To pick up where I left off, something else has also changed about students. Okay, maybe it hasn\u2019t changed, and it\u2019s only me, and my experience, but as this is also my essay, it\u2019s only fair that I get to say that. You can write your own essays and disagree accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, having taught on all levels, involving all (st)ages, covering the basic, the intermediate and the advanced level courses, I have a feeling that students aren\u2019t as willing to put in the hours anymore, to grind, even though, I\u2019d say, there\u2019s no other way to get better at something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be clear, this is not to say that students are somehow worse these days. No. I\u2019d say it\u2019s about the same, give or take. Overall, they might even be better these days. That said, that\u2019s not the same as willing to put in the hours, to work hard to achieve something. So, I\u2019d rather say that it\u2019s a mixed bag. Some things have changed for the better, whereas other things have changed for the worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, before I expand on this topic, why working hard is what\u2019s often missing these days, I do want to add that this does not mean that all university students are like that, nor that they are simply lazy. I\u2019ve witnessed students put way, way more effort into something than what was expected of them. It might be unnecessary and, in some cases, working smarter is better than simply working harder, but, anyway, my point is that this does not apply to all students. Plus, I\u2019d say that this also applies to a lot of people who aren\u2019t students or are no longer students, so this is not just about students, even though I\u2019m focusing on students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s not only just me who\u2019s noticing this. Ian Buchanan also mentioned this in a fairly recent interview with David Nicholls. He noted the same thing. In his view, his generation did more and was expected to do more. To be more specific, he isn\u2019t fond of how students these days respond to challenging texts by complaining about the difficulty, like how it\u2019s unnecessarily difficult, without considering that they might need to put in more effort to come to terms with the text. I agree. I\u2019ve noticed this as well, where it\u2019s like, well, this isn\u2019t written in a clear and concise way, so could we have something else please. To be fair, at times they have this feeling or sensation that there might actually be something to that difficult text. It\u2019s like if only they persisted, they might get something great out of the text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m at a loss when I encounter this kind behavior, because it\u2019s like saying why can\u2019t something hard simply be easy. I\u2019ve run into this type of people a number of times, not only among students, where it\u2019s still sort of understandable, but also among experienced academics who look at you all puzzled: like why all this theory, like why do insist on complicating things, why not just get to the point instead?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ah, but that\u2019s presupposing that language works like that, that words refer to things and just select the right words and that\u2019s it. That\u2019s why it\u2019s bizarre how someone like John Searle, known for speech act theory<\/em> that heavily emphasizes that, as J. L. Austin would put it, we do<\/em> things with words, went on to say something as silly as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhere questions of style and exposition are concerned[,] I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can\u2019t say it clearly[,] you don\u2019t understand it yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Note how I was bit of an a-hole there, fixing his terrible style and exposition, just to make a point. Anyway, while he (x) is, at times, cited as having expressed that in introduction to one of his books, \u2018Intentionality: An essay in the philosophy of mind\u2019, that\u2019s not the only thing he (x) had to say in that context:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut anyone who attempts to write clearly runs the risk of being \u2018understood\u2019 too quickly, and the quickest form of such understanding is to pigeonhole the author with a whole of other authors that the reader is familiar with.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So, while he is in favor of clarity, very clearly so, to the point that he gets ridiculed for it, he has also always been aware of how that\u2019s not as clear cut as many people would like it to be. In other words, okay, there\u2019s something to it, that you try your best to make people understand you, but, at the same time, if you simplify things too much, if you dumb it down, that can also lead to people missing your point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is exactly the case with landscape<\/em>. If you say or write landscape, this and\/or that, blah, blah, blah, all casually, it is indeed exactly in that way that Searle (x) points out that it gets understood. It seems so self-evident to people what a landscape is<\/em> that doing the exact opposite, explaining the concept, in great detail, seems like you don\u2019t know what you are talking about, even though you do, and they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s, of course, the same with other \u2018big concepts\u2019, like nature<\/em>, culture<\/em>, ideology<\/em>, economy<\/em>, structure<\/em>, and the like, as I\u2019ve pointed out at least a couple of times in the past. If you don\u2019t explain them, you indeed risk doing what Searle (x) warns us not to do. We could say the same of language<\/em> and discourse<\/em>, so that we account for both landscape<\/em> and discourse, the name of this blog. That\u2019s also particularly apt in connection to Searle, considering that while he, perhaps, isn\u2019t considered the most radical of philosophers, he, much like Austin, weren\u2019t just going to be content with how language is understood. No. They totally went against the grain. He was like no, I\u2019m going to write about this and not like a short essay and that\u2019s it, but like entire books. While perhaps clear in style and exposition, at least in comparison to others who do the same, or something similar, I wouldn\u2019t call his works casual, easy to grasp, like light bedtime reading. Oh, no, no, no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think this is, perhaps, easier to grasp in terms used by H. P. Grice, as he also explains how people come understand one another in terms of maxims<\/em>. So, as he (45-46) explains this in \u2018Logic and Conversation\u2019, we have four maxims or, to be more precise, categories<\/em>: quantity<\/em>, quality<\/em>, relevance<\/em>, and manner<\/em>. To summarize all of them, because I don\u2019t want to get tangled up on that again, as I\u2019ve written about all that in the past, at least a couple of times, the point is that to help others make sense<\/em> of what we say, we must say enough, not too much, not too little. We must also say only what we believe to be true and we must have evidence to support that. We must also avoid being all over the place in the way we say something, as well as stay on the topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we apply Grice’s criteria to a lot of texts, including my texts, my \u2018proper\u2019 articles and my \u2018improper\u2019 essays both included, I\u2019m far from being clear and concise, happily flailing all over the place, albeit sometimes more, sometimes less. Ah, but even Grice would recognize that we routinely avoid fulfilling his set of criteria. Why? Well, because we make<\/em> meaning as we speak, or as we write, or, to be as inclusive as possible, as we express something. That\u2019s what he (43-45) calls the implicature<\/em>, which is a fancy pants way of saying that we imply<\/em> something when we say something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It would be tempting to think that we may mean what we say and, in some cases, imply something else than what we say, but that\u2019s an untenable division. It\u2019s rather that we often assume that something is the case, based on what we know, like saying this, or that, typically means something, whatever it is, while being aware that it might not be the case and that there might be a good reason for that not to be the case. Humor is the textbook example of this. It\u2019s silly, hyperbolic, ironic, sarcastic, happily all over the place, but what matters is that it works<\/em>. It has that function<\/em> and that\u2019s to amuse you. If you take it literally, you miss the fun of it. So, in short, you don\u2019t find or uncover a meaning, as it if was hiding or concealed. Instead, you make<\/em> sense as you express something, so that you produce<\/em> meaning, not alone, but in connection to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, hey, aren\u2019t academic texts supposed to be serious? Well, yes, if you say so. If you insist on that, but, again, that\u2019s you insisting on it. But there isn\u2019t anything inherently wrong about amusing your readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, no matter what, Grice was smart enough to leave it up to you to decide whether someone meets the criteria or not, without giving you any clear-cut criteria that you could rely on to judge whether the meaning is conveyed clearly to you, or to some other reader of the same text. As you\u2019ll notice, it depends, and we cannot universalize that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, what is enough? What is too little? What is too much? What counts as evidence and how much of it does one have to have to not get called out for lying or claiming to be sure when you aren\u2019t sure? What is relevant? What is obscure anyway? What do we mean by orderly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n My answer is that it all depends on the context. It\u2019s all circumstantial, which means that no matter what you do, you cannot universalize it. That\u2019s what I mean when I insist that meaning<\/em> or sense<\/em> is not something pre-existing, but something that is made<\/em> or produced<\/em>, there and then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To expand on that, for one person, it\u2019s enough to just utter a couple of words and they get the point, whereas someone else may need a longer explanation. One person is less adamant about the extent of the evidence, knowing that certain kinds of evidence are convincing, whereas someone else isn\u2019t at all convinced and demands more evidence. What is obscure to one person, like technical manuals, is crystal clear to another person, because they are an expert on that and know all the relevant jargon. What might also come across as irrelevant to one person, might be highly relevant to another person, because, again, they are, perhaps, more familiar with the matter and are therefore better at assessing that, there and then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, see, see, you can\u2019t universalize that. No matter how hard you try, there\u2019s gonna be someone who\u2019ll object to it and claim that the person they are dealing with is being uncooperative. Okay, maybe I\u2019m too sure of that, so let\u2019s say that, instead, there\u2019s always that possibility that someone is unconvinced by it, now or some time later on, because what might be clear right now might be obscure in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want a concrete example, think of your relationship with this essay. Is this text easy to understand? Or is it difficult to understand? Either way, ask yourself why that\u2019s the case. It might be that you know all or most of this already and that\u2019s why it\u2019s easy. You might also have stumbled upon it, thinking, what in the world is this fellow on about, like he doesn\u2019t make any sense. Or it could be the way of writing that makes it difficult or easy to you. Maybe I\u2019m too all over the place and that makes it difficult for you. Alternatively, that\u2019s how you prefer it, all over the place, so it\u2019s easy for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You might also return to this essay in the future. Maybe you didn\u2019t get it the first time. Maybe it even angered you. Ah, but lo and behold, now it makes sense to you. Now you get it. Again, ask yourself why that\u2019s the case. The short answer to that is that the circumstances have changed. Oh, and you are, of course, part of those circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It might also work the other way around. You might get this, right now, and be like yes, yes, and yes, hallelujah, amen brother, and what not, probably because you are as hippy dippy as I am (or was, at the time I was writing this, there and then), only to think of this as embarrassing drivel in the future. That can happen and you just got to accept it. It is what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But how does that work? Like how does that vary like that? Doesn\u2019t the text<\/em>, the essay, stay the same? Well, yes, the text, the essay, stays the same, inasmuch it isn\u2019t subsequently edited (which can also happen as I do edit these at times, fixing typos, marking concepts in italics etc.). That said, assuming the text isn\u2019t altered or isn\u2019t altered in any substantial way, the context<\/em> does change. I change. You change. We all change. Everything changes, even the language. Oh, and sometimes the language changes to the extent that something that\u2019s considered obvious is just odd or perplexing in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To swing back to speech act theory<\/em>, what matters in language is not what an utterance is<\/em>, what it means<\/em>, as if it were fixed, like it means this, whatever that is (see how I\u2019m struggling with that, going in circles, unable to fix it), but what it does<\/em>, what it makes happen. So, a text<\/em> may then well be difficult or expressed in a, at least supposedly difficult manner, perhaps defying the expectations, not because the author seeks to hide something and\/or the author is poor at expressing it, albeit that\u2019s certainly possible, but because it has a different function<\/em> altogether. Instead of giving you some, supposedly, correct answers to what it is that you are interested in, the author might, in fact, be pushing you to think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s my take then? Well, I don\u2019t think I can solve that for you, nor for anyone. That\u2019s pragmatics<\/em> for you. There\u2019s no right or wrong, as such, when it comes to expressing something. Do what works<\/em> for you and if that bothers others, too bad. Of course, if you seek to publish in someone else\u2019s publication, it might be that you need to adjust your style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s also how I think it works with understanding the expressions of others. It\u2019s all there, as a text<\/em>, in a certain a context<\/em>. You can\u2019t change the text, but you can change the context. So, if a text, let\u2019s say an article, a book chapter or a book, isn\u2019t working for you, it\u2019s often not the case that it\u2019s poorly written. While that can be the case, fair enough, it\u2019s most likely that you just don\u2019t get it and, on top of that, you aren\u2019t willing to put in the hours to get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s definitely something I\u2019ve noticed recently. Students aren\u2019t any worse than they used to be, or that\u2019s my view of it anyway. It\u2019s rather that they aren\u2019t willing to put in the hours. But why aren\u2019t they willing to put in the hours? Well, like I pointed out in the previous essay, if you work at the same time, there just isn\u2019t as much time you can spend on your studies. Plus, if you want to have, erm, some sort of life in addition to your studies and work, there\u2019s even less time for you to spend on your studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be fair to the students, I think it\u2019s also worth pointing out how I\u2019m critical of just about everybody, not just them. I\u2019d say that this is even more applicable to people who have fancy degrees. I don\u2019t like the attitude where you just adhere to the past masters in your field. That\u2019s lazy and parochial. I\u2019ve given such people plenty of flak over the years. If you\u2019ve read my essays, I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve noticed. That said, I must acknowledge that this is not as simple as people choosing to act in such ways, doing just more of the same. To make sense of that, I think you need to ask why that\u2019s the case. So, why is that the case? Well, in my view, there are multiple answers to that. Firstly, if you have already landed a sweet gig, it\u2019s not like you need to put in more effort. I get it. It\u2019s like why bother if you don\u2019t have to. The problem with this is that it\u2019s also in their best effort to police others, to prevent them from putting in the hours. How so? Well, if others put in more hours than they do, there\u2019s the risk that they end looking lazy. That\u2019s not a great look, so, yeah, I get it. I don\u2019t approve it, no, no, but I do get it. Secondly, there\u2019s only so much they can do. I don\u2019t know how things are abroad, in different countries, but at least here everything is run on a shoestring budget. That means that many academics just don\u2019t have the time to put in the hours. That also means that the people who you\u2019d think would put in the hours, the people who the students expect to know a lot, simply don\u2019t have the time for it. There are simply too few people to handle the workload, which means that a handful of people do all the teaching and\/or research, plus most of the admin. The problem with this is that in this way the academics, me included, fail not just our students, as we often do when we lack the time to expand our horizons, to familiarize ourselves with what it is that some students are interested in, but also ourselves. If we don\u2019t have the time for something as basic as reading, beside what is expected of us in a certain field or discipline, it\u2019s unlikely that we\u2019ll come with anything new. To combine the two then, this means that it\u2019s just more of the same or, to be more accurate, more of almost the same (as nothing is ever, strictly speaking, the same), year after year. It\u2019s like a feedback loop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, to practice what I preach, instead of mere criticism, there needs to be constructive criticism. So, what can be done about this issue? How can we make sure that people put in more hours? Now, as you might have guessed, I don\u2019t have any silver bullets for this. That said, I think there are things that can be changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What’s, perhaps, most important is that the people who run the show need to figure out what it is that they think the universities are for. In other words, they need to define what their function<\/em> is. To give you a bit of context, in Finland universities are quasi-state universities. They are public corporations or foundations that operate independently from the state, but they are nonetheless heavily regulated and largely funded by the state. In other words, they can be also understood as quasi-private universities, having been detached from the state not that long ago. Long story short, they are expected to operate like a corporation, that is to say balance their budgets, yet they must do what the state wants them to do, to carry out research and provide education. The problem is that neither is good business in Finland. Education is free and most research doesn\u2019t make any money. That means that what the state wants the universities to do doesn\u2019t make any money for the universities, nor for the state. This means that the state reimburses the universities for research and students, according to a certain set of criteria. The more and better research a university does, the more money it gets. The more students graduate on time, the more money it gets. The problem is that the universities don\u2019t have enough researchers, nor teachers, yet they are asked to publish more and award more degrees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, you might think that there\u2019s an easy to fix. Simply hire more people and voil\u00e0! Ah, but not so fast. The thing is that the state defines the funding for the universities. This is basically a certain sum of money, a pot, if you will. It then allocates this money to the universities, dividing it among them according to how well the universities have performed. So, if one university hires more people and manages to produce more, that means more money to it. That also means that the other universities won\u2019t get as much money as they used to get, which means less resources for research and teaching, likely in the form of various cuts. In other words, if the pot isn\u2019t increased to accommodate for the increase in performance in one university, then the other universities will suffer. Hiring more people in hopes of better performance may also backfire, which means more cuts in that university and thus more money to the other universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s also additional public and private funding for research. That basically works the same way. If you produce more, it\u2019s likely that you get rewarded and, conversely, if you don\u2019t produce more, it\u2019s unlikely that you\u2019ll get rewarded. This makes balancing the budget even trickier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea behind this model is to make the universities perform better by having to compete more with one another. Simply put, the idea is to reward good ideas. That may seem like a good idea, but it isn\u2019t. Why? Because the universities are, nonetheless, quasi-state universities, as I pointed out already. They are all tied to the state. They are simply playing musical chairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you assess the education aspect of it, as I do, as a lecturer, the state doesn\u2019t really seem to understand what the function<\/em> of university education is. It\u2019s bizarre really. It asks the universities to balance their budgets. The teachers are an easy target when it comes to making budget cuts because, well, they aren\u2019t producing anything, right here, right now. That\u2019s true. A teacher doesn\u2019t produce anything. I admit it. As a teacher, I don\u2019t produce anything. In that sense, I\u2019m paid for nothing. There’s no surplus that I can point to. But that\u2019s the thing, a university is not a factory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you wanted to make the state, including the municipalities way better in terms of their performance, it would totally make sense to fire all the teachers, yes, all of them, because they aren\u2019t producing anything. Why pay anything to anyone who doesn\u2019t produce anything? Now, that said, imagine going to your local council with this idea, proposing that we fire all the teachers, all the principals, all the support staff, on that basis, because they are massive financial burden to the municipality. Something tells me that they\u2019d react to such proposal by pointing out that schools are not factories, like duh. It\u2019s like we want people to be educated, to have certain know-how that is beneficial to them, and to others, so we hire other people that already have a certain know-how to educate them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be clear, the legislators are aware of this. It is clearly stated in the official unofficial translation of the Universities Act (558\/2009) that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe mission of the universities is to promote independent academic research as well as academic and artistic education, to provide research-based higher education and to educate students to serve their country and humanity at large.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n As you can see, the universities have a dual function<\/em>. Firstly, the universities do research, no strings attached. Secondly, they provide higher education. Note also how this education is supposed to be research based. This means that universities need research staff and teaching staff. If you make cuts in research, then, well, you are bound to fail to provide research-based higher education. If you make cuts in teaching, you are still bound to fail to provide research-based higher education. Plus, to connect this to the burdens shared by the students and the staff, if you make cuts that result in the staff no longer having time to put in the hours to learn more, be that through research or by simply reading articles, book chapters and books, you are, once more, bound to fail to provide research-based higher education. In other words, if we simply just keep doing what we do, like more of the same (I know, I l know, it\u2019s almost the same, not the same, but you know what I mean), we are not really providing our students research-based higher education. To connect this back to the students, if we fail at that, if we fail in our mission, we fail them and, in the long run, when they succeed us, as they eventually will, it\u2019s only likely that they\u2019ll end up failing their students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay, maybe things are better in other departments, other schools, other faculties and other universities, but, like I pointed out in the previous essay, I don\u2019t see how we can currently succeed in that mission set by our legislators. Why? Because the state, the real force behind the universities, does not provide the universities the necessary resources for their staff, the researchers, the teachers and the supporting staff, to succeed in that mission. For whatever reason, it thinks that universities are factories. This is so stupid to even have to point out, but, no, they are not factories, nor are they corporations that have certain expenses, notably the workforce, that then produces something that balances the books or, more ideally, results in surplus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Someone needs to remind the legislators, namely the government as that\u2019s the majority that makes the decisions in the parliament, and the ministry of education what the mission is and that, currently, we are already failing. There\u2019s no way I can honestly say that me and my colleagues, in my department, are able to provide our students \u201cresearch-based higher education\u201d that enables them to \u201cserve their country and humanity at large.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I pointed out in the previous essay, it\u2019s so streamlined now that we risk reducing the students to one-trick ponies. Like we really need to think what we include in a certain course. Why? Because that might be the only course where they can learn what they can later on use in their theses. That\u2019s bananas. We have to be like, should variationist sociolinguistics be part of the course that covers sociolinguistics, discourse studies and pragmatics. Of course it should be in that, not necessarily because it\u2019s the most relevant approach these days, but it\u2019s kind of silly if you graduate never even having heard of such. For us, as teachers, the problem is that it\u2019s difficult to make much use of that at this level due to research ethics, so it\u2019s bound to be cut from the course in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Plus, as you may have noticed, there\u2019s basically one, yes, just that one course dedicated to those areas of research. We do not have separate courses for them. It\u2019s pretty wild that we end up, for example, covering speech act theory<\/em> in one 90-minute lecture, basically split between Austin and Searle, and then that\u2019s it. That itself would warrant its own lecture series, but we don\u2019t have that kind of resources. In fact, we never had that kind of resources. I don\u2019t imagine we ever will have that kind of resources, fair enough, but it\u2019d be great if we could have separate courses at least for those areas, not because I want to teach all those courses, but because it\u2019s pretty silly that we have to combine those three areas of research into one lecture course. I know there\u2019s overlap between them, again, fair enough, but we aren\u2019t doing our students any favors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This issue is particularly problematic, because the students do want us to change the course content. While what we provide our students is a solid foundation on those areas of research, we barely scratch the surface. What we include is pretty good, but it is also pretty old school. While I don\u2019t mind that, don\u2019t be fooled by the date of publication when you read something, it is 2024 now and what the students are interested in is what happens in 2024. For example, that one course covers conversation analysis<\/em> or, rather, the basics of it, but no one really gives a hoot, not me, not my closest colleague, nor the students, because it doesn\u2019t help them, here and now, to grapple issue that concern them, here and now. The tools they get from that don\u2019t help them to \u201cserve their country and humanity at large\u201d, as the legislators would like them to do. They want tools to deal with how language is connected to, for example, ableism, anthropocentrism, racism, and sexism, or, more broadly speaking, (m)any kind(s) of discrimination, but are they getting those tools from us? Well, no. Okay, they get some tools, but, again, that\u2019s like one lecture among other lectures, so no, not really. To be positive, we are making some changes. This may annoy others, because we aren\u2019t doing traditional or old school linguistics, but I think we need to stick to the mission. We can\u2019t live in the past, thinking that research and education are about adhering to some past masters from decades ago, when it\u2019s clear that it\u2019s not relevant to what the students are interested in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We can and do offer more courses as independent study units, which is a fancy way talking about book exams, but that\u2019s hardly ideal. When I did teacher training, it was pretty ironic how we had this major book exam, with like four books, if I remember correctly, while the people teaching us kept telling us that book exams are hardly ideal when it comes to learning and assessing that learning. Haha! Did I fail it? Yes. Yes, I did (and that\u2019s not the only exam in life that I\u2019ve failed). I complained, not because that wasn\u2019t totally on me, but because, come on, that is ridiculous (I think they ended up changing that format though, and, yes, I did pass that exam in a retake). To be clear, I love a good book. I just don\u2019t like the idea of telling students that they can do this other stuff, this cool stuff that isn\u2019t mandatory, but the only way of doing that is to read books and then take an exam where they get asked some random questions about the books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I had any saying (I don\u2019t, nothing has changed about that in a decade), I\u2019d like to make universities actually more equal or, should I say, more collegial. It\u2019s easy to forget that the vast majority of students are adults, yet at least I feel like they are often treated like children and, somehow, they also acquire a similar mindset where they think that the people working at the university are the adults. I fully understand that the dynamic is different between people if they are in such relationships where one is a superordinate and the other is a subordinate when compared to people of equal standing. I just find it a bit \u2026 well I just don\u2019t like it when other adults think that I\u2019m, somehow, better than them just because I have a certain job or some fancy academic title. I don\u2019t like it because it distances me from them. Now, to be clear, that doesn\u2019t mean that I want to be buddies with all the students, no, that\u2019d be just \u2026 exhausting. It\u2019s rather that I feel like I end up in an odd vacuum where the only people I\u2019m supposed to deal with are other academics. That\u2019s just, well, condescending and awfully boring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To pick up where I left off, something else has also changed about students. Okay, maybe it hasn\u2019t changed, and it\u2019s only me, and my experience, but as this is also my essay, it\u2019s only fair that I get to say that. You can write your own essays and disagree accordingly. Anyway, having taught on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3554,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[571,1539,897,1667,437],"class_list":["post-5467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-austin","tag-buchanan","tag-grice","tag-nicholls","tag-searle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3554"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5467"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5687,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5467\/revisions\/5687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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References (legislation)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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