We did not make tenure for the quality of our research or our teaching in the major and beyond, but by placating the instructors and the freshmen in language teaching and by doing a great deal of very effective service.
We do not imagine this — it is objectively demonstrable and the people who did not do as we did, were sent away. We did as we did because we needed to, having run out of money to move on.
I remember the momentuous afternoon we decided to do this. I felt as though I were climbing up out of a lifeboat onto a ship and jumping off a cliff, at the same time.
We thought we ought to be able to do what we were doing by day and do what we should really do by night, but we were not able to dissociate ably enough to accomplish this. That compounded our anxiety.
It was traumatic to hobble ourselves. We had not imagined this would be necessary and it was very difficult to assimilate.
In Doña Perfecta, Pepe Rey dies and Rosario ends in a madhouse. One day long ago someone said of me: “You are trapped in a system and you fear extreme violence.”
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I washed out of a TA program because I was not obedient and really too intelligent and challenging. There were a lot of moldy oldies in the department. And anti-feminists who particularly disliked older women. I had options, but most the others in the program didn’t, so they had to do as they were told. It was not the quality of my work.
I went over to Reed College, which did not mind how I was at all and even gave me a big scholarship, and I got my M.A. in a special program designed for older students, although I took most of my classes with the regular students. Of course by that point I was too fed up to go on for the doctorate though urged by my professors, even expected to continue. I claimed it was my age (your present age), but it was really that I had become disillusioned.
There was something I wanted to do in the way of research that really needed to be done, about the capitulation of civil servants to the Nazis in Munich. This has wide implications; as far as I know no one has really researched this matter. Maybe someone will look into it some day.
Actually, I admire you for holding on. People like you are the only chance of salvation for the institutions you work in.
Yes, we are the only chance of salvation, but the institutions try to kill us.
Research project, I think you should do it. It does have wide implications. Even if you just write one article it will raise the issue. I think you should start now.
I am guessing your experience is a TA is what I started to experience as a professor. What has been so hard for me to believe is that what really matters is not your research or your teaching in the major but what some crazy freshmen, their parents, and some dead wood instructors say about the evils of your modern language instruction training.
Apparently I have a great deal of anger about this. I used to be more confused and have shame. I would rather be angry, I say.
I would have to go to Munich and look at the archives. Not in this lifetime, alas..Don’t want to do it any more. I don’t see things the same way, I guess. There is so much going on, so much to be at least concerned about and involved in to the extent that I can be and want to be.
I am really glad you are hanging in there and fighting it out. As you say, it’s like the institution is trying to kill you, but look where you are. In the heart of the beast! You can think of yourself as a warrior!!!
Institution, trying to kill me, yes, but it would be easier if they recognized this. It is actually more clever: trying to get me to kill myself and has been succeeding to some extent.
So yes, warrior *is* a way to think about it even though I am happier not thinking of myself as an enemy or outsider.