I have only been reading the page for a few months, but I've worked through the archives and I can second what Harlingen Hector says about the long-departed Walter.
Academics suck. They make the worst colleagues. Just a day or two of perusing the Chronicle Forums will teach anyone how petty and small those people are.
I recently moved from one nondescript college in the Midwest to one in the Southwest. No culture shock. My brown boxes and I found ourselves in a department full of drones and douchebags, just like my last department.
But Walter, and Weepy Wayne, and many others on this site are expansive personalities, bold adventurers, people I'd like to know and would love as colleagues. (Who ARE the lucky bastards who have offices next to those guys?!?)
It's a hard job, of course, but when you have fellow travelers along for the trip
, the job can remain fun and rewarding.We all need to let our hair down a bit - or at least let it blow in the breeze.
Let us learn from Walter and the rest of the famed RYS correspondents: say it's little when it's little, tell the truth, speak out against the idiocy, maintain our standards, require that our flakes do the work, go belly to belly with the Dean when he/she tries to turn the college into a fast food franchise.
It's our profession, isn't it?
