Greg, Grin No More.
I had nothing but love for Grinning Greg until his PS, PSS, PSSS ending. PS stands for "post script," Greg. If you write something after the post script it is POST-post script, or PPS, not "PSS" or "post script script" which just makes no sense. Jesus. No wonder you're still an adjunct.
- Grinning Greg, you fucking sissy! I've worked many long, lean, tedious years as an adjunct, and while I'm not one now, my sympathies still lie with the academic proletariat. What I cannot abide, though, is a sniveling crybaby. You "admit" that you are where you are because of choices you made, but then turn around and try to blame Bush and Reagan! Give me a break! Don't like your income? Stop letting your wife lead you around. Go for a tenure track position. Or write a pseudonymous grocery store novel. Anything. Just stop feeling sorry for yourself. You sound like such a whimpering shit that I'm inclined to believe the post was just a gag. Now put on your diaper, your bonnet, and get back into your corner.
- Grinning Greg is such a tool. Despite having a nearly useless degree, he managed to land a decent teaching gig but abandoned it because his "most understanding wife in the world" wanted to move. Then he landed another job, probably a dead-ender but at least he had health benefits and the wages were decent. He abandoned that job since there was no room for advancement. So now he's at another job that also offers no upward mobility, but less wages, and no health care. He's not willing to relocate anywhere, which is critical for aspiring faculty who wish to be gainfully employed. And his wife has the final say on where they live; since she's fine with being the primary breadwinner, that's reasonable. But not a good recipe for finding a decent teaching gig. So, Grinning Greg made his own bed and now he must lie in it. Blaming politicians and CEOs for university policies is ludicrous. They have nothing to do with the misuse of adjuncts. The blame lies squarely with the universities. Did he miss Angry Archie's rant about the cheap labor of the adjuncts propping up the ivory tower tenure trackers, much the way cheap migrant labor allows liberal-minded middle-class families to enjoy organic grapes? Greg says he considers himself fortunate, but his whingeing tells a different story. He concludes by blaming Reagan for his job woes and promising that faculty in more lucrative fields will soon get their come-uppance, using post-scripts to take a final dig at CEOs at major corporations. No doubt they're also to blame for not giving him a parking pass.
- I agree with the Dean's sentiments: "You've been an adjunct for six years? Why haven't you moved on?" Greg needs to wake up; academia has passed him over. He needs to move on, find a real job -- for which having an MFA likely will not help -- leave the adjunct positions for people using them as brief stopping point and stop being a snowflake. The world doesn't owe him TT-job just because he has an MFA. Most fields in academia produce far too many people with terminal degrees for the number of faculty jobs out there, and so the competition is fierce. He's lost in academia, so he needs to find something else to do.
