It's back to school season in the U.S. Elementary and high school students in my part of the country have been in the classroom for a month now, and most colleges have started their fall term as well.
But in the late summer I began encouraging people to ask me when I head back to the classroom -- because the answer is so satisfying. "August, 2017," I say.
Sabbaticals are a perk of academic life, and a real treat. The idea is two-fold. Originally, I imagine, a sabbatical was granted in order that faculty members would have a chance to relax and recharge. The wording is not accidental. At most institutions, faculty are eligible for sabbaticals every seven years, which someone must have decided was the stretch of time after which renewal was required.
We do work hard (though perhaps not harder than other people!), and especially when a professor has been teaching the same courses term after term, a chance to step away from the classroom, to read up on new developments and methodologies, to rethink some approaches, perhaps to travel to new places and confer with colleagues in other countries and systems... A brilliant plan, sure to bring new energy and enthusiasm when the faculty member returns to her institution.
The second part of sabbaticals, though, is that faculty are intended to spend the year engaged in research projects. On one hand this makes sense -- if someone needs to go do research abroad or at an archive, doing that while teaching is difficult. If she needs to focus on extensive reading or experiments or writing, the interruptions of meetings, classes, and students can slow a project almost to a halt.
On the other hand, aren't the two parts of sabbaticals counterintuitive? Is it possible to "rest and recharge" while also conducting intensive research and completing a large writing project?
It may be that god rested on the sabbath, the seventh day, but while resting she didn't think up a whole new universe, did she? Still. I can't, and won't, complain. Life is good. And as I launch my sabbatical year, I'm thinking about who my traveling companions will be.
One of my colleagues, who's a classical archeologist, recently told me that she has always taken Tolstoy along on her sabbaticals. During her first sabbatical (in addition to the research and writing she did, of course) she read Anna Karenina. And during the second she read War and Peace.
Tolstoy shared a lot of the values of the American academic. He believed in hard work and in experiential learning. He preferred the simple life, but was interested in why people accumulate wealth and stuff and tried to understand what that did to them. He was horrified by violence and war. He explored the relationship between reason and passion, and recognized that not all the answers lay in rational thought.
So yes, I'll take Tolstoy with me. I'll revisit my Reading Anna Karenina Challenge, and I'll think some more about why reading Tolstoy is inevitably an intense experience. This week, reading an Ulitskaya novel (The Kukotsky Enigma -- now translated into English and available at Northwestern UP), I stopped to dwell on an exchange with a minor character who was reading Tolstoy's Sevastopol Stories:
But in the late summer I began encouraging people to ask me when I head back to the classroom -- because the answer is so satisfying. "August, 2017," I say.
Sabbaticals are a perk of academic life, and a real treat. The idea is two-fold. Originally, I imagine, a sabbatical was granted in order that faculty members would have a chance to relax and recharge. The wording is not accidental. At most institutions, faculty are eligible for sabbaticals every seven years, which someone must have decided was the stretch of time after which renewal was required.
We do work hard (though perhaps not harder than other people!), and especially when a professor has been teaching the same courses term after term, a chance to step away from the classroom, to read up on new developments and methodologies, to rethink some approaches, perhaps to travel to new places and confer with colleagues in other countries and systems... A brilliant plan, sure to bring new energy and enthusiasm when the faculty member returns to her institution.
The second part of sabbaticals, though, is that faculty are intended to spend the year engaged in research projects. On one hand this makes sense -- if someone needs to go do research abroad or at an archive, doing that while teaching is difficult. If she needs to focus on extensive reading or experiments or writing, the interruptions of meetings, classes, and students can slow a project almost to a halt.
On the other hand, aren't the two parts of sabbaticals counterintuitive? Is it possible to "rest and recharge" while also conducting intensive research and completing a large writing project?
It may be that god rested on the sabbath, the seventh day, but while resting she didn't think up a whole new universe, did she? Still. I can't, and won't, complain. Life is good. And as I launch my sabbatical year, I'm thinking about who my traveling companions will be.
One of my colleagues, who's a classical archeologist, recently told me that she has always taken Tolstoy along on her sabbaticals. During her first sabbatical (in addition to the research and writing she did, of course) she read Anna Karenina. And during the second she read War and Peace.
Tolstoy shared a lot of the values of the American academic. He believed in hard work and in experiential learning. He preferred the simple life, but was interested in why people accumulate wealth and stuff and tried to understand what that did to them. He was horrified by violence and war. He explored the relationship between reason and passion, and recognized that not all the answers lay in rational thought.
So yes, I'll take Tolstoy with me. I'll revisit my Reading Anna Karenina Challenge, and I'll think some more about why reading Tolstoy is inevitably an intense experience. This week, reading an Ulitskaya novel (The Kukotsky Enigma -- now translated into English and available at Northwestern UP), I stopped to dwell on an exchange with a minor character who was reading Tolstoy's Sevastopol Stories:
«Перечитываешь?
Зачем?»
«Честное слово, не знаю. Тянет. Почти каждый год, обязательно летом.
Вот так, на пляже. В поезде… Во саду ли, в огороде … Вроде как родственника
навестить. Из чувства долга. Но и по любви тоже. И скучновато. И необходимо.»
"Why are you rereading [Tolstoy]?"
"Honestly, I have no idea. It pulls me in. Almost every year, always in the summer. Like this, at the beach. On a train ... In the yard, the garden ... It's like visiting a relative. Out of a sense of duty. But also with love. It's a bit boring. But essential."
Ulitskaya herself -- writing a Big Book about family, love, the twentieth century with its terror and tragedy -- must have been thinking about Tolstoy.
Of course, when I began this post I was also channeling Martha Nussbaum, having just read the great New Yorker piece about her from earlier in the summer: "The Philosopher of Feelings." And so I am taking Tolstoy, but also maybe Martha along on my sabbatical journey. So far Martha's primary influence has been on my exercise regimen. Apparently she starts every day with 90 minutes of exercise. That's more than I can manage, but when I get up in the dark, make myself a cup of coffee, and head out on a run, I do seem to think more clearly for much of the day.
Reading, and writing, and traveling, and running. Not a bad life at all.
Yay a blog update! Glad you are doing well :) -Robin
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