Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Remember those Glory Days when you were a young graduate student and thought that you were going to light the world of academia on fire? The days when you felt you were Living On The Edge Of The World. Now that you're a professor, the reality of life in the Academy is far different from what you'd imagined it would be, in fact it's Worlds Apart.
You often feel that My Best Was Never Good Enough and you feel that your career is a Wreck On The Highway. The groundbreaking research you thought was ahead of you is now behind you, and quite frankly it was never really groundbreaking at all. You have some of the trappings of success - you have some graduate students and you see in them the same dreams you had decades ago, yet everyday you feel like you're wearing a Brilliant Disguise. You're tired and jaded, and every day feels like a Lonesome Day. You need meaning in your life, a Reason To Believe that the material you publish is actually read by someone rather than just wasting paper in some obscure journal that no one other than a librarian ever picks up. You're Countin On A Miracle that something will make your writing meaningful. You want someone to ask you to Raise Your Hand if you dream of taking a different path for you feel that you're living in the Darkness On the Edge Of Town. Oh, there's your colleague now. Good, your speech is ready, and the audience certainly looks attentive. Your moment of glory has almost arrived. You await your cue to take to the stage. When The Lights Go Out you have to take a Leap Of Faith and hope that 500 of your colleagues will appreciate the remarkable insights presented in your paper "A Marxist Perspective on Darkness on the Edge of Town" at the Bruce Springsteen Glory Days Symposium:
This is how your tax dollars are being put to good use. This is the way things work these days, so This Land is Your Land and that's the state of our Humanities Departments. If you don't like it then do something about it. Afterall, this is where you're sending your kids - right Into The Fire. Your kids need the damn credential to get on in the Real World and this is the way the game is played, so this is The Price You Pay - you pray and send your kids into The Promised Land and hope, beyond hope, that they're not Lost In The Flood of mediocrity. |