What can I say? I get sentimental around the holidays. This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the...
- 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 much
- nation 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.
