University of Venus
GenX Women in Higher Ed, Writing from Across the Globe
January 4, 2011 - 10:00pm
I am at the end of a long and tough professional and academic journey. While preparing to embark on a new horizon, I had the benefit of thinking a great deal about the priorities of my medium-term schedule. One of the first tasks on the list is writing a book on the subject of my PhD in history, about the inter-ethnic relations in Romania after the fall of communism. On the same list, I have other ideas of articles and essays that have haunted my mind over the last 12 months or so. More or less, my near future will again be directly preoccupied by the acrobatics of words.
January 2, 2011 - 6:45pm
One year later…Last year at this time, we met in a cozy little cafe in Roxbury to finalize our plan for launching a blog together. After way too much coffee, sweet lemon scones, and lots of animated discussion, we decided to soft launch the blog at the end of January and to give our project a name, a brand: University of Venus.
December 22, 2010 - 9:15pm
A couple of weeks ago, Lee pitched an idea for bringing several of us at UVenus together around a single question and Meg and I thought it would be a great way to end 2010 as we take a break for the holidays in the USA. We'd like to make this a monthly feature at University of Venus and we want our readers to participate! If you tweet your answer, one of us will post it on the blog for you.
December 21, 2010 - 9:00pm
My 200-level students last semester proposed or redesigned a university-level course for their final assignment.* They were allowed to make it in any subject, at any level. It wasn't my most tightly conceived assignment, so I wasn't sure what to expect from them. The results were understandably uneven, but revealed a great deal about what undergraduates think an undergraduate degree should be.
December 16, 2010 - 9:00pm
This past month I completed my second Master’s course – a Research Methods class which took us through the paces of literature reviews, conference proposals, peer reviews, paper drafts and concluded with a small class symposium where we each presented our work. I confess, it sounded dry to me when I registered. I was almost dreading it as it all seemed to be so much of what I was already advising my students on. However, I was determined to be positive, so I chose to use it as an exercise to improve my writing. And of course, it was wonderful.
December 14, 2010 - 9:30pm
It happens every time. I start teaching the concepts of McDonaldization and mass production to my students and it sends me into a mini-crisis.
December 12, 2010 - 7:30pm
My sister recently visited a physician in Manila who turned out to be a former undergraduate student of mine in Iloilo. Recognizing the common surname (Arcala), the doctor gushed about how I had tempted her to switch from a Biology major to a Political Science major, upon taking my General Education class in Social, Economic and Political Theory. To this day she remembers Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau and Marx and the engaging manner in which I embedded their ideas in their historical milieus.
December 9, 2010 - 8:45pm
The topic of this blog post comes naturally to me, as I sit surrounded by over 40 essays waiting for me to grade. 40 essays, each 8 pages long – you count how much text I must get through, and fast (as my deadline for delivering the final marks is approaching very soon). The immensity of the task makes me wonder what the purpose of this exercise is and which ways there are to best achieve this goal. And so, I find myself writing about grading.
December 7, 2010 - 9:15pm
Every morning I wake up, get dressed, put on my make-up, drink a glass of cold milk with no sugar and then I walk to the University. It takes me about 10 minutes. Living in a huge metropolis like Istanbul where most people have to commute for at least an hour or more and change a few public transportation vehicles to get to work, I must say I am blessed by my morning exercise of walking to my office, which is kind of like a second home to me.