Introducing: Academic Mondays

Following the suggestion of a reader, we will now have an open thread each Monday on a current academic keyword (e.g. “excellence”) or on other topics of very broad interest to academics.
Today’s question is: what did you not learn in graduate school that you most wish you had? My answers are: how to teach English [...]

En hiver: Archpriest of Hita

It is winter, and key limes are thick on the branches. Garlic is blooming, and soon there will be bright kumquats. Picking oranges, seeing how the tree branches had bent under their weight, I realized that the globes on Christmas trees represent fruit.
Every winter we quote from the Archpriest of Hita. This year we [...]

Reading for Pleasure Wednesday: Miguel de Cervantes

Now we have discussed the Quixote, about which I do not always think, and I have decided to read it again.  I learned as well that tuition at Brooklyn College in the late forties was $3.75 per semester.
Axé.

Home Improvement

It is the weekend, and I should be singing;  but I am out of songs at the moment except for C.V.’s poem to be read and sung. I sing that the idea that you should somehow rise above an abusive workplace and produce is a malevolent and false truism. Of improvements made recently at work [...]

On Protocol

If during graduate school you lost a TAship at your institution; if you have now tried everyone’s patience here; if you are now being allowed to take certain classes so you can earn a professional qualification in another field; please do not address the professor who is kindly but painedly showing you how to register [...]

Jean-Pierre Rampal

I have not been posting very much because I no longer have reliable Internet to the house, and will not until April. I am not reading the news very much because the 60% budget cut higher education in this state is to absorb by 2012, is antithetical to my good mood. Work is going well, [...]

That Job Market: Suggestions for Interviewees

It is October 15, the traditional opening day of the job search season. I have a few suggestions for people going on campus visits — suggestions others may not have covered yet.
1. Good facilities are rare. Take note of the schools that have these.
2. Think of yourself as a colleague, not as an aspirant or [...]

Día de la Dignidad y Resistencia de los Pueblos Indígenas

This is October 12 and I have forgotten to mention it in two classes so far. Today in Guatemalan protests against the putative heroism of Columbus and the Hispanization of America (which is colonization, Europeanization, whitening) one Native person has been killed so far that I know of.
Imer Boror, aged 19, was killed by gunfire [...]

The Republican/Oil Princess Look

It involves:
+ cosmetic surgery
+ serious foundation and eye makeup
+ salon tan
+ red nails
+ rhinestone flip flops
+ salon dyed and highlighted blonde hair (very, very important)
+ shorts or little black sundress
Axé.

“I Said the Wrong Thing”

“I am sorry I said the wrong thing. I am sorry to have upset you. I hope you can get over it.”
Meaning:
“I refuse to apply normal standards of behavior when dealing with you. I will say abusive and dismissive things, I will ask inappropriate questions, and I will make inappropriate remarks.
“I am unable to see [...]