1- Random greetings to Clio Bluestocking, who has written an excellent post in response to Historiann’s call.
2- We are expected to dislike research and have difficulty with writing, but what is difficult for me is giving of myself to the point where I barely have enough plasma left to function. I am not cut out to be a professor because I am too research oriented.
3- This semester I have taught more than ever before — five courses, like Clio Bluestocking in her old job — and it has been exhausting. I can tell you that research is centering and grounding, and not doing research causes grief.
4- From August to November I still did research but now I have to get caught up on classes, truly. Giving up research is always depressing so my current plan is, 15 minutes a day of research – not toward any project – not with any form of pressure, but 15 minutes of research just so I do not feel so depleted.
5- Right now I would like to sleep for a long time and then get up and read the papers. After that I would go work out, and then I would take a long walk, either on the beach or through town. Then I would work on class preparation. I would be teaching two courses in field – field being literature and cultural theory – and I would be doing it right. I would still have my senior thesis people and graduate students, of course. Then I would have research, and normal committee work rather than a major administrative assignment. That is all I would have.
6– I do not have that life. I wish there were academic advice sites which did not presuppose these kinds of conditions. I really wish it were not presupposed that even under those conditions it is terribly difficult to publish and get ahead, and that even under those conditions it is terribly difficult to enjoy life.
6- I would see movies, have days off when I went to art galleries, and did recreational reading. I would also do reading in field not undertaken in service of anything in particular I might teach or write.
7– I do not have that life. I wish there were academic advice sites which did not presuppose these kinds of conditions. I really wish it were not presupposed that even under those conditions it is terribly difficult to publish and get ahead, and that even under those conditions it is terribly difficult to enjoy life.
8- I have had VAP jobs that offered the life I describe, and one real job that did. When I had that job, Reeducation said I was doing so well in life that I must be in denial — people like me do not deserve to do so well — and so I stopped doing so well. I still think I am right, though, and that my model of life is right.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
“Tard, très tard, j’ai découvert la véritable nature de la science, des homes qui la produisent. J’ai compris que le cheminement de la science ne consiste pas en une suite de conquêtes inéluctables, qu’elle ne parcourt pas la voie royale de la raison humaine; qu’elle n’est pas le résultat nécessaire, le produit inévitable d’observations sans appel imposées par l’expérimentation et le raisonnement. J’ai trouvé là un monde de jeu et d’imagination, de manies et d’idées fixes. A ma surprise, ceux qui attegnaient l’inattendu et inventaient le possible, ce n’étaient pas des homes de savoir et de méthode. C’étaient surtout des esprits insolites, des amateurs des difficultés, des êtres à vision saugrenue. Chez ceux qui occupaient le devant de la scène venaient souvent se déployer d’étranges mélanges d’indiffèrence et de passion, de rigueur et de bizarrerie, de volonté de puissance et de naiveté. C’était le triomphe de la singularité.
A mon entrée au laboratorie d’André Lwoff à l’Institute Pasteur, je me suis trouvé dans un univers inconnu. Un univers fait d’imagination sans cesse et de critique sans fin, oú le jeu consistait à inventer sans cesse un monde possible, ou un morceau de monde possible pour le confronter au monde réel. Faire des experiences, c’était donner libre cours à toutes les idées…C’était fabriquer sans cesse de “petites lumières”…..
La statue intèrieure, François Jacob, Prix Nobel de Médecine 1965
I *love* this quotation. Love it.
I think it’s a good model. Kind of off-topic, but I was hoping you’d comment on my most recent post about your experience with undergraduate syllabi at our shared undergrad institution: like mine, or not? (Different departments.)
That makes lots of sense to me. I have a friend who just said fugeddaboutit and got a job as research faculty, starting as some kind of visiting professor gig, and he loves it. It’s out west though and people are less … eastern there.
That’s interesting. What’s weird is I’m even happy to teach. Not be police / prison guard / nurse / and all that, though, and that is the problem. And I get *so* bored just teaching skills, I want some kind of inquiry going on, and it seems that many faculty still think of teaching, even at the graduate level, as skills plus regurgitate professor’s views. It’s depressing.