Tag Archives: Tenure

A Tiryaki Haze on the first day of school

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Tiryaki, the opium addict puppet, thanks to Emin Senyer's website for image

It’s the first day of the spring semester.  As one of my students put it in an email last week, “you are going to need to find all of us – little pebbles in the forest – wash us off, put us in order and enliven us again.”  Sighing as I read her words, “yes,” I thought, “I will have to do that – but who is going to do that for me?” After her email, I resorted to an M.-focused weekend – he deserved that after all of these years chasing tenure. 

However, it was the spirit of Tiryaki, the little Karagoz puppet who is an opium addict, who is nodding off most of the time, who awoke me to day and reminded me of the pebbles to be collected.  “Tiryaki,” I said, who is going to find ME in the forest? Who is going to clean ME off?  Who is going to enliven ME?”  Taking a big fat toke of the joint he was working on (in between his opium binges), he threw his head back and with a knowing glance, blew smoke in M.’s direction. 

M. was otherwise engaged in the early morning rush to get out the door, but I thought about what M. always advises me to do with my students, and it is always said this way:

“In Turkey, the students have MUCH more respect for the teachers – you should not coddle to their feelings so much.  BUT you should grade them more easily than you do.  You should give more As (top grades).”

As I wound my way through snow and slush-infused traffic for almost two hours, cursing my commute the whole way, in between fantasizing about retiring early to Bozcaada or some other such Turkish place, I thought about how to apply M.’s advice to ME for a change.

Maybe now that the tenure committee has made their recommendation to the Provost to keep me for life, well, maybe now I can start to respect MY time, respect MY body by sleeping and eating enough and at the right times, MY sanity, etc.  And as for giving more As?  Well, maybe I need to reduce the numbers of things I am involved in, so that I can give MYSELF more As.  Tiryaki’s call to arms – which wasn’t REALLY a call to smoking opium – was to tune out a bit – and I suppose there is a lesson in that for this workaholic. 

I didn’t like the Tiryaki haze that overtook me today – it even lasted after caffeine intake, lunch and teaching – the adrenalin rush of teaching just never showed up.  So, Tiryaki has me right proper, hook, line and sinker, to use the fishing analogy.  So, I guess my task at the moment is to learn what I can from the haze, embrace the haze.

Take…..

Life…….

A little………….

S….L………O…………………….W……………………………………….E……………………………………………R

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Occupy the Writeamatrix: A failed movement, for the moment

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So, after making it through the sandstorm-poop-a-thon writeamatrix beat down walk on the beach this morning now that the writeamatrix is back from vacation, I made it through the day of legitimate meetings with our contractor and CAD expert – mapping out our future home, but not without hearing the occasional whip-crack on the floor behind me.

SHE, meaning the writeamatrix, my academic writing whipcracker, did NOT want me to forget her presence – and the need to get things done. The wind on the roof, the sand in the front yard and the waves crashing across the street all added to her fury – or were they as a result of her fury?

In times like these, M. always tells me that I need to take a more eastern approach to life – relax more, live life, not worry so much.  “Easy for him to think,” I often mutter under my breath, “he’s a Bohemian with a capital B and an artist and has always marched to a different drummer.  I am trying to prove that I can have a career even if I started late and had a somewhat misspent youth that I have to make up for.”

As I closed the door on our contractor and CAD lady, the dog was literally dancing, as if to say “please, please, please take me for a walk, it loosk SO fun out there!” and in case I didn’t get it, the puppets also began an advocacy campaign akin to their Occupy movement a few months ago when they wanted some new music and got me to buy the discovered Ottoman records CD.

Today, however, it was about Occupying the Writeamatrix. “We are the 99% of you, and we want the writeamatrix out! They say banks got bailed out – we got sold out? You know? Well in this case, you bailed the tenure out, are we going to get sold out? You know, the 99% of you – and, DUH, M.? What about him? Please, m’lady, please,” they cried, “please just take the damn dog for a walk at the beach! It will be good for  you both – she’ll get over it if you don’t get RIGHT to work on your academic writing.”

The sparkles that almost captivated me away from the Writeamatrix at the Provincetown beach today

Feeling the pull, I quickly slipped out to the door.  When we reached the beach across the street, the waves were furious, white-capped and frothy in their fervor, my dog wanted none of it.  The air was invigorating – wild and wooly and wet and free and I felt as great as the sparkles all around me.

But the dog pulled me away, afraid of the mayhem.  Determined to give him a good time, I hopped into the car to take him to the Ocean side of the town – Herring Cove Beach – but the writeamatrix caught up with me there – projected through the droplets of sunlight on the seawater – but projected to larger than life, riding Poseidon‘s wave-horses onto the beach – splashing all over the cars watching the mayhem.  It wasn’t long before I got the heck out of there and back home, to work, on…….the……….article…….and……..the……….syllabus.

Esma, the tiny hippie puppet, still exuding ginger flowers and sharp birds-of-paradise flowers in her anger at the hegemony that is the Writeamatrix, with whom she is in an epic battle, just spent the evening sitting across from me, shooting her flower darts my way, saying “why are you 3 hours away from your husband on a Friday night? Why don’t you let it go a bit, let it step down, let your life come back in now that you have tenure? I don’t care if there is a windstorm, we are the 99% of you, and we miss M.  You need to go home first thing in the morning!”  Nodding, I decided to redouble my efforts to at least finish the syllabus tonight, and then go home for the weekend – just with M.

“Don’t forget, m’lady,” Hacivad Bey reminded me late into the night, “we are the 99% and while we may have lost this battle, we ARE going to win the war.”

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Return of the Writeamatrix (who compares Turkish and U.S. academe)

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Here is my writeamatrix - she looks an awful lot like The Corporate Dominatrix, who you can read about here - note she is carrying a briefcase (image thanks to The Corporate Dominatrix)

I quickly slurp down my cay, anticipating the whipcracking Writeamatrix to crack me up any moment now.  As you may recall, she is the academic dominatrix in my head who wants me to, in no uncertain terms, GET BACK TO WORK.  Before I know what has hit me, I feel the sting of her whip. “Not in your head, slackerific, right here in your face!”

I expect (hope, wish?) that Karagöz will hop up with a “talk to the hand” or some such in-your-face-back remark, but all I can hear is some muffled sniveling in the corner of the closet.  The writeamatrix has trapped him there, underneath the floor-washing bucket, and he is at risk of smelling oh-so-pine fresh if he is in there for much longer.

“Get up and get going!”  she says, her whip making the tone change unnecessary.  I hop up, and before long am hustling an even-sleepy dog (which is unusual when the beach is nearby) out the door and down the stairs in the middle of a windstorm. Clearly, it is time to walk the dog!

My dog running around on a poop-a-thon during a sandstorm on the Provincetown Beach

The wind is fierce and sand is getting in my eyes and nose as the writeamatrix walks me across the Provincetown Beach, bootcamp-style.  “Productive academics MUST get exercise and you are so slackerific you hardly do that anymore – this explains the reduction in your PRODUCTIVITY.”

With this last word of proclamation, she cracked her whip harder and harder, my self-esteem crumbling, thoughts of anxiety medicine and antacids racing through my head at breakneck pace.  I didn’t know what to say to her.  She, however, knew JUST what to say to ME.

“Last year this time, you had 7 manuscripts under review – and what do you have now? One piddly, pathetic one that you think will get rejected anyway.  What about what matters? What about all of those suicidal foster kids that nobody has talked about before,  YOU have to rise UP! YOU have to write about them! YOU need to draw attention to their plight!  Walk, yes, you may walk now, but you need to do this so that you are ready to SIT DOWN and WRITE.  Do you remember the AIS phenomenon that your mentor told you about?”

A whip cracked

Image via Wikipedia

“Um, the AIN phenomenon? I’m sorry, writeamatrix, I have forgotten” I say, cowering a bit.  “ASS-IN-SEAT as the famous Dr. JC used to say.  That is what gets the job done.  You use to be really good at that – but not anymore.  You think that now, because you have tenure, you can slack off? Not so!”  In addition to cracking the whip, she pushed me forward with her boot – or was it hte wind? “Yes, of course, writeamatrix, how silly – I mean – how STUPID – of me to forget about that.”

“Stupid? Stupid is a KIND word. You American academics, you have it easy.  In Turkey…(“Oh,” I thought, “I didn’t realize the writeamatrix was Turkish?”)…don’t interrupt me!  In Turkey, you slave through the doctoral process, and you have MANY more stages to go through with MANY more requirements than you have here in this inferior nation.  Turkish academics are the BEST in the world.” I am beginning to realize that the writeamatrix is not only Turkish, but she is like the set of characters I meet who are over-the-top pro-Turkish, you know, the Turks make the best (fill in the blank from food to rockets) and the Turks invented the first (fill in the blank) and the Turks do (fill in the blank) better than anyone – it is a definite type.

All of a sudden, here on this sandy Cape Cod beach where I am picking up poop in turkuaz-colored bags, I realize that the writeamatrix is not only Turkish but is also channeling the voice of my sister-in-law, who is famous (to me) for asking “when will you become a REAL professor?”  I always felt hurt when she said this, answering, “um, I already am one?” to which she would inevitably reply “you have only just received your doctorate, you don’t even know what you are getting into – mwah hah-hah-hah (think evil witch-ish laugh)!”

Of course, is my sister-in-law (or the writeamatrix, for that matter) an academic? Well, I know my sister-in-law isn’t, but that doesn’t stop her from repeatedly explaining to me that in Turkey, first you are an asistant doçent, then a yardimci doçent, then a doçent and finally a profesor – all of which involves six or so years of work to achieve each status, exams, papers to be defended and the mastery of one language other than Turkish before reaching the final level…clearly a tremendous amount of work.  In my world, tenure brings me to the “associate professor” level, akin to doçent (if Wikipedia’s commentary on the topic is to be believed) and I have only been at it for 12 years…and only partial conversational language capabilities in Spanish, my best aside from English.  What I have, though, is the freedom from the allegedly nepotistic-extraordenaire Turkish academic system, where you are sunk without major as in MAJ-AH contacts…of course, we have elements of this phenomenon in the U.S., but as I have chosen a teaching university, I am somewhat protected from all that as my life is not driven by the gerbil-wheel of grant dollar seeking.  But still, I want to be good enough, to good enough work, respectable enough work – and not slack.

So, when my sister-in-law launches into this, or when the Writeamatrix appears, it is easy to feel not-good-enough, something I always wrestle with anyway (see Peggy McIntosh’s work on the academic imposter syndrome that women experience).  It’s a constant battle and I am trying to get a foothold on just being satisfied enough.  Not that I am trying to live up to my parents’ academic and research careers or anything…but I am putting it on myself, not them on me.  The Writeamatrix is mine all mine, a creation of me, I suppose.  Whether I like it or not, I have to deal with her.  Hopefully, the relentless Hacıyatmaz will help me to balance her out.

So this was how my morning walk went, the Writeamatrix hassling me as I ran after my dog who was having a poop-a-thon on the beach.  Meanwhile, Hacıyatmaz was rolling and rocking his way along, insistent on helping me fight fire with fire, not giving up on me as he seeks to find a different kind of balance between my academic and my personal writing.  But for now, the Writeamatrix is winning out, as is the poop.

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