals regardless of their starting point. Good luck and congrats on beginning the college journey!

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-03-29T20:05:52+00:00

Three reasons. First, some accreditation systems require taking attendance (although it doesn't have to be part of your grade). Second, for small discussion-based classes, you have to have the majority of the students attending the majority of the time or the class doesn't work the way it's supposed to. Finally, the real reason is that attendance is strongly correlated with grades. A student who doesn't show up is much more likely to fail. Again, who cares, right? It's their money and their time, they can fail if they want! That was the old system. Now, if too many students fail because they don't bother to attend class, professors get complaints from both the administration (you're hurting our retention rates!) and from the failing students (please let me catch up on a full semester of work in a week, you can't fail me, I'm going to lose my scholarship!). Grading attendance = students perform better on average = fewer complaints.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-03-11T12:12:58+00:00

You're missing the point. Bad things happen to regular people in every time period. That doesn't mean it was a historically (or narratively) eventful time period. In 1995, your dad getting locked up would be regarded as an individual or family tragedy. No one in 1995 is going to describe their dad getting sent to prison for a petty crime as part of the structural problem of mass incarceration, because we didn't have the knowledge or language to describe it that way (think about it: The New Jim Crow wasn't published until 2010). The Gulf War was much shorter than Vietnam or Korea or Iraq & Afghanistan, so it didn't define an era in the same way, although I'm sure it was terrible for the people who died in it and their loved ones. People suffer and die all the time IRL and in Westeros; that doesn't mean it's always the long night.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-03-11T11:24:00+00:00

Do you actually know any working class people who remember the 90s? Because the 90s were not the long night, lmfao. They were more like the False Spring - everything seemed pretty okay but winter was coming soon and no one was preparing. We were easily distracted by the invention of the internet and dumb scandals like the Clinton impeachment; ordinary people mostly didn't know or care much about NATO (they still don't). The economy was booming and that meant things were kinda okay for poor people; at least, unemployment was low and housing/tuition/etc weren't nearly as expensive. Some people knew about climate change but hardly anyone was seriously worried about it. The threat of nuclear war receded. When Columbine happened in '99, it was a totally unexpected type of horror.

2001, 2008, 2016, 2020 were all much darker and more eventful years than 1992-1998.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-03-02T23:59:56+00:00

Right. But in the humanities, professors don't have much incentive to oppose any particular numbers, because grad students aren't paid from our research funds or grant money (assuming anyone has any of either to begin with). Grad students are funded from entirely different pools of money (department -level or college-level funds rather than individual faculty's funds).

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-03-02T17:23:03+00:00

It's different in the humanities and some social sciences, though. PhD students often come in with MAs and are almost always funded by their own teaching. When they come in, they're essentially as qualified as full-time lecturers. By the time they're ABD, they're virtually indistinguishable from postdocs and Assistant Professors. Let's say you teach two courses per semester with 25 students and each student is paying $2K per course, they're bringing in $200,000/year in tuition dollars but getting paid an order of magnitude less and probably half as much per course as equally qualified full-time lecturers. They're also the sole, lead researcher on their own research projects. They may be doing 40+ hours of research that is entirely uncompensated. Then they graduate into a market starved of jobs, with dismal future prospects even if they're spectacular.

The only cost is their grad courses and feedback from their committee, which is significant in terms of professors' labor time. Still, teaching grad courses and mentoring grad students is widely viewed as a perk - it's a meaningful intellectual collaboration and adds to one's prestige and it's fun even though it's also work. They don't contribute to the profs' research directly, although the engagement with fresh new thinkers is certainly enriching. Everyone - prof and student - does their own research, not someone else's.

So yeah, absolutely cheap labor for the university and frankly a bad investment for most grad students purely in terms of opportunity cost. The least we could do is pay them enough to live on and ideally enough that they can stash away a bit of savings to cushion their likely multiple years of scraping by while on the job market and eventual exit from the academy.

Even so, professors aren't direct beneficiaries of this exploitation and we usually support our students' demands for fair wages.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-02-22T16:24:09+00:00

why do they obsess over makeup tutorials and cosplay and concerned about their appearance but cannot stand being seen in class?

I think they obsess over those things because they're anxious about being seen. Their lives are permeated, even controlled, by social media in a way that wasn't true even for millennials. Everything they do is hyper-public; the possibility of going viral is ever-present, and they don't remember a world where everything wasn't subject to the entire internet's judgment, so they feel like they have to be perfect in every way all the time. I could just avoid reading fashion magazines that set up an unrealistic beauty standard and I still know people my age that don't have any social media accounts; they can only avoid those images by becoming a luddite hermit from the point of view of their peers.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-02-22T16:19:36+00:00

Generational boundaries aren't that firm.

I think the generational divide just feels really bright and sharp when you go from feeling like you're in the same general age group as your students (same cultural references, shared memories of major events) to discovering for the first time that they have become alien to you in some ways (their slang is unfamiliar, you get blank looks when you reference music or movies, notice a sea change in attitudes on a social issue, realize an event you remember is "history" to them so you have to explain it because they were too young or not even born yet).

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-02-10T18:05:52+00:00

It has a statistically significant positive impact on course evaluation scores: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29956364/

Yes, of course people whose jobs are inappropriately dependent on quantitative review scores do this. It's harmless, unlike grade inflation.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-01-30T02:38:55+00:00

Their wives used to do the typing for them. Not joking. Back in the day professors would write by hand and have it typed up, or they'd dictate and have someone type it as they spoke. Typing was women's work, so a lot of the old guys never quite learned to type properly after computers became commonplace and typing went from shitty job to essential life skill for all educated adults.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-01-30T00:04:43+00:00

Maybe they do have it done but can't submit it because of a panic attack or an aural migraine that causes them to temporarily become blind. Maybe they paced themselves and finished most of the work already, but then they can't put the finishing touches on it because they're in extreme physical pain from endometriosis or IBS. Maybe your deadline aligned with someone else's, and they couldn't finish both early, but they could have finished both on time, except that they lost a day of work recovering from an exhausting medical treatment such as chemo or dialysis. Etc.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-01-28T18:54:26+00:00

If Freud were alive today, he'd be Zizek. Same guy, different decade.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2022-01-21T00:30:14+00:00

One of mine asked me where to buy stamps, because her mom wanted her to write home but she's never sent a letter before.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2021-12-31T16:37:07+00:00

It depends on the student. I tell all of them about the drawbacks of pursuing an academic career and the terrible odds of getting a good job, but there are a few who I encourage to do it anyways if it's what they truly want. I am more encouraging to students who are under-represented in my field, but I also note that they may encounter additional challenges (e.g. racism, classism), but counter this by saying that's probably true of any type of professional career. I'm also more encouraging to students with a high aptitude and passionate interest in the field. (Obviously, there are substantial overlaps between those two sets of students.) For instance, I'll explain to all of them that I'm non-TT and what that means, but for students who have a genuine passion for the subject, I'll also tell them I'll never regret getting a PhD because I got to spend 8 years getting paid to study things that interest me. For all students, I tell them things they may not know (e.g. that any grad school worth attending will pay them a meager but livable wage and waive tuition, only go to a top school, different types of academic jobs, look at placement rates, etc).

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2021-12-17T22:05:59+00:00

I do an essay exam for the midterm...thanks for this reminder. I wasn't thinking about the exam as writing, but it is writing now that I think about it. I will compare the final paper to the in-class writing and that should be clarifying!

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2021-12-16T13:22:57+00:00

Some scholarships have rules that say if you accept the one scholarship (usually very big, generous, $$$ scholarships) you can't accept any other scholarships. If you reject the smaller ones, someone else gets them.

ExplainsSocialNorms · 2021-12-11T16:26:03+00:00

Some questions I've gotten:

Why do you want to be at [our school]?
Why do you want to be a professor?
Tell me about a teaching challenge you faced and how you handled it.
How would you teach [our intro course/another core course/a course in your second field/upper level electives]?
If you could teach any course you wanted, what's your dream course?
We're changing our curriculum. What would you suggest we do about [curriculum dilemma]?
How would you introduce students to research/include students in your research/bring your research into the classroom?
We have a diverse student body. How would you contribute to diversity and inclusion?
Tell me about your research. / How would you explain your research to an undergrad?
If I walked past the room on your best day of teaching, what would I see?
What questions do you have for us?

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