LY #113 Conventional Behavior: Old Friends

I was looking over the history of the convention at the WSCA website to try and figure out how many I've attended.  The first thing I noticed is that my memory of going to a snowy Denver WSCA was incorrect -- it was a snowy SCA (Speech Communication Association convention) in Denver in fall of 1985.  Then I figured out that I've been to over 16 WSCA conventions.  Why do I go?  Well, a convention paper looks good on one's vita.  Hearing about new developments in teaching or hearing interesting research in one's field can regenerate interest in subjects grow stale.  And then there are the people.

One of the great pleasures of attending the Western States Communication Association conventions over the past 29 years has been catching up with old professors and the folks with whom I attended the graduate program at the University of Utah.   But time and fortune happeneth to them all.  This year I saw very few.  My profs are mostly retired, too old to travel, or deceased.  Many of the Utah folks with whom I went to school are now scattered around the country and not settled in the West.  But I did have brief interactions with a few old faces.

Of my old profs, I saw only Dr. Robert Avery, phasing toward retirement at age 72.  Bob is still tall, slender, handsome, and given to obsessive boosterism.  He met folks at the door of last night's Utah reception, wearing the customary bright red Ute sweater and handing out the bright red on white U badge stickers.  I chatted with Bob a bit, finding him still cheery.  As long as I can remember Bob's been the man in charge of the party.  Back in the day, he would sneak booze or champagne into whatever hotel was hosting the conference for the Utah party.  But now, perhaps having been caught once too often (or perhaps because the University coughed up some funds) there's now a no-host bar (though Utah Alumni get tickets with their invitations).


Way back in MY day, graduate students who attended the convention were rounded up to act as servers at the party and actually poured champagne for everyone in attendance.  I enjoyed this activity.  First, because it made for a nice change from listening to panel presentations and doing coursework.  Second, because it underlined our role as servants to the department.  We were the ones who did the scutwork for major professors and who taught the "weed" classes.  We were the cheap labor who taught the highly popular basic courses that supported the graduate school.  Acting as a servant, towel over my arm, enacted the "truth" of our relationship to the department in ways that turning in papers never could.

I spoke VERY briefly (2 minutes) to Dr. Jeanine Congalton, of Cal State Fullerton.  Jeanine was at Utah when I arrived and was one of those deeply dedicated forensic types, focused on speech and debate.  I also spoke with Dr. Michael Salvador of Cal State San Bernardino.  I knew almost from the first year we were at Utah that Mike would become a department chair.  He had the proper mix of force and subservience that makes for a good faculstrator.  Mike was a department chair at Washington State University for many years and has recently been hired in as a chair further south in the land of his youth.

My only vital link to my graduate student days is Dr. Professor Alexis Olds of the University of La Verne and Cuesta College.  In the mid 90s Alexis encouraged me to be active in the Media Studies division of WSCA and convinced me that I wanted to be Vice-Chair and program planner one year, an experience that taught me a lot about organizational structures and event planning.  (Mostly what it taught me about event planning is that I hate event planning.)

A story that Alexis told me that she has told her children about me is about the night that she drove me home from a giant celebratory party and I was so drunk I upchucked on the outside of the car.  She claims now that it froze on the outside of her car and that it was horrible all winter.  The last time I heard the story she told me my cathartic upheaval was so corrosive it took the paint off her car.  I remember the upheaval but I never actually got word from her about any damage at a time when I could have done something about it.  I don't remember the actual celebratory purpose of this party.  I do remember that I got sick from drinking ouzo straight out of the bottle.

A person I was worried about seeing, of course, was Professor Fox.  I'd actually done some work with my therapist around the possibility of such an event.  But he was absent and so that problem didn't need to be managed.

Tomorrow night I'll offer a few notes about my favorites among this year's presentations.

LY #91 The Semiotic Rabbit

I had fun jumping back into semiotics today, although I'm not sure my students would say the same.  We'll see how things go when we dig into Understanding Comics next week and start stirring together rhetoric, semiotics and comics.

I've been remembering a Utah semiotics class taught by Professor R. Fox.*  For several weeks Dr. Fox came to class carrying an empty box.  I don't remember now if anyone took the bait and asked what it was.  Eventually he asked us (perhaps in frustration) if anyone was curious about it.  I think that the box represented the "empty signifier."  According to Wikipedia (ah, a lovely tertiary source), an empty or "floating" signifier is one without a clear referent -- one without an agreed-upon meaning or one with so many meanings that it is highly ambiguous.  I didn't talk about empty signifiers today, though.

 Steiff bunny puppet (Nedley)

My favorite moment with Dr. Fox, however, was the night of the semiotic rabbit.  Now, don't try to Google this term.  I did this afternoon and found a very thoughtful Prezi by jojo damonkey (yes, you read that right) about Toril Moi's critique of Judith Butler's semiotic rabbit holes.  But no semiotic rabbits!

Well, one night Dr. Fox came to class wearing a classic Steiff bunny hand puppet.  He told us that all questions that night should be addressed to the "Semiotic Rabbit."  There was some hilarity and disbelief about this demand but we all then began talking about our readings with the puppet on his hand.  After awhile two other students and myself got into a rather fierce confrontation with our pointy eared instructor.  (What was the argument about?  Heck, it was 27 years ago!  Maybe someday I'll pull my journals up from the storage area.)

What I do remember are the last words of the argument.  The "discussion" had grown louder and louder and I finally said something that undercut and challenged his authority more that usual.  His face flushed.  "Fuck you!" he barked at me, paused, took a breath, smiled, and added,  "Says the Semiotic Rabbit."



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*This is a pseudonym for the character I've previously called Zephod Beeblebrox.  I've decided that, rather than violate copyright, I should instead give him the name of a trickster -- the Fox.  I would have called him Professor Coyote but a European trickster seemed more apropos.

LY #76 1988 Continued: The PhD Issue

Tonight's post continues with the happenings on October 6, 1988, as recorded in my Bendnotes 3.   Last night's post was my 1988 report on a Faculty Forum meeting.  Tonight I'm typing up a couple of discussions that occurred after the meeting.

_______________

"C. and I talked with Don after the meeting.  He gave us the story of Fred's decision to turn the school toward the PhD.   He also told us that "while I respect Ward a lot" that they don't see eye to eye -- Ward is perceived as being very close to the administration.  As we walked back to the office, C. and I shared with each other our concern about being the bad guys, the professional guns brought in to take the place of those who were good teachers but who didn't have the magic letters after their names, or who weren't committed to the PhD myth.  Although she is a Dr., she and I agree that a belief that the PhD means something about an individual's ability to teach is a belief in magic.

{By the way.  I figured out this week that little of what I learned about teaching at the U of U is useful for this job here.  The major job of a teacher here, still, is to try and teach, not to sort out the wheat from the chaff for the replication of an archaic and oppressive disciplinary society.}*

When we got back to Deschutes, we ran into Mary Monaghan, and she eased our minds by telling us that we wouldn't have been chosen if we had not been seen as potentially excellent teachers as well.  She was especially nice about me, remind me that she had supported and fought for me strongly.**

. . . So.  That's an overview of part of the political situation here.  Sometimes it's real interesting to me.  Since my depression sat in, it's mostly been really dreadful.

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*  To understand this comment, you need to know that at the University of Utah graduate students often taught one of the three "weed" courses.  A weed course is not one in which students smoke weed.  (Yeah, I know what you were  thinking.)  It was a course in which the teacher, usually a graduate student at the U Comm dept, was required to bring in a classwide GPA of no higher than 2.4 because these courses were designed to "weed out" those students who supposedly didn't have the smarts to do great work in the communication program.  Weeding was necessary because communication was one of the most popular humanities programs so their needed to be a gateway to entering.

The required C+ class GPA meant that almost every high grade (B and up) needed to be balanced with a lower grade.  If a graduate student like myself allowed a class average to slip upward toward 2.8 or, heaven forfend, a Stanford-like 3.3, then we would have been "spoken to" and threatened with the loss of the teaching assistantship.  Because I was at the U. only because I had the assistantship (which covered my tuition AND gave me enough to pay for rent and food as well) I did my job as required.  Of course, being who I am, I often told the students about the weeding I was required to do.  When one of the major departmental faculty heard about my honesty, she was very upset and told me that, "It's not a good idea to be too truthful with them."  And yes, she was someone who touted a left-wing, post-Marxist ideology.

One interesting aspect of this kind of grading requirement is that a student who might get an A in one class because they outshone the other folks, might have pulled a B or lower in another class where there were more high performers.  An undergraduate's grade in these classes had as much to do with the other students in the class as with his or her own abilities.  Thank all the powers that bee that I haven't been required to grade like this since I left the U.  Nowadays, I have a set criteria for an A which I really believe almost every student in my classes can reach if they do the work.

** Reading once again about Mary's comment about fighting for me leads me again to think that I was the second choice of the COCC hiring committee.  I wonder how I could find out for sure?

LY #42 The Utah Party

Today I received my annual invitation to the Utah party at the National Communication Association convention.  I used to love these parties at both the national convention and the Western States Communication Association convention.  There was almost always good food at the Utah parties and plenty of alcohol.  (I think that the department was often trying to override people's opinions about a largely "dry" state.)

When I was a graduate student, the tradition at one of the Utah parties was to have us grads pouring "champagne" for those attending.  Cheap "champagne" (but not Utah champagne, if there is such a thing.)   The lead party-maker in the department, who we'll call Dr. A., used to sneak champagne and then hard alcohol into the hotel for student minions to pour for party attendees.  My spouse has fond memories of running into Dr. A. on the streets of some city (New Orleans, I think, or perhaps Seattle) with a box of liquor in his arms.

"Shhhh," he said, and laughed.

 I noticed that the practice of sidestepping certain rules ended some years ago and now those with invitations get a ticket for one free drink at hotel-catered parties.

But back in the day what I enjoyed about pouring champagne for my betters was the feeling of being one of a crew, like a theatrical company.  It felt like I was truly being made to serve the department when I did an activity so not-part-of-the-job-description.  It was part of the hazing ritual that is graduate school.

This year the convention is in Washington, D. C.  in late November.  I'll not be attending this one, or any in the future.  I do, however, plan to attend the next WSCA in Anaheim and go to one last Utah party before I retire.   Utah is a large presence at the regional conventions which are usually held in February.  I remember one party with snow blowing outside onto the party room's balcony.  I got into my goofball state of mind and decided that what some of the younger stuffed shirts then serving the department needed was snow on their necks.

Yeah...I know.  Uncool, man, uncool.    But not as uncool as the time I showed up at the Utah breakfast, a recruitment tool to bring in new graduate students.  I showed up a year or two after getting my PhD, sat down with a young professor who had been hired at the school after I'd left the program, and asked him about what Utah had to offer.  He took several minutes to give me the spiel, all while a senior faculty member was as amused as I was over my jest.  Once the younger prof caught on that I didn't need to hear the sales pitch, he was very annoyed and for years after would bring up my "cruel" joke whenever  we met at conventions.

I guess there's just something in me that doesn't take academia all that seriously, even though I'm part of it.

LY #39 Time Passages

Right now, as I write, a person I first met as a young graduate student at the University of Utah is giving the B. Aubrey Fisher 27th Annual Memorial Lecture.

The blurb from the University of Utah Communication Department says,

• "War Scholar to Discuss Communication's Role in National Security

  Professor Bryan Taylor, a renowned communication scholar with a specialty in studying the nuclear and (post-) Cold War rhetoric and culture, will present the Department of Communication's 27th annual B. Aubrey Fisher Memorial Lecture, titled War Voice: Exploring Communication's Intrinsic Resources for the Study of Security on Thursday, October 24th at 7:30 p.m."
  
  I first met Brian back in 1984.  I fear that when I was introduced to him my goofiness erupted and I jumped up a couple of times and commented on his tallness.  This was very poor impression management.  But that side of me seems to come out in the workplace, that goofiness.  I think I get it from my mom and her love of vaudeville.
  
  

  

  From the proceedings of the NCA Ethnography Pre-Conference

  I worked along-side young Bryan as we taught breakout sections of a large class called "Introduction to Human Communication."  The class was divided into large lecture classes and smaller, graduate-student-led discussion sections.  We taught in the mornings and took our graduate classes in the afternoon.  It was my second quarter teaching, the first being at Idaho State.  I was also living on my own for the first time in my life.  It was a scary time.  But Bryan didn't treat me like an idiot. 
  
  
  
  I have a vague memory of Bryan using his height one day in one of our graduate student bullpen.   When an extremely irate male student came to my office and started to raise a hand above his head and talk to me in a very loud voice.  I felt some fear and also some embarrassment that I'd let a student appointment get so heated.  I don't remember whether I asked the student to leave...probably not.  I do remember Bryan standing up from his desk (his back had been to us the whole time) and making his physical presence known.  It could be that he also said something to the student.  It could be that the student just walked out.  I just know Bryan had the guts to just be present and
  
    Bryan was a very nice, extremely smart young man and I'm not at all surprised that he has become "Distinguished Lecturer Bryan Taylor, Professor of Communication at the University of Colorado." 
  
  
  I, of course, am not a "scholar" but rather an evoker of understanding.  I haven't had an academic article published since 1993.  I've had papers at conventions, of course, but never did the hard, time consuming work of submitting any new original research to the tender mercies of the editor of a communication journal.  Frankly, once was enough.   I just didn't have the energy and personal fortitude to continue as a researcher. 
  
  I've been fortunate to be a teacher, to have my work-life judged not by the collection and submission of "new knowledge" but by teaching and service.  And I think it may be easier to be a goofball when one is a teacher than when one is a researcher.