21st Century Scholar

I taught in a district that was a punching bag for critics of underperforming schools. Scandals appeared in local newspapers and on nightly news reports. In my school, teachers then debated the issues, including cheating, sexual assaults, theft, embezzlement, bribery, racism, dropout factories, fired or defecting leaders, and on and on and on. At a [...]

Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is one of my favorite plays. At the beginning of the story, Faustus, surrounded by countless dusty tomes, declares that he has read everything about everything. I’m not sure what it says about me (especially given Faustus’ fate), but I frequently think about that scene. I read a lot. I eagerly [...]

Because newly-minted Ph.D. graduates far outweigh the number of tenure-track positions [read about the sobering statistics here], many will have to travel if they want a job in academia. From my own experiences with friends and colleagues, graduate students deal with the possibility in different ways. Some have families and friends and roots. Travel is [...]

As May approaches, Ph.D. candidates are scrambling to submit dissertation chapters to their committee chairs. At the same time, many have heard or are eagerly waiting to hear from search committees regarding potential jobs. Some even have job offers. During a hectic time, the negotiation process only adds to the hubbub. Here’s some advice: Take [...]

On the first day of school, two students started fighting. One student tried to escape. The two ran from the first to third floor. A crowd followed them. Just before the fight stopped, a security guard’s head slammed through a window in my classroom’s door. She never returned to school. A few days later, someone [...]

In my last post, I discussed the use of Evernote as a tool to store and organize fieldnotes. For this blog, I transition to the writing process. I am fortunate to have mounds of digital data from my dissertation. I also have a list of papers that I am either planning or authoring. Although I [...]

The intrepid anthropologist enters the field. He carries his essential tools, a pen and notebook. Over the next months, he gains entrée and acts as a participant observer. Here and there, he steals a moment or two to record the local culture in his notebook. At the end of the day, he sits in a [...]

During my first month as a doctoral student, one accomplished professor told a story to our cohort about what happens when tenure-track professors do not receive tenure. He used the provocative phrase “gypsy professor,” defined as someone who does not get tenure and then travels aimlessly from one job to the next. For some itinerant [...]

I. I come from a working-class family. I am the only one to enroll in a four-year university. To save money, my father asked me to attend community college first. I did. After two years, I transferred to the University of Maryland. A week before classes began, my family’s economic standing changed drastically. I accepted [...]

In my last blog, I discussed finding and applying to faculty positions. Today, I continue to the interview stages of a job search. Typically, the process includes two parts: a phone interview and a campus visit. The campus visit consists of informal and formal meetings with faculty, administrators, and students. The meetings take place in [...]