In which Piers wonders about work

Over the past few years, especially during and since the Year I Almost Died, I have been able to count on work--teaching, research, service--to offer a fairly meaningful experience, and I have
believed in what I am doing. If you have read this forum over the past year, you have probably noticed that such confidence is no longer apparent in my thinking. 

I have continued to work at the elements that make up the three-legged stool of an academic career, but with increasing doubt that my efforts will make much difference in the long run. I am planning to submit an application to this wonderful NEH/Folger seminar this summer, but even the necessary step of asking for recommendation letters from colleagues proved daunting: I feel so incredibly small-time, and frankly am not the type to self-promote in the way that institutional climbers usually do. The Imp of the Perverse whispers, "just teach your classes, take care of the family, and hunker down." But I have enough ambition in me to want just a little more...and I think I could actually make a meaningful contribution. If I could find the time and gumption to do it. Long shot.

Meanwhile, with the upcoming SACS accreditation visit, my entire institution is in a tizzy--a full running-in-circles, hands-waving, wide-eyed tizzy. A significant part of this SACS business is the mandated QEP (Quality Enhancement Program -- if this sounds like a thirty-year-old business-speak concept filtering into education circles, then you may be hearing right) on Information Literacy.  The entire SACS visit and our response to it shows how the entire concept is smoke and mirrors. SACS commissars--accountable to no one--create all kinds of work for the campus to do in preparation. The campus creates an office responsible for making these preparations, thereby creating another perpetual administrative office to staff (there's no way the office will not continue to operate after the nominal SACS visit and results are submitted . . . the QEP is meant to last for years, and someone will have to make sure results are found, recorded, tabulated, interpreted, spreadsheeted, powerpointed, etc).

Most distressing moment of the meeting yesterday in which the details of the QEP program were described to our department:  the use of "external assessments" to evaluate the effectiveness of the programs.  Given the way things are going with higher ed, and our abject failure to provide a compelling alternative, I expect more "external assessments" to drive more and more of our curriculum and instruction.  A colleague of mine muttered, "we can teach to the test!" . . . I laughed sourly.

Morale:  pretty dang low.