There is this moment in the Gulag Archipelago where some prisoners finally arrive at their camp. After days on the miserable train they are actually looking forward to it: when they get there, they will get off the train, and they will see the camp and thus know at last where they were be living, bad as it will be, for the next long while.
But when they arrive, there is nothing there but snow, and they realize: they must also build their camp. This was the kind of realization those of us in some programs had upon arriving here at VSU: we had job descriptions and timelines on which to mark our accomplishments, but before beginning upon these we would have to create conditions in which such work could be done.
That is the stress of academic labor in my current case, and it is my self-evaluation. I am not comparing us to prisoners in a gulag, you realize, but only giving a vivid image of building something from the ground up, from a subordinate position, without institutional power.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 