Pick one personal experience that Ronald Pelias shares in his auto ethnography, “The Academic Tourist.” Reflect on the way the author describes this experience. What kind of language does he use? Then, consider the definition of an auto ethnography: Using the personal to get to the cultural. What cultural questions/issues is Ronald Pelias investigating through his personal experiences?
Finally, if you have time, what personal experiences might you want to share with Ronald Pelias to expand on his cultural questions even further?
Post response as a comment. Please use APA when citing from Pelias’ article.
Here’s a link to the article: 1077800403009003003
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1077800403009003003
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”But you push on knowing the arguments you’ve
used to justify what you do and hoping that your arguments carry more truth
than your feelings, and you accept that you’ll probably never be able resolve
your uneasiness, and you accept that service doesn’t really count anyway,
and you accept that you’d really rather not be doing it.”
The language shown by the author in this piece of his work is emotional. Sadness, disappointment, but mostly dissatisfaction. Ronald Pelias touches cultural question such as do we really need a degree or diploma to succeed in life? Does having a degree requires you to constantly be doing research or reading books you don’t really want to read? What about if the whole point of going to school is to become someone useful for the own community/government benefits, making you just something part of their game?
My personal experiences shared with the author is the thought that society/government trains people to be someone for their own benefit. For example, if you were born in a low class community it will be really difficult, almost impossible to ever become part of the elite community, even if you work you’re whole life, but society tells you to go to school so you can work and become economically successful when statistically speaking you can get better but never as rich as someone who was born in a high class group.
Pelias (2003 ) uses his experience of being in boring committee meetings to relate with the struggle of doing what is expected of an educator. He uses the second person point of view instead of the first to connect with the reader. By using the second person Perlias is makes it possible for the reader to see through his eyes into his personal experience without making it seem narrow by using the word “I.” A culture question Perlias is investigating is how is a professor of a university expected to spend their free time at work.
In his auto ethnography “The Academic Tourist: An Autoethnography”, , Ronald Pelias (2003) provides experiences as a teacher and the process of writing research papers. One personal experience that Ronald Pelias shares in his autoethography is when he writes in the second paragraph about his experience in a meeting. Throughout his essay, Pelias writes in long sentences, for instance, each paragraph is a sentence on its own with the exception of quotes provided from outside resources. In addition, Pelias writes in second person and speaks to the reader saying “… but you probably won’t, because who wants to read an article when Friends is on…” (Pelias, 2003, p. 370). Moreover, as Pelias (2003) writes his auto ethnography, he writes with many details including his thought process. For instance, Pelias (2003) writes, “…but you go and listen and try to not play with your pen to point of distraction since you do want to be a good citizen” (p. 370). Essentially, Pelias provides enough details that makes his situation relatable to the reader. The cultural questions/ issues Pelias (2003) investigates through his personal experiences is the thought process of constructing a research paper and he explores the lives of professors. Pelias (2003) begins his research paper by providing insight of what a day in his life is as a teacher. Through this detailed paragraph, one learns how some teachers feel about teaching and the thoughts they have while teaching. In addition, he later explores the criticism, something that is always present, whether it is good or bad. Overall, through his detailed writing, Pelias (2003) explores the dynamics of teaching and the thought process of writing a paper.
The author describes his experience in the line “because Friends is on, and you plan on having a few drinks with your friends a bit later, and you are hoping to get in a nap before then” as something that has happened many times before or something that he knows people can relate to. In that quote, he repeats and a lot like if he is actually talking and his words are just coming to the paper. Almost like his body is telling to stop doing so much work. Ronald Pelias is talking about how academics, similar to tourist, never reach a full understanding about any area they pursue because of their habits and what defines full understanding.
The Academic Tourist: An Autoethnography. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1077800403009003003
Ronald Peilias shares his personal experience by using second-person language and being specific, both connecting and sharing with the audience. “…you feel you’ve made your case about how academics, like tourists, never see the world beyond its surface level,”(Pelias, p.372). Pelias investigates the mundane profession of being a scholar such as a teacher or professor by going through how they truly feel in their daily life. He points to how teachers are stuck using the same lesson plan and afraid to change it because it works for students therefore leaving the teacher in a robotic manner. He explains how teachers are excited for the bell like students even though they do not show it and hoping students do not ask new questions. Pelias could even be describing his own personal experience and feelings in the area of being a scholar by doing so. I would want to share personal experiences such as the time I asked my English teacher a question and they admitted to me that they did not know the answer because of all the years they taught the same lesson plan , not one student has asked them it. My experience would help further Pelias’ cultural questions by emphasizing that tourism is problematic.
Ronald J. Pelias (2003) reflects on the culture of academia in his autoethnography, “The Academic Tourist”, noting that “academics… like tourists, like ethnographers, never get beyond the surface of things, even when they spend a lifetime at their sites” (p. 371). He discusses this further when he describes committee meetings, and does so with a note of hopelessness. He feels obligated to attend, and wants to voice his opinion like a good member of that particular academic community, but reminds the reader that a lot of the decisions have been made before the meeting happens. He goes into detail on the struggle not to ignore everyone and sit and play with a pen, further highlighting the Sisyphean task of contributing to the academic community at large and, more importantly, going beyond the surface of the material. While on paper, he as a scholar should be educating, researching, and engaging with his peers to further the work of future generations, however, he personally feels the weight of daily tedium eating away at his motivation. Though not a professional academic, I understand the frustration surrounding getting caught up in the shallows of one’s profession. With a job in sales, I am often irked by being called into meetings that seem nothing more than a meeting of corporate buzzwords and fluffy rhetoric, especially when I could be analyzing numbers, setting budgets, or working in the field. Like Pelias, I find that the culture of my job can make it difficult to do my job.
In the paragraph, the author talks about the cycle the of teaching. He talks about the preparation teachers have to do to teach the class and how they have to prepare the syllabus. He emphasis on how teachers tend to use the syllabus even though sometimes they don’t plan. In the paragraph he uses the first person. He uses metaphors, and his point of view. From the passage an auto ethnography can be define us using one’s experience to describe a topic. Pelias is investigating how teachers prepare for the semester.
Within “The Academic Tourist”, Pelias shares his experience with committee meetings. Which Pelias describes as if it is a bureaucracy fueled necessary evil that yields little to no results. However, from the tone that Pelias takes and from the statements he makes, these meetings leave him uneasy because he “doesn’t have enough information and… any single decision seems to get swallowed in complexity by the university system(Pelias, p. 370, 2003).” This unsettling realization provides a look inside these meetings that determine the nature of an academic department and how inconsequential they may be or seem. How easy it is to lose focus on important matters that are steeped in complexity.
One personal experience that Ronald Plies talks about is his teaching career/style. In the story “The Academic Tourist” the author explains describes his experience as a good one as far as exploring different methods of teaching to his students. The type of language he uses is his own point of view. The cultural experience that Plies speaks is how there are different methods to teaching.
In “The Academic Tourist”, Ronald J. Pelias talks about doing service for her community, university, or professional organization (370). In this paragraph of her professional auto-ethnographic, the author is using long sentences, juxtaposed each another. She is using the pronoun “you” to refer herself.and the verb used is to “be” to demonstrated that she is doing the work under the demand of her professional institution, so she is a passive subject in this part of her auto-ethnography. Here Pelias is showing how serious the professional service needs to be taken as she is doing so to keep up the great relationship between herself and her community as well as between the community and the world.
Ronald’s experience on the additional work required in teaching besides being in the classroom sets his tone for this effective auto ethnography. For example, when he’s asked to come in and do services for his department. Ronald (2003) states, “…most of the decisions the committees are supposed to address have already been made, but you go and listen and try not to play with your pen to a point of distraction since you do want to be a good citizen…” (Pelias, 2003, p.370). Ronald uses vivid details to showcase the setting in which he is in and uses a language that is informal. His very well written informal language grabs the reader along his journey. Furthermore, he states, “…who wants to read an article when Friends is on, or when friends are available for a drink, or when you could just be taking a nap…” (Pelias, 2003, p.370). This statement can be related to many readers because we often think of other things we could be doing when it comes to an assignment we have to do so such as reading an article. His language and tone is stated as if he’s talking directly to us which makes his writing effective. Through his personal experiences, Ronald is investigating the fact that people in certain professions do not go beyond the surface of things even when they have been in that profession for a long time. An important thing to be noted in his writing is that it seems like a spoken word poetry to me due to the poetic tone. His use of long sentences that are paused by commas instead of periods, and repetition of the phrase mentioning Friends.
A personal experience that Ronald Pelias shares in his ethnography is his experience as a teacher and using the same lectures every year with his new students. He describes his experience as lack of enthusiasm due to his reuse of old lectures and doesn’t create new ones because he believes that if it’s not broke don’t fix it. The language he uses seems to be everyday words that we use in English and he uses them to tell a story of his experience as a teacher. I believe that Ronald is using his experience as a teacher to connect to the cultural issues of the academic lifestyle and understanding the sociology of education.
One personal experience that Ronald Pelias shared in his auto ethnography is how he trying to make his class better and how thinking if about editing old slides because he sees new students and also because maybe he found other strategy thats better. Pelias describe this experience by giving certain examples like about students and what he should do after his job like hanging out with his friends and when he going to get his alone time . The kind of language Pelias is using in this article is he is goes very in depth . The definition of auto ethnography is his experience about being a teaching and see how he is in the outside of school environment.
When reading through The Academic Tourist by Ronald J. Pelias there was one section that stood out the most to me. Pelias (2003) speaks of the “… working relationships with the community but actually just exploits students, which you aren’t necessarily against if it is for a good cause” (p. 370) which is explained with the same tone that is used throughout the paper, sarcasm. Sarcasm is a effective language when speaking of uncertainty, which Pelias uses in this section to cast doubt over his real purpose as a lecturer and as a professor in his college community. At the end of this section Pelias (2003) goes back to the repeating statement “when Friends is on, or when you could be having a drink with your friends, or when you could just be taking a nap” (P.371), and he constantly repeats this statement to further show the level of doubt he has even after making certain remarks of what he can change as a scholar. Pelias points to the bigger picture of professors at universities and what their role actually entitles, he challenges the perception that these lecturers are actually playing a positive role in their community and why there role might not be as crucial as they might think.
Ronald Pelias auto ethnography “The academic tourist: an Auto ethnography” states “but you probably won’t, because who wants to read an article when Friends is on, or when friends are available for a drink”. According to Ronald’s experience we can assume that his life is really stressful being clustered with massive amount of work. like he said that sometimes he would love to be watching a TV show or having some drinks with his friends instead of going to all these meetings, doing research and being a scholar which what they are meant to be. language used on this text is emotionally depressing and the authors seems tired of what ever he is going through.
Pelias, struggled to familiarize himself with the students because new students come in an out every academic year. He felt very bored to teaching the same thing over and over again so delivering the subject matter to them was at times very difficult. And being able to deliver the subject matter to the students was something he battled with. Again, he experienced that always when he is not teaching then it’s another thing else either serving at the committee meetings, department, professional organizations and etc. His work as a teacher mattered most to him and he had wished to making changes to that which he had no authority to doing so. In Pelias academic writing, he used a lot of run on sentences as well as many conjunctions instead of periods. He compares ethnographers to tourists because both groups “never get beyond the surface of things.” They continue until their aim or focus is achieved.
The one experiences that the author describe is what teacher are doing when they are not teaching which is service or going to meeting. The way the author describe this experience in boring tone how is to teach the same thing over and over again and irony. The language that the author used are simple world the author for example the author used ” service learning, community, accomplished” the author speaking to all type of audience because even if your English is not perfect or great the word are second grade level. The culture question or issue that the author is investigating is why teacher do not speak up when they known something needed to be change the education system
Class lesson Plan
For many years i have come to understand that majority of teachers do not struggle modifying their teaching lesson plans or guides. Teachers recycle the old plans they developed many years ago to teach different classes in different years. Therefore, they reproduce the same material every time to various suspecting student forgetting that sometimes one or two students in the same class are retaking the class and were not able to understand the same material in the initial time they took the class. So, the very student are left subject to face a similar problem repeatedly. While on the other hand, the teacher feels such an ease in passing the message because for some reason they have mastered the content. In first paragraph of The Academic Tourist, Ronald J. Pelias discussed similar experience mentioning that some teachers try to rewrite a new plan but mostly rework the old feeling bored. They spend time teaching the same material numerously without taking cognisant to the students challenges. Pelias uses simple and short sentences to explain his idea. In this piece of work Pelias is investigating the student experiences with their teachers lesson plan. He emphasized on whether teachers are trying to adopt any challenges on their lesson plan and gather students out come.
On the article of “The Academic Tourist: An Autoethnography” the author Ronald J. Pelias talks about one of the personal experience is his teaching style. The author explains that there are different ways of teaching. To be a good professor a person need to have positive behaviors, discipline skills, etcetera. The type of language the author uses is point of view. He also talks about a professor need to have good preparation in order to teach the students. The professor always have to give a better explanation based on the topics they teach in class so the students can understand them well and the students will be able to do their assignments easily. As the semester begins, the professors starts preparing the syllabus because the students will know about what the professors is going to do each day in class and the students can keep track of what they need to do in order to pass the classes.
In the article “The Academic Tourist: An Autoethnography” Ronald J Pelias discusses his relation to teaching. He talks about different ways students may grasp information. Pelias also is very repetitive to his view on things he contentiously uses various quotes. Such as “but you probably wont because who wants to read an article when Friends is on, or when friends are available for a drink, or when you could just be taking a nap” (Pelias, p. 370, 2003). He uses this statement a lot to describe how to new age of students perceive things. He feels like student which are the millennial’s focus more to technology then to actually read an article.