Before living here I wouldn’t have said stealing was the essence of Cajun culture, but they have done everything they could to convince me that that is exactly what it is; they just use tourist paraphernalia to mask their wickedness. And the worst thing I ever heard at UL was a Cajun professor justifying hiring off the tenure track by saying “these Cajun kids don’t need to work with research faculty.” He really showed what he thought of his people at that point, so if you are insulted by what I am saying, look at him.
Their nostalgias are for the French Empire and a pre-Civil Rights, pre-Abolition U.S., and I’m aligned with Republican France and other revolutionary projects, and we will never agree.
I can’t be polite any more to these guys who say please feel sorry for me, my Ph.D. isn’t as good as yours, be tolerant. It is true, not only is my Ph.D. better than theirs, my counting skills and my ethics are better, too.
[This all has to do with workplace abuse and it does come from just a few people, and their acolytes of course, using Cajun suffering as a justification for their bullying. They had power and I tried to mollify them, or to survive them. I guess I am just becoming aware of how much I cooperated with them by trying to get along. That cooperation is what I am trying to pull out at the root. Yes, everything they have said is true: I have the better degree, the better training, the better experience, and the greater talent, and it hurts them. I wasn’t thinking I was better, or trying to lord it over them, and the genuine respect I gave them only made them feel more threatened. But it was and is their problem, not mine, and most importantly it was and is a problem only they can fix. I, in any case, and not going to try to make myself less-scary any more, or hope they behave better any more. I also don’t respect them any more, because they have done their very best, for 27.5 years, to show me why I should not. From now on, I am only tolerating them and stepping around them. Suggestions for improvement to this policy are welcome, but overall, I will not be moved.]
(Anyone can say I’m being overly dramatic, and say yes-but. However: I think that has to be done BEFORE, not after, you matizar.)
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 