Academic Awards & the Perils of Insecurity

ragan

When I was younger and much less secure, framed pictures of myself decorated tables in my apartment. When I was in my 30s, I saw those totems for what they were: monuments to my insecurity. Academic awards perform a similar role for scholars suffering from imposter syndrome. All my degrees and certificates are on one wall of my office; I call it my “wall of insecurity.” That’s no joke. That’s how I refer to it when somebody walks in and mentions the monument of self-doubt.

Professional associations offer countless opportunities for accolades: top student paper, top debut paper, best article, best book, early career awards, mid-career awards, distinguished scholar, distinguished teacher, distinguished service, and tons of awards named after people who have won a bunch of awards. These awards matter, because they help scholars and educators demonstrate impact. 

Throughout my career, I’ve tried to be judicious about awards. After landing a significant prize, I don’t immediately go for another one. 

Over the last two decades, I’ve noticed a few people in my discipline who have sullied awards for me. One senior scholar regularly denigrated other people in the field when she and her mentees weren’t recognized for a distinction. After winning one award, she publicly announced, “It’s about time.” At NCA, she and her mentees attended the awards ceremony and immediately left after she collected her award. Screw everyone else, right? I got mine! So long, suckers! 

Others in the discipline—and I won’t name names because I’m a good Christian woman—go out for every single award they can—year after year. Their modus operandi exhausts me: win multiple awards, humble brag on social media, rinse & repeat. There’s such a profound lack of self-awareness, like, “This isn’t the best look.”  They’re addicted to the dopamine hits that come with winning. But winning what I’d consider to be excessive awards doesn’t build your name. That’s what the scholarship should do. In other words, the award helps you make a case to a college tenure committee, who may not understand the impact of your work. Inside the discipline, it’s the work, not the awards—and some of the most significant “names” aren’t people who feel compelled to prove their worth through accolades. Obsession over awards makes a person look desperate, not accomplished.

The prize obsession I outline here makes me less inclined to go out for an award—even when I am particularly proud of an essay. If I go for an award, will people think I’m trophy-addicted? It all feels so masturbatory. 

I wish my discipline would move away from self-nominations and complicated processes where colleagues—already saddled with so much work—pen recommendation letters. Reduce the number of awards. Come up with more organic ways to recognize substantive contributions to the field—ones that don’t rely on a small group of people nominating themselves for every award an association offers. 

A Pathway to Queer Criticism: The Rhetorical Criticism Textbook’s Lost Chapter

ragan

I am generally loathe to write book chapters but couldn’t pass up this opportunity to author a basic overview of queer theory and rhetorical criticism. The essay is written for undergraduates and others who are looking for a readable survey of how queer theory is used in critical/cultural communication research. Given the method’s disciplinary popularity, it’s terrible that textbook authors continue to willfully ignore the instrument. Enjoy!

intro to lost chapter queer criticismDownload

shifting priorities

ragan

9 months until 50. Today, I was thinking about how much my priorities and values shifted from my 30s to my 40s. In my 30s, I wanted people to see me as important. Every endeavor–scholarship, podcast, TV–was in service to that end. Toward the end of my 40s, I realized that my need to be valued came from a profound place of insecurity. I increasingly saw -myself- in other people’s bad behavior, like, “Oh, I get why they’re acting that way. That’s how -I- behave when -I- am insecure.” This move allowed me to extend grace to people and to MYSELF, like, “Don’t take it personal. This is -their- shit, not a reflection of who -you- are.” Then my buddy Sarah Tracy buddy shared a 15-minute productivity hack to complete work that would otherwise sit in your to-do file. I modified her magic and applied the exercise to writing scholarship. Over the last 3 years, I’ve never been so productive and, when it comes to research, there’s no end in sight. In my 30s, research was a means to an end, be it tenure, credibility, etc. Today, writing is process and art–not some vehicle to gain attention or prove my value. I’m writing from a place of pure intellectual curiosity. A lot can change in a decade, as long as you’re open to change.

10 Nuggets of Advice for Incoming Faculty

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Now 20 years into my post-doctoral career, I offer this list. Learn from my mistakes.

1. Identify your department’s emotional vampires. They take many forms. Some wield seniority like a weapon, feeding off your fear that they may torpedo tenure and promotion. Others are struck on being stuck, which means they bathe darkness and negativity. Have a solution to one of their many problems? A vampire stuck on being stuck treats a practical solution the way vampires respond to garlic and daylight. They’re not looking for solutions. Solutions pull them away from what they love most: kvetching about problems. Stay away from vampires and invest that energy in colleagues who make you laugh.

2. Don’t hang yourself on another person’s cross. Master manipulators know how to make other people do their dirty work. Be especially careful of faculty who weaponize graduate students. Good mentors don’t involve students in drama. Similarly, no colleague who genuinely cares about you wants you too deeply involved in their institutional struggles. A well-timed hug goes a LONG way.

3. Save your sass for -after- promotion and, even then, use it sparingly. This is a variation of “pick your wars.” This took me a LONG time to learn.

4. Avoid the colleague who -regularly- enters other people’s offices and closes the door behind them. They’re either gossiping or don’t value transparency. We ALL occasionally share things in private. And sometimes gossip is more a crucial whisper network. I’m talking about the person who constantly shuts the door after they enter a room.

5. Beware the person who campaigns for chair. The best department leaders with whom I’ve worked have been reluctant chairs. Ideally, faculty should be trying to persuade the “natural” leader to run. One bad chair can do unbelievable damage.

6. Early tenure and promotion isn’t that important. Evaluators will go out of their way looking for every weakness in a file for early. Most committees for regular tenure and promotion focus on positivity. Early tenure and promotion are not worth the stress.

7. When a colleague tells you another colleague is “concerned” about something you did, they’re ventriloquizing. It’s like when somebody writes into an advice columnist and says, “Dear Abbey, my FRIEND is cheating on her husband.” The author is the “friend.”

8. Don’t bury students in the rigor of your graduate education. Meet them where THEY are. Simplify projects. Take their concerns to heart. Here’s insight it took me years to learn: Whatever grace you show them comes back to you. Cutting students slack really makes YOUR life easier. Give YOURSELF that gift.

9. Listen when a colleague tells you that you’ve hurt their feelings. You’ll likely be spending a bulk of your career together. It takes a lot of guts for somebody to say, “Hey, this hurt, but I care about you and want to work through it.” I’ve had work relationships FLOURISH when people respond with grace and humility. (FTR, I’ve been on both ends of that conversation.) I’ve also had work relationships turn into cold wars because they care more about defending their behavior than your feelings and friendship.

10. Related to the previous point, lean into forgiveness when a colleague cries “mea culpa.” Some of my favorite co-workers are ones with whom I’ve gone “toe to toe.” Focus on what you like about each colleague and bond over THAT stuff. As they say, resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to choke. There’s one important caveat. Sometimes, a co-worker may do something so terrible to you that forgiveness isn’t an option. There’s a difference between a forgivable misstep and something straight-up sinister. Unforgivable stuff is RARE though, so make sure you calibrate your alarm system. In 20 years in my department, I’ve only suffered two truly unforgivable acts. And both incidents were at the hands of two colleagues that have deeply injured several other people in the department.

Bonus: Sometimes, you won’t connect with a colleague. Something about them may rub you the wrong way or vice versa. That’s ok! It’s ok to keep a polite distance. Just don’t make more out of it than you need, too.

mourning

ragan

28 years ago (gulp), my friend Jennifer Yoder made it to AFA finals in Dramatic Interpretation with a moving performance of the one-woman show “Family Secrets.” There’s a moment in her bit where she’s handling her mother’s ashes. Jen’s expression sinks and she says something like, “That’s when it hit me, the grief.” Speech competitions are marathons in rehearsing death. Most of my oral interps dramatized mourning. I’ve come to learn that the anguish that comes when you lose a friend or loved one defies the logic of a 10-minute performance. Grief isn’t something that just, smack, hits you. It’s like a rain storm. Pain may start with a manageable drizzle, then you get pummeled by it. We take out umbrellas and emotionally distance ourselves via work, alcohol, or whatever works at any given moment. We catch your breath and then get walloped again. Pull back and breathe. Then a deluge throws us to the ground. Grief defies any sort of logic we textually impose on it. I can’t explain why the death of somebody on my life’s periphery sometimes knocks me on my ass, or why I sometimes don’t shed a tear when somebody more central in my life passes. All I can do is allow myself to feel what my heart tells me it wants to feel, sans intellectualizing.

Rest in peace, Jim Patterson, one of the nicest guys in West Hollywood.

anxiety and depression

ragan

I’ve battled abnormal anxiety my entire life, although it ramped up when I entered adulthood. Depression was never an issue until a mentor took his own life. His passing made me spiral. I treated his death like a Rorschach, projecting my insecurities and discontent onto him. He must have ended his life because, like me, he was middle-aged, single, and unfulfilled. But this is -my- shit, not his. Since the pandemic and Dan’s passing, depression sometimes consumes me but mostly hides behind a long string of happy days. For me, anxiety and depression are distinct feelings that share a few characteristics. Anxiety feels like you’re leaning back into a chair that’s lost balance. You know that feeling in your stomach when you first realize you -WILL- fall, that split-second you think, “This is going to hurt”? Clinical anxiety takes that fraction of a moment and stretches it out for minutes, days, hours, and even years. 

Clinical depression feels like you’re mourning without anyone dying. There’s no GOOD reason for gloom and sadness to pull you into a monochromatic world but, nonetheless, that’s where you’re trapped. For me, anxiety and depression share a key characteristic. Each bout is triggered by something seemingly benign–something most people would shrug off, something that, on my better days, I would easily get over. These illnesses lurk in the background, ready to sink claws into and feast on some trivial encounter. I suppose there’s power in recognizing the pattern, in seeing rain clouds and saying to myself, “Those will pass.” I’m grateful I no longer water the garden of my worst impulses, no longer self-sabotage and act out. Still, feelings are powerful and often run circles around logic.

RECOGNIZE and REDIRECT

ragan

That’s short for a mindfulness strategy I’ve developed, where I first RECOGNIZE unproductive thoughts and then REDIRECT them to productive activity.

I don’t know if this is OCD-related but I have a history intellectualizing my grievances, which typically includes long monologues rationalizing my upset. I’m basically imposing logic on emotion. We all do this but my OCD can make me spiral. I often fixate on OLD grievances, although fresher ones make me spin more. The good news is that I don’t have (m)any FRESH ones, so anxiety pushes me to old and unsettled injustices.

After years of therapy and mindfulness exercises, I’m so much better at short-circuiting the process by first identifying or recognizing unproductive thought patterns. This enables me to then say, “This isn’t productive. I give myself permission to work on something GENERATIVE.” This system has performed a major intervention in my life and paved the way for me to write more than I’ve ever written.

My Keynote Address at the International Association of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry

ragan

This was, by far, the best experience I’ve had at a conference. I have never sat through a Keynote address, so I was terrified to take on this challenge. I put a lot of joyful work into this speech. I’m honored to have shared this digital space with scholars who laid the foundation for me to do the work that I do. What a gift. I’ll never forget this experience. In this speech, I share 4 gifts of autoethnography given to me by masters of the craft and then explain the unique spin I’ve put on these techniques.

Why I’m Begrudgingly Voting “Yes” on the CSU/CFA Tentative Agreement

ragan

I’ve spent the last week outraged. For the last four days, I planned to vote “no” on the tentative agreement (TA) and then leave the union. Before I rationalize my change of heart, I first want to distinguish between my two primary sources of grief. First, I’m unhappy with the terms of our TA. Second, I’m disgusted with our union’s machinations. I’ll first explain why I think the union shot itself in the foot with its messaging, then make a case for why I’m now leaning toward a “yes” vote, despite the union’s TERRIBLE maneuvering. 

One thing that’s puzzled me this week is why the CFA made a 12% GSI the FOCAL POINT of its messaging. The bargaining team knew that “me too” clauses meant we’d never see more than 5%. So why center 12%? My guess is that they were using 12% as a bargaining chip to secure other goals, like raising the salary floor for lecturers. The strategy is nonsensical to me given the union’s refusal to budge from 12% when the CSU tried multiple times to compromise. You can see CSU’s and CFA’s back and forth here: https://www.cfabargaining.org/proposals Each CSU offer in 2023 was met with, “5 is not 12.” But they always knew anything over 5 would trigger a “me too” for multiple other unions, so why not negotiate on OTHER terms and avert a strike? Rank-and-file members are rightfully pissed because many terms of the TA were included in previous CSU offers (e.g., retroactive pay for ’23-’24, a 2.65% SSI), then taken off the table in CSU’s last “best and final” immediately prior to the strike, only to be brought back in the TA. The bargaining team is now trying to paint these OLD elements of past offers as NEW gains. They’re playing a shell game, which has enraged membership. CFA’s 12% messaging played with the hearts and minds of its membership. Future strike authorizations will be an uphill battle. People will leave and have already left the union. So much of this could have been sidestepped had the CFA 1) tried to compromise with the CSU in earlier rounds of bargaining, 2) been forthright about how anything over 5% would trigger several “me too” clauses that rendered more than 5 impossible, and 3) not treated a full-week strike as a performative instrument, wherein rank-and-file were used as pawns and disrespected. That Monday night email to return to work Tuesday was gross, especially after the CSU tried to get students to rat out striking professors. I’m tempted to vote “no” just to stick it to the CFA and its terrible leadership. 

On the other hand, I don’t want to cut off my nose to spite my face. After ending the strike on day 1, CFA made it virtually impossible for us to get more than we got in the TA. I agree with the resounding sentiment that we likely would have secured more had we been on strike for four days. But I have to deal with the reality the CFA manufactured rather than a world of “What if?” If the TA is voted down and we go back into bargaining, we definitely will not get over 5% due to “me too” clauses, likely won’t get retroactive pay, and might (over may) get the CSU to eventually budge on other issues. Unfortunately, the CFA already squandered its opportunity to effectively bargaining terms for ’23-’24. So why vote “yes” when I was going to vote “no”?

First, CFA sold me on a pipe dream that anything over 5% was attainable. I’m disgusted by their lack of transparency about “me too” clauses. The union’s now pivoting as if “me too” is new information. But that’s always been the reality of our bargaining situation. So the question becomes if I want that 5% to be retroactive? Yes.

Second, I was hung up on July’s contingency because, as an 18-year CSU employee, contingencies have burned me twice: in 2008 and last year. Then I learned that, per Clause 41.3 of the 2022-2024 agreement, the base-funding contingency was ALREADY PRE-BAKED INTO THE CONTRACT. Here’s the clause:

Any term(s) of this Agreement that carries an economic cost shall not be implemented until the amount required therefore is appropriated and made available to the CSU for expenditure for such purposes. The CSU shall make appropriate requests for financing or budgetary funding in amounts sufficient to meet obligations set out in this Agreement. If less than the amount needed to implement this Agreement is appropriated in any given year of this Agreement, and made available to the CSU for expenditure, the term(s) of this Agreement shall automatically be subject to the meet and confer process.

In other words, the TA’s language about ’24-’25 is redundant. The contingency for ’23-’24 isn’t explicit in the TA because the state has ALREADY provided base funding for the academic year. I’m not optimistic that we’ll secure base funds for ’24-’25. People (myself included) have been circulating a fiscal outlook from California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office that predicts underfunding the state’s schools. This document specifically addresses Prop 98, which establishes minimum funding for grade schools and community colleges, not the CSU. Still, the LAO’s fiscal outlook is prophetic and fuels my pessimism regarding what’s to come (or NOT come) in July. Either way you cut it, the CSU will not guarantee a raise that’s not connected to base funding. From what I NOW understand, a base-funding contingency is already baked into our contract and should act as an enthymematic presumption for all raises. 

The thing I hate most about the TA is the non-performative language about mental health counselors. The CSU “agreed to move toward at 1500:1 student-counselor ratio”? How does one measure “move toward”? I fully understand how anyone might vote “no” based entirely on this bullet point. The language is nothing more than a commitment to NOT commit to student mental health in the WAKE OF A PANDEMIC, and it’s appalling. This is a classic non-performative, or speech-act that does NOT describe what it will (or won’t) do. Both the CFA and CSU should be ashamed. 

The most heartbreaking part of this week is how the CFA torpedoed its credibility. I no longer have any faith in our union. My plan is to leave the CFA if we don’t receive an additional 5% in July. I don’t blame anyone who votes “no” on the TA, whether it be for the agreement’s terms or to send a message to our terrible statewide leadership. I also appreciate why some have already left. I’m not persuaded by those who say, “No, stay! You can help change a fundamentally broken system.” My mental health is more important than being a radical agent of change in an organization that manipulates and disrespects its rank-and-file members and lacks this much transparency. I may have had the energy and patience to do so in my 20s and 30s. Closing in on 50, my energy is better spent on projects that bring me joy. 

Why I No Longer Perform (my first performance poem in years)

ragan

“Retired”

I hereby retire from performance:

oral, aural, and otherwise.

Ragan no longer needs theatrics

            to exorcise her demons.

No more split-pea soup spit at sad-eyed priests,

            head-spin, sloughing skin

crucifix fuck screech.

I swear

I have removed my hand

            from the Bible.

Performance appealed to my youthful sensibilities.

My career to nowhere began at Houston’s

            Theatre Under the Stars, aka TUTS,

            a great place for putzes like my dad

            to send late-in-life babies

when they were too busy or lazy to parent.

The TUTS academy taught me “the basics,”

like how to step, ball, change,

and rearrange my face to convey assigned emotions:

HAPPY!

            SAD!

Facial acrobatics served me well

            when boys twice my age used their power

            to compel me,

            much like the power of Christ compels clergymen.

Say it again.

“The power of Christ compels” them.

Bad spirits are patient.

They await opportunities,

And pounce when preoccupied parents

haven’t checked the children.

Demons strike with Ouija boards and bewitching spells.

Churches melt to stages

upon which sexual education takes the form of

“Christ-like” mutual masturbation.

I suffered a similar not-so-original sin at the hands of

            three young men,

their sticky semen dripped down my tiny thighs.

Childhood histrionics led Dad & Joyce to assume

            my disclosure was,

“More lies. Attention-seeking behavior from

            our little actor.”

To Dad & Joyce, I was The Crucible’s Abigail,

transfixed by Tituba,

pointing fingers at false witches.

“What has possessed him to fib?

The problem with Ragan is not her bed;

it’s her brain.”

And so I buried myself neck-deep in drama—

            on and offstage.

Rage, tears, and inappropriately timed public confessions—

            anything to lessen the possession

            of three young men who stole my soul from heaven

            when I was 7,

that tender age when kids still add halves to their earthly rotations.

Come to think of it, maybe I was 7-and-a-half, or 8.

Too late to say now.

When you step foot in an empty space,

you can swap your face with anyone.

Why not exchange pain with Oedipus Rex?

Gouge out eyes and

no longer see

how the power of Christ compels thee.

“What an excellent day for an exorcism.”

I have retired from performance,

because, at 47, I no longer demand attention

to sate the ravenous kid in me,

no longer need to purge sins via Ibsen,

nor laugh past pain through Neil Simon.

I lay down a tragic mask

            that served me well when I was anything but.

The pipe dream that men who have sinned

            against me will confess and apologize—

that fantasy has exited, stage right.

Without classical training, I never learned that one does not

            mention the name of the cursed Scottish play,

lest you pay the price of bad luck and disaster.

I have mastered the art of healing through forgiveness,

which ironically seems so Christian

for “faithless slime” like me.