Re: reel hot pashun
J J R (jrovira@juno.com)
Sun, 26 Jul 1998 18:58:19 -0400 (EDT)
Heh, ok, I won't argue with the truth behind what you're saying here :).
In my experience, I've noticed two different kinds of academics.
1. Those who left high school and home to go to college, then go to grad
school, then go back to college immediately as a professor.
I pity these people. Sex is the only stimulation outside of books they
know. Male versions of this tend to either Screw undergrads as a hobby
or wish they could. Female versions tend to get bawdy if unmarried, or
ridiculous in other ways. The best they can hope for is to be lesbian.
That way they have a mission in life --Representative of a Victim
Class--and a good reason to be self-righteous about it.
2. People who actually had to work for a living for an extended period of
their lives.
Much more interesting, I value their judgment more. Generally.
3. People who are a mixture of both of the above, enjoy what they do,
deal with political realities as best they can, care about their
students, and just live normal lives.
There's a lot of em out there.
Jim
P.S. BTW, I love your writing. Particularly this sentence:
<< A sense of security leaks away down the same crack as the sense of
proportion. Bitterness rises inexorably. >>
Yeah, that sounds familiar too :)
On Sun, 26 Jul 1998 18:08:48 +0000 Scottie Bowman <bowman@mail.indigo.ie>
writes:
>
> Good try, Jim, good try.
>
> The thing about academics is not the number of books they've
> read. It's the nature of their experience outside of these
>same
> books.
>
> There are at least two aspects to this: the kind of people who
>
> become academics & what the academy does to them once
> they're inside & the drawbridge has gone up.
>
> A life in scholarship attracts the bookish, the obsessional,
> the squirrels of the world. It holds out the prospect of long
>
> holidays & work where the hands are not dirtied & the days
> pass sitting in a quiet library or holding forth to immature
> & impressionable minds. It sounds a life of civilised ease.
> One will face no great challenge from one's peers. Those
>bastards
> not hanging on one's every word will, nonetheless, offer no
>real
> threat since their progress depends finally on one's approval.
>
> That's how it all looks from the outside.
>
> Once inside the ivied walls, of course, things begin to feel
> a little different. The world contracts to a competition
>where
> the compulsion to publish is as urgent as the compulsion to
> defaecate. One's little heap of produce must be protected &
> eaked out to its very limit. The fear of plagiarism demands
> the construction of guardian walls against prying eyes.
> The atmosphere becomes ever more claustrophobic & paranoid.
> Increasingly, one resents just how low the intellectual is
>held
> in public esteem. Government is sees as indifferent. A sense
>of
> security leaks away down the same crack as the sense of
>proportion.
> Bitterness rises inexorably. Life grows frightful......
>
> I've been a family doctor in a small village, a shrink in a
>booby
> hatch, a child psychiatrist, a medical officer on an RAF
>flying
> station, an analyst in London - & for the past 35 years I've
>been
> in private practice in a university town where a quite
> disproportionate number of my patients have belonged to the
>academic
> staff.
>
> Don't try to tell me about the Olympian wisdom of your
>friendly
> neighbourhood prof.
>
> Scottie B.
>
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