From Rate Your Students, August 19, 2009
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.
pretty bad autumn sunday haiku
really bad thursday haiku
From College Misery, December 19, 2010
After a week shortened
Police released details about the death of law professor and blogger Dan Markel. Who the hell murders a professor and drives away in a Prius?
Archie's here, with a new game for old CMers
Archie here, with the latest Crampicle Hyperbole
So
here I am, enjoying the relative calm of the beginning of the beginning
of the new semester. I escaped the lurid spectacle of the AHA and ran
off to the exotic tourist destination where I do my research. Now I’m
tanned, rested, and ready to rock out with my ... but I digress.
A New Angry Archie Game: The Real Mail Mablib
Archie, one of this year's convention correspondents, is
off to a big convention in a frozen solid city somewhere. But on his way
he's filed this wacky wiki post that we'd like to share with you. We
think we're in love with him.