You all know that I support the idea of venting from time to time. But recently I've just become so annoyed at CM and its bitter cacophony of bitter voices.I don't know why summer is so hard for you. I've got two articles in progress and have just returned from a rather important conference. My colleagues there were charged, engaged, and not a one vented or bitched about their students. They were pushing forward with scholarship and teaching ideas. (I even found a new possible collaborator for future papers, and yes, my paper went great.)
Since returning from that I've tidied up several parts of my second book proposal, and celebrated the doctoral defense of one of my long time friends. It's great to be in academe. It's great to have the jobs we have and the mission to teach and lead, write and read.
If you wallow in "misery," you will be miserable. Is that a point you miss?
XOXO,
Katie
Oh look! I just saw a gumdrop unicorn frolicking under a rainbow!
ReplyDeleteKatie, you're so lucky, don't you even see that??? You have a real job with money to send you to conferences. And don't say you deserve that job, because I know dozens of people who are ivy-trained, very talented, and 6 years out still unemployed (or piecing together 5 or 6 adjunct jobs to make ends meet).
ReplyDeleteIf you think your position is due to your incredible talent rather than your incredible luck, you're wrong. Be grateful for your luck.
Meh. After months of no Katie, this is what we get? It has all the right parts: condescension, self-flattery, a BFF and nicely missing the point of this blog all together ... but it lacks that pizzazz that I've come to expect.
ReplyDeleteI understand that we each might slack off at certain things during the summer. I look forward to reading your better work this fall.
So Katie's not unhappy, so others shouldn't be unhappy either? Hope that chick doesn't teach logic.
ReplyDeleteOh sheeyaatt, my summer was going down a-ite 'til 'bout 10 seconds ago. Now my lunch is going to come back up.
ReplyDeleteI guarantee that I'm happier with this summer than you, Katie. You can't win this game!
ReplyDeleteOh look! Someone who doesn't have to teach this summer!
ReplyDeleteOh, Katie, me and my collection of Hello Kitty dolls are having a tea party. We're going to blow bubbles and shout self-affirming mottos into the wind. That'll get all my papers graded, I'm sure. It'll make my dean give us professional development money so I can present at any of the conferences I was accepted to. Our hiring freeze will be eliminated and the world will be RIGHT after that.
ReplyDeleteLogic 101, anyone? I'm convinced that most people on this blog are more productive and conscientious than others in the world. Productivity is NOT a problem here. The problem is that OTHERS aren't productive or conscientious. And that's when we have to call them out instead of spreading sunshine and rainbows to the wind.
Hey Katie: Thanks for your perspective. Now fuck off into the air.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, if life is going that well for you, what are you doing here? Have you forgotten that the whole purpose of this blog is for people to vent about the various aspects of this job that make them miserable?
You're about on par with our resident troll, "Anonymous". Now go guard a bridge or something.
I'm going to butt in and play the bad guy....Katie has a right to give us her opinion under the free speech rights ganted by the Dead Mens' Sheet of Paper (US Constitution). She has a point that reading this site can sometimes "taste" like drinking a bucket of arsenic, a solid wall of bitter walnuts.
ReplyDeleteHOWEVER, none of that excuses the absolute douchebaggery of the tone or the content of the post. College Misery is for gnashing your teeth, cursing your luck, and loathing those good-for-nothing swine the school calls students and I call "future fry cooks." Complaining about the bitchery is bitchery as well, and no-one is above the fray; if you want out, the door is over there.
Sure, Katie has the right to give us her opinion, just as she did at RYS.
ReplyDeleteI just wish this entry was near the quality of her RYS submissions.
Oh, katy. Go have drunk lesbian sex with your students and let the rest of us enjoy our misery. Scissor me timbers!
ReplyDeleteKatie sounds like the poster child to get gullible students to take a humanities Ph.D.--and then they may still wind up as a fry cook...Strelnikov, thank you for giving that dizzying glance of the future.
ReplyDeleteI don't know; I actually find CM cheering at times, maybe because I'm pretty sure that the people who talk so brightly about their work and their students at conferences also have dark nights of the soul (and/or are outright lying for PR purposes).
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm enjoying the various vaguely apocalyptic scenarios, each with a different small, apparently doomed, vehicle, that are playing out in the header.
The biggest problem with this post is it's not miserable. I rely on CM to give me my daily dose of misery to make me glad I have a tenure track job with, mainly, decent colleagues and students... and when the misery does strike, CM is a refuge.
ReplyDelete@Charles: Wait... hot lesbian sex with students is an option for us??? Why have I never been told of this?
ReplyDeleteI'm willing to forgive 'chipper' if it's funny or thoughtful. This is neither... and ends up simply contributing to my misery. Maybe that was the plan all along???
ReplyDelete@Ancillary Adjunct
ReplyDeleteI wasn't talking about the grad students....brainless BA holders have been winding up working the fry cooker at Mickey D's. Thanks for the callback, though.
"XOXO"? You should not ever be allowed at a conference anywhere. Ever.
ReplyDelete@Lex
ReplyDeleteIt's a deal of hers, like Yaro's almost-broken English, or my homicidal rage at undergraduates and the administration. You'll get used to it....
OR ELSE.
(I keed, I keed...)
pass me the insulin, please
ReplyDeleteWhere did my comment go? Weird.
ReplyDeleteWell, then, OK, another one, different this time:
ReplyDeleteParagraph 1: condescending
Paragraphs 2 and 3: boastful, and not nearly as impressive as the tone suggests (whoopie, Katie, that's the bare minimum level of productivity where I teach).
Paragraph 4: condescending and overly simplistic.
Katie, please to get a dictionary and look up: irony, satire, hyperbole, personae, meiosis, tapinosis. CM is, above all, a rhetorical exercise in the classical sense of that term, where we all perform ourselves as far more pissy than we really can be on the job. I'm sure there is a blog for overly earnest self-affirming back-patters. Or you could start one.
"Wait... hot lesbian sex with students is an option for us??? Why have I never been told of this?"
ReplyDeleteOh, yea, it's all the rage these days...
@Frog and Toad: "I'm sure there is a blog for overly earnest self-affirming back-patters. Or you could start one. "
ReplyDeleteLOL! I love the calm and clear way you summarize the problem with this post.
This is the best post I have ever read on this site.
ReplyDeleteI feel exactly like you do, Katie. Thanks for the great post!
I think she can be amusing. I don't know if she's for real or just taking the piss, but it makes me laugh either way.
ReplyDelete