Bueno, gente, I want to start this meme while it is hot even though I, personally, will have to come back later to do a really good job at it, as it will take some thought. But the meme is, a) what are you actually ashamed of, and b) what have you been shamed for? … More Self-Tagging Shame Meme
Now it is time to link to On Shame, the best post ever of all those I have read. Read it at its home, because I am only reproducing the opening riff. After this it gets truly deep. After unabashedly complaining about having an single income family, of which she is not the earner, that … More The Best Post Ever
PROFESSION The reason I do not like being a professor is that it is not like being an intellectual, it is like being a high school teacher, a social worker, a librarian, a secretary, a mother, a sorority girl, an IT person, and a government employee. I saw this in my first week of professordom … More Roads to Perfection III
Camino de perfección is a novel by Pío Baroja, but that is not the point. The point is that assiduous readers of this weblog, and of its many entries on Reeducation, may be scratching their heads. How is it that that Professor Zero, seeing perfectly well the many flaws in certain paths, and being quite … More Roads to Perfection I
*Las cabezas bien pensantes is the title of a story by Elena Garro in the collection Andamos huyendo Lola. I spend a lot of time explaining to undergraduates who are the first in their family to attend college how things work and what the possibilities are. The candor of their questions is refreshing and makes … More Unas Cabezas Bien Pensantes
Since, very tragically, I cannot find my files I have decided I will fly blind into class, grounded in what I know from the last time I taught this subject and in what I have been thinking about it over the past few days. Instead of refining the beautiful handouts I cannot find, I will … More On Level Playing Fields
Few people know that the Reeducation I actually undertook was not my first attempt. My first, short-lived attempt took place in Brazil. I had long planned to seek Reeducation and where I was living, everyone I knew was in Reeducation. If you had dollars and a good black market money changer, Reeducation with a Famous … More Brazilian Reeducation
This is one of the longest and most unwieldy anti-Reeducation posts I wrote in July. If you are tired of the topic I recommend my favorite recent post, New Orleans Noir. Also, nobody has commented on Puden, partly because it is strange and partly because it is in Danish. It is, however, there to be … More The Book on Reeducation
A friend of mine who is a department chair is irritated at one of her assistant professors because he teaches extra courses, sometimes at night and sometimes in summer. This is to finance his professional travel and equipment, which are not provided by the university, and which cannot be financed through grants because granting agencies … More American Illusions
Hurricane Katrina was two years ago today. It was also my cat’s fifth birthday. Today he is seven. He has lost two fangs in the intervening time and Louisiana has lost two fangs as well. I have lost a molar to Katrina-related family tragedy, still unresolved, but I have gained four fangs by rejecting Reeducation. … More Fangs
