Half of the Brain :
the place all those random thoughts that flit through my head each day go to die

here I go...(rant to follow: read at own peril)

so i said to myself when I started blogging, "self, remember you're blogging about the other half of your brain, which in my case would be the non-academic, not-consumed-or-obsessed-about-work half. You are not to let discussions of that never-ending opus creep into this space."

Right, i know--foohardy wasn't it. Some ill-fated attempt on my part to deny this maddeningly absurd Institution I've chosen to spend my entire adult life wrapped up in.

Who exactly thought this thing we call the academy was such a good idea anyway? I've spent the afternnoon reading about various "metaphors of self" (ala James Olney) employed by diarists and it got me thinking, among other things, about the metaphors I would use to describe various aspects of my own life. My metaphors for the academy aren't particularly innovative or creative but they are pefectly apt.

1). The academy is like a black hole-- one big ole blob of mass collapsing uncontrollably and unstoppably in on itself... sucking into its dense nothingness everything in its path.

2). The academy is like the inbred-to-imbecility royal families of old who take more pride in their lineage then in the fact they can think straight or smile without drooling.


I've spent yet another afternoon reading and I can now say I've spent a serious 6 months steeped in research and can count on less than one hand the number of book-length studies that actually needed to be book-length. I'm fed up with navigating 250 pages of adnauseum effluvium for one or two paragraphs of important or intriguing observations. See what happens when you carry the "publish or perish" metaphor to its ultimate conclusion... So here we are in today's academic environment: BOOK to degree, 2 BOOKS to hire, 3 BOOKS to tenure... and what do we end up with . . .

nothing but a library full of crap with academics so busy being academics that they no longer have time for the other aspects of their careers which leads me full-circle back to a system (be it an astrological or familial system) collapsing in on itself.

I watched the conclusion of boy meets boy last night and I am today reminded of the thread earlier in the summer on IA sketching out reality shows centered around the professional academic. Here's mine: Prof meets Prof.

20 professors(ages and gender vary as do fields of study) share our stage and the goal is for the "Leading Prof" to narrow down the field over the course of six weeks to determine which colleague's work has the greatest bearing on his own, and which colleague might he most want to work with in developing a new innovative research project. Funding for such a project is the "romantic cruise" awaiting at the show's conclusion as is a book contract with a reputable University Press with the option for a mainstream spin-off to a national publisher should all go well.

In the end... our leading prof comes to the unfortunate yet not entirely unpredicatable conclusion that of the 20 scholars gathered no one is as brilliant as he, so he chooses himself as his most compatible collaborator-- takes himself on the cruise-- and thus continues the feeding of the ego.

The expose behind Real World: University is much the same as the expose behind the other shows that form the corpus of reality programming--be it big brother or marry a millionaire or boy meet boy-- it's fixed... all of it.

You've got folks (good folks too might I add) cranking out book after book in order to have that competitive edge. A situation that stacks the deck against most people acheiving a "successful" academic career-- you've got to have something after all to use to explain/rationalize to the large numbers of extraordinarily qualified yet jobless academics why there's simply no room for them in the inn. "We'll you just don't have 8 books out with Harvard UP, we can't offer you that assistant professorship"

Which in my own cynical world ends up translating to. . . "We really had no intention of ever finding space for you within our system, we simply needed warm bodies for indentured labor, place holders to put in front our underclass students so they don't get wise and stop forking over tuition. So, instead of doing the responsible thing and appropriately limiting our graduate programs before you spend 6, 8, 10 years of your life and $20,000, $40,000, $60,000 of your money, we'll just use you up, spit you out, and let the "free-market" take care of the glut on the other end. " HRUMPH-- (and this from folks who by and large think Republican and big business are both dirty words and who as a group tend to pride themselves on their open-minded and democratic social progressiveness. ) How's the view from way up there in that ivory tower?

I want out of my contract and I want off the show but. . . in an ironic twist that testifies to my own presence in said tower... dadgummit if I don't want the piece of paper first.

back to the grind. . .