Though the spacing of Columbia College's buildings isn't exactly what I'd call "chummy," my semi-sequestered week in Chicago at the annual conference of the University Film and Video Association was not entirely the fault of an urban campus. Last year, my named peppered the Boston program: a film screening; a panel presentation; a peer response. This year – depleted by two overloaded semesters and the (as-yet fruitless) job search for a teaching partner – I brought nothing. I was quiet. I was still. I was an observer. An audience member, not a performer.
I felt guilty. A transplanted Southerner, I have recently contracted the Midwestern work ethic. Apparently these Scando-Germanic folk fear being caught idle by the returning Christ. Even Sabbath here is understood as a time – not of rest – but of scheduled leisure activities. “Play as hard as you work,” I’ve been told. So to sit, and to listen, and to watch – can be hard.
The Price and History of Guilt
I came to Calvin from one of the many Christian colleges that teeter on solvency’s brink. There, research and networking were decried as a dean’s “fetish.” There, any member of the faculty fortunate enough to attend even a regional conference might well “waste” 10% of the school’s entire professional development budget in a single weekend. Devaluing the collegiality of professional scholars fomented an atmosphere of miserly resentment or listless despair. Why bother applying for limited funds to attend a conference – only to be told “no”? Why does that department – and not mine – merit travel money again this year?
But if professors there were denied the means to share their scholarship and improve their pedagogy, they were not exempted from the demands of peer review. The college’s external accrediting agency – not to mention its internal mechanism for granting promotion and tenure – expected evidence of scholarship: publications, gallery showings, presentations, membership in professional organizations. Administrators wanted proof that the wheels of intellect still turned in the mind of its professorate, but wouldn’t (couldn’t?) support it with travel funds, release time, or grant-writing assistance.
The vicious vise amounted to an unfunded mandate. If scholarship was to be done, it was to be done on a teacher’s own time. If scholarship was to be presented, it was to be presented on a teacher’s own dime. Perhaps that would have been an acceptable bargain had salaries been atypically high. But I taught there for a dozen years and never grossed as much as $40K.
Despite appearances, I’m not really ragging on that school. There are too many like it. And professors at them are often quite willing to sigh and endure, having accepted appointments that are, in their minds, the equivalent of postings to the mission field. Indeed, they may interpret (or court) privation as evidence of a faithful life. I know I did.
A World Without Academic Conferences
I was a newly minted scholar. I believed what senior faculty and administrators around me taught me about academia. I believed it was normal to teach 21½ hours in a single semester (yes, you read that right). Why wouldn’t I believe those things? There were no counter-examples in my life. I was the school’s lone Communication professor. And I never set foot off the island to compare my life with others in the discipline.
I appropriated without question that college’s definition of “scholar,” partly because I was trained in false pride. “We are a teaching college, not a research institution,” we beamed in unison. We cast a superior sneer toward other schools that had “sold out.” They valued the cool steel and glass of new microscopes, the omniversity’s icy ivory spires, the tainted influence of sports club boosters. We – lovers of Jesus all – we valued accredited hours of "seat-time," undergraduates taught by tenure-track faculty members (not graduate assistants or adjuncts), and mentoring relationships with our students.
And I believed it. I swallowed it whole. As if friend-making and pedagogical idea-swapping within the broader Academy ever detracted from the classroom experience. As if broadening my own mind and influence ever equipped me with less to share with others. As if reflecting deeply about my motives or skills or aspirations or interests as a communicator ever made it more difficult to articulate those things as a teacher.
What a Calvinist Deserves
Thus loudly sings the voice of guilt: I do not deserve lonely Chicago. I cannot justify my presence here. I must not enjoy hors d'oeuvres at a new media reception, a picnic on Northerly Island, a banquet at Adler Planetarium. I cannot endure the extravagance of traveling to hear how others structure curricula or replace obsolete technology. Working harder, I can improve the student experience of group learning on my own – without spending Calvin's money on Amtrak fares from Grand Rapids. I can watch a documentary about the history of the banjo on YouTube from home – without hearing the director speak in person about production decisions that shaped the film.
I should be in the office. I should be writing syllabi. I should be in the classroom. I should be teaching. Always teaching. Shouldn’t I?
No. I will be in the office next week. Not now. I will teach in September. I will bring Chicago to my students.
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