Every time there’s a small amount of leftover money from a project, my institution creates a new account for me. My logic is that I should spend down the one that is closest to expiring. But I was warned that accounts that have not been active might become swept up by the university. Certainly a perverse academic version of Robin Hood. That was the signal and license to order some books without having to explain at home why there was a sudden burst of online bookstore activity.
Our administrative assistant emailed me on Thursday that the books had arrived. Here are the titles were worth the trek to campus:
1. Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks and Good Food
2. Start Where You Are, But Don’t Stay There
3. Someone has to Lose: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling
4. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
5. The Warmth Of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
6. A Body Worth Defending: Immunity, Politics and the Apotheosis of the Modern Body
Book #1 and #4 are part of my reading as background for a future proposal on “public understandings of science” which, if funded, would allow me and some fellow enthusiasts to visit several microbreweries to determine how the workers there apply science knowledge. Book #2 and #3 are by amazing authors who write with great clarity yet always blow my mind. Book #5 will help fill in some gaps in my own understanding about why so many of my students of color in Cleveland has such strong southern accents. And Book #6 (which I previewed through interlibrary loan) explains how the metaphor of the body’s immune system as being a form of defense has political roots. Realistically, I am unlikely to finish all of them. But they hold so much promise and intrigue. For example, both cooking books have extensive information about yeast and fermentation. Yippie!
Not surprisingly, I bumped into a couple of friendly colleagues and they were caught up in another internecine situation. I'll try to recreate the storyline here. First, an applicant to our doc program had very weak credentials and the committee chose to not admit. Second, an administrator submitted a letter supporting the candidate (long after the deadline) and pretty much said he would take on this candidate and personally (not programatically) lead him through to the PhD.
Third, the next layer of committee also rejected the applicant, the administrator's support notwithstanding. Now at the moment I was present, the committee's "no" letter was resting in the administrator's mailbox and an eruption was imminent. Fourth, someone else revealed during this hallway discussion that the math dept (where said administrator held a joint appointment) has recently been approved to initiate their own math education PhD program. Normally, a duplicate program would require approval from the now redundant program. Fifth, my own department chair had just learned about this situation and was said to be sputteringly livid. Sixth, the math department does not list this PhD program on its website even though it was cleared by the Provost's Office. Seventh, there was evidence that students were being admitted to this mystery program … and when someone said they heard a student has already graduated from this program, I was laughing so hard I couldn't catch my breath.With all the grief I have received and wrath that has rained down for what was perceived as my attempts to work around or beat the system, I discovered I had turned an emotional corner. As people have been asking how sabbatical has been, I sincerely explain that the true test will be in how things go for me once sabbatical had concluded. I suppose the reason I felt I needed to bookmark this incident was a reminder about how far I have progressed and that I need to stay on this path. I already see it will be tricky because I need to keep limits on my indifference because uniform apathy is a poor corollary to uniform anxiety and anger. A whole new type of balance I had never imagined could exist. Finding ways to notice the foolhardiness and laugh accordingly, as well as being vigilant about what is offensive and calling it for what it is -- well, maybe that's where sabbatical has left me.
