The Minutiae of Academia
Happy
Monday everyone! Wow, I am usually not that excited on Mondays, I’m sort of
even surprising myself. Sometimes it’s the little things that catch you off
guard, so I guess it is appropriate that I decided that today’s blog post is
going to be about the minutiae of academia. There are two main motivators/inspirations
for this post. One, I am registered in a MOOC on creativity at the moment and I
have been reading a lot of articles about the characteristics of a creative
person. An article I read was about da Vinci and it said that he was very much
about observing details of life because those details add up. The second inspiration
was that I was facilitating workshops for new part-time faculty all weekend and
many of the questions that the faculty had were about the small details of
teaching and classroom dynamics.
The minutiae
of academia is interesting because in our teaching practice we may be so
focused on the small details that are trivial that we forget the bigger
picture. An example of this is planning out your lesson to such an extent that
you do not factor in the possibility of a discussion running longer than
expected. Yes preparation is important, but not at the expense of flexibility
or shutting down a very fruitful dialogue. I started thinking about the small
things that I tend to zone in on in my teaching practice, in my research, or my
everyday work that distract form the bigger picture. I have a few but it is
still something that I need to contemplate and I welcome more suggestions.
- Those forms….
You know what I am talking about
the forms. The many many many forms that seem to accumulate in academe like
detritus. Those forms are an exercise in recalling minutiae and often cause us
to forget the bigger picture which is often why we have to fill out the forms
in the first place. All I can think of is those many rounds of OGS and SSHRC
applications and the information that needs to be inputted in a precise order,
with the exact words for something that will probably be much larger in scope
than the itty wee thing you spent your Thanksgiving long weekend writing. (I
know so many of you know exactly what I mean).
2. The “is
this original” rabbit hole (aka blame Adorno, Benjamin, and Baudrillard for my
inner torment)
When you are in grad school you
are always obsessed about finding the new thing, the original thing, your
thing. Sometimes when you spend so much time looking for the “new” you end up
forgetting about the larger framework that should inform your work. Finding
that balance between micro and macro isn’t easy. But focusing on the smallest
things is often why you rarely get to see your friends in grad school (or after
grad school). We tend to huddle in our academic packs, and it is important to
never cross the streams, Peter (bonus points for those who get that reference).
Maybe if we spent a bit more time trying to find interdisciplinary ties instead
of the small thing that brings us together (phenomenological studies of
gendered tactility in late 19th century literature anyone?) then we
could do a great job of community building instead of silo maintenance.
3. Ah the Twitter…
Je love the Twitter don’t get me
wrong, but again we spend time arguing phraseology, and forget the systems that
underpin that phraseology. Don’t be afraid to look outside of your filter
bubble results (really just look things up on a public computer every once in a
while to see what different results appear). It’s important to try to open
ourselves up to different ideas if for no other reason than it creates a great
counter-argument for your own work.
So try to see some forests for the trees. Try to see some
hills instead of just an ant. Those are my 700 words for this evening; I would
love to hear some of your detail-oriented thoughts. Think about your teaching,
your research, your writing, your community, what are the small details that
are possibly stalling progress? What small things are built in to academe (part
of the system) that are seemingly there just to gate keep?
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