No offices for you, humanities grad students

I'm frustrated and sad on behalf of my cohort back at the University of Saskatchewan.

In the last year, we have lost our English grad student room due to a reshuffling of offices in the Arts tower to provide room for an "administrative commons" following sharp cuts to the Arts and University budget. This room was important for grad students, particularly the MA cohort and lower year PhDs; we would meet up there before and after courses, and it was distinctly our space; the English Commons Room upstairs was the dominion of profs and while students were welcome to stop by, we always had to be professional.

Were we spoiled compared to the lot of other grad students or other institutions? Perhaps. The only other hangout space, other than the small undergrad Arts student lounge, the undergrad pub, or other eating places on campus, is the general grad student lounge, which is a 5 minute walk across a busy bus loop and parking lot, hidden in (an admittedly beautiful) old chapel tucked behind some other buildings. This space isn't great as a hangout space if for nothing else other than location, although it does have coffee and washrooms and a lovely interior. It's too far from the the convenience of the library shelves, professors' offices, and classrooms to be a practical gathering place.

Now, in another recent blow to English grad students, they have lost their office spaces in the north wing of the Murray Library. In late August, they received an email notifying them to move out.

They were given a week's notice.

The offices, which before belonged to two MAs or one PhD student, will now become communal. Every grad student in English and several other humanities disciplines will have a key to the offices, and (as I understand it) the use of them will just be on an occupied basis. First come, first served. They're essentially carrels with lockable doors.

I understand the egalitarian perspective of it for those who may not have had any office space, particularly when some of the rooms (*cough* ones without windows and with only one flourescent light *cough*) weren't used very often.

However, I think it is more indicative of the University's general belt-tightening strategy (TransformUS, psh) to cut costs, and again it is at the expense of the student. The reasons for this shift in room use has been driven by increased grad student enrollment and displaced grad students from many other humanities departments due to construction and their grad spaces being turned into classrooms. The humanities administrative assistants were left scrambling to find space during a time when available space is being reduced, and I give them all the kudos in the world for trying their best, but the simple problem is there isn't enough space (or money) allotted to humanities grad students to accommodate their research; as researchers and students, we (and the work we're doing) just isn't valuable enough to the institution.

Does that sound bitter? Full disclosure: I am, a little bit. For the University to keep hypocritically proclaiming research as one of its priorities and then shoving valuable researchers (many of whom are SSHRC funded, if they need a "value" system) into the old corners of the library (example: my office had no windows and the plugins were only two prong), then practically out of the library entirely leaves a sour taste in my mouth, particularly when upper level administration tries to frame all the cuts as having little to no impact on the students.

The benefit of having a locked office is the ability to keep all your research supplies present. For a humanities grad student, that can amount to several dozen of personal, library, interlibrary, and professor's books. When in the course of research a student can need to refer to many different books over a single day, the value of these private offices dramatically increases. They are also a personal work space with plants, posters, coffee cups; essentially, a comfortable space where one can spend several hours a day, often more than 5 days a week.

Apparently lockers will be provided in the offices eventually where personal books can be kept, but how will that work if someone else is currently in the office? Will they be big enough to fit several texts? Too many questions and conflicts remain at this point, though I hope something like that would at least help alleviate some pressure.

I can see several negative outcomes, garnered both from my own experience as a grad student and the helpless comments from others who are now preparing to spend the next years of their PhDs in home offices with research articles close at hand.

The number of Sasquatch grad students, that you hear exist but never really see, is going to climb dramatically.

Corollary: the number of grad students who come to events and interact with professors and each other is going to drop dramatically.

Similarly, all those MA students who look to PhDs for guidance are going to see a distinct reduction of mentorship, if for no other reason than the PhDs simply won't be on campus. Some of the most important discussions of my grad student career thus far happened after running into a PhD student in the hall, or when just stopping by each other's offices for a chat. The PhDs that came to English grad student events were those who spent time on campus - coming out for a drink or trivia or literary theory reading groups or the student-run colloquium or sitting in on a class wasn't a big deal when they were already on campus.

The blows to research will be frustrating and isolating, and the negative impacts on the sense of community among the department and grad students of all levels will be palpable. Of course, other areas, such as how TAs carry out preparation for classes and meeting with students and RA work, will be impacted as well; meeting up with a student by Starbucks to discuss a paper because no offices are available on short notice may not be a pleasant experience.

It's a double blow, and all I can do is watch from a distance, feel frustrated on behalf of everyone who is having to deal with this personally, and fear for what the upcoming TransformUS cuts are going to bring for the University in general.

Hopefully it won't hamstring the humanities too much.

Scholarly, Digital, and Social Editing - belated post

I meant to have this post out and published weeks ago, but moving has put such a spin on things!

Back in July, I attended the Scholarly, Digital, and Social Editing Conference at the University of Saskatchewan. Several months before, Peter Robinson, the organizer, had approached me and asked if I would present a paper for a conference he was putting together. I agreed, and then proceeded to not think about it much until the conference approached.

The schedule is here, and though the majority of the names might not mean much to you if you're outside of digital humanities and textual editing, for me, several of my academic heroes are on that list.

A great mix of people were present, representing a variety of disciplines and areas were present, and many of them were from overseas, including a large complement of Australians. A nice balance was struck, from my grad student perspective, of experienced and established scholars and some more new to the field. Because of the variety of people combined with their heightened interest in the topics being presented, the discussions following presentations was always stimulating, and sometimes resulted in some passionate debates.

For example, Robinson's talk was focused on digital humanists. One of his lines of argument was that digital humanists and scholarly editors need to stop collaborating (for a more detailed description of this presentation and others, see Geoffrey Rockwell's excellent conference notes). An energetic discussion ensued with scholars on both sides.

Barbara Bordalejo's assertion that transcribers are not editors, however, probably inspired the most dissent from audience members. Listening to the dispute that followed made me really appreciate conferences; while some I have attended had probing questions, I have never witnessed the spirited and knowledgeable discussions that went on at SDSE.

The keynote presentations and several of the others were a pure intellectual joy to listen to, and the projects and ideas that people were working with left me with a small notebook full of notes. I particularly appreciated the folks who were outside the humanities/academic field. Ben Brumfield, a software designer (if I remember correctly?) had a great presentation on amateur editions, and asked some very relevant questions throughout the conference. Paul Flemons, who works more with biology, offered a similarly valuable different perspective.

As a grad student among such eminent scholars, I had many "eep!" moments. My paper was on the same-old "Here's what I've been working on with the Dunciad" material that I've presented variations of before, so I wasn't terribly excited about it; however, it went over well enough. However, I was honestly more excited to be able to not only listen to the various presentations, but also to talk to the presenters afterwards. So many of the scholars were incredibly gracious, and I had lovely conversations with the likes of Melissa Terras, Laura Mandell, Paul Eggert, and Peter Shillingsburg, the latter of whom I had a great conversation with about logging with draft horses and retirement. And, of course, I met some other grad students, all of whom were working on fascinating projects.

There are too many amazing crowd-sourcing projects going on to which I would love to contribute. I've also been inspired to look ahead to my own PhD projects coming up in the next few years. I really can't imagine a better conference to attend, and I am thankful to Peter Robinson for stopping me in the hallway back in the early fall.

Yay, conferences!

A select few websites from the conference:
Geoffrey Rockwell's notes 
The Atlas of Living Australia, sharing biodiversity knowledge
Papyri.info, for the study of papyrus - the sheer amount of information and documentation is incredible!
Transcribe Bentham, making Bentham's manuscripts available
And, a shout-out to the project I've worked on, created and curated by Allison Muri, the Grub Street Project!

PhDing: justification

One month from today, I move to Montreal in preparation for starting my PhD in English at McGill.

I read daily about the state of academia and the PhD process, and as anyone else who reads such material knows, the vista awaiting grad students, adjuncts, and scholars trying to get tenure and grants can resemble more of a zombie wasteland with the half-alive bodies of our former comrades stumbling about and just trying to make it a few more steps than the ivory towers and grassy knolls of campus.

An exaggeration? Perhaps. However, resources like 100 Reasons NOT to go to Grad School,  Pannapacker's Graduate School in the Humanities: Don’t Go, Schuman's controversial Thesis Hatement, and Skallerup's excellent and unapologetically honest College Ready Writing series exist for a reason. And these texts are hardly the beginning; Googling "should I go to grad school" is overwhelming.

I feel, therefore, like I need to justify my choice to go to grad school. This decision isn't just because I'm scared of doing anything else! I've thought it through! In a way, I feel like a truant child; I want to be part of my favourite adults' party, but they're telling me that for most of the members, the party is actually pretty wretched.

I don't necessarily want to be at this party for the long term, but I think I could at least hang out for a little bit.

I did both my undergrad and MA in English at the University of Saskatchewan, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Saskatoon, the largest city in the province at about 240000 people, has been my home during my degree; before that, I lived in small towns of around 700 people.

I did well in my undergrad, due in no small degree to the excellent faculty at USask. In particular, Dr. Allison Muri took me under her wing, recruiting me to English during my first year, helping me get a job in the Library in my second summer doing digitization work, and hiring me as an RA for my senior years of my undergrad. I can say, quite frankly, that I would not be where I am today without her mentorship.

Because of my high marks, but also, I suspect, because of the amount of research I had built up by the time I applied to my MA, I was awarded a SSHRC to do my MA. After living on student loans, scholarships, and a bit of money my (lower-middle class) parents had saved up for me and my siblings' education, SSHRC felt like an outrageous amount of money.

During my final year of undergrad and my MA, I was planning on going to do a PhD, except for the few months early in my MA when I had an existential crisis (WHY am I here, what am I even doing, does this matter, am I good enough, ack!). With a publication under my belt, a clear research goal going into my MA that built off my undergrad research, and, of course, good marks, I applied to SSHRC for PhD and to 6 institutions in Canada.

I was accepted to five of the six institutions and, as I discovered a few months ago, awarded a SSHRC.

I had better financial offers from other institutions, but chose McGill for a couple reasons. First, I will be supervised by one of the top scholars in 18th century literature. Secondly, they have a solid digital humanities group developing. And, third, McGill is in Montreal.

For a small-town prairie girl who hadn't been on a plane until last summer, Montreal is a big deal and a big draw.

So, summary: I can live in Montreal (where, as an anglophone, it would be very difficult for me to live otherwise), study at one of the best institutions under an amazing scholar, and be making more money than I have ever before. I will be able to live well above what I have in the past.

Well, but what about after? you ask. And a good question it is.

My answer? I will take it when it comes, just like I decided I would after doing English as a major in my undergrad.

I know the state of academic jobs. I am not going into this commitment expecting to get a tenure-track, or even adjunct, job afterwards. My tentative plan if I have no job prospects after is to go teach English overseas. My identity is tied to academia right now, but I know I've done enough volunteer and summer work in other areas to know that there are other things that I would also be happy doing the rest of my life.

Grad school can be isolating and competitive, but I am outgoing enough and am so oblivious to drama that I think (hope?) I will be fine. I know only my supervisor and a not-yet-met cousin in Montreal, so I know it will be lonely at times at the beginning - but isn't making new friends and groups part of the adventure?

Nobody will read your research, you say! Well, nobody read my material during undergrad except for professors and I was the only person doing 18th century and, to a lesser degree, DH in the grad program at USask. I'm used to my research not being understood or relevant to my friends, never mind my cohort.

Grad school is full of angst and depression and doubting oneself. Maybe. It is for some people, and isn't for others.

Grad school can drag on, though - what if you go on past your funding period? What if you are a grad student FOREVER? Well, my supervisor is retiring four years after I start and will supervise me one year from retirement, so I have extra incentive to finish it on time. I finished my undergrad in four years and my MA in one, so I have some good precedents set, at least?

Hopefully, I won't look back at this post in future years and shake my head at my naïveté.

Or, rather, I will, but I will also recognize that it was worth it.