My students, for the most part, are as lazy as they are willfully ignorant. I have no clever story. I have no lively hyperbolic post.
I cannot believe these people will run the world. I pray I am long dead.
I feel as though I am trying to plug up a basketball sized hole in a dam with a baby carrot.
Now you know why I’d rather take the money than the release time, as per the recent discussion. The release time always evaporates and the money doesn't, if I manage to spend it quickly enough: just like eating a meal in prison.
ReplyDeleteIf I die at my desk, I won't have to put up with the political reaction to climate change when it often does become obviously expensive. Remember how Rick (“We’ll never have the smart people on our side”) Santorum tried to reprimand the weather service for making a completely accurate prediction of Hurricane Katrina? With the way the Trump campaign is going, I'll probably be beaten to death for expressing ideas in the reactivated Manzanar internment camp long before that, anyway.
Either option would be less cruel than having to lose all my marbles one by one to Alzheimer's, the way it happened to my Dad. It was all the more cruel since he was an intelligent fellow, and a teacher, back when teachers were supposed to be intelligent. He didn't handle the '60s well: often, when education springs a fresh abomination on me, I think thank goodness he didn't live to see how low we have sunk.
I hate to admit this, but at this moment, my students are about the only good thing about my institution. Sure, a bunch of them are lazy and willfully ignorant, but at least that can be explained as the folly of youth, and at least I can hope.
ReplyDeleteI'm dealing with malignant ignorance of my joint's leadership against which my colleagues can buoy me only so much. There is no reasonable explanation. I can't believe I ever wanted to work here. I have no hope but to polish the CV.
Sorry, I'm not trying to change the conversation. I feel your pain. It's not identical this time, but I've felt that pain, too. There is always some pain in this business, and it varies in its tolerability. But sometimes the particular pain can't go to work with you, lest you spread it like a cancer. This place is all I've got.
DeleteI seriously wanted to comment earlier along the same lines (to me, it's way much worse when the Thalacephalos-esque leadership is shittier than the student body), but I do understand Santa Fe Sid's post. I'm pleased somebody more eloquent than I did so.
DeleteOPH, all I can say is that a scholar of your wit and verve should always land on his feet, although any truth in that statement is probably decreasing day by day.
I'm still (relatively) young and unscarred, but the pain of an institution going bad through stupidity and shortsightedness sucks.
I have a feeling that despite the fact it is always dying, CM and its antecedents and alter egos is going to be something will cushion the mental blows of my eventual decline.
I don't know. That carrot line is damn clever. And I must teach s similar sort of student as Sid as I often find myself nodding knowingly when I hear his stories. If I can only get into the middle of May all will be well.
ReplyDeleteWhere is Hiram?
Hi Sid!
ReplyDeleteFunny stories and clever phases sometimes hide the fact that our students' behavior is an insult to all of our ancestors who evolved past grunting.
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Delete"I feel as though I am trying to plug up a basketball-sized hole in a dam with a baby carrot."
Delete"...our students' behavior is an insult to all of our ancestors who evolved past grunting."
It's being able to appreciate turns of phrase like these that make me glad I'm at least somewhat evolved past grunting.
Ah, Sid. I understand your pain and feel it too, sometimes.
ReplyDeleteI loved reading your haikus from a while back (posted in Crystal's worthy tribute). You should write some more!
"I feel as though I am trying to plug up a basketball sized hole in a dam with a baby carrot."
ReplyDeleteYep. That pretty much sums up my existence.
And yet, you have Jonah. I saw a story last night about placing walleye fry in Lake Erie. One in 1000 will mature and even then they get yanked out of the lake by yahoos trailing lures behind tour boats. Sid, grasp the mature fish! (carpe carp?) You make a difference.
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