Bring on the Gold

The Holiday Inn banquet hall has been reserved. A fleet of 20 year old waiters have donned their black polyester pants, soiled tuxedo shirts, and clip-on ties. They are ready to assist you on your trip to the buffet. Fatty prime-rib, chicken cacciatore, and baked ziti awaits. The smarmy DJ is standing by, ready to kick this party into high gear. Prepare to chicken dance, electric slide, and YMCA your way into the wee hours of the night. The watery drinks will be flowing! This is going to be one helluva 50th Blog-Post party! Have fun everybody! If you can’t find me, I’ll be in the alley smoking a joint with the waiters.

OK, wait. All joking aside, I must admit that reaching post #50 has me feeling a bit reflective. Many of you have been blogging away for years now and 50 probably seems like a pretty measly milestone. But I am rather amazed to have made it this long. My intentions for this blog are clearly stated (over there under my fake name). Of course, there are a few other reasons I haven’t told you about. While I am not willing to completely spill my guts here, a few special toasts are in order. I raise my glass to Acadamnit readers for the following:

Indulging my juvenile sense of humor: While I (brace yourself) actually take my job quite seriously, I have no interest in bringing such seriousness to my blog. I have decidedly refused to address what can generally be considered “important issues” in the academic workplace. I pose no serious political or pedagogical questions and offer no opinions or advice. It is not because I am unaware or do not care. There are numerous thoughtful bloggers out there providing this content and I spend enough time at work thinking about such things. So, thanks for not getting all high-minded on me.

Giving me the chance to retake College Composition: Throughout high school and college I was a miserable failure at any assignment that required creative writing. College composition was a nightmare and I barely pulled a B. Let me just apologize right now to all of my past teachers who assigned any writing task that I could not construct as a journal article. Holy shit, I made you read some crap. This obviously begs the question of how I ended up starting a blog. It was pretty simple. I started writing mock documents to amuse myself. You know, fake annual self-assessments and letters to journal editors. I would crack myself up and then push delete. I just switched the delete button with “post” and this blog was born. It now amazes me that I strongly suspect some of you teach these very classes. So, thanks for setting aside your red pens and allowing me to type at you.

Verifying sanity: I have never doubted that the stupid shit I write about comprise ubiquitous sources of frustration in academic contexts. Who doesn’t work with this person, or this one, or hasn’t had any of these (A, B, C) in class? (fuck, don’t get me started on these people) But it is still deeply satisfying to verify that we are all dealing with similar crap.

So, here’s to not getting fired! Thanks everyone.