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Sunday, May 18, 2014

Taking a Vacation from Higher Education

I love reading and writing about higher education. It is my job, and as someone trained in the subject, I take seriously the responsibility of engaging in public conversations about the past, present, and future of America's colleges and universities. Specifically, I advocate for a robust, well-funded, diversified public higher education sector, and I generally find privatization to be poor public policy.

Recently, it has been almost impossible for me to avoid any number of debates about college costs, spending, and governance. Most days I feel compelled to enter the fray, but for the better part of this week, I passed over the headlines. I disregarded the "humanities matter," "adjuncts are miserable," "students are entitled," "colleges are resorts," and "presidents are overpaid" tropes on my Facebook news feed. On Twitter, I skipped over the by now familiar cast of characters in the debates, including the data-heads, the disgruntled former academics, the over-confident and under-informed online journalists, and the edtech evangelists. I don't buy into the doomsday predictions for higher education, but I was certainly feeling burned out by the fire and brimstone rhetoric. As it turns out, the glory of the information age is also it's greatest weakness: we are able to follow the details of every incident in real-time, without the discerning perspective that comes with reasonable distance. It had me feeling exhausted. My social media dependence meant that I was fatigued by the array of issues and overwhelmed by the barrage of information, yet I continued to scroll and read.  

So, I shut down. For a brief period of time, I stopped caring about higher education. I decided that I was on a vacation, of sorts. A mental vacation. After writing my dissertation for the past year, I needed to recharge my batteries. I read about baseball statistics and perused urban development projects in my new city. I read a biography about Einstein and spent an hour following links from the "savant" Wikipedia page. Because why not? I didn't pick up my research on part-time faculty and instructional costs, and I didn't obsessively check the number of clicks on my blog posts. A type of serenity soon emerged as I realized that the higher education world kept turning without my complete immersion in its problems. Students still crammed for exams. Graduation ceremonies dragged on for too long. Administrators braced for a new round of budget uncertainties. Faculty slogged through mediocre exam essays. The media babble no doubt continued to stream on social media, yet the articles, thought pieces, and listicles suddenly seemed to me rather...fleeting and immaterial. 

In my moment of peace, I wondered if perhaps being an academic in certain disciplines is like working in a helping profession. Just as the ability of a counselor to help others requires that they periodically focus on their own mental well-being, the ability of an academic to launch headstrong into the issues that matter to them requires a mental vacation from time to time. It could even be that interdisciplinarity is not simply a research fad or hedge against unnecessary specialization. Rather, it could be a defense mechanism in the face of burn out. A search for new muses and a desire to see a topic through fresh eyes. We academics are a special lot in that we care a great deal about our work, sometimes serving as shepherd to pet projects that matter to only a select few. This is a wonderful thing and one reason why there is virtue in a life of the mind. However, it is possible that the mind can only take so much before constant engagement prevents our ability to effectively contribute. Could it be that caring too intensely without a break clouds our thinking?

I haven't fully returned from my vacation. Sure, I've clicked on a few stories, but I couldn't finish them. I know I will re-enter soon, and this post may re-ignite my passion. For the time being, I'm basking in the sunshine of being disconnected. There is freedom in knowing that I am just a tiny speck of grease in the machinations of the higher education universe. 
  

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