20190430.0430

The month ends today, and so does my focus in this webspace on LinkedIN. I have already commented on my reflections of the experience, so I need not dwell thereupon now. What I will dwell upon, however, is how I plan to proceed for the next month, which begins tomorrow. Putting up a buffer will be of great importance for me, as next month promises to be busy; there are birthdays and holidays and conference trips that demand my attention, and I do want to be diligent in at least one of my pursuits. Having something posting here will help me, and knowing what I want to post will help me ensure that I am able to do so.
I have, of late, been thinking I might return to poetry. I do not think I am ready to begin again my hymns against the stupid god; I do not know that I have the anger ready to hand that that body of work demands of me. But I have been thinking on other things. This year was a good wildflower year, and the weather so far has been pretty good, so I have been much outside and much given to consideration of what is outside. There is enough outside in the Texas Hill Country to attract attention and consideration, so I will not be short of inspiration for such work as I might do. And it has been a while since I have put such skills to use in any sustained fashion, so it behooves me to practice my versification once again.
At the same time, I know that other things attract more attention, and more favorable, than my poetic efforts. Of the few posts in the last 100 I've made that have attracted triple-digit readership (and the fact that that is a figure I would note is itself an indicator...), only a couple have been posts of verse; the rest have been what I hope is the lucid prose of this blog's title. If I am working to attract notice to my efforts, then, it seems that my short essays will be of more use than my short verse. Just as I am unsure that I have the anger to sustain my hymnal, however, I am unsure that I have the presence of mind to post essays so far ahead--unless I return to summaries and commentaries. But those seem a bit flat for me at the moment; I do not feel that those are what I want to do, and this webspace is as much about what I want to do as about attracting formal attention. (And, anyway, I have another webspace where commentary plays a bit better than this one, if the number of views received is any indication.)
I am not certain, then, what I shall do. But I shall do, so I shall be certain soon. I hope you will read along.

20190429.0430

Looking at what LinkedIN has had to offer over the past month has been interesting, certainly. I know that I've tended to fall into the same habits with it that I have with other media I consume; much of what I've done has been looking at what it offers me to read, summarizing it, and offering my comments upon the same. How useful or edifying those comments have been, I do not know; I hope they have been helpful or interesting for people, but I know better than to expect much in that regard. After all, did what I have to say much matter, I'd be producing more original content than responses to the same, and I'd be more confident in it, such that I'd push it forward in more places than I do what I write here.
One thing that has been abundantly clear to me is that the audience LinkedIN believes it has is not looking for deep reading. It is not looking for developed ideas. It is, instead, looking for short bits that help business and corporate folks feel good about themselves and allow them to work towards the idea that employees in the current socioeconomic climate can be persuaded to offer the kind of loyalty that they need not reciprocate, to give of themselves abundantly until that final moment when they are let go as no longer of immediate use. I acknowledge that the view is cynical, but it is also grounded in my reading through what comes across my feed, both from my contacts who remain active on the platform and from the platform's own systems. If I am cynical, it is because I am paying attention. I believe the face-eater when it says it wants to eat faces, and I do what I can to protect my face from it.
That said, although I am not going to focus my attentions on LinkedIN as much going forward as I have in the past month, I am going to make sure that I pay attention to it. For one, it does offer me another venue for writing--and thereby for advertising my abilities and what I might offer through them. (Hey, I have to keep the lights on, too.) I do intend on doing more to put myself out into the business community where I live; I intend on going to such a function this Friday, as a matter of fact. It will be good to have some kind of entrée into conversations there, and the materials on LinkedIN offer such a thing; business trends can be discussed, even at "outside" events, and I am not so well grounded in sport or outdoor life as I would need to be to participate in the other conversations like to be going on at such events. Nor yet do I have ready access to the most recent television shows, which closes off another avenue.
As I note, the experience has been interesting. I will be moving on from it, but I am glad to have done it.

20190428.0430

One more article that LinkedIN recommended for me was Randi Zuckerbert's 20 April 2019 "Celebrating 420 Is Not Equal for All." The short piece notes socioeconomic impacts of recent legalizations of marijuana in the United States before pivoting to the racial and ethnic biases that appear to underlie the benefits which currently accrue from the legalizations. Zuckerberg reminds readers that there are still people suffering from draconian laws that have been overturned, even as people markedly unlike them benefit from the changes to those laws.
Zuckerberg is, of course, entirely correct in noting the racial disparities in benefits from and incarcerations due to marijuana use, possession, and sales. They are and remain present, as do disparities in popular perception; too often, white folks who indulge in marijuana are regarded positively or benignly, while persons of color who do so are regarded as already-hardened criminals. And it is shameful that those elected to positions of power who currently have the authority to pardon or commute, and who do exercise those powers in cases where justice has been miscarried--and enforcing bad laws is such a miscarriage--do not do more to release those incarcerated who are guilty of things no longer illegal.
I have noted (here and here, for example) that I am in favor of legalization of marijuana. The economic benefits to the states that have done so are clear, and I am not aware of any increase in crime that offsets those gains to any substantial degree. I am certain that if there were, it would be trumpeted to the heavens by those whose interests are in forcing others into ways of life that arise from some source they do not even know, but have internalized uncritically such that they cannot conceive of alternatives except as being "unnatural." But I hear no such fanfares being played, and even my ears are not so bad as to miss such brassy braying as that; I can only conclude that the apocalyptic ends that many have said legalization would bring about are not occurring.
But for many, as Zuckerberg rightly points out, bad ends have already come about and are ongoing. She is right to remind us that things remain skewed, that many still suffer where others now take delight, and that the burden of that suffering is lopsided in strange ways that reflect poorly upon the nation where it is borne. There is still work to do--and every day demands some efforts upon it.

20190427.0430

While it is the case that I was accepted into one of the LinkedIN groups I had sought to enter, it is also the case that it took some days to be accepted into that group. (I am writing a fair bit ahead of posting at this point, which I take to be a good thing. It does sometimes mean I miss the chance for some timely comments, but I have also found that materials written in haste almost always come off less well than might be hoped.) As of this writing, I am still waiting for approval in the other groups I have requested to join, and I confess to some slight annoyance at the delay.

I know that social media groups that are not directly linked with companies are volunteer activities, and I know that there is only so much that can be expected from a volunteer--particularly when non-volunteer activities demand attention. The bills have to be paid before hobbies can be indulged, or such should be the case. (I have seen it go otherwise far too many times...) And I know that the situation I am in as I write this is not one that demands my participation in particular groups; it would be helpful, perhaps, but more if I have to alter my situation than if I am to maintain it. Too, given yesterday's comments, it may well be that not being in the groups is more a benefit than being in them would be. I do not know yet, of course, but I have to entertain the possibility.

At the same time, the prevailing narrative is that business has to move quickly, that the business world has to move quickly. It is also part of the prevailing narrative that all public activity is branding, and it is a commonplace on LinkedIN that people's profiles--including those of group moderators--make much of their current professional positions. That is, they are representing their companies and brands at all times, as I am on that platform for mine. (And I know I still have some work to do in that regard.) For delays to occur in what seems should be a quick scan-and-click job sends a less-than-favorable impression, even with such mitigating factors in place as are noted above. And it is not necessarily that I am a Millennial that I have such an attitude about things; I learned customer service from Boomers who found themselves and find themselves catering to the Greatest Generation and the tag-end of the Lost Generation. If I expect my performance and those of my peers to be a certain way, it is because that performance was and still is demanded of me.

But I am perhaps overly harsh in such things. I do not know that I do better when I am doing work for which I am not paid, and I doubt that the managers of such groups as I have petitioned to enter are compensated for the time they spend on the groups; I ought not to be stricter with others than I am with myself. And I have to think that a great many in business leadership roles might take such a lesson to heart; certainly, a reminder of it from time to time is a helpful thing.

20190426.0430

Earlier in the month, I noted that I was joining the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Professionals group on LinkedIN. Recently, I was accepted into the group; when I was, I was surprised at what I saw.
What I had expected to see were announcements of conferences and jobs open, offerings of training opportunities and announcements of availability for work. I had thought I would see articles written by members discussing--under useful pseudonyms and with other appropriate anonymizations--incidents in clinics and concerns of clients in practice. They are the kinds of things I see, adjusted for discipline and professional focus, in other groups, both on that platform and elsewhere, so they made sense as appearing on the LinkedIN group. And, given the nature of the platform itself, I did expect to see some advertisements interspersed among the other offerings; I understand that the platform has to fund itself.
I did see those things, to be certain. Indeed, the first entry in the group that presented itself to me was a notice of a conference, for which abstracts were soon due. But most of what I saw were advertisements for holistic cures--and not from the platform, but from one member. I have to doubt the identity of said putative member; the activity reads more like a bot posting at high speed than an actual person, even one who is paid to promote a particular website and its offerings. And I have to wonder about the wisdom of making such posts around people who are ostensibly health care professionals; it seems that would be an audience likely to reject out of hand such commentaries, given that professional training in clinical fields usually instills a belief in the superiority of peer-reviewed study over individual assertion.
Then again, I have been disappointed by professionals in the performance of their professions many times, as I have disappointed others in the performance of my own professions. (Clearly, I have, else I'd not have had to change profession as I have.) It may well be that those in the group invite such advertisements, that they respond to them with things other than annoyance and over-passing. (I am not unmoved by advertisements. I am more moved by the fact that I do not have money to spare in addressing them.) It may well be that people whom others seek for their ability to see things are oblivious. And that is a distressing thought, though it is probably more true than is comfortable to consider.

20190425.0430

Another of the many pieces LinkedIn has recommended to me is DeVry University's re-release of John Hanc's "Building a Career, One Academic Step at a Time." (I suppose I should note here that I am, as of this writing, contingent faculty at DeVry.) The piece describes "stackable credentials" as an interlocking system of two-year, four-year, and graduate degrees and of various certifications and continuing education units. Hanc focuses on extolling articulation agreements--that is, agreements that allow straight-across transfers of course credits--between community colleges and senior colleges and universities. A couple of student examples bracket the article, and a number of educational administrators are quoted as being in support of the idea, as well, helping the article to make its case.
There are some solid, salient points in the piece. Community colleges can offer students who have previously been academically underserved or who have been away from formal education for some time to re/acclimate themselves to general academic environments. They are also usually substantially less expensive than senior colleges and universities (though this is often at the price of having fewer facilities and less access to research apparatus), making them more accessible to socioeconomically disadvantaged populations. And it is the case that baccalaureate and higher education is not the best fit for many people--and no shame should accrue to that, although it does in too many cases.
At the same time, there are some issues with the piece. Perhaps the most glaring is that it appears to call for an extension of credentialing-mania; part of the problem that attaches itself to higher education in the United States at present is that it is seen as providing necessary credentials instead of a broader education. (I am aware of how fraught the term is. The discussion goes on in many places, carried out by people far more eloquent than I; it can be found easily.) Incorporating more sites of education more explicitly into such systems is likely to have the same effect on them as it has on prevailing educational standards, prompting the same kinds of things currently decried. And it will also likely drive up what are currently more manageable costs, so that access to educational opportunities currently in place will become more restricted yet.
There are other issues, as well. For one, part of the value in staying with an institution across a longer term is the opportunity for continuity. Even for non-traditional students, there is value in seeing familiar faces week to week and session to session. The longer engagement allows for the development of relationships that can help students transition out of the classroom successfully. Fragmenting curricula through "stackable credentials" disrupts that, serving to isolate students-turned-workers further from one another, and individuals are not as able to align for common goals and good as are already-existing groups. And, for another, the move to fragment curricula reads as another avenue of attack on humanistic study. While "writing" instruction--narrowly tailored to workplace genres such as resumes and HR reports--will doubtlessly remain in place, the broader liberal arts will likely fall away even more than they already are.
I do not need to speak here to the threat such poses.

20190424.0430

I read yet another piece LinkedIn recommended for me: Michelle Gibbings's 14 April 2019 "The Upside of Bad Days." The piece is a fairly shallow rehash of traditional advice: shit happens, and you can either complain or do something about it.
A couple of points come to mind to discuss in relation to the article. It is important, certainly, to move ahead with things when possible, despite the events of a day going bad (though what Gibbings calls "going bad" and what I might call it differ; missing a meeting or losing a document is an annoyance, while having a house flood or having to take a sick child to the hospital on her birthday because she has pneumonia is a bad day). Wallowing in the annoyance does not help, and it does, as Gibbings usefully notes (in one of the few instances of her doing so in the article), tend to drag others down. Even amid it, things need doing, and not getting them done will only serve to make things worse than they already are, to increase the annoyance or make for a really bad day, after all.
More important, to my mind, is a tendency of which Gibbings seems representative. I've sat through a number of motivational talks, and I've read a number of pieces by motivational speakers. Every one of them has seemed insipid to me--and, worse, convinced of its own profundity. I know that the presentations have to believe their own hype; it's simple marketing, and they are in the business of selling themselves and their "services," as I probably ought to be. And I know I am not likely among the intended primary audiences for such things (which bespeaks yet another area in which social media platforms' algorithms need refinement); I do not think such presentations are actually looking at people who have read as I have read and who have had the time to sit and think about that reading--and how it reflects and fails to reflect those parts of life that can be observed from a good spot for reading--as I have had. So it should not be a surprise that they do not much register with me, that they come across as more annoyance, if not outright insult, than inspiration.
Then again, I do find myself writing about such things. I am using them as springboards for my own productivity, insofar as I can call the effort spent putting words into this webspace productive. So perhaps I am not so immune to them as I might like to think myself...

20190423.0430

To continue on with articles LinkedIN recommends for me, I read Robert Glazer's 15 April 2019 piece "What I Learned about Potential from a Day Spent in Prison." The article reflects on Glazer having spent time volunteering at a maximum-security prison and drawing lessons from it, notably the relative normalcy of those incarcerated and the systemic failure to decrease and rehabilitate prison populations. Glazer pivots at the end of the piece to the thought that, if those in some of the most deliberately repressive circumstances can work for meaningful change in themselves, those not in such situations can do much more.
There are problems with the piece, of course. The misery-tourism aspect of the thing attracts attention and grates; it moves towards a white-savior mentality that was a bad idea when it arose and which should be long discarded from its longer history of use as means of abuse and abnegation. That it only moves towards and does not overtly adopt such a mentality is occasioned by the lack of notice paid to the tendency of prison populations to be overwhelmingly people of color; while some concerns of demography are noted, those that work so strongly on populations that become incarcerated are omitted from the piece entirely, which is something else that writers now had damned well ought to know better than to do.
That said, the article does do well to point some things out. For all that carceral research holds that prison populations have long been fluid, people in the United States tend to think of inmates and former inmates as a people apart, rather than as simply another part of the body politic to which any might belong. Glazer seems to work to reassert that the people in prison are people, having the same potential (which can be read as a gloss on "inherent dignity") as any others. Glazer does attract attention to the socioeconomic bias in the criminal justice system, pointing out that one of the major differences between his own demographic and those of the inmates is that he and those like him had access to more robust systems of legal support than those imprisoned; an inmate arrested at age eight is highlighted as a particularly prominent example of someone suffering due to a lack of such a support system. And Glazer also points out the systemic problems that exacerbate crime; harsh sentences do not serve their purported deterrent functions, but only to overcrowd prisons. (He does not address root causes of this, though, which is a weakness.)
At the end, while Glazer raises some good points, he does not seem to go far enough. If he is representative of the platform, it seems there is a damned lot more work to do. I can only shoulder so much of it, myself...

20190422.0430

Yet another piece LinkedIn presented to me is Bernard Marr's 14 April 2019 "How Robots, IoT, and Artificial Intelligence Are Changing How Humans Have Sex." In the article, Marr points out several avenues of current development in the further integration of technology into sex--internet-enabled sex toys, sexbots, and virtual-reality pornography--before moving into consideration of legal issues surrounding such advancement and policy questions that begin to move towards broader social questions. Marr stops short of offering any judgments on the matter, simply noting trends and current developments before noting that things are changing; how they will continue to change and what responses will be appropriate are not yet clear.
I confess to a certain degree of titillation in the piece; although sex sells and various forms of sex work are continually substantial parts of human endeavor and economies, they do not appear to be often discussed on such platforms as LinkedIN. There remains a large degree of prudishness about business in the United States--and US norms still exercise outsized influence on broader discourses--that prevents even such cursory and sober discussions of related issues as Marr's from popping up often. And because there is such a taboo in place, violations of it--even those as innocuous as Marr's article--attract attention, particularly from those so salacious as I am.
Something towards which Marr gestures, and which does need some consideration, is that the increasing integration of technology into sex will further decouple sex from intimacy. The two are certainly not identical--intimacy extends beyond sex, and sex beyond intimacy, in myriad ways--though there is a strong association between them, as well as cultural preferences for their conjoining. Further disassociating them from one another--and, again, making sex more a mechanistic thing is like to do that, if not certain--will have effects on the very nature of family, which is largely defined by consanguinity and privileged sexual relationships. Realigning such things will not be done without struggle--which is not a reason not to do them, but it is folly to deny that such struggles will occur, and that many will be resistant to making changes. Many of us define ourselves in some or large part through familial terms, even those of us who are in the purportedly fragmentary family structures ascribed to and almost necessitate by the demands of work in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Comments on the article suggest that quite a bit of work is needed. What should be discussion of the potential business and legal impacts such changes would make--which would be appropriate to the platform, despite the protestations of some that such content is unfitting--is instead too much judgment of others' sexual preferences. In this, as in much else, what an adult does in private, in his or her own home, with inanimate objects belonging to him or her, is nobody else's concern, and while expressing that such may not be to personal taste is one thing, trying to condemn it overall is quite another--and ultimately fruitless, as the fact that all laws are violated attests.

20190421.0430

Another article that LinkedIN recommended for me is Shradha Sharma's 14 April 2019 "In the Business World, Can Nice People Finish First?" In the article, Sharma frames the question of the title in terms of general observations of reported business attitudes before moving to address the question through two embedded video interviews and comments about them. The interviewees are used as case studies to assert that putative "nice people" can succeed in business; Sharma ends up asserting that a focus on what is good in a businessperson by that businessperson, rather than looking at what others do who succeed, results in not only business success, but also more authentic existence.
I do not know that my experience accords with what Sharma proposes. Too often, those who will take the time to aid others end up screwed over; yes, they may develop and enjoy a reputation for reliable honesty, but they also end up giving more of themselves than they end up taking in. And when they do say "no" in the interest of self-care, their reputations erode, leaving them without so much of a good name and not much of the money they had hoped to earn or otherwise acquire.
When the principle is to bring in money, that having money and increasing the amount of money had is good, that doing so faster is better, being nice does not suggest itself as a viable option. And two anecdotal attestations that another way is desirable do little to offset my own anecdote--or the ample attestation that those who act from greed succeed when the goal is bringing in more money.
This is not to say that I like to see it be that way. I have generally been one who gives, who helps, hence the lines of work I have been and am in now. And I appreciate the things I have and the people I have in my life because I have acted as I have. But that does not blind me to the fact that I spent a lot of money and lost out on bringing in more as I trained to do the work I had wanted to do to help others, and I am not blind to the fact that I will never make a lot of money doing the kind of non-profit work that I currently do. That I believe I have made the right decisions for the games I have been playing does not mean I am unaware that they are the wrong decisions for the games others play, nor yet that the other games attract far more prestige than those I do.
It is the case, to be sure, that I am not doing what I'm doing in the interest of fame. But that does not mean I'd be averse to being a bit better known--or a bit better remunerated. There are a number of things it would make easier, and I do not think the difficulties that might arise offset that greater ease.

20190420.0430

Another of the training courses LinkedIn has suggested for me is one titled Developing Your Professional Image. It seems to be another instance of the platform misrecognizing my presentation on itself--and there is not really any chance that it is sending me a message I might not want to hear. For as I watched the introductory video clip, which lays out the course's ideas and rationale, I noted that it is aimed explicitly and specifically at new and soon-to-be college graduates who need to transition from campus life to life outside it. I have long since graduate college, and repeatedly; I am fourteen years past my bachelor's, twelve past my master's, and seven past my doctorate as I write this. I am two years at my present agency, and even if I am still peripherally involved in academe, it is not as a student sitting in the rows of desks or lost amid a large lecture hall. I am clearly not the target audience of the course.
That said, I may well still review the materials when I have world enough and time. I know that I continue to dress for the most part as I did while I was working to be a full-time academic--and, as I was doing so in the humanities, that meant more for ease of use and comfort than for any particular professional identity. I favor polo shirts and either jeans or khaki slacks; I've been described as dressing like foodservice management, generally, even though it has tended to come across to many of my students and no few of my colleagues as a bit stuffy. While living in The City, though, I generally did a bit better, if not much, favoring button-up long-sleeve shirts worn with their collars open. (I try not to wear a tie; closing my collars usually does not work well for me, and leaving the collar open with a tie on strikes my eye as strange and unwelcome.) What I have seen about people in the kind of position I expect to be taking on soon shows me that that is fairly standard attire in the field in my part of the world.
If I am going to make an effort to appear more professional, to look more like I belong in the line of work I mean to go into before too long, I should probably start by dressing more like the people in that line of work. I'm not necessarily fond of the idea of doing as much ironing as that, but I'm less fond of the idea of spending the money to have others do that work for me; I guess I'll have to handle it. And if that is all I have to do, then I am in a good place to move ahead, I think.

20190419.0430

As I have pared down parts of my LinkedIN feed, I have noticed a change in the amount of material that comes across it. Such makes sense, of course; I am following fewer things, reporting fewer interests on the platform, so it ought not to give me quite as much to deal with as it did previously. What surprises me, though, is how much less comes across my feed now than did before. Evidently, most of what I had on it was material not relevant to the work I do now, not relevant to the image of myself I want to present on that platform at this time. It is no wonder, then, that I did not get the kind of attention with it that I had hoped to get, attention that might have led (and might still lead, though I am not hopeful or even necessarily eager) to an offer of a different position that might better suit me.
I have to wonder how much other clutter bestrews my lives online. I know that some such detritus is an artifact of my having been online for quite some time; this is not the first blog I've had, to be sure, even as it is not the only one I currently have, and I used to operate more webpages than is currently the case for me. I am in many respects a different person now than I was then; I occupy more roles and different than I did. It makes sense that some of what I did then no longer applies, that maintaining it portrays me as other than I am in the present moment, even if who I am now is a consequence of who I was then and what I did while I was that person. That I recognize it does not mean I necessarily want to advertise it, though; as I have said in the past, I am not ashamed to defecate daily, but that does not mean I want an audience when I do so.
Perhaps I ought to go through my other media feeds and prune them in the ways I have worked and am still working to adjust my LinkedIN feed. I am perhaps less concerned about my presentation in other venues, as I am directing those at other audiences and for other purposes. That that is so, though, does not mean that those I would hope see my LinkedIN work will not see how I am in other places. (That some of what I write in other venues populates to the platform suggests that they are more likely to look elsewhere than not.) Then again, I also know that people are not always happy to click links, so perhaps things are safe that are not used to smack my readers in the face...such as what I write here, which I seldom reference elsewhere...

20190418.0430

I've noted before that LinkedIn puts advertisements for courses it offers in my feed on the platform. Some of them are sensible offerings for me, things I might consider sitting for it time and resources allow. (They do not currently do so.) Not all of them are; one that showed up for me recently was a course called "Customer Service at Your First Retail Job." Why it appeared for me, I do not know; I do know that it shows a remarkable misunderstanding of my career trajectory, unless it is trying to tell me something about which I ought to be profoundly worried.
My first retail job was some twenty years ago, now. I worked in a grocery store that catered to the elderly population of my hometown--one that even now gets described as a retirement community (with the swift pushback against it by those who do the work of taking care of the elderly). I did so under the tutelage of others who had long been in such jobs, and I did relatively well in the work. (Of course it did not result in much monetary advancement; I started at $6/hr and ended at $6.25 several years later. Yay.) And I've worked other, similar jobs since; I spent most of my undergraduate years working in foodservice, and, even now, I do a lot of customer service in my work, though the circumstances are slightly different because the power dynamics are different, as I believe I have noted in this webspace before. But the recitation of experience is meant to note that I am far past my first retail job, making a course in it seem like a poor fit for me.
To be fair, LinkedIn is offering to let me view the course for free. Perhaps it is an acknowledgement that the system's algorithms are able to anticipate that I will be hiring entry-level people, which is not untrue. If matters proceed as I expect them to do, I will be hiring and training an administrative assistant, and such positions are usually considered entry-level. Mine was. So it may simply be that the platform is overgeneralizing with me in the same way a child who is learning verb tenses in modern English will say a person "eated" rather than "ate" lunch; it may be that the platform is trying to help me and simply has not figured out the best way to do it with the resources it has (or maybe it is the best, and I expect more from it than it can deliver).
But there is another possibility. Not too many years ago as I write this, there was a bit of a flap when the purchase-tracking and marketing software at Target stores determined from a particular person's purchases that she was pregnant--and sent mailers to the address she shared with her parents, who were surprised at the (ultimately correct) revelation. I have to wonder--my paranoiac tendencies demand it--if I am getting a similar message, if the information I have on the platform and other materials it aggregates (I am somewhat prolific online, as might be guessed) have concluded that my time in my present position is soon to be done and I will need to start again.
It is not a comforting thought. But maybe I need to sit for the course, after all...

20190417.0430

In one of the articles LinkedIn has recommended to me, Karl Roessner's 10 April 2019 "Promoting Diversity of Thought," the comment is made that "open floor plans...encourage interaction and frank discussion, while easily allowing for multiple parties in a discussion." The comment is made in a context that suggests the author believes, or wants to be perceived as believing, that having and employing access to multiple viewpoints is a good thing; the view is a good one, in itself. (Whether I am convinced that the author is sincere is another matter entirely.) But the specifics are somewhat questionable; I do not know that I agree with the stated value of the open floor plan. Indeed, I think it works to other ends entirely than those Roessner purports; they are not tools to open matters, but rather more vectors of control.
Office pools and open floors do allow line-of-sight among employees, certainly. They can also help to minimize inappropriate conduct on the part of those in authority; there is less privacy to hide misdeeds, and those who will do wrong deliberately will often try to do so clandestinely, so the relative lack of privacy is a benefit in that regard. I am sure there are other benefits, too, though none occur to me at the moment.
That open offices can allow for collaboration is not a guarantee that the employees will confer. In one in which I worked, my coworkers and I did not talk to one another; we worried that we would be seen talking to each other and that such speech would be regarded not as fruitful consultation, but as idleness and wastefulness. We were there, and we were reminded more than once that we were there, to make sure that the company made money--which meant, in practice that we were servants to the company owner's pocketbook. We were all of us told, explicitly and implicitly and often, that only the owner had ideas worth hearing, and we were all of us micromanaged. The open floor in the office, then, was a means for the owner to oversee us and loom over us.
Even if Roessner is sincere, I think the model under which I worked is more normally the case than the free and collaborative idea he extols. Academic office pools in which I have worked have not always or often been accommodating; much of the work of academe benefits from privacy (not least because of applicable laws), and not having it made getting done the work that needed doing harder than it needed to be. Too, the more open plan still made oversight and interference with the work and The Work easier to do, and not all academic administration is as academic as might be hoped; power-plays and bullying suffuse most organizations and all fields of endeavor, and the preoccupation of academe with doing original work makes the ability to look over people's shoulders more problematic than it would otherwise be.
In the end, in my experience, open offices are more trouble than they're worth.

20190416.0430

As I have continued to look at LinkedIN, adjusting my own presentation on it slightly as I have looked, I have made sure to write pieces for it, as well. I had expected that I would do so, as I believe I noted earlier, because I do still think of myself as being a writer and a teacher of writing, even if I do not bring in much money with the former and have been working to make the latter less important a part of my life. But I figure that the advertising cannot hurt, and I would be writing in one venue or another in any event, so it makes sense to me that I would post a piece or two to that platform.
Having done so recently, once by following up on a far earlier piece and again by motioning towards similarities I see between my current workplace and others I have seen and seen described, I am keenly aware of the differences between the platforms for the kind of writing I am doing. Here, of course, I can ramble on at length--or briefly, as is more often the case--on topics I decide to treat, and I can do so with relatively little concern for going back over my words, adjusting them for ease of reading or the like. I can trust that those who read here can read well--better than I can write for them, in fact. In other webspaces, I write to audiences I can expect have some college education, perhaps quite a bit of it, and who are likely to be invested in reading as an activity in itself in any event; I do not need to be as worried about exceeding their reading abilities as I might be in other venues.
For LinkedIN, though, I have to be aware that I am addressing audiences that, while they may be educated and intelligent, are likely reading not for their own pleasure, but for ease and speed of comprehension and readiness of use. And that tends to mean that I have to spend more time revising my work than is normal for me, and with different intent. Most of the time, when I revise, I do so with an eye towards greater accuracy and completeness, which does not necessarily mean greater concision or clarity. The last two are more important for the kind of writing it seems to me that LinkedIN rewards, though, and while I am able to revise with them in mind, it is a bit of a different thing.
I appreciate having the opportunity to work to that end, though. It will help me in my work at both the regular job and the teaching job I still have, and that will help me provide; how can I say no?

20190415.0430

Today is, of course, Tax Day in the United States. Filings are expected to have been made by the time today ends, and there will be many who will rush to make their filings in the next hours, hoping that they will get things done when they are supposed to after having waited months while doing nothing, not even to organize in some fashion the piles of papers they have stuffed into shoeboxes. Seeing such, because I have worked in and for a tax office for some time now, and I do not find it difficult to imagine what kind of students the people were who now hasten to get things done and will find that matters are not to their liking.
Across the years of my teaching, nearly thirteen years at this point, I have seen the tendency to put off until the last moment what was announced as due long before. Student after student, class after class, institution after institution, students I have had have waited--not all, but more than should--until the day before a thing is due or the day that it is due to work on long-assigned tasks, scrambling to gather together what is needed and hoping that it will pass muster. For me, it rarely does, and I have often returned the comment that the work "reads as if composed in haste, which is not helpful." For there is a difference between doing things swiftly and rushing through them, and it is in more than the nomenclature.
I am not immune to such things, of course. There are any number of writing tasks I have before me, have had, that I ought to have worked on before now. Some of them will demand attention sooner than I realize, and I will work through them more quickly than they deserve. But that I recognize a failing in myself does not mean I am wrong to point it out in others, and I will still be done with my tasks in plenty of time; they are not due tomorrow, the things I have yet to do. And I am working with things with which I have long worked; they are familiar, intimately known, regarded well. They are not crammed into shoeboxes and hidden away, but face me daily, prominent in my office; I have given them thought, even if I have not put words to page for them just yet.
My own taxes are done, and with plenty of time to spare. I even expect money back, though I know it will take a while; I've paid my share and more, and will again. I could hope the same could be said for others, but I know it's true for fewer than it ought to be...

20190414.0430

Another article that LinkedIN recommended I read is Adam Grant's 8 April 2019 "The Office without A**holes" (the asterisks are in the article; I have no scruple about such words). The piece is a transcript of a podcast that talks about assholes at work--who and what they are--and their negative effects on the workplace, as demonstrated by formal study. Grant also relates methods for diffusing the kind of jackassery described in the piece, including affording employees greater agency and developing company cultures that tolerate absence rather than obnoxious conduct from performing people. That does not mean that nobody should ever feel upset or offended, but there are differences between putting across hard-to-hear ideas and using them, or other interactions, as chances to vent institutional authority.
It should be obvious why I was attracted to the article at first. My writing, here and in other places, does not seldom revel in the opportunity to use words deemed impolite, as witness the papers on bullshit I've delivered at major conferences and the occasional entry into this webspace with the "NSFW" tag. In them, as in Grant's article, the juxtaposition of the "naughty" word with "professional" or "intellectual" spaces amuses--or so it is hoped. (Some folks never do get past themselves about it, and it is possible that I occasionally go a little further with my jokes than ought to happen.) And, indeed, I was reminded as I read of others' works on bullshit, namely James Fredal's 2011 College English piece, "Rhetoric and Bullshit," with which I've done much.
Such is not all I take from the article, however. As I reflect on it, I am perhaps most aware of how grateful I am that my workplace--small as it is--is generally free from assholery. There are, of course, bad days, as there will be with any group of people; even my family, whom I love, sometimes vexes me in such ways. All it takes is inattention to what is going on, really, and few or none of us can attend to every utterance with the care and concern needed to avoid being an asshole altogether. (It occurs to me, too, where the metaphor of calling people assholes fails. Yes, things unpleasant to the senses emerge from them, but without the expulsion, death would soon follow--and not a nice one.) But on the whole, things are good here. It's one of the many reasons I'm not looking forward to being on the job market again--and, again, I do not anticipate needing to be, but I'll not let myself be caught unprepared for it if I am.
I've been among assholes, I've worked for assholes, I've been an asshole. (Ask my students.) It is nice to be away from them, even for a little while. For still must I go out into the world...

20190413.0430

I have noted more than once (yesterday, for example) that I am not eager to return to the job market. I do not relish the thought of being out of full-time, continuing work again; I was in that position from 2013 through 2017, and those were not good times for me or for those I care about. I figure that, if I were back on the job market, I'd be the kind of person again that I was then, and I do not want to go back to being him. I do not want to do that to my family; once was more than enough. But I cannot afford to let myself be blind to the possibility that I might have to do it at least one more time, for which reason I have been working on some of the things I've been working on this past days. I have the hopes that the small adjustments I've been making along the way, results of experience in jobs and looking for them, will make any job-hunt time to come a bit easier for me to handle.
Further, while I am working against cockiness in it, I do think I'll have an easier time of a job search the next time I have to do it, not only because I am making the adjustments I have been making, but because I have recent work history in "real" jobs, now. It will not be long before I have two years with my current employer, a year in my current position, and another promotion in hand; yes, the circumstances that allow it are unusual, and I acknowledge that I may not get the expected boost up, but I have been given every indication short of the new contract that it will be so. And that makes a difference; I am less apt to have to face the kinds of questions I have previously, about why someone with my credentials would want a given job, or how my experience putatively outside the "real" world suits me to a particular job. (Yes, I'll still have to answer how I fit the position, but there's a difference between "How do you fit this position?" and "How do you fit this position?")
It is a thing I have written about elsewhere, the perceived mismatch between town and gown, the thought that Shaw is right and that those of us who have spent time at the front of the classroom cannot succeed outside of it--so why bother letting us try? I have also written to try to address that issue, though I do not know that it has been of any moment, and I have to doubt that it has. But I am likely to be in a position to hire people; I expect to need to replace myself as I succeed my current supervisor. And I will keep in mind my own experiences when I do so; I will look especially for those who are now in positions like I was before, because I know what they can do when they finally do not have to worry so much about whether there will be work tomorrow.
But they, and I, will always, always have to worry. And it will likely get worse as things go on...

20190412.0430

Another of the pieces LinkedIN suggested for my edification was Bernard Marr's 7 April 2019 "How to Write a Resume to Appeal to Robot Recruiters." In the piece, Marr notes the vanishingly small time spent reviewing resumes before briefly discussing automated resume review and laying out six tips to speed resumes through the automated systems used by many companies: embed keywords naturally, research relevant automated systems, tailor resumes to descriptions, simplify file types, simplify and condense formatting, and make human contact. The piece ends with a call for feedback from readers.
The advice Marr gives is not exactly new to me, not after having taught the kinds of classes that review such genres as resumes as many times as I have, nor after having sent out as many job applications to as many employers as I have. The limitations of machines are clear to me, certainly; I am qualified for a great many jobs, adept in the skills required of them, but because most of my experience had been in teaching things rather than in the direct professions, the automated systems I encountered rejected my applications out of hand. Or I think they did; I still have not heard back on more applications than I have heard back on, though I do still occasionally get word that I have been rejected from a job I applied for two years ago or more.
That the advice is not a surprise does not mean there is not value in Marr's words, though. It is good to see an acknowledgment that there are, in fact, factors outside applicants' control regarding their applications, even as Marr exhorts readers to do what they can to circumvent those factors. Often, an applicant not being able to secure a particular position is ascribed to the applicant not working hard enough, but there is no person that can outwork an algorithm on a continuing basis. Ultimately, gaming the system in the way Marr recommends relies on chance--that the algorithm responds as expected to the stimulus provided and that the human reviewing the materials on the other side will, as well. And the chance of the latter seems slim to me; with hundreds of applications, why would a reviewer give consideration to any? The pay is the same whether any one applicant receives a response or not, after all. Even if there is a fancy handwritten card: I have been told that no few places will reject an application for not following directions, and I have not seen a thank-you in any such.
Even now, I worry about going back onto the job market for just such reasons. It took me years to find a solid job that I happen to like. I do not want to spend more such years now.

20190411.0430

As I was looking at my LinkedIN feed recently, I saw an advertisement for a course in dealing with angry customers. It is no surprise to me that I would see an advertisement on the platform, nor yet is it a shock to see the ad be for its own product; I advertise my work on platforms I maintain, and I am not quite a profit-driven as many others are. It is also not a surprise to see the course on offer; it is a commonplace in the business world to which LinkedIN is devoted that there will be angry customers and clients, and they have to be dealt with as often as they occur.
I have worked in traditional "customer service" industries: I worked in grocery stores and foodservice for longer than was good for me. (I do hold, though, that everybody ought to work such jobs who can; things would improve a fair bit, I think, for those who work them and for the rest of us.) I have also worked and am working jobs that are less "normally" customer service but that still have much of that work about them, although the situations differ. And while I've not taken the LinkedIN course on the matter, I somehow doubt that it addresses such occupations in detail, given the overall orientation of the platform.
Much of the work I have done has been in the classroom, as I have amply attested here and in other places. While the notion of students as customers has many, many problems--about which many, many people have written many, many words with many, many more degrees of skill than I could marshal in many, many years--there is a prevailing notion that students are consumers of education, that they are funding the institutions they purport to attend, and that those at the front of the classroom are therefore working in customer service positions. And even where such a notion has little traction, it is or ought to be the case that the student is regarded as being a partner in the educational effort--and partners deserve to have consideration shown to them. The power dynamic differs from the typical customer service situation in some regards; the instructor is not likely to be dismissed out of hand, although most instructors are contingent and therefore always under the threat of non-renewal. But an angry student in the classroom is likely to be disruptive to others in it, and sending the student out of the room is not as available an option as once was the case. So how to handle them is an open question.
The work I do most now has me in the front office of a substance use treatment center. Those who come to see me are often referred to us because of one form of legal trouble or another; few who come to us do so without such prompting, and being obliged to do a thing always makes it less pleasant. And there is this, too; I can reasonably expect to deal on a daily basis with people who are under the influence of one chemical or another, licit or otherwise. For some, the influence makes them less capable of handling refusal than might otherwise be the case; for some, there are other, less fortunate effects yet. While I do have some leeway to send them away--I do not have to tolerate abuse, and I will not, not anymore--and there is the threat of intervention from one authority or another to keep them behaving more or less well, such options are far from ideal (even if I have had to invoke them). How to handle such people is a question I continue to struggle with, as well.
I suppose there are no easy answers. That said, I would certainly welcome insights.

20190410.0430

One of the articles LinkedIN has pointed out to me in recent days is Kate Bolick's 5 April 2019 "Everything That's Wrong about the Myth of the 'Dumb Hairdresser.'" In the article, Bolick explicates the trope of the title, the "Dumb Hairdresser," before arguing that it does not manifest as much in reality as might be thought. She states the initial argument after laying out the excellent job prospects for hair-cutters, citing US Bureau of Labor Statistics figures to note both the high job growth in the field and the reasonably decent wage range as she does so. Bolick then pivots to listing professional stereotypes before railing against that applied to stylists. Said railing takes the form of interrogating and dispensing with the patriarchal underpinnings of the stigma against hair-cutters--indeed, against most nurturing work--and examining, if briefly, the sociocultural circumstances that valorize collegiate study--and in STEM fields--above all else. She then focuses on anecdotes from LeMoine that accentuate the value of skilled tonsorial artisans, ending on a laudatory message well worth hearing.
As I read the article, I am put in mind once again of Mark Edmundson's piece that I have cited so many times in this webspace as I have. Even in the first instance of it, nearly nine years ago (and it is strange to think that I have been at this for so long), I find myself opposed to the proposition that the work of the hands is somehow of less dignity and nobility than that of the mind. And I think I feel that more deeply now that my work is less of the mind, even running to cutting hair daily, if not quite for the same reasons that LeMoine and the others Bolick discusses do. There is a great difference between working to make people feel better about the ways they look and clipping a few strands to see what chemicals have been present in the body that built them. Even in that work, though, I find myself working with the work of those who cut hair more normally, trying not to alter or interfere with the work they have done as I do mine. I know that many people's self-concept inheres in their appearance to a great degree, and I know that many of the people I see in my regular work already have enough struggles; I try not to add to them.
I also find myself considering Bolick's comments about the patriarchal overtones that have accrued to tonsorial work. For me--anymore; I know matters differed in my youth, given how much of an ass I was as a kid--getting a haircut is an experience of pampering and vulnerability. I get my ears lowered, as the saying is, and I get my beard trimmed--and I generally get a brief massage and a hot towel treatment, as well. In each, I make myself less able to see, and I put myself into the hands of another whom I do not necessarily know, hands which I know hold blades close to parts of me that would not interact well with them. I know that I am not alone in doing so. I also know that I am not alone in worrying about physical safety, and I have to wonder how many others prefer to have women cut their hair because they perceive women as less likely to enact violence upon them. I do not know if the idea changes anything or how much, but I think it has to be present in the minds of some. Unfortunate as that is...

20190409.0430

Between when I wrote the comments that posted yesterday and this piece, I did betake myself to address an earlier LinkedIN article I wrote. I returned to the ideas in "A View on Technical Writing" with "Another View on Technical Writing," noting another model of instruction and citing my own experience as a writer working outside academe. As I write this, the new article has yet to attract much attention, and that is not necessarily to my liking--but I cannot control what other see. I can, however, put myself and my work out where they can be seen and hope that people will look my way; I can make sure that, if and when they do, they have good things at which to look.
It is self-flattery, of course, to make the last remark. I am not entirely sure that I do any writing well; I have to wonder if the opposite is true, given the kinds of things that I have posted to this webspace. Not for nothing do I call it "ravings" first. I do decently enough, I think, in the other webspaces that I regularly address, the Tales after Tolkien Society blog and Elliott RWI, but I still wonder if "decently" is good enough to attract the kinds of attention I would like to receive for my work. Since I have not yet gotten that kind of attention, it occurs to me that it is not, although I do wonder if it's simply a matter of getting enough material together to arrive at what might be called a critical mass. Then again, some folks hit it off to begin with, and that does not seem to have been the case for me, and I wonder, too, if it is too late for me now...
Following such thoughts is not like to lead me to good places, though, and I already struggle enough to keep myself in something resembling a decent place, mentally. Again, it's not for nothing I call this webspace "ravings" first. I ought to keep in mind that I spent many years as a student; I spent long working to improve, long learning that none of us know it all, much as we might want to. If what I have done so far has not earned me the acclaim I would hope to have, it has been practice for that work that will, in time. If I do not continue along the way, then there is no chance that I will stumble into the thing that would bring others to me.
I am not in the position I once was, that institutional structures would bring people to me and give me the change to prevail upon them in some way that would fix me in their memories and allow me the time to make some small contribution to human knowledge that others might remember long. If I am to have such now, it will be because I have made it to be so. And that will not happen unless I continue to work to that end, writing here and elsewhere until I finally get where I feel like I need to be.

20190408.0430

One of the things that LinkedIN permits, and it is not alone in doing so, is publication of articles, usually short pieces, original to the platform. I've got a few out, all dating from 2014 when I was trying to get more things going as a writer; one of them, "A View on Technical Writing," has actually attracted a minor bit of attention. (In retrospect, I likely ought to revisit the piece; it's been a while, and I've had some additional experience since then, both in and out of academe.) I expect that I will need to follow the model of many others on the platform and write such pieces again, though what I would post is not necessarily clear to me.
Trying to do so, trying to figure out what else to write and then sitting down to write it, presents the usual difficulties, of course. I try to address at least some of those through regular practice, such as in this webspace, and I have the notion that I am benefiting from that to some extent. I successfully landed a grant for my primary workplace, for example; I clearly have to be doing some writing rightly. But I continue to feel, as I have noted before in this webspace (and not so much in others, for reasons I think I have made clear), that I am trying to do too many things at once; I do not know that I will benefit from adding an additional task to my day or my week. I do not know that the tasks to which I might put myself will benefit, either, and it would not be helpful for me to put out bad materials in a putatively professional setting.
Then again, looking at some of what gets posted, some of what makes it through traditional gatekeeping to find publication, some of what makes money, I wonder if I ought not to be so concerned about the quality of my work. I wonder if I simply ought to write and post whatever comes to mind there and in more traditional media much as I do here, seeing if it lodges with people in a way that helps me. Sturgeon's Law applies, yet more than 10% of things get rewarded; I suppose there is a market for manure, and I perhaps ought to apply myself to a shovel...

20190407.0403

To continue from yesterday's comments, I remain in seven groups on LinkedIN:

• Medieval and Renaissance Studies Group
• Language, Literature, and Criticism
• University of Louisiana at Lafayette Alumni Group
• Literature
• Community, Career, Technical, Vocational College Network
• Sigma Tau Delta
• English Language & Literature

As I noted earlier, seven groups is a manageable set. And it has the benefit of being an easily remembered number, one resonant with any number of social constructs. Were I inclined to more ritual, I might even betake myself to engage with one group each day each week.
But I am not thus inclined, and I am not necessarily inclined to retain all seven group memberships that I currently have. Again, I am working to make my LinkedIN profile present me as more of a "professional" and less of an academic, since I am, at best, a part-time academic; I do still do some work in the field, but I have abandoned any pretense that it is my vocation or even my primary occupation. At the same time, having a more business-oriented public identity does not mean excising all outside interests. There are expectations of people in the business world, and even if I do not always understand them as well as I perhaps should, it does not mean I cannot try to meet those expectations.
Among them is pride in schools attended. Many of the offices I enter--and not only the academic ones where I still sometimes find myself--show their occupants' degrees. My own will, when I have it. So I think I ought to keep my institutional alumni group on hand--and I likely ought to add that for my undergraduate degree. Doing so would bring my group list to

• Medieval and Renaissance Studies Group
• Language, Literature, and Criticism
• University of Louisiana at Lafayette Alumni Group
• UTSA Alumni
• Literature
• Community, Career, Technical, Vocational College Network
• Sigma Tau Delta
• English Language & Literature

Similarly, co-curricular affiliations seem to factor into the professional identities of business leaders, at least in my part of the world. (I have no intention of leaving again, so local practice seems worth emulating, at least in part.) Consequently, I will be keeping the Sigma Tau Delta group on hand; I was heavily involved in it as an undergraduate, and a bit less so as a grad student, and keeping that record seems worth doing.
The other groups need not stay in place, however, save perhaps one of them; they reflect concerns that I have had and may still have, but do not need to make much of in terms of presenting myself as a professional working outside (or largely outside) academe. At the same time, I do need to present myself as having a life outside work, some humanizing thing that suggests I might be more than just the workplace self and so might be a colleague people can work with. Given my predilections, looking at earlier works seems a thing to keep doing; the others seem overly broad or no longer relevant to the non-academic identity I would foster. My list becomes, then:

• Medieval and Renaissance Studies Group
• University of Louisiana at Lafayette Alumni Group
• UTSA Alumni
• Sigma Tau Delta

I am not sure that four groups will be enough; I rather doubt it. And, indeed, I need both to foster local connections and to foster connections in my current line of work--where I expect to remain for some time, even if I cannot count on doing so indefinitely. Consequently, I sent off requests to join two groups, one addressing each of those concerns, leaving my list at

• Medieval and Renaissance Studies Group
• University of Louisiana at Lafayette Alumni Group
• UTSA Alumni
• Sigma Tau Delta
• Mental Health and Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Professionals
• Texas Hill Country Professional Network

Six is also a workable number of groups, and the list presents me as more focused on maintaining previous connections and establishing those in my current line of work. I hope it will be helpful.

20190406.0430

I continue to look over my LinkedIN profile, examining it in the light of making it a better representation of the me I would see get jobs and offer them to other people. When I initially signed up for the platform, I did so thinking I would use it as a kind of back door to promote myself as an academic, so I joined a number of groups that were relevant to my interests and to my perceived identity as a scholar who had an eye for the outside world--some eleven, as it happened:

• Modern Languages Association (Unofficial) Networking Group
• Medieval and Renaissance Studies Group
• Language, Literature, and Criticism
• University of Louisiana at Lafayette Alumni Group
• NCTE
• Literature
• National Council of Teachers of English
• Community, Career, Technical, Vocational College Network
• Sigma Tau Delta
• English Language & Literature
• Lecturers and Instructors in Humanities

Given my shifts in affiliation, as well as concerns of over-extension and the simple fact of groups going inactive, it seems appropriate for me to remove some of the group enrollments I have had. The last seems the easiest to address; there is little point in remaining aligned to groups that no longer function. Consequently, I remove myself from those groups showing up as "unlisted" on the platform, leaving me in

• Modern Languages Association (Unofficial) Networking Group
• Medieval and Renaissance Studies Group
• Language, Literature, and Criticism
• University of Louisiana at Lafayette Alumni Group
• NCTE
• Literature
• Community, Career, Technical, Vocational College Network
• Sigma Tau Delta
• English Language & Literature

That still seems more than I ought to be trying at the moment, so I pruned more from the list. My shifting affiliation--namely my removal of myself from consideration for mainstream academic work--led me to excise a few more groups from my list, leaving me enrolled in

• Medieval and Renaissance Studies Group
• Language, Literature, and Criticism
• University of Louisiana at Lafayette Alumni Group
• Literature
• Community, Career, Technical, Vocational College Network
• Sigma Tau Delta
• English Language & Literature

Seven groups is manageable, to be sure. But I am still not sure the affiliations are what I need them to be. It is something to which I shall have to return--and I do not mind taking a bit more time. Rushing into things is what led me to be so scattered to start with; it will be good to slow down a bit.

20190405.0430

One of the articles recommended for reading in my LinkedIN feed as I sat down to write this is Seth Borenstein's AP article "No AI in Humor: R2-D2 Walks into a Bar, Doesn't Get the Joke." The central idea is that humor is one of the most human of qualities, and that it depends on context--which artificial intelligence in its current state fails to comprehend. A number of technologists are quoted about the matter, noting the limitations on artificial intelligence despite its rapid advancement. Some warnings about the possible emergence of humor among artificial intelligences are also voiced. In all, the article does a decent job of presenting the present state of affairs and offering reassurance that at least some fields of human endeavor are likely immune to takeover by thinking machines--for now.
Of particular interest to me is a comment related from Columbia University's Allison Bishop: "computer learning looks for patterns, but comedy thrives on things hovering close to a pattern and veering off just a bit to be funny and edgy." To my mind, the comment echoes the words of another person from Columbia U; I am reminded of Asimov's comments about humor. There is no shortage of ideas about what makes something funny; that voiced by Asimov in his Treasury of Humor requires that a pattern be established and subverted. That is, there has to be some kind of pattern set up so that it can be deviated from--with the deviation offering the potential for humor. The simple deviation is not enough, of course; experience tells that it has to take certain forms and adopt particular content based on multiple prevailing contexts. How many jokes fall flat with one audience, only to have another rolling on the floor?
I have too much experience with such things to be comfortable recounting it. I want to be funny, to have people laughing because I want them to do so, not because they find me an object of scorn. But I think I try too hard at it; I certainly overextend in many of my attempts at humor, making connections that go farther than can be comfortable traversed or inserting a joke into a situation that does not admit of it. And it is because I do not take enough stock of context, focusing on the putative joke to the exclusion of its surroundings--not that the joke is necessarily good enough to merit that focus. So I wonder if the issue is not as much in the artificial intelligence as in other kinds altogether, kinds that are not necessarily accessible even to the "natural" intellect of a great many people.
Even if it is not, I suppose I have to face the fact that I am not good at being funny, even if I do often elicit laughter, and even if I can recognize being funny when I see it. I suppose it's like writing good stories in that; I can find them, and I can make sense of them, but I generally do not do well trying to make them happen. Clearly not, or I'd've sold more of them than I have yet done...

20190404.0430

In my comments yesterday, I make reference to the "professional" orientation of LinkedIN as a platform. There is a reason I have the term in scare quotes. It can have any of a number of meanings, after all. Someone who gets paid to do a thing can be called a professional at it, although that is not necessarily the only qualifier or the best one; there are people not paid for their work who are somehow still called professionals, and there are some who are paid for it who still are called amateurs. (And that term, amateur, has other meanings that are worth looking into. But that discussion would have to happen another time.)
For the platform, though, I have to think that "professional" means not only "in the workplace," but also "in an effort to get into the workplace." There's a lot of material that seems to be self-marketing, people promoting their own brands and carefully crafted (if not necessarily well crafted) workplace identities. A fair bit looks to be signals to headhunters saying "come find me and make me an offer," while another chunk looks like it's "I need to find a job; this is why I am good for it." Yet another chunk reads to me as "I'm already important; buy my stuff so that you can get hired and be important, too."
There's nothing wrong with that, insofar as it goes. None of it's secret, and the platform is voluntary for use; those who go onto it do so, at least in theory, knowing what they're getting into. Nor am I immune to the matter. I am not actively looking for work, having a decent job already that I like quite a bit, thank you kindly, but I am aware that the job I have might end; I mean to be ready if I have to go back out on the job market. And I remain open to the possibility, remote as it may be, that a better offer might come my way. I do not expect such a thing, though; it seems to me a kind of wishful thinking in which I dare not engage to believe that someone who needs to fill a position would go looking randomly rather than talking to friends and making specific offers or advertising and waiting for applicants, and it seems far less realistic that such a position would be a better one than what I have at the moment. (Certainly, there are things that could be better, but it's still just about the best job I've had in terms of how I'm treated and how it allows me to live.)
As I continue the works of refining my identity and of cleaning up how I present that identity on LinkedIN, where I will be admitting only of parts of myself in more overt performance than is normal for me and for most, I suppose I will have to look at that kind of thing, how I look as an employee and a possible employer (since I'll have to hire people if I remain in my position). And I shall have to wonder if that is the way in which I will be viewed most.

20190403.0430

To return to the idea of LinkedIN for a bit: Given the explicitly "professional" orientation of the platform (despite the "intrusion," decried by a number of users I have seen, of personal information into it), there should be no surprise in the presence of ads spread throughout it. Even as I write this, in my own messaging, there is an ad for an EdD program--and it is bracketed by an ad for an MS in Library Science program. I am not an entirely inappropriate audience for either, to be fair; I have mulled over getting a library science or library and information sciences degree, and I am someone who has some small interest in research into education. But I think that the advertising misses the mark with me--and if it does with me, then it likely does with others, as well.
As I think on it, though, I find that I am not surprised that the LinkedIN ads are not entirely on-target with me. Although I am profligate in what I have added to my feed on that platform--and I probably ought to go through and weed it out a bit--there is a decided slant to my interactions and self-portrayal on it. I have not attended to the platform as I ought to have done in quite some time, so it still shows me as I was when I was trying most to find a full-time position in academia. It is an area in which having additional credentials might be an asset; I can easily imagine having an MLS and a PhD opening more jobs for me, or an EdD and my PhD doing so. And since most of the job experience I cite was and still is academic...
Given all that, I have to wonder how much an academic I come across as being in other platforms. I know I still must to some extent. For example, my other regular blog, the more professional one, still makes class reports, and it does do much to remark on current events in academe, responding to pieces in the Chronicle of Higher Education and others. This webspace notes my continued involvement in academic life, and I am sure there are other indicators that are perhaps not quite as obvious to me but that ring of being written in a velvet-paneled gown and terrible, terrible hat to those whose eyes for such things are keener than mine can be. (Some, such as my usual sentence length and my predilection for semicolon use--or even for using words like "predilection"--are clear even to me, and few of us see ourselves well.) The extent, though, I do not know; unlike many cases, though, I think I would like to know how I come out on that score.
There are things I could do for myself to make such an assessment. It would not be much of a challenge to run a reading-level test on what I write, to generate such a number and compare it to the kinds of writing done by academics and by others to see what my writing looks like in such light. But I would be worried about the observer effect, as well as by possible recursion, so insights into how I read and how far up my own ass I read as being would be welcome.

20190402.0430

In my comments yesterday, I remark that "I do not think I have done well enough as a professor to warrant reaching out to my students for aid; I do not think I helped enough of them well enough to deserve help from them in return." I know that the comment comes off as somewhat self-pitying--and it should, because it is, at least in part--but I also know what students have written about me across years. There are some who have praised me highly, to be sure, including at least one who took a paper written for my class to an international conference, where it was received well. But there are far more who have condemned me with varying degrees of vitriol--and I have likely deserved quite a bit of caustic remarks made about me.
I look back over such things with mixed feelings, as I think is true for many who have been in the profession. I did not attempt to become a scholar so that I would be liked, necessarily; I did so because it seemed the only thing for me to do, because I had (and have, I confess) a love for the materials I treat that I wanted to share with others, because I wanted to make a difference in people's lives that would go with them. And doing those things does mean that people who would otherwise be comfortable must be made less so, which will necessarily attract some opprobrium. Most folks would rather be comfortable than just about anything else. Disrupting that comfort strikes people closer than they can handle, so they lash out. I understood that, certainly.
There were parts of me--I suppose they are still there, but I am trying to fight them back, to stifle and suffocate them so that they wither away and can be amputated--that took that need to discomfort people as an excuse to be a bully. Many students have written of me that they thought I was more concerned with proving myself smart than with helping them be so. They were more correct than I was willing to admit at the time; they are more correct than I would like to admit even now--but right is right, and I have been a jerk and a bully for a long time, the more so when I was in a position that an attribute that got me bullied could be used to bully others. And I was not a child that such behavior could be forgiven. I was an adult, pursuing or holding one or more graduate degrees; I ought to have known better.
Recognizing that, tacitly then and explicitly, belatedly now, I am filled with chagrin--as I ought to be. I acted badly towards those who ought to have had better from me, whom I had thought I would be better to than I was. I try to be better, but given what I know, I am likely not doing enough. And it is too late for the one line of work, in any event; anything other than the sculleries of the ivory tower is closed to me, and I do not know that I want to scrub academe's pots for much longer. (But I likely will; I still need the money, and there is one school that seems willing to keep giving it to me, at least for the moment.) How much of the lesson I can transfer to other work is not clear to me, but I suppose some of it, at least, should carry over.

20190401.0430

In an earlier entry into this webspace, I suggested that I might look at my LinkedIN feed for articles to read and respond to, with the idea being that my doing so would oblige me to pay more attention to that social media platform--with the intended effect of making me more overtly marketable if I find myself on the job market again. (I have no desire to be back on that market; I spent long enough looking for work already, thank you. But I am not so cocky as to think I'll never need to do so again. Indeed, I expect to be working until I die; I'm a Millennial, after all, and I know better than to trust that luxuries like retirement will be available for me. Maybe I can set Ms. 8 up such that she'll have a chance at it, though. Maybe.)

When I looked at the feed, though, I found it a jumbled, disordered thing, throwing information at me haphazardly. And it was a strange thing to be so inundated. I am trained as a scholar, accustomed to taking in large amounts of information quickly and parsing it out so that it makes sense (at least to me; I am well aware of the trope of scholars being unintelligible to those outside their fields), and I work in social media in at least two of the jobs I still have. (There remain several, and, while I know it is bad for me to be stretched as I am, I also know that I need the money now; the health concerns that are sure to arise will arise in a "later" that may well never come. And I do have good life insurance policies, even if I have not got health insurance. Matters will be less ill than they might otherwise be when the time comes--and it will come, as it does for us all.) I ought not to have trouble handling multiple streams of data coming in, even or especially if they're coming in from a single source.

Something about how the LinkedIN feed is laid out, though, stymies me. Or else, and this is more likely, I was not as good about curating my contacts and media feeds on the platform as I ought to have been. Some of it has to do with my teaching; there was a while that I asked my students to set up profiles on the platform, and I had them connect to me so that I could review their work. (I had had some thoughts in that line, as well, that I might exploit my connections to them. But I do not think I have done well enough as a professor to warrant reaching out to my students for aid; I do not think I helped enough of them well enough to deserve help from them in return.) As my students have gone on to divergent careers, their interests have changed in such ways, as well, and so my own feed reflects what I have to think is a strangely wide set of influences.
Some of it, though, has to do with my trying to be too many things. One of the difficulties that I have faced--such as anything in my life has been really difficult, with my multiple positions of privilege; I know I've been playing the game that life is on easy mode--is that I lack focus. I have been interested in a great many things, and I've tried to do a great many of them. Consequently, I've not been able to devote myself to some of them--many of them, if not most--in the ways that they have deserved. And so I am less good at them than I would prefer. I'm sure it has shown up; I am not good at hiding things, really. If it has shown up, then I should not be surprised at someone seeing it, nor yet that, seeing it, they act upon it.
We are supposed to change our behavior based on new information, after all.