Why Studying the Academy is Important

Early in the quarter we were posed with the question “What is the purpose of studying the Academy?”  The Academy is regarded as the highest tier of learning, where intellectuals dissect meaning in the world and spend hours researching to help better humanity. Many students' goal is receiving that degree from the university for a better prospect in life The Academy is idealized, romanticized, and fictionalized. This place of learning, research, development, improvement, and thought is, however, not perfect. There are problems.

Tradition of white, upper-class male learning has long been ingrained in the Academy and remnants still remain today. We witnessed a story of sexism through Life in the Academy and stories of racism in From Oppression to Grace. Other prejudices, like religion and culture, are also present and even newer troubles, such as corporatization, retention, ethics, funding, etc…, play prevalent roles in the modern university. Many of these issues we would hope have been abolished, but through the personal accounts of academics and students, this is not true and little seems to have been done to combat these deeply ingrained bigotry and difficulties.

"It’s easier to act like these problems don’t exist." We can go about never addressing the issues. The trouble is that problems do exist and they need to be fixed. We need to find a solution to our issues, but why do we need solutions? "We could simply 'be,'" but we would never become better than who we are now. We need solutions to improve the quality of the Academy and develop the community as a whole, in terms of financial, racial, religious, cultural, ideological diversity. In light of recent events, the university wants to work together. We support each other, even if many of us come from literally all walks of life, and innately strive to do our best, the results of which benefits the whole university community as well as the city of Seattle, Washington state, United States, and even other countries.

Small parts add to a greater whole so our singular actions will influence the Academy. What we do will change how the Academy is perceived and how the Academy acts. By thinking about the Academy we will learn and begin to understand what we work for. We will know if our actions, which combine in the overarching order, are ethical, helpful, productive, and useful. This process allows us to learn about ourselves and this will prepare us for the future, so we can make the wisest decision for more situations. We think, we learn, we understand, and we act to make better changes for the future Academy.

The process cannot be static or a one-time event. "There is a tendency for institutions to not work well." We have to be continually aware, continually thinking, and continually improving to reach that better future. Interestingly, everyone in the group separately developed the idea of continuous awareness and collaborative solutions. To think that a business major, a computer science major, an astronomy and communications major, a computer science and math major, and someone who is still deciding separately developed this idea means that it is a universal necessity. Everyone needs to be conscious. It is not the responsibility of a single individual nor the effects of a single event. It is the conscious work of everyone's continual efforts that will create a better Academy. 

Corporatization of the Academy

            Corporatization of the Academy           

            “We have made great strides these past few years in becoming a leaner, more efficiently operated institution. I promise that we will continue to look closely at administrative expenditures and find ways to economize and reduce costs even further” – Ana Mari Cause Provost of the University of Washington

Lean and efficient are not words one would usually associate with a premiere academic institution, yet as higher education attempts to recover from budget cuts these corporate terms are becoming ubiquitous. They are one way in which the corporate world has influenced higher education and its practices. This corporate influence, or corporatization, worries many professors, administrators, and students.

Corporatization of the academy is a broad term that is used to explain different trends in Universities. It encompasses how the influence of outside corporations is growing inside the academy, the implementation of many common corporate models on University administration, and the growing use of corporate terms and language. The amount of scholarly research on this trend is astounding and marks how passionate many professors and administrators are about what many see as a negative trend. In many of these scholarly articles and opinion pieces, the professors talk about how corporatization is affecting students in a negative way, yet they do not give an undergraduate or graduate students perspective on how these new policies are affecting them. I will examine how corporatization has affected the teacher student dynamic, the implementation of metrics, and what a college degree consists of from an undergraduate perspective.

Investing in a college degree

A college education is often advertised as an investment rather than a growth experience. High school advisors and college recruiters do not advertise how much one’s critical reading will improve, they do not advertise how college will advance one’s social perspectives of race and identity. Advisors and college marketers advertise the fact that one’s lifetime earnings will increase by over one million dollars. Over time, a college degree has strayed away from its traditional educational goals and has become an investment.

In many public institutions throughout the United States a college degree is no longer about gaining a quality education, it is rather a testament that an individual is competent/hard-working/smart enough to graduate and they possess a designated amount of knowledge and skills in their respective field. A college degree is no longer about continuing one’s educational growth, but it is rather an investment for one’s future livelihood for many college students. It has stemmed away from a holistic educational experience because many “elective” classes are, for a better word, jokes. Students are wary of their GPA and see no benefit in broadening their experience. People do not take Scandinavian studies because the are fascinated by Sweden, rather they take the class because everyone knows you can get a 4.0 by only spending 20 hours per quarter on the class (also see rocks for jocks, pow wow 101, psych 101…). Competition is strong in the academy and students are quick to gain a competitive edge and thus are quick to jump on an easy 4.0 so they can focus on the classes that matter in their degree.

My mother always likes to remind me that each hour of class costs approximately 30 dollars. This is a huge sum of money for one hour worth of course work, yet still people skip class everyday. Why? In my perspective they skip because they are not paying for the education but are rather paying for the degree. Students often go to college because it is a requirement to enter their aspiring field and to the American middle and upper classes. In order to gain a holistic educational experience one must invest $50,000 dollars a year to enter a smaller liberal arts college (if you have the GPA and test scores to get accepted). This is worrying as a student, because it could to lead to a less culturally aware and educated society.

Student Consumerism: Student, Customer, or Product

One of the most commonly cited effects of corporatization is the effect on the student teacher relationship. Many professors and administrators fear that students have gained too much power in this delicate relationship and that this is greatly harming the educational system. One of the major ways that students have gained power is through the implementation of student evaluations and the effect that these evaluations have on professor’s personnel decisions. The influence of corporatization has established students as customers, and with this classification many of the privileges of American consumerism where the customer is always right. Recent budget cuts have only extended this power dynamic as more and more of the Universities revenue is a stem from undergraduate tuition, particularly out of state. University administration puts pressure on professors to put as many students through the University as possible and frown on teachers failing students. Administration also uses student evaluations as a metric to measure a professor’s performance as a teacher. Professors, wary of bad student evaluations that may affect their academic careers, often decrease their expectations of students and make receiving a quality grade easier. This is particularly prevalent for many TA’s and research-oriented professors.

"I tell my students to consider me their academic personal trainer. You wouldn't want a personal trainer who lets you sit on your butt and eat doughnuts, because you're not going to really reap the benefits that way. My job is to kick their academic butts." - Tracy E. Zinn, PhD, James Madison University

I find the decrease in professor expectations as one of the most disappointing side effects of the corporatization of the academy. I want a teacher that will inspire and set high expectations that I can strive to reach. There can be very little critical thinking or discussion if the professors don’t expect you to read the material. A professor that does not expect students to do excellent work sets the tone for the entire class. It is very difficult to motivate oneself to read or find real world connections to a subject when there is no medium to express these connections in class. When the ceiling is set so low, it is easy to be complacent and do just enough work to get a good grade. 

Metrics & Research

One of the biggest areas corporatizations have affected is research and the use of metrics in academic programs. A metric an expected tangible result in which a program’s success may be measured by. In “Teaching And Learning Across Borders”, Julia Harrison and Anne Meneley talk about how professors involved in an initiative aimed to, “foster innovative thinking and pedagogical practices to cope with ‘transnational flows’ of people, cultures, and commodities,” were constantly trying to find tangible results:

 “Participants also took stock of the “outcomes” of the project, to consider to what use the Ford Foundation funds had been put. The issue of “outcomes” was to prove central. In our interviews we hear considerable anxious talk about the relative paucity of material evidence of scholarly productively resulting from the grant […] the material outcome of knowledge production in the form of scholarly publication has increasingly—for better or worse—becomes signs of our scholarly work,” (82).

These professors are anxious that the academic research they are conducting will have enough tangible results that it may continue and positively affect their academic careers. The professors perceived pressure from the non-profit Ford Foundation. Imagine the pressure for results; academics must be under when they enter into partnerships and research agreements with for-profit firms.

As Universities attempt to find new cash flows to replace lost public funds, one of the first places administrations look are corporations willing to fund research that benefits their industry. It is the fastest growing source of money and it is particularly prevalent in economics, medicine, engineering, chemistry and other fields where the returns are easy to value. This adds uncertainty to the findings of a university if its findings support the sponsoring corporation. Researchers are pressured to produce results and the funding can simply stop, if the project does not show enough promise or if the academy has received enough data. This relationship also leads to a tenuous relationship between firm and researcher. In “The Corporatization of Higher Education”, by Rebecca Clay, Clay brings up the case of Nancy Olivieri, a researcher who discovered a life-threatening side effect in a drug she was testing. She was fired because her university was reluctant to jeopardize a large donation from the corporation. In another case a Penn State patient died in a gene-transfer study. There was a local public outcry that medical companies were pressuring the study to find results quickly and take unnecessary risks.

So What?

"When I hear faculty saying, 'Isn't it awful that the university is becoming corporatized,' I'm thinking, 'Awful compared to what? Awful compared to going out of business?'" -anonymous

When discussing the 16% increase in tuition at the University of Washington it is easy to bring up the possible negative implications: poorer students may not be able to afford college, it will add to the already growing student debt[1], it will lengthen the socioeconomic gap in education. Yet, it is much more difficult to come up with viable alternatives that will not affect the quality of the institution. One may ask for more funding from the government, but their budget situation is far worse than the University of Washington.  Look at Washington state’s budget. What cuts would you make?

The reality of the situation is that there is not as much money for higher education as there has been in the past. Universities have responded by increasing tuition, becoming leaner and more efficient (often adopting corporate models and the use of metrics to distribute funds to programs who are best able to use them), and by becoming more affable to corporate funds and corporate research agreements. How much of a tuition increase are you willing to stomach in order to avoid some of the negative aspects of corporatizatioin?

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Every field involves fieldwork

When I started reading Auto-Ethnographies, I was confused since the situations described did not seem to be very connected to academia.  I mean, it was fairly interesting to hear about the difficulties of being an outsider and yet also an insider in the studied cultures, but I did not see how these exposés were about the authors' situation in academia.  Then, after reading several chapters of these apparently random travelogues, I realized, with significant help from the essay I was on, that these journeys were part of academia for anthropologists doing ethnography.  This thing called "fieldwork" is a huge part of their discipline.  Fieldwork is where anthropologists get "down and dirty" in their discipline and get experience.  Still, I had difficulty relating to this fieldwork as being part of academia since I am majoring in math and computer science, both fields known for their, shall we say, lack of going outside. 

You may think that fieldwork is a topic too unimportant to consider compared to the weighty themes discussed in the Academic Life class, such as prejudice, ethics, town-gown issues, and so on. I agree that fieldwork is not particularly weighty.  However, it provided a way for me, a science major, to understand humanities majors in a way I had never done before.  In fact, the idea of fieldwork as described above is one of the first deep connections between methodology in the sciences and in the humanities I have seen.  Connecting the humanities and the sciences is one of the weighty issues from class, so I feel fieldwork is a worthy topic. 

In anthropology, students gain a visceral understanding of their field by going abroad as graduate students.  What makes someone viscerally understand math or computer science?  I decided that "fieldwork" in math was the many years of practice with the basic concepts of math in order to gain that mathematical intuition often called mathematical maturity.  That is, in math, "fieldwork" is started in elementary school and continued through college.  In graduate school, you finally use the understanding you have gained from your 16 years of "fieldwork" to probe deeper into the subject.  So, not only is the method of doing fieldwork different between math and anthropology, but also when the fieldwork is done is different.  That is, in math, "fieldwork" is done in an academic setting and must be mastered before further study, rather than being the capstone of academic experience, as in anthropology.

In computer science, again, "fieldwork" is lots of practice with programming, so that one has a gut feeling for what is a good program and how to write it.  However, in computer science, this is usually done through projects outside of class or on the job.  Even in graduate school, as far as I can tell, "fieldwork" is done on one's own, with little direct benefit to school grades or academic prestige other than being able to code faster for projects.  Often really awesome and useful programming projects are not even put on a CV for this reason, despite such projects being the meat of a computer science undergraduate's résumé.  In fact, although it's slowly changing, students who want to be professors are warned against putting programming projects on their CV to avoid giving a bad impression, of what, I still don't know.  That is, in computer science, only the results of "fieldwork" are valued, and the actual process of fieldwork is both outside of the academic setting and not valued in academia.

After examining my two majors, I could not help but wonder about other fields.  According to Nesley, in social work, fieldwork is done as part of undergraduate or graduate school, and is, like anthropology, done through working with individuals and observing them. In economics, I would guess from class discussions that fieldwork is, like in computer science, gained through individual side projects, research, internships, or on the job training.  In the arts, I imagine fieldwork is done both before and during college, by practicing lots and experiencing other people's work, which matches the pattern for mathematics.  In geology or other earth sciences, I suppose fieldwork is going out into the world as an undergraduate or graduate student, as is done in anthropology.  I wonder if, in philosophy, fieldwork is reading lots of different philosophers' works or going out into the populous and thinking about the philosophy there.  I imagine that the understanding of philosophy gained would be different depending on which type of fieldwork was done.  Overall, what I notice is that neither the timeframe for doing "fieldwork" relative to the rest of the academic training nor whether the "fieldwork" is part of the curriculum or left to the student appears to depend on the position of the given discipline in the humanities-sciences spectrum.   

What fits this definition of fieldwork in your discipline?  When do students in your discipline do fieldwork?

Funding and Ethics in the Academy

Over the last ten weeks, we've primarily talked about funding with regards to how the state and the university allocate their budget – how the state cutting the education budget affects us as students. However, we've also touched upon funding on a more personal level: a few of the authors in both “Auto-Ethnographies” and “From Oppression To Grace” talked about their experiences involving funding – most involving either discrimination against race/gender or bias against the topic being researched. For academics, funding can be incredibly important – it determines both the types of projects they can work on and their prestige amongst peers. As such, as members of the Academy it's important for us to remain aware of the questionable ethical practices surrounding funding on both a personal and institutional level.

The ethical issues surrounding funding become increasingly complicated when personal privacy comes into play. For many projects, especially those involving human subjects, funding requires approval from an ethics board. Their primary purpose was to ensure the safety and projection of participants in academic studies. However, that purpose has changed with time. In the afterword to “Auto-Ethnographies”, Michael Lambeck describes a system which works to shift legal and financial responsibility onto these same participants. “In the ethics review process the university or granting agency passes on liability to the researchers and the researchers pass it on to their subjects. In my view, this is not merely non-ethical, but unethical.” (233) While there have certainly been budget issues in recent years, the Academy has a moral obligation to help the community – not exploit it. As institutions and researchers become increasingly focused on preserving their own legal and financial protection, tensions between the Academy and the surrounding community will only worsen.

Very few institutions are funded solely from their own members. Outside parties such as donors and other institutions often fund both academic and community outreach projects. However, this funding can come with strings attached – not all of them immediately apparent. For many groups, a large portion of outside funding depends solely on recent reported successes. In our quartet, Nesley (who works with the Dream Project) mentioned that they have to turn in surveys reporting success rates in order to continue to receive funding and Izumi (who works at the Pacific Science Center) pointed out that employees and volunteers need to write reports about current demonstrations in order to receive funding.

While it makes sense to both fund more successful projects and use the promise of additional funding as a motivational tool, this process has several problems. While thus far there have not been many serious reported cases of this kind of fraud in academic institutions, it does not mean this problem is insignificant. As a result of smaller operating budgets due to decreased third-party funding, there's additional pressure to engage in practices such as misreporting results in order to seem more successful. These can range from institutional standards to personal decisions, regardless of the motivation. Not only are these behaviors unethical (and carry heavy penalties if discovered), but they also undermine the legitimacy of other academic endeavors.

Another serious concern comes from the *other* kind of third party which funds academic endeavors. Corporations with overflowing coffers often have a vested interest in funding groups within the Academy. In 2007, BP gave UC Berkeley a $500 million grant to create an Energy Biosciences Institute, which would primarily work on new biofuels. While universities are certainly feeling the effects of state budget cuts, there are immense ethical problems associated with allowing corporate funding. There is a major conflict of interest when companies fund studies from an academic institution where the results could impact their business. Personally, though I don't think there's too much to worry about when it comes to entirely fraudulent results, I am worried about tampering with the scientific process – the same question phrased in two different ways can produce differing results. Increased corporate influence on the scientific process is not a good thing, especially when corporations aren't known for putting the public good before shareholder profits. When large sums of money are involved, it's often difficult to discern the objectivity and of whatever results are being reported.

Thus far I've been talking about ethics and funding on an institutional level. However, murky ethics come into play on a personal level as well, especially when it comes to discrimination. Many faculty at academic institutions derive their prestige from their publications – both in terms of quantity produced and quality of the publishing journal. These publications not only grant prestige to their authors, but also to the institution which they are affiliated with. As such, academics who publish more frequently in respected journals receive additional money in terms of both salaries and funding. In a morally ideal world, this would be a relatively functional meritocracy where the most qualified researchers receive the most funding. However, as usual, reality is far from ideal – beyond the essays we've read in “From Oppression to Grace”, there are several studies showing gender and race discrimination regarding both academic publications and faculty/tenure appointments. Given how both of these are instrumental to one's professional standing, this kind of institutional bigotry is especially abhorrent.

In direct contrast with the discrimination I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the Academy is often referred to as an “Ivory Tower” due to its collective knowledge and perceived intellectual superiority (both internally and externally) of its constituents. It's common for an institution with a solid external reputation to avoid discussing matters which could potentially disrupt that reputation. The Academy is no different. Statistically, most faculty members are white males and the effects of this reach beyond the bigotry involved in hiring and publishing. In both “Auto-Ethnographies” and “From Oppression to Grace” this quarter, we've read how “controversial” projects (ranging from studies on institutional discrimination to critiques on clearly political biases) which place a critical lens on the Academy often find themselves unfunded, despite academic merit. Personally, I can understand the desire to maintain a certain reputation and stymie internal criticism – it is often the most damning. However, internal critique often provides a viewpoint lacking from external analyses: organizations which seek to limit it often suffer as a direct result.

This post has been rather critical for that very reason – personally, after I finished my first draft I was understandably disheartened. I remember in our last official class together several people mentioned feeling like they didn't have the tools to tackle the problems we've discussed over the last ten weeks. In our first lecture, Dr. Taranath asked how many of us had taken a class from a female professor before – I never realized how rare it was. It was the kind of statement which stuck with me weeks later as I was registering for classes and looked through the list of (predominately male) professors. As I was trying to figure out how to actually *end* a blog post it led to a sort-of realization– though as members of the Academy we have a responsibility to think about these sorts of problems (and as undergraduates we often have neither the free time or political clout to try and tackle them directly), by simply remaining aware and sharing these thoughts with others we can do our part to improve this community.

Work- School- Life: The Balancing Act

The balancing of three worlds: work, school and life in general. All involve an enormous amount of effort and energy. As seen in Oppression to Grace edited by Theodorea Regina Berry and Nathalie Mizelle, many of the women struggled in balancing their families, especially as single mothers. In On Beauty by Zadie Smith, we see the opposite where academia meshes with their private lives creating an interesting world for their family. Personally, I believe keeping both worlds separate and balanced is important and a struggle. From my past experience, I have put school and building my resume first- not to an extreme point, but to the point where I ignored some responsibilities as the oldest daughter. Now, having just recently start over in college I have been able to put my family first then my academic career and have been a world more satisfied with myself creating a new perspective for myself.  Family has always been an important aspect in my life and I am glad to have been able to wage the war and finally put them first. Advancing my resume and such, affects their lives in some way such as in my ability to get scholarships, but their well-being is much more important.  As we have learned academia can come in all different ways such as traveling, life experience, and really, you only have one family and relationships that become easily less visible when losing sight of the bigger picture. In the end it all comes down to, "what brings me joy?" Here are different concepts and aspects our quartet and class has covered in regards to balancing work, school and life in general. 

"Maintaining the line between personal and private definitely takes self-discipline." -Izumi  

I can relate to Izumi, but also believe maintaining that line not only involves self- discipline, but much more reflection. With reflection you can see where you stand, how you feel, what you want and how you have to adjust to "find your joy." I have personally struggled with that balance. When stress overcomes me I tend to neglect my other responsibilities besides those that initially caused my stress. It does take a lot of meditating, self- discipline and reflection to remind me of what is important. Personally, "maintaining the line," between the two worlds would mean more of keeping out my academia life from my private life. My main extra-curricular activity is the Dream Project, so when I find myself struggling to deal with the stress of school while putting my family above all, I ask myself, "How can I be helping other students, when I'm not helping my own family?" That puts everything into priority for me.

"I'm not sure about the rest of you, but as an undergraduate working full-time it's difficult to even find a balance between work, school, and life (even worse to maintain it)." -Ajay 

I could never imagine working full-time and having anything close to balance in my life. I don't know how students do it and especially be involved in extra-curricular activities at the same time. The need to work full-time becomes more common as tuition rises and financial aid lessens. I wasn't planning on working during the school year, but from recent number estimations I know I'll be looking for a part time job after the summer. How are students expected to keep their grades up while working and building up their resume? Tuition increases, amp up the need for scholarships therefore also increasing the competition and need to balance these all, while having some hint of a life. I especially want to highlight in Ajay's comment, "even worse to maintain it." It is a constant balancing act, walking across the beam. You prioritize one more than another or more than usual and it throws off your whole act. 

"With only 24 hours in a day, the hours required by both work and school often come at the expense of extra-curricular education." -Ajay 

This all goes back to the pressures of building your resume and developing as a person through those activities, instead of just in the classroom, but how can you with only 24 hours in the day? There never seems to be enough hours in the day. Extra-curricular education does take the backseat when it comes to work and school. Without work how are you supposed to go to school if your funds are limited, especially with the budget cuts? How do you decide which extracurricular activities to cut when they are your true passions compared to work? The academy, work, and our personal lives not only include balancing, but sacrifice. 

"Something about his academic life had changed love for him, changed its nature" (225). -Zadie Smith, On Beauty

I understand Howard in the sense that the academic life changed him. High school did this to me in both positive and negative ways. I developed socially, learned how to manage my time and had the time of my life being involved in high school, but my personal relationships tended to be neglected in that balancing act. The nature of my role as the oldest sister and daughter changed. My sisters' expectations of me altered from asking me for help or to just listen to them to understanding that I wasn't really listening or that I wasn't going to do anything about it which is sad and I entirely regret. I wasn't a sister. My academic life was my life. I even told one friend of mine that I couldn't deal with the stress of school, ASB, National Honor Society and all that jazz with the drama of our friendship. My life was about building my resume, getting into colleges and building up my resume to get as many scholarships as I could. Yes I sacrificed and succeeded, but lost my joy along the way. What was first fun became dreadful at times. I never stopped and asked myself, "Are these my priorities?" or "Do I like who I am?" I believe I loved myself in the terms of my success, but not in the most important aspect of being the best person I could be. I do not understand Howard in terms of his mid-life crisis and various sexual relations, but I do understand losing yourself along the way.

"I had made someone else, but what about me? Had I made myself?” (161). - KaaVonia Hinston-Johnson, Choosing My Best Thing           

This past year of transitioning into college and having dealt with personal problems among my relationships has called me to step up and to be the older sister and good friend. Oh yes, there have been many sacrifices, but with those sacrifices and forced growth I believe I have come out a better person. In "making" others, I have found a joy that makes me. I think I rather have wanted to step up under different circumstances, but I am the most happiest with myself. I used to define myself in terms of success and how many goals I've checked off my lists- which definitely did make me happy, but now defining myself in terms of how I help my family and friends has fulfilled me in many more ways. Even with these positives, comes the struggle of deciding when I can put myself first, or naturally ask myself, "What am I doing for myself?" Despite the growth in myself, I ask myself that often. I can't even imagine the responsibility of a child, a career and myself. From all our readings and discussions, I give even more kudos to mothers.

"Academics in that sense are no different from the rest of working class citizens."- Izumi

Izumi said this in terms of childcare and the support given to those in academia compared to the rest of the "working class citizens." In terms of circumstances such as computes, I believe it trumps occupation. But in terms of occupation, I see academia more understanding with family priorities in the sense the student- teacher relationship is somewhat a reflection of the child-parent relationship. I plan is to remain in fields that involves education, but in terms of being a social worker, eventually a teacher and working in education policy. Specifically as a social worker, I believe the profession would be as understanding as education as both involves working with people and having empathy. 

"I think it’s all right for a work place to check a Facebook, but I do not think a work applicant should be discriminated against for this." - Izumi 

When I think of the work-school-life balancing act I see it more as a personal balancing act, and not so much the dynamics of those in my workplace being able to invade my private life. I understand the rights anyone, even work places have to check Facebook, but I do not agree with it being required to give access to your Facebook to be eligible for a job. I believe that crosses the line and discriminates as Izumi said. Facebook is a good indicator of the professionalism of a person, such as their profile picture, but I believe going through posts and such crosses the line of privacy. I would just ask those investigating employees' profiles, how would you feel if the same was done to you?
Knowing your workplace can access your Facebook at any time is like having a watchdog over you. I believe employees should be judged on their work habits and their credentials, not if they are in an off and on relationship and like to party with their friends.

"There are lots of things I use currently to help me keep going and have a good balance." -Melanie 

Melanie listed a good list of what she does for herself in finding her joy and balance. This included planning ahead of time, getting enough sleep and dividing chores in an effective way. I definitely do not plan as effectively with back-up jobs, but I do use goal lists all the time. My goal lists help filter out my mind and keep me focused on what is important to me. My room is also filled with quotes that give me strength and help remind me that I can make it through the day. My constantly up-dated goal lists are a way for me to reflect on my life, what I want and what is or is not working for me. Among my priorities are not only my family and grades, but joining a certain amount of activities or trying something new each quarter, working out and flossing regularly. They keep me on track. When I move back home for the summer, I plan on adding another sign in my room that asks, "What is my joy?" Constant reflection is necessary to make sure your balance is not off, and that you are where you want to be.


These quotes show the different aspects and perspectives that come to mind when it comes to the ultimate balancing act of work, school and life. With that balancing act our joy can lose its way off our list of priorities. Personally, balancing has been a struggle for me throughout high school and as I have seen priorities do change, but as I continue my journey through the academy I hope to keep in mind what I have learned in this class and to constantly keep the act of reflecting in my life.