coldhearted scientist وداد

Important.

So, pinning to the top, we have the results:

1. Sacrificing everything to alleged institutional needs and goals is NOT actually good professional service.

2. My research is fantastic. I deserve to do it, and the world deserves it, even if it is not in one of the university’s desired disciplines (or challenges a certain person’s agenda).

3. I deserve to live, and my living does not prevent others from doing so. To the contrary, it supports their doing so.

Note: these seem to be fundamental questions—do I deserve to have observations? to speak? to live? I am shocked to see I have such questions in me, but I clearly do, and I’ve learned I have to fight for the right to answer in the affirmative—it’s not a foregone conclusion for me. I’m not fighting any more, I’m saying yes right now, and I’m fighting for the research project(s) I came to do.

And, from a certain pov one could even say multiple lives were ruined because of one person’s ego trip and their leveraging of cajunista discourse for certain ends. I was left standing, though, and my serious research and writing career starts now, and my really good classes start now, and I have moved spiritually to English y mi norte local está allí.

And I’m over it already, but many Cajunistas are evil. Yesterday looking through files to prepare taxes, I came upon an older file, with notes trying to understand what was happening to us at work. After much thought I had realized we were being mischaracterized and misrepresented, and denigrated to our faces and around campus, because we were trying to do our fucking jobs (and not exploit state resources to our own ends, as is the custom here). Mischaracterized and denigrated by Cajunistas in power. Not Cajuns, mind you, but Cajunistas. I felt that rage again and wanted them erased from the earth again. And I am justified. These are NOT good academics or good people. And they’re mostly not even Cajuns, although they will go on about how they’ve lost their language.

Also: It’s the campaigns of hatred and personal vendettas that always seemed so pointless, not to mention destructive, to me. I’d never worked in a department like that acted this way, but then I’m from Anglo- and Latino- world. They said it was “Cajun” but I would say just European … as in, the Europe that gave us the world wars. It is SO unfortunate.

Also: “we wish we hadn’t had to hire in this position” is sort of like, “we wish you hadn’t been born.” I’m vulnerable to the kinds of discourses I’ve been discussing for my own reasons, that aren’t the fault of anyone now living, so I would think all of this was an idiosyncratic reaction of mine. Except that so many other people, all different, have also been pushed out by the dynamic that has existed, or alienated by it.

And I am also irritated at the university, every time things start to go well it has another crisis and kills programs. It’s another characteristic of abusers, and I’ve even got an individual in my department who’s like that too (things go well so they go on an abuse attack).

Axé.