The other reason I feel terrible working in my original field is the infantilization — I associate it working in it with shame and humiliation. And of course all the advice I rail about, the advice I tried to use to get myself to keep working on it, is infantilizing advice, so the entire atmosphere … More And now, postscripts to that letter
“Do you mean you are going to take more of a stand, rather than remain silent? . . . I pride myself for being able to glimpse in a person that elusive quality of heightened awareness. . . . YOU ARE TRULY BRILLIANT, GOD DAMNIT. Please just admit it. . . . “ That is … More Extraits d’une lettre
…as I was deciding to go on partial leave this semester. 1. The situation, and my health situation, is and has been really bad. I do not recognize this enough but the only explanation for all that keeps happening is that it is bad. Recognizing that is different from joining the culture of complaint, or … More These were the notes I had made
Discipline will not do anything useful with [the problem of self-sabotage and self-hatred]. Just the opposite – it will aggravate the issue. Discipline is a form of masochism, a symptom of self-hate, and you can’t eradicate self-hate with more of the same. And, I suppose, it is because of this that I have such an … More An important comment from Clarissa
I have become faculty advisor for the secular students’ alliance, an important organization because it creates a space in which secular students can be secular. It is not so easy here because they face ostracism from family and friends and some are not in a position to come out of the closet, so they need … More On teaching, and on how one is seen
The things I used to work on are beautiful and fascinating but I never stopped to enjoy them, really, because from time immemorial I had been employing the efficiency model in the interest of getting things done, making deadlines. Other people may have explored as undergraduates or beginning graduate students but my friends and I … More Du plaisir
In Reeducation, as we know, my ability to remain objective and maintain a certain level of detachment from things was considered to be a lack of affect … when really it was just a professional skill, as well as an unwillingness to participate in histrionics. Did I need really destructive treatment … a lethal blow … More De l’objectivité
It had a quotation about advising people on graduate school that I thought was smart but that bothered me in the end. I killed it by mistake but perhaps that was a good thing. I am going to stop railing about academic advice because in the end it is a personal issue, I am talking … More In which I find I have inadvertently killed a post
And this is the other thing I do not understand about academia, our duty to be in academia, and so on. All I ever heard about were the things you may not do if you are a professor. You may not: * desire to live somewhere pleasant, that you have any part in choosing * … More You may not
I also see perfectly what I was trying to make a radical break from and why, at a psychological level, it was virtually impossible to keep working in that field. Yes, in the best of all possible worlds one could have done it but it was far more realistic to switch. And what I considered … More And also
coldhearted scientist وداد 