A Beaker Ben Flashback Of Thankful Things. From 2009.

• excellent, friendly secretaries and support staff who have saved my ass several times (who knew that my exam doesn’t print and staple itself on its own?)
• look on my colleagues’ faces when they realize that, although they got straight A’s at elite schools and I got more modest grades at big ol’ State U., we still work at the same place and I have more research funding to boot
• relief and gratitude expressed by a student who claims that he overslept the exam (more likely spent all day studying) but I’ll let take the exam that afternoon anyway
• confusion and fear expressed by same student when I mention offhand that any extra studying he did won’t help him muchnation of China for purchasing US bonds that allow the federal government to spend money that pays for my research
• underfunded IT department, which is so busy that it could never have time to check all the websites that I peruse at work
• student research assistants who are less stoned and more hard working than I ever was in college
• parents of students for continuing to pay tuition even after all hope of graduating has been lost
• humanities faculty for coming up with such batshit-crazy research topics that it makes our goofy science experiments sound sane
• political naiveté of my coworkers and administrators, which allows someone like me, with just a modicum of common sense and a healthy lust for power, to have far more influence than he deserves
• public school system for doing such a poor job of educating children that none of these young whippersnappers will ever be qualified to replace me.