There is much gloom and doom in the post-MFA job marketland, but you know what? I know people getting teaching jobs. Granted, to land as a tenure track creative writing prof, it seems you need three creative books and multiple pubs and a critical theory book and edit a renowned lit mag and quite possibly some trapeze skills, but a regular ole' teaching job? (Summers off! Still!) These can be found. (She blogged optimistically.)

I found the following advice online while randomly trawling around. The writer prefers to remain anonymous. But I thought this solid advice deserved re-posting.

"This is just my opinion, but I think too many MFA grads assume that they can only serve as adjuncts, when in fact there are numerous full-time non-tenure track gigs out there to be had, particularly at large state universities. You just have to play your cards right and be patient.

I graduated from a small MFA program that most people have never even heard of and was able to land a full-time non-tt comp gig at a large state university. I make 32K and have full benefits. These kinds of jobs are out there, and 1-2 years of TA experience can get your foot in the door. In the fall of my second year of my MFA program, I checked Higheredjobs and The Chronicle religiously. I didn't even waste my time on the small liberal arts colleges and went after the "State U" type schools that have to fill 5,000,000,000,000,000 sections of freshman comp per year and don't want to burden their research professors with such "service courses."

In fact, the job that I currently hold was landed because I sent my CV to a large state university on my own; this university didn't even post a listing, but needed full-time instructors come July and simply pulled my file; after a go-through-the-motions interview, I was hired and signed a FT contract on the spot.

So, in short, if you want to teach comp FULL-TIME after the MFA, make sure that you:

1) Target the large state universities; you need to target the universities that have the most sections to fill, which obviously increases your chances of being hired; don't waste your time on the SLAC's that have like 5 sections of composition to fill each year.

2) Be open about location. If you picky about location then you're in the wrong profession. The English job market is dreadful and you might need to be willing to teach for a year or two at Middle of Nowhere State U.

3) Don't just send your CV to large state universities that post listings. Any halfway decent comp director will gladly take your CV to put in a file somewhere that just might be accessed in the summer when administrators are scrambling to fill extra sections. I sent emails to tons of comp directors at large state universities and had my CV in their files within a week.

4) If you plan to teach after your MFA, understand that a fellowship to a program that allows you to not teach might actually do you more harm than good. Yes, obviously the main objective of an MFA is to write and not to prepare yourself to teach freshman comp full-time, but at the same time you absolutely need that 1-2 years of teaching experience to get a full-time gig after you leave your MFA program. For full-time comp gigs, is all about the teaching experience; where you earned your degree or whether or not you're published is meaningless for these kinds of jobs. (Obviously that will change as you work toward applying for tenure track creative writing gigs, but that's a completely different ball game)."

So maybe not so sexy. But practical. I also have friends getting Fulbrights, landing instructorships, or just (*gasp*) getting jobs and writing when they write.

The University of Washington, like many universities across the country, has a "Common Book" program that chooses one book a year for all incoming freshman to receive upon arrival and, hopefully, read. This year, for the first time, UW has chosen a book of poetry. Well, "chosen" isn't really the right word. What they've done is develop and publish their own anthology of poems designed to "grab an 18-year-old."

I'm all for encouraging young people to read poetry, but why not an actual, single-author poetry book as they exist in the wild? The article linked above states, "The committee first considered a book by a single poet, but quickly rejected that idea," but does not explain why the idea was quickly rejected. Perhaps the committee could not agree upon a book that, in its entirety, would hold the attention of or feel relatable to a UW freshman. Which begs the question: Does such a book exist? The answer to which, I'm sure the committee believes, is "One does now, and it's called You Are Never Where You Are. And we made it special just for the occasion."

For context, past selections for the UW Common Book include:


Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder (2006)

Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert (2007)

The Devil’s Highway: A True Story by Luis Alberto Urrea (2008)

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (2009)

It is intriguing that all are nonfiction books. Perhaps this is a coincidence. Or maybe one surefire way of relating to 18-year-olds is through stories that actually happened. God forbid anyone should have to suspend disbelief in the quest to enjoy reading.

In any case, I'm not sure I agree with the cherry-picking of poems, or books, to appease a particular audience's perceived preferences. Isn't exposure to unfamiliar and worldview-challenging media one of the great experiences of college life? Do we no longer expect our students to accept and meet the challenge of understanding what is initially foreign as part of that experience? Wouldn't it be great if we could give these students the benefit of the doubt and let them tackle a book of poetry without spoonfeeding it to them?

I recognize the tension between reality (not everyone likes to read; almost no one likes to read poetry) and the ideal (give them a chance to approach a book on its own terms and deal with their reading demons). University administrators want students to read. They also recognize the correlation between enjoyment and continued reading practice. Intellectual rigor falls through the cracks in favor of being encouraging. It's the same old story: dealing with the students you have vs. dealing with the students you want.

But does it work? Do any of these Common Books serve as gateways to a lifelong love of reading? Will the contrived collection of You Are Never Where You Are unlock the world of poetry for anyone? Will it do a better job than, say, Ariel or Lunch Poems? I'll have a better idea when I find out what poems were selected for the collection, I guess.

As a postscript, I wonder how much prevailing poetry reading habits played into the committee's decision to develop its own collection, i.e., the preference for reading and engaging individual poems on their own rather than reading them in the context of an entire single-author collection. This is not a fully formed thought. Just something that occurred to me in time for me to leave off this post and go pick my dad up at the airport.

This might be of interest for those of you pursuing a career in higher ed.

"Tenure—the ability to teach and conduct research without fear of being fired—is still the holy grail of higher education, to which all junior professors aspire. Yet fewer and fewer professors are attaining it. The proportion of full-time college professors with tenure has fallen from 57 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 2007. The numbers for 2009, soon to be released by the Department of Education, are expected to dip even lower.

To which some educators are saying: good riddance. Tenure is a bad deal not just for universities, which are saddled with its costs, but also for professors, who are constrained by its conventions. Cathy Trower, a researcher at Harvard University who has studied tenure for the last decade, says the current system may actually be scaring talented young people away from academia. "This one-size-fits-all, rigid six-year up-and-out tenure system isn't working well," she says."

For more, go here.

I sincerely ask for forgiveness for I know this may seem like a complete intrusion to your privacy but right about now this is my best option of communication. This mail might come to you as a surprise and the temptation to ignore it as frivolous could come into your mind; but please consider it a divine wish and accept it with a deep sense of humility.

Dear L. Y.,

Your introduction demonstrates strong pathos, appealing directly to the reader with emotional language. Good job here. However, in revision please direct your attention to eliminating redundancy and consider leading with more concrete information. What is the purpose for you writing to your audience? Could you perhaps lead with a narrative; tell us a little story about where you came from, where you’re going. How am I involved, exactly?

This letter must surprise you because we have never meet before neither in person nor by correspondence, but I believe that it takes just one day to meet or know someone either physically or through correspondence.

I’m sorry—say what? Are you coming on to me? Know thy audience and write accordingly.

I got your contact through my personal search, you were revealed as being quite astute in private entrepreneurship, and one has no doubt in your ability to handle a financial business transaction.

While your audience will no doubt appreciate the lengths you went to personally investigate their background and interests (long walks on the beach, curling up with a fine book), you are rambling and I am suspicious something is up. By now, I don’t plan on listening to you because you’ve spent so much time seeking my trust and hoping I have some blind faith to throw around. I’m on to you!

I am L.Y. a transfer supervisor operations in investment section in Bank of China Ltd. Secretariat of the BOCHK Charitable Foundation 13/F. Bank of China Tower , 1 Garden Road , Hong Kong I have an obscured business suggestion for you.

Wait—did you just say “obscured business suggestion”? You don’t mean “obscure” by any chance, do you? Nevertheless, I like that the suggestion is obscured. That is, you’re finally admitting that what you’ll be asking me is no damn good and I’d be a fool to continue. Go on.

Before the U.S and Iraqi war our client General Mohammed Jassim Ali who work with the Iraqi forces and also business man made a numbered fixed deposit for 18 calendar months, with a value of (I will disclose amount upon your reply) in my branch.

Weigh the pros and cons of taunting your reader with teasers. Will you release this information later in your email? If you introduce a gun to act I, will it go off by act III? You risk alienating your reader (again, mind you) by asking them to follow through to learn more information. Is this assignment not to be informative rather than coy?

Upon maturity several notices was sent to him, even early in the war, again after the war another notification was sent and still no response came from him, We later find out that General Mohammed Jassim Ali and his family had been killed during the war in a bomb blast that hit their home.

After further investigation it was also discovered that General Mohammed Jassim Ali did not declare any next of kin in his official papers including the paper work of his bank deposit. And he also confided in me the last time he was at my office that no one except me knew of his deposit in my bank. So, (I will disclose amount upon your reply) is still lying in my bank and no one will ever come forward to claim it. What bothers me most is that, according to the to the laws of my country at the expiration 3 years the funds will revert to the ownership of the Hong Kong Government if nobody applies to claim the funds.

Against this backdrop, my suggestion to you is that I will like you as a foreigner to stand as the next of kin to General Mohammed Jassim Ali so that you will be able to receive his funds. I want you to know that I have had everything planned out so that we shall come out successful.
I have contacted an attorney who will prepare the legal documents that will back you up as the next of kin to General Mohammed Jassim Ali, all what is required from you at this stage is for you to provide me with your Full Names, private phone number and Address so that the attorney can commence his job.

Could I give you my public phone number (?) and we can call it a day?

After you have been made the next of kin, the attorney will also fill in for claims on your behalf and secure the necessary approval and letter of probate in your favor for the transfer of the funds to an account that will be provided by you with my guidance. There is no risk involved at all in the matter as we are going adopt a legalized method and the attorney will prepare all the necessary documents.

Please consider opting for a topic change and re-writing your persuasive essay all together to fit the requirements of the genre. You mention a legalized method. This makes me think of the often touched upon subject of marijuana legalization, legalization of drinking for 18 year olds, legalized driving when you’re 11, things of that nature. Pursue any of the above topics in favor of the current one, please.

Please endeavor to observe utmost discretion in all matters concerning this issue. Once the funds have been transferred to your nominated bank account we shall discuss the percentage issue on your reply.

Believe me, there’s nothing nomination worthy about my bank account. Know thy audience. Have I said that already?

If you are interested please send me your full names and current residential address, and I will prefer you to reach me on my private and secure email address below and finally after that I shall provide you with more details of this operation.

• It's winter quarter, and I'm taking nonfiction workshop which is the most awesomest workshop ever. (Hi Dinty!) Here's a link to a fun Gmap inspired essay by my prof.
  
• Professor Dinty Moore, two other nonfiction cohorts and I are also developing a 19th Century American Essay course. This has been interesting, as nonfiction had yet to be formally invented. Perhaps this creation of a specialty qualifies us to be academics. Lesson One: all this past decade fracas over honesty in nonfiction would have been considered a non-issue back in the day.
  
• I'm trying out a new strict persona as comp instructor this term. I make students read the textbook. I lecture from the textbook. Texting = Death. I don't take late work. DO WHAT I SAY YOUNGUNS. I wear black-rimmed glasses even though I have 20/20 vision and have affixed extra cat hair to my cableknit L.L. Bean cardigan.
  
• OU is hiring a Nonfiction professor, and all the interviewees are coming to visit over the next few weeks. I will not be gossiping online about this process, however, as that would be unprofessional (Hi Dinty!). The important thing to remember is that there will be luncheons and colloquia. At last, Latin.
  

Two years ago I wrote an article for Poets and Writers on life as a teaching assistant. I am back in TA Camp for my PhD program, and while some things are different, even more stays the same. This post is my original draft, the one nixed by the editors in favor of the more conservative approach on the website today.

This account reflects the experiences of one MFA Teaching Assistant. Individual results may vary.

March 2006 – The Phone Message

“…We would like to offer you full TA ship to attend our program next year...”

Price is Right theme! Tequila! Throw down! You like me! Go to bars and accept offers of free cocktails from friends. Feign modesty. “Oh, I wouldn’t say talented so much as fortunate. It’s all so subjective.”

The Bottom Line

I will teach one section of Freshman Composition, 3 hours a week, in return for a stipend of $9000 and tuition waver. I also required to enroll in a one-credit (but two hour a week) teacher training course. I must arrive a week early for a five day teacher training.

TA Camp: Day One (Getting to Know You)

Enter classroom. Here sits my future writing community. They have been instructed to answer the question, “If you were a vegetable which one would you be?”

“Asparagus,” perky mod brunette says. “Because I’m a superfood!”

Many rolled in town the night before. They are day old cabbage. One guy wrote on his placard, "Grizzly ‘Rassler.”

I arrived fairly confident. Within an hour I am terrified. I am doomed to fail. Recursive process? Dialectical thinking? Whaaa???I look around. Everyone’s face is inscrutable. We are indeed professionals, I realize. Professionals at acting like we understand, or that we might understand. At least, no one can definitively prove we don’t understand. This is how we have earned the right to higher education.

Over lunch at the hippie sandwich shop I ask. “So was anyone else, like, confused?” By confused I mean completely freaking out. I pick a sprout out of my tooth. No one responds. Pros. Every one of them.

Homework

The first three chapters of the Freshmen Comp text, The Curious Writer by Bruce Ballenger. One TA tells me she has already read it. She ordered the book earlier this summer. I make a mental note to make friends with this person. Panicked, I turn around and ask a day old cabbage if he read the book.

“Errr. Uhhh. What book?” I notice a Band Aid on his face. Fiction writer.

The Curious Writer by Bruce Ballenger

Chapter One: Writing as Inquiry. The writing process is likened to traveling between a mountain and a sea. Swimming in the sea is creative thinking, a churning activity. Then we climb on the mountain and reflect upon our creation. Then we plunge back in the water.

Chapter Two: Reading as Inquiry. Prof Ballenger is way hung up on his ex-girlfriend Jan.

Chapter Three: Ways of Inquiring. The way to inquiring is to inquire through Symphonic Inquiry. Collect. Explore. Focus. Explain. Collect. Focus. Evaluate. Draft. Reflect. Explore. Focus. Collect. Re-Explore. Re-Focus. Re-Evaluate. Re-Draft. Re-Reflect.

TA Camp – Day Five

Three days from now, I will be standing in front of a classroom, a room of eyes staring. I have NO IDEA what I will do. All I have learned is how to attend TA camp. I know to substitute “teaching method” for “pedagogy,” “paper” for “inquiry project,” and “grading sheet” for “rubric.”

Today, returning TAs come to interact. They are a grizzled, world weary bunch.

“Oh yeah,” one guy says “Did I ever tell you what I did to that kid with the iPod?”

The minute we are alone I clutch his Popeye arm. “Tell me what to do on the first day,” I beg. “I mean, what do you do? And please, please don’t answer me with begin to engage in the Spirit of Inquiry.”

“I play Two Truths and One Lie. It’s a good icebreaker.”

“What about having the students interview one another?” asks another TA.

“Then I get confused who is who.”

“True. All I know is I hate ‘if you were a vegetable what would it be?’”the other TA says.

If I were a vegetable I would be an eggplant. All seeds and pulp with very little meat, delicious if prepared correctly, and disgusting if not.

First Day Teaching

My fate is upon me. I am “Mz. Ferguson” — middle-aged and covered in cat hair. I tried to dress up but I look like a homeless librarian, my hair worse. I didn’t make it as a rock star. The business collapsed. I’ve never fully recovered from a love affair in my twenties. I’ve waited tables for twenty years. Break glass in case of emergency: English teacher.

I am allowed 1000 copies from the English Department copier for the semester, and have already used 178 of them Xeoroxing the syllabus. After “Two Truths and One Lie,” which takes all of ten minutes, the entire class stares out the window. Can we go yet, can we go yet, can we go yet their faces chant. Papers rustle.

Two Weeks In

I can’t forge the connection between dialectical thinking, recursivity and the eighteen-year-old mind. I remember when I was a freshmen, flashing back to a morning I woke up on a fraternity bathroom floor, my fur-coated eye opening to a single black pubic hair curled on the tile.

In Class Peer Review Workshop

I have typed up a page and a half of workshop questions for my students. With italics, bold fonts and bullet points I format the guidelines, carefully wording open ended questions. I write in all caps on the board, and send a classroom email. Read each paper carefully and give careful consideration to the questions below.

Five minutes in everyone looks up. The class has come to a simultaneous conclusion about everyone’s paper in the entire room: It was good. They liked it.

Grading

Twenty-four binders are stacked before me. Each contains “Inquiry Project #1: The Personal Essay — My Literacy History.” Students were instructed to “relay a personal memory that demonstrates an experience you had with the power of language.”

I take out my first paper, trembling a little.

My student writes about drinking and driving through the Montana wilderness to Led Zeppelin. Two full pages are dedicated to a shenanigan involving a sparkler, three cases of Kokanee, Going to California and a moose skull.

“Try connecting this experience to a greater issue,” I write. “What is the greater significance of your SUV and Kashmir?”

Later, I look at the clock. I have spent almost two hours on my comment sheet. My comment page is longer than the essay.

Twenty-three more.

In Class Freewrite

“What did everyone think of the reading last night?”

…

“When the Marxist educational theorist Friere states teachers should not lecture, and students should construct their own educational revolution, what did you think of that?”

…

“Questions?”

…

“Comments?”

…

I call a random name from my gradebook.

“Nicholas?”

“Why I gotta write? I’m going to major in accounting.”

“Nicholas. What I’m hearing is that you don’t care and you just want a Hummer?”

He nods.

“Without wisdom, wealth is just money.” Since I started teaching, I burp Chinese cookie fortunes. “Anyone else?”

…

A girl waves a sheet of paper.

“Janna?”

“I came here on a soccer scholarship. I have to leave early today. Here’s my note.” She throws it on the desk and leaves.

…

I see a hand. A volunteer!

“Courtney.”

“Like, no offense, but how old are you? 50?”

Lesson Plans

A poet is screening the entire series of Twin Peaks. For the final paper each student will answer the question “Who killed Laura Palmer?” Band-Aid man says he is guiding his students to their totem animal.

Comp 101

Movie Day! Grizzly Man. The class will discuss how the director, Werner Herzog, controls the narrative, and the ethical complications of his decisions.

I’m a technology toad, so even though I had planned certain scenes, I end up with Timothy Treadwell pointing at bear poop for a full ten minutes.

“Oh my gosh! It was just in her butt and it's still warm! This is a gift from Miss Chocolate!” gushes Timothy.

“Class, what do you make of the rhetorical choices of director Wernor Herzog here?”

“HAHAHAHAHAHA!”

The Op-Eds – Or Three Main Reasons Teaching Freshman Comp is Hurting my Writing And the World

Half the class argues for the legalization of marijuana. The other half vehemently opposes stem cell research on migrants.

Great readers make great writers, but what am I reading?

First of all, renduncy is repeating itself.

Furthermore, everyone knows that.

Its’ common sense.

In conclusion, bad writing is hurting not only me, but all of the city, the state, the nation and the world.

Student/Teacher Conference

“I noticed that for your personal essay you did not write a literacy essay but a book report on Old Yeller.”

“Yeah. That book was really personal to me.”

“Yes, but how did Old Yeller­­ relay a personal memory that demonstrates an experience you had with the power of language?”

“Why do you hate Old Yeller?”

“I don’t. It’s just instead of a summary of the book; I need to know the impact this book had on you and your thoughts on engaging rhetorically with the world. What do you think that was?”

He thinks. He thinks really hard.

“What do I have to do to pass?”

A hundred bucks and a bottle of single malt Scotch.

Final Grades

The few truly deserving A’s are easy, then I hand out more A minuses than I should. From there I move on to the “B plus/God Bless” strategy, finishing up with Cs, and a few Fs, for those I didn’t see the last three weeks of class.

I give one D. After an hour of internal debate, I pass the guy who wrote the Old Yeller book report.

Yep—here we are again. Facing our demons. The bad year? or good year? existential self-questioning had bugged me like Fmr. Gov. Blago’s phone. (…) In honor of May, the time that the current class of MFAers say adieu to what they knew for two years, I offer a recollection of May '08--May '09 (give or take).

The good news. It is still a bit early for you, nearly-graduated one. May still gives you time to look forward to a belabored severance of your new, scared self from your old, confident self. I didn’t freak out or imagine the shape of the future beyond Missoula until August, once the UHaul had to be picked up or I’d forfeit my deposit. Or as I was selling my pre-owned mattress to a family whose toddlery son had to use my bathroom and proceeded to dump (throw?) my last roll of toilet paper in the bowl (true story).

Since August, I’ve learned key money-saving skills. They include how to create life-sustaining feasts in a bowl. It is much like I imagine astronaut food to be but poorly, poorly executed and non-dehydrated. Think rice and beans (dried, not instant), 5lb. beef “savings pack” and onions from the bin at Aldi. Put it all together…and you hope that a burrito wrap can hide the horror:


You know what? Just hold off on that Aldi onion and…grow your own onions! On your kitchen counter. Whoops. Get to know your favorite compost heap pile.


There will be copious reading opportunities for your genre of choice in your city of choice. Or, at least enough to sustain you and comfort you into a false sense that you-are-still-in-the-program. See some famous people. See some soon-to-be-famous people. Silently support them with beams of flowers and rainbows and unicorns and puppies and kittens because they need them and you can wait out karma.

Survive the winter and everything will be a-okay. It won’t seem like it in mid-January in Chicago (or Seattle--or, well, New Orleans is just warm anyway, without mercy, and we'll exclude it from our results), but trust.

You’re going to spend a fair amount of time researching post-graduation fellowships or residencies that will give you another year down the road to do that thing you were doing in the MFA program. You’ll spend the following March opening the rejection letters.

If you’re a poet, maybe you’ll find all the Apocalypse Now stuff mighty useful as an operating principle for your newly imagined collection of poems—you see it taking shape. Your perverse worldview had to pay off sometime. Since the real world is so damn bizarre sometimes, it’s almost too good to be true. It’s taking beautiful, exquisite shape. (Well, at the very least you’re totally estranged from your thesis, which you can’t even bear to look at, much less tinker with. This may change. In a bit, maybe you’ll warm up to it, face its cold icy stare. I’m waiting it out, giving mine the silent treatment for now.) But the scheming and the abject poverty of jet-loving corporations and the illness and the general turmoil treats you OK. It’s something you can always count on. Prose folks, I bet this is the same for you.

You will temp. Boy, will you ever temp. You will know the skills of the temp. Like a substitute teacher, be ready for the 5AM call. “Can you be on site, ah, 10 minutes ago?” Start…now. Watch as the clock on your assignment runs out. Four months, three months, two months… You’ll be searching the fall teaching openings. This is, of course, assuming you didn’t have an idea of what was going on and refused to acknowledge time would pass after you graduated. I found myself desperately clinging to the scam-toned Craigslist posts in the “education” section because, well, what did I have to lose?

And if this hasn’t enticed you, remember, not having the extra money to eat at "restaurants", see concerts, go to, what, the history museums, leaves a heck of a lot of time for sitting down and writing. Right? I’m not a perfect example, no. I spend a lot of time messing around and drafting elaborate and overly complicated, windbaggy emails to my online students. They don’t need to know how amazing Blackboard is. They can access their assignments just fine thank you very much. So, yes, for everyone who is driven, you can sit down and write and something actually materializes on the screen. But one thing is for sure: you won’t be sitting down to just write if you can’t pay your utility bill. Then you’re just in the dark.


And the job tip in the post directly below this one is excellent. Take it. Run with it.


The Three Ps roundup almost one year in:

• PhDs: One up and coming! Go Kelly!
• Publications: Yes, yes and yes.
• Panhandling: I applaud the social service opportunities available in large metropolitan areas for those in need.

In the June issue of Atlantic Monthly, there is an article entitled “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower” by Professor X. The contents of the article will come as no surprise to anyone who has taught English 101. There are some minor differences between Professor X’s experience and my own: He’s a professional adjunct, I was a TA. He works at a private college and a community college, I worked at two mid-sized public universities. He believes that it is his job to uphold academic standards and seems to be supported by his university’s administration in doing so, I have received mixed messages in that regard and have serious reservations as to what standards the curriculum of English 101 is meant to uphold. Beyond that, the points he makes are all things that have occurred to me or been made by my colleagues in the three years I’ve taught 101. Many students are not prepared to succeed in the strange mix of critical thinking, analysis, and blitzkrieg workload that we’re peddling. Our values as students and teachers of English are different from theirs. Students don’t necessarily come to college to become scholars. Most are just there to achieve a higher income bracket. Some are there to receive specialized training within a field. Very few will go on to post-graduate work.

Professor X corroborates something that has been bothering me for a long time, although the way he expresses it doesn’t sit well: that not all students are “fit” for college. He notes, “America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational education track. We are not comfortable limiting anyone’s options. Telling someone that college is not for him seems harsh and classist and British, as though we were sentencing him to a life in the coal mines. I sympathize with this stance; I subscribe to the American ideal. Unfortunately, it is with me and my red pen that that ideal crashes and burns.” He goes on to position himself as a gatekeeper of sorts, crushing the dreams of those students who aren’t up to the challenge of college. What worries me is the assumption that “unfitness” is permanent, that it can’t be overcome, and that it is an inherent quality of the student. I don’t have any proof that this isn’t true. I haven’t seen any remarkable turnarounds to contradict it because I haven’t been teaching long enough. And maybe my resistance to the very notion of unfitness just proves that I buy into the American ideal that everyone should be given the chance to try. That’s not a bad ideal, frankly.

I think the problem enters when we encourage students to pursue a college education blindly and without thinking about their purpose in doing so. The problem is that we end up with students who don’t know what to do after high school and don’t know why they are sitting in our classrooms. Or we end up with returning students who assume that higher education is the cure-all for their life crises, their inabilities to reach the next tier of their career field, their sense that something (they don’t know what) is missing in their lives. With only vague (or inaccurate) notions of what my class, or any class at the university, can and should do for them, students risk wasting significant amounts of time and money. It’s not rocket science—in almost any other endeavor where there is an exchange of money and time, we know why we’re doing it. We go to the gym because we want to lose weight, be fit, prepare for some other physical endeavor, meet other hardbodies, etc. We go to therapy because we are in psychological crisis. We start a hobby because we are interested. Often, the more specific our goal, the more successful we are with the endeavor. Unless the goal is absolutely unreasonable. My most successful students are very aware of why they have come to college and how it can prepare them for their careers. They see how the liberal arts education fits together and they tailor their required courses and electives to their needs, integrating the assignments into their academic interests. My least successful students are the ones who still don’t know what interests them. They are the deer caught in headlights, fearful and sticking to their instincts. They cling to what they already know and are uncomfortable stepping outside of their self-defined boundaries. And then there are the students who have glommed onto this “You can do anything you set your mind to” schtick. The students who struggle with basic algebra and can’t use a research database to save their lives but still believe that, somehow, it will all fall into place and they will become brain surgeons, rocket scientists, Fortune 500 executives and TV news anchors.

As a teacher, you’re supposed to be supportive of your students’ dreams. But you wonder when some responsible adult in these students’ lives is going to sit them down and give them the reality talk. You wonder what world they live in, that these dreams haven’t been dashed already. You wonder whether they might actually make it to their seemingly unattainable goals and wonder if you might’ve aimed higher yourself. And then you’re caught up in that American fantasy of achievement where we all challenge each other to do better and astronauts end up on the moon. THE MOON! And isn’t life amazing and aren’t we, each and every one of us, fantastic?!? And you stay in this la la land until the students turn in the next batch of papers and their gnarled prose shocks you back into reality. Harbingers of the apocalypse? Yes—we are all, each and every one of us, doomed.