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    Zaretsky’s list of things academics should never do (hat-tip Rod Dreher)

    At the CHE, with discussion, here:

    1. Never give copies of your books to friends and family.
    2. Never call students by their first names.
    3. Never try to be cool.
    4. Never lament the building of new football stadiums rather than new library wings.
    5. Never become an administrator.
    6. Never allow the Internet in the classroom.
    7. Never teach a class outdoors.
    8. Never refer to yourself by the title "Dr."—unless you are a real doctor.
    9. Never confuse a syllabus with reality.
    10. Never turn down a plum administrative position.

    Rod Dreher is soliciting additions to the list. I would add: (11) Never become visibly angry in the classroom, and (12) Never try to influence your students' political beliefs.

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    16 responses to “Zaretsky’s list of things academics should never do (hat-tip Rod Dreher)”

    1. PA Avatar
      PA

      Man, I must be a terrible academic.

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    2. Kate Norlock Avatar
      Kate Norlock

      I tried to do both #5 and #10 and live the contradiction!

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    3. R Avatar
      R

      “Never do anything that could potentially raise your evaluations, regardless of whether it has an effect on students’ learning.”

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    4. Sara L. Uckelman Avatar
      Sara L. Uckelman

      Wow. This is a bizarre list. My friends and family asked for copies of my dissertation — does that make it OK that I gave them copies? (Or is the implication that we’re supposed to sell them to our friends/family instead of giving them to them?) My students all call me “Sara” — how strange would it be if I then referred to them as Mr. X and Ms. (blech) X? I suppose it’s all right to be cool if you can do it without trying?

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    5. Michel X. Avatar
      Michel X.

      (5), (10) ⊥
      :: Explosion.

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    6. anon grad Avatar
      anon grad

      Never give anything even resembling a formula for an A.

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    7. Eric Winsberg Avatar
      Eric Winsberg

      technically, 5 and 10 are not contradictory. they simply imply that one should make sure to never be offered a plum administrative position.
      this seems like a good norm to follow.

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    8. Michel X. Avatar
      Michel X.

      Touché.

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    9. Matt Avatar
      Matt

      My friends and family asked for copies of my dissertation — does that make it OK that I gave them copies?
      So long as you realize that they don’t really want it, and were asking only to be nice, and you were only giving it to them because they asked, and you had to play along, and didn’t really think they wanted it for its own sake, everything is fine.

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    10. Charles R Avatar
      Charles R

      Or, accept the plum position but fail to administer in it.
      This, of course, is what we can say is how the latest business models of the highly paid CEO administrators of failed firms have been succeeding by most reliable witnesses, and aren’t we supposed to want higher education to be more modeled on the firm? “We were just following the example when we took the money.”

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    11. Tim Avatar
      Tim

      re: 2. It would be very unusual in the UK to refer to students using anything other than their first names (and equally unusual for them to refer to a tutor/lecturer/professor using anything other than their first name). I would think this would create an needlessly formal, even stilted, atmosphere. No?

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    12. Neil Avatar
      Neil

      Never expect to find wisdom in lists.

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    13. PA Avatar
      PA

      Re. 3: is it okay to be cool without trying?

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    14. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      OK, I’m failing 1, 2, 3, 7, 8 and (depending on definitions) 5. Time to slink away…

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    15. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      OK, returning having read the CHE document, a more serious point: Zaretsky’s discussion of why you shouldn’t be on first-name terms with your students is indirectly a very powerful case for anonymous grading. I’m on first-name terms with all of mine, and unapologetically work to try to get them to do as well as possible in the exam – but the marking is double-blind, and even if it so happens that I’m marking some of their work they normally won’t know it and I normally won’t recognise them.

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    16. cameron Avatar
      cameron

      “Or, accept the plum position but fail to administer in it.”
      Isn’t that the definition of “plum” in this context?

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