My union has been trying to get a decent contract since last March. Our current contract expires THIS FRIDAY.

I’ve written already about how the UC system wants to take our offices away. The sad news is that keeping our offices isn’t even in the top three goals for our current contract.

We want better pay (ex: when the tenured faculty vote to give themselves all a raise, we (the colonists who get no votes) must get that raise too. Last time, the tenured people gave themselves 4%–we were given 3%).

We want more job security (the UC system wants to turn us all into adjuncts, who can be fired at whim, with no real warning, no matter the experience, awards, etc.).

We want to stop being told to do unpaid labor, to stop being punished for it when we resist.

If you’re around, you can come see what’s happening and show your support.

All are welcome to attend bargaining 10-5 at Gladys Valley Hall in the Vet Med center. We’ll be in the following rooms:

Wednesday, 1/29  Room 2030
Thursday, 1/30  Room 2071
Friday, 1/31  Room 2030

Be sure to mark your calendar and make plans to attend our Stand Up for Teaching! rally on Monday, February 3. We’ll meet at the steps of Mrak Hall at noon to show UC management that we’re united in fighting for a strong contract that values the work of all lecturers.

If you have questions, please email us at ucaft2023@gmail.com.

Teachers, if you haven’t asked your students about nonacademic sources, I advise you do so.

Because I don’t want to be in this dispiriting place alone.

A few years ago, Melissa and I started working on a textbook to teach our students how to find, evaluate, and ethically use sources.

We knew a lot of knowledge was lacking, both from decades of teaching and from the current political crises.

Using our draft chapters has shown me how desperately needed this book really is.

Because now I quiz the students on this subject.

One of our chapter is on evaluating nonacademic sources; it explains the difference between academic and nonacademic, talks about when nonacademic sources are necessary in their writing, discusses how to evaluate news sites, warns about reliance on Google and Wikipedia, gives examples of satire news being mistaken for real news, and lists four kinds of sources that just shouldn’t end up in their writing, unless their paper is about unreliable sources.

(We argue that one should not cite 1) other student papers one finds on the internet, 2) cheat sites, 3) sources with no discernible personal or agency author, and 4) religious texts as incontrovertible evidence in what should be secular arguments.)

My reading quizzes ask students to tell me the difference between academic and nonacademic sources and to name one of the four forbidden types of nonacademic sources they should avoid.

The students who do the reading do fine, of course.

But here’s what many of the upper-division students who skip the reading say:

What’s the difference between an academic and a nonacademic source?

• Nonacademic sources are written by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
• Academic sources are the things our library has. Everything else is nonacademic.
• Academic sources are reliable. All nonacademic sources are unreliable.

What is one of the four nonacademic sources you should avoid in your writing?

• blogs
• news sources
• film reviews
• social media posts
• this is a trick question–you should never use nonacademic sources in your writing

After I take up the quizzes, I have questions for those students. So you can never cite news? If a pediatrician writes a blog about common problems at checkups, can you not use the info just because it’s a blog? How can you write about foreign policy under Trump if you aren’t allowed to ever cite a Tweet? What if you need census data? Will you just have to skip that information because it’s nonacademic? How are you going to write that film paper if you can’t cite nonacademic sources, since films ARE nonacademic sources?

Fellow teachers, if you haven’t had this conversation with your students, I recommend it. It will be eye-opening on both sides. The information generation just isn’t getting enough instruction on how to filter information. If you want Melissa and I to start the conversation for you, our book is coming out soon.

I got myself a Harry Potter backpack at the start of the year. It tore almost immediately, and the tear is getting bigger.

Just this morning, I was thinking about how I should go back to my very old, but not torn, boring backpack.

Then:

Student A: Is that Harry Potter backpack?

Student B: I noticed it on the first day. It’s how I knew I had signed up for the right class.

“Wow. That’s brilliant. I never would have seen that,” several of my students exclaimed after the day’s discussion leader had them rewatch the “set up the kids” scene at the beginning of Cabin in the Woods. The discussion leader pointed out that the jock wasn’t dumb, the virgin wasn’t one, etc.

And the other students were flabbergasted.

Which made me flabbergasted.

But it’s happened each time I teach this film. This class is designed for Film/Media Studies majors, and so my heart breaks when they can’t actually read a film correctly.

To watch Cabin in the Woods and miss that the kids are not actually archetypes, which a surprising number of my students do, means that they misunderstand the initial attempts at characterization, all of the clear references to the designers affecting their behavior and cognition, and one character constantly trying to understand what’s happening.

“And since when does Curt pull this alpha male bullshit? I mean, he’s a sociology major, he’s on full academic scholarship, and now he’s calling his friend an egghead?”

I used to teach this film last, but this term, it will be our first. We’re going to talk about it Wednesday. I even told the students why–not about what exactly other classes were misunderstanding, but that other students were managing to majorly misunderstand significant plot points.

So we’ll see how they do.

When I started teaching Writing in Film Studies a few years ago, I was surprised by how many horror films made it onto my viewing list, since I don’t really like horror films.

Or maybe I don’t like “typical” horror films. And I will admit that I really dislike the serial killer ones. Give me aliens, zombies, vampires, gods–I can escape. Watching regular men kill regular women doesn’t give me catharsis. It leaves me feeling upset for days.

Cabin in the Woods is one of the best of the horror films I love. I didn’t really know what it was going to be about when I headed to the theatre in 2011. But I knew it was a Whedon thing, so it wasn’t going to be ordinary.

The theatre was almost empty. A woman who appeared to have a nice buzz came in and sat down right beside me. Halfway through the movie, she yelled, “This movie is fucking awesome.” The other seven of us in the audience just laughed. Cause it was true.

I was disappointed that Goddard, the director, chose to open the way he did, since it gave away so much of the twist away. But I also know that moviemakers don’t worry too much about spoiling things for professional geek overanalyzers. And it didn’t spoil the fun.

I watched the film again over the weekend, flinching as one character makes out with a wolf head (ick–so much dust!–even though I know it’s actually sugar).

And I found myself even more mad than usual that the virgin has to suffer to save us. Especially when one of the people she’s saving is the married professor who seduced her and then broke up with her via email. Why can’t we ever have to sacrifice that guy?

And I watched the documentaries about the effects–the approximately 100 practical monsters they created, the little details like the glowing coals in the reanimated mother’s belly.

And this time, I found a new favorite line. When I get my students’ first screening response on Wednesday, I hope they present them in the right way: “This we offer in humility and fear.”

My upper-division writing courses are challenging, so I offer some generous extra credit.

One of the ways students can earn it is participation in a book club. I pick a book (one related to the course ideas, often one I want to read), they read it, write a response paper, and meet at the end of the quarter to talk about it.

My favorite choices, ones I’ve used again and again, are Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Maus by Art Spiegelman, Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss, and Red Son by Mark Millar.

My Writing in the Health Science students are the most compelled to raise their grades. Many of them have enjoyed Atwood, but we’ve also read Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats, Adam Alter’s Drunk Tank Pink, Alan Alda’s If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face, Rachel Pearson’s No Apparent Distress, T.R. Reid’s The Healing of America, Paula Kamen’s All in My Head, Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams, Anne Fadiman’s When the Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, and books by Atul Gawande and Mary Roach, among others.

In a tight quarter system, it’s a much needed chance for students to have a good discussion in a small group, to think through issues in a low-stakes way, and to remember that they do actually like to read. (Many students ask for further book recommendations for the break.)

It’s also a way for me to learn more about them, what they don’t yet know, what moves them, what surprises them.

Recently, for example, a few students in my Writing in Social Justice class said they learned a lot about the Holocaust from Maus–they had never heard of the camps. My premed students learn about patients who weren’t believed, who were told it was all in their head (they didn’t think doctors would ever abandon someone). They learn that our ideas of villainy are completely determined by point of view. They learn great scientists can also be great writers.

Today, I have set up appointments to meet with six former students who want to get advice for classes to take, for improving their writing further, for choosing a grad program, for life.

It’s Summer Session 2. I honestly can’t remember the last time I took a summer session off.* After many long years, I finally am. (Not the whole summer, mind you; I just got back from an intensive Summer Abroad course, teaching 8 units in 4 weeks.)

But I’m still answering messages from my students. And I’m still going to pay to park so I can hold some office hours to help them.**

Having office hours requires an office.

So imagine my distress to learn that in the current bargaining session with my union, you have proposed taking my office away.

The laws (and you) require that I keep my students’ confidentiality. As I’m sure you understand, students bring up confidential information when they meet with me. We discuss their grades, their health problems, their hesitation in coming out to their parents, their sometimes difficult relationships with other people here.

I am required to keep this information confidential, so I need an office.

Common decency requires that other things be kept confidential, though the law doesn’t say anything about it. Sometimes, they’re homesick, crying, angry, despondent. They tell me about how their dreams are being crushed, how their parents don’t want them to pursue what they care about, how they need help fighting for a new dream.

Honor requires me to keep this confidential, so I need an office.

You say I could do all of this without my own office, that I just need a locker. What about the student who needs to talk through how to survive college now that her parents have been deported? The student who is being sent back to China after failing too many classes? The student who doesn’t know how to talk about how he used to cut himself, but wants to try?

Yes, these students should talk to counselors, but some of them are told they have to wait to do so. And, quite frankly, they often come to me first. And in emergencies, I walk them to the counseling center.

It’s vital that these students can come to me in a safe location, not just try to catch me at my locker, so I need an office.

You require me to be a mandatory reporter, so I need an office.

You require me to keep any projects (which are confidential) they haven’t picked up for a year, so I need an office.

I teach twice as many classes (more actually, with the independent studies and freshman seminars) as my tenured peers, which requires lots of office hours, so I need an office.

Speaking of independent studies, the classroom for them is my office, so I need an office.***

Since I prepare syllabi and grade essays and grade homework, I need an office.

Half of the students in my always-full office hours are former students. Many of them end up asking me for letters of recommendation and for mentoring.

Since I still meet with and write for those former students, I need an office.

I am currently in charge of the Upper Division Composition Exam. Hundreds of confidential files live in my office and, at certain times of year, need to be spread out all over my desk. Lots of confidential conversations about the exam happen there as well. Thus, I need an office.

(There is a staff person assigned to assist me with the Upper Division Composition Exam. It would be awkward if I didn’t have an office but she did, so I need an office.)

I serve on several campus committees, so I need an office.

All of the grad students in my building have offices, whether they’re teaching or not, whether they’re staying away from campus for the quarter or not. I work with some of them. The idea that I would have to go to their office to talk about their dissertations because the university sees them (but not me) as deserving of one is absurd, so I need an office.

I am an official mentor for the Guardian program, so I need an office.

I am an unofficial mentor for lots of other students, many of whom encounter me through the work I do with STEP, so I need an office.

I am the faculty adviser for a student group; I am with the students at least once a week, so I need an office.

When I publish the peer-reviewed journal I edit, “UC Davis” is behind my name. When I publish articles and books (I have two books coming out this year!), “UC Davis” is behind my name. When I present at conferences (nine this calendar year!), “UC Davis” is behind my name. When give guest lectures, “UC Davis” is behind my name.

Taking away my office implies that my research has no value here, even though you’re happy to feature that work in your publicity.

I’m assuming you would rather I keep saying “UC Davis” instead of “Independent Scholar” when I do these things, so I need an office.

To keep my job, you require that my teaching be “excellent.”**** What makes me “excellent” is the time and attention I give my students, not just my in-class performance. To remain excellent, I need an office.

I am an award-winning teacher, partially because I have an office in which to do all of these things.

My fellow lecturers in this system all do much more than just teach and go home. We care about our students–we work with them, listen to them, guide them, and inspire them, and we strive for excellence in everything we do, so we need offices.

Endnotes:

*This letter is not about how you only pay me 60% of my class rate when I teach in the summer, even though I have to do the same amount of work as I do in a regular term.

**This letter is not about how you charge me hundreds of dollars to park at work every year.

***This letter is not about how the students pay you to do independent studies with me but how you not only refuse to pay me, you refuse to consider these extra courses when I ask for raises. It is also not about how you’re trying to change the guidelines so I can never get another merit raise again.

****This letter is not about how you are also trying to change my contract to say that I can be fired at any time, with no notice or cause.

Students, if you’re reading this and wondering whom to talk to about how all of your teachers, not just tenure-track professors, need offices, here’s where to start:

Professor Kristin Lagattuta, Chair, Academic Senate, 402 Mrak Hall,
University of California, Davis, 95616, (530) 752-4919, aschair@ucdavis.edu

Gary May, Chancellor, Fifth Floor, Mrak Hall, University of California, Davis
(530) 752-2065, chancellor@ucdavis.edu

Janet Napolitano, President, University of California, 1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor, Oakland, CA 94607, president@ucop.edu

Eleni Kounalakis, Lieutenant Governor, State Capitol, Suite 1114, Sacramento, CA 95814, (916) 445-8994, https://ltg.ca.gov/contact/

Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, State Capitol, P.O. Box 942849, Sacramento, CA 94249-0004,
Tel: (916) 319 2004, https://lcmspubcontact.lc.ca.gov/PublicLCMS/ContactPopup.php?district=AD04

Senator Bill Dodd, State Capitol, Room 4032, Sacramento,  CA  95814, (916) 651-4003, https://sd03.senate.ca.gov/contact

[If you’re not from Davis, you can look up their representatives here: http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov]

In 2017, I taught my first seminar on Doctor Who. This term saw its first regeneration.

Lessons from my class:

Some of the students are just as ambivalent about technology as we are (this comes as a relief).

Many of them were amazed by the revelation that the Daleks are stand-ins for Nazis. (I sometimes forget what surprises freshmen, in terms of literary analysis.)

A few of the students hadn’t watched any Doctor Who before. They all reported liking it, but a couple said they weren’t going to watch the whole series because it’s too many seasons (and they’re just talking about doctor 9 on) to catch up on.

Lesson: some of this generation are quitters.

I let the students vote for themes to discuss in the last few weeks–this doesn’t always go well (the same thing happens in my Simpsons seminar). One of the themes they picked this time was happiness. A few were frustrated that class discussion kept going onto what makes us unhappy (what did they think was going to happen?).

In our poll on scariest monsters, the weeping angels won.

In our poll on best doctors, David Tennant won.

Martha and Clara were both lambasted by many for being our least favorite companions, but many students came around on Martha after I pushed them on it one day. They like that she’s a doctor; they like that she chose to leave–to move on.

We all love Donna.

We all love Jack.

We all love River Song.

In fact, the spin-off series we want to see most is The Adventures of River Song.*

I’m disappointed that none of the students took me up on the challenge of writing the fan script explaining Jim the Fish.

My favorite comment in the whole quarter?

A student’s observation that the humans who travel with the doctor are his emotional therapy animals.

*I’ve spitballed a few alternate titles:

Dr. Song, Non-Medicine Woman

Professor Song and the Temple of Doom

Kiss of the River Song

Melody/Song

For Whom the Angels Weep

Alias River Song

Bringing up River Song

River Song and the Chamber of Secrets

It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad Universe

I Walked with a Time Lord

Touched by a Time Lord

River Song’s Guide to the Galaxy

Red Lipstick Diaries

Interview with an Assassin

A Wrinkle in Time and Space

The Woman Warrior

The Professor is In

Welcome Back, River Song

Not Mostly Harmless

Spaced

River Song’s Adventures in Wonderland

Mapping the River Song

Let the Right River Song In

Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous

My Big Fat Gallifreyan Wedding

Lost in Tardis Translation

Professor River Song, Actually

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Assassin

River Song of Arabia

River Song’s Web

Educating River

Spoilers!

The Diary of River Song

Are You There Doctor? It’s Me, River Song

Diatribes of a Mad Professor

Doctor Song, I Presume?

Hello, Sweetie

Love’s Labors Lost

Close Encounters of the River Song Kind

[Note: almost all of these could also be porn titles]

by D’lana Pearce

On June 15^th, 2019, I will be a college graduate. This is supposed to be the culmination of my hard work and yet I find myself dreading the future. I have a substantial knowledge on inequality (racial, sexual, and gender), I know a lot about colonization, political processes and corruption, what ATP is and how it works, cellular death, regression analysis, integration, and what a comma splice is (though I still have them in my writing–no one is perfect). However, I feel unprepared for the future. I have a large amount of student loan debt (well above the average), as well as credit card debt, and a general concern for life outside of the cushion of being a college student. I find myself asking a lot of questions, most of which don’t even pertain to college but are things I will have to learn quickly to be successful. Some of my questions are for far in the future but others I am stressed about at this very moment. I find myself up late at night, distracted by my thoughts about what I will do with my life once I graduate. I worry I will make the wrong career choice, professional behavior, or financial decisions and all my work in college will be rendered useless.

Some of my questions are:

1. How do I focus on health and wellness with a busy schedule?

2. How do property taxes work?

3. How do I understand my health insurance benefits?

4. How do I know if I am making enough money to buy a house?

5. Is better to not get a tax refund (and not owe anything) or to get a refund?

6. Is it better to have a will or a trust? At what age do I draft them?

7. How often do I *need* to go to the doctor?

8. How do I prepare for a professional interview? I’ve worked various minimum wage jobs but I have no idea what to expect when I go into interviews for a career.

9. What exactly is business casual?

10. How should I manage my personal finances?

11. What jobs value the skills my major teaches?

12. How do I network?

13. How do I apply theoretical course concepts to a job? I find it hard to believe that Karl Marx will be a daily conversation topic and yet I learn about him in almost every Sociology course.

14. How much do employers care about what I have posted on social media?

It’s not that I would expect a college to have a course teaching these things. In fact, many of these questions cannot be taught in one course. However, as I find myself pushed into the real world, I am finding that everything I know is not nearly as useful as I thought it was. It’s scary to find yourself in a position where you must make decisions that will truly alter your life with almost no experience and no textbook to look for answers in.

Once again, D’Lana Pearce weighs in on teaching.

My ideal class is as follows: PowerPoints uploaded before class so that I can follow along, podcasts of lectures, no mandatory attendance, no group projects, no class participation, a clear syllabus with all due dates listed in categories, a detailed breakdown of what will be covered in each class, and all assignments prompts posted on the first day of class. In short – I want some of my work done for me.

My favorite professors at UC Davis have all required attendance, group projects in some form, and class participation. None of them have uploaded PowerPoints before class and none of them have done podcasts.

In my opinion, the best professor in my major (Sociology) is the professor that taught me about social problems and is currently teaching me about political sociology. This professor does not teach easy classes. The readings are long, and they are complicated. Many of the topics are graduate level. You will not pass any class they teach if you slack on the readings. Participation is worth enough to change your grade by an entire letter. Most of the class is lecture based with some writing on the chalkboard and the occasional graph on a PowerPoint. You must work for your grade. In theory I should hate it, but I don’t. I first took this professor in Fall 2017 when I was readmitted to UC Davis. I liked them so much that I am currently taking three upper division Sociology classes, which are all writing based, along with a writing internship and a seminar that requires a term paper. I could have avoided this by taking one of my classes with a different professor, but I know that I will learn more with this professor.

The best writing professor I have ever had made me work for my grade (it was a B and I have never worked so hard for a B in my life). The required writings took me out of my comfort zone. Even after I edited them they still found mistakes. To be completely honest, I didn’t even realize how much I had learned until I looked at my first and last papers from that class. Their class made me want to minor in writing. Up until then I absolutely HATED writing. I’ve since then discovered I like the various ways I can express myself through writing.

These two professors are two different people. They teach different topics, they have different backgrounds, and they have different personalities. Their organization is one of their only similarities. Both put everything they expect from their students in the syllabus. There are clear deadlines and expectations. As a student, I have found, there is nothing I appreciate more. The readings they assigned are related to each lecture and the information gathered from those readings helps stimulate class conversation, and learning. The material for the midterm and final is from these readings. Additionally, they are applicable outside of the class.

Both professors have mixed reviews on ratemyprofessor. The negative reviews all say the same thing. They are too hard. They make you work for your grade and there is a lot of work required. College professors that make you work for your grade? Shocking.

I don’t think there is such thing as a perfect educator. I do think that some genuinely care about their students success and those are the ones who leave an impression.