coldhearted scientist وداد

ACADEMIA

I have criticized Robert Boice’s writings on writing not for their actual content but because, I have said, they speak to people who do not know how to set up a writing program and need to know, or people who do not like to write and need to discover a way to write nevertheless.

I feel restless reading Boice because I already know and use everything he has to say, except to the extent that he seems to expect people to write like a machine, which I disagree with. However I am wondering whether Boicean strategies might apply to me more globally, insofar as it is virtually my entire job I do not like.

I do not dislike my field, I do not dislike writing, I am more interested in serious teaching than is good for me, and I am downright talented at administration. For all of these reasons I dislike being a professor: it does not offer one very many interesting opportunities in research, teaching, or service/administration.

The main professor jobs I have had prevented one from being a professor while claiming to encourage and demand it.  The cognitive dissonance is more than I can bear. I also dislike:

+ having to live in the country
+ having to live far from the mountains and seas
+ having to live in humid climates
+ not making enough money to be able to afford weekends in town, or regular voyages in lands of mountains, seas and dry air
+ the lack of access to books, culture, intellectual life
+ teaching mostly University of Phoenix type courses
+ not having input on choice of course materials
+ not being allowed to be creative or to reach for stars
+ having to deal with so many professors, that is, so many socially inept people now taking revenge on happier people for being happier
+ in an environment with no context for it, trying to conduct abstract research about art when one could be undertaking some of the really urgent work that needs to be done.

This is to say that the reason I do not like being a professor is that I liked college and graduate school. I think people who tell me I should like being a professor, or that I should be resigned to being a professor, ought to realize what being a professor is before they tell me again. I think they should realize that I am not like them: I am not the complaining sort, I am not histrionic, and I am not given to existential angst. I am discussing concrete problems. “Money would not help.” YES IT WOULD. “Living somewhere you enjoyed would not help.” YES IT WOULD. “Feeling that your work was meaningful would not help.” YES IT WOULD. “Feeling empowered and feeling that you have some kind of control over your life is sinful.” IT IS NOT.

The sacrifices one undertakes to be a professor – the atonement for having enjoyed college and graduate school – would all be fine if I had to do this to support a family, or something like that, but the irony is that if I had had a family to support I would have gotten realistic about life and taken a job in business instantly. I know this from the times I have been pregnant: the hormones make you start thinking clearly, thinking like a grownup, right away. Being in academia I tend to think more like a slave, which is inconvenient.

AUTODEMOLICION

I think my error for the month of November was in trying to say everything was all right. Every time I try to say everything is all right and that I am happy and functional, I find that I: stop sleeping enough, stop eating right, stop working out, start smoking again, and stop thinking clearly about work. I put all of my energy into saying everything is all right. But really everything is disastrous, and I am better off saying so. Only when I say everything is disastrous can I see clearly which things are not, and point myself toward them.

Everything is disastrous and this is not just a passing mood of mine, nor is it an emergency. Emergency measures, stopgap measures, mood elevating measures, none of this is required. Disaster relief is required, and that is a much more thoroughgoing program.

ACADEMIA

The day I realized I did not like being a professor was the first day. Nobody believed me. One knew professorship had its problems, they said. I was in an adjustment period, they said. I was just having a bad hair day, they said. I should have realized this back in graduate school, they said. I would eventually admit I loved being a professor, or at least resign myself and admit that life was an unhappy thing, they said. However I LIKED GRADUATE SCHOOL and I had GOOD REASONS TO ATTEND it and I DO NOT LIKE BEING A PROFESSOR and I INSIST THAT IT IS POSSIBLE to have both of these sentiments at the same time. I deny that life is an unhappy thing, and I reject the proposition that maturity is resignation. In fact, I propose the opposite.

AUTODEMOLICION

I wish to reiterate a few points about Reeducation and my errors with it.

1. It said my success as a person was false, and that I was fatally flawed. Due to these defects I had no right to my connection to the cosmic flow. I needed to cut this off and submit to a stronger and more univocal power.

2. It said I was unfeeling. I should reject what I knew deeply in order to let myself be buffeted about by passing emotions.

3. It said I had too much control over my own life, too much confidence. I ought to come out of “denial” to let myself be buffeted about by fate. Say yes to everything, follow other peoples’ advice, do not trust my own feelings (my own feelings, to the extent they might exist in some deficient way, had to be wrong feelings because my father is an alcoholic).

I want to say once again that all these propositions are wrong. I have to fight them every day. The facts are:

1. If one is doing well, one is doing well. Apparent success and happiness are not NECESSARILY false even if one has not had a perfect background. Most people do not have perfect backgrounds and everyone deserves to do well, not just the small elite with perfect backgrounds.

2. Histrionics are not feelings. Passing emotions MAY be moments of breakthrough or insight but they are less, not more real than reason or lasting feeling.

3. This idea that one “has too much control” simply does not apply to me. My error tends to be obedience and the relinquishing of control. I am not inappropriately confident. Sorry, folks, you fail to convince me.

ON THAT QUESTION OF “CONTROL”

Finally, I have an intuition on Christians and on Americans I have not fully worked out but whose traces I would like to put down here.

Christians repeatedly say that the reason they need to humble themselves before God is that before they converted they thought they were masters of the universe. It is human nature, they say, to believe one is a master of the universe, and that is why we all need Christ and God.

I have also been repeatedly told that although everyone is born believing they are a master of the universe, people whose parents are alcoholics only believe this all the more strongly. That is why they need both Al-Anon and a monotheistic God.

If it is in fact true that most people think they are masters of the universe, I really wonder where they get this idea. I deny that it is human nature or that it is that common. My hypothesis is that it the belief in one’s own superiority that the Christians and their acolytes accuse themselves and others of is really just a white American thing.

Axé.