Silver Backed Bucky from Boneta Says: "I See Orange People."

Anyone teaching on a large campus the last handful of years has witnessed a slow immigration of orange skinned youths with inhumanely white teeth. These artificially tanned beings dress in the latest suburb-appropriate fashion, not a hair is out of place, both the male and female of the species are denuded of body hair, and they all emit the same mass produced scent.

Last evening I met with a long lost friend and made the mistake of agreeing to do so at a bar near a suburban mall. There I witnessed an amazing thing—I had found the oompa-loompa breeding ground. The place was packed with the soon to be, if not already, divorced parents of the orange youths. These fifty-somethings-on-the-make were also orange and white toothed, and dressed and smelled the same as their offspring. They appeared to be oblivious to their own grotesqueness as they actually preened and puffed-up their chests to attract a mate. From what I could gather of their mating ritual, possession of the latest consumer products (automobiles, big screen TV’s, and breast implants) was the most critical factor to a successful coupling.

I am currently reading "Mr. Jefferson’s Lost Cause" by R. Kennedy. The author discusses Thomas Jefferson’s rhetorical acclaim of the yeoman farmer, the middling-sort of his time. Jefferson professed that they were the backbone and “pride” of the republican nation. (Kennedy goes on to argue that is was all talk, that TJ actually pursued a course of action that fostered plantation-slavery over an independent yeomanry.) Be that as it may, it all has me thinking about this new, post-modern middling-sort.

One tenet of post-modernity is the rejection of Platonic metaphysics, with its dualism of surface and underlying substance that has defined western thought for two millennia. In the post-modern era everything is superficial, behind every mask there is only and always another mask. “What you see is what you get!” Scholars no longer search for some underlying reality; rather they have become adept at reading surfaces.

The post-modern middling sort is as it seems. There is no soul, no intelligence other than the craft and cleverness requisite for the acquisition of consumer goods. They inhabit a suburban world of mall and mega-store culture. Every aspect of their identity is “mega” from their mega-screen TV’s and mega-SUV’s to their temples, the mega-church. And life is best lived at one remove, via the electronic glow of a cathode-ray tube, or I should be more “with it” and say via LCD or plasma. They even like their wars to be mega- and at one remove, remember “Shock and Awe?” Since no one really wants to have to actually go fight a war, they hire private contractors to do it for them. (They don’t even know what “Blackwater” was or that it is now Xe.) Every aspect of their lives is mega- and easily purchased. All of this is readable from their surface; on their teeth, hair, clothing, and their skin. That artificial orange color speaks volumes. Time again to swing wide-open the doors of the academy, the oompa-loompas are coming to increase their human capital. How else are they gonna pay for all this cool stuff?

Due to their sheer numbers, these orange people are still the backbone of the nation, but who today could assert, even as a rhetorical flourish, that they are our “pride?” Eeeeww, that’s just gross!

Angry Archie Arrives To Settle the Score on Salaries, and Why There's Rarified Air Above those Stinky Adjuncts.

OK RYSers, I have one question for you: what the fuck? And I’m not talking about all the people who wrote in to tell everyone else their salary. That’s just bad taste. No, I’m talking about the reactions to yesterday’s salary dump.

Let’s start with the people who thought others were lying about their six-figure salary. What rock have you been sleeping under? And it ain’t just the wankers in the professional schools either like one respondent suggested. I know some literature professors who make north of the two-fifty line. So if you didn’t know that many of your colleagues are making four or five times your salary for basically the same work, then you haven’t been paying attention.

Then there’s the guy who couldn’t believe how little the adjuncts got paid? Again, where have you been all these years, shit-for-brains? And as for the wise old tenured mentor who tells them to “just refuse the number” I’d like to ask that jackass what good that would do when there are fifty other unemployed Ph.D.s waiting in line to take that number? So, sure, they can refuse the fucking number, and watch while someone else takes the classes. At least they’ll have their pride right? What a fucking tool!

People ask me, “Archie, why are you so angry? You have a great job at a great school in a great place. Where’s the problem?” Well, the little salary discussion really wrapped the problem up in a pretty little package. This profession is full of fucking shit, and the salary dump brought it all out. Let me go out on a limb here and guess that the majority of the respondents were good-hearted people with the proper kind of left-leaning politics that most hyper-educated bozos share. You probably don’t like to shop at Walmart because of its union-busting practices, and you wouldn’t be caught dead drinking a non-fair-trade latte, right? But you are shocked to find out that there is exploitation going on here! Here’s a hint for you about what’s going on in our little corner of the world: Walmart could learn a thing or two from you, Mr. “just refuse the number.”

Let’s review for a second. How do you think you got your 2/2 load? It wasn’t because of your supreme meritoriousness. And it isn’t a birthright that those of us like you and me who have the good fortune to teach at good schools enjoy because we are oh-so-fucking-special. It is actually a fairly new development in American higher ed. The administrations went to the faculty and said “you are such wonderful shiny research machines, and we’d like to reward you for being so utterly super. So here’s a 2/2 load, and we’ll just go get some desperate unemployed person to pick up the classroom slack for you.” I mean, what could be better right? Except that then the administrations said to the departments, “oh, that tenure track line, you don’t need that anymore right? I mean we have all those happy adjuncts to teach those classes now.” And the departments said nothing, because they were happy with their 2/2 loads and their research budgets. It was a Hobbesian social contract. Once the departments subscribed to it and accepted the new order, everyone who came after was bound by the new order forever more.

So this is the ugly fucking truth. You, me, all of us, we get to live the vida-fucking-loca on the backs of all those desperate suckers who just want to get their foot in the door and will accept wages a supermarket cashier would spit at because they believe that somehow if they just suck it up and eat shit for long enough, they too will get to ride the tt train. But we don’t acknowledge this, because it would break our little leftist hearts to do so. And what’s more, our refusal to acknowledge what is happening is going to result in our own extinction. If you don’t think that this is all leading to the elimination of tenure and full-time positions at all but the most elite schools, then you are in for a serious surprise. Keep fiddling, motherfuckers, because Rome is already half-burned.

And here’s the real kicker. This state of things leads to little shit-lickers like Ivy and his pal Gonorrhea, or whatever her fucking name was, saying “teaching is for losers, and I’m too good to do it.” Two months ago this pair of short-strokers was getting reamed by their advisors and everyone else in exchange for some miserly little grad stipend. Now they got some shit-job at Ozarks mining college and suddenly they’re too good for all that? I mean Gonorrhea had the audacity to say she just handed it off to her “assistant” so she could get one with the real work of research in her “narrow but incredibly important” field. I guess it’s true what they say, if you want someone to really crack the whip, just hand that motherfucker to one of the subalterns and watch the blood fly. They’ll turn on their peers like no one’s business.

So blame the president, the legislature, the football coach, and whoever else you want. Just don’t blame yourself, because that would be too much like fucking honesty. Why is Archie angry? Because this profession is full of self-deluding assholes who are enjoying the view because they are standing on the stacked cadavers of a bunch of failed gradflakes and freeway adjuncts. The breeze smells fresh up here fellas, just don’t look down.

Hiram From Ham Lake Harumphs on Our Salary Hilarity.

Please stop this professorial pay madness. I always knew we were whiners and narcissists, but are we really reachy wannabes as well? How many of us in the humanities couldn't have gone to law school if what we wanted was a six figure salary? How many in the sciences wouldn't be at big chemical firms, how many engineers at defense contractors? C'mon, people, we know how it works--people make what they do in response to rough supply-and-demand type forces, with the occasional union or especially draconian pay freeze thrown in for good measure. More in the sciences and business schools, less in the foreign languages. We get it. You don't need to post any more public institution pay scales--we discovered these at my own uni a few years ago, and it ruined everyone's life in our department, because we couldn't DO anything about it. Anyone who knows can send you a post about what dark machinations are required to raise or lower certain salaries. I repeat--we get it. WE GET IT. STOP.

If you want something to rage about, look up. As in UP. How much does the president of your university make? How many vice presidents are there, and what do they all do? At my institution--which just closed its separate graduate school and built a football stadium--the offensive and defensive coordinators each make over $300,000 to lose half their games every year. The admin buildings have more flatscreen TVs in them than the sports bars that surround the campus, often tuned to static images.

My point is, there are forces at work well above ALL our pay grades, and that's what deserves our scorn and obsession. All that these public institution pay records do is turn us against each other and make us hate our lives. Seriously, stop this bullshit. If all we've got to complain about is how much money we make compared to proffies in other disciplines, RYS has fallen a long way indeed.

"Thanks for Ruining My Day." Some Salary Followups.

• Full Prof, >30 years experience, flagship state university, Biochemistry: $113,000 for 11 months, if I have enough money in the grants after I pay for light bulbs, chemicals and technicians. Otherwise 9/11ths of that. Teaching load: two team-taught freshman courses (1/3 each), one hundred-student upper-division course by myself, one-third of the introductory grad courses. Five major committees including campus P&T (there goes February and March).
• I just finished my 8th year--$54,000, in a private, religious (sort of) 4 yr in Midwest. It took going through multiple schools and lots of negotiating, threatening to leave, and gender equity raises to get here. I'm in the sciences, and teach 4/4.
• Jewish studies (historian), 3-2 teaching load, assistant prof (6th year), $57,000.
• I'm in my first year on the tenure track at a midwestern urban R1. I teach 2/2 in a social science field and make $62,000.
• I'm in my fifth year as assistant professor (Humanities, 3/2 load) in a large Canadian university and make just over $95,000 CAD; currently about $85,750 USD. I don't complain about my pay (though I live in an expensive city and carry plenty of credit card debt).
• I teach 4/4 at a state comprehensive university in the northeast central US. I've been here 15 years and am a full prof. My field is philosophy, and I make $100,000.
• Someone's never heard of faculty making more than $100 K? Clearly someone has never heard of engineering faculty who are Distinguished Professors (Above Scale) at major research universities. I bet medical faculty do similarly well. Here's the secret: They busted their asses to do hard things not many people want to do AND for which people with lots of money want to pay them. Whereas you humanities types are (nearly literally) a dime a dozen and not doing anything people are going to line up to pay you tons of money to do. And I hope to Goddess you knew that going in. Me? I'm in the social sciences and expect to do better than $60 K but probably not so well as $150 K. (My secret? I'm not stuck with faculty jobs as my only option.) And I am totally fine with that. I made sure I knew the score going in.
• 3/3 load at a SLAC in pacific northwest, $70,000.
• "I must confess I don't have any experience with part-time adjuncts, but the numbers people are reporting simply can't be real. I don't know anyone who'd teach for $3000 a class as some of your quoted numbers suggest." Well let me tell you it IS real. And those of you who make more and apparently only surround yourselves with others who make more should get your heads out of the sand and realize how hard it is for some of us to earn a living. My Northwest community college pays exactly $3,163.80 to teach a 5 credit class. I feel bad for the poor saps who are assigned the 4-credit classes (which is most of them) which pay less than $3000 per class. Teaching four such classes would be considered a full time load but being paid per class amounts to a whopping $12,655.20. AND no benefits. I even have to pay for a damned parking pass at my school. We part-timers are abused. And to the guy who said "Don't accept the number" and "Nobody put a gun to your head" ... Could you please come on over to my house and pay my mortgage and buy groceries for me while I'm negotiating a better salary? Thanks. It may take a while because there are ten other shmucks in line behind me willing to take the tiny salary. The college doesn't really care whether or not they are getting the best teacher, they just care about enrollment numbers and profit margins.
• Psychology, $95,000, ordinary private uni in the south.
• Salaries over $150K are possible and worth it for some superstars. We have several profs who make more than our university president and he’s happy to let everybody know it (if only because we might think his salary is small). Schools get about 20% overhead from all research grants and can hire an adjunct to teach for you while your grant pays your full salary. Patents are the big prize. Plus, the publicity of having a world-renowned scientist is valuable too, especially for schools that don’t have good athletics programs – I mean, don’t get free 3-hour commercials on fall Saturday afternoons and in March.
• I get $2412.34 per class at a crappy community college in Pennsylvania. And I teach exactly that hard, at about 10% of my ability, training, and inclination.
• When I was hired, I was shown my salary on a cute little AAUP salary graph that showed me "roughly" in the middle of the new assistant professors. Fine, I thought. Now ten years in, I'm making $54,000 in the humanities, and we just hired two half-retards fresh out of grad school at $58k and $61k. Who do I call about that?
• Humanities, poor me, $41,500, fourth year, 4/4.
• As a grad student, I taught (not TA'd) a whole ton of seminar classes at a wannabe-Ivy research university. I was paid between $1500 and $4500 per course. I later taught 2/2 as an adjunct in the same department at the same university and made $42,000/year. Then I took my Ph.D. and got the hell out of academia; I now make $61,800/year working in industry. And for once, I believe in what I'm doing. Rumor had it that my grad school advisor was pulling in over $250,000/year--because he brought in lots of grant money, he threatened to leave the university, so they gave him some kind of big award and big salary to make him stay.
• Religion proffie, brand new, first contract for $61,000, negotiated up from offer of $52k.
• Oh good, another reason for me to hate my fucking life. $49,000, 5/5 load, fifth year, Sociology.
• I'm starting my 6th year about to apply for tenure in the Physics Department at a small uni in the South. I typically have 12-14 contact hours per term. Started at $47,940 in 2004 and am making $52,220 now. Might have been more but our former President left us in some financial distress. I get more if I pull in a grant and have summer salary. I don't teach in the summer so that salary is for 9 months. For those at public institutions - you can usually get a copy of your uni's budget (and faculty/staff salaries) at the library. Interesting reading!
• Art history, $39,500, second year at a state college in the south.
• Okay, you want the dirt. One weekend I went to do photocopying for a class in the main office of my department. (A totally useless state school in Michigan.) As I was waiting for copies to collate, I noticed a file cabinet ajar behind the department secretary's desk. Of course I shouldn't have, but I strolled over, saw my name on a personnel file, and picked it up. By the time the orgy was over, I knew the salary of ALL of my colleagues. Deadwood Dick made $120,000. Sexy Suzie made $70,000. I made $66,000. The range was astonishing, and blew my mind. Three people on the exact same year teaching the same load, had salaries of $80,000, $67,000, and $50,000. Is there that much negotiating going on that I don't know about?
• Adjunct teaching 6-7 a year at $2200 a class. (Class size 35+.)
• I may be hopeless naive, and just a sweet Southern belle who doesn't like to think about these things, but I'm nearly apoplectic over the fact that you've reported someone in my own discipline who makes nearly FIVE TIMES my salary. Thank you for ruining my day! I swear I wish I could find that person and beat him/her with a Louisville Slugger.
• $59,000, Communications, big state school in Midwest.
• I'm starting my 6th year about to apply for tenure in the Physics Department at a small uni in the South. I typically have 12-14 contact hours per term. Started at $47,940 in 2004 and am making $52,220 now. Might have been more but our former President left us in some financial distress. I get more if I pull in a grant and have summer salary. I don't teach in the summer so that salary is for 9 months. For those at public institutions - you can usually get a copy of your uni's budget (and faculty/staff salaries) at the library. Interesting reading!
• $42,000, first year t-t in English, SLAC in south.
• $47k. I'm in a teaching-only term faculty position, 6 large lecture classes and supervision of one lab course a year, state U in the upper South, 10 years experience as a professor and had tenure at a previous university. It's a living and I'm glad to have it.
• Been at a Midwestern Community College for 6yrs. Grossed 75,000. Teach 6 classes. Will hire a new person for next fall – we have a scale, but a PhD with a few years of teaching could start at 4
• Great survey and very informative.....although it makes me feel SORRY for myself. I wish more people identified the region of the country they live in and the area in which they teach. Anyway, I'm in the humanities and teach a 3-3 at a small comprehensive college in the Midwest. I'm starting my fourth year and make (almost) $49,000. (I was hired at $45,000).
• $43,000 - Assistant Professor starting 3rd year in Arts/Humanities at "Flagship" in SW State. No raises at institution in years (except for upper admin). Mandatory furloughs loom.
• Full time, 3/3, all freshman composition, at a big state uni. Non-tenure track. Four years in: $37,900.
• The strangest thing happened. I got a 12% pay raise this year. I'll make $89K if I don't teach in the summer. No, I did not get a promotion - I made full a few years ago. We have a equity clause in our union contract that kicked in this year despite state budget cuts and declining enrollment. I teach 2/2 in a science related field at a mediocre state research Uni in the middle of nowhere.
• I teach 4/4 at a state comprehensive in the east central US. I've been here 15 years and am a full prof. I make $100,000.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Humanities Prof Writes: "Salaries? I Thought Some Of Those Figures Were GNPs."

Our "poorly designed," "silly," "worthless," and "crude" survey of salaries has generated quite a bit of mail. The first set of numbers went up this morning, of course, and we're still eager for you to write with your salary, teaching load, AND discipline.

But we also want to share some recent notes that have come in that might move the discussion out of mere math to theory.

• Whoa dude, Wow. Can you guys say what fields you're in more specifically? I'm a grad student and I'm *very* interested in understanding the differences across fields. I know it's not statistically valid and all that stuff, but still, I'd love to know if the responses are in French vs. Sociology, vs. Law vs. Chemistry, etc. I'm a grad student in Business (management). Adding up fellowship, RAship, etc, I take home $30,000. I am humbled that this is more than some of the responses from actual proffies.
• I’ve wondered about this too, primarily because humanities people complain so much. I am a first-year T-T assistant in the social sciences at a research university on the east coast, 1/1 load this year and 2/2 every year after, starting at $70,000, with the option to teach 2 classes each summer, which would take me up to $84,000. Maybe they do have something to complain about.
• I must confess I don't have any experience with part-time adjuncts, but the numbers people are reporting simply can't be real. I don't know anyone who'd teach for $3000 a class as some of your quoted numbers suggest.
• Salaries? Those 6 digit numbers are salaries? For a college professor? I thought some of them might be the GNP for a small country. Explain to me how ANY proffie is worth $154,000?
• I have a simple solution for those folks who have small salaries and who don't like them. Don't accept them. That's long been my solution for part-timers who I occasionally have to mentor. I tell them, "Don't accept the number." It's fine to complain about making $30,000 for a full time job - which is simply ridiculous - but nobody (I assume) put a gun to your head.
• I don't believe your "sruvey" for one minute. I've been a college prof for 20 years and I've never even HEARD of one making more than $100,000 a year. Are you sure someone's not just pulling your leg? Perhaps they're not mathematicaly inclined?
• These 5/5 people? How do they have time to write in? I teach 2/2 and am swamped all day every day.
• You really shouldn't lump in juco or adjunct salaries with the salaries of full time professors at legitimate universities. It skews the results. I think if you look at your own numbers, regular professors at established and well funded schools make $60k+ and then people who are "freeway flyers" or juco teachers make less. There's less range than your scattering of statistically insignificant numbers would suggest.
• That list of salaries is so discouraging. I get finished the PhD next semester, and I don't want to be one of those sub $30,000 people. Seriously!

Money - Real Numbers. Completely Unscientific Gathering of Non-Matching Data Sets, But What Exactly Did you Expect Here? We Half-Ass It All the Time.

Thanks to all for fessing up your salary numbers. We got so many in the first 90 minutes of the posting that we thought we'd share them now. Please keep sending info in, though.

And in response to countless notes from the more wonky readers: Yes, we know none of this data is statistically significant or valid or whatever. We know that we didn't collect the "right" information or "matching datasets." But then again we did shoot an 84 yesterday with pars on 16, 17, & 18! And that's really all we care about.

• $42,500 in your fourth year for a 4/4 at a SLAC? That's hard to believe. We would pay newly graduated adjuncts more than that for a 4/4. I teach at a university in the South in the sciences. I alternate between a 1/1 and a 1/2 load. This year I'll make $105,500; though that includes summer salary off of grants. I'm an associate professor in my eight year.
• $55,000.
• I was just hired as an assistant professor at a small state college in the South, in the humanities. Starting salary: $51,000. 3/3 load. Spending freeze in effect: no travel money, can't even get compensated for business cards.
• I took a full-time job at a University in the Midwest. I am the coordinator for a major ‘weeding’ course and teach about 18 contact hours a week. I make just over $31,000 – plus another $2,000 for giving up half of my summer.
• $57,000 in chemistry. I occasionally teach summer which pays extra. I do research occasionally with funded summer salary. I still need to sell a gazillion textbooks to make ends meet.
• I was very fortunate to get a VAP spot at a cool school in upstate NY. $60,000 plus a ton of perks.
• $47,000, but no raises in the past 3 years.
• I am starting my second year of T-T at a New England state college, I started at $52,000 but after I was hired I heard I might have been able to negotiate to $55,000 for previous fulltime adjunct work. I was so happy to get hired I basically took their first offer.
• I teach at the R1 flagship in my state. I'm an assistant professor with a 2/2 load and going into my fifth year. I make $72,000.
• I teach as an adjunct at a colossal community college in the southwest. I normally teach 8 classes a year (4/4) and my gross (!) pay is $19,000.
• 3/3 load. $65,000.
• At my SLAC in the Midwest, I'm fully tenured, teach 4/4, and make $49,500.
• I'm in my second year at a faux-Ivy in the NE. I teach 2/2 and make $77,750.
• Non-tenure-track instructor in a very cold state. $32,000.
• I'm in my tenure year in a large California university. I teach 3/2 (1 release for administration) and make $94,000.
• $12,000 per annum.
• I'm in my third year as a Business proffie at a non-descript state university in the northwest. I make $82,000.
• I'm at a nice community college in Washington State. I make $47,000.
• I really don't think it's any of anyone's business, but $60,000. And I'm worth every nickel.
• I'm a second year assistant professor in the social sciences at a medium sized university in the intra-mountain west. I make $68,000.
• I can't afford a nice car, but my salary sounds pretty good for the 8 months a year i work - $62,5000 for a total of 5 classes.
• $74,250 as an associate at a very good regional university in the midwest. My salary next year as a full "proffie" will be about $80,000. Not bad for a kid who flunked freshman Psych 2 times and was a Beer Pong champion.
• I live in Wicked Walter's state! 2/2/1 load, $69,111. (Exactly.)
• My salary this year is $38,750. I teach 5/5.
• My salary got CUT this year from $80, 250 to $77,750 and I STILL have to teach 3/3, including 2 freshman sections.
• I am a part-timer only, but usually teach 10 sections a year (including summer). Last school year it added up to $26,700.
• Full professor at a Big 10 school. $154,000.
• I've spent my entire career at a chuch school in the deep south and I make $87,250 as a full professor.
• I am a humanities prof, so therefore try to remember that I don't teach for money...that'd be obvious if you did my taxes. 4/4 load, 6 freshman classes, $40,000.
• I finished my Ph.D. three years ago but am still adjuncting in a large northeastern city. If I'm lucky I get about 4 classes a year for about $15,000 per year. Not surprisingly, I have other jobs.
• 4/3 teaching. Service, of course. $45,000.
• My very first contract as a t-t prof in math shows a starting salary of $72,500. I want MORE, though...of course.
• Midwest private liberal arts college; science; second year; 2/2/2; $52k. More if I get a grant.
• Junior college in the northeast. $70,000, but I've been here forever. Our new hire will make $45,000.
• I'm not telling YOU. But around $50,000 and I teach 1/1 but have a lot of administrative duties.
• This is a stupid question and survey. You won't get any usable data. I make $90,000 and I don't teach nights, weekends, summers, or Fridays. Boo-Yah. And, yes, Economists Rule.
• 3/3 at a large Canadian uni. $66,000.33. (And I'm not kidding.)
• I know you probably don't want a narrative, but I thought it would help. I am a trailing spouse and left a 2/2 job at $65,000 for part-time adjunct work teaching 6 classes a year that TOTALS $14,400 for the year. So, yeah, I'm pissed off.
• 5/5; $56,000.
• 4/4 - $70,000.
• 2/1 (full research load including grad student mentoring) @ $97,5000.
• Party school in the southwest, $48,000.
• $77,700, about to be cut to $72,000, for a 2-2 load at a public R1 institution in a high-cost-of-living state. I am an Advanced Associate about to go up to Full, and have been there for 10 years. Includes publish-or-perish performance reviews every 2-3 years and a serious service burden.

The Bitchy Bear From Boston Swings By To Straighten Us All the Fuck Out on Coupling, Ambition, and How We Spend Our Careers.

Ok, so now we are talking about Mike's decision to 'settle' for lack of a kinder way to put it. These types of discussions are interesting to me because I am ambitious. I wasn't held enough as a child so now my sense of self depends entirely on success, or the trappings of success. I already know this. I tried therapy and didn't work. Now I go with dirty martinis and scoring one now and then on my main grad school rival. He and I are not unlike Mapp and Lucia, our petty rivalry enacted with operatic fervor. I should be more evolved than this, but I am, alas, not. And neither is he. Oh, it's delicious fun, and since there hasn't been anything good on TV since they canceled Dynasty, it gives me something to do. So I scored one off him by finishing sooner. He scored one off me by getting a better first job at a higher salary in a much better institution. I scored one off him by getting a job an expensive private and turning down the job he moved to this last year in a state with steep pay cuts and furloughs.

Yes, some misguided souls may think life is about being happy with who you are and what you have, but we all know it's about the ticks in the win column and the toys which accompany those.

This is in stark contrast with my nonacademic spouse who, having no ambition to speak of, quit the game he was in to follow me. Well, not so much quit as retired by 40 because he had made so much money as a cubicle rat (oh, wait: cubicle "flower") that he could afford to just ... stop ... working. This is in addition to this wonderfully useful thing called "family money" that certainly doesn't exist in mine. So he is all of four years older than me, he's retired, and I am in a job where my title still involves the word "assistant." For many of you, this will not compute because you got your PhDs going straight through, and you started as an assistant in your 20s. For those of us who went out into "the real world" to work for awhile and then went back for the PhD, we were older when we started down the academic road, which is slow going anyway. All of my friends who started with me down my original professional trajectory have titles like "Chief" and "Directing" and "Managing" and "Poobah" while my title is "Assistant." This is even more depressing because even though I am in a professional field which loves to give lip service to valuing the faculty's professional experience, the silverbacks treat me like an older, uglier, yet-fully-in-need-of-condescension version of the shiny new 27 year-old assistant proffies in my cohort, who are all perky-breasted, wide-eyed young things that hang on the silvers' every word. Nice kids, all of 'em, but kids nonetheless. I am an (old) woman without a country.

Thus the academic-nonacademic marriage does provide a reality check about ambition. Still, nothing gets my back up like the phrase "the reason academic politics are so petty is that the stakes are so small." Would you spare me? The reason why Dilbert is so funny is that we all basically work in the place with the same people, from incompetent Peter-principle bosses to shiftless coworkers. It's not the assumption that academic politics are petty which sets me off; it's the idea that office politics everywhere else are somehow non-petty. While academics supposedly fritter away time on silly things and inconsequential squabbles, people in the Real World are engaged in struggles of life-or-death import, like figuring out how to do Lady Gaga's hair, improve pre-packaged cake frosting, and developing pharmaceuticals to help silverbacks get it up. Get the picture? Oh, I'm sure it's unheard of in the Real World to scheme over things like office space and salaries, right? Uh-huh. This is not to say that all of the "real world" is silly; people do work that saves lives every day. But so do we in academia. Some of us are, in fact, working to try to cure cancer and AIDS and prevent car crashes. And just like the people who try to figure out how to make cake frosting and sex better, many of us academics work at things which make this rotten world sweeter and more pleasant, like the life of the mind.

So even though we are all in the academic context, there are really really different jobs within that context. There is usually at least one essay a year in the Chronicle berating young graduates not to think they "are too good for teaching jobs." That essay makes me want to barf every single time because it's not that I think I am "too good" for a 5/5 teaching load, it's that I don't want that job, just like I don't want a bunch of other jobs ranging from US President to homicide detective. A friend recently got tenure at a nearby community college, and he's been swaggering around attempting to rub it in. I'm happy for him, but I really wish he would stop acting like I'll crumble into a fit of jealousy at any moment. I don't want tenure at a community college. It's not that I think I am "too good" for it; it's that I don't really enjoy teaching that much. I prefer writing. If I were faced with the choice of a teaching job or going back to my profession in the "real world" I would go back to the real world. Is that so wrong? If you yearn to be in front of a classroom, rock on, and who cares what your advisor and peers think. Frack 'em. But let's not pretend the questions Mike has grappled with are all just a matter of irrelevant ambitions and specious hierarchies, though some types of academic jobs and settings do (unfairly) have more status than others.

These questions also come down to what you want to spend your time doing, and that is a reasonable criteria on which to make a life decision.

Mike, from one regular columnist/punching bag here to another: Best of luck. It takes time to figure out what you really want given the hand you're dealt. Now I've got to go and figure out how to make sure my rival knows I just got asked to give a keynote. Maybe I'll circulate the program via the proffie listserv...

Carla Flood.

A fair amount of material has come in the past 2 days concerning Carla, Mike, and the current battle between the Ivies and the "rest of us poor fucking schlubs who went to East Central State University of Podunkville." Below are some of our favorite bits.

• I pity your assistant; what is he supposed to learn from you with your callous disregard for teaching? Or perhaps he's just another "nickel wrapper" whose existence serves to furnish a comfortable room for you in the Ivory Tower?
• Don't forget, Carla: you would never have gotten as far as you have today without teachers. Try and show a little gratitude.
• Oh, I see. Carla's a LOSER.
• Carla, you and Ivy can piss off to whatever self-congratulatory circle-jerk you two so graciously took time off from. Your disdain for teachers, students and the classroom in general is nothing short of morally repugnant and I hope to the Sweet Lord Jesus (who is the Christ) that you never inflict yourselves on anyone who actually gives a goddamn about your field - whatever the hell that might be. I don't hate you because you're both from an Ivy league. I don't hate you because you're ambitious. I don't hate you because you've got nice jobs. I hate you because you're insufferable fucking pricks.
• There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to focus entirely on research instead of teaching, raising a family, or growing tomatoes. But Carla is banking that she'll produce produce brilliant research that will change the world, like the smallpox vaccine, the Internet, and theory of relativity. The vast majority of research is read only by a handful of specialists as a professional courtesy - tracts on gender politics in country-house poems, ten-year studies that produce no conclusions. The odds are stacked against her, but Carla is prepared to work hard and not complain. She may very well succeed; I have to admit that she seems fiercely driven and her reasoning is sound: teaching isn't less valuable than research, just different.
• Good for you, Carla, that you're just so much better than everyone else. Way to go. Yay you - I'm sure your Nobel is already in the mail. My question to you is: Why do you feel such a compulsion to convince everyone of how important you and your work is? Why do you have to beat the dead horse about what an elite school you went to?
• This sort of nonsense drives me crazy -- the idea that career trumps life, that one measures one's life in conference papers given and articles published, that intellectual banter is only to be had with other careerists. But what really bugs me is her talk about training. I hear such talk often as part of a rhetoric of humanities professionalism -- "our training," "our graduate students are trained to," and so on. In humanities study, I'd suggest, there's no such thing as training. Training is systematic, rigorous. Reading and learning are relatively haphazard matters, with courses taken for all sorts of reasons, and works read in no uniform sequence. Thomas Merton had a great story about walking into the wrong room and ending up in a great class with Mark Van Doren. Of course if "training" means something like what people do with dogs -- obedience, all that -- maybe Clever Carla has been well-trained. Paper-trained.
• I suggest that Mr. Ivy and Clever Clara get together and groom each other like the apes they are. Even if their scholarship has some social utility, which they have not even suggested themselves, these people are cancers on the body politic. Teaching the young, now, there is something with some actual value. And on a personal level, can you imagine engaging in some "intellectual banter" with either of these smug little creeps? Okay, back to rolling the nickles . . . I can do it on the backs of my four published books, stacked atop the pile of leading journals containing my publications.
• I will bet dollars to doughnuts that neither Carla nor Mike's respondent attended Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. Don't these writers know that "Ivy" is code for "second-tier ag school in upstate NY" or "Penn?" And also strongly implies, "I went to a shitty undergraduate institution and am now pathetically trying to overcompensate?" Can't we just agree to abandon the word "Ivy" to the desperate parents seeking to impress their neighbors with their kids' college admissions?
• Ivy and Carla make me want to shoot myself in the face! Since when does having an Ivy League degree exempt you from being a person and make you a special superhuman research machine? I attend graduate school at an Ivy, and though I would probably not ever admit it to my adviser, my greatest ambition is just to be a happy person. And if having a few publications is a part of that, then fine, and if having a dog and living in some tree-lined town in the Midwest and teaching at a third-tier liberal arts college is a part of that, then that's fine too. Your scholarship won't ever change the world, but your behavior as a person and a member of your family might.

Dr. Mindbender on the Crying Burden.

Crying students happen. I take no pleasure in making them cry, and even though I’m a rat bastard by nature, I try to channel my well-stifled inner Buddha and have compassion when dealing with distressed students. Kent’s column about a crying student gives rise to two questions, though: First, why did it take so long for “Jason” to realize he wasn’t going to pass, let alone get a C? Second, why did “Jason” stick around and cry in front of Kent? The first question’s answer probably has something to do with generic student idiocy, so we can let it pass. The second one, though, puzzles me, ‘cuz the one time that I realized I’d utterly fucked myself, I didn’t stick around.

Back in the day, when I was a wee undergrad, I took a speech class. And boy howdy, was it great. I loooooved that shit. Getting up in front of people and pontificating? Hellz, yeah. The catch was, this class met at 9:30 AM, and I wasn’t so good at getting to it on time, partially ‘cuz I’m a night owl by nature and partially ‘cuz I got seriously loaded most every evening, making mornings come right early.

Disaster struck at midterms, when the instructor, Ms. Schickelgruber, scheduled the exam for 8:30 AM, an hour before our regular class meeting. No one, least of all myself, was surprised when I slept through it. But then I slept through the makeup test. And the makeup test for the makeup test. That’s when Ms. Schickelgruber’s patience wore out. She said, “No more makeup tests,” when I cruised in at my usual 9:32 arrival time and begged forgiveness. Stunned, I planted ass among the other students and tried to play it cool, but my brain started to blare, Failure, Will Robinson! Failure!, and sniffling commenced. Seconds before the waterworks opened up for real, I scuttled for the exit, found an empty office, and holed up for a cry. I even called home and blubbered to Dad.

After class ended, I returned to pick up my backpack and talked to Ms. S. about my grade. The news wasn’t good: if I aced the final exam, I would scrape a C, by tenths of a point. This brought me down even further and made me want to cry again, but I just nodded and went on my miserable way back to the dorm, where I snorfled some more.

What I specifically didn’t do was stick around and cry in front of the professor. Even though Ms. Schickelgruber was ssssmokin’ hot and seemed to like me as a person, she wasn’t my mom. Ms. S.’s job was to lead the class, evaluate my work, and dole out a grade at the end. I did appreciate her kindly demeanor when I collected my backpack after class was over -- and in that respect, I’m down with Kent’s compassion kick -- but as far as class went, the lady cracked the whip over my ass; I both deserved it and knew I deserved it, and I didn’t burden her with my tears. Is it too much to expect the same courtesy from my own students?

--

Moderator Note: And, yes, like, OMG, that IS Dawson Leery. Good grief. You can't BELIEVE how many people wanted confirmation.

Another Swipe at The Recent Ivy League Idiot. (And We Confess There are LOTS of non-Ivy Idiots Just Like Him Who We Hear From As Well.)

"I see this in so many of my older colleagues. I tell them about my recent publication and they tell me about their family or their golf game. As if it's the same thing."

Has it occurred to you, ambitious douche bag that you are, that for them, it IS the same thing? That they consider their families -- GASP -- as important, achievement-wise, as you think your publication on Einstein's Theory of Booger Dimensions, or Hegel's Fart Assonances? I know this may come as a shock to you, but not everyone is a publication-grubbing toady who would put gaining another CV entry or a citation in someone else's pissant little paper as more important than a round of golf with an elderly parent, or making their eight-year-olds school performance of "The Three Piggy Opera."

"But teaching is so low on my list of priorities, and was instilled upon me by my mentors all through grad school."

It sounds as if you're the one with priorities out of whack, and it sounds as if your mentors have the same issues. Let's be realistic, Researchflake. How many people are really going to read your article? Maybe two dozen will pay close attention -- and half of those will be reading with their knives out, looking to carve out a piece of publication turf by proving that you're an idiot who doesn't know she s/he's talking about. Maybe a few dozen more will skim through your article out of idle curiosity. Your spouse or partner will read it, stifling yawns and feigning enthusiasm because you're so chuffed, and your parents will probably read it, as it's the only way they can make any connection with you at all, as you've been so busy -- "Cats in the Cradle-style" to actually interact with them. That might make you "mediocre."

I'll bet you that Mike -- teacher that he is, and that you contemptibly call a loser -- has more of an impact and more influence on those who filter through his classrooms than your piddling publications.

Success as a teacher is not mediocrity. It's those teachers that toil in the classroom that make it possible for you to ruminate on your fungus-addled toes in your Ivory Tower, pondering your latest publication praising Plato's puckered prepuce. Success as a teacher does not equal mediocrity. It means his priorities are different -- I'd argue more realistic and more noble -- than yours. Certainly more worthwhile than "publication whore bingo" game which you seem to think is the pinnacle of success.