For many, many reasons—especially including the lovely, encouraging messages my cyberkinfolk have left for me—today has gone better, and felt lighter, than the last couple of days.
For one thing, I did get a lot of sweet and generous messages, all of them estimating favorably the likelihood that we’ll encounter a positive outcome from present disappointing experience. Y’all are so smart, how can I doubt that you’re right?
Then too, I was invited to serve on a panel at the annual biblical scholars’ wing-ding, which was a gratifying inflation to my ego. And a friend who chairs another section encouraged me to propose a presentation on hermeneutics for his session. It’s a good proposal, and he’s predisposed to like my stuff, so there’s a reasonable chance that I’ll be two-timing the conference.
And this afternoon, I was invited down to a class at McCormick Seminary, a Presbyterian school down in Alex Golub’s ’hood, where they were using one of my books for a course on “Thinking Biblically” (this wasn’t the postmodernism book that some of you frittered away idle minutes with last year; it’s a revised version of my dissertation, published under the title Making Sense of New Testament Theology). So the profs generated a little classroom controversy with my book, and then invited me to take the heat in person. The class was sharp and demanding, and they accepted my responses to their tough questions, even when I didn’t necessarily convince them. We spent about a half hour more than we were supposed to, but we could have gone on longer; they were inquisitive, and I was excited to talk with them, and we had a great time together. Times like that remind me why I got into the teaching racket in the first place.
Lesson: respect and intellectual engagement make me feel terrific, whereas numb uninterest and being treated as a disposable impediment in someone else’s factory make me feel weary and dispirited. So, how shall I maximize the extent to which I operate in a sphere that offers me the former and minimizes the latter?
Posted by AKMA at February 5, 2003 09:18 PM | TrackBackAmen to your lesson, from which I learn. As to your question, there used to be a labor movement to deal with unwholesome work environments, but now that they're all unutterably wholesome, we appear to be fucked.
Posted by: tom m at February 6, 2003 07:34 AMYou can continue to receive the deep and abiding gratitude of your students who struggle along side.
Posted by: Tripp at February 6, 2003 09:35 PMAwww, Tripp—shucks! I should stipulate that the whole institutional setting is different at McCormick; among other factors, this was an advanced class (the like of which I have no chance to teach at Seabury).
Tom, I’ve been trading emails with Liz about working conditions in the knowledge factory. It beats flipping burgers (at least, for this vegetarian), but there’s more in play than merely rates of pay (“it’s more complicated than that”). Maybe there’s a book in it for a sympathetic journo.
Posted by: AKMA at February 7, 2003 03:22 PM