Thursday, October 8, 2009

A Month of Boring Things - Day Twenty: Academics

Academics like to complain. A lot. If you ask one of them to teach a 4:4 or a 5:5 or, as I did last year, a 6:3, they might vomit a little bit of bile into their complete-with-snarky-comment-on-the-outside coffee mugs. Is it somewhat soul crushing to spend your time explaining something you're passionate about to 15-40 terminally bored teenagers? Of course. Is your pay fairly lousy, your field of research generally unappreciated and even reviled by the general populace, and your very existence distrusted by the hoi polloi? Yes. But, shit. If you tripled your weekly in-class time, you'd still be spotting my father fourteen hours. Also, those bizarre eccentricities that make you lovable and unique within the Ivory Tower are often illegal in the real world, and worthy of layoff.


Rating: 65%

17 comments:

edditor said...

alot

laurie said...

This has been a seriously long month.

edditor said...

Seriously, this has been a long month.

This has seriously been a long month.

This has been a seriously long month.

edditor 2 said...

I agree. a lot.

the Real Edditor said...

dont mow my fucking grass

Fake Edditor said...

That's what she said.

Internet John said...

When I was in high school, I used to imagine that university was a place where people had spontaneous and valuable conversations about cool, important, sexy things.

Now I realize it's mostly a bunch of awkward, unhappy people who stay in school their whole lives because they can't get along with normal folks.

Viking Andrew said...

Institutionalized people. I tell my students I'm more or less Charlie Manson, and fear my parole hearings.

Walter Benjamin and the Mechanical Reproductions (the band) said...

college is a great place to get your car towed or broken into from what i hear

Walter Benjamin and the Mechanical Reproductions (the band) said...

shcool is for megadweebs i usted to beat ppl up like everyone who looks at this blog all the time

Walter Benjamin and the Mechanical Reproductions (the band) said...

but that pic pwns
*pours one out for dead homie tx la mercier*

I.J. said...

As far as I can tell, the number one topic of conversation among faculty and graduate students in the A+H department at my school is photocopier jams. We have a squirrel that begs for Cheetos in the smoking area, but I'm apparently the only person who doesn't find that boring and cliché.

Walter Benjamin and the Mechanical Reproductions (the band) said...

your boring and clichay

I.J. said...

I know. That's why I haven't been posting.

Walter Benjamin and the Mechanical Reproductions (the band) said...

i ws just kidding i love you and yr posts about science and being angry and being poor

I.J. said...

I love you, RKT.

LoCo said...

After learning that womyn in academics have the fewest children, I think I'll stay in academia forever if it means spending less time pretending that my coworker's kids are cute. That was for you, my old boss's daughter Julia.