Let's say that a professor's time is worth $30 an hour. Then a message sent to all faculty members and taking 1 minute to read costs $0.50 x the number of professors in the university. A meeting of 10 faculty members for an hour costs $300! We could monetize our efforts in that way. An hour long sexual harassment training, multiplied by the average hourly wage of the number of people required to take it. That has an economic cost to it. That's not even counting the cost of creating and administering the training, monitoring it to make sure everyone does it. A message from the chancellor to the university community saying he won't fire the football coach has an economic cost to, though it seems trivial. Getting information daily or weekly from the humanities center (each grant you can apply for is a separate message from them!), the college, the graduate school, the office of first year retention etc...
The fact that each of these things is small, in and of itself, disguises the real costs. In fact, the multiplication of very small items is actually more distracting, than if there were one large thing you had to take care of. You have to be organized in getting all the small things done and keeping track of everything, and that is a task in and of itself. So if I complain about doing something that only takes 2 minutes, you could say, "Oh, that's trivial, that's only two minutes." But you would be wrong.
It gets worse: it is not just that each these things takes a small amount of time, but that they sap energy and attention, which are more valuable than time itself. They are the invisible service burden that we have just by being faculty members, even if cannot list them as items on our cv.
All of the goals of the university are significant ones: increasing equity, diversity, sustainability, retaining students, increasing research productivity, improving teaching, reducing time to degree for graduate students, complying with Title IX. Every administrator charged with one of these areas needs to engage with the faculty in order to further these goals, but nobody is monitoring the total effect of all of it on faculty time, energy, and attention, or working to reduce the cumulative weight of this burden.
***
Imagine, instead of this, that you had went to a cabin in the woods and did your research for six months with no communications from the university at all, or to an "scholars' colony" on the model of an artist's colony.
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Maple Leaf Rag
A guy was pounding out "Maple Leaf Rag" on a piano with a very heavy touch. I went up to him in a very apologetic way and told him he needed a less muscular approach. "I'm sure you are better piano player than I am, and don't take this the wrong way, but..."
Friday, March 30, 2018
The invisible burden
Filling out paperwork. Doing Sexual Harassment training. Filling out one's annual review form. Filling out conflict of interest form. Sorting through emails sent by department, college, university provost and chancellor, graduate school, teaching excellence center, to see if any of it is important or not. Applying to internal grants. And many other things...
None of this is "service" work for which we receive credit. Cumulatively it amounts to many of hours spent by many people in the university, either generating these things on the administrative end or responding to them by staff and faculty. And hence millions of dollars. My idea for increasing the research productivity of the entire university is to go on a kind of research retreat, during which nobody would be allowed to do anything except research, teaching, and essential service. Maybe it could be the first two weeks of April?
It is not that any one of these things is horribly taxing, in and of itself. Some of the things are necessary, too. But the cumulative burden is quite large, because it increases the amount of distraction and mental clutter. We could put a dollar cost on it, by seeing who spends how much time on which kind of things, and then multiplying that by their hourly pay rates. But the real cost is in sapping energy.
None of this is "service" work for which we receive credit. Cumulatively it amounts to many of hours spent by many people in the university, either generating these things on the administrative end or responding to them by staff and faculty. And hence millions of dollars. My idea for increasing the research productivity of the entire university is to go on a kind of research retreat, during which nobody would be allowed to do anything except research, teaching, and essential service. Maybe it could be the first two weeks of April?
It is not that any one of these things is horribly taxing, in and of itself. Some of the things are necessary, too. But the cumulative burden is quite large, because it increases the amount of distraction and mental clutter. We could put a dollar cost on it, by seeing who spends how much time on which kind of things, and then multiplying that by their hourly pay rates. But the real cost is in sapping energy.
audition dream
My daughter was cutting out dozens of orange, card-sized slips of orange paper with scissors. She would first outline the card in a marker and then cut it out of a large piece of the paper. Each of them represented an audition she was going to apply for. I questioned whether she needed to audition so many places but I lost the argument, somehow.
[Real life basis: she texted me last night to say is an official substitute player for the Chicago Civic Orchestra.]
[Real life basis: she texted me last night to say is an official substitute player for the Chicago Civic Orchestra.]
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Proud
I am not sure why I cannot get more proud and excited about this book that is about to come out. It's not that I think it is bad, but I am more excited by the book I want to write next. That is good, because it is always best to think the next project is the best one. Your favorite book should be the one you haven't yet written.
Still, I just cannot seem to feel that joy. Maybe I am thinking too much that some people won't like it, or that it won't be as good as Apocryphal Lorca. This is kind of dumb, because the book has good things in it too. I wish I could simply argue myself into feeling differently about it. This great brilliant guy Jonathan Mayhew they describe in the publicity material just doesn't feel like me.
Still, I just cannot seem to feel that joy. Maybe I am thinking too much that some people won't like it, or that it won't be as good as Apocryphal Lorca. This is kind of dumb, because the book has good things in it too. I wish I could simply argue myself into feeling differently about it. This great brilliant guy Jonathan Mayhew they describe in the publicity material just doesn't feel like me.
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Dream
I was at my mom's house. I brought books with me to read, but several books had arrived there for me in the mail, in shrink wrap. One was a book about the reception of Lorca in 2016, a huge volume. I was worried about taking all the books home with me on the plane back home.
No No
I was reading a book on Nono while my students took an exam. I'm sure it is fine for an audience of other musicologists, but describing music in words, with a high level of detail, over the course of several pages in row is even more deadly than detailed poetic analysis. With a poem, at least you have the poem there on the page along with the analysis. Even then, people skip over the analysis to get to the interpretation and the contextualization, the part that makes it meaningful to someone else.
It's like hearing somebody talk about people dancing or playing sports in abstract terms. It is possible, but you have to know how to do it.
If you don't have a recording handy to play along as you are reading then you just have to take it on faith. Even with a score there, you would have to go to a keyboard and try to play it, which is fine if it's keyboard piece and you can sight-read decently, which I cannot. Even most musicians don't want to read things like that, and might not have enjoyed all their musicology and theory classes in their conservatory training. If musicians think theoretical discussions of music are boring, then ordinary folks will think that times 20.
There are effective ways of writing about music, like Alex Ross in the New Yorker. And there are musicologists who know how to do this too. The trick is not writing for musicologists. My aim here is not to show people how much I know about music, or how smart I am, but to communicate with an audience. As Woolf said, to know whom you are writing for is to know how to write.
Maybe I should say I am writing for the same people that the composers are composing for: listeners.
It's like hearing somebody talk about people dancing or playing sports in abstract terms. It is possible, but you have to know how to do it.
If you don't have a recording handy to play along as you are reading then you just have to take it on faith. Even with a score there, you would have to go to a keyboard and try to play it, which is fine if it's keyboard piece and you can sight-read decently, which I cannot. Even most musicians don't want to read things like that, and might not have enjoyed all their musicology and theory classes in their conservatory training. If musicians think theoretical discussions of music are boring, then ordinary folks will think that times 20.
There are effective ways of writing about music, like Alex Ross in the New Yorker. And there are musicologists who know how to do this too. The trick is not writing for musicologists. My aim here is not to show people how much I know about music, or how smart I am, but to communicate with an audience. As Woolf said, to know whom you are writing for is to know how to write.
Maybe I should say I am writing for the same people that the composers are composing for: listeners.
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