The transition to liberty is not swift

Classes are over! Now I get to luxuriate in luxurious laziness for a whole year.

Wait, no. I’m not quite done. There are plans.

  1. I have to get back on track with the exercise program — I was derailed by the last week. So it’s off to the gym this morning.

  2. I have to finalize all the grades for my evolution course, less the final exam (due Thursday), because students want to know exactly where they stand right now, even though the final could easily raise or lower it by a whole letter grade.

  3. Lab audits today. As the biology safety officer, I’m supposed to wander around checking on fire extinguishers and eye washes.

  4. Our chancellor has summoned members of my division to an informal meeting this evening. I guess she doesn’t want to forget the faculty exist, so I’ll stop by and oblige.

  5. Hey, the job searches aren’t over — one more interview on Wednesday, and we’re waiting on administration approval for various things.

  6. Oh, yeah, I’ve got to write one more final exam. Maybe I’ll put that off to tomorrow.

The grand plan is to clear all this clutter out of my life in the next week, so I can buckle down to a strict writing schedule. But I want to get on it noooooooooowwwww.

Two job openings, and we aim to fill them NOW

It is the last week of classes, and they’re going to fly by in a blur because this is also the time when I’m running multiple on-campus interviews. I’m looking at Friday as the day I reach the finish line and collapse in a broken heap. It’ll be fun, as living on the cusp of catastrophe always is, until it isn’t.

Anyway, blogging is buried at the bottom of a heap of work. You know the drill — talk among yourselves while I engage in the biz.

Guilty, guilty, guilty

Bill Cosby has been found guilty on three counts of sexual assault and faces up to ten years in prison on each. He’s 80 years old, and therefore faces the end of his life in total disgrace. It’s quite the downfall for the guy whose comedy records made me laugh, who was a revered icon at Temple University when I taught there, who became immensely popular as the star of a comedy series. Now this is what he’s come to…a convicted sex offender known to all as a creep.

At least it’s good that it caught up with him at last. Too late for the women he abused, but he gets a small taste of the punishment he deserves.

The devaluation of knowledge accelerates

Here’s an announcement that kind of says it all.

Southern Illinois University Carbondale is asking department chairs to recruit graduates to serve as adjunct faculty on a volunteer basis.

A statement from the office of SIUC Chancellor Carlo Montemagno, posted on the chancellor’s website Tuesday afternoon, indicated that the university is developing a “pilot project” in collaboration with the SIU Alumni Association to “create a pool of potential, volunteer adjuncts with advanced academic degrees who might contribute as needed for up to three years after their approval.”

I’ve written a few rants about the appalling practice of universities surviving on the backs of poorly paid, part-time temporary faculty, that we churn out brilliant, educated people that we then put in such desperate straits that they’ll work for a pittance, and for long hours. But they were paid…poorly. Now we’re at the stage where the administrators, who are better paid than the faculty, are thinking they can get our intellectual labor for free.

If, 40 years ago when I was a graduate student, I had heard about this practice, I would have decided it was time to leave science and find an occupation that would keep me and my family alive. Not because I wanted to, but because it would be necessary.

We are looking at the end result of years of Republican misrule, of long efforts to starve and destroy the infrastructure of this nation.

I volunteered for this?

Warning: posting may be intermittent, and I may be particularly cranky. I volunteered to chair two search committees at once — we’re trying to find sabbatical replacements, and since I’m a terrible person abandoning my colleagues for a year, I felt obligated to put in one last surge of work to get it done. Unfortunately, it’s all coming down in the last two weeks of class, so I’m a little overwhelmed right now. A little. May break down in tears soon.

Also, stress means I wake up at 3am now and can’t get back to sleep, which further increases stress. Who designed this physiology, anyway? This is not the place to stick a feed-forward loop.

I just have to hang in there for a few more weeks, and then as a reward for when everything is all done, I’ve scheduled a colonoscopy.

I don’t think I’ve ever read Writers of the Future

I’ve been an avid devourer of science fiction for decades, so it’s a little odd that I’ve missed out on this anthology, Writers of the Future. It’s been cruising along for 34 years, and apparently they throw a colossal, glitzy gala in Hollywood every year, flying in the authors and partying…for a week? Jeeez, writers…so spoiled, they’re all just rolling in the dough.

And here I’ve never even seen the books, let alone paid for one. How are the publishers paying for this? Oh, here’s the answer.

Yikes. “L. Ron Hubbard presents…” — that’s as good as slapping a glowing green Mr Yuck sticker on the cover as far as I’m concerned. No way would I ever pick up something like that, but at least we know how a few authors can get treated swankily. It’s by selling out to a corrupt criminal cult. Tony Ortega has been writing about this PR gimmick for years, but still authors fall for it and still participate, and they should be embarrassed. Also because paying homage to an extraordinarily schlocky pulp author who founded a religion should be something to be ashamed of.

The bad news is that if you get published in Writers of the Future, no one will read it except Scientologists, and everyone who sees your name listed there will know you’re a sellout. The good news is that no one will crack the cover to see your name on the roll of the shameful.

O my fellow Academics, this poem will rip your heart out with its truth

I wept several times while reading A POEM ABOUT YOUR UNIVERSITY’S ABSOLUTE AND UNWAVERING APPRECIATION OF ITS FACULTY IN SPITE OF SAID FACULTY’S CRAP SALARIES. I might have howled a few times, too, but I blacked out at the end and the last hour has been a blur.

Maybe we need a law against too much raw honesty in our poetry. It’s dangerous.