Somebody Fresh Out of a Faculty Meeting Wants to Get a Little Something Off His Chest - We Hope He Doesn't Have a Weapon
I do my best to be a good doobie. But after 6 years of this SHIT I'm fed up. I get tired of people complaining about the students when it's the other faculty that makes this job such a trial.
C, you are a social misft, a gigantic idiot, who can fill up space and time with your blathering. I don't care what you know about quantum macroeconomic theory - or whatever - and your "reflections" on that shit just makes me want to get after you with my tennis racket.S, you are our fearful leader, and your days are numbered. I can't stand how you cherry pick the majors for yourself, huddle together with your sycophants and favorites, and then look down your nose at any junior faculty who deigns to want to be involved in the life of the department. Why don't you go home to your rich real estate mogul husband and drink yourself even dumber than you are already.
C#2, I know you think that bullshit publishing house is really something, but we all know it's half an inch removed from being a subsidy press. You can print out your press releases all day, but we all know you wrote them yourself, and nobody - but nobody - gets to write that their readers are "waiting breathlessly" for a new tome.
M, you can stay on the 4th floor please. I don't want any Earl Grey tea. I don't want to hear how your tenure hearing was fixed. If you don't get it next month, it will because you're a daft loudmouth.
G, there's a reason why your classes are scheduled at night. The fright of you in daytime is too much for our freshmen weak hearts.
"but nobody - gets to write that their readers are "waiting breathlessly" for a new tome."
ReplyDeletemaybe his readers are mostly asthma patients??
Hi Hiram. We haven't discontinued the series. It's just that they get so few views that we've determined it's not a popular feature. We're glad you like to revisit old posts from RYS and CM, so when you see a dandy one, feel free.
ReplyDeleteThat is high quality colleague smack. Like snowflakes, these morons are a universal problem.
ReplyDeleteI stopped going to faculty meetings a while back. My department is so conservative (academically), nothing new is ever proposed. If somebody puts forward an idea, it dies in committee. It's very top-heavy, and the older people are comfortable with the way things are (two-thirds of the full profs were already there 24 years ago.) And all votes are "advisory to the head", anyway. He can do whatever he wants, so why bother.
ReplyDeleteOne older colleague irritates all of us with his pedantry and love of his own voice, spouting nonsense. Why won't he do the right thing and retire already, we all wonder. The department head schedules meetings to make announcements that could be made by email, in an effort to stay relevant. Nobody cares about him (no ideas from that side, either.)
To me what this says is that it's not really a department, just a bunch of individuals doing their own thing, hoping to be left alone.
I experienced something similar while I was teaching. It wasn't so much a department I was in but, for most of my time there, a fiefdom run by a monomaniacal head who used his position as a way of advancing himself at the institution.
DeleteI eventually gave up making suggestions in meetings when it became abundantly clear that anything that didn't increase the head's chances of promotion was going to be ignored. Whatever was adopted, usually initiated by him, was generally meant to get him noticed by his superiors.
Then there was the technologist/technician-vs.-engineer split with many of the former being openly resentful and hostile towards those of us with degrees. One dispute, which took place while I was away finishing my Ph. D., became so heated that it could have evolved into a fistfight.
I wasn't sorry when I handed in my resignation.