this field is required » admin & announcements

ta-da!

pamela — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:01:54 +0000

Well, it took me most of the weekend, but I finally have TFIR satisfactorily re-setup using WordPress.org, Laughing Squid hosting, and Soma Design’s lovely theme, The Erudite. Please do let me know if you find something that doesn’t work. Blogging will recommence shortly!

moving on up

pamela — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:36:41 +0000

Hi friends. This weekend, I’ll be attempting a move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org. I may be getting way in over my head, but what’s a summer without some challenging, up-all-night, independent learning opportunities? Presumably, the move will involve some site downtime, and P approaches 1.0 that I will break stuff. I also have no idea if the RSS feed will be in the same place. So please stay tuned on Twitter. Only time will tell whether I will come out on the other side of this successfully, or whether I will go crawling back to WordPress.com with my tail between my legs :-)

changing gears

pamela — Wed, 26 May 2010 19:07:19 +0000

As you might know, I’m beginning a new PhD program this fall. This one is in philosophy and education, instead of just philosophy. I’ve been very interested in education for a few years now, and I know some things about it, but basically just enough to be dangerous and to write a decent admissions application. This summer needs to be a time of transition to my new specialty field.

To that end, I have recently begun reading a LOT more education stuff — probably quadrupled the number of blogs, and I have a number of education-related books on deck. One thing that has become immediately apparent to me is that education, particularly ed policy, is crazy complicated and very highly interdisciplinary. It involves psychology, sociology, history, economics, statistics, etc.

While I’ll be doing a concentration in ed policy, my work will have a more overtly philosophical orientation than other policy people’s. I’m interested in distinctively moral questions surrounding education. Answers to moral questions are informed by empirical information, but not always straightforwardly. As such, and as I’ve written before, I don’t see this move as leaving philosophy at all. It’s just a strategic move that is likely to be more rewarding personally, and possibly professionally.

Even so, I want always to know exactly what’s going on in education today. Most of my colleagues at Teachers College will *not* be philosophers, and most of the professors and guest speakers will be more on-the-ground in education. I can’t demand that they all become interested in philosophy on my terms, but I can try to make myself a very interesting philosopher who speaks to them and their interests. I don’t like the idea of spending a lifetime doing philosophy that no one outside of philosophy really cares about, so achieving this is important to me.

So, you’ll see my Google Reader sharing, tweets, and blogging turn substantially in this direction. Please pass along any education-related items of interest (book recommendations, news articles, etc.) that you think I should know about. I look forward to being that friend of yours who fills the education niche in your life.

interview with an ex-vegan

pamela — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:11:16 +0000

Rhys Southan of the blog Let Them Eat Meat came across my veganism-related posts here on TFIR, and ended up interviewing me for his series of interviews with ex-vegans.

I put quite a bit of effort into the interview and am pleased with how it turned out. You can find it here.

I welcome your comments (make them over there). This whole thing has really been a journey, and I’m not there yet.

And to anyone who finds themselves here from following a link at Let Them Eat Meat — welcome. I am going to be blogging more or less regularly beginning soon and would love to have you join the discussion of miscellaneous things ethical.

and just like that...

pamela — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:30:55 +0000

I unquit blogging.

Reasons:

1. I have started collecting a bunch of articles/posts/etc. that I have stuff to say about, and blogging is the best forum for that.

2. I got accepted to the PhD program of my dreams, and can stop worrying too too much about having my personal info & views floating around online (at least until the job search in 4 or 5 years).

3. Rather than using up my energy for writing, blogging puts me in a writers’ frame of mind, more of the time. The additional practice is beneficial, whether or not any of the actual content has merit.

4. It is cool to have a blog.

QED. I am back.

moratorium

pamela — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:01:48 +0000

I feel obligated to write on this blog, and it constantly hangs over my head, so to speak.

I was thinking of alleviating this uncomfortable state by sprucing up the site & making efforts to attract new readers, in the hopes that I would then be motivated to blog more and have more fun doing it.

However, I decided that it would make more sense just to quit blogging, at least for a while. Writing good term papers, then a dissertation and for academic journals, is about all the writing I can handle.

I had hoped that the blog would be a good way to get comments on things I’m writing or planning to write, but there are two problems with this.

The first problem is that, as an unestablished academic, I really can’t afford to put ideas out where they have even a small chance of being stolen. (Not to say that I have any ideas worth stealing, of course! Just wishful thinking). It would be not only morally wrong but also rather imprudent to take ideas from a big and famous blog; not so much in the case of a smaller one.

More dangerous, though, is the problem of online exposure and getting Googled. I am pretty careful not to identify myself on here, but it is surely possible to figure out who I am just using the internet. The academic job market is SO INCREDIBLY COMPETITIVE, so I want to exercise caution with my online presence. I must avoid giving potential employers any reason to weed me out of a pool of applicants; a blog with unusual views could easily provide such a reason.

As a result of the these two problems, I tend to blog about topics: 1)upon which I have nothing novel to say, and 2)that are uncontroversial. This is a recipe for blog disaster! No wonder I am so bored with it. But, since I believe the problems I discussed to be genuine, my blog is destined to remain boring until something about my cirumstances changes (such as, graduating and getting a professorship).

So, ciao for now! Thanks for playing. Don’t worry, I have no plans to quit reading blogs, so I’ll “see” most of you around. I’d be surpised if I never blogged ever again, because I really love the idea of it, but now is not the time.

grad school ch-ch-changes

pamela — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:36:02 +0000

You, as my friend and/or reader, may have seen me post stuff on Twitter and Facebook suggesting that I am currently applying to graduate schools. Indeed, I am. I figured I’d explain the situation here, once and for all.

Very shortly after I began a PhD program in philosophy in the fall of 2007, my research interests rapidly started shifting towards topics in education. First I got interested in moral character and moral education, then arguments for and against school choice, then the relationship between feminism and education, and most recently, I’ve started studying alternative forms of education such as unschooling.

Because not many people in departments of philosophy focus on education, and because the job market for professors of education seems rather better than that for philosophers, I have decided to move to a school of education to complete my graduate studies. I have ten applications under consideration in US News & World Reports top 25 schools of education, all of which have programs in the philosophy of education or something similar (most PhD, one EdD). With any luck, I will be accepted to one or more of them with funding, and will be making the move for the fall of 2010.

Some philosophers with whom I have discussed this have expressed their regret that I am leaving philosophy. However, I don’t see myself as leaving the field at all. In fact, I will be pursuing exactly the same research projects as I would have pursued had I stayed in philosophy, only with the more useful guidance of experts in education. So, it is more of a strategic move than anything else, and will likely benefit me career-wise in the long run.

So keep your fingers crossed for me, and look for updates on this over the next few months :-)

’tis the season

pamela — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:00:25 +0000

Just wanted to check in and say that, no, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth and, no, I’m not quitting blogging again.

Rather, it’s just that the annual winter end-of-semester meltdown is upon me, and this is perhaps the worst one ever. So, posting will be light for the next six weeks or so.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to say hang in there and keep up the good work to my fellow grad students who are busy burning the midnight oil and turning coffee into original thoughts. Yes, we might be underpaid, underappreciated, and lacking in job prospects, but I sure am thankful that it is possible for us to be doing our thing.

Fa la la la la, la la la la :-)

please update your readers and leave a comment for crying out loud!

pamela — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:24:54 +0000

Dear Readers,

I have switched away from FeedBurner basically because I can’t be bothered to log into two different places to check on my blog. So, if you were using that feed, please update your RSS reader using the feed URL: http://thisfieldisrequired.com/feed/ And for comments: http://thisfieldisrequired.com/comments/feed/

In the time you would have taken to read this had it been a regular post, why not leave a comment on one of my other posts? I know that people are reading them, but somehow I’ve managed to attract only the silent types. Anonymous comments are welcome, if your shyness is inhibiting you from telling me how wrong I am.

Editing to add: I just noticed a “ratings” feature and turned it on. You can now rate posts and comments using those little stars at the bottom. (Apparently, you have to click on the title of the post to use this feature, the stars don’t appear on the front page of the blog). If you people are too hard on me, or give me terrible ratings with no feedback, I’m turning it off :-)

Be back later this week with something substantive!

links & a milestone

pamela — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:36:46 +0000

I have a bunch of tests to grade today, so unfortunately I can’t spend too much energy on blogging. Just wanted to pop in to say that:

1. I have added links to some of my favorite stuff at the bottom of the column on the right. Of course, I don’t agree with all of these sources all of the time, but they’re worth checking out if you’re bored. I’ll keep adding more links as I think of them.

2. TFIR recently received its first amusing search terms! Drumroll please…

“why I am like Kant”

Wow, I really want to know what kind of person was out there Googling that. I really hope that it wasn’t someone who is actually delusional. In any case, they were probably disappointed to find that I have not posted anything that would assist in determining one’s likeness with Kant.

Have a great weekend!