Doctor Grandma

Another academic year just ended. This one was particularly eventful, with a lot of unexpected strangeness and craziness. I feel almost like when I finished the dissertation, was told I passed, and took off walking for 5 miles, not even with a destination in mind. So I thought I’d do a stream of consciousness and do 5 miles of writing this time.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll actually get outdoors and do some real life walking. My legs hurt right now from sitting at the computer for 2 days and figuring final grades. I always have my own grade book in excel, which is my own style, where I can view all grades at once and see easily what a student has missed in attendance AND assignments, all at once. I can follow the line across to the end — to MY end, the one I like, the one I create, not the one online that is someone else’s creation. Each has its own place. I oftentimes find mistakes in mine, and I work to the last tenth of a point, to make them both come out the same. Then I know I can enter those final grades.

This academic year, we had a President resign. A little disconcerting, to say the least. He happened to be someone I really liked and admired, someone I believed would take us to new heights as a college, lead us to the big outside global world. However, that was not to be. We actually had TWO Presidents resign this year, the 2nd one only for 2 days. Then he returned. We are still in limbo for leadership, as we do not yet have a new permanent president. A good friend of ours has a line in a song, “Strange days ahead”. Let’s hope these strange days are PAST!

This academic year I headed a committee. We always do amazing things, but this year the money ran out. We were told there were no more funds to bring in speakers, plays, or whatever else we might have managed to do. This was disconcerting as well. But we managed. It’s all about flexibility and adaption.

I taught an extra class, at yet another university, while my husband was unemployed for 9 months straight. He secured a job, has worked 3 weeks, and I’m about to have the summer off.

My students were AWESOME this year! One class had at least 4 graduating seniors and most of the rest juniors. Yet, there were still 22 in the class. This makes for an awesome class with a maturity level where you can actually discuss issues. I had 3-4 students ask to be my advisee and switch to sociology as a major. That was awesome as well. My class evaluations were high. Very much joy in that.

This semester, we nearly lost one student to alcohol poisoning. At the end of this semester, I had one student disappear for the last 2-3 weeks of class. Still don’t know what happened to him. Another student missed 2 exams and showed up one day looking very drugged. She decided not to finish the work of the semester. Last day of finals, another student borrowed my book for the exam, then took off with it and cashed it in for money. Strange days ahead?? I would say so. We had one student’s father pass away, another student’s grandmother/mother pass away, another student get mono, one got hit in the face with a baseball, another student have 10 million orthodontist appts., and the baseball players and golf team disappear for largely 1/2 of the Spring classes during April. This is life as it happens, but it seemed to go overboard this semester.

One week before classes ended, I rec’d chapter corrections for a publication due out this summer, and they looked like someone had spilled red ink all over the manuscript, with strange markings all over the pages, and “comments” with questions awaiting my updating and response. I had 5 days to make the corrections. I missed the deadline by a day, but they graciously accepted it, including a new photo which may be included in the final product.

This year I presented at the Southern Sociologist conference in New Orleans and got to visit that city again with my husband and son. We love going there. I also accompanied a group of students who presented their own research, driving 2 of them to and from the conference. Drove all over rural SC that day. It is always awesome to see students present their own work and proudly stand and explain their posters, when you know they’ve been up all night finishing them. One of ours got first place!

This semester, a Club I am advisor for participated in Relay 4 Life and turned in $200. we collected. Very awesome.

Tonight, I finished tabulating and entering 114 final grades. My thoughts are on all the ways I could have made class a little more fun, a little more academically accomplished, a little better. But now it is done. I have completed 4 years as an assistant professor.

I have no idea what to do with my time and it will take SOME TIME to get used to not preparing for another upcoming class. There were MANY NIGHTS this semester I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning, preparing or grading. With my May class at 2 students currently, it may not make, which means after this weekend, I have 3 months off. Family history research is calling my name. Travel to grandkids and adult children is, as well.

This Saturday, I will see an unprecedented number of students graduate who I know personally, and not all are sociology majors. Some are Business majors, some Psychology, Political Science or Forensics, all of whom I had in class or served as advisor for their Club. It will be the biggest graduation yet!! I love graduations. I run around trying to get my picture with all those I know. It will be a big day this weekend. I cannot yet quite imagine life after classes.

Here is my Agnew family history research for the night, which led to nowhere.

James Agnew’s father is James Agnew. The elder James is married to Mary. It is pointless to search for records on a “James & Mary” Agnew as there are about 10M of them. Elder James lists his birth place as Ohio, his parents’ as PA. Mary is born in PA. Searched for a marriage record for them in PA or OH to no avail.

James & Mary can be traced through the 1880 census still in Hamilton County, OH. They have a number of kids. Mary cannot be our James’ mother, unless she had him at 14. So I’d like to find any sort of records on the elder James, to lead to his first WIFE which would probably be our James’ mother? An elderly Samuel Agnew is living w/ them in 1850. James is 38, Mary is 22 and our James is 8 yrs. old. The elderly Samuel is 70-something…….. he came from PA also. There is a famous Samuel Agnew born in 1778 which would be a match…….. but he supposedly died in 1849. He DID have a son named JAMES who everyone lists as dying in 1870, so that is not OUR ELDERLY JAMES, because he is still with Mary in the 1880 census.  🙂 

James & Mary have many other children, mostly girls, though Alfred is born in 1849. Then there is a Mary E., Lizzie, Sallie, & an adopted daughter Hellen.

Searched findagrave for cemetary markers for any of them, to no avail. The 1890 census was mostly destroyed in a fire. Anccestry has put together city directory records, etc., to patch some of it. Found a widow Mary Agnew in Hamilton County, Ohio, in 1901. She is living w/ a David Agnew & “Annie”. I do not see that James & Mary ever had a son David. (It could be another relative she is living with.)

Published our Agnew family story in an international Agnew newsletter this month, was hoping someone somewhere might respond with clues. Nothing yet.

Do not know Mary’s maiden name.

I’m a working class girl. My dad was a professor, but he was the first in his family to get a college education. I am the first woman. At home, he wore white t-shirts and gray pants. Every day. And just hung out with us. His father worked for the Monon railroad, as far as I know for his whole working life. My other grandfather worked as a car mechanic, a security guard, and during the depression for the W.P.A., building sidewalks on city streets. My grandmother took dresses from other relatives apart and reshaped them for my mother, during the depression. She was pretty good with that foot-operated sewing machine. She had 4 sisters. They were all sent to other people’s homes to work as domestic servants, when they turned 15. They all quit school at the age of 12. Besides my dad and myself no one else in my family has a Masters degree, that I know of, let alone a PhD.

For most of my life, I worked jobs that did not require a college degree. My very first job ever was being the hat check girl at a roller rink, age 15, on skates. From there I did the waitress gig at quite a few restaurants. Restaurant managers are some of the worst sexist jerks I ever met in my life. One constantly put the moves on me. Another beat his wife, and she would come in with bruises, expecting sympathy. Yet another’s wife was having an affair with the younger night manager. The manager came in one night, punched him out and fired him, then divorced his wife.

 Then I became clerical staff at a university library. As my research skills grew and I began to out-do the professional librarians and be requested by professors for assistance w/ their research, I decided I could do this for myself and ret’d to school. Besides, there was nowhere for me to advance to within the library system, and I didn’t want to get an MLS (Masters of Library Science).

During my 16 yrs. as library clerical staff, we never got the summer off. I’m used to 2 weeks paid vacation, and that was a privilege. We never had money for any planned getaway vacation, so I usually took a day or 2 off, here & there, all throughout the year.

To now be working a job where I get 3 months — the summer — OFF, is frankly, to be living a life of privilege. It *is* something that was within my own family of origin, as my own father took us on a 3-4 week annual family vacation. We camped in tents, but we traveled, almost always west. I’ve had my August birthday in the Grand Canyon, Yosemite National Park, and in Mexico. I’ve seen a bullfight, and I’ve driven into the California Redwoods, where trees made us feel as big as an ant.

But for my working lifetime, I’ve never had my own summers off. The school year is so stressful & hectic, it’s almost a necessity. I have time to breathe, to stress down, to contemplate, to organize. I have summer projects, including a journal article and family history research. But my time is my own, and I am setting no alarm clock. I get paid very little for the amount of education I have and the incredible amount of work I do during the semester. So I see this as a wonderful little “perk” almost necessary to this job. However, I also know just how much this sets me apart from most of the global world. It is an incredibly privileged life.

This week there was a visiting librarian consultant on campus. It brought back a flood of memories to me, with my 16 yrs. in the PU Humanities library system. It had been a while since I’d heard “library-speak”.

First of all, librarians are fierce defenders of human rights. Sound strange? They are, historically in the forefront of the freedom to information, freedom to research whatever you want to. They refused to cooperate with the Patriot Act when the govt. wanted to know what all we were reading. They are linked to groups like the ACLU. They fiercely defend freedom to information and non-governmental interference.

I wrote one paper in grad school about power relationships within libraries. Where I worked, there was the clerical staff, who had 1st and most contact w/ patrons and little power; and then there were the “librarians” who roamed the shelves, wandered in and out to work when they felt like it; had their own offices and were in charge of meeting with faculty.

Clerical staff had 2 20-min. breaks and a 1-hour lunch. Librarians wandered. To assert their own independence and power in their own way, clerical staff started skipping their 20 min. breaks and leaving an hour early. And no one stopped them, because the librarians knew what they were doing was a lot more lenient.

The two groups never took breaks together or lunch together. It was an unspoken rule. I am not good at unspoken rules and my problem came when I, as a clerical staff member, became so good at research that professors were coming into the library and asking for me instead of professional library staff. I was in fact told to QUIT meeting with professors, as it was “embarrassing the professional staff”. Yet, I knew those same professional library staff were not interested in some of the research projects of some faculty and belittled them behind their backs. These would be the African American faculty, and their projects were not considered “true science” (direct quote from a librarian). Somewhere along there I decided to become not a librarian, but a professor, and do my OWN research.

More and more I realize my background was a research university and how much I am geared toward that path. Research is what I do. It comes naturally to me. I always want to get to the bottom of what has been published out there on a subject I am interested in. Papers I wrote as an undergrad had 20-25 sources. I wanted to know all there was to know on a certain subject. But I was more mature in age and experience than most undergrads. My dad was a professor too, and although he died when I was only 16, the fire was already lit. His gradf students came to our house for dinner and I saw the way he worked, papers spread out all over the dining room table at night. He worked at home surrounded by the noise of his 4 kids, not away at his office.

So the visiting librarian was very interesting and forward-thinking, and my recollections are from my own background. What I am recalling are the amazing separations by class and occupation levels, where no one may pass, under threat of losing one’s job. Everyone follows the rules, just because that’s the way things are. There was nowhere else for me to advance to in PU Libraries. I had to either go get my MLS or my PhD. I chose my PhD. I wanted to actually DO my own research — not be in charge of finding information for someone else’s interests.

In any case, the “library-speak” was also about what a library IS, in the future. What is a library? It is not a hoarder of books. It is certainly not a gatherer of journals in paper form. Journals are not even bound anymore. (That was my former job: binding periodicals clerk). So what is a library?

Libraries of the future are places where people may gather to share information, to study together, to collaborate. They will still hold books. But books will be borrowed and shared amongst libraries. Librarians will put together search engines by subject, according to the interests of the people doing research. Their jobs are to continually review what is “out there” and condense it down by subject areas. Databases and also just things they put together, places where they gather various sources. Not all journals are yet online, especially the older historical issues, so that is ongoing.

Libraries may eventually become virtual, but retain books like a museum. But for now, the vision is for them to be artistically designed, welcoming environments where people come to enjoy and share knowledge, and to collaborate on research and learning.

And now I have my own published book, and my own journal article. I have a chapter in a 3-vol. series coming out, and I have an entry in a criminal justice encyclopedia.  🙂

I forgot how much fun is the beginning of a semester.

No one has yet failed. Anything. Assignment, test or class. No one is yet tired of the class, either student or professor. All is an atmosphere of newness, expectation, excitement, hopefulness. Students hope their class will be interesting, perhaps challenging or maybe even “easy”. They hope to see people they know or like, or people who they might find a relationship with. Professors hope their students will be interested, engaged, contributing. Everyone hopes to be liked. Everyone hopes all the energy & effort they put into this project will somehow be worth it. And we don’t yet know.

It is all drop & add, drop & add for the next week. Then people finally settle into their classes & we get rolling.

Incredibly, it is May 4th. Tomorrow morning, I turn in final grades.

Last night, I sent an article to a journal. I wonder if it will be published. I have publishing opps. popping up all OVER the place. However, I have such a bad history of things not getting published, that I’ve become quite cynical. All you need is a glitsy, glossy article with lots of tables and figures and p values and other statistics, and you might get published. What ever happened to talking face to face with another person, in depth, to really get into an issue from the inside out? It’s called: qualitative analysis! WHOA, what a concept. Sociology has gone the way of tables and figures, unless you happen to know someone who knows someone. Hmm, it seems the cynicism is taking over, so let me stop.

The semester is at an end. This academic year is at an end. I’ve completed my 2-year cycle of classes. It should be easier from here on out. My only problem is, I keep changing and rearranging courses to make them BETTER! Hah. So I end up creating new tests and new assignments, sometimes even changing a text book, putting in tons of more work for myself. What a silly person I am.

I really reached the exhaustion point at the end of this school year. There is change in the air on my college campus. I think a lot of athletes took my class hoping for an easy B, or even an A, and suddenly they realize they’re not making the grade they needed in order to play next year. So they freak out. There is a new A.D. and I think he is instituting new academic requirements. I’ve had a number of students freaking out at the end of this semester. It puts a lot of tension in the air. One person had a little temper tantrum when I wouldn’t take his extra credit after the final. My syllabus states, and all semester I had been repeating, last day for extra credits or assignments of any kind = last day of classes. So he had a little hissy fit and crumpled up his paper and threw it angrily into the wastebasket before walking out. A couple of other students did similar things. Two of them needed a B and are getting a C. One guy plagiarized his paper and then announced he was still going to get an A in my class. He got a zero on his paper. Plagiarism is a serious offence. I don’t think he quite got that. It just amazes me, it really does. It amazes me when people don’t turn in a final paper, when they don’t even come to the final. What an announcement of “I don’t care!” What are they doing, REALLY?? This is COLLEGE!! I don’t get it.

Others wrote very nice notes to me about how I was their mentor. Some wrote very nice things about what they learned about gender in my sociology of gender course, which I had doubts about. It was the first time I had taught that.

I was on USC campus today. There was excellent, free, quality WIFI in any building. I sat in the “Nanotechnology” building waiting for AL in a meeting and surfed the ‘Net. Professors, students, all were walking around. Asian students, who I never see outside of Columbia. The library had a huge reflecting pool out in front of it, with a fountain. Inside the library was so beautiful, spacious, computers everywhere, printers all over the place! It was SOOOOO NIIICE!! I’ve MISSED so much, that kind of quality place. Wow. I can’t even get my office cleaned or painted. It is scuzzy. It was trashed when I arrived. Trashed. Nobody even checked to clean it out. It is dirty, no one ever takes a broom to the floor, let alone….. a MOP?!  I’ve learned, from many conversations, that people literally eventually PAINT their own offices!! You can’t get an office painted where I’m at. Mine was painted by my predecessor, probably 15 years ago. It is a dirty, medium murky blue. AWFUL. The air conditioner spits out puky, lukewarm air and shuts off automatically after 6 or 7pm. (Everyone should be HOME at that hour. Heaven forbid someone wants to work in the evening.) ……… I’m going to stop now. I really am tired this school year. Yes, I need my summer off.

I always looked forward, as a graduate student, to attending department meetings as a member of the faculty. I really did. It was something graduate students were not allowed to see, unless you served as special “student representative” as I did one semester. It was such a status differential, I looked forward to the time when I could meet other colleagues face to face, and make decisions about our department, how it is run, what courses we offer, how our students are doing.

At Purdue there would be 20 or so faculty at every meeting, and they were all sociologists or anthropologists. Here, I am one of 2 sociologists, there is no anthropology dept., and we are a group of 8 who represent 4 different disciplines, sociology, psychology, history and political science.

I just came from our last meeting. Everyone is very cordial, at least in the meetings. I am new faculty, and I do not have tenure. I am the only member of our dept. without tenure. (I am the “baby” faculty member.) I am always aware of being the rookie, and also the outsider, coming down from northern climes. Some of the faculty are actually from outside the south, but most are from the south, if not South Carolina. What I find is that I am always aware of being the newbie and an outsider because they always speak of HISTORY that I know nothing about. It sometimes gets irritating.

Everyone speaks without stating plainly what exactly they are refering to.

Today I was asking them about their plagiarism practices. They all gave me various things they do, but it was evident that they each do their own thing. The reason I asked is that I had a blatant and horrible case last semester, with a major required paper of a student. At the time, I decided to give him a -0- for the paper, which still left him with a D in the class, but my colleague suggested giving him an incomplete, with a better grade being possible if he redid the paper. I did not want to give him an “incomplete” as if he had been sick or had surgery, so I said no! Because of that suggestion, however, as well as her added comments about how she doesn’t usually send a report to the Dean, I did not SEND a report to the Dean, AND I told him I would change his grade of D if he redid the paper. Now I wish I hadn’t SAID I would change the grade because he does not deserve it. He is having a terrible time rewriting this paper, and it’s still not done. (He has to re-do it to graduate.)

In any case, I could sense a tension in the room due to my asking. There is this thing called academic freedom. Everyone can basically do their own thing, make their own decisions about grading, tests, and plagiarism. One person looked at me and said, “Just do what you need to do, make your own professional decision.”

Well I understand that but I don’t have tenure. These people have all been around here for 8-10, or in that person’s case, 20-some years! They know the culture. One has to know the culture and the roles expected of you in a place, before you can then make your own informed decision. I just wanted my decision to be informed by their general standard practice.

It comes back to me time and time again how I have landed on the moon. It is culture shock. I am still trying to figure out the language, including body language, and what is never said, as well as what is spoken out loud. One has to first see how it is done “here”, in this place. What I am really doing is trying to decipher symbolic meaning in a place where those meanings are not intuitive for me. To make an informed decision, you have to first know the meaning, the intent, the ramifications of any action you may take. In Georg Simmel’s words, I am “the stranger who comes and stays,” not the stranger who comes and goes. I am here, yet always a stranger. I view this world as an outsider, yet in another sense, I am a part of this world, always here, yet there.

Took a class to a county courtroom today, as observers. We first had to pass the metal detector. My purse beeped due to my car keys, but they let me keep them. No cell phones were allowed in the court room. (Left mine in my office desk.)

We sat down by 10am. The judge arrived at 11. The defendants we saw today were all in trouble for violating their parole:

1. young black male, broke his parole when he was found w/ a bit of crack cocaine. As I recall, he was sent to finish his 90-day sentence in jail. His mother and sister were in the court room. He seemed to want to serve his time and waved his arms twice to people in the courtroom as he walked out.

2. tall white male, in on violent charges, probably domestic, had not gone through either of 2 programs (not sure why), of which one was anger management. He was sentenced to serve 11 mos. in jail. Also seemed to want to do this & get it done & over with.

Both these first 2 defendants waived the right to counsel. It didn’t really seem to make a difference.

3. 2 women. The first one was in her 30s, had been convicted of sharing MJ with a 15-yr-old in her own home, also other friends present. She broke parole “to save her life” to get away from old druggie friends & had been reportedly clean for a year, and working, in AL. You’re not supposed to move w/o permission. Her entire family was with her, mother, father, sister, & all testified that her drug addiction had driven them crazy but she seemed to be clean now & didn’t want to have her return to N. Her 2 kids are living w/ the grandmother. All family members were tearful & you could tell her addiction had broken their hearts. Judge agreed to extend her probation & let her live in AL, but ordered monthly drug tests & 20 hrs community svc. to take away restitution charges not paid.

4. 25-yr-old mother of a 9-yr-old, same charge as above. In fact, they had been caught together but this was coincidence that they appeared in court together. (!)  This woman, however, admittedly can’t quit the stuff, so the public defender said she was NOT a good candidate for probation. She was to return to jail w/the stipulation that she be admitted to treatment program instead, if a bed were available. IOW, she won’t be let out, it’s either jail or treatment. She had already been thru 1 treatment program. (Didn’t seem remorseful, hasn’t learned.) Wants to be there for her son. (Hmm.) She as in shackles, as were the 1st 2 men.

5. Short & stocky white dude, has not paid much on a $30,000. debt. Must owe for larceny or something. The victim wants him incarcerated if he cannot pay the bill, but the judge sympathized w/ current economic situation & just continued the parole. Guy showed papers that he had been looking for work.

6. 50-yr-old black male on probation had been found at a house w/ bunch of other people all doing cocaine. 1 lb. found on table in living room, by police.I don’t remember his length of sentence but he went to jail, not on probation anymore.

No one contested their guilt, all waived right to trial. All the last ones were represented by public defender.

The judge kept talking to my students, asking them questions, or if they had any questions! We were sitting in jury box at front of courtroom! (This is small town America.) I felt embarassed for the families of defendants sitting there waiting for their loved one to appear before the judge.