I had a couple extra paragraphs explaining why this charity is depressing, in anticipation of you guys being like "Why? Why is this depressing? Why?" Then I decided that was nuts, and erased them.
1: Why did you erase them?
Why is it depressing on so many levels/
I get that it is sad that some families can't afford food. But what are the other levels?
On your group's week, you provide a backpack of groceries give a man a fish, which then goes home with a local schoolchild whose family is having trouble providing food.
That's why it's depressing. That there is no option for Heebie U to help make families (or single people) self-sufficient, because those opportunities are all gone for the foreseeable future.
I don't knock feeding hungry people, it's better than that they don't eat. But it's a bleak and hopeless form of charity if it isn't tied into something with gives them an outcome beyond the occasional meal at some other bugger's discretion.
[comment redacted by mistake. Sorry! --Stanley]
Funny, I've been thinking about a longer response to my exchange with x.trapnel about charity. I might try to add that to this thread.
I think in this case the basic impulse seems reasonable, but that the distribution mechanism seems problematic, to say the least.
Sending the food home with the kids strikes me as depressing. Even though it's probably a useful venue because kids show up at school predictably on a regular basis.
Having tons of needy families, to justify such a program, and then only giving them one bag of food per semester, seems depressing. I'm sure there are other programs out there that are also feeding these families, but saying "Here's groceries! See you in the fall!" is depressing. And being able to fill the calendar in such a small town is depressing.
Also, the emails are chipper and upbeat and all about passing around the backpacks! Which heightens the depressingness.
That's why it's depressing. That there is no option for Heebie U to help make families (or single people) self-sufficient
Wait, do you find food banks depressing for the same reason? Food banks seem like a good element of a (semi-functional) safety net.
What I find depressing is that it uses the child in school as the point of contact for delivering charity to the family.
"Remember, don't overfill the bags with canned goods, because kids will be carrying these home!" Really.
It does seem that the once a semester thing seems silly, in a depressing sense. Either identify families at risk and set up a charity to send those kids home with a bag of groceries every week, or do something else. A backpack once a semester is weird. If you can't afford a backpack's worth once a week, then just send a little a week. I mean, a few goddamn caps of soup a week makes more sense than a backpack of food once per semester, even if the total amount of food is the same.
Sending the food home with the kids strikes me as depressing.
Agreed. It says, "We'd give it to the parents, but either we assume they parents would eat it all themselves or that you only care about hunger in children."
"Remember, don't overfill the bags with canned goods, because kids will be carrying these home!" Really.
That is depressing.
"Remember that you have to balance your impulse to give generously against the reality that the food has to be literally carried on the back of a ten-year-old child."
So wrong.
re: 4
Yeah, but obesity is often caused by financial poverty. If you are completely skint, often all you can afford is shit pre-packaged processed food. Or you might be able to afford to eat better, but at the cost of a great deal of time and effort.
9: Do you know who you are collecting food for? Do they get a chance to say what food they would like?
Wait, do you find food banks depressing for the same reason?
Emphatically so. Unemployed people need to be given an income commensurate with their needs (not their desires).
To me it says "Our angle is to pretend this is some 1950's Leave it to Beaver situation, and the kid will whistle while they skip home with pride! Ignore the many ways this doesn't make sense!"
4: On a blog where most of the commenters are highly educated, it's hard to imagine someone being unaware of the poverty-obesity connection.
(I'm rushing, so those may not be the four absolute best links on the topic.)
I was thinking Heebie found this depressing because of the Geebie family's own difficulties providing food to their child.
OT: It would be a bad idea for me to make use of this service, wouldn't it?
I was thinking Heebie found this depressing because of the Geebie family's own difficulties providing food to their child.
OT: It would be a bad idea for me to make use of this service, wouldn't it?
If Witt had provided 5 links, I'd be convinced. Four links, you can find that for anything.
Emphatically so.
I guess I think of food banks as being used temporarily. That may not be accurate but, in that case, they have the advantage that you don't have to go through the same bureaucracy that you would to get state benefits.
My sense is that food banks are pretty liberal about giving you food if you show up. For example the web site of my local food bank says, "Our food bank is available to anyone living in [city]." That's not a minor feature.
Actually, looking at the food bank website makes the program that HG describes seem even more half-assed.
"Single individuals and families can visit once a week ... and typically leave our food bank with 50-70 pounds of food."
OT: It would be a bad idea for me to make use of this service, wouldn't it?
That's a pretty tempting service. As long as you're absolutely positive there were enough people who made it to your level in the process, so that you're not inadvertently outing yourself, I say go for it, and then report back to us. But I'm impulsive like that.
They just opened a food bank near my house. It's three doors down from the liquor store. I'm wondering if it isn't a trap, like if you wander over to the liquor store after you get free food, a guy jumps out and berates you.
If you're going on a trip, you can ask the food bank to issue you Traveller's Chex®.
(Okay, now I feel bad for joking on Serious Day.)
Do you know who you are collecting food for? Do they get a chance to say what food they would like?
I don't think so, but I only started reading the emails closely after agreeing to play, so maybe it said earlier.
10 is right -- I don't understand who would possibly get much benefit from as much food as a ten-year-old can carry, once a semester.
23 is a best-case scenario view of food banks. They are often open limited hours (like, 4 hours a week), often during working hours, so it's hard to get there if you work. And they're often first-come, first served, so you have to get there early and wait a long time. And "open to everyone living in X" generally means "you must show us a government-issued photo ID with a local address," which is hard if you're poor, because poor people tend to move a lot. Among other reasons.
If I sound grouchy, it's because I found heebie's post depressing for exactly the reasons she outlined. And because I just got a stupid e-mail survey chaperoned by my local public radio station, which I love and trust, but issued by a fundraising consultant which turned out to be an annoyingly manipulative "But you really like direct mail! What would make you give more through direct mail solicitations!" push poll. Blech.
if you wander over to the liquor store after you get free food, a guy jumps out and berates you.
So awesome.
It's like an anti-mugging ("he threatened me, and told me to put my money back in my wallet. And then he gave me a cell phone.")
10, 29: The idea may be to get more regular donors for the food bank or some other charity. There are some charity events at our university that I'm fairly certain make no sense outside of obtaining a list of emails that is weighted toward people who might be willing to have some regular involvement.
obtaining a list of emails that is weighted toward people who might be willing to have some regular involvement
An email asking who would be interested in having their email address included on a list of people who might be willing to be involved with or otherwise assist the food bank or some other charity would seem to be a more straightforward way to go about this.
This charity is generating a lot more chipper, upbeat emails than a more straightforward invitation to be on a mailing list might.
34: Sure, but you do better if you've got a list of givers, not matter how small the gift.
23 is a best-case scenario view of food banks.
True, but also makes me think that I should be donating to local food bank which is, I think, pretty good.
36 s/b "no matter how small the gift."
Sure, but you do better if you've got a list of givers, not matter how small the gift.
An email simply soliciting donations (cash or in-kind) for the food bank or some other charity would seem to be a more straightforward way to go about this.
17: I am aware of that. I just see a contradiction between "obese" and "starving." From experience: in my state the Food Stamp allotments are pretty generous, I've gained 20 pounds since signing up 1 1/2 years ago. (My problem is that I'd never had occasion to need to learn self-restraint concerning food; sometimes I consider asking for my benefit to be reduced, when I'm not doing pushups or letting my friend's dog drag me around for miles.)
And about "charity food" in general, are food benefits too hard for people to get? Using an EBT card is much less humiliating than being seen in line outside a Salvation Army, e.g., especially when I use Self-Checkout.
Anyway, I see fat people in line for free food often, even in the park in the snow. (Though I applaud people who go out in bad weather to feed folks who really are hungry.)
There must be something obvious about this that I'm missing.
39: It sounds like that is what they did at Heebie U, minus the simple part. Instead they went with "think about the children," which is probably more effective for most people.
I see fat people in line for free food often, even in the park in the snow
I know it's hard to believe, but even fat people get hungry. Generally, the problem is that they're eating too much unhealthy food and not getting enough exercise, not that their food budgets are too big.
Er, I guess comment 4 got redacted too hastily? (A timely reminder to sign your comments, people.)
There must be something obvious about this that I'm missing.
Empathy and a pseud?
Also, they may be waiting on line for healthier food than they could afford, and may also be taking the food home to feed svelter family members.
45: On the veldt, if healthy food was in short supply, the successful strategy for optimal reproductive fitness was to give the healthy food to daughters who might grow-up to be hot.
But it's a bleak and hopeless form of charity if it isn't tied into something with gives them an outcome beyond the occasional meal at some other bugger's discretion.
Indeed.
"If you give me a fish, you have fed me for a day. If you teach me to fish, then you have fed me until the river is contaminated or the shoreline seized for development. But if you teach me to organize, then whatever the challenge, I can join together with my peers, and we will fashion our own solution."
No, that's what happened on the sveldt.
But if you teach me to organize, then whatever the challenge, I can join together with my peers, and we will fashion our own solution."
Is organization ever taught? (First, as a glib joke about personal organization. But second, as a real question about unions and such.)
But second, as a real question about unions and such.
Yes.
My knowledge is all second-hand or further removed, but I think of this as part of what labor organizers do.
Granted. It's just that I have a more stringent definition of "hunger" that comes from growing up seeing pictures of starving Ethiopians -- who were usually very thin.
But anyway. I do think food stamps should be easier to get: in a country as rich as the U.S.A. there's really no reason why anybody, even a fat guy (like me), should have to line up in a park during a snowstorm just to get fed.
Further to 51 there are some great (if dated) stories in the book I recommended here.
Just becuse you're fat doesn't mean you have any money. Come on.
And about "charity food" in general, are food benefits too hard for people to get?
Yes.
Twice pseudless was forgivable, as an accident. A third comment with a fake pseud makes me want to know who we're talking to before I continue the conversation.
i think the obesity-junkfood-poverty thing has been discussed here before.
I do like the idea of per calorie food tax, used to increase funding for food stamps. most other suggestions for "subsidizing healthy food' seem very unworkable.
I don't, actually. You mean you think Defunkt is an ad hoc pseud change rather than someone new?
Defunkt is a fat guy standing in the snow.
A big part of what ACORN did before its demise was teaching people to organize. That was what made it so threatening to movement conservatives, not the fact that it had people of color in leadership positions or GOTV operations (which were actually only small potatoes, relatively speaking -- or so I'm told).
61: It was what Barack Obama did before he was co-opted.
You mean you think Defunkt is an ad hoc pseud change rather than someone new?
If it's someone new, welcome. If it's a regular, I'd like to know, even if they don't want to identify with their regular pseud.
In typing 56, I was mostly worried that 4 hadn't been redacted by mistake, which made me feel surprisingly dirty.
Clarifying 61: I'm sure some movement conservatives were scared by the people of color in leadership positions at ACORN, and I'm sure they were outraged that ACORN tried to register marginalized people and then get them to the polls. But the real problem, as I understand it, was that ACORN was actively trying to create a class of citizen-activists among poor and marginalized people.
62: You're obviously suffering from false consciousness and/or seeing the world through whirly eyes if you think there was ever a time before President Obama was co-opted.
My gym is in an area with tons of homeless people, who sometimes wander in off the streets. One of the gym regulars is an ex-homeless, now-living-in-an-SRO guy, who does odd jobs around the gym for free instruction and a little cash, and we've become friends.
We happened to be talking about this issue last night, after a guy wandered in asking for money for food, and my buddy kicked the homeless guy out. His take on related problems is interesting. He thinks that obtaining food is, itself, not a problem, no matter how horrible your life is or how screwed up you are -- there are more than sufficient rescue missions, etc., that will provide hot meals to all comers. Moreover, these are located within a few blocks of where panhandlers are most likely to congregate. My buddy is very aggressive with guys who wander into the gym asking for food money -- some of them recognize him and get angry b/c he's ruining their hustle.
Anyhow, as I think we all know, "hunger is a problem" doesn't just mean "there are tons of people who are literally starving to death walking the streets and have no access whatsoever to food" -- there are huge, awful issues as to where, how, and what food is consumed by the poor. This works in a bunch of different ways -- a family that thinks of itself as respectable is not going to want to come down to the skid row missions where the free food is, and likely won't even know of the options available to them. Horrrible food from some godawful convenience store may not be nutritious or even satiate much hunger, but you can eat it in semi-privacy and restraint. Etc. etc. So, yeah, we're in a place where distribution, access and quality of food is the right way to think of the problem, not starving Ethiopians, but that sure doesn't mean that hunger or food distribution to poor people isn't a really big problem.
54: So we agree that food benefits should be easier to get. And we probably also agree that healthy eating and healthy cooking classes should be easy to come by too.
Perhaps we should organize to distribute our resources better.
18.2: OMG I need that right now. I spent $800 getting to and staying at my interview, a few hundred more on food, entertainment, and access to conference services, a few hundred on clothes, quite a bit on mailing and recommendation services, etc., and it's been well over a month with nothing but a brief email thanking me for the thank-you card and follow-up email I sent. The real cost, since I'd been saving up for years for this trip, has been the month of paralyzing, mind-destroying anxiety. Every time my phone rings I burst into tears. I can't sleep, which resulted in me missing my first class. I can't concentrate on work. Just call me, goddamn it.
[Sorry, it hadn't hit me that a pseud was required; when I posted 4 unsigned by mistake it seemed optional.]
Signd,
The Fat Snowman
More to 50 and 52:
In fact, it's problem when professional organizers don't teach organizing. Sometimes you can establish a union somewhere by parachuting in a bunch of organizers and signing up a lot of people on union cards.* And then the organizers can move on to the next project, leaving behind a group of people who don't know how to organize themselves to deal with management and feel like they have to appeal to "the union" to deal with things.
Or you can take the harder and longer approach by teaching workers how to organize their co-workers, so that you develop rank-and-file leaders and a stronger bargaining unit.
*Assuming, you know, that the employer accepts the results of the union election, doesn't fire everyone, doesn't move the company to Alabama, etc.
This applies in all kinds of movements. Civil rights organizations took different approaches to voter registration: pouring in outside volunteers vs. building local organizations. Obviously, I'm oversimplifying, and there's plenty of room between the extremes, as well as tactical reasons to lean toward one or the other at times.
Twice pseudless was forgivable
Especially given that there are pseud banks all over the country willing to hand out hot, nutritious identifiers (<ob>Wry Cooter, Matt Weiner</ob>) to all comers.
71 -- When Wry Cooter finally appears, the blog will end. We will all ascend to blog heaven or descend to blog hell, depending on our merits.
Super Wasp is also available.
(Super WASP is available to a select group.)
depending on our merits.
Fuck that shit.
How much less unionized is Texas than other places? The only times I ever, ever hear talk of unions whatsoever is around Unfogged, around M/tch and Sir Kraab, and around the extended family. Almost every institution eventually comes up in conversation at some point - students talk abou their families, colleagues discuss spouses, I've got plenty of non-academic friends, etc - and yet unions seem completely like fairy tales.
66: Indeed. And thanks, it hadn't occurred to me to see if the Y here did "work/study." What immediately comes to my mind about that place is all the thin pretty people with iPods and new-looking running shoes working the treadmills in the front window; to me that seems like a relatively rich person's resource.
68 totally sucks.
My relatively trivial job-search-related problem is that I was stood up this afternoon for an informational interview.
62 is probably right, but just to be perfectly clear I was referring to Obama's activities in Chicago during the 1980s before he went to Harvard Law School.
This kind of reminds me of the guy on the Dylan newsgroup that used to say he was only a fan of "Pre-Columbian" Dylan -- before he sold out and signed with Columbia Records in 1961.
I was stood up
Well, I've long considered you to be an upstanding commenter, if that's any consolation.
"Pre-Columbian" Dylan
Lost to history is the name of this Mayan folk singer.
One missing piece that the OP sort of gets at is that food is not readily accessible to children. Mara is still dealing with the psychological impact of food scarcity after almost a year in foster care and a placement I'm fairly sure was safe and healthy for six months before that. School lunches and all that go a long way, but they don't reach the littlest ones and that's where (arguably) the damage of malnutrition can be most severe.
yet unions seem completely like fairy tales
Pretty much.
As with most measures of social progress, TX is near the bottom: 5.4% union vs. 10.9% in the entire U.S. New York is 24.2%. More.
Further to 81, I'm not calling people who don't have the money for food bad parents or saying they all starve their children, but if parents are being neglectful or have other priorities higher than making sure the little ones eat (for good or bad reasons) it's easy for the kids to fall through the cracks. I don't have a solution to this.
If my blind-date experience is any indication of what will happen (which it has been, to a T, so far, regarding this process), I will get a brief email two months from now saying they're sorry to leave me hanging, that I am a really special girl with so much to offer, and that we did have an amazing time together, but their dog/father/grandmother died the next day, and sent them into a spiral of pain and regret that basically forced them into the arms of the internal candidate. They're so sorry they didn't tell me, and hope I'm not destroyed by the experience, but they were so ashamed of themselves.
Yeah, 68 outdoes my job search-related suffering by an order of magnitude. I just took a BART trip for a few bucks, stayed an hour longer than expected while I listened to the CEO adore the sound of his own voice, and then was walked to the door and was bid farewell to by the CTO with an enthusiastic "We'll be in touch real soon!" >1 month != "real soon". No response to my follow-up email. If you're not going to call/email/send a carrier pigeon, don't say you will. That's all.
But at least I'm well fed!
85: You'll need to hire a Teamster to shovel that shit for you.
84: That's why I always kill the dog of any potential employer right after I finish the interview.
68 sounds awful. Sorry the job search is treating you so badly, AWB. I spent yesterday being grumpy and/or moping about job-search-related things that seem a lot more trivial.
84: That's why I always kill the dog of any potential employer right after I finish the interview.
That only works if you're the internal candidate.
To narrow down the obvious list of things that hadn't occurred to me, I Googled "Wry Cooter" -- he's on Facebook.
And 81, children are usually fed by their parents, at least in theory. Parents who could perhaps, oh, get food stamps more easily. As children could be taught healthy eating, and eventually healthy cooking, in school. Bringing back (mandatory) Physical Education might help too. Problem is, these things might require a reapportioinment of resources in the form of raising taxes and/or diverting tax monies away from "tough on crime" or "war on drugs" programs. Guess which way the voters in my state lean?
By the way, I was a teenager in California in 1978 during the Prop. 13 thing; people tried to point out that that might turn out to be a bad idea.
Yeah, these people said they'd get back to me by the end of the week. They were great, really seemed excited and honest and kind, and my guess is that some sort of funding disaster has befallen them. Or I somehow slipped into the "to be kept on a string" pile in case their preferred candidates all die in a natural disaster.
"to be kept on a string" pile in case their preferred candidates all die in a natural disaster.
I see the beginnings of a strategy here.
And a lot of the people I saw lined up to vote (presumably for Rand Paul), even people in fashionable new clothes who drove up in new luxury cars, are also a bit on the heavy side.
But Rand Paul is so healthy looking. Did his daddy buy him his very own personal trainer?
4: On a blog where most of the commenters are highly educated, it's hard to imagine someone being unaware of the poverty-obesity connection.
Being highly educated means not having to know things about the poor.
It was good for me too, sorry I didn't hang around.
78: oops, I was kidding around, trying to preempt the corrective from Bob. That said, I'm happy to believe that Obama, like almost every other national politician, never did anything, after, say, his twentieth birthday, without first considering the political ramifications.
All of my direct union knowledge comes from my fiance, who is a unionized worker for a government agency (public transit). The really odd bits come from the layering - I had not realized that there was one union for the rank-and-file workers, and a distinct union for the people who manage those workers (And then above that is the non-union management, with many vacancies, in part because their pay has failed to keep up with that of their unionized subordinates. Who wants to be promoted out of the union into more responsibility and less pay?).
99: Even that time he wore "mom jeans"?
I actually knew a kid in high school who planned to run for office some day. He was, in addition to being an insufferable prick (though, in fairness, he had pretty decent politics), incredibly careful about everything he did. I suppose I could look him up to see what became of him. My guess is law school and a job in a corporate firm.
Good guess, Von! He's a named partner in a mid-sized New York firm. I bet he donates a bunch of money to the Democratic Party.
99: No problems -- I got that you were parodying mcmanus.
Having said that. have you read Dreams From My Father? Maybe I'm completely off, but it did not read to me as a book by someone that was aspiring to be President of the United States.
I like how the Von Wafer personna fades in and out.
Maybe it's like an incredible Hulk thing -- don't get Ari angry, you won't like him when . . . Oh shit, it's Von Wafer!!!
I just looked up my own high school classmate who watched what he said so that he could be a politician some day, and was pretty insufferable but basically liberal. He too is a lawyer in New York.
The guy in my class in high school that seemed like a born politician is now a U.S. Senator. It probably helped that his father was also a U.S. Senator from the same state.
was pretty insufferable but basically liberal
Help, help, I'm being stereotyped!
I bet he donates a bunch of money to the Democratic Party.
That can be looked up, too.
Mine donated $1000 to Edwards.
Help, help, I'm being stereotyped!
A lot better than being oppressed, isn't it?
There's still violence inherent in the system.
So, I touched on this a little the other day, complaining about the fact that there is not a "one-stop shop" approach to receiving government benefits. Another thing that really bugs me though, especially given all the trouble that my then-pregnant friend* was put to just to keep her food stamps while applying for other benefits, is why food stamps, which are a wholly federal program (remember when they looked like savings bonds?) should be administered by anyone but the federal government. I mean, I know that the main reason is that so poor people who live in poor, regressive states can be fucked over even worse, But anyway, why shouldn't you just be able to check off an "I would like to see if I qualify for food stamps" box on your 1040, and if you did, you'd get food stamps? What would be so hard about that?
It may be that I know a person who has been seriously under-employed for a couple of years now, who has been fighting with the county benefits office for months about trying to get food stamps, which have not been forthcoming because he lives the kind of lifestyle (lots of very short term temporary labor, moving around to different jobs, living in extremely cheap accomodations with other radicals) that doesn't fit into their vision of what the deserving poor look like. So it might be that this person was so fed up the other day that he simply walked in to the county offices the other day and lied and said that he was homeless and unemployed, and then they gave him an EBT card. How the hell does
a system like that help anyone?
[The county website says that application for the combined benefits (cash, EBT and medical) can take HALF A DAY, including a TWO HOUR face-to-face interview. Based on my knowledge of friends' benefit travails, I think this is a VERY conservative estimate of the amount of time necessary.]
*Yes, the one who lived with us and lost her baby.
68: That just sucks. I have said before, and people may feel free to quote me, that the academic job market is none of those things. Is there anything about a well-run academic institution that is served by feeding its graduates into that wretched machine and taking its new faculty members from it?
In lighter news, I was approached recently about the hemi-demi-semi chance of a job with a new entity. It is many contingencies removed from something that I would buy a house or even a new suit on, but it's nice to be thought of, individually, for a job, rather than as a commodity blunt instrument.
Federalism, feh. You're absolutely right that benefits should be administered in a standard fashion regardless of where you live. (And shouldn't be administratively difficult, of course.)
Having said that. have you read Dreams From My Father?
I have. And I agree with you, at least to some extent. My guess is that Obama, like the rest of us, struggles with sometimes-incompatible goals: in his case, to be a fully realized human being and to be President of the United States. I had the sense that the former impulse carried the day, even if only that one day, when he wrote Dreams. Then again, he didn't really write it, so we should probably factor that into the equation.
115: Woohoo, entities! Some of my best jobs have involved working for entities.
but they were so ashamed of themselves
Oh, they'll never say that.
But re 68, were you able to get one of these? Wouldn't cover the whole thing, but definitely takes a bit out.
121: I did, but there was a mixup with my paperwork and I got it in a day late, with a note saying, "If you haven't already redistributed my funding..."
Huh, the wannabe politician I knew in college has gotten tattooed and gone to China and then southeast Asia, it turns out. He's now back in the flat midwest studying for the bar and working on some asshole's campaign, so at least he's apparently on the right track there.
You aren't actually supposed to read campaign bios.
I would request a standalone thread on the state of the humanities/social sciences job market but for the fact that it's too depressing to talk about. Actually, I woke up two nights ago at 3 am and couldn't get back to sleep because thoughts of the job market and what it means for the future of my profession haunted my dreams (from my father). Anyway, I'm really sorry, AWB.
I haven't read any of the books published in Obama's name, but I think only the second was really supposed to be a campaign bio.
The wannabe IDF soldier I knew in HS became a very liberal state representative. But he then failed to seek reelection before I could extort any favors out of him.
PS I have really, really decided to capitulate and go back to the financial industry. Boring from within.
Thanks, y'all. There isn't much to do except regroup and try again.
I thought Obama wrote DFMF. (Is that what fa was saying, too?)
I assume the wafer is joking about the Ayers as ghostwriter thing.
You're absolutely right that benefits should be administered in a standard competent, unbiased, reasonably efficient, and humane fashion regardless of where you live.
There, fixed that for you. I can't help you with the leap that brings you to "... so therefore it should be federally administered," though. It would probably be an improvement over some state adminstrative bureaucracies, but not over others. Social-security Disability is handled federally, IIRC, and mS impression was that it was hardly champagne and blowjobs.
135: Good point about SS disability. That should also be streamlined, even though it would mean putting one of my closest friends out of a job.
I have really, really decided to capitulate and go back to the financial industry
Sorry, Natilo. You do what you have to do, obviously, but that's a bummer, at least if I remember correctly your past ill feelings about that work.
Natlio is actually Angelo Mozillo, conducting an elaborate online fantasy life as a radical activist.
There isn't much to do except regroup and try again.
This is surely correct, and certainly the attitude you need to have. But really, Flip is dead right:
Is there anything about a well-run academic institution that is served by feeding its graduates into that wretched machine and taking its new faculty members from it?
I mean, I wasn't kidding a few weeks back when I said that the market, in the humanities and social sciences at least, leaves VERY deep scars in most people I know, such that they don't fully recover for a good, long time. This is no way to run a railroad, people, particularly not a railroad whose apprentice roster is filled with incredibly talented people who just want a job laying some fucking track.
139: Natlio is actually Angelo Mozillo, conducting an elaborate online fantasy life as a radical activist.
And it would have worked too, if it hadn't been for those darn kids and their stupid dog!
I was calling up food pantries for a client, and I discovered that some allow you to go only 3 times a year and that for others you need to get a pre-approved referral from a food source hotline. That seems like a lot of work for someone who might need food.
My church has a food program which strikes me as not depressing, because it mostly serves the elderly--well and one homeless guy (the food bought for him is not perishable and is stored at the local, independent drugstore.) Our church buys fresh produce and bread for old people (and their shut-in neighbors!) a bag of groceries for the weekend when Meals on Wheels does not operate. They also sit and have a cup of tea together, and the people get to socialize. That part sounds like a lot of fun.
And there's no preachiness to it. Some of the teams aren't even affiliated with the church or religion.
My client wanted food pantry info (and she is overweight and eats too much) even though she has food stamps. She lives in a group home. The food stamp money is turned over to the group home which buys food for all of them. There's always food there, but they only really get a regular dinner. Some of the other stuff gets locked up. It disgusts me as a human rights violation, but the site managers argue that it would all be gone in a day if they didn't.
Unfortunately, it isn't all healthy, and you don't get a say. I'm kind of fond of fair share foods, a miniscule charity, which gets a bunch of perishables from the supermarkets and sells them out of a van for $2 for a big bag. Unfortunately the people who work for them are basically volunteering, and I can't help but think that *they're* being exploited. But it is so very barebones.
144: Unfortunately the people who work for them are basically volunteering, and I can't help but think that *they're* being exploited.
The director of the local free meal delivery service for people with HIV/AIDS and people with other terminal diseases, recently blogged about taking this "food stamp challenge" that's all the rage with rich do-gooders. In the comments it came out that more than a few of the volunteers for his organization were themselves on food assistance of some kind. Which seems very commendable on one hand, and somewhat messed up on the other.
I am about to spend Thursday trying to help one of our clients get benefits, and it is going to be so much fun. She got fired from her job for being disrespectful. She said they had a bad attitude. Both are probably true, but I had to talk her out of trying to get a lawyer to sue them by telling her that even if she were 100% right it would take years to get anything that way.
So, she has MassHealth (Medicaid, which if you find the right providers is actually pretty sweet).
Other than that nothing, cause her job paid too much.
We will be filing for unemployment. I have to explore food stamps and cash assistance.
She lives in a fancy non-profit SRO which sounds more like a studio apartment, and I think she should be able to work, but I have to try to get her on social security disability--even though she hasn't seen a psychiatrist in a while. (Getting her in to see a therapist at her health clinic so that she can see a p-doc and scheduling an annual exam are also on the agenda.)
DTA and the Boston HOusing Authority both suck,
I mean, I feel guilty for not donating to their used truck fund drive.
146: I thought you couldn't get unemployment if you got fired.
148: I think that's if you quit.
148: It depends a lot on what you get fired for. Your employer can contest it if they want to, and if you stole or something, they will.
Whole Paycheck fired me, and I got unemployment. I had also just written a bunch of letters cc-ing everyone requesting my employment records, including one which mentioned that the assistant manager had lied to me about my rights to my employment file and implied that I wouldn't get my final paycheck if I didn't sign something. They didn't try to challenge my claim. I don't know what they would have done to to other people.
Of note: pseud suggestion Marmaduke Hammerhead. This is the first time I've successfully dredged up an old comment through a search. Google, Bing, and Yahoo have never been any use; duckduckgo worked in this case.
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No more pumpin' your juice to Marvin Sease.
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i was hoping not to be goaded to writing this but obviously (or not?) one of hte big problems for poor people trying to live on food stamps or the equivalent is that it takes a lot of knowlege re cooking, nutrition, consumption about how to stretch your dollar at the supermart. I mean, i have gotten by by stocking up on dried beans and carrots and potatoes from 1x month shopping trips but that works for me because i have read a lot about nutrtion and know how to turn that into something tasty.
i try to donate to food drives things that will improve nutrition for people getting it - jars of peanuts, bags of almonds and walnuts, tins of sardines, dried fruits.
146: I thought you couldn't get unemployment if you got fired.
Depends on whether it was for cause or not, oder?
154: I had always thought that "fired" implied cause. Losing a job otherwise was a lay-off.
155: There are probably a number of legal definitions and what not, but ultimately it seems to come down to your particular state's forms and how they classify certain types of separations. I just applied for unemployment, since technically I was laid off from my last job, but because of some peculiarities (basically, that I was listed as the "owner" of the non-profit) I am going through a bunch of rigamarole to get the actual check.
Getting fired "for cause" usually means that you stole or something, not that you weren't performing up to snuff.
Getting laid off usually means that your position was eliminated.
Oh. I'd thought bad performance was a 'cause'.
148
I thought you couldn't get unemployment if you got fired.
It would be pretty stupid to call it unemployment "insurance" if this were the case. Which is not to say you can collect in all cases but normally you have do have done something fairly extreme like punching your boss to be ineligible.
This Domino's employee: fired for cause?
155
I had always thought that "fired" implied cause. Losing a job otherwise was a lay-off.
Being laid off is just a prettified way of saying you were fired.
159: Most public programs have stupid names.
135: Social-security Disability is handled federally, IIRC, and mS impression was that it was hardly champagne and blowjobs.
My one experience with this was that SS Disability was very streamlined and responsive (a few gotchas, but compared to the simultaneous experience with "private" disability, at least Faygo and a handjob). Ditto IRS. Not so good recently: Post Office.
My Dad probably should have gotten soc sec disability at 62. The State of Maine considered him handicapped, but he didn't. It would have upped his retirement check.
163: How long ago was this? Apparently the standard rule now (based on what my friend, whose firm specializes in these cases, has said) is that you are ALWAYS rejected on your first application. Virtually without exception. And most people need to retain a lawyer to have even a hope of winning an appeal in any reasonable amount of time.
165: About one year ago. It as not a hard call, however.
155: once again demonstrating how small JBS-world is. 'Layoffs' are done all the time with all parties understanding the workforce will be returning in short order. Particularly in production industries where inventory overhang is sometimes unavoidable, and one's firm reels back in the effect of the payment into UI one's firm has paid into.
So lets so i asked my boss a few months ago if i could work partish time/have a few weeks off to study for the bar exam. and she said ok. And then recently she let me know they might not have work after that. was i 'layed off' or did i quit? I would like to have unemployment justi in case.
168: As above, it probably all depends on whether they contest it, and whether the unemployment office sides with you or them. My friend the disability lawyer was laid off/fired due to some weird office politics at a small business. They contested it, but she requested a hearing and they didn't show up, so she won her unemployment benefit. YMMV.
hm. I would guess said boss will rehire me in a month or two.
Also, this job was through an employment agency.
Which is not to say you can collect in all cases but normally you have do have done something fairly extreme like punching your boss to be ineligible.
"To be ineligible", yes. Of course the ex-employer can block you from getting it for who knows how long by claiming you were fired for cause, in the effort to pay less unemployment insurance premiums.
Being laid off is just a prettified way of saying you were fired.
Even I know that's not true.
129
I haven't read any of the books published in Obama's name, but I think only the second was really supposed to be a campaign bio.
See here and here for my take on Obama's books.
1) Based on 114, Natlio is my new hero.
2) Could somebody please explain what "Wry Cooter" means?
3) I'm not Defunkt anywhere else. It just came to me, I didn't realize anyone was using it anywhere. Maybe I should be Chubbo the Snowguy?
172
Even I know that's not true
Perhaps I should have said often. It was certainly the case when I was "laid off" a couple of years ago. Collecting unemployment was no problem.
174.2: I always took it to be a crass pun on Ry Cooder. And anyway, we usually keep the joke explanations over on Standpipe's other blog.
Way off-topic:
Does anyone have an opinion on how worthwhile it is to have a long, wool topcoat? I kind of need a new winter coat, and having a dressier one might come in handy if the weather is very cold when I'm doing job interviews over the next several weeks. On the other hand, I'm not sure if it would feel awkward wearing it on typical winter days (and I have a need for dressier clothes only a handful of times a year, at most), and I'm not sure I want to buy two coats.
I really like mine and wear it a lot when I'm not going to be riding my bike. If I wear it with a hoodie and jeans I look like a homeless person, but that's okay sometimes, too.
But yeah I don't feel a bit weird wearing it; if I have a scarf nobody knows I'm all schlubby underneath my coat. Dapper, yes, but not weird.
Anyhow, what's the alternative? You don't want people asking you if you run the ski lift. (I mean you could get a nice short leather coat or some bullshit, but why not do it up, right?)
I have a beaten-up (but still quite warm!) Carhartt and a very nice wool dress coat (procured in mint condition on a lucky day at Goodwill for like $5; my mom hypothesized that some rich dude died right after buying the coat; thanks, mom). I love the dress coat but rarely wear it, so I just resign myself to looking like a farmer on nights like tonight, when I donned the Carhartt to a moderately swanky Italian joint.
This is all very unhelpful anecdotal information.
The alternative would be something to more directly replace the battered polyester-pretending-to-be-suede jacket I've been wearing, I guess. Mostly I'm just not accustomed to coats that extend below my waist. Seems kind of formal somehow. But I think I'll go with it.
For really cold weather I still have the ridiculous down parka I wore through my winters in Chicago and Ithaca, which is kind of ugly and makes me look about four times my actual size and which is entirely too warm to wear for temperatures above zero.
Mostly I'm just not accustomed to coats that extend below my waist
Kind of necessary if you're sporting just suit pants on your bottom half. They're quite thin compared to jeans or Dickies or even khakis. Do some men wear long johns or something? I know back in my middle-school football days, some dudes swore by women's nylons as an added layer of warmth, but I never tried it.
You would not believe the ridiculous coat I wore in the winters in Chicago. Otto may have seen me in it, actually, but at that point he didn't know me from Adam so he probably doesn't remember.
Hey, apache has a module called mod_bw.
This is all very unhelpful anecdotal information.
Which is as good as anything for this purpose. I think I'm convinced to go ahead and buy one.
183: Yeah, that's a good point. I haven't worn suit pants in winter in ages (maybe not since 2004?), so I didn't even think about it....
184: Then wouldn't it be just as plausible that I would have seen you in it and not known you from Adam and forgotten?
Men in long wool coats nearly always look very handsome. Buy it.
If the length is the main thing that feels awkward, you can find various designs of wool jackets/coats that are cut at or just below the waist that might be formal enough.
Does it need to be able to go over a suit/blazer? Because that might be a problem with a shorter length.
For example, I have something like this that I can make look fairly formal or really informal, but it's not going to be able to go over a suit.
Then wouldn't it be just as plausible that I would have seen you in it and not known you from Adam and forgotten?
After posting the comment I remembered that you were in that class/those classes as well.
Also, Paren!
Buy it.
Well, that's unambiguous. Okay!
Nosflow!
And yes, it is unambiguous. I am always encouraging the men in my acquaintance to purchase such things.
How about a camel topcoat?
Dromedary or Bactrian? A man should know how many humps he's getting into.
On the other hand, I'm not sure if it would feel awkward wearing it on typical winter days
Bulgar's link was just what I was thinking. Filson has great wool stuff that's short of a full peacoat like the Yukon.
Personally, I wear Unfogged comments like a coat of big hugs. THE. FREAKIN'. BEST.
You should get a filson tin cloth coat, essear; let 'em know you mean business.
Bulgar! Are you coming to the meetup on Wednesday?
I really like my long wool coat, but as Sifu says, you can't really wear it when biking. So if you bike for your commute, or plan/hope to, and if you want to keep your wardrobe lean, perhaps you should hold off.
Oh, whatever. Go ahead and do it. They do look great.
I'm just feeling miffed that I don't have mine with me these days, probably.
I've always wanted one of those long wool coats, but I've never lived in the place for it and had the job-status for it, so I've never bought one. I have some old hand me down down coat that's good for freezing temperatures down to the teens, but it is not at all stylish. It's too warm for most temperatures above freezing (with no wind).
I've never really felt the need for long underwear pants in anything 10-15+ F outside of camping situations. That includes walking to subway/metro, but not long walks on frozen beaches. I'd still wear a long coat if I had one.
The birth of "Wry Cooter" is lost in the hoohole. What a world!
Perhaps the nicest garment I own is a wool coat I picked up in a secondhand clothing shop in Rome. Purplish navy, beautiful craftsmanship, nearly new. It would almost be worth having a posh job so I could wear it more often. They do enhance a person's appearance, so I say go for it, essear.
Isn't this the origin of the pseud? Found on google, which I should have tried first.
Huh. Should have used google myself. You've been unreliable, Google, so you have only yourself to blame.
I also recommend a long wool topcoat. I loved mine, before I swallowed that damn medicine ball. And unlike long johns you can take it off as soon as you don't need to keep your ass & legs warm anymore.
Insulated overalls work even better but they're hardly front office. Nobody looks dashing in them either, the seats are always too saggy.
wool union suits are much better than working thermospump
I like to come in out of the cold all dapper, remove my wool coat, and BAM-- dressed like a teenager.
At some risk of going back on topic:
I had not realized that there was one union for the rank-and-file workers, and a distinct union for the people who manage those workers
This was usual practice, at least over here, in the days when most people were unionised. It makes sense, workers and managers have different priorities even if they don't have different interests, and workers don't want their union meetings full of bosses.
My heart goes out to AWB. Can we have a whip round and buy her dinner at some fancy gaff in San Francisco or something to take her mind of it? If it's any comfort, the job I wanted most in my life I heard nothing about for 10 weeks, and then I got an offer the day I had two other interviews.
Long wool coats are great, as long as you have a long wool limo to take you to the door of your long wool mansion. Otherwise they get wet in the rain and weigh a ton, and also lose their shape in a few months (this can be fixed, but not cheaply).
Isn't this the origin of the pseud? Found on google, which I should have tried first.
Heh--went to check its OP, and was then completely unsurprised by Comments 1 and 4. Did Ogged and B have a great screwball-comedy chemistry in person, too? I'd like to think she incorporated him into her harem somehow, or that she will someday.
208: Thanks, chris! I think whatever happens, I have to do something drastic to my life. I've been lucky as a PhD student not to feel in limbo ever; I love what I do, and it's a pleasure to go to work and do the day-to-day. But while on the market this year, I've been teaching four courses on two distant campuses, both of which seem to have decided that I am no longer qualified to teach the courses I'm actually qualified to teach (and was hired to teach in both cases). I'm also being undermined regarding the grades I give because the worst plagiarist I've ever seen had her daddy call and tell the deans that his little girl is going to be a doctor, thank you very much, so I am forced to change her grade. For the second semester in a row, I'm forced to take instruction on how to teach freshman writing, for no pay, and be told what assignments to give, what they should be worth, how to grade them, etc., because the director wants everyone to teach it her way and she discovered that she can't tell people with tenure what to do, so she was put in charge of those of us who are fired by default every semester.
I am suddenly so fucking sick of being contingent labor. But it's so difficult and exhausting and humiliating and time-consuming to be contingent labor that I can't do what I need to do to get a real job with health care and a living wage and stuff.
My sympathies, AWB. Awful, awful stuff.
210. Urk! Yes, you evidently have to do something drastic with your life. But as I understand it you're vigorously applying for every suitable job in the English speaking world, so what can you do? You don't want to leave academe, but can you take a "sabbatical" in some less stressful area to 'do what you need to do to get a real job'? Is 'Yes, I know it says on my resume that I was doing 9-5 data input/ being a beach bum in Costa Rica for four months, but that meant I could work 50 hours a week getting my thesis finished and I did, so there!' an acceptable position these days?
Also, I do get the impression from the tubes that the kind of academic corruption you describe in re. the little doctor is rampant (god send she never gets to treat me for anything!), but I hope the college in question isn't one with a reputation to lose.
I really don't want to leave academia, but I do keep hoping that I can at least get some kind of teaching position, even if it's not permanent, somewhere new where people are still excited about what I do. I've taught at both places for quite a few years now, and there is a way that a reliable adjunct instructor can be increasingly imposed upon as time goes by. People start off being thrilled to see that you know what you're doing and do it well, and then it's taken for granted, and then they start assigning you whatever courses are left over and telling you you're lucky to have a job at all. Additionally, funding for both schools has plummeted in recent years (or at least anxiety about funding has surged), so student limits for classes go up by 10 or more without warning, and people's jobs are being cut all the time. It's not a good time for me to be making demands.
About the little doctor, the administration is making her do additional work this semester with another instructor as a tutorial, but I'm still extremely uncomfortable with it. This school has an excellent reputation, but it's enforced with such draconian policies that they're basically unenforceable. The idea is that it should be so terrifying to cheat that no one ever will. But when they've got parents telling them that anything less than perfection is unacceptable, they can't bear to just get a B or something, even in a very difficult course. So they freak out, and seem to completely lose touch with reality after they've done it. I tell them every semester that I got Cs in college, and somehow I didn't end up in a ditch somewhere. But then, my parents didn't see my grades as a reflection of themselves and their own idea of my worth as their daughter.
Is 'Yes, I know it says on my resume that I was doing 9-5 data input/ being a beach bum in Costa Rica for four months, but that meant I could work 50 hours a week getting my thesis finished and I did, so there!' an acceptable position these days?
People tell me no. But I've no idea how accurate that actually is. I know the fact that I've been working in a non-academic job for nearly 2 years _seems_ to consign me to the outer darkness. But then again, I expect my CV isn't as good as AWBs, so who know?
Hearing about the adjunct catch-22--can't stay 'viable' unless you're in academia; can't survive adjuncting unless you teach so many classes you can't publish your way out--made me wonder awhile back about the feasibility of the following possible way out: Could one perhaps ask contacts at various academic institutions about the possibility of being a more-or-less-formalized and (crucially) unpaid Visiting Researcher or whatnot, which wouldn't require anything beyond showing up at talks or something, and then spend half the time you would otherwise be adjuncting tutoring GMAT/GRE/LSAT for much better $$, with free time for writing/mental health? (The basic idea being simply to acquire the right to list "Visiting Researcher, 2011-12" on the CV, but without having to go through a hassle over it since it wouldn't come with any remuneration.)
The Max Planck I. of Int.Law seems to do this--non-funded visitors seem to be basically open-door--and I feel like my dept at NYU sort of handed a "post-doc" to a guy without much if any process because he had funding from elsewhere or didn't ask for any.
This strategy obviously depends on being well-connected, but I had the impression AWB was okay on that front.
re: 215
I know people who've done similar, yeah. There are lots of non-stipendiary research fellowships around, although most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of 'and you can't have another job on the side, except teaching here' sorts of restrictions.
177: Let me be the contrarian on the wool topcoat. Sure, they're nice looking and cool etc, etc, just the sort of thing that your non-invested imaginary friends on the Internet love to tell you to run out and buy. I say, save the money on the wool coat and get a nice lined full-length raincoat (you can upgrade a bit on the money you're saving not buying the wool coat). Much more practical and useful. If you are rich or tragically hung up on your self-image, sure, get the wool one (also 208.last).
217: You mean the yellow slickers?
Mostly, I've been wearing a parka lately.
Related: Every door on my car has a frozen lock.
220: do you think he shouldn't have been fired, or is that the first you'd heard of the story?
Of course he should have been fired. Out of a long gun! But the fact that any Tom, Dick or Harry in the Home Office can just put somebody on the watch list with no verification or oversight is so dysfunctional I can't find words for it.
224: Can he get unemployment benefits?
225. Only by claiming under a false name, which he'll probably do fairly efficiently. If they bust him for that he'll go to gaol. He should go to gaol anyway, but I can't think what they'd charge him with. I don't suppose that particular scam has occurred to the Bills Office. There might be some bucket clause in the Official Secrets Act they could apply, but it wouldn't be strong enough.
Am I reading that right that they only discovered this when doing a background check for his promotion? If he had decided to fuck over any number of people not in his immediate family they would never have discovered it.
227. Well, yes, which is why it's a bit scary.
227 is absolutely right.
If the story's true, of course.
1) it's in the Mirror
2) no named sources
3) the official spokesman doesn't actually confirm it happened.
I think that this may indeed be "a bit of a legend in immigration circles".
I am not sure why not being allowed to fly into the UK would get you stuck in Pakistan for 3 years. Couldn't you fly into somewhere else in Europe and take the train or a ferry?
This was on Bruce Schneier's blog a couple of weeks back. He had it from the Daily Mail, which suggests it may be complete drivel.
Go for a long coat. Although, as people have suggested, there are some that aren't fully long -- sometimes known as "3/4-length" or "car coats" or something like that. To get myself through the current hellish winter I've depended on a good coat (actually, usually I wear a parka, but sometimes a 3/4-ish wool one) AND long johns. There is no reason you have to have the same amount of insulation on your legs in the dead of winter that you do in the summer.
115
... Is there anything about a well-run academic institution that is served by feeding its graduates into that wretched machine and taking its new faculty members from it?
So if you were running an academic institution what would you change? Would you eliminate all the PhD programs whose graduates have bad employment prospects? Problems seem inevitable if you go on producing many times as many PhDs (in some fields) than there is any need for.
re: 233
Well, there's a load of brutal shit that goes on beyond just the oversupply of graduates. All the hoop jumping and hazing crap, and the ways they place massive obstacles in front of anyone who isn't prepared to demonstrate their desire to utterly abase themselves before the system.
I too endorse long underwear. Adding even a thin extra layer over that much surface area is very helpful. And sexy.
229, 231: I am nothing if not gullible.
If 230 were true, the UK's watchlist would be nearly useless.
If 230 were true, the UK's watchlist would be nearly useless.
This is not an argument against its being true.
I thought the point of a watchlist was to keep people from blowing up a plane and that nobody expects it would keep people from traveling somewhere over land. Or, what 237 said.
238. Blowing up a ferry or an undersea rail tunnel would be fairly disruptive. You can't get to Britain overland.
that is to say, you can if you're already in the Republic of Ireland, but I would expect they've got that covered up to a point. There's some history.
Don't look at me. My relatives stopped that stuff in about 1900 and left.
So, the idea is that she went there to visit relatives three years ago, he put her on the list, she got turned back at the airport when she tried to fly back, she called her husband who said he'd sort it out and... that's it? She just sat patiently in Pakistan for three years? She didn't call her MP, or a lawyer, or contact the UKBA through official channels to try to get her name taken off the list, or contact the British High Commission, or try to fly back to Paris and then take a train? For three years?
Very unlikely I think.
239: blowing up the Channel Tunnel would be extremely difficult to do; it's designed to survive the impact of a derailed train. Blowing up a ferry would also be pretty tricky. Sinking ships is hard unless you have a lot of explosive and/or time and expertise to set a proper charge.
242. You're assuming that she was a middle class person with competent English and no inculcated fear of the law. Why?
Sinking ships is hard unless you have a lot of explosive and/or time and expertise to set a proper charge.
To paraphrase Howard Marks, I'd use containers.
You don't have to sink the bugger. Destroying the onboard inventory would do very nicely.
Of course, here on the frozen tundra, our requirements for winter outerwear are somewhat different than those for all of you lazy warm-climate people. I have a full-length wool coat for dress occasions that I got 15 years ago very cheaply, as it were. I also got a nice raincoat with a liner at the same time. I don't know what happened to the raincoat, haven't seen it for a few moves, so I'm assuming it's gone. I think, of the two, I would rather have lost the wool overcoat. It's getting really ratty at this point. I think the next time I buy a wool coat, it will definitely be a 3/4 length. I just discount the fact that you can never be truly warm in dress clothes when it's 9 below (Fahrenheit) with a 30 below windchill as it has been here for a couple of days. My also-disreputable Carhartt parka is my default coat from November to late March. I really just need to start making real money again. Sigh.
242. You're assuming that she was a middle class person with competent English and no inculcated fear of the law. Why?
Because she was married to one?
I go out all the time in single digit temperature here in Maine, and my full length wool overcoat and scarf over a tweed jacket has yet to fail me. I alway wear dress clothes when going out, and the tweed+sweater vest under an overcoat is really hard to beat. I also have a soviet surplus fake fur hat to keep my head warm.
I'm not willing to wear a sweater vest, even to stay warm.
they can't bear to just get a B or something, even in a very difficult course. So they freak out, and seem to completely lose touch with reality after they've done it.
have you submitted an op-ed to anyplace in the Tiger Mother fuss? That was a great post. More people should pay yyu for your writing.
I have a just - above - knee synthetic raincoat w/Thinsulate lining, which I can bicycle in, is warm, looks reasonably adult. Cannot make me look like a Central European intellectual in 1910, which is how I'd dress essear for a job iuterview, if I could do it subtly.
My heart goes out to AWB. Can we have a whip round and buy her dinner at some fancy gaff in San Francisco or something to take her mind of it?
As an academic with an extensive teaching record, fantastic c.v., publications, and no job, I also demand a fancy dinner.
Problems seem inevitable if you go on producing many times as many PhDs (in some fields) than there is any need for.
Doesn't pass the smell test. When most of the instructors of college English in the US are non-tenure-track, often for life, but their classes are made larger and larger, it's because there is actually a huge demand for English PhDs, but the system is too slow and too underfunded to offer meaningful stable employment. The expectation now is that you'll probably spend 6-10 years in graduate programs so that you can live for the rest of your life without health insurance, doing for pitiful wages a job teaching material that every single college student has to learn. If there were too many English PhDs, there wouldn't be classes to teach. There are in fact many many classes to teach, but the standards for how many one should be able to teach and survive keep changing.
253 is true. If someone would like to offer Blume and I a night out at some fabulous restaurant, it's a date and we'll take photos. Or Spa Castle! You could also send us to Spa Castle.
Blume and me. I need more sleep, more coffee.
fabulous restaurant,... Or Spa Castle
Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament?
AWB, we've all decided we love your prose style. I vote you write a salacious, anonymous (because it's so salacious! also, jobs) tell all. Just make shit up if you have to. It's what everyone else does.
Least helpful suggestion ever? Possibly. But even if you don't make 5 bajillion dollars, it might help you feel better in the interim. (As long as you share it with us.) You could probably bang it out in a month.
255: sorry, no, house protocols dictate that you'll need to get cancer before we start wining and dining you. To be honest, I don't think it's worth it.
Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament?
Only if they liveblog it.
Only if they liveblog it the joust.
Although I can see where that might be above average difficulty, I'm confident in both AWB and Blume's abilities.
I am mildly surprised that there are professional-ish men over the age of 20 who live in cold weather climates who don't have a wool overcoat. What else do you wear, a ski jacket?
Medieval Times, at least the local one, always seems like a fun idea, but then turns out to not be as much fun as you'd think.
And it sure does sound like an even more horrible time than usual to be a humanities Ph.D.
Is high school teaching a possibility? I know that the public schools have ridiculous Ed. degree requirements, but the private schools don't, and if you're going to be exploited and made to spend all your time teaching, you might as well get semi-decent pay and medical insurance. But this is probably a terrible idea for some other reason.
263: Personally, I have two and I got my first one my senior year of college. But we professional-ish men over twenty who live in cold weather climates are each a proud individual with a unique, and usually absurd, preference in attire.
I've always said that I don't want to teach high school because of the mandatory attendance. That it's such a huge change in attitude if the kid got themselves out of bed, knowing they were allowed to stay in bed, vs got out of bed under threats and duress and does not want to be there.
On the other hand, I'm not in the middle of a hellish job search. You guys have my sympathy.
I am mildly surprised that there are professional-ish men over the age of 20 who live in cold weather climates who don't have a wool overcoat. What else do you wear, a ski jacket?
See 182.
208.last and 217 bother me a bit, but I still think I'll get one.
263: there are plenty of professional-looking short jackets, made-up such fine materials as leather and... other materials.
AWB, can your advisor call the school that interviewed you? S/he might have a better chance of finding out what's going on. Implicitly, the call also sends the message, "Don't f--- with AWB!"
My job search and my reactions to various bits of news and gossip are conspiring to make me feel like I'm a huge asshole. I think my competitors on the job market this year are great, I think they do really interesting work, I view some of them as friends and want them to get great jobs, but when some of them start getting offers from places that didn't even bother to interview me, I suddenly find myself feeling bitter and thinking mean thoughts I don't want to be thinking.
For really cold weather I still have the ridiculous down parka I wore through my winters in Chicago and Ithaca, which is kind of ugly and makes me look about four times my actual size and which is entirely too warm to wear for temperatures above zero.
Oooh! I have one of these from Michigan! It is really, really ugly.
263.1: Professional-ish men over the age of 20 who can't make it in most US climates without resorting to a wool overcoat are weak and fragile and deserve to be culled from the herd.
For really cold weather I still have the ridiculous down parka I wore through my winters in Chicago and Ithaca, which is kind of ugly and makes me look about four times my actual size and which is entirely too warm to wear for temperatures above zero.
Oooh! a womble coat! Haven't seen one of those since about 1990. Mrs y was wearing one the day she got groped near the top the up escalator at Kings Cross station and pushed the bastard down it. As she said, "He couldn't have had the faintest idea what sex I was underneath that thing."
"Don't f--- with AWB!"
Actually, having received been the recipient of such calls, I think the message would be, "I, AWB's advisor, don't understand the way the profession works any more. In fact, I believe that it's still 1952. Wait, why is my student a woman?" Unless, that is, AWB's advisor is someone powerful enough to make the members of the hiring committee cower. In which case the message would be, "Fear me!" Which also wouldn't do AWB all that much good.
That said, I think AWB can send an e-mail asking for an update. Nobody that I know of has ever been ruled out for a job because they've show a keen, and appropriate, interest in getting that job.
Professional-ish men over the age of 20 who can't make it in most US climates without resorting to a wool overcoat are weak and fragile and deserve to be culled from the herd.
Fixed.
Flippanter is the new mcmanus.
275-6 make sense to me. I was pleased when I found out my department chair was at the conference talking to a friend on a committee doing a search in my field, and he says, "And you didn't interview AWB? You're crazy." But before the actual rejection in this case, I think shaming should be withheld.
If I don't hear anything by tomorrow, I'll send an email on Friday. I've asked some people in my department, and they agreed that contacting, at this point, wouldn't be out of line.
Flippanter is the new mcmanus.
"Finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Eh, comrades? Eh?"
You don't get a long wool overcoat in the Gulag, you know.
215: The trick to pull here is that you don't even need the line on the CV to be a "real position." That is, it shouldn't be too hard to convince a school to give you a "visiting position" of some sort that *doesn't pay*. Then you can get any sort of other job you want which pays you, and on your CV you only list the nonpaying fake job, and don't list the real job. Then people can't tell what's going on from your CV.
I think I've mentioned this before, but someone I know from college did this with her CV. She got her Ph.D., then due to 2-body problems spent the next year teaching high school, and the year after that got a good tenure-track job somewhere. Her CV lists her employment for that year as being some sort of "research associate" or something at her Ph.D. granting institution (which is in another state from where she was actually living), and only under the teaching heading is it listed that she actually taught somewhere else that year.
271: If it makes you feel better I've had exactly the same reaction. Somehow I'm not at all insulted that other people would beat me out for a job (as you say, they're very good and do very good work) but not getting interviewed is psychologically much more insulting and harder to accept with equanimity.
On the other hand, I'm not in the middle of a hellish job search. You guys have my sympathy.
I'm not either exactly, having decided that my first two go-rounds were quite enough thank you. But I am adjuncting while I look for other work, which is rather sucky indeed.
Does this mean I don't get to go to Medieval Times with AWB?
...but not getting interviewed is psychologically much more insulting and harder to accept with equanimity.
Yes, casting one's CV, again and again, into the oily river Lethe, and hearing in response only the echoing sobs of the lonely damned gets old pretty quick.
284: It actually does make me feel better, thanks.
There's also the funny correlation that I'm getting interviews from all the places where I know someone on the faculty moderately well (save for one special case where I understand why I didn't), and not at the places where I don't know anyone. Which has me wondering if my CV/research statement/letters are misrepresenting me, or something.
Which has me wondering if my CV/research statement/letters are misrepresenting me, or something.
Seems the more likely explanation is that personal connections are worth more than a good profile on paper.
287: eh, people get jobs via connections. Always, everywhere.
Yeah, but I would have thought the path me -> my letter writers -> the faculty at these schools would be a good enough connection to get me an interview. Apparently not.
Is high school teaching a possibility? I know that the public schools have ridiculous Ed. degree requirements
Here they have an "Alternative Route to Licensure" program for people who already have their education and I imagine a lot of states have something similar. My wife is in her second year of teaching middle school through that program and loves it.
Basically you apply to the program and if you get approved it enables you to apply for teaching jobs. Once you get an offer you meet with an adviser who helps you lay out a plan over the next two or three years to take the classes that will enable you to get your permanent license.
291: Did you email people at the schools where you didn't know anyone well? I'm told that if you don't contact someone specifically then probably no one will look at your application.
Many of my students have suggested that I try teaching at their religious private high schools, but there are reasons why I teach college. Not only can you always say they chose to be there, but I can teach the material I need to teach with honesty and clarity, and I never have to talk to parents. Clearly, parents can influence their college students, but at least I don't have to take their calls.
282: That's my vote as well. I imagine that it's more difficult to pull off in the humanities than in the social sciences, but there must be some museum or literary society out there that would let you claim to be their fake research fellow.
I'm having a bit of survivor guilt myself about having landed a job my first time out (especially given that Best Friend hasn't gotten one, and is now keeping her fingers crossed for a postdoc). This might also be related to the fact that I'm having a hard time mustering the willpower to finish the !#$%@ dissertation.
I'm told that if you don't contact someone specifically then probably no one will look at your application.
Maybe this is a matter of being in different fields, but I honestly don't know what to make of this. National searches are national searches. Every application gets a look, even if that look is little more than a cursory glance. So, in my field at least, the idea of contacting an individual -- as distinct from sending in an application to the chair of the search -- early in the process likely wouldn't help and might actually hurt.
The fact that my own Best Friend hasn't gotten a job in her first three years on the market (a postdoc in the second, but basically adjuncting plus surveillance and shame) is sad, but also keeps me from thinking this is necessarily about merit, because she's not only done with her dissertation; she's also 7 times smarter than I am. Her main problem is that her field doesn't really exist, I think. It's very "hip," but not in the sense that people make calls for jobs in it--there are just a lot of conferences about it.
It's not at all in any conceivable way about merit. I would hive thought that was long-since clear?
I dunno, "hive thought" is a pretty awesome replacement.
293 291: Did you email people at the schools where you didn't know anyone well? I'm told that if you don't contact someone specifically then probably no one will look at your application.
I really don't think this applies here. They might get hundreds of applications, but there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 plausible people on the market this year, and everyone knows who those people are, even if they haven't met them all.
299 had me puzzled for a moment, in a thread about jobs, and those who would have them.
Vaguely on the theme of jobs, so I won't do a pause 'n' play.
I'm grading a first-year German quiz that tests vocab for areas of study and professions. Many times before we've used the prompt (in German) "This woman works in a hospital. She studied medicine and is allowed to write prescriptions," and have always gotten an upsettingly high percentage of students who identify her as a nurse rather than a doctor.
For the first time this semester we added the prompt "This woman works in a lab and runs experiments." One of the words on the vocab list is "scientist."
Two of my ten students said the woman is a TA.
On the veldt, men would go hunt up the science while women stayed home and cleaned the veldtmouse cages.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
The "nurse" answer in 304 doesn't seem crazy. NP's are pretty common.
302: I suppose math and physics might be different in this regard (e.g. physics being "trendier" means people are aware of the research of a larger number of people), but in math everyone I've ever talked to says you really have to email someone or else there's no guarantee that anyone will notice that you've applied.
high percentage of students who identify her as a nurse rather than a doctor
Oddly the first thing I thought was pharmacist.
Pwned by my own wife.
Good bye city life.
Green Acres we are here.
Yeah, I give half credit for nurse, though it's clearly not the best answer. (And 'pharmacist' isn't on the vocab list.)
I'm grading a first-year German quiz that tests vocab for areas of study and professions. Many times before we've used the prompt (in German) "This woman works in a hospital. She studied medicine and is allowed to write prescriptions," and have always gotten an upsettingly high percentage of students who identify her as a nurse rather than a doctor.
What's an upsettingly high percentage? I'd imagine that if a student is more familiar with nurses than with doctors, like from family life, "nurse" would come to mind first.
And 'pharmacist' isn't on the vocab list
Not to mention it really isn't correct since they can't write prescriptions.
I second gswift in 308. Not only are Nurse-Practitioners common, they're awesome. Is the idea that they should be answering as if they're in Germany?
315: I think the idea is that if you said "This man works in a hospital. He studied medicine and is allowed to write prescriptions," exactly nobody would say "nurse."
The awesomeness of nurse practitioners or how many scripts they can write isn't really the point.
They might get hundreds of applications, but there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 plausible people on the market this year, and everyone knows who those people are, even if they haven't met them all.
I'm always a bit puzzled by this. I feel like this is true in the fields I'm familiar with, too, but at least in the case of political theory, this seems to have much more to do with the psychological need to deal with a manageable choice situation, and various sociological factors, than to do with any standards-based judgement of what makes someone 'plausible.' So I'm curious--what do you mean by the word in the case of physics, essear?
(Also, how narrow is the market you're talking about--it's not 'physicist, general' is it? I mean, my sister is on the market this year, I believe, and given how truly global physics seems to be--she's a postdoc at the moment, doing something with lasers at some respectable institute in Austria--"ten people" seems insanely few.)
I've told the story about the time when Dr. Oops was a resident, and found herself on a team with a black chief resident, another black resident, and a Latino resident? There was apparently a consistent tendency for people to start snapping their heads around, looking for the real doctor who had to be somewhere behind the nurse, pair of orderlys, and the janitor.
I might, to be contrary. Or if I couldn't remember the word for doctor.
There was apparently a consistent tendency for people to start snapping their heads around, looking for the real doctor who had to be somewhere behind the nurse, pair of orderlys, and the janitor.
I haven't watched the show since the ... second, I think? season, but I did like the refusal of 'Grey's Anatomy' to go along with this in their casting.
Every Halloween, the more ambitious women dress as slutty Nurse-Practitioners.
she's a postdoc at the moment, doing something with lasers at some respectable institute in Austria
Laser cooling, in Innsbruck?
Every Halloween, the more ambitious women dress as slutty Nurse-Practitioners.
I'd like to see Reverse Slut-o-ween costumes. Nonsexy nurse. Nonsexy French maid.
Uh, yeah. Is she one of the Plausible Candidates?
Nah, but I'm pretty sure I know somebody in her lab.
Actually, poking around her institute's website, I'm not sure the project she's on actually involves cooling, though the stuff she used to do did, and other projects seem to. There's definitely lasers, though.
You can tell that we're very close, and I keep myself abreast of all the latest developments in her work and job search.
Anyhow, I feel like physics gets vey specialized, which might explain the whole "ten people" thing.
I might, to be contrary. Or if I couldn't remember the word for doctor.
Gee, it's crazy how many students forget the word Ärztin but remember the Krankenpflegerin.
To be fair, Krankenpflegerin is an awesome word.
More evidence that my I'm not really a rising star in my current field:
Let me note first of all that I haven't even graduated yet. (And I swear I would have by now, had it not been for all this interviewing and relearning of CS.) Second, let me note that a postdoc is obligatory in my field. Now, let me relate that yesterday I received an email invitation to the faculty job talk for one of my grad school classmates at this institution.
So yeah, I must be quite far from the top of my class. Oops!
Ärztin sounds like the phone service provider for Mordor.
And to be fair, it has "krank" in it, which is both a ncie sound and importand and easy to remember.
Whenever my sister starts talking about her job, what with all that girly stuff about quantum optics, I just start zoning out. On the veldt, you know...
it's crazy how many students forget the word Ärztin but remember the Krankenpflegerin
To be fair Krankenpflegerin is kind of awesome.
But there are lots of awesome words in German! You can't just use whatever one you want to mean anything.
Two of my ten students said the woman is a TA.
I'm sorry, but this absolutely cracks me up.
I was very close to the top of my class as an undergrad. I should've quit schooling when I was ahead.
337: I can. People in your class can't.
But there are lots of awesome words in German! You can't just use whatever one you want to mean anything.
But I do this in English, too! It tends to require a lot of gesturing, and forbearance on the part of my interlocuter.
Well, learning German has just rocketed to the top of the language list.
You can't just use whatever one you want to mean anything
Stop stomping on my creativity!
But I do this in English [...] interlocuter
Yep. (Pretty rich coming from me after that front-page "Rhythm" gaffe, but I have no shame.)
Well, learning German has just rocketed to the top of the language list.
And the rising enrollments in German courses leads to a giant wave of tenure track hires in German departments! Yay!
And the rising enrollments in German courses leads to a giant wave of tenure track hires in German departments!
Nah, they'll just give the language courses to grad students who need funding because they haven't gotten jobs yet.
And then the German departments seek new office space at the expense of Slavic departments.
Ooh a job bitching thread!
So I had an on-campus interview mid-January. Someday I will recount the mush craziness from that visit (which I believe I did a fine job of playing it cool through), but not today. In any case, I ask about their expected timeline and am told that they are hoping to make an offer by the end of January, but of course this will depend on the administration. Fine. Good.
Now it's the end of the first week in February and I'm starting to feel antsy. I ask my advisor and she says it would be approptiate to request an update on where they are in their hiring process. So I do this. The response I get back begins with the phrase "Unfortunately it is now out of my hands," and then suggests that I contact someone in HR to see if they can tell me anything. What the hell?
HR person has not yet responded to me, and my advisor confirms that there's no reason they couldn't just tell me they went with another candidate or that I should please be patient or whatever. I mean, I can tell that it's not good news, but it is infuriatingly ambiguous.
Huh. I'd actually read that as possibly good news. I can't think of any straightforward negative they couldn't just tell you: "I can't talk to you" sounds to me as if someone wants to hire you, but there's an internal argument about it.
I don't know how AWB's field works, but in my area a phone call from the advisor is not a bad idea. It's not meant to intimidate -- you can't force a department to hire someone they don't want -- it's more to say, hey, this is a qualified candidate I think you'd be interested in, so please don't let it slip through the cracks. Because things do get overlooked. I know of one case where a department could have hired a very good person essentially for free (it would've been paid by some campuswide initiative), but they didn't discover this until a few months later, because no one read the file carefully.
Back to something like the topic, writing a check for a food bank or "soup kitchen" is better than donating food. They like to have offerings where everybody gets basically the same thing, and they can buy in volume.
I don't think it's ideal but it works best for them. And you're welcome to call them if you don't believe a strange new Snowman.
"Unfortunately it is now out of my hands,"
LB is probably wrong, I'm guessing. Here, I'm told there's a rule stating that we can't tell job candidates that they're not being offered a position. Instead, a form letter has to go out to do the job more formally/slowly/cruelly. But, because we're not assholes, we usually ignore this rule and send an e-mail once we know what's what.
On the other hand, maybe LB is right. Maybe the committee is deadlocked or something. But I can't see why HR would have anything to say if that's the case.
lb,
Thanks, I'll tie my slim hopes around that.
It still seems a strange way to communicate that, given that the easier thing to say would be "Internal machinations are still working themselves out. Please stand by." That wouldn't promise anything, but would answer the damn question.
353:
Ah, this had been something closer to my suspicion.
Grrr.
VolksWagen is probably right, given that he knows academic hiring. Sorry about that.
339 I was very close to the top of my class as an undergrad.
There wasn't an actual ranking, was there? Are you just going by the Phi Beta Kappa / Student Marshal things?
356 is lame. The official nickname for Mr. Von Wafer is "The Dutch Cookie."
Well, checked it out, and the thread evolved from hungry kids to academic job searches and overcoats for formal occasions. Rapidly.
You are all kicked out of the sleeper cell.
And Obama was recruited at birth. In Indonesia.
And I cannot be parodied.
(Also, how narrow is the market you're talking about--it's not 'physicist, general' is it? I mean, my sister is on the market this year, I believe, and given how truly global physics seems to be--she's a postdoc at the moment, doing something with lasers at some respectable institute in Austria--"ten people" seems insanely few.)
No no no. "Ten people" is for jobs that say something like "we're looking for a theoretical particle physicist" or even "we're looking for a theoretical particle physicist, preferably working in physics beyond the Standard Model or LHC physics".... The scope of most of these searches is pretty narrow.
I know what I was ranked in my graduating undergrad class. Is that really uncommon?
There wasn't an actual ranking, was there?
No, but I know roughly where I stood in a GPA-based ordering.
I know what I was ranked in my graduating undergrad class. Is that really uncommon?
I've never heard of "rankings" among undergraduates. Was this a college with no majors? Are you just talking about within your major?
348: But the Slavic programs are already gone, so the Germans start making threatening noises in the direction of Spanish and Portuguese.
Jimmy Pongo: I was in a very similar situation prior to being hired in which no one I knew could even get any gossip out of the previously very talkative department. It turns out that they were waiting to hear from the person who had been offered the job ahead of me, and didn't want to say anything to me in the meanwhile so that if they offered me the job I wouldn't feel like I had been the second choice. Makes sense in theory, drove me batshit crazy in practice.
I suppose I know where I was ranked in my first and second year undergraduate classes. There was a prize, with money, for the top student each year, and I came second, to some other fucker. I also know what the head of department _said_ about my relative position in the department at the end of the degree, although whether that reflects actual marks, I've no idea.
365: Huh. There were, what, around 20 of us inducted into Phi Beta Kappa our junior year, which I would bet is strongly correlated with high GPA. But, while I could guess at roughly where I ranked within that group, I don't see how I have enough data to be very confident about it. (I assume we're talking about overall GPA, not just GPA for courses within a major; at least in my departments there were prizes based mostly or entirely on within-major GPA.)
368 refers to a within-major thing. But how would they compare across courses? Anyway, UK degrees are structured differently.
367 would have been my guess, except that then asking HR would be pointless.
There was a prize at my college, to be eligible for which you had to have above a certain GPA. But you had to have letters and extracurriculars and maybe even an interview to get the award, so it wasn't just by rank. It was the closest thing to the top rank they had, I think. The winners always seem to have had enough accomplishments to make you wonder why they were still in college.
Apparently the university where I work now names a valedictorian. Seems a little silly. Especially comparing people in different departments, as ttaM says. Though caring that much about grades at all once students are adults seems a little excessive.
Grades-only awards seems silly, especially for adults. I met a guy, who was then in grad school, who had been nominated (to apply) for the award at my undergrad. He said he never went through the process, since his extracurriculars, outside of engineering/lab work, consisted primarily of watching tv. As he said, what was he going to do, write an essay about watching NCAA basketball? I bet many people hit the GPA threshhold, which is probably why they needed more stuff to filter out candidates for the award.
My college didn't use GPAs. I think I just calculated something from my transcripts, according to some formula I may have made up, for grad school applications that asked for undergrad GPA.
Further to 374: And also they name a salutatorian chosen not based on GPA, but on their ability to give a speech in Latin, and the audience is given cues about when to laugh or cheer since none of them understand it. Bizarre.
377: A well-given Latin speech is a fine thing! The guy who gave it my graduation year was known to be frighteningly smart as well as painfully shy, so there was cheering all 'round. Apparently his speech was quite humorous and clever.
Was this a college with no majors? Are you just talking about within your major?
No, there were majors, but the ranking was given without regard to majors, which I agree is quite odd. I also half-remember that it was reported only in the fourth year, but I might be misremembering that part. Just a hilarious useless number: X/4,294 or whatever.
nd the audience is given cues about when to laugh or cheer since none of them understand it
At my PhD commencement the Latin speech was printed in the program along with its English translation, so it was pretty easy to follow. Tweety was watching the commencement broadcast online, and reported that the speech had subtitles.
254
Doesn't pass the smell test. When most of the instructors of college English in the US are non-tenure-track, often for life, but their classes are made larger and larger, it's because there is actually a huge demand for English PhDs, but the system is too slow and too underfunded to offer meaningful stable employment. The expectation now is that you'll probably spend 6-10 years in graduate programs so that you can live for the rest of your life without health insurance, doing for pitiful wages a job teaching material that every single college student has to learn. If there were too many English PhDs, there wouldn't be classes to teach. There are in fact many many classes to teach, but the standards for how many one should be able to teach and survive keep changing.
However big the demand for English PhDs the supply is obviously much larger which is why conditions are so lousy. If you quit there are 10 others who would be glad to have your job. And lack of funding is the same thing as lack of demand. And since when does every single college student have to take English?
"This woman works in a hospital. She studied medicine and is allowed to write prescriptions," and have always gotten an upsettingly high percentage of students who identify her as a nurse rather than a doctor.
No, that seems fair enough. Nurses actually work in hospitals. Most of the doctors just kind of float around.