Author Archive
On The Personal Factors That Can Affect Success In Grad School
August, 2010 · By Justin Bengry
Academic advisors might warn students about heavier workloads, research expectations, and the increased competitiveness of grad school, but the personal upheaval is largely unspoken of.
Success in grad school is determined not only by academic achievement but by personal factors as well.
Along with practical advice on the ins and outs of grad school, prospective graduate students need to know the personal challenges they will face when pursuing advanced degrees.
Anyone who can get into grad school likely has the intellectual skills to succeed. But learning how to negotiate the new pressures on your personal life in grad school is an equally important skill.
So, along with practical advice on the ins and outs of grad school, prospective graduate students need to know the personal challenges they will face when pursuing advanced degrees.
Many graduate students, even at the masters level, have to undertake research trips or participate in conferences that take them away from home. Lasting anywhere from a weekend to a year, such trips are an amazing opportunity but can also be incredibly disruptive personally. While these trips can be expensive and lonely, they are also intellectually rewarding and exciting opportunities to travel.
Relationships can suffer from the enormous time commitments and potential travel requirements for success in grad school as well. For the lucky, partners might be able to join you at conferences and research trips. But for most, the time spent away on lengthy research trips poses a significant challenge to stable relationships.
Relationships are affected by more than just travel commitments at grad school. A graduate program will require more time, more personal investment, and more focus than undergraduate studies.
It’s not just school. You have to treat it like a full-time job. And this job requires lots of overtime! Balancing this enormous commitment with a relationship is hard. To do so successfully, you’ll need to prioritize and also limit the time you spend on your education. You’ll also need to identify and devote specific days and times to your relationship. Without planning, both will suffer.
Also, plan for the unexpected.
I moved to London, England, in February 2007, to undertake only a few months of research for my degree. In the end, I ended up staying more than two years!This move abroad took me away from my family and my friends, and even my professors, but it helped me to become an expert in my field and also build a relationship with a partner in England.
As in my own experiences, you will find that relationships, travel, research and finding the finances to manage these all become important considerations when thinking about going to grad school. They continue to be factors you need to consider throughout your studies as well.
Grad school offers amazing opportunities to advance your education, gain important credentials, develop professional contacts, and sometimes even to travel. It is, however, an enormous commitment in terms of time and money, and the decision to embark upon grad school should be made only after extensive research and advice.
The advice and experiences you’ll find here are a great place to start, but be sure to talk to professors, academic advisors, and career counsellors as you consider or prepare for graduate school.
This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 4 August 2010.
Review of Reviews: Should Grad Students Review Books?
July, 2010 · By Justin Bengry
I’m of two minds regarding grad students writing book reviews for publication. On the one hand, they give you regular and consistent publication credits, access to the newest monographs in multiple fields, and of course free books. They are never as valuable as peer-reviewed articles, but they do keep your CV active and up to date. On the other hand, unless the books are directly related to your field of study, reviews divert your attention away from completing your own research and writing. As a grad student, however, there can be few opportunities to publish, particularly in major journals. Book reviews offer an opportunity to get your name out there.
But how can you be considered for review opportunities? And how do you get the most out of them?
My best luck has come simply through word of mouth. Friends, colleagues, and sometimes even scholars I don’t know have recommended me for particular titles. Journals also have book review editors whom you can contact to express your interest and describe your specialization. I’ve never contacted journal editors, but I have recently submitted my details to H-Net lists, which offer the opportunity for a larger online profile as their reviews are published quickly and archived on the internet. I’m certain, however, that most of my review opportunities came out of scholarly conferences, where other scholars have come into contact with my work. Build you profile in the profession, and opportunities of all sorts will begin to flow toward you.
I’ve written 4 book reviews in journals ranging from the Journal of British Studies to Urban History, have two forthcoming in even more divergent journals, and have just committed to writing a review essay of three books for another journal. Each has been a completely different experience.
Those that overlapped with my own field of research were the easiest to write. I was most familiar with the literature they drew upon, the sources they used as the bases for their arguments, and felt more than capable of identifying strengths and pointing out weaknesses. These reviews sharpened my own scholarly skills and allowed me to contribute to the profession in a public and meaningful way.
But I’ve also reviewed books outside of my specialization and only peripheral to my own knowledge base. Similar to concerns expressed by medievalist blogger Squadratomagico, I have encountered books that may have been good enough, but were also unoriginal and unexciting. These types of reviews were definitely harder, sometimes to the point of debilitation. I sometimes had to reposition myself as an educated non-specialist to comment on how understandable, useful, interesting, and applicable such books were. It was challenging to offer something useful to readers as a non-specialist commenting on a field in which I did not participate. Though I knew little, I learned a lot.
Of course, at the same time I was writing my own dissertation, and it necessarily suffered somewhat from these moments of anxiety, distraction, and lapses in confidence. Worst of all perhaps, writing reviews allowed me to procrastinate while still feeling productive. I was getting work done after all (wasn’t I?), just not on my dissertation. In the end, I completed my dissertation, but lost weeks of work time to the stress of reviewing books.
I was only a grad student then, so publications of any sort were valuable. The Tenured Radical, however, offers some sage advice about focus and priorities once we’re on the job market:
Whether it is submitting an article, finishing revisions on an article that has come back with reader’s reports, writing a book proposal and sending your manuscript out, whatever. You need to show that you are moving forward in your career. … the further out you are from graduate school, the higher expectations are about your scholarly trajectory. Do not agree to write any: book reviews, encyclopedia entries, or anything else that fills up a curriculum vita with entries that have nothing to do with original scholarship.
On the whole, however, I would have to conclude that in grad school the benefits of reviews outweigh the challenges as long as you can manage your time, prioritize more beneficial work, and complete more important tasks.
If you choose to take them on, the lesson I’ve learned is to budget time for reviews. Make reviewing a specific task, like completing a chapter by a certain date, rather than an imprecise activity that can grow to consume whatever time you allow it. Reviews can be a dangerous opportunity to procrastinate, but used effectively, they can also stimulate your thinking, offer new insights in your own work, and increase your professional profile and publications credits.
This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
29 July 2010.
This Is What They Don’t Teach You In Grad School
July, 2010 · By Justin Bengry
You can only learn how grad school works by actually experiencing it.
Many future (and even current) grad students are not sure what to expect at grad school, how things are different from undergraduate studies, or sometimes even how to access the information they need to succeed in this new environment.
This new series will offer advice, experience, and ideas for students already in grad school, as well as those thinking about making the jump or just exploring the option.
It doesn’t have to be this way!
Welcome to a new TalentEgg series! While TalentEgg’s Career Incubator is primarily devoted to articles for undergraduate students and recent graduates embarking on their careers, we also know that many readers won’t stop at an undergraduate degree.
Many will go on to grad school for professional degrees, other master’s degrees, and even doctorates. This new series will offer advice, experience, and ideas for students already in grad school, as well as those thinking about making the jump or just exploring the option.
The series will be written by two TalentEgg writers, each with their own unique experiences in grad school.
Danielle Lorenz
Danielle Lorenz will begin grad school at Carleton University in Ottawa this fall, where she will pursue an MA in Canadian Studies with a focus on Indigenous Studies.
Danielle is just embarking on her grad school adventure, learning the ropes and sharing her experiences with readers as she navigates this new world. In addition to articles on applications and funding, Danielle will also write about life as a new graduate student and offer regular updates of her progress in grad school.
Justin Bengry
At the other end of the spectrum, Justin Bengry recently completed his PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in History with an emphasis inFeminist Studies.
Justin has finished nearly a decade of grad school and wants to share how to succeed and what to be wary of in higher education. He will focus on relationships with supervisors, conducting research and also how to succeed at grad school.
Throughout the summer and fall we will also cover issues and questions surrounding application procedures, fellowships and grants, TA-ing duties and responsibilities, relationships with supervisors and everything in between. This will be an ongoing series of articles, the timing of which will be designed to match your trajectories for applications, anxieties, and needs throughout the academic year.
Feel free to comment on articles with your own ideas and questions for areas you’d like to see us cover!
This blog was originally published at TalentEgg on 20 July 2010.
Memory, Identity and Politics in Sarajevo
July, 2010 · By Justin Bengry
As an historian I’ve probably gained more sympathy and understanding of the importance of my discipline from my travels and experiences outside the classroom. There are moments of sudden and profound understanding that have given me chills. I first experienced this on my first trip to Germany. Walking among the trees down the former East Berlin’s Unter den Linden I was overwhelmed by history, the power of space, and the profound social and cultural transformations that this street had seen and now represented.
With many more trips to Europe, and the experience of many more sites of historical unrest and change, I thought I had become dulled to such emotive responses to history. And then I took a week-long road trip across the Balkans in a rented Fiat.
There’s something about the immediacy of knowing this place was under siege so recently, experiencing war within the period of my own memory. It’s easy to assume that war ended in Europe in 1945, but throughout Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia war ravaged society not even a generation ago.
The stark reality of this hit when driving through towns that couldn’t afford to replace bombed out buildings and past farmhouses still pockmarked with bullet holes. After the relative wealth of Slovenia and parts of Croatia, the tell-tale signs of war in rural Croatia as we approached the Bosnian border were jarring. And later, in Mostar, the ruins of office buildings and apartment blocks in the downtown core was a stark reminder of what many around us had experienced so recently.
But the experience that stays with me is Sarajevo. Mostly recovered, you might not see many signs of war in its streets these days. Until you look down to the sidewalk and see the so-called Sarajevo Roses, small mortar shell craters filled with red cement, much of the city today seems largely unscathed, its scars mostly hidden from the public and from tourists.
And then I found the shell of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina just around the corner from our hotel. An Ottoman style building on the banks of the Miljacka river, the library was a repository for the history of Bosnia, and as such became a deliberate target of Serb incendiary bombardment on 25 August 1992.
The fact that the Serbian army would destroy a repository of a nation’s written culture and history speaks to the power of history to define a people and their identity. Bosnia’s rebuilding of the library and recollection of materials lost in the subsequent inferno is equally telling of the need to assert a collective history and culture in an area fraught with competing identities. What I found most poignant, besides the hulking ruin itself, was a plaque mounted on its wall, even during the process of reconstruction:
On this place Serbian criminals in the night of 25th-26th August, 1992 set on fire National and University’s Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over 2 millions of books, periodicals and documents vanished in the flame.
Do not forget, Remember and Warn!
This plaque is striking. When I saw it, the building was under reconstruction, but the plaque remained. Its tone and identification of the perpetrators of the library’s destruction names names. It asks Bosnians never to forget the loss, but also never to forget who caused it. But, appearing in English, it is also a call for foreigners not to forget what happened on this site of twentieth-century history as well.
As an historical actor itself, the library remains a poignant voice on multiple levels of self-identification, memory, loss, and self-representation of a people to the rest of the world.
For more on the library, its history and destruction, and the move to rebuild its collections see:
Photo: National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Justin Bengry)
This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
15 July 2010.
On Luck, or How we Succeed in Academia
July, 2010 · By Justin Bengry
I’m in a more contemplative mood of late.A single event has changed the trajectory of my life. I was ready for one path, preparing for the struggle and strain of starting again, and then…and then I got lucky.
Among those of us applying for a particular job or postdoc, any one of several dozen applicants would be perfectly qualified and able to fulfill the terms of almost any appointment. Still, impressions at an interview, good or bad days, and nerves at a teaching demonstration or job talk all influence the final outcome. And none of these are static indicators. A lot comes down to luck.
I’m thinking about this more lately because of the great luck that has befallen me. After living on credit cards and borrowed money, increasing my debt, and sinking further into despair, a lifeline was thrown to me. Luck has chosen to take me to the University of Saskatchewan for a two-year postdoc.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t feel that I lack control over my life. I’ve created the conditions in which luck could find me. I’ve worked hard to get here. I’ve published, taught, and made connections across three countries. I’ve bled to get here.
But so have hundreds of others. Some of them are more qualified than I am for positions; some might be less qualified. But in this case I’m the lucky one. Some small thing distinguished me from them in this competition. It could have been key phrases in my proposal, the combination of areas I research, particular “synergies” with existing faculty members. I don’t know. But it worked to my advantage.
But this experience has made me think about the profession of academia, its randomness, and luck. I take credit for my hard work for five years to get here. I give credit to those innumerable friends, colleagues, and family who have supported me intellectually and personally even longer. But in the end I’m no different than 100s of other aspiring academics, thousands of other scholars, tens of thousands of other men and women who want to make a living engaging with intellectual questions.
The experience has humbled me. I’m lucky. I have security and stability for two years. My shoulders have dropped at least two inches with that assurance. I’ve started sleeping the full night through for the first time in months. It didn’t have to be this way. I was ready to forge a different path. Success is luck. And in this job climate and economic downturn, we all need a little more luck.
This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
3 July 2010.
History Matters: Gay History, Queer Theory, and What to do with the “Hard Stuff”?
June, 2010 · By Justin Bengry
I recently reviewed Charles Upchurch’s Before Wilde: Sex Between Men in Britain’s Age of Reform. In the period roughly spanning the first three quarters of the nineteenth century Upchurch has uncovered a range of voices discussing male same-sex sexuality. In the press, courts, letters, and other documents he finds an active discourse in this period largely overlooked by historians who have favoured the earlier subculture of the “mollies,” or the later period of sexological discourse and scandalous trials like those of Oscar Wilde. Family relations, economic considerations, class and status, among others, Upchurch argues, inflect this discourse.
I enjoyed the book. I learned a lot. It certainly didn’t radically reposition the historiography, but it responded to gaps in the literature with solid evidence and exhaustive archival research. By all measures of historical scholarship, I believe, it is a good, solid book, one which Upchurch can be deservedly proud.
Then I read other reviews online.
I found others who hail it as a masterpiece of profound merit that illuminates the truth of history that has been occluded by dangerous queer theorists like Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. Larry Kramer, celebrated playwright and gay-rights activist, offered effusive praise of the book in his Huffington Post review that sums up this distinction:
This is a very important book. It may even be a historic book, one with which gay history can arm itself with more sufficient factual veracity as to start vanquishing at last the devil known as queer studies. Queer studies is that stuff that is taught in place of gay history and which elevates theory over facts because its practitioners, having been unsuccessful in uncovering enough of the hard stuff, are haughtily trying to make do.
He goes on to malign,
…Foucaultian and Butlerian (to name but two) nightmares with the obtuse vocabularies they invented and demanded be utilized to pierce their dark inchoate spectacles of a world of their own imaginings.
Kramer, and others, who demand the “hard stuff” of history—just the facts ma’am—are drawn to Upchurch’s solid base of social history. His work gives voice to the excluded, reclaims untold stories, highlights the role of minority subjects in greater narratives of politics and the state. For many outside the academy, this is what should be the stuff of history.
But if Kramer is anything to go by, then, even educated, informed, and engaged individuals aren’t actually getting the distinction between history and other related fields upon which we may build our work. Kramer wants history, and maligns Philosophy, English, Sociology, and Interdisciplinary Studies for not being History. But the history he wants is social history, and a relatively narrow version of social history at that. To be fair, Upchurch does offer a more complex and sophisticated discussion that goes beyond mere politics of visibility.
These issues bring up hard questions for us as practitioners of history. I struggle with my love of history and my dedication to this craft. I want to write sophisticated, rigorous, intellectually powerful works of scholarship. But I also want them to be read and valued by more than a handful of like-minded colleagues. I value social history’s relevance and appeal to wider audiences, but I also feel that so many of us have gone further than what social history alone offers.
How do we respond to well-intentioned, but potentially disruptive, individuals like Kramer, who love history, but fear the history they don’t understand? Who want history, but don’t quite know what it is anymore? How do we tell our advocates that we’ve changed, that we are everything they value, but more?
This post was originally published at History Compass exchanges on
17 June 2010.
No Respect! Are Humanities the Rodney Dangerfield of Academia?
June, 2010 · By Justin Bengry
The recent bloodbath in humanities programs has left me reeling.
Most recently there was The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. According to the Times Higher Education, there has been a unit at UCL covering this subject since 1966. This world-renowned centre currently operates with 29 staff, including 12 academics, and 54 students, including 25 PhDs. This is a significant scholarly presence that has long led international scholarship in the history of medicine. No more. It will be phased out over the next two years.
Then there is the case of Middlesex University. Having already closed its History department in 2006, Philosophy is now on the chopping block. Opposition to the closure has gained support from scholars and public intellectuals around the world including Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, and Slavoj Žižek. But it’s clear from stories like this that humanities programs are considered expendable, suitable victims of cost-cutting measures.
Closer to home, Canada recently invested $200 million in the Canada Excellence Research Chairs initiative. It attracted 19 world-renowned scholars to Canada, but included no scholars in the Arts and Social Sciences. Not a single, solitary one. (It also included no women!)
The connection between these stories, and others we could collect, is a denigration of the humanities. Funding priorities, department closures, and the suggestion that humanities scholars are a drain on limited resources illustrate this over and over again. There are a number of reasons for this, of course, ranging from the recent economic downturn, the ongoing corporatization of the academy, but also just an ongoing, general devaluing of the humanities.
But why do we suffer this fate? Why don’t we garner wider support? Are we too isolated in the ivory tower? I think there’s something else at play. In one way, I think we’re victims of our own success.
History remains among the most widely popular disciplines among the general public. Period films are huge money-makers, and the History Channel has been a success for more than a decade. Yet historians feel constantly under siege. Of course there can be a world of difference between popular and academic history, but it’s often a fuzzy line. We’ve done an amazing job of making our discipline interesting and accessible to non-specialists.
The consequences of this are perhaps also our biggest challenges.
Non-specialists have no problem telling me the “truth” about history, the ways people interacted in the past, the priorities my research subjects held, and the motivations of past historical actors. This is based on intuition, “common sense,” and also genuine interest. But it also positions non-specialists on an equal footing with scholars, people who have devoted at least a decade to complex questions and research. Few would tell my colleagues in nuclear physics or genetic biology, who have the same level of training as I do, the “truth” about their field, the interaction of subatomic particles, or the molecular makeup of DNA strands. But they immediately, whole-heartedly, but unmaliciously tell me all about history.
They are invested in the discipline but don’t respect its practitioners.
This equal playing field in the public’s mind diminishes the need for specialists, and their funding, and their departments. I worry that this kind of casual denigration of the humanities is what “filters” up to non-specialist government, administration, and funding bodies who enact the same assumptions in funding, hiring, and administrative decisions.
Perhaps this goes some way to explaining the bloodbath. But what is the solution? How do we remain relevant and respected? How do we bridge popular and academic history without losing the unique skills and insights that specialists offer? How will we survive?
This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
3 June 2010.
4 reasons to extend your degree
June, 2010 · By Justin Bengry
Sometimes it’s just not the best idea to finish your undergraduate degree in four years. You might need more time.
Whether it’s because you want to take an extra credential or major, do a co-op or work placement, travel or study abroad, or you just need to slow down the pace, extending the length of your degree is a serious but viable option.
It can even make your degree stronger if you plan it effectively and use the opportunity to your advantage.
Here are four reasons you might want to extend your degree, and how you can use them to position yourself better after that degree is done.
Extra major
Completing a double major or adding a credential to your degree can make you more appealing on the job market. If you like languages, you may be able to combine it with business studies for a degree tailored to international business. If you like music, history or sociology, combining these with an education degree opens doors to be a music or social studies teacher.
Double majors and extra credentials show employers and grad schools that you are driven and motivated. And pragmatic combinations position you well for competitive fields.
Co-ops, internships and volunteering
Many of us finish our degrees with the classic problem: lots of education but no experience. But how do you get experience in the first place? You get it during your education as a part of your degree!
Co-ops, internships and volunteering are becoming an increasingly valuable addition to many undergraduate degrees. Some offer you the opportunity to earn while you learn, but each helps build contacts and network in your chosen career. Or you can just use them to give a career option you may be interested in a trial run.
If you choose this path, by the time you finish, you’ll already have practical skills, a stronger resumé and important references.
Travel
Taking time to travel is one of the most valuable experiences in life. Extensive experiences abroad show employers you are adaptable, pro-active and confident. But travel is often expensive and time consuming.
Study abroad programs and international internships offer another chance to live in another country, experience another culture, and gain a sensitivity to international issues and global concerns. They may last the summer, a semester or an entire year abroad. Some even allow you to count courses toward your degree.
But if you continue to take courses while living abroad, they may not all transfer back to your home institution. Always plan foreign study with an academic advisor.
Personal reasons
The transition to university can be a difficult one, especially for students studying in a new city or province. And the pace of courses in your program might be more than you expected. It’s OK to slow down. Many of us also have to earn an income while going to school. Undertaking a full course load at the same time might seem like a necessity in order to finish, but it could do real harm if your grades suffer, or if you fail classes. Repeating them only takes more time and money.
Be sure to look into summer courses, which you may be able to use as prerequisites for other classes, or as required elements for your degree.
It is important to plan ahead since extending your degree can be costly and confusing. Some programs require that students follow a set plan, and many courses have prerequisites that aren’t offered every semester. Make sure to weigh the benefits and consequences of remaining longer at university.
Will you be able to pay for that extra year or semester? Do you want added student loans? Sometimes the answer is yes, but before making any decision,discuss your goals and options with a counsellor or your department advisor.
This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 1 June 2010.
Young yoga entrepreneur teaches fellow yoga enthusiasts to practice their passion
May, 2010 · By Justin Bengry
Many of us have a passion for something, but we never really take it seriously as more than a hobby.
But what if our passion and our work were the same thing? Entrepreneurs can live their passion every day and incorporate it into a career. Turning your passion into your career, however, is a challenging task requiring focus, motivation, hard work, and a measure of luck.
Asia Nelson is a certified advanced yoga instructor, yoga teacher trainer and director of her own company, Pranalife Yoga, based in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. She has been a certified yoga instructor since 2003 and started Pranalife Yoga in 2006.
Q. How did you develop an interest in yoga?
A. I first got into yoga accidentally. During undergrad, I’d signed up for a Tai Kwan Do class and they made me spar a green belt on the first day. I thought, “This isn’t for me,” and when I couldn’t get a refund for the class I transferred into yoga because I thought it sounded interesting. It was probably the most life-altering “accident” of my life thus far!
Q. What inspired you to start your own yoga business?
A. Truthfully, I hated Cubicle Nation so much I had to come up with some way to make a living that didn’t involve working for someone else. I spent some time considering my skills and passions and what opportunities I saw to apply them, and Pranalife was born.
Q. What aspects of entrepreneurship appeal to you most? Which are the hardest?
A. The hardest parts of entrepreneurship are in some ways the most appealing. My major purpose in life is to grow, so every challenge is positive for me. For example, my favourite part of being an entrepreneur is being self-led, which is also one of the hardest things to do well long-term. Sometimes it’s just easier to be part of a team, but I thrive on the discipline needed to succeed in entrepreneurship, which I think is one of the toughest fields out there.
Q. How have you applied your education and training to your business?
A. I hold an honours BA in English literature and an MA in rhetoric and communications design. I draw from what I learned in my degrees for everything from staying disciplined to research and writing skills to the mental acuity needed to get things done well, even when they’re not fun (which would describe 90% of the last half of writing my MA thesis).
Right out of my MA, I held a job as an interaction design advisor for a marketing company and, although my fit with a cubicle was terrible (I get hives at the idea of an office job), I gleaned incredible knowledge about how to suss out customer desire and innovate on business design from having had that role.
Q. What is unique about your yoga business?
A. Everything I do is about moving from good togreat. This shows up most strongly in my Teacher Training. I’ve done a number of things with the Teacher Training to build a truly great program for my teachers.
Most yoga programs cost $3,000-$5,000 paid up front. You do the entire training in one shot and, when you’re done, you’re on your own. If it turns out you don’t actually want to teach, well I guess you’re out a few grand and a few hundred hours.
Not with Pranalife. I divide the training into 60 hour modules to cut down on the up-front cost and to give them time to practice what they’ve learned before going further.
I’m passionate about supporting my instructors and I do so in innovative and useful ways. The result is that Pranalife yoga certification means you’re going to be great, and you’re now part of a business with integrity.
Q. What has been your greatest obstacle in developing Pranalife?
A. I’m a perfectionist and an overachiever so if I’m not careful I end up doing everything myself because I assume it’s the only way to get it done right. At times I’ve become the bottleneck in my own business, and so I’ve been learning how else to run things so that I don’t get in my own way.
Q. What has been your greatest success with Pranalife?
A. The yoga teacher training is what I’d call my most successful pairing of my passion with my skill set. It does well financially, it excites and challenges me, and it creates amazing experiences and opportunities for others interested in and dedicated to yoga.
Q. What advice would you give other young entrepreneurs embarking on a similar path?
A. Entrepreneurship is for a certain breed and very few people do it, or do it well. Be sure it’s really what you want to do because it’s very demanding. If you can be content with a stable job that brings you decent money and a pension, then you’ll probably default to that at some point, so just do that.
If reading that last sentence makes you afraid to risk it, then I’m right. If reading that pisses you off and makes you want to prove that you’re an entrepreneur, you probably are. There’s only one way to find out.
This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 28 May 2010.
Making the Grade
May, 2010 · By Justin Bengry
I’ve always been ambivalent about grading.
I question how much students really learn from exams. I know, for example, that I forgot everything I ever learned about the Revolutions of 1848 until I actually had to relearn and then teach them again myself.
I question whether undergraduates really need to learn the content of exams. Is it not better for them to complete a course having gained better critical thinking skills, improved communication and writing skills, and an appreciation for history rather than by supplying a flawless (but regurgitated) retelling of the events of 1792 in France?
And I question the effect that grading has on instructors, who must toil through 50 answers to the same question about China’s Cultural Revolution. Of course there are some shining stars, but many answers reflect relatively passive learning and a bit of studying the night before. I love teaching, but I’m never more depressed than after reading student exams and realizing that my love of history and language is only mine and seldom theirs. It is only reflected back to me in a few exciting papers, and rarely from only the students with the highest grades.
But why should my students have the same priorities and passions as me? Just because they are in a history class doesn’t mean they need to love history. History is really just the means, the method, a pedagogical tool. I’m not in the business of creating mini-Justins (aside: Oh, what a world it would be!), rather I want my excitement for knowledge and learning to impart a sense of curiosity and opportunity among students.
Grading quashes that for both of us.
Duke University English professor Cathy Davidson seems to feel the same way:
I loved returning to teaching last year after several years in administration . . . except for the grading. I can’t think of a more meaningless, superficial, cynical way to evaluate learning in a class on new modes of digital thinking (including rethinking evaluation) than by assigning a grade.
I encountered Davidson’s work while reading about her experiment with peer-evaluation techniques. Earlier this month Inside Higher Ed reported on the success of her course “Your Brain on the Internet.”
On her blog, Prof. Davidson explained her grading methodology as “crowdsourcing,” basically peer review, with evaluations based on performance contracts with the students. The course was already organized as a seminar led each week by students, she explained, but where formerly students had only been responsible for reading each other’s work, they would now be required to evaluate it. If the “crowd” deemed it satisfactory, it earned that week’s points. If not, students had the option to revise and resubmit.
Davidson was overjoyed with the outcome:
Whether in conversation or in the presentations, my students often took the best writing on a topic and then took it to a new level, with greater complexity and greater attention to a range of possibilities (rather than polemic) that quite literally any published work on the same topic.
But not surprisingly, critics to this method have appeared. This week, Leonard Cassuto, a professor of English at Fordham University responded in Inside Higher Ed. While he recognized the benefit to questioning grading methodologies, he ultimately felt it was the professor’s responsibility and duty to rank students in a meaningful way. Davidson’s method was unhelpful, he worried, when all of her students earned As.
I think avoiding grading (or some comparable form of rigorous evaluation by the instructor) shirks necessary responsibility, avoids necessary comparison, and puts the humanities at even greater risk of bring branded “soft” than they already face. […] The bottom line question is this: if everyone gets As, does that mean that Yale Law School will simply accept them all?
In the end, Davidson’s class comprised just 16 students, and on a larger scale her methods would, I expect, distribute grades differently. I am, therefore, excited about Professor Davidson’s experiments in teaching and grade evaluation, and I think there is a great deal of space (and need) for innovation. But Professor Cassuto identifies important reservations about the effect such methods could inadvertently have on students who wish to go on.
Davidson’s experiment does, however, bring up a number of questions: Does peer evaluation imperil the humanities? How can we more effectively evaluate students? On what should we evaluate them? Perhaps this offers an excellent opportunity to apply digital technologies more fully to the humanities classroom? And in the History classroom, is there space for this kind of evaluation method?
This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
20 May 2010.