3/- It’s gorgeous here, and Dame Eleanor should come back. I have discerned that “take a job, any job” means, to some, “you may have to take jobs in places as horrible as Madison or Ann Arbor.” I have also discovered that the people who think there are only academic jobs, simply have no information.
I wanted to walk off work the first week of my first professor job, move to L.A. and get some kind of research or writing work. I am sure I could have done it.
At the time I thought it very unwise to move away from where there was other work. That is a real bridge or ship burning and it is unwise, but professors push people to it, like pushing them off a cliff.
2/- I have finally understood why people keep repeating that publications are the only thing that count. There are people who do still not know this, do not believe it, do not expect it really to be true, or do not agree with it and want to make it untrue. It is to these people that those who keep on preaching that publications are the only thing that count, are speaking.
1/- I am in California, a superior place to many or most, and not worth renouncing unless for something else that is really good. People keep saying I am completely different from other professors and it is perhaps that I, unlike most professors, am not mean or supercilious or condescending or immature or ignorant of life. I keep finding that professors are stunningly unrealistic when not downright delusional.
A professor would say I should want to be practically bound, mutilated, and thrown into a Siberian cell just for the sake of a tenure track or tenured job, any tenure track or tenured job. Otherwise, one is not a real scholar, or serious about one’s work, or valid as an intellectual, or worthy as a person. If one takes a job that is not an academic job, one never deserved an academic job anyway.
I am sorry but those who say such things are low people. I mean, they are really low people. They should not be in the kinds of positions they have, or say such things to students.
0/- I am considered different from all other faculty because I am not interested in aimless discussion or rote memorization. This has been an issue in all my jobs except the R1 jobs. This really surprises me about the other places, but it is true.
#OccupyHE
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 