Note to readers: please remember the asynchronous and melded nature of all my posts. No positions are currently open in my current department.
If the job I have to offer is so good that well qualified candidates should be beating upon my door to get it, then why are they not doing so? Especially since they are not, I regret the decision (not mine) to shut the last person to hold said post out.
Why do faculty and graduate students feel they have to either idealize or demonize academic work, to the tune of either «It is the best, and anyone who does not think so is ungrateful», or «It is the worst, I have so much work and my soul is suffering so»?
I hypothesize that these attitudes are two sides of the same coin. We have already established that the suffering persona so many in good positions take on is a form of boasting and also gatekeeping. I think the attitude that everything is wonderful, is a form of boasting and gatekeeping, too, particularly as it interdicts nuanced discussion of the actual situation.
If you make a living wage and work at an institution whose library has acquired books in the present century, and you get to give interesting courses in field, and you have colleagues in field or related fields sur place that you actually see, then I certainly understand any rose-colored view you may have.
I do not appreciate it, however, when those of us who do not enjoy such advantages, are called turncoats for considering alternative avenues which do pay a living wage, do offer resources for research, do offer viable retirement programs, or do pay into Social Security.
I also do not appreciate it when the torn ambivalence of those of us wounded from being lodged in nests of vipers, is condemned. If you do not know what it is to be asked to work with a hand tied behind your back and your feet in quicksand, and told that if you were more virtuous you would see that you are in a bed of roses, then you are not qualified to speak on these matters.
What is behind the need for idealization? Why is it not all right to say that this is what you have done, of the four or five interesting things you could have done? Why is it so necessary to suggest that dissatisfication merely indicates lack of interest or commitment? Why the demand for such extreme loyalty, for the belief that this is the only worthwhile thing in the world?
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 