Saturday, November 27, 2010

Things I am grateful for, in no particular order, from the Bitchy Bear

1. I am grateful that I got tenure.

2. I am grateful that I finally seem to have gotten out of my post-tenure slump.

3. I am grateful that my colleague is going to return from sabbatical, and thus, I will no longer have to replace her on this dumbass time-waster of a committee I took on for her.

4. I am grateful for this colleague in general, as she is pleasant, professional, and is willing to sit on dumbass university committees so that I don't have usually have to.

5. I am grateful that the sociopath who is the president of my university is too busy with his own career and thinking about himself to fuck with the faculty.

6. I am grateful for the departmental secretary, who is 75 if she is a day, in all her sweetness, decency, and organization.  She can not hide the fact that she thinks we're all nuts; but then, a goodly portion of us are nuts, so what the hell.

7. I am grateful that I only want to murder three out of close to 60 colleagues, and those three I can avoid.

8. I am grateful that by some concatenation of circumstances, I am pretty sure that I will never ever  become a narcissistic and  insecure boob like those three colleagues when I am in my 50s and 60s.  To be a rampaging case of ego-needs-stroking when you are in your 60s? Unattractive. Just saying.

9. I am grateful for the roughly 10 students out of 90 this semester who read the fucking syllabus and didn't have to write me one dumbshit email after another to get me to explain to them what's already on the fucking syllabus.

10. I am grateful for this PhD student of mine,  who is a total headcase, very bright, wonderfully gifted, and a total pain in the ass.  Sometimes the best ones aren't the easiest ones.

11. I am grateful for my advisor, who has been the closest thing I have ever had in my life to a dad. A psycho dad not unlike Red from that 70s Show, but a dad nonetheless.  It makes me happy that he takes endless delight in my successes, large and small.

12. I am grateful for pie.  Yum.

13. I am grateful that I have a job where I get to read and write for a living--AND eat AND have health insurance.

8 comments:

  1. I'm grateful for pretty much everything. Sorry to be so sappy. I tried to make a list and it got so long ...

    really. But College Misery is on the list. Thanks, everyone.

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  2. I'm just grateful that I'm not reading a student's paper with the word "greatfull."

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  3. Wait! You have a departmental secretary? I'd be grateful for that too... if we had one.

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  4. Our university president is a Sarah Palin type who is more interested in self promotion than anything else. The President's response to athletics losing millions of dollars a year and to administration costs going up is to hire more administrators and to not give raises.

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