This got started when I posted a cowboy poem to my WordPress site with the title “Why Do They Write for Short Pay?”[1] The poem delved into the phenomenon of cowboys writing poetry, which many have done as long as there have been cowboys.[2] The title is actually a play on the cowboy song “The Night Rider’s Lament,”[3] which goes in part,
Last night as I was out a ridin’ graveyard shift, midnight ‘till dawn the moon was as bright as a readin’ light for a letter from an old friend back home. He asked me why do you ride for your money? Why do you rope for short pay? You ain’t gettin’ nowhere and you’re losing your share. Boy, you must have gone crazy out there. But he’s never seen the Northern Lights, Never seen a hawk on the wing. He’s never seen Spring hit the Great Divide, And never heard old camp cookie sing. When I shared the poem on Facebook, I had replies from two people who told me the title made them think they were about to read a poem about academics.This makes perfect sense given that both of them are academics. Because they both know me, they were not surprised to find the poem was actually about cowboys rather than university professors, who labor as researchers in their field in addition to teaching classes and all the other things they are pressed to do.
So, in case no one has done it before, I thought I would consider ways cowboys and academics might be alike. On one side of this issue, I have fair credentials from having been a professor and academic administrator for some 38 years. On the other side, the cowboying side, my credentials are admittedly thin, but—at least in my mind—relevant. In my youth, I worked on cattle ranches hauling hay, feeding cattle, rounding cattle up and working them, doctoring them, building fences, and so on. In addition, from almost as early as I can remember, I have been enamored of cowboys and the cowboy life. To claim this as a credential may be a reach, as no doubt many of my generation have similar sentiments fueled by Roy Rogers, Audie Murphy, and John Wayne.
Because there are many obvious differences between what cowboys do and what academics do, it may be quite a challenge to find what they might have in common, but I’ll try to throw a loop around at least a few. In the Dictionary of Occupational Titles[4] — that long piece of work the government uses to classify all kinds of work — to find occupations similar to “cowboy” you go through these categories: Agricultural, Fishery, Forestry, and Related Occupations / Animal Farming Occupations / Domestic Animal Farming Occupations, where among a rather long list you will find: TOP SCREW (alternate titles: lead rider, ramrod, top waddy); LIVESTOCK RANCHER; FARMWORKER, LIVESTOCK (ranch hand); and COWPUNCHER (puncher, ranch rider, rider). Sadly, the term cowboy does not appear. Yet, I am willing to take cowpuncher as a synonym, especially as the description given is:
Performs any combination of the following duties on a beef cattle ranch to attend to beef cattle: Herds, castrates, and brands cattle. Inspects and repairs fences, windmills, watering troughs, and feed containers. Feeds cattle supplemental food during shortages of natural forage. Trains saddle horses. Rides beside horse being trained to prevent bucking horse or rider from being injured.
These titles are assigned numbers, the number for cowpuncher being 410.674-014. Put that in your search engine and it will bring up the DOT title and description for cowpuncher.
The same exercise for academics goes like this down the DOT trail: Professional, Technical, and Managerial Occupations / Occupations in Education / Occupations in College and University Education / Faculty Member, College or University. I won’t give the whole description here, but just note that it covers teaching, grading, researching, advising, and committee work. The DOT number for Faculty Member is 090.227-010, in case you want to look it up. Other titles, mostly administrative, are given as well, and fall into the broad, informal category of academics.
At this point, it is worth noting that while the term cowboy does not appear in the DOT, neither does the term academic. Nevertheless, both are used commonly to refer to the two types of workers being compared in this essay.
So, what do cowboys and academics have in common?
- Both cowboys and academics are front-line workers in their respective industries.
Although they each are supported by a large network of associated workers, without them the core activities of their industries do not get done. The next time you have a sizzling steak put before you, thank the server but also say a word of thanks in your heart for the cowboys that took care of that animal and moved it on its way to your plate. And when you are interacting with your banker, doctor, accountant, lawyer, and your kids’ teachers¾among many others¾thank those professors who taught them English, history, mathematics, biology, and so forth, for moving that person along the way toward being educated and trained in the ways needed to make a difference in your life.
- To become either a cowboy or an academic requires specific preparation.
Nobody becomes a cowboy overnight, and nobody becomes an academic overnight either. Years of preparation are necessary for either pursuit. The preparation is different, with each being prepared within the same systems where they will work. The bodies of knowledge necessary for them to be effective require an ongoing pursuit of mastery, and their skill sets must be continually sharpened. Academics are schooled in, well, schools, as that’s the setting they will work in. They learn not only their subject matter — be it biology, business, or English literature — but also methods of instruction. Cowboys are schooled on the ranch, range, corral, sale barn, tack room, and loading chute. They learn about cattle and how to care for them, horses and how to ride them and use them to herd cattle, and a host of other activities and skills needed on a ranch. And most of them begin their schooling at an early age, growing up on a ranch or at least in a ranching community.
Of course, many cowboys are educated in the classroom too, learning in the college and university setting the science of animal husbandry, management techniques, and the economics of surviving in agriculture. Also, many cowboys are broadly well-educated in areas outside of ranch life. For instance, and to the issue that got this treatise going, cowboy poets are often well-versed in literature and the humanities in general. And, in rural areas, whether Western or not, there are academics who are also involved in ranching, and vice versa.
Academics also are many times the sons and daughters of academics. The same holds true for doctors, lawyers, welders, accountants, and restauranteurs. It’s hard for anyone to identify with an occupation or lifestyle to which they have not been exposed. And it’s natural for kids growing up to be influenced in their career choice by the example of people close to them. Ranching, and its necessary component of cowboying, are often multi-generational pursuits, with at least some ranch kids growing up to be ranchers themselves. Opportunity matters too. I doubt many kids growing up on Long Island aspire to the ranching life or a career as cowboys.
- For cowboys and academics, job satisfaction is strongly affected by their relationships with their bosses.
While my time as a ranch worker was limited, it was a good time, largely because of the people I worked for. For example, when I went to work for Paul Haines, who had the biggest cattle ranch around, he showed me what he wanted me to do and left me to do it, which was to shovel ears of corn into a big feed mill attached to a tractor to make feed for his cattle. I did other work for him too, feeding cattle mostly, but whatever the job, he didn’t hang around, instead he left us alone to do our work. I appreciated his management style. A dozen or so years later, when I took a faculty position teaching psychology, I found myself again in a situation in which I was left alone to do the work — at least the main part, which was classroom instruction.
Cowboys and academics alike have to be self-starters who can work without a lot of close supervision. That can only happen if they have the respect they need from their bosses. A boss who gets in the way or otherwise interferes with what has to be done may be plagued with constant turnover. Both cows and college students require close attention, and having to keep one eye on the boss all the time makes the job more stressful than it has to be. Mutual trust goes a long way toward making harmonious relationships, whether on the ranch or the college campus. Also, for cowboys and academics alike, being left alone to do their jobs depends on their competence in doing their jobs.
- Cowboys and academics work within systems that rank them and value them by rank.
The cattle ranching system is much less formal than the higher education system. I have never seen a cowboy employee handbook that describes what training, experience, or competencies are necessary to progress from what might be called a “button” just starting out with much to learn and more to live up to before ever being called a cowpuncher, let alone a top hand. On the other hand, every college or university has a Faculty Handbook that spells out in detail the qualifications necessary to advance through the ranks of instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, and all the way to professor. Most coveted of all is the designation of tenured professor. Think of a cowboy who is not only a top hand but who has as much job security as any agricultural worker could ever expect to have.
At the bottom of the scale for academics are adjunct instructors, sometimes called contingent or contract faculty, because they are hired on a course-by-course, term-by-term basis as needed to fill out the course offering schedule. Their counterparts among cowpunchers are those hands hired for temporary positions and not kept on through the winter months, a point that is explored further in the next section.
- The work of both cowboys and academics follows seasonal patterns.
Concerning the rhythm of their work, cowboys and academics could be said to have common ground. The academic year, running from fall to spring, complements the agricultural season. When kids on farms and ranches provided necessary labor, the only time they could be spared to attend school was in the fall after harvest, until it was time to plant in the spring. In contrast, academics have traditionally lived by a 9-month schedule roughly September to May. From freshman orientation in the fall to graduation in late spring, academic life follows a regular cycle more or less opposite to the peak agricultural season.
A lot of ranch bunkhouses run full in the spring and summer and slack way off to a skeleton crew through the late fall and winter. From spring calving to summer gathering and fall shipping, cowboying has peak times and slack times. It’s just the nature of cattle ranching that at times a smaller crew is all that’s needed and at other times, when a lot of cattle have to be gathered, moved, branded, sorted, loaded, and so on, a much larger crew is needed. Classic cowboy poet, Bruce Kiskaddon, captured the end of the cycle in ranch life well in his poem “When They’ve Finished Shipping Cattle in the Fall.”[5] Here are a few lines:
When the last big steer is goaded Down the chute, and safely loaded; And the summer crew has ceased to hit the ball; When a feller starts a draggin’ To the home ranch with the wagon— When they’ve finished shipping cattle in the fall.
Though they have different kinds of work, each occupation has predictable tasks that run their course, only to start again the next year.
- Cowboys and academics alike are responsible for seeing other creatures through some part of their development.
This may be a rough fit, and some may take offense at a suggestion that college students can be likened to beef cattle. Certainly, I am thinking only figuratively, not literally in this comparison. My point here is that as cowboys care for cattle through some period of development as they make their way to market, academics care for students through 4 years (give or take) as they make their way to the job market (I’m sure you saw that coming). There are distinct differences, though. For one thing, college students choose to put themselves into an academic system and are (more or less) willing participants in the process. By contrast, cattle are distinctly less than willing participants. These differences are why professors can get by without horses, lariats, and catch pens. About the closest we come to the actual herding of students in a physical sense is at the commencement ceremony where we put them under the direction of a student marshal who is responsible for getting them in line for the processional and eventually cross the stage. Come to think of it, I’ve seen a few times when the student marshal looked like he could use a lariat or maybe a cattle prod to keep the graduates in line.
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I know that many comparisons like these could be drawn between other occupations. The conditions and factors that make either cowboying or teaching a joy or a burden also apply to other types of work. Both cowboys and academics deserve respect and recognition for their contributions to the common good. Moreover, both contributed to that steak the server put in front of you at your favorite steakhouse. And for those of you who are vegan, they benefitted you too, because some of the people critical to your survival and success were also nourished by steaks and burgers from cattle tended by cowboys and brought to the plate by people in a myriad of disciplines that are a part of the broader economy — people whose educations ranged across the liberal arts, business, and other disciplines crucial to our economy.
[1] https://gbreland.com/2023/05/02/why-do-they-write-for-no-pay/
[2] “The roots of cowboy poetry can be found in the post-Civil War period, when the open grasslands of the American West, increasingly emptied of their Native populations by disease, assault, and forced movement to reservations, became available for exploitation by grazers and herders using cattle from Mexico and Texas and herding techniques learned in part from the vaqueros of Old Mexico. Trail drives moved herds from Texas northward to railroad stockyards . . . . Along the way, a variety of poem and song traditions were recalled, modified, reinvented, and regionalized.” David Stanley, “Cowboy Poetry Then and Now,” in David Stanley and Elaine Thatcher (eds.), Cowboy Poets & Cowboy Poetry. (2000). University of Illinois Press.
[3] http://www.nightriderslament.com/lyrics.html
[4] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/oalj/PUBLIC/DOT/REFERENCES/DOT04A
[5]Kiskaddon, B. “When They’ve Finished Shipping Cattle in the Fall,” in H. Cannon (1985). Cowboy Poetry: A Gathering. Gibbs M. Smith, Peregrine Smith Books, pp. 34-37. To hear the poem recited by Waddie Mitchell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdnORepX_2Y
Garry Breland 