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Roth, Lorie - What Academic Novels Tell Us About Teaching - Page 3
Exchanges: The On-line Journal of Teaching and Learning in the CSU
This is the academic world as seen through the eyes of the U.S. government. What about life at the university as seen through the eyes of novelists?
Using a research design into which no one will want to inquire too deeply, I calculated the amount of text in the novels devoted to various activities that comprise the academic life. Results are shown in Table 2. Whereas the federal survey focused exclusively on academic work, the novelists, on the other hand, write about the academic life. This necessitated the addition of extra categories to capture the richness, robustness, and vitality of the academic life.
Table 2
Percentage of Time Faculty Devote to Various Activities
in Three Academic Novels
| Faculty Activity | NSOPF | Moo | Wonder Boys | Straight Man |
| Teaching | 60 | 9 | 9 | 9 |
| Research/scholarship | 14 | 17 | 9 | 4 |
| Administration/service | 18 | 11 | 6 | 16 |
| Professional growth | 5 | 1 | 6 | 0 |
| Outside consulting | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| Drinking/drug-taking | 0 | 2 | 12 | 5 |
| Sex (having or thinking) | 0 | 11 | 8 | 11 |
| Politicking/conspiring | 0 | 12 | 2 | 13 |
| Other* | 0 | 27 | 27 | 17 |
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*The "other" category includes subjects peculiar to and individual to each novel, such as, for example, a huge pig, kidney stones, an ancient Ford Galaxie Convertible, a boa constrictor, and the suit Marilyn Monroe wore to her 1954 wedding to Joe DiMaggio.
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