When I see Rachel Monroe has a new piece involving true crime, I am there:
This all happened a long time ago, at a time when Baker was smoking a lot of weed. All the strange interactions he had with Doc over the years have blurred together. At a certain point, things began to feel inevitable, all Baker’s small choices gaining momentum until it felt as though there were no more choices to make. And while he insists that he has no regrets about what took place later — it happened the way it should have, the way it had to — maybe if he’d made a different decision that afternoon, he wouldn’t be in prison right now. Because it can all be traced back to that very first time they met, when Doc turned to him and asked, straight-faced, as if it was the most normal thing in the world: “Have you ever thought about killing someone?”
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The first (!) person in the medical community to say “oh, hang on, this Tuskegee study IS FUCKED AS SHIT” has died:
Just four years out of medical school and with no other means of recourse, Schatz wrote a succinct, scathing letter to the study’s authors.
“I am utterly astounded by the fact that physicians allow patients with a potentially fatal disease to remain untreated when effective therapy is available,” the 1965 letter read. “I assume you feel that the information which is extracted from observation of this untreated group is worth their sacrifice. If this is the case, then I suggest the United States Public Health Service and those physicians associated with it in this study need to re-evaluate their moral judgments in this regard.”
Anne R. Yobs, one of the authors of the now-infamous study, received the letter. She wrote a brief memo to her supervisor — “This is the first letter of this type we have received. I do not plan to answer this letter” — stapled it to the top of the letter, and that was that.
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If you use an arthritis or general muscle pain cream containing flurbiprofen, be careful handling your kitties and ask your vet:
But these cats died by flurbiprofen, another NSAID. In the case of its most recent victims, the cat owner applied a lotion or cream containing flurbiprofen to treat muscle or arthritis pain. And it’s highly unusual for a cat to show up at the vet’s office; usually it’s the dogs that get into trouble from exposure to NSAIDs.
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I’m really glad Jon Krakauer has written this book, because he’s a popular writer and I think it will change minds about rape, but I’m super annoyed for all the same reasons Jessica Valenti is.
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The problem with student course evaluations.
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4/20 Twitter is the worst Twitter, but more realistic stock photos of people smoking weed is pretty great.
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This entry in a list of things non-horse people say to horse people is accurate:
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keep it down, you pervs, I know you read The Toast
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MALLORY AND HER SISTER ARE ON THEIR WAY TO MY HOUSE AS WE SPEAK
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Is it bad that I want Jon Krakauer to stick to writing about either adventures gone wrong OR weird religious sects? Because I’ve read Under the Banner of Heaven and Into Thin Air at least ten times each, but nothing he’s written since has been nearly as good. Especially if his new books are going to involve mansplaining rape statistics.
I’m not sure we can say that something intended for a very broad audience is mansplaining – some of the readers, of course, will already understand the point of the book, but many will not. Given the subjects he’s touched upon in the past, I think it’s likely that many of Missoula’s readers won’t have thought about the topic of sexual assault before. I completely understand where Nicole and Jessica Valenti are coming from, but I can’t be mad about anything that (I hope) thoughtfully brings attention to the topic.
Indeed! I think that Nicole and Jessica (and lots of other informed people, I expect) have a compelling argument, but I also think that it’s powerful to have a book written by someone who didn’t know much, and who had problematic perspectives, who then learned about the issues and realized what a dire situation it is.
Well-informed feminist, rape culture-aware folks are not the target audience: it’s the people we’re not reaching who are, so that’s great in my book.
Yeah, I sometimes forget that the word is not divided into People Who Know The Truth About (problematic aspect of culture) and People Who Vehemently Deny That These Problems Exist.
It’s still maddening that the women who have spoken up on this and tried to bring attention to it HAVEN’T been listened to, but you can’t really fault Jon Krakauer for that. I’m glad he’s using his privilege for good.
That’s a great way to put it – I get into this with a few folks I know. There’s a whole spectrum of knowledge, experience, and understanding out there, and my kindness, thoughtfulness, and patience can be key in helping create an ally.
That’s about the best way of summing it up that I can imagine.
If mansplaining is defined as a dude explaining something to you that you already know, with the assumption that HE is the one telling you this for the first time, this book may qualify. It could be that he’s been badly quoted but in interviews he comes off as if he believes he discovered something no one had understood before.
It’s great that he wanted to release it early to shift the discourse of the Rolling Stone scandal, and it’s great that Dads everywhere will learn something, but it does also serve to reinforce the notion that when it comes to an issue like this, ignorance is objectivity, and the most credible witnesses/reporters also happen to be those least affected by the issue they’re covering. There has been a lot of this lately with well-meaning white people sharing tales of shock at police violence against black people.
You didn’t like Where Men Win Glory? I thought it was wonderful and actually enjoyed it more than Under the Banner of Heaven. Maybe it’s a matter of coming to his books when you have less information on a subject. I was already pretty well versed in the problems with the FLDS before reading Under the Banner of Heaven, but I knew much less about Pat Tillman. I’ll probably read the newest, since I’ve read everything else he’s read, but I expect it may be more annoying.
I am totally going to start just saying yes, my horse is blindfolded. Every year at this time of year! Also, one of mine not only bites but once chased someone up a tree and kept them there.
I was once bitten by a horse. At a petting zoo. When I was three.
I do have all my fingers still, though, so it must not have been very convinced they were carrots.
Yeah, I used to exercise ride a bit as a scuzzy barn rat kid and I absolutely started asking people if their horses bit after I worked with one pony who, while otherwise perfectly lovely, would bite you right on the ass when you bent over to pick her front hooves. It’s just nice to have some warning on that kind of thing, you know?
I ride my own pony’s dad for his owner, and he thinks it’s the funniest thing in the world, when I dismount and as my feet hit the floor, to swing his head round and nip me on the ass. He doesn’t do it hard, just twangs my breeches and doesn’t leave a mark, but every single time. On the rare occasions he doesn’t, he swings his head round a bit higher up and pings my bra strap with his teeth.
I forwarded that article to a friend who writes for Horse Illustrated. I am champing at the bit to see what she thinks of it.
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See what I did there?
Hello everyone! I’m in dire need of assistance on something incredibly unimportant.
If anyone is going to the Mountain Goats show tonight (or coming up soon!), will they be willing to buy me a black tour t-shirt in XL Ladies or Large Unisex? I could paypal the cost and shipping and send my eternal gratitude and good will toward you and yours! I made a poor decision at the Columbus show last night and I’m already devastated at my stupidity. Anyone able to lend a hand?
“I do not plan to answer this letter.”
In the words of Mallory, FUCK THAT
There was an astonishing amount of callousness and double-think among the doctors who ran Tuskegee, some of whom were involved in the Guatemalan “study” (which was, in addition to being completely unethical, so fraught with experimental errors that it produced no usable health information). If anyone could direct me to the grave of Dr. John Charles Cutler, I would be tempted to enter a petition to make it a public rest stop.
I came across a paper not long ago- written in the 2000s!- by some guy claiming that the gynecological experiments performed on slaves in the South were totes okay because they were providing a MEDICAL SERVICE, okay? Those slaves were SUFFERING, okay? You don’t want to DENY THESE SLAVES PROPER MEDICAL TREATMENT, okay?
. . . to say nothing of the fact that the specific treatment under discussion (that of vaginal fistulas) was treating a disorder that is generally caused either by traumatic childbirth or rape, two things which these women PROBABLY WOULD NOT HAVE HAD TO DEAL WITH if they weren’t enslaved in the first place.
Oh man, I think someone told me that thing about the blindfold before. And I believed them!
“Flurbiprofen” is the goofiest pharmaceutical name ever created.
It is just plain old advil with a coating of Flubber.
It sounds like it was named by the Swedish Chef.
Now when I use it to secretly murder cats, the jury will acquit me because they’ll all be laughing too hard.
True 4/20 story: on Monday, my dad was standing outside his office when a car drove by filled with dudes shouting “4/20, BLAZE IT BRO!” Two minutes later, they were followed by a police car with sirens blaring.
I do not think their 4/20 ended the way they hoped.
Can we talk about the Ask A Manager OFFICE SEX CLUB letter? Because I am now OBSESSED with finding out what happens. That letter writer better send a follow-up.
OH MY GOD that letter and the comments were the best thing ever. What the duck, indeed.
FAVORITE.
My jaw is on the floor after reading that!
OMG. I love how the LW is so *wrought* about stopping this. It’s totally okay to have sex IN THE OFFICE if it’s during your lunch hour! WHAT
If it’s okay to have sex in your hotel room while on a business trip, then OBVIOUSLY it’s also okay to have sex in the office during your officially sanctioned break time!
I guess I get that people will have sex on whatever the heck they want, but HOW ARE THESE PEOPLE NOT SUPER GROSSED OUT BY THE COUCH. The couch is the equivalent of a college dorm lounge couch. You do not want your bare skin in contact with the couch.
[tells self they sneak a sheet into the room in a purse or briefcase]
Yeah I am really really …. troubled? at the way the LW seems to think those two are similar situations? Ugh the whole thing is so weird and already was badly-handled and argh!
The LW left a comment! http://www.askamanager.org/2015/04/i-walked-in-on…
I get not being totally sure how to handle the situation, but I am not sure this person really knows how to be a manager. “Should I tell HR?” Uh… YEAH.
Uh, yeah, that is not a person who sounds comfortable being a leader.
I really, really hope LW can look back on this in ten years and just laugh and laugh and trump everyone else at the table in a ridiculous work stories conversation.
I am very concerned that this person truly still seems to not fully understand how outrageous of an offense was committed.
I don’t know if this is related but I feel like sometimes we get a little too worked up about being understanding and welcoming and non slut shamey and sex-positive, etc. that we kind of lose focus on stuff like “it’s actually ok to tell your 3 year old that they shouldn’t masturbate in public” or “it’s ok to fire employees for having sex at work during work hours even if they were clocked out.”
Unless you work at a hospital, because according to television that is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OK.
It’s all the beds. They make people frisky. Can’t help it.
Or theatres. Chances are if you work in a theatre, you’ve become comfortable with the weird stains on the green room couch.
I can SORT of understand, in that this is so freaking weird that they must feel like they’re in some alternate universe. If you think the people you work with are reasonable, ethical people and it turns out that ALL of them are doing this INCREDIBLY bizarre thing, I can imagine you’d at least briefly have a reaction of. . .’well they all seem to think this is normal so maybe I’m the weird one?”
yes, exactly, and that is why advice columns (particularly those with great comment sections!) are wonderful: they give you that “Is this normal?” check you can’t give yourself.
Seriously! Their insistence that it’s still a “great culture” at this workplace when this nonsense is going on has me giving them serious side-eye. I get that there’s a lot of judgment in the comments and they must be feeling very defensive, but a sex club popping up in your office is not an example of great culture.
I was just, like, FIRE THEM ALL AND THEN FIRE YOURSELF FOR NOT KNOWING THAT THIS WAS NOT OK, LW. I clearly need to add some empathy to this morning coffe.
i find your empathy at the most appropriate of levels.
YES. Sent it last night to my co-worker because it COULD NOT WAIT until this morning.
at an absolute minimum, they were abusing company resources. LIke, okay, they were on their lunch break, they were clocked out. But they were using the copy room for non-copy purposes (there’s a joke in there about reproduction, I’m sure) and they had locked it, effectively preventing OTHER employees from using the space for its intended purpose.
If someone were using that couch to take a nap on their lunch break, would that be okay? No? Than this isn’t either.
I told my husband about DUCK CLUB and he was like, “Eh, what’s the big deal?”
And now I both need a divorce and have some questions about his workplace.
Thank you, thank you so much. I LOVE THIS. I am 90% sure LWs office is in the So Cal area, very likely OC. Its such casually bizarre behavior it reminds me of … a lot of people I knew in college.
I would like very much to have a Toasties-only comment section for Ask A Manager, starting with Duck Duck Goose! sex club.
yes! I love the commenters there but I rarely see the posts before there are 200 comments and the question has been VERY thoroughly answered. And that whole “keep it SFW” thing.
Grey duck.
that couch will be cleaned with fire, right???
Burn the whole place down and nuke the site from orbit.
Put it on a bonfire with the Jizzcliner.
i still cannot believe that salvaging that chair warranted an actual conversation. if that dude had been my dude “absofuckinglutely NOT” would have ended the discussion *shudder*
Gotta say, I read NPR’s interview with Jon Krakauer over the weekend and had such the same reaction. Like, thanks, glad it’s getting atention, but why the FUCK have you all not be listening oh right that.
flames on the side of my faaace
Jon Krakauer: “TIL!”
world: [hands Krakauer a cookie]
Apparently, universities are hiring more women than men for STEM professor positions. On one hand, that’s good, on the other hand… this is the sort of thing I worry will be ammo for the MRA/feminism is unnecessary crowd. Maybe universities are actively trying to correct the imbalance? Maybe it doesn’t matter because the women are still underpaid, poorly treated by colleagues, given shitty family leave (which is notoriously bad for your career in academia). What do others think?
Eh, MRAs will jump on anything. My personal take on that is, in four years of engineering undergrad, I had exactly one female professor and one female TA. Even if my alma mater is hiring more women than men now– which I think they actually are!– it will take DECADES to correct the imbalance. They hire maybe 3 new professors per year, in a good year, so even if the 2:1 female:male hiring ratio keeps up, in absolute terms, compared to the existing male staff, they aren’t actually adding that many women. And they continue to add men. So.
ETA: I always find NPR a bit smarmy, but that article was unbearable. “why do so many women simply not apply? If the answer is, because of a long-held belief that women in STEM don’t get equal consideration, then this research should be a wake-up call.” Fuck you, buddy, maybe women don’t apply because “getting hired” is not a guarantee of a successful and healthy job in academics…
ETA2: I decided to do the math. Not counting adjuncts or lecturers, or non-teaching research professors: we have 40 male and 5 female professors in the school of engineering. If the school hired at a rate of 2 women and 1 man per year (which is not sustainable…) the department would be split 50/50 in 35 years. Obviously that doesn’t account for any retirees, but even if we say one man– and no women– retire each of those years, we’re looking at over a decade. Sorry for the rant! Just wanted to point out how much is still sucks to be a woman in STEM!
yes, I don’t really like how this article talks about a *hiring* study without even mentioning the gender composition of *current* faculty. I understand they’re presenting it as a counterexample, but it feels like a glaring omission.
I wouldn’t worry too much about giving MRA’s more ammo; they are a pretty creative bunch, and whether progress occurs or not, they’ll manage to keep themselves busy.
#1 – What kind of hiring are we talking about? A 2014 study found that while 36% of assistant biology professors are women, only 18% of full professors are.
#2 – I’d be interested in knowing if this study took salary data into account in any way, especially since previous studies have shown that even when people chose to hire women candidates, they were not willing to pay them as much. (That same study also showed that women were hired less often; I’m pretty appalled that googling “study on hiring women in science” today has given me nothing but links to articles enthusiastically explaining why this most recent study means that we don’t need to have any diversity efforts. *headdesk*)
#3 – So … we’ve done a study on hypothetical candidates. Do the current hiring stats for universities remotely reflect this whatsoever? Particularly top universities? Does it vary significantly across any of the broadly different fields encompassed in STEM? I would be kind of surprised if there wasn’t a noticeable difference between, say, biology and computer science.
#3 yea, verily. I’d love to see real hiring statistics. I feel like there is a vast divide between ranking candidates you know you don’t have to actually hire, for whom there’s no commitment and no practical considerations to take, plus the nagging feeling in the back of your head that choosing the woman would make you “look more progressive,” versus ranking candidates you will spend money on, work with, and need to accommodate.
“that nagging feeling that choosing the woman would make you look more progressive”
heh yeah I noticed they studied psychology departments and I was like “oh, like those guys don’t see RIGHT through your attempts to remove experimental bias!”
After reading the (originally linked) study itself, I wonder whether there is a tendency to see two truly identical applicants who you would *rate* the same, but then you actually *rank* the woman higher because you know you want to hire more women into your tenure-track? This is why I would like to see the results compared to the current gender breakdown in the department of each respondent, not just the respondent’s gender. There might still be bias! But at least we’d be able to eliminate this potential factor.
THOSE STOCK PHOTOS THO. You know something has become mainstream when there are lame stock photos of adults doing the thing with fake smiles, in badly-decorated living rooms.
Most of them look happy, but the grim determination of the woman filling up that bag (weed balloon?? I do not know these things,) is dang INSPIRATIONAL though.
One commenter said something along the lines of “you really know we LGBT people have gone mainstream when two lesbians are smoking weed and cooking together, and it’s just as corny as all the other photos.” Love love love.
the weed balloon. whut?
back in MY day, it was joints, bowls or bongs. what is that even? is that a vaporizer???
My friend had a letter published by Dan Savage! Historians FTW! http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/authors/259…
I JUST LEARNED A LOT.
This is so great! I haven’t looked at that site in years because ugh, so it was amazing to see an article-length response published in full, with the “schooling” announced in the headline.
Bonus: I initially clicked on the wring article and read down the original Savage Love waiting for this response to it, and I got to read an additional schooling! Someone convinced him to pick up Emily Nagoski’s book and learn a little more about how sex/biology/arousal (and possibly especially in women) actually work, and in particular to understand that those are not synonyms. What a day.
I can no longer read Dan Savage, what with all the rape apologism.
Agreed. I am also not a Savage fan. I was mostly excited that said friend pretty much schooled him on history/telling people their views are backwards and old-fashioned when they’re not.
That was great! Kudos to your friend for making the very important point that telling religious people to just give up their stupid religions isn’t so helpful.
That was honestly my favorite part!
Your friend made my day!
Your friend is ridiculously smart and interesting.
I saw that letter and thought it was awesome! Yay, go your friend!
who is your friend?????? Medievalists everywhere want to know! I mean, I’ve seen that letter linked all over medievalist Facebook and probably on medievalist Twitter as well, and nobody’s said yet. D:
(Mostly we all want to give your friend a round of applause, although I’m aware of one person who offered to buy them a drink at Kalamazoo.)
He is rapidly becoming internet famous, apparently! Since all kinds of other people are posting his name, I don’t see the harm in sharing. His name is Matt Irvin, and he teaches at Sewanee. I first met him in grad school, and he is a pretty awesome dude.
Well done, Matt!
Oh my GOD Rachel Monroe’s latest. That was quite a read! I usually find myself pretty resistant to the “charming killer” trope but I really did find myself feeling for Baker… what a messed up situation. I am creeped out for the rest of the day.
Realized I’d also read several of Monroe’s works in the last year (the West, Texas explosion, the tulpa piece) and they are always fascinating and so well written. She’s got a self-curated 2014 retrospective here ICYMI.
Well, there goes my productivity for the rest of the day. She’s a really fantastic writer.
I know her in person because her best friend from junior high is one of my nearest and dearest, and I can tell you- she is a wonderful human being and fun as hell to hang out with, too.
Yeah I am going to have All The Thoughts about that article all day! My personal read on it is that Baker is minimizing the badness of the situation, probably in order to maintain his self-image as a guy who was always in control. I also think that the enmeshment and the stalking probably happened slowly enough Baker didn’t realize quite how bad it was.
I think that’s a pretty good read of it– I could see his demeanor as stemming from really profound embarrassment and shame, more than psychopathy? The difference between feeling ashamed and feeling remorseful or guilty is an interesting line to walk…
I agree on the shame thing. Feeling guilty implies you did something wrong, and lots of people hate feeling like that so do a lot of mental gymnastics to avoid it. I know I’ve done similar things (although not about killing a dude). I think at the point where killing someone because they asked you to seems like not only a good idea but a huge relief, there is quite a lot of additional dysfunction and badness going on (she said , understatedly).
I think a part of it might also have to do with cultural shame surrounding men being victims of any kind of sexualized crime- it’s just Not Supposed To Happen, so if the situation allows for the victim to rationalize, then that’s what he’ll do.
I got to the bit about how “[Doc] didn’t seem like he wanted to die” because he fought back at the very end, and thought . . . well yeah. Don’t most survivors of suicide attempts say later that they regretted it almost immediately? Our bodies are designed for self-preservation in ways our brains just aren’t, and in that life-or-death moment, anyone will fight back.
I was once giving a barn tour and referenced a horse that was “the one standing on cross-ties over there” and the woman I was talking to looked at the horse’s feet and was confused.
As a non-horse person, I confess I would have done the same. :-/
Okay, so I read the comments on the stock photo article (of course they devolved), but none of them beat the first one: You know things are changing when a white Lesbian looking on at her black partner who is smoking looks as stereotypical and corny as any other character in a stock photo.
That photo is going on the cover of the Gay Agenda’s promotional brochure.
Oh Hi it’s a dissertation-length article on Adventure Time! Come on and bring your friends! http://theholenearthecenteroftheworld.com/
I have a story about student course evaluations, that story being that when I was in grade school I had a TERRIBLE professor and we all wrote terrible evaluations about how she had taught us nothing and none of the course materials were appropriate and she was regularly late for class or fell asleep during student presentations and large parts of her slides were plagiarized (!!) from Wikipedia (!!!!!!!!!). And NOTHING HAPPENED and she is STILL TEACHING THERE and she HAS TENURE and we later found out she had been getting these kind of terrible evaluations for YEARS.
So anyway that was a massive waste of my tuition and I mention it every time the alumni association calls me trying to get me to give them money.
See also: the time my MA program sent me a letter specifically asking for my SUCCESS STORY. I let them have it.
I’m taking a terrible online certificate program that is so poorly organized and such bad content and such a drag because it seemed so cool, and each “class” (alias, “module”) is about 4 weeks long and EACH one asks for a review and no one is doing them. Worse still is we’re invited to come be on a webinar to tell new students to join program and I have to hold my tongue so hard because I just want to pass and be done, and I can’t even imagine being like “you guys should do this ITS GREAT” and suckering newbies. anyway, its all a fraud. the end.
My entire class came into evaluation day with copies of things our adjust prof had written on our paper, dated quotes, and spent the entire hour writing. Even with all this information, I am still amazed they listened and didn’t hire her back the next semester. My school’s admin wasn’t great, but apparently you can’t fault 20+ students who come with that much evidence. (My favourite was the girl who brought copies of her essay that she’d had the prof go over a week before submitting with the note, “Good work, currently around a B,” with notes for changes to make. When submitted with changes made according to the prof’s suggestions, the essay received a D with the note “You sure make me earn my salary!”)
This all happened a long time ago, at a time when Baker was smoking a lot of weed.
If there were a book of folktales starring my family, this is how pretty much every story would start.
My favourite headline of the day so far: Meet the cuddly owl who loves landing on people’s heads.
I don’t think I would turn down the opportunity to have an owl on my head, but on the other hand I am imagining those talons digging into my scalp *shudder*
Amazing!
“No, fuck you, I want to land on a head, I land on a head.”
Extrapolating from the depth of the scratches left by my cat when he jumps on my back….OUCH.
Yeah, owls are pretty much designed to KILL things. So…could be dicey.
How great is this legal doc? http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/262792039?width=…
“And people’s human rights are being violated faster than you can say the phrase Willis B. Hunt, Jr. is a b*tcha*s hoe.”
I nearly spit out my coffee there, which means I can certainly forgive the weary/wary confusion in the paragraph above.
That said it does take a kind of menacing turn at the end, so I’m now feeling pretty sympathetic to Mr. Willis B. Hunt, Jr.
I saw that on twitter this morning and desperately need someone to explain the context to me. Why is she a plaintiff? What prompted this?
Florida Woman indeed…
Maybe her website will provide answers?
http://tamahjadaclark.com/justice-has-come/
(it’s almost as good as the Notice)
She’s suing people involved in her arrest. She was found in a car near the prison where her baby’s father was, with the baby in the car, holding an AK-47 and with other guns in the vehicle. She was arrested for attempting to break him out of jail.
I am scared to click that link at work. But when I get home, I am all over it.
Oh my god what YES.
My favorite line was “it took me one month to study the history of the world and to learn the history and inner workings of American jurisprudence, literally. I was born to do this here. Don’t you know that your FBI and CIA have been trying to recruit me since grade school? Lol.”
Lol, literally, indeed.
She is totally delusional.
“I am well aware that the court has not spoken to me because it cannot defeat my legal argument”
The judge is so afraid of her? I bet he read this out loud to his staff while doubled over in laughter.
Canadian political nerd alert: as predicted, if Mike Duffy’s going down, he’s not going down alone.
http://nationalobserver.com/2015/04/21/news/redac…
” “It’s the worst case of redacting that I’ve seen in a long time,” reacted René Leblanc, Deputy Commissioner of Lobbying on Monday, when shown the diary.”
!!!!!!!
Will this finally get rid of Harper?
Probably not. But a gal can hope.
I am crossing all the fingers and toes I can right now.
There’s a lot of Canadian rumbling on my Facebook feed.
I just wanna tell you good luck….we’re all counting on you.
The phrase “clamorous coitus” makes me giggle.
Obstreperous Sex is my new band name.
My friend is a professor & didn’t get tenure this last round because the committee had set the number of “allowable” “negative” evaluations at three, and she had four. For an intro-level non-major geology class. Of like thirty students. And most of the complaints were along the lines of “instead of answering my questions, she asks me more questions to make me figure it out for myself, and that’s haaaaard.”
http://dangerousminds.net/content/uploads/images/…
It’s the Sixteen Candles remake we didn’t know we wanted. “Voila, breakfast is ready!”
(by which I mean “Do you really have to do that over my pan here? You’re obviously not getting much chopping done either.”)
Apropos to nothing, A Man just came into my office to tell me, slowly and carefully, how to call the internet company to report an outage, and I am PIQUED. Even more so because immediately prior to the slow and careful instructing, he slowly and carefully explained how to restart the modem (which I’d already done twice, tyvm).
UGH.
“First, you pick up the phone with your dainty lady hands, then, you…”
“Brain you to death with it? Got it.”
Oh, how I wish, though.
Instead, I had the IMMENSE pleasure of whimmily opening up Chrome and Outlook while he was explaining how to call the internet company (“this is the phone number, and then you give them your account number,” many rolled eyes as punctuation) and lo and behold, all was well, and I got to turn to him all wide-eyed and say “Oh, look at that, it’s up again. IT’S UP AGAIN. No, not out, UP. WORKING.”
Brava.
I have such mixed feelings about student evaluations. I’ve always had suspicions that they were basically useless because of things like the big disparity you’d get in answers because indifferent students wouldn’t bother filling them out, but there have been times when I very much appreciated having a place to write down my experiences (good and bad!) with professors.
I had one really terrible professor once; he taught intro to health and basically you could just put his picture next to ‘cultural appropriation’ in the dictionary. He spent so much time talking about being spiritually healthy – atheists like me could never truly be healthy because of our lack of belief in a higher power, incidentally – and becoming one with nature like various indigenous peoples are, he never did get around to teaching the material on the final exam, which was standardized across the course sections. He was denied tenure and actually sued the school because he said they had denied him based on some minor political activism he was engaged in. I’m pretty sure all they had to do was look at his course evaluations and exam grades to make that decision, politics aside.
Ugh, that sounds like a terrible course. Still, I’m not sure student evaluations are the best fix. If there had been no common exam in your course and the prof graded easily, the research indicates that he’d get great evals, cultural appropriation bs or no. So I kinda feel like there are other, fairer methods of evaluation that could work just as well at eliminating nincompoops without also hurting good teachers with standards.
Oh, I have a feeling he would’ve had plenty of angry students either way, some justifiably so and some not. But yes, I do very much think student evaluations shouldn’t be weighted very heavily. As a student, I appreciate having a forum where I can at least feel like maybe some of my concerns (as well as some of my compliments) are heard, but I don’t want my professor’s performance to be evaluated solely on what I say. I’m not the expert here.
Oops! Meant to write “could have gotten great evaluations” not “he’d get great evaluations.” Obviously students often do see through this kind of nonsense, as you did. I agree with you that the burden of somehow being evaluation experts shouldn’t be placed on students. Lots of 18-22 year olds have never heard of cultural appropriation and shouldn’t be responsible for spotting it. But when they do, we should listen.
Student evaluations definitely have their place and I wouldn’t want to get rid of them, but I reeeally wish they were more frequently paired with class observations by colleagues who could make productive suggestions based on their own teaching experiences. It’s bizarre to me how seldom teachers and professors in the US actually see each other teach.
Yes, it seems to me like there is a place for student evaluations, but that really needs to be in concert with observations from people who actually kinda know what they’re doing re: teaching. Student evaluations should really just be one small part – important, yes, but not that important.
I once had a tutor who talked so long and so much that he talked himself right out of the topic and into whatever else he felt like discussing.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, this was more than once his opinions on suicide being ‘like taking something that doesn’t belong to you’.
In relation to Into the Wild, no less. Which we weren’t even studying.
I have no stakes in academia (which sounds like it may work differently in the States than here anyway) so this is entirely from an ex-student perspective, but I was usually one of the extremely unhappy/happy reviewers. It seemed only fair to me that after a semester’s worth of boring, off-topic, bigoted drivel that I got to feed back to someone. Thinking about reviewing some awful classes was sometimes all that got me through them.
I feel you must all know about this mug. Gorgeous, politics, coffee, whaddya want? http://www.redbubble.com/people/kcshoemake/works/…
I and three other girls who shared an adviser where all sent a very nasty email after this professor learned the results of her course evaluations. This professor called all of us rude, disrespectful, and unprofessional for having filled out a negative evaluation for her. Unfortunately only one of us had given her the negative feedback in the first place, so the rest of us were just left with an awful taste in our mouth in regards to her.
Wow. That is a TERRIBLE idea, always. Just, always.
Like restaurant owners getting defensive about bad reviews, in the comments of those reviews.
its a vaporizer (volcano) and I love her face, grim determination to smoke a ton of weed.