A number of us are concerned about the ongoing implosion of the world economy. Before we all panic, however, let’s try to remember where everything is in the grand scheme of things:
But the apocalypse is here. I am arranging to receive my next paycheck from Northwestern in gold. I am going to teach my class tomorrow, and then come back to my apartment and start building a fort.
I’ve received a bunch of questions on writing letters of recommendation for students. I think the answers will be helpful both for students and for faculty. And I hope both will weigh in, as these are questions about both how faculty should handle letters and what students can expect from faculty. There are a lot of questions here, but I think they’re best addressed in one big post. The issue basically boils down to: how do you write letters for students who are on the job market together and who are applying for the same jobs in roughly the same area? Continue reading “ask a scatterbrain: letters”
In a comment on the job talk thread, I confessed that I struggle to communicate with students what exactly I am looking for when I want them to make explicit their theoretical contribution. My struggle usually comes when students have an interesting case that they want to study and perhaps a field site tied to that. They get tied up in the case itself, rather than using that case to answer larger questions that might contribute something to some subfield of sociology. Continue reading “ask a scatterbrain (jr. faculty edition): talking theory”
The power of email. It brings me wonders like these deep thoughts. Continue reading “so profound”