Young people
Posted on August 26th, 2005, under Teaching, Academia
Rowan writes:
Mel, I’m curious about your statement… ‘it helps to be The Young Person when giving guest lectures like these…’ I am assuming from the capitalisation that you see this is as a stereotype of some sort or a construction, and one you obviously feel keenly when you give a guest lecture. When you have the time, I would be interested to hear more about your views on age and (guest) lecturing in particular, as well as in relation to the broader dissemination of knowledge within academia. For instance, how do you define The Young Person? What are the parameters and contexts? When do you stop being The Young Person? Who circulates this stereotype: tenured staff, guest lecturers like yourself, students? You clearly acknowledge it is useful at times. Why? Is this currency restricted to certain subjects or fields (such as blogging), or do you think it is universally useful regardless of subject? As I say, am curious…
These are great questions - tho hard ones! I’ve been thinking a lot about how to answer them but I’m not really comfortable generalising outside my own experience, so I’ve reposted Rowan’s questions here so that more people might think about them with me. Of course there have always been younger (guest) lecturers - and yes, I’ve often seen them wheeled in to give expertise in some groovy new area that course convenors want to cover to keep students interested but don’t know much about themselves. My work never really lent itself to that kind of packaging in the past, so I’m finding it amusing that in a new disciplinary context my work can be seen in that way.
Sometimes I feel pressure to be a good example to students because I’m aware of how much I was fascinated with younger lecturers when I was a student. But here I use the capitals to signify my paranoia about being young and lacking in experience as well as some more complicated tensions arising from my split teaching/research position. I’m sure my paranoia is just that, but I feel it in response to asides and comments which run along the lines of me being a ‘rising star’, etc., which I think stem from people’s knowledge of how my job was created (I applied for a teaching role originally, and my current position was formulated after my interview). I find it unhelpful and intimidating to be introduced in that way. It also happened quite a bit when I first arrived in Brisbane from Sydney - I was often introduced in terms of my career trajectory rather than my personality… but maybe they’re interchangeable for many academics, who knows. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, then, I find it reassuring to be able to fall back on my age for whatever shortcomings I’m demonstrating. I also find it a good excuse to sound naive in committee meetings, or to introduce new ideas in contexts where the dominant attitude is ‘But we’ve never done it that way’.
I’m keenly aware I won’t be The Young Person for long, and that this is a time to savour. It will change as soon as I’m closer to my colleagues’ age than my students’, and people start making asides more along the lines of ‘She should know better by now’. By then I’m sure to have developed some other neurosis to replace this one!
But Rowan I think the wider issues your questions point to are things like the impact of casualised labour on the kind of lecturing style that will be increasingly normalised in the future. They’re issues I’d like to talk about more, so thanks for the provocation.
On August 26th, 2005 at 12:20 pm, Laura said:
I’m 32; there is one tenured staff member in my dept. under 40. Across the faculty, out of 157 tenured staff, there are only nine under 40.
(!!! !!!)
But the two people I’m working with on a first year intro to Eng Lit course are both older than my parents. I think this is why they asked me to do the 2 lectures on Trainspotting, though I fricking hate that book, with a bullet, oh my gosh yes.
On August 26th, 2005 at 2:08 pm, melgregg said:
I’m quite shocked by this Laura. And I don’t just mean that there are two lectures on Trainspotting! Maybe I was on to something with the capitalising after all…
On August 28th, 2005 at 1:02 pm, Mark Bahnisch said:
It’s not that unusual - when I worked in the School of Social Science at UQ in 2002, there were two full time staff members under 40 (aside from one PostDoc under 30). And more staff members in their 60s than 40s.
On August 28th, 2005 at 3:49 pm, melgregg said:
Well, to me it is unusual, but all of us can only speak from experience, ie. at Sydney Uni and at the University of Tasmania the departments I studied in were weighted fairly equally if we are now talking about the under/over 40 divide. In Sydney I felt I had peers because of this; in Hobart I felt I had role models. It’s why I didn’t question my trajectory before this point - I’d seen lots of examples of it around me. But I think this is to do with other factors as well. A campus like Hobart attracts people from bigger cities who are seeking their first job and a good chance to climb the ranks, whereas in Sydney the relative newness of the disciplinary area I studied in may have been a bigger factor. In Brisbane, QUT doesn’t appear to have the same scenario Mark describes at UQ, and times have changed so that tenured positions just aren’t being replaced. We’re witnessing a difficult moment while the senior staff continue to enjoy a privilege that is increasingly rare while dealing with new models of hiring and contract work. Anyway, none of this does much to scratch the surface of bigger questions like what happens when the boomers retire, and there aren’t many people invested enough or trained in the skills required for contemporary university work to take their place…
On August 28th, 2005 at 4:23 pm, melgregg said:
Actually, while I’m feeling a bit nostalgic for the hopes I had for the CSAA-forum, if you haven’t read this before it’s quite relevant, and written by someone who is now a colleague of mine. The whole thread is worth a read if you’re a junior academic.
On August 28th, 2005 at 6:08 pm, Mark Bahnisch said:
True, Mel, it varies from place to place and from discipline to discipline.
Again, some universities/departments are addressing this proactively, and others aren’t. It certainly does represent a structural issue, though, and it’s quite right to point out that the shift to casualised/contractual positions which can only be encouraged by the Federal government’s IR stuff is giving younger or newer academics a radically different experience. I’d be very surprised if most haven’t come to a point at one time or another after a few years of sessional and contract work when we wonder whether it’s all worth it.
On August 29th, 2005 at 11:09 am, Laura said:
I’m there, Mark, I’m there.
On August 29th, 2005 at 2:00 pm, Mark Bahnisch said:
Yep me too, Laura, this semester will more than likely be my swansong.
On April 28th, 2006 at 9:04 am, home cooked theory » Blog Archive » Issues said:
[…] Just wrote an email to the CSAA-forum asking for input for a panel I’m speaking on at the Crossroads conference (this is in addition to the workplace culture panel I’m doing with Kate). The idea is for ACS board members from different regions to talk about industrial issues in their part of the world so that we get a sense of the institutional status of cultural studies in different regional formations. As the youngest board member I’ve also offered to speak about some of the particular circumstances faced by a younger generation of cultural studies researchers, for instance, issues raised in these blog posts and exchanges. Maybe I could smuggle Glen into my suitcase! […]