Does it Make Me a Narcissist If I Believe This Craiglist Post Is About Me? (I Gave a Summer Final 9 Hours Earlier!)

Fuck Don Asher.

Don Asher is a fucktard of the highest order. He's a putative college expert who specializes in helping snowflakes along a bright shiny path to college success. He's published a number of books about college, careers, including the surely stunning Asher's Bible of Executive Resumes, and The Overnight Resume. (Because nothing says success like an overnight resume.)

Anyway, he writes a column for the US Airways magazine and is "widely" published in a variety of ... yada yada yada. He's the education dork at MSN Encarta, and published a piece this weekend called "The 7 Secrets of Highly Successful Students."

It's a tour de farce. It's full of such howlers that I just thought your readers would like to know what some of the current, hot, advice is vis a vis being a successful student.

• A savvy student wants to earn as many A's as possible, as few B's as possible, and avoid C's at all costs. So how do you engineer your GPA? Class-shop at the beginning of each semester. Sign up for more classes than you can possibly take, and drop boring or difficult professors sometime in the first two weeks. (It won't show up on your transcripts.) If you get a bad exam or quiz score, ask the professor what you can do to earn extra credit.
• Professors are people, too. They worry about being liked, whether they're gaining a few pounds and whether or not they're good at their jobs. So go visit them. Ask them for clarification of some point they made in class. Try out your paper or lab ideas on them to see if you're headed in the right direction. Ask them the best way to study for the exams. It's probably not a great idea to focus on grades only, as in "What do I need to do to earn an A in your class?" Get your professors to help you be a better student. And maybe ask, "Have you lost a little weight?"
• Study abroad in the sophomore year, not the junior. The junior year is a time to concentrate on your major and get the most out of your department. If you're abroad, you can't do that. Plus, some students get distracted by drinking in Naples, or that cute French guy or gal in Nice, and blow their GPA during the study abroad. Grad schools and employers care most about your GPA in the final two years of college, and if you go abroad in the junior year those grades are prominent. Finally -- and don't tell anyone -- but most sophomores aren't 21 yet. In most of the world, the drinking age, official and unofficial, is much younger than that. So...

There's other shit that's actually not bad advice, but the inclusion of the elements above just makes me crazy, especially the notion that students SHOULD try to game the system, game the proffie, flatter us poor dolts with comments about lost weight.

I'd like to find Don Asher and beat him with a bag of oranges. I'd like to put a pencil in his ear and watch it shoot out the other side.

To those of us who know better, he might seem a bit harmless, but it feels to me that more and more of this insanity is sold to students and parents, and soon the tipping point will come and college will truly just become this rubber-stamp-feel-good-handjob of a joke that so many people seem to think it is already.

The Best Thing About My Office...

...other than my Scottish clan dagger that scared the crap out of the Dean when he visited me, is my officemate, Picard.

He's quiet, doesn't take up much space, and lets me dress him up any way I like. In the fall, he will wear a jersey from my favorite football team.

In winter, a sweater from my favorite hockey team. Sometimes I let my colleague dress him up in a Minnesota Twins shirt but he thinks it makes him look fat.

Today he has on a T-shirt from Shirt.Woot.com and I think he looks smashing.

Let the Quenching Bitterness Flow. Office Space Replies (cont.)

Let's be clear right from the start, my office at the university is not "my" space it's the "University's" space and when I'm there, I'm there as the University's employee. Yes, there are things there that increase my level of comfort for the 4 or so hours I spend there each week - good lighting so I can turn off the damn fluorescent overheads, an easy chair (good for napping, and I didn't have room for it at home)...

But otherwise, this is the place I use to meet with students, go over final notes before class, and stack the piles of memos I get but never fully read. MY office is at home.

[*]

An office, huh? I used to have one of those -- as a grad student. It was nice, too. Top floor, big ol’ window with a sunset view, my own ergonomic chair, my own computer, my own L-shaped desk with lots of acreage to spread my shit all over. Filing cabinets to store my crap. I even set up a kitchen in there. Mini-fridge, George Foreman grill, toaster, water-boiler. Oh, yeah…it kicked ass.

Now that I’m all PhD-ified and employed, though, my “office” sucks ass. I get a windowless closet that comes complete with one-size-fits-none office chairs and two tiny work desks. Two shared computers in hutches that my knees don’t fit under. And no storage space of my own ‘cuz the shelves, the drawers, the cabinets, and even the room’s corners were staked out long ago by the eleven -- yes, eleven -- other suckers jammed into the same bullpen. I wanna go back to being a grad student.

[*]

What I enjoy most about my office is the door. I just love shutting it and pretending I'm not even in there.

[*]

Ah, and here is revealed both the stick and the carrot. Why do you want to be a professor? Because of the nostalgia of my undergrad days, the crush I had on the brilliant minds decorating their offices in the manner of teenagers. Why do you want to stay a professor? Because having an office that is your own third space means that you never have to have a relationship to space that is more complicated than the one from your youth. You never have to grow up. "Check out my rad movie posters and bric-a-brac" is just another way of saying "please love me." No wonder so many illicit romances start in these professorial versions of lawn crap.

[*]

Yeah I have an office, three of them, at three different colleges. Mainly because I gotta hustle my way to pay rent here in the NYC, and no one is hiring full time instructors. Yeah, yeah, I don't have a PhD in my discipline, one where it seems only people with money, scholarships or a house in the woods away from reality get PhDs. Sorry silverbacks, this isn't 1969 where tuition is free.

But really, the first office is in a broom closet. Well, not a broom closet, but something akin to where you put the rations for a fall out shelter. It's narrow and long, with four desks. One is continually held by an older gentleman who wants to discuss topics related to his faith (This man's first words to me, ever, were "So what do you think about abortion?") Another is held by a 40 year old gentlemen who is actually nice, respectful and thoughtful. The third desk is held by an older gentleman who doesn't talk to me, period. If I'm lucky I can get the fourth desk (after squeezing my way past these three gents) if the Russian woman doesn't get there first. And if she gets there first, I have to listen to her complain about how dumb American students are compared to her grandchildren in the old country. There's desks, file cabinets, and posters. That is it.

Another is in a department different than mine. Its nice, for a cubicle centered hell. Sure we got a microwave, printer, computers, mini-fridge, but just try to have a conversation with anyone. All they want to talk about is the commute into the city, their weekends in Long Island/New Jersey/Connecticut or their kids. The only thing missing is my boss asking me to come in on Saturdays.

The final one is shared with 43 other adjuncts (but only 6 desks) who are all male between the ages of 23 and 45. This means bachelor living; anything that drops on the floor stays on the floor, lunches are spent eating leftover pasta heated in the microwave two stories above us, constant debates of what browser/OS/smart phone carrier is better and chalk dust everywhere. Have you tried helping students when there are four other guys in the room trying to prove how smart they are to your students?

So no, no Snickers bars, no vitamin water, no iPod dock (for fear of it being stolen), nothing. You better enjoy every day that you're there, or I will find you, cut your face into a mask and live the life I can't have here.

Our Newest Favorite Students Discuss "Dibs." Today's VidShizzle.

First Set of "Office Space" Replies.

We're getting quite a bit of mail about yesterday's thirsty on office space. We'll start with these three and offer some more in coming days.

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At my first tenure track job, which I started last year, I got a smaller, windowless office. However, I get a piece of art on loan from the art department with a promise that I can rotate the piece every four months if I want.

The college provided me a large cork board where my conference badges hang, flyers, cartoons, and other little pieces of me. On the opposite wall, a large white board hangs with all my deadlines for journal articles, reviews, and some scribbled ideas for my next project. As one of the few active researchers in my department, it lets my colleagues know what I am up to without me saying it. The college also provided me an extra book case and filing cabinet at my request. The needed textbooks for my classes as well as useful textbooks for my subject areas sit on the shelves along with books in my research area. I have a books that I enjoyed reading and keep on display.

On top of filing cabinets I keep my coffee maker, and a rotating stock of dark roast. I enjoy leaning back in my chair, a hot cup of coffee, and reflecting on the day while looking at my piece of art. Thanks to my space, I can be productive as well as isolated when I want but inviting when needed.

[*]

You fucker, I don't even have an office.

I am a full-time faculty member at a private "career focused" college. Because we are career focused, they treat us like the rats who live in cube farms in big corporations: I get a cubicle. It sucks. I don't even have 24-hour access to my dumpy cube: I can only visit it when classes are in session. Not late at night. Not on weekends.

My dream? An office with a door that closes and locks, with 24/7 access.

[*]

I'm an old silverback and have had more office space than I can remember.

It's always good to have a little space, a place to keep stuff, a place to do the business of being an academic professional. But so many of the young faculty we get nowadays are consumed with their space and what it means about their pecking order.

I'm sorry to say that Newbie Nate from Northwestern does NOT get the big office. You know how many years I've worked here? I get that office. And I don't care if he comes in and looking longingly at my three massive windows, he needs to put his time in before he qualifies for that.

Not too long ago we had someone turn us down for a job because we wouldn't guarantee him a certain size office. Are you serious? That's what you use as your line in the sand? Nothing about tenure clock or committee work or access to the college's golden depository?

It's just a space. Make of it what you will. But the only space a professor (I refuse "proffie") needs is between his or her ears.