Camino de perfección is a novel by Pío Baroja, but that is not the point. The point is that assiduous readers of this weblog, and of its many entries on Reeducation, may be scratching their heads. How is it that that Professor Zero, seeing perfectly well the many flaws in certain paths, and being quite unwilling to take the next step along these, still made an exception for Reeducation and went right ahead? How is it that she, a declared enemy of false reason, has taken its torturous staircases?
The answer to these questions is easy, and it was explained to me some time ago by a friend who at that time only knew part of the story (the story was only half over then). “You have paid a very high price for obedience,” said he. I understood, but I still felt the entire situation was an anomaly or an error. It was indeed obedience in which I had engaged, and obedience had not served me well. But what other choice was there?
But I had been taught that once we attained perfect obedience, a state of perfect subjection, an unquestioned and unquestioning place, perhaps, in the Sartrean “look,” abuse would end. If we died a virtuous death, as it were, we would be resurrected. We would have graduated, and our lives would start. I was seeking that virtuous death and the reward it would bring: a second life on Earth, now in freedom.
On television during the time I was learning these things was Martin. If he showed the world he was willing to have firehoses turned on him again and again, he would be free at last. I believe I misinterpreted that, or misapplied it.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
The reason I do not like being a professor is that it is not like being an intellectual, it is like being a high school teacher, a social worker, a librarian, a secretary, a mother, a sorority girl, an IT person, and a government employee. I saw this in my first week of professordom and wanted to quit and retrain – I was living near a large city at the time, and it was a good place to do that – but followed the common advice to “give things a chance.”
wow. that is exactly how I felt in the beginning & let me tell you being on sabbatical is not helping change my mind. It is a weird thing how academics encourage their students to finish even as they hate their jobs, then seasoned scholars encourage juniors to suck it up even as they hate their jobs, and so on. Someone has to have the common sense to stop it. I tell my students the truth about what they will have to do to be successful in academe and then ask them to think long and hard about whether they are capable and willing to do so. (Note – of course there are lots of people who love their jobs, or love them enough to keep doing them, I am just thinking of all the disgruntled people paving the way for new generations of disgruntled people in order to justify their own choices instead of telling the truth in order to help other people make better ones.)
OK everybody, I split the post up so this comment now actually refers to Part III:
https://profacero.wordpress.com/2007/09/08/roads-to-perfection-iii/
Thanks, profbwoman! So I am not just being histrionic – !!! Ay, qué maravilla, with this feeling of affirmation and so on I think I might be able to get through the day!