Hey, I Know!

Let’s NOT. Let’s not have a meeting. Let’s act like that email you sent to some of us NEVER HAPPENED. Mmmkay? Listen my dear colleague, my dear, uh, Dr. Gabriel, (I just bestowed that name upon you because you have been fucking up BIG TIME) a meeting will do you no good. You have a multi-year track record of serious fuck-ups. I’m sorry (not really) that internal report just slammed your ass, I’m sorry (not really) the Dean is pissed at you, and I’m sorry (not in the slightest) that your reign of fucking up has now reared its ugly head and has taken a serious bite out of your ass. We, your meeting invitees, can’t fix any of that. Your ass cannot be reclaimed. Spend this scheduled meeting time getting your shit together (you know, because your ass is gone) and stop with the big time fuck-ups. Work on some average sized disasters and work your way down to the mini catastrophe. With enough hard work you could probably start engaging in micro fuck-ups within a year. There will be no meeting. I have to go get my big fat head onto my snow white pillow now.

Go Ahead

Leave me a message. My phone will not let me delete messages without listening to them. Fortunately, my phone does not know the difference between me listening to a message and when I just put the phone down and have my desk listen to a message. Thanks desk. So sure, my desk would really appreciate your explanation for why you missed class. Go ahead, let the long saga of your various time conflicts unfold into my phone. My desk will love it. My desk will eat your story up. While in defiance of all known natural laws, I suspect that if I keep doing this an ugly stain will eventually develop on my desk. A dark amorphous stain comprised of laughable excuses delivered at odd times to ensure the likelihood of reaching voicemail. If I’m lucky this stain will resemble the Virgin Mary and I’ll sell it on Ebay.

Provost This

What the fuck Provost? I got your letter. While it is comforting to know that you are recommending to the B.O.T. that I be granted tenure, all I can do is add your letter to the pile of “official” letters I have that say something along the lines of: We/I are pleased to advise you that we/I are recommending that you be granted tenure. The first one was somewhat exciting, but you people are killing me with this shit. I have been told by fucking EVERYONE that I have tenure, I have been approved for a post-tenure sabbatical, arrangements have been made to cover my classes…BUT I DO NOT HAVE AN OFFICIAL LETTER SAYING I HAVE TENURE. IN WRITING MOTHERFUCKERS. NOW! I have seen your votes, I have seen the outside reviews, I have seen the entire fucking pile of documents that you have reduced my life to. This is killing me. You haven’t notified any of us. I am not the only one losing my mind here. I NEED THE PIECE OF PAPER.

I am starting to feel like a real asshole. People are congratulating me. I think Clio Bluestocking once referred to me as a “recently tenured professor.” That made me smile. For a time, people referring to me as such, seemed OK, kinda nice really. But FUCK. It is still not official? I feel like those people in AA that have to go around apologizing for their drunken deeds. I mean do I need to send out a mass email stating: Hey thanks for the congratulations everyone, but I still don’t have a fucking piece of paper making it official. Your compliments are now just making me feel like an imposter. So unless this was your intent (in which case, get the fuck out of my address book), please refrain from all tenure talk. Sincerely, ASSistant Professor No.

Guess what? I am going to write a letter in response to you Provost. I ALSO RECOMMEND THAT I BE GRANTED TENURE! …it means nothing to you doesn’t it?

Fucking Weirdo

I just had to spend three hours with a fucking weirdo. I am sure all disciplines have their own version of the weirdos. I am not referring to your average run-of-the-mill weirdo we have all encountered. Forget about the hotel weirdos, door-knocking religious weirdos, and your typical weirdo student. I am referring to the weirdos in your discipline. They comprise about 5% (upon further reflection, make that 10%) of your field. Whatever it is that you do, these weirdos take things into the bizarre realm. They represent a cartoonish version of your field’s worst stereotype. They, without fail, dress bizarrely. They also write things that get published somewhere on the outer fringes of your fields literature universe. They garner some degree of press for their writings because they are outrageous and some science reporter somewhere thinks it will make an interesting story. In graduate school their weirdoness was disguised as creativity, they showed promise and got jobs. They still have those jobs, they do publish and teach after all, but they have morphed into complete weirdos.

One came to visit my department. Weirdo would not leave. I am losing all tolerance for these people. I mean, whatever. Go ahead and spin your bizarro ideas. I am just going to sit here because I know that the fundamental fallacies on which your ideas are based are just wrong. I am happy to entertain different perspectives, but you are just wackadoodle nuts. The funny thing is we share a little something in common. There is no doubt in my mind that you have a website or blog. It is certainly devoted to even more extreme wackadoodle ideas. These ideas are so extreme that they fall well outside of our discipline. No doubt you run this operation anonymously. Shit, me too! Well, not the weirdo wackadoddle stuff, but the anonymous part? Yep. I realized this after 180 minutes, 52 non-committal head nods, 27 “hhhmms” and 15 solid minutes of staring at the carpet. It’s troubling me that we have this in common.

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.

Badges!

You want me to be a what? Graduation Marshall? What is that? Do I get a badge? No badges? Please Dean’s office stop asking me to do this stuff. I have put in my graduation ceremony time. I have worn the crazy outfit, I have listened to our shitty band, and heard our President give the same lame speech. You are going to have to hit up someone else. Unless you can guarantee to me that there will a be a streaker, at least two incidents of a grabbed microphone for shouting political statements, a drunken brawl, and you pay me for my time (and maybe give me one of those leis all the Hawaiians wear)— forget it, I’m too busy.

**IMPORTANT UPDATE** (not really, but I enjoy making be-beep be-beep noises in my head around those words)

Holy Shit. I knew my University webpage portrayed a completely fictitious version of my campus. I knew other University web pages did the same. I know all of our schools are trying to portray the same things. The same academic landscape. For example, ALL schools have this picture:

Oldest and Most Picturesque Building on Campus on a Sunny Day: The building must be made of stone and have some roman numerals (or anything in Latin, or even a quote by someone who signed the Constitution) on it. At least one tree and some very colorful flowers in full bloom are in front of the building. The grass in the foreground must be of PGA golf-course quality. The background needs some distant mountains (if unavailable: oceans, tall buildings, and/or a US flag can be substituted). The scene is so filled with sunlight you would think the earth is roughly 2 meters from the sun. (Never mind that this building is decrepit inside and absolutely nothing of any importance ever occurs within its walls.)

In the comments lots of “classic” scenes show up: Chemistry students measuring Gatorade or gazing into flasks of undetermined contents. The library “diversity tableau” the “pretending to study” students, and the gleeful professor with a perfectly legible chalkboard/whiteboard full of notes behind them. WE ALL have them. I understand the marketing issues, but I am blown away be the repetition. I know, I know. We all know this. I shouldn’t be surprised. I never explicitly searched University websites with this in mind though. I was initially laughing as I found endless examples of every cliché mentioned, but then it stopped getting funny. I never realized how blatantly formulaic and ubiquitous it was. It makes me think it would be fun to create a completely fictitious University website. Combine it all. Find all the best examples of cliché images and text and create one gleaming beacon of academic bullshit. We could then deface it. Give every smiling person on campus some off-color dialogue. Photoshop the buildings back into reality. Put all the trash back. Rewrite everything.

This is what happens to my brain at this point in the semester (so close, yet so far from over), and when my basketball team not only lost, but lost big. Damn.

ATTN: University Website Designer

That smiling chick on right side of the homepage is pissing me off. I want to puke when I see that shockingly diverse array of students who appear to be reading a book together in the library. And those well dressed students pictured in the Union? Where the hell did you find them? And why do they appear to be holding trays of appetizing food? These pictures have been up for fucking forever. Replace them with even more ridiculous photos please. I don’t care. Familiarity has led me to hate these people, I have given them each derogatory, profanity-laden names and back stories. They really just piss me off. I can’t be the only one sick of their shit-eating grins. Give me some new people to slowly despise.

Vacancy

Dr. No is not in. Dr. No is also referring to itself in the third person. Why is Dr. No like this? Dr. No had its mind blown apart. I am Dr. No’s reptile brain, known as Dr. Iguana. I was quietly hanging at the base of Dr. No’s brain just doing my thing. You know, keeping the old heart rate in check regulating body temperature, same old shit I do every day. Next thing I know the whole Corporation just explodes. Damn. I’m in the corner office now. Pretty roomy in here, downright spacious. Not sure what to do though. I’ve got to get Dr. No back. Yes, it will know what to do. But what happened? I remember hearing voices right before the explosion, but I wasn’t really paying attention. What was that voice saying? That voice was vaguely familiar…it was asking a question maybe? Geez, this is tough. Oh crap! I’ve let Dr. No’s heart rate go through the roof. Its’ hard to think about this many things at one time! OK, think. What happened? Something about teaching…I GOT IT! The familiar voice asked if Dr. No would teach a class at 7:30. Then the rest of the office screamed “7:30 in the motherfucking morning?!?!!!!!!” and then all I remember was a flash of bright light and then silence. Think. How do I fix this? I could give Dr. No a heart attack. No, that won’t help. How would that weasely guy who worked in the Excuses Department handle this? Maybe there are some files left in his office.

YES! Here we go. Let’s see, all that appears to be left are: not feeling well, dentist appointment, lack of travel funds, must have left it at home, must be on my laptop, having car troubles, it’s not you it’s me, it’s not me it’s you damnit, I’m allergic, and OK but just this once. I don’t think any of these are going to work. There must be something else in here…What if I just say that mornings are when Dr. No likes to write and it would be a huge career destroying inconvenience to lose this valuable time. Wait, am I allowed to lie? I’m pretty sure writing and sleeping are two different things. I’d visit the Lying Department but I could never get through security. The locks, lasers, ninjas, and booby traps are all on autopilot and are impenetrable (wait a minute, shouldn’t I control that? I thought I was autopilot, like the blow up pilot doll in Airplane! Shit that movie was funny, it appealed to me on a fundamental level). Well, why the hell not. Let’s give it a try. No. I can’t possibly teach during that time slot I really need my mornings for writing.

It’s working!!! I see people coming back to work! The office is magically reconfiguring itself! Whew. Dr. No better let me watch Airplane! again for this. Hell yeah! I want some Cheetos too.

L'enfont Terrible