Candidate X has worked to distribute information about the fabrication and dispersement of powdered anthrax spores. He figured it was either that or going to work in banking and his mom raised him to be moral.
This is such an evangelical questions. By their works you shall know them!
That strikes me as more general university bullshit than evangelically-inspired university bullshit.
Except for maybe "deeds" instead of "actions" or something.
I'm assuming the person who wrote that isn't a native English speaker?
3: The worst offenders of using evangelical language for secular purposes are fucking academics.
In other news, I am not being invited to campus for either of the jobs I interviewed for, so I suppose next year I will be destitute, or at least moving to some far-flung place for another year of applying for jobs in outer space.
Oh, fuck. I'm so sorry. Is there potential of another one or two year gig someplace still, or is anything more stable than adjuncting out of reach for next year.
There are still one-year gigs. But that means moving, again, making friends again, probably making a hell of a lot less than I'm making now, etc. There are still a few tenure-track jobs that haven't gone to campus visits, but they're all long shots. If I get absolutely nothing, I have a few offers from people to be a housemaid or whatever, but it may involve special outfits.
Candidate X has disseminated science and technology by chatting up girls/boys at the college bar with nerdy jokes and a binary watch.
Slightly more seriously, is the emphasis supposed to be on the benefit to society, or on the dissemination?
Also, sorry to hear about the jobs, AWB.
One-year gigs would be a lot more pleasant if one didn't have to spend all one's time there on the job market, which lasts from October to April.
Good luck AWB. My fate is currently in the hands of some DOE reviewers under less than ideal circumstances so perhaps I should also be getting fitted for the French maid costume.
"Candidate X, through prodigious feats of drinking and drug consumption, has pointedly raised awareness among influential opinion-makers in his peer group about the heretofore unimagined potential for coolness among natural science majors."
In honor of five years with my current employer, I'm required to walk through the blowing snow to attend an ice cream social that everyone else can skip like any sane person would when somebody throws an ice cream social in January.
Is it worrying that 14 makes more sense to me written as "walk through ice cream to attend a blow/snow social"? What the hell is an ice cream social?
You'd call it a party if there were any hope anyone was going to have fun. "Ice cream social" is honest about the fact that there will be ice cream, and there will not be fun.
<misery poker>I didn't even get any interviews at all! </misery poker>
Maybe the ACLS will come through for me.
I have at least been able to muse about the various forms PFO letters have taken.
- two have come in the form of emails to all applicants, one (one presumes) using Bcc:, the other (one knows) not. (By mistake, at least).
- one came in the form of an email with an attached pdf of a letter.
- one, the best by far, came through the actual mail in the form of an actual letter addressed to me, just me.
15 - Moby is walking back in time to the turn of the century, where he will eat sundaes with Marian the Librarian and drive a Pierce-Arrow.
AWB, my sincere condolences. I've found few things to be more soul-sucking and demoralizing than looking for paid work. Ugh.
Nearly three years, over three hundred applications, about 30 interviews, three crappy short term gigs, and finally, finally, one shot at the show. And this was in computer programming, java and the web, a field which allegedly has tons of jobs and not nearly as many qualified candidates.
You'd call it a party if there were any hope anyone was going to have fun. "Ice cream social" is honest about the fact that there will be ice cream, and there will not be fun.
But why is ice cream involved at all?
I believe it's intended to be some sort of celebration. Without the ice cream, it would be hard to tell.
Or, if it's a weirdo teetotal thing, cake.
Booze creates an unacceptable risk of fun.
I think the ice-cream social is the modern, puritanical version of the old cocktail party, no?
ice cream > cake
low quality ice cream >> low quality cake
Ice cream in the winter is weird, but this looks like loads of fun. I'm gonna try to watch some of it in St. Paul tomorrow. Tickets are free.
An ice cream social is something that takes place in exactly one setting: musicals about the early 20th century in America.
pwned on preview but I mean srsly. Ice cream social? Will it be at the soda fountain?
I think the ice-cream social is the modern, puritanical version of the old cocktail party, no?
Not sure about the cocktail party part, but probably yes on puritanical straightedgery - the first mention I can find on Google Books is 1879, in a Christian magazine. It didn't get to be a common term, according to ngrams, until the 1900's and 1910's.
The most Wobegonian of the Wobegon country churches has an ice cream social, as does the Clotho ghost town festival. It may be a revival thing even here.
6 and 17 are making me very unhappy, indeed one might say, given that I don't really know either of you, disproportionately unhappy. The profession, broadly speaking, really is fucked. I know that doesn't help, but I fear that it's the truth. As one brilliant undergraduate student whom I tried to dissuade from applying to PhD programs said to me last week, "It's like you've found the best bar in the world [being a university professor], and now you won't let anyone else drink there." "Sort of," I replied. "But it's more like all of the bars like this one are in the process of going out of business, and I'm trying to make sure you don't go to school to learn how to tend bar."
Honestly, if people like the two of you can't find excellent jobs, there's not really a profession, qua* profession, any more.
* I think I am misusing this. Or, even if not, I'm sure I shouldn't be using it at all.
In this case, the subtext of "ice cream social" was "there's too many of you for us to buy lunch."
The ice cream was pre-formed scoops, individually bagged. You put it in a bowl and then added whatever topping you wanted.
Fuck, this really upsets me. I'm just so enraged and so sorry that you guys have to deal with this crap.
Also, fuck a bunch of ice cream socials and forced professional socializing of all kinds. Our department chair has decided that we need to "build community", which, in his mind, seems to mean having a weekend retreat of some kind and also lots of after-work gatherings. "No, thanks, I won't be attending. Yes, actually I really do mean that. I'm tenured, you'll recall."
The ice cream was pre-formed scoops, individually bagged.
I don't even know how to react to this.
It was strange because they were flat on the bottom.
8: I suspect there are some options in between the two you mentioned. But it always sucks to have to look for work.
8: I suspect there are some options in between the two you mentioned. But it always sucks to have to look for work.
I'll be honest: I like ice cream, but I wouldn't eat ice cream thus served.
@35
That calls for some sort analogy where the collapse of academia is like all the bars being replaced by ice cream socials, but I'm coming up empty.
Sorry to hear that AWB, nos.
My old outfit has an ice cream social every Thursday at 3, from Memorial Day through Labor Day. A nice chance to joke around with staff and lawyers from other practice groups. Then back to work for a bit.
Labor Day to Memorial Day there's beer after 5 on Fridays, but it's not as well attended: people have stuff to do. Well, there are regulars every week . . .
43: They had a huge bowl of cherries, as well as all the fudge sauce and whipped cream you could want.
46 -- Fresh, from Chile, or canned. That makes or breaks the whole thing right there.
Did you poor fudge all over yourself while weeping?
Sort of a missed opportunity if no.
OT Mac bleg: My sister wants to buy a Mac book.
I'm planning to buy a Macbook Pro 15" laptop. I am thinking of buying the base model ($1800) and upgrading the hard drive and the screen resolution. The higher model ($2200) already has larger hard drive, but would need upgraded screen res.
She has a few specific questions about whether she should get upgraded memory, fancy screen, etc.
If someone is willing to give her some advice, would you e-mail me at mypseud at geemail? Thx.
47: Maraschino cherries. I didn't want to look up how to spell it.
48: On first read, I was trying to parse "poor fudge" like "poor mouth."
50 -- I guess that's what you get for living on the frontier.
49: Do not not not upgrade the memory via Apple at the time of purchase. Buy the memory from Other World Computing (etc.) for like a third of the cost.
sucks to have to look for work
The only thing worse than having a job is looking for a job.
51: An addict friend acquainted me with the revolting bit of twelve-step wisdom that it doesn't take long for "poor me! poor me!" to turn into "pour me...A DRINK!"
Poor me! Poor me! Pour me... into that JUMPSUIT!
I must get out of these wet clothes and into, well fuck, into some dry clothes I guess.
I prefer ice cream to cake.
So do I, but I haven't been to a party/celebration where ice cream was served other than as dessert since I was about 11.
This was ice cream served as a dessert. We just had to eat our own lunch and then walk through the snow for dessert.
OT: When a headline says somebody "euthanized phantom dogs," it is very disappointing to learn the story is about billing fraud. Metaphorical asshole copy editors.
Exciting update! The ACLS did not come through for me.
I just read this. What the fuck? How can you two not have jobs? You are fucking geniuses and actually should be teaching people. When I think about some of the law professors I know . . . God,what an awful system.
Eh, sorry, that's not helpful. Still, I am pissed off at the world on your behalf.
There aren't any new jobs available teaching people, and nobody is retiring from the current jobs. Just like being a lawyer.
It's funny, in both of those cases I'm really puzzled by the demographics. Were colleges and law firms just expanding at an unsustainable rate until 10-20 years ago, and the hiring crunch is the end of that expansion? Or what's the deal?
When I was only a newly minted ABD, they told us that whole Arizona golf resorts full of academics were going to be retiring soon. They assumed that everybody but them was going to quit at 65 and that nobody but them every hired an adjunct.
There are still plenty of jobs at law firms and as lawyers, just not enough to justify the cost of law school at current prices for a lot of people looking at (especially) lower ranked law schools. If either Neb or AWB wanted to become, God forbid, a lawyer, or probably even a law professor, they could have a job. What's so infuriating (to me, not like I'm a judge of anything) is that Neb and AWB both seem like literal superstars and the world of college teaching is like, nope, no room at the Inn, we're too busy paying off this 78 year old communications studies professor who has been teaching the same lame class since 1961.
But this isn't helping anything.
From my c.v. you wouldn't get the impression that I am a superstar.
One of (dissertation) committee members, also on the placement committee, told me at the APA that my dossier was really good—I guess she was thinking of the letters of rec—and that I should feel good on that account if on no other. Sadly, such things do not themselves pay money.
I suspect there are some options in between the two you mentioned.
As someone a couple of years further into the process of PhDing, not getting an academic job, and trying to move on to other things, let me reiterate - because I've said it several times here before - how hard it is to get a job right now.
I will survive somehow, and I'm certainly in a better position than a lot of people of equal talents, but the problem is that everyone in my cohort knew how hard this market would be, and while I was teaching ten classes a year while writing a dissertation, they were publishing relentlessly while using their funding. (Funding at my school skipped my year for reasons that have to do with state manipulations.) But I've been talking to people in my field who aren't doing any better on the market, and we can only assume that all the interviews are going to current tenure-track people who are unhappy. So something might open up at their schools later in the spring. It's just really grim.
Condolences to nosflow. I think we'll both have something next year, but it remains to be seen what kinds of somethings that might be.
re: 71
I can only commiserate and hope you have good luck over the next year.
FWIW, I'm familiar with that bind. I spent a lot of time working a full-time job and writing up my thesis while friends were networking continuously and working on their CVs. Nice for them.
Today, are your friends successfully employed or involved in jobs that require them to ask, "Would you like a deep-fried Mars bar with that?"
re: 73
Well, the minority of the group I'm familiar with who did get jobs are pretty much exclusively from that cohort, yeah.
No teaching jobs?
It's like no one has noticed the massive downsizing of gov'ts, state local federal the last two years.
"Obama to Kill 109 yr old Dep't of Commerce" is the headline I wake from my nap to.
"And let me be clear: I will only use this authority for reforms that result in more efficiency, better service, and a leaner government." ...Obama
Cause we just so fucking broke and poor.
Sincere condolences to Nosflow and AWB. I don't know what else to say.
I can't believe Obama ruined the university system.
68:we're too busy paying off this 78 year old communications studies professor who has been teaching the same lame class since 1961.
Yes, they want to shrink resources cut jobs cap benefits and pit laborer against laborer, interest group against interest group.
Thanks for you playing, Republican.
Oh give over, Bob. Everybody understands exactly what's happening and why. It's just a bitch when it happens to your pretend internet friends. It's worse when it happens to yourself, or people you know IRL, as it does, but it's still a bitch.
I can't believe Obama ruined the university system.
no, but I can believe he didn't lift a finger to rescue it.
78:Krugman describes as not enough stimulus to create effective demand, but fuck yeah, you won't find any Keynesian economist who won't admit that the 2009 Recovery Act didn't send enough money to state and local governments.
Besides the Fed's slow recovery policy.
There are a lot of factors, but you also won't find too many left-of-centre economists who won't admit that this is at the least a preventable depression, and it is worldwide.
I've had arguments with some of those 78-year-old professors who are clinging to jobs despite no longer being able to hear students in discussion, having no relevant things to say to advisees, and no developments to pedagogy since the 70's, and from what they say, they would absolutely love to retire, but they're watching their retirement packages get cut or disintegrated to the point that they'll have to sell their homes, not be able to take care of grandkids, etc. I'm not sure it's worth hating them for sticking around, because we're all getting fucked. They're just getting fucked after a lifetime of work and thinking they'd retire in style and comfort, while I'm getting fucked without ever having a chance to work without being fired by default at the end of every year. I'm in the worse position, but both our troubles bubble up from the same filthy stream.
It is not altogether clear that most of these old professors would be replaced with new tenure-track people anyway. My Doktormutter is hanging on to her job right now, despite being of retirement age, because it is very unlikely that the university will keep her tenure line once she is gone.
It I could have "Doktormutter" as a job title, I'd never leave unless somebody offered a job as "Doktormutterswhileflippingthebirder".
I went on the market two years; 2009-10 was the last time I gave it a go. I lasted through the VAP season that spring before calling it quits. But academic German in this country is way more fucked than Philosophy, even.
We've had, depending on how you count, seven, eight, or nine retirements over the past four years. We've replaced the people we've lost with three newcomers. And we've been a relatively lucky department in the context of our division. It's not a profession any more.
Time for nosflow to start taking the fire exam in areas that are relatively non fucked, financial wise. Maybe Portland or Seattle? Lots of down time to read and hit the weights. You could be manly philosopher firefighter and pull a lot of tail.
In the last decade, we've lost half of our faculty and replaced 80% of those we lost.
Tweety reminds me that I was actually semi-offered a VAP that I turned down. It was in a not-great location, 4-4 teaching load (every one of those different preps), all things that were out of my expertise (film courses, for example). The chair of my department sprung it on me in June 2009: Look at this job I got you! Move to this other state NOW and spend the rest of your summer preparing courses! Then work 110 hours a week all next year! This might (*might*) make you more attractive on the job market next year! I had just finished my degree, was getting married the next month, planning to spend the following month in Berlin on my honeymoon, and had just signed a lease for an apartment in Cambridge the following year. I turned it down, which I'm sure sent all sorts of messages about my non-seriousness and unwillingness to work hard.
(I later found out that the position was open because the VAP they had died.)
(I later found out that the position was open because the VAP they had died.)
You folks need get out there and create some more openings.
89 sounds a plan, but how many people would die because of an argument over grammar?
we can only assume that all the interviews are going to current tenure-track people who are unhappy.
More than a few, certainly. (Behavior that I don't really understand when it comes from PhD-granting departments.)
It is not altogether clear that most of these old professors would be replaced with new tenure-track people anyway.
I just found out about some "positions available to teach Social Studies 10, a year-long sophomore social theory course, and/or Social Studies 98, a series of semester-long junior tutorials, which immerse students in focused studies of social science or historical topics and which provide instruction in research methods." This would be part of this degree program. "Members of the Committee are united in their belief that rigorous social science inquiry must cross disciplinary boundaries and that it should be based on an understanding of classic and contemporary social theory and on an intimate knowledge of the history and culture of the places we study", so united in that belief, in fact, that they arranged for the foundational year-long course, as well as the research methods course, would be taught by a rotating cast of temps.
It's my office hours and a (talented) student from last quarter (also in one of my classes this quarter) just came in and said he was thinking of turning his final paper for me into a writing sample for grad school. I neglected even a token attempt to dissuade him, for which I am ashamed.
My sympathies to AWB and nosflow. I guess I can't really complain about anything, since the situation in the sciences seems infinitely better, despite making me semi-permanently grumpy of late.
||
Penn State Alums are still upset with the Board for firing Joe Paterno. This is going to look bad when all the civil suits hit, right?
I assume that the civil suits haven't been launched yet, because they are waiting for a criminal conviction of Sandusky. Do I understand the way the law works right here? And after Sandusky is convicted, people are going to sue the Penn State sports program out of existence, right? And the behavior of jackass alumni who think Paterno is the real victim will make the University look really bad in front of the jury, right?
|>
So why hasn't the Penn State sports program been sued out of existence yet?
My best student ever is on the market this year. He has not one but two published articles, one of which won a national prize, and three years of full-time teaching experience, accrued while he finished his very good dissertation, which is about a topic that, please trust me, were I to tell you what it is, you would say, "Wow, that's a great idea. I can't believe nobody has written about that before." which is precisely the reaction that one wants when one says what one's student's dissertation topic is. He's also a wonderful person: funny, self-effacing, blessed with excellent hygiene and good manners. In addition to me, he had a Pulitzer Prize winner writing for him, as well as another person who is widely acknowledged as one of the three best scholars in the world in his chosen field.
This student, who did absolutely everything right, did not receive a single nibble this year. Not one. Again, it's not a profession any more. If people like this student -- and neb and AWB -- can't count on getting a good job without putting themselves through the meat grinder of three or four years or temporary employment, I honestly have no idea what we're playing at.
I missed the first question because it didn't have "?" after it.
Yes. No. No. Yes.
105 cont'd: you should see her CV. Mmmmmm.
so united in that belief, in fact, that they arranged for the foundational year-long course, as well as the research methods course, would be taught by a rotating cast of temps.
Yes, a rotating cast of brilliant temps. Who, in any event, are preferable to some of the full time faculty.
The extent to which I completely fail to deserve the job I got makes me slightly ill. I'm sorry, infinitely more deserving neb and Bear.
I exempted Blume because she wisely chose not to subject herself to several years of the meat grinder and is now gainfully (I've assume) employed. But yes, Blume too. The whole thing is to despair. Or maybe it isn't. Maybe the end/restructuring of entire professions is just progress on the way to the socialist utopia. I hope so.
The extent to which I completely fail to deserve the job I got makes me slightly ill.
This is actually true in my case. So I try to make up for my intellectual shortcomings by being a very good teacher and providing the university with top-notch service. I'm an absolute demon for committee work! I also used to think I was a good mentor, but this year has given the lie to that one.
Sympathies, nosflow and AWB.
87: So what are you looking for now? Presumably not opportunities in the field of documentary filmmaking.
Also, I ride my bike a lot and am very devoted to my family. And it takes a great deal of time and energy to avoid meeting Josh in person. So all in all, I'm quite busy, you know.
This thread makes me so very, very glad that I didn't go to grad school.
Of course most of the threads about work make me very glad that I've happened into a niche job which is comfortably outside of anything that could be called "a field" but happens to fit my personality.
So my sympathies for anybody out there who's in the process of looking for work, it's horrible.
A friend of mine just quit his engineering PhD program (with 3-4 years left to go), as the jobs he had wanted in his field (teaching-heavy, research-light) seem to have evaporated, to the extent they ever existed. In a way this seems backwards, but perhaps he has wisely decided that he doesn't want to spend several more years so he can be an adjunct. Still, hell of a time to suddenly be on the job market.
Patrick Swayze in Road House had a degree in philosophy. So there's always that.
It's like we're back to the time when Weierstrass can end up teaching high-school for 15 years. Just outrageous.
111: Something in administration / project management / program coordination in higher ed / healthcare / government / non-profits.
It's weird, but someone I know from a second rank school got a job shortly after graduating. As far as I know the deciding criterion was his ability to convince people that he was willing to live in North Dakota. Don't think that it was tenure track, though.
Someone from here got a pretty good job in an unrelated field as an ABD in Arabic. Headhunters like PhDs because they've proved that they're smart and hard working.
You can also get a pretty good academic job if you do Arabic. A friend of mine working on modern Arabic lit landed a t-t job just after he had taken his qualifying exams, before he had even started his dissertation prospectus.
107: I'm sure the temps are brilliant. Why not just hire some full time, though? Surely that would lead to better instruction over time, as well as making the program less complex to administer?
This thread makes me so very, very glad that I didn't go to grad school.
Me too, and I'll add my sympathies to neb and AWB.
I also know people like Von Wafer's student above. Multiple publications in top notch venues -- and I mean people with the sorts of publications in really top journals that some academics base entire careers on -- good references, lots of experience, etc who are struggling by on scraps.
The system is broken.
By way of contrast, someone I know slightly just got a pretty good permanent academic post. He's perfectly fine, but he's been out of academia for three or four years, doesn't have a good publication record, and doesn't have a huge amount of teaching experience. I can only assume nepotism of the usual academic type.
My sympathies to neb and bear as well. I would have said that right away, but honestly, the memory of being in their position still hurts so much I didn't even want to think about it.
No that I have a tenure track position, I have a kind of survivors guilt. Why did I get a job and not neb or bear? They are obviously better scholars than I am.
I am entirely uncertain how obvious that is/how that is obvious. Indeed, while I don't want to be ungracious, all you people who are saying kind things to/about me* ought to recall that—to the best of my knowledge!—you do not know my academic output. And the amount of time I'm here might be some suggestion of the quality of my scholarly habits…
*AWB I'm sure ought to be exempted from what follows, so brightly does her brilliance shine
124: Indexing doesn't qualify as academic output?
||
Is there anyone hereabouts who is good with phonetics and might want to help my friend Leigh (seen hereabouts) put together a glossary for the fake Russian in her soon-forthcoming YA novel?
Email in the pseud.
|>
Given the thread, I realize I might have included some throat-clearing about salvaging a sense of purpose from an expensive education, etc. etc.
Fie on everyone who has so little brain to rub together that they've overlooked neb & bear. Fie!
Given the thread, I realize I might have included some throat-clearing about salvaging a sense of purpose from an expensive education, etc. etc.
Fie on everyone who has so little brain to rub together that they've overlooked neb & bear. Fie!
Why phonetics rather than, say, Russian? And, for that matter, why is the Russian fake rather than real?
124: The first page of google results includes links for Bitch University, Bad Bitch University, Real Bitch University, Hardcore Bitch University, Break a Bitch University, and Stitch and Bitch University. Unfortunately, the only hits for Little Bitch University are accidental. Perhaps you could found your own for-profit institution.
130: Actually, I think the Russian is mostly real, but the setting is "inspired by Czarist Russia." As for the why phonetics, not entirely sure, but are you at all game?
133: I'd really have to know more about the nature of the project to know if my knowledge of phonetics would be helpful. Someone who knows Russian would probably be better, I'd think.
She (or you) should post the enquiry in Languagehat comments, or some blog like that.
Yeah, Languagehat sounds like a good place for a query like that.
Our very own smearcase knows Russian.
About the only way I can continue to intend to finish my dissertation is by reminding myself that I'm not planning to go anywhere near the faculty academic job market. The markets I'm going on are bad enough (and don't generally require phds for entry level/first professional job work).
It's rusty but functional. Yes, I know Russian and indeed Russian phonetics.
While wrestling with my first chapter / submission, I comfort myself that my field includes a bit of ditch-digging, light soldering, plumbing. I could finish this extravagant opportunity cost by becoming an actual sharecropper; I might survive two years of that.
142, 144: Indeed, he was the "someone" I had in mind when writing 134.
I'd look up how to write "What am I, chopped liver?" in Russian but I guess at this point I can only read Russian slowly, with a dictionary and a grammar reference.
66
It's funny, in both of those cases I'm really puzzled by the demographics. Were colleges and law firms just expanding at an unsustainable rate until 10-20 years ago, and the hiring crunch is the end of that expansion? Or what's the deal?
In academia, the deal is a simple matter of arithmetic. My Phd advisor, Daniel Kleitman, has had 30 doctoral students to date. This isn't an unusually large number. Only one is needed to replace him if and when he retires (he seems to be going strong at 77). So the odds are most of his students are not going to do nearly as well as he did (in terms of an academic career). This holds in general, academia is producing far more Phds than needed to replace the existing professors as they die. So the competition for academic jobs is unavoidably brutal. This is particularly unfortunate of course for those subjects, unlike mathematics, which have no employment value outside academia.
And again using my advisor as an example, the elimination of retirement at 65 has significantly reduced the number of academic slots available. According to wikipedia he joined MIT in 1966 at age about 32. So if he had retired at 65 he would have had a 33 year career. As it is, it is 45 years and counting. If this is typical, it has reduced the number of slots by 25%+.
For the record I am just using my advisor as an example, I have no problem with him.
66: There's a sort of precession. Harvard PhDs teach at Michigan, and Michigan PhDs teach at Wayne State, and Wayne State PhDs teach at junior colleges (or drive buses and taxis). But even at best, not everyone gets a job, and we're now at worst.
That's the way it is with the professions. The doctor's patients all die, the legal profession loses half its cases, and 99% of academics are downward mobile failures.
Emerson should maybe find a different dermatologist.
I think tech has changed the law a whole lot more than it has changed academia. A whole lot of what junior lawyers did when I started can be done faster, better, and cheaper by machine now.
There's still plenty of demand for legal services -- but not at a price at which it can be offered. The other side submitted a fee application in a contract case I had recently: guy is way cheap, like less than some paralegals on the coast, and reasonably efficient. Bill was $73,000, which is too small for outfits like my former firm to deal with, but a damn big check for someone to just write.
(Note to RH & LB -- that's for a preliminary injunction, discovery [inc, half dozen deps], and a jury trial. A screaming deal by 1% standards, a lot of money to ordinary people.)
I'm told that some 60% of divorces in my county are pro se these days. People are making terrible messes, but just can't afford to have it done right.
Yeah, I'm sure glad I didn't go to grad school, but I also wish I'd never left the financial industry.
Fucking artists, man, you have no idea.
And, yeah, we had computers and Westlaw 20 years ago, and junior lawyers like me knew how to use them effectively. Now even old fogeys like me know how to use them effectively. And we have the whole damn internet.
I just don't understand why there aren't more openings for lazy, neurotic, cynical, verbose para-professionals with weird resumes full of non-sequiturs and long gaps of unemployment, and who also happen to have dodgy politics and lots of bohemian friends.
And, yeah, we had computers and Westlaw 20 years ago
Not so much in the sticks, though I guess I'm thinking of 25 years ago. My dad used to make me change the inserts in the back of the Northwest Reporter.
156 -- Yeah, Westlaw and Lexis were only in the library back when I started law school, and you had to use their printers, and it printed on rolls. A step up from illuminated manuscripts, I suppose; not that big a step up from digests. Today, I can save any case to pdf from my laptop anywhere I can get signal. I could probably do it from my phone, if I really wanted. I've used a law student for the odd project now and then, but 20 years ago, I'd have needed a couple of junior lawyers to do what I can do now in just minutes.
Oh, and I'm just old enough that I really like having the books too, but not if I have to buy them. You know what a subscription to the P.3d costs?
I thought this NYT article on the law school racket was interesting.
From 1989 to 2009, when college tuition rose by 71 percent, law school tuition shot up 317 percent.
So students are now incurring vastly larger amounts of nondischargable student loan debt to obtain often worthless legal degrees.
I am increasingly of the opinion that student loans should be banned.
musicals about the early 20th century in America
I got an offer tonight to play in the pit orchestra for Oliver! at a local high school production. Apparently, the gig pays several hundred bucks and is a week's commitment.
There are several reasons I might want to do this and several reasons I might not. I should probably make a pros and cons list.
159 -- I've been reading the Campos blog pretty regularly. The situation is really awful.
On the plus side, I ran into a 3L I know at lunch time today, and she just got a job. Plaintiff side workers comp. She won't get rich, but she'll be helping real people who really need her help.
Judging from you posts here and at waste, neb, you've got an oriiginal and subtle philosophical mind, and a serious injustice has been done. I know enough to know, and I'm sorry.
So besides encouraging people to go all Kind Hearts and Coronets, I did want to offer my sympathy to Neb and AWB.
My output isn't particularly stellar either. Eight years of mostly unfunded grad school, teaching up to 10 courses a year while dissertating, going to conferences on my own dime three times a year for eight years, paying tuition for the last three years, and living in one of the most expensive cities on the planet have not been kind to my publishing ambitions. As I realized today, I only got out one article since defending in July. Why? How could that be true? Oh right, I was on the fucking market for the past two years, which eats up seven months out of the year with sorrow and obsessive copyediting.
Don't cry for me; I'm just bitching. A friend and I are planning to do a book that we could maybe get an advance on, which could mean I could do minimal work and hang around here until next year's delicious job market opportunities open themselves for me.
No, it sucks, AWB (and neb). It's fine to admit that it sucks. Not a good game.
Just to pile on the misery--only had one interview, no callbacks, and was rejected by my alma mater. There were 19 jobs total for my field this year. In the early 2000s, which was not a super great market, there were 70-80. It is beyond brutal out there.
That sucks, Miranda. I just got an email from professors at my alma mater, where I actually did apply for a job (late-cycle, hasn't rejected me yet), recommending that I apply for a job at another school with twice the teaching load and $25K less salary because it's "perfect for [me]." I'm glad they're thinking of me, but I can't figure out why the job at my alma mater is not "perfect for [me]."
89 sounds good in its way; it's true that firefighters are catnip to the laydeez. more seriously my heart goes out to you guys in this horrible job market and I am so sorry it sucks so bad.
145. You're studying to be a line engineer for an electricity supply company?
$25K less salary
Why don't they just cut the crap and hold an auction to see how much people will pay them to work for them?
There are big advantages to making debt slaves of the professional classes and the intelligentsia. Also, big advantages to converting schools to prisons. And the money you take out of education that's not put into policing and corrections can be spent on drones.
Why don't they just cut the crap and hold an auction to see how much people will pay them to work for them?
It's the logical next step after "will adjunct for food".
171 That was a scarily long time ago.
172: Further evidence that history has in fact ended.
There is this thing that one sort of upward mobility, professionalism, seems to have been extinguished, at least in law and academia. People kept trying it because they couldn't think of anything else to do.
Medicine probably will be next. MDs are fighting to maintain their status and income level, but as soon as an attempt is made to rein in medical costs, they'll lose.
The business about "elite snobs" is in large part the resentment people with money feel for well-off educated people whose status does not come from money alone and do not kowtow to the business world. Business should be the only avenue to status.
"Why don't you join the military the way I did?
174: In other words, all social relations become increasingly reduced to market relations.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.
Well, corrections and the military aren't really the market, and government spending has been transferred rather than reduced. But an alternate, non-commercial, non-financial avenue to wealth and status is being repressed.
There has always been a contradiction in the idea of equality through education, since the effect has usually been just to raise the bar for admittance into the elite.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that your 174 sounded doctrinaire or anything, if that's how 176 seemed. What you said sounds basically right to me. Just making a connection. (Not that I'm any sort of Marxist, btw.)
Oh, I thought you were MacManus sneaking up on me.
The quote wasn't me, so he could still be behind you.
It's striking how fast the hollowing out of professional status is happening. I work in an what is officially called an academic-related post. We are paid on the same pay scale as lecturers, have the same benefits, and largely the same level of academic qualifications. Fewer PhDs, more vocational/technical and professional qualifications. Generally, more business experience.
When I came back to work there four years back, my job was a permanent job. Not paid as well as a similar job would be in the private sector, but with somewhat better terms and conditions, as per the standard informal compact on these things.
In the intervening period, every single person recruited into that department, except for higher management, is on a fixed term contract. Even the people in posts that aren't funded from fixed-term grants or projects, and for which there is no operational reason why they shouldn't be permanent. None of them know from one year to the next if their job will exist, and they live in a state of permanent insecurity. Several months of every year are spent worrying about their contracts, and putting out feelers and preparing to have to jump if need be. When I speak to other people in other deparments -- curators, conservators, etc. -- the situation is exactly the same. Five years, to go from a world of relatively secure jobs with a defined career path and some compensation for the relatively low salary, to an almost entirely casualised insecure workforce. As far as I can tell, it's like that more or less everywhere.
I never thought I'd come to feel chills down my spine at the word "casual."
183: "...almost entirely casualised insecure workforce."
That seems to be the US model too. It will be again time for radical unionism in a few years.
I witnessed the beginning of the casualization of education way back in 1985-90. People I knew taught at PCC, the local community college. Something like 80% of the faculty were casuals hired term-to-term. A lot of it was tech and there were many uncredentialed tech people, but there was a liberal arts track too.
Other people I knew taught at PSU a mile away, and many of them had real jobs (though casualization was getting started there too. But students I knew often preferred PCC), because you could get your credits cheaper and easier there.
This guy, Amo de Bernardis, a HS shop teacher by trade, was the visionary founder of PCC. He imagined it as a tech school, but that did not prevent him from offering liberal arts. As you can see, he was highly admired or even legendary during his lifetime.
In statements not mentioned in his obituary he was very clear that the school existed for the students and for the job market, not for the faculty. He braged about there not being a faculty lounge.
Of course, this is a CC and there's nothing strange about a his job market orientation there. But he was regarded as a visionary and a lot of 4-year schools copied his methods.
Except in the US, your health care is tied to the unstable job.
186:Probably not in manufacturing
Making It In America ...report on current manufacturing, via The Atlantic, via Ezra
The high end guy operating the advanced machine, has calculus and programming and QC, maybe 6 years post-HS vocational, makes $20 an hour.
Low-end makes $13, and can be trained in a hour and will never learn anything on the floor.
re: 187
Yeah re: health care. Although give the Tories a few years ...
As it happens, at our place the middle-managers have worked really hard to make sure all of our people have had their contracts renewed as and when they've come up. But no-one's under any illusions. If stuff gets tight over the next 18 months and funding dries up, they won't get renewed. It's not a humane or functional system if the very existence of your job depends on the good will and supererogatory efforts of one or two managers.
177:The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.
Well.
What is "reactionary modernism?" What is fascism?
The of those outmoded relations as self-conscious drama, nostalgia, reassurance used as a means of social control? (Baudrillard?) "Fascism is the subject making an object of his/her subjectivity?"
But we are almost past "uneven development" and near the point where all non-commodity relations, where they exist, are manipulated by capital.
183 is right on. And time for radical labor activism is quite clearly ten years ago.
So, I'm aware this is pretty utopian, but it's the kind of thing that is starting to seem like the only reasonable option:
Why not break away from the whole armature of academia: accreditation, administration, bureaucracy, grading, testing (at least standardized), physical plant, etc. etc.? Synthesize something akin to the medieval model of "colleges", part Black Mountain, part post-industrial information economy. I'm imagining a bunch of people getting together in some place with a relatively low cost of living, pooling their intellectual resources, and offering to actually educate people, rather than just making sure they come to class. You could do it cheaply, too. Practically everyone who's not on a full ride at an Ivy expects to work at least half time when they're in college nowadays. Contract with the teachers to pay a reasonable amount (I don't know what this would be per student, per year -- $5000? $8000?) that would go directly to the teachers. Keep the overhead as low as possible, and have a student-teacher ratio of no more than 10 or 12 to 1. Instead of a diploma and a GPA, produce a well-written, comprehensive outline of what each student has learned over 3 or 4 or 5 years. More like an apprenticeship or a series of very directed seminars than the meat grinder apparatus we have now for turning out BAs and BSes. Obviously, there'd be a big disconnect with official academia, but that's sort of the whole point. Blog and tweet about it, get enough press than people figure out that this is a better model in terms of actual education than the tradition university structure, and eventually you'd have a solid alternate path to education and employment. The teachers could form professional networks to get students jobs and internships in their field.
I dunno, maybe this is all ridiculous, but the bachelor's degree credentialling process we have now is 10 times as ridiculous in my mind. I think there are a number of models of technical education (including things like union apprenticeship programs) that are somewhat similar, so it's not completely outside the realm of what people expect. Shit, make it a non-profit and you could probably get some decent grants to start it up. Or, you know, kickstarter and all that.
Ten years ago, I had plausible hope of income growth.
You could call it "UniversEtsy", although I don't know why you would.
It's funny. I would also say that I am not a Marxist, but about once a month something reminds me of the quotation in 177, or the paragraph with the "all that is solid that melts into air" quote (which comes slightly later).
183:Well, in part this is what OWS and "Call" and communization is all about. Withdrawal.
You can't fight late capitalism, and in fact every attempt to do anything good within late capitalism, any resistance, is 100% certain to make the system stronger and more oppressive.
This is controversial among Marxists, who say 1) duh, was always thus, that is how the dialectic has always worked, and 2) there is no place or way left to hide.
192: I had many conversations with my father back in the Seventies about how computers and other tech advances were changing both manufacturing and management, and that the American labor movement was seemingly blind to what was happening.
In turn, he was high enough up there to have lunch with George Meany and others at the top but never could convince them to look at what was coming.
The lessons? None really, except that blindness isn't a symptom limited to Detroit auto companies.
As for why no one has organized, I think there has been organization, a lot of it, at the bottom levels, while the top tenured folks seem to think we're mad at *them* for having a permanent perfect thing that's going extinct. The reason that organization is going to start in earnest now is that it's no longer just an increasing adjunct workforce being paid less and less to teach more and more, with weaker contracts and poorer benefits; now the tenured and tenure-track folks are finally feeling the bite. Even if you are one of the lucky stars who gets a TT job, that could mean (and this is direct from a job ad) $45K, 4/4, not all on the same campus, with one course per semester in your field of expertise, with advisement, committees, and expectation of publication in top research venues. Also, there is no major in your field, and they're thinking about cutting the department at any time, so you'll have to write up a report of learning assessment each semester proving that your courses each fulfill the college mission statement.
It's especially hard because at Hogwart's, where I am now, the recession has kind of not really hit. They've made some little cuts here and there, but a tenured prof friend of mine keeps a house in town and a penthouse apartment in Major City nearby, with maids in each. I am paid so well I will definitely be taking a $10-$20K pay cut next year if I get one of most of the tenure-track jobs that everyone seems to have decided I'm not qualified for. I will definitely be teaching 60% more courses than I am now, with full committee duties and no budget to draw on. I feel like a spoiled child when I get these rejections. Someone thought I was good enough to live a decent life for a year, and now you're telling me I'm asking way too much if I want to make enough to pay the minimum on my student loans?
197. Marx won't go away, because nobody has ever answered the central question he asked, which was, "How do you accommodate economic monopolies or oligopolies to a democratic society?" And if you try to ignore that question you end up in a situation like the one we're in at the moment.
Marx's own answer was, "By democratising the economy as well as the polity." If you don't like that idea, the onus is on you to come up with a better one.
Off topic, AWB, does Hogwarts have a relationship with some university in the south of France? I was intrigued to notice a French teenager sitting at a cafe table in Avignon wearing a Hogwarts sports jacket, which seemed somehow unexpected. The kid looked too young to be at university himself, so I wondered how he came by it.
That's a funny story, Chris. Apparently some Italian clothiers found a Hogwarts sweatshirt in a London used clothing sale, and they decided to make very expensive clothes with the Hogwarts name on them, which they said was the essence of North American collegiate chic. This came out when some celebrity wore a Hogwarts shirt on TV and the proper college community said to itself, but celebrity did not attend Hogwarts! I guess for a while it was settled by selling the expensive Italian brand in our bookstore, but I haven't spotted anything of quality in there, so maybe there was a settlement.
Honestly, if people like the two of you can't find excellent jobs, there's not really a profession, qua* profession, any more.
Von Wafer,
Thanks. There are still pockets of sanity, but they are becoming fewer and farther between.
As a personal strategy throughout the years, I gave up on following my passion and began studying everything I could in people skills. I hoped that a top technical knowledge combined with a top people knowledge would be da bomb. It has helped, but it can never come close to being born into the club. If you haven't done a good job picking your parents, you'll never break the glass.
This overall trend line is very bad, which is why I now predict that it will take bloodshed to change this. We aren't there yet, but we are getting there. Some of our nobility will have to pay. Some of our Frankenstein-monster corporations will have to pay. Then things will change.
Until then - attend the frigging ice-cream socials and smile and pretend to like it, just like everybody else.
That's weirder than I could have imagined, but I'm sure it's the answer. He looked very a la mode, although what initially attracted my attention was that he was drinking (through a straw) something exactly the colour and luminosity of a green LED, which seemed a bit less cool. His girlfriend had a complementary bright red drink. Yuck.
I'm always slightly astonished when I see how people who came into the system 20 years ago live. A combination of a massive increase in the cost of accommodation, and downward pressure on wages, I suppose, explains the massive disparity between what a starting lecturer could afford now [a shitty one bedroom flat, rented not bought] and what an academic in their early 50s might have. Although I suspect more than a few of the senior-ish academics I know always had money anyway.
205: Midori, no doubt, which, interestingly, is a product-placement in a video by a current pop band who played on our campus this fall. Maybe it was a true student of the globe-hopping type.
Probably not Midori, unless one drinks Midori by the half litre (shudder). I doubt if he was much over 16.
ttaM, when I was a kid, senior academics had whole houses off the Banbury Road in Oxford - the big ones. What do those fetch now? £750k?
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While the product is fairly expensive (Men's Hogwarts Clasic Hoodies in Blue $53.00) it seems that the company can't afford translators.
re:208.last
They sometimes still often do, as far as I can tell. If they were lucky enough to have bought them a while ago.
Houses in Park Town, which is the poshest bit off Banbury Road, seem to average around 1.5 million these days.
http://www.zoopla.co.uk/house-prices/oxford/park-town/
Someone thought I was good enough to live a decent life for a year, and now you're telling me I'm asking way too much if I want to make enough to pay the minimum on my student loans?
That really is one of the most terrible things about being on the academic job market: the constant message that you're just asking for too much. And its even more pernicious flipside, that if you reject the terms being offered, it is because you are unwilling to work.
202, 203: but I haven't spotted anything of quality in there, so maybe there was a settlement.
Never heard that story. Apparently the clothing company is still in business. However, per Wikipedia, Most of its products are made in Italy and are much more expensive than the Champion-produced licensed apparel the college's bookstore sells.
It is really weird looking at their clothes. They say things like "QUARTERBACK" and "CHAMPIONS" and "COUGARS" (very much not at all like our mascot).
183.3 is what I figure will be my near future. I know a few people who have full-time permanent jobs now, but only one who got it out of school. One year out and quite a few people I know who graduated last year are on their second or third jobs.
214: Right. I'm currently emailing with an adviser about this. She makes some pretty dollars and has tenure, and went straight from a great PhD program to a great job with the help of a solid job market and supportive advisers willing to work their own connections on her behalf. But with me, she thinks I'm just asking too much w/r/t a particular job, and that suffering is just part of what I signed up for when I went to grad school, and that later, when I really deserve it, I'll get a job somewhere better.
Medicine probably will be next. MDs are fighting to maintain their status and income level, but as soon as an attempt is made to rein in medical costs, they'll lose.
I agree that the hollowing-out in discussion will extend to more and more professions, but I rather think that physicians will be the last group it happens to, since even though they're vastly overpaid and doing lots of things in a bad way at the moment, their basic value and the demand for them is much clearer and more persistent. More likely their incomes drop by a quarter or a third, and some specialties get decimated, but it remains a desirable profession on the whole (especially if the loan system is reformed along with the health care system).
re: 217
Yeah. We are still recruiting people, but they are all funded by specific projects and their jobs will only continue to exist if new funding can be rolled in to cover the posts. Because of the relatively long lag times in funding I expect we'll start seeing the bite of that soon as money dries up.
We are advertising for someone to be my assistant on a project I am running. But we need someone with quite a solid set of skills, and yet we can only offer them a 9 month contract. It's stupid.
re: 218
And you have to be polite and nice to these people. Rather than stabbing them in the face with a pencil.
There's a bit of an effort out there to publicize and shame some of the most egregiously bad low pay, high qualifications, non-permanent job postings - you know two masters, heavy technical skills, $15/hr in an high cost of living area - but it's sporadic and its not clear it can have much of an affect.* Conferences and professional organization publications are now more like to have people talk about the issues, which doesn't sound like much, but is a step in the right direction.
*And there are always a few people who drop in to make comments like: "this is what the real world is like, I can't believed you're shocked by it, also they probably have an internal candidate they want and they're just posting to meet the obligations to list publicly and they don't want anyone else to apply and this is completely ok, you're so naive, etc. etc."
200: been there. Wish I had useful advice, but the best I can say is that Hogwarts is on the high and cushy end, there's no way to make a $20K pay cut feel great, but it beats being unemployed, maybe. I like my job a lot; I don't like feeling both like I'm expected to think that this job is my one true aspiration and that I'm a complete professional failure at the same time.
218: When I was in academic grad school, I'd hear people refer to some jobs as ones "you can* write your way out of." Not dead-ends where you'd be concerned if you actually did get tenure, not ideal either, but the impression I got was that you'd better take those, given the chance if nothing better was out there.
*And by "can" I'm pretty sure they meant "should try to."
The story in 202 and 203 is fascinating. It looks like the college didn't register the mark internationally (and wasn't famous enough to get the mark without registration) so the Italian company owns the mark everywhere outside the US. Inside the US, the college has licensed the mark to the clothing company.
The prose on the clothing company website is something to behold.
219: There aren't very many professions left that aren't touched, so MDs might both be last to be hit and the next to be hit. Five years ago I already talked to an MD working for an HMO who thinks we're halfway there. He's on the clock all the time (Two minutes for the common cold or flu, five minutes for tonsillitis -- I don't know the numbers, but he's supposed to speed patients through), has little autonomy, and isn't making what he expected though still a lot. MDs also have enormous loan debt.
I should try to get my alumni association to do a job satisfaction survey entering retirement.
I also met a guy ten years ago with a perfectly fine PhD who had only worked ten out of twenty years of his career.
AWB is in one of the cities I've spent the most time in!
I thought she was somewhere in the midwest.
Doctors complain all the time about loss of status and working for HMOs and how they don't get paid enough*, but the med school cartel in the US has limited supply so dramatically that there will continue to be good jobs available for those MDs who can get into through the system, at least in the medium term. If lawyers cut the number of law schools by 2/3 or academics would close up everything but one philosophy department to PhD students, you'd have something similar.
*Really, is any money too much? I save lives /insane professional ego
This popped up in my rss reader earlier:
There aren't as many scamblogs from the M.D. point of view. Here's one. Despite the working conditions, there are still not any MDs who are unable to find a good-paying job, so their worries still include such un-indentifiable problems as the chance of getting sued for malpractice (each doctor, on average, gets sued almost 1 time per career!), and the laughable notion that people other than doctors can do any of the seemingly routine jobs that doctors do.
I'm always slightly astonished when I see how people who came into the system 20 years ago live.
I occasionally wonder what life has been like for the people graduating from undergraduate programs within the last couple of years.
For myself the two years after I graduated were genuinely terrible, in terms of simultaneously trying to figure out how to live as an independent adult, and how to transition from academics (which I was good at) to looking for work and figuring out what I had any affinity for -- and that was in good job market.
I was (and am) at the anxious and naive ends of the personality spectrum, so I was not well prepared for that transition anyway, but I can't even imagine what it would feel like to be going through that in this job market. It's hard enough to be exiting one phase of life and working on re-defining one's identity and the things that you take pride or satisfaction in, without doing that in the midst of an impossible job search.
I occasionally wonder what life has been like for the people graduating from undergraduate programs within the last couple of years.
For myself the two years after I graduated were genuinely terrible, in terms of simultaneously trying to figure out how to live as an independent adult, and how to transition from academics (which I was good at) to looking for work and figuring out what I had any affinity for -- and that was in good job market.
It seems to me that in the last five years, moving back in with your parents right after graduating college has gone from the mark of a loser, to something you expect to do and feel fortunate if you can avoid.
My parents were in the field that I'm going into. They both had, basically, one overall employer for nearly three decades, though they changed campuses/offices. The story I've heard (though they're not sure it's completely accurate) is that my mom got hired for the job that turned out to be, though it changed a bit over the years, the last last job she ever had on the same day she interviewed for it. This would have been in the early 70s.
228. Zizek's quite interesting when he stops posing for a minute. He should do it more often.
re: 233
Oh, yes. There's some smart stuff in there. I've liked quite a bit of his LRB stuff, and I also enjoyed First As Tragedy .. quite a bit, too.
I also noticed one paragraph was, more or less, a direct lift from Lenin's Imperialism which I've been reading.
My sympathies as well for everyone on the market. Folks may remember my somewhat bizarre path of lucking myself into a job last year, and the survivor's guilt is constant. Giving advice to my undergrads ("Don't go to grad school. Don't go to law school. Don't...oh, fuck it, have you tried waiting tables?") and grad students ("Have you thought about leaving the program? You know, to do something that you might have a prayer of actually being paid to do someday?") is demoralizing for all parties. My department is committed to only hiring full-time, tt faculty, and I'd like to see us start reducing the sizes of our incoming grad classes, but it's hard to know what to do otherwise. Every time my husband complains about our new city and new (to him) region, all I can do is look at him i disbelief and think Do you know how @$%&@ lucky I was to get this job? He keeps forgetting that, had I been single when on the market and had this job not turned out, I would have taken a position anywhere.
235. Yeah. I'm not a huge fan of a lot of Lenin's theory (never mind the practice), but he did understand (well, Hilferding did, and he stole it) that imperialism isn't all about formal empires with Emperors and shit, which most capitalist economists still refuse to grasp. If you make your living growing cut flowers for the Dutch market in Kenya you probably don't need to understand the theory.
Yeah, to 237. I'd not read Imperialism until recently, and I found it pretty interesting how little has changed. Much of his analysis (borrowed or not) is still relevant. Ditto on the not a huge fan, etc.
25: We had an infamous ice cream social at Freshman orientation. Since the drinking age here is 21, booze was not allowed.
I think sometimes about going to grad school in a health policy field. There seem to be more "academic" jobs in that area, generally people working for hospitals who get an academic title. There are also gov jobs and consulting, so it seems less crazy, though it would still be crazy.
A friend of mine was offered hospitalist positions in rural Georgia for 1 year paying around $230,000. i think that she felt "on the clock" too and was expected to see a ton of patients, and she was only staying a year, because she's going on to a fellowship in oncology.
"While the product is fairly expensive (Men's Hogwarts Clasic Hoodies in Blue $53.00) it seems that the company can't afford translators."
Don't want to bring the mood down even more, but there's been a extreme downward pressure on translator's fees the last few years, and this type of thing is the result. Companies aren't willing to pay for quality anymore, so a lot of people who had an UMC income are now poor or unemployed.
My sympathies to AWB and Ben and everyone else.
See, if the number in 241 was missing a zero and the phrase "going on to a fellowship" was "not going on to a fellowship", you get the law-school equivalent.
Well, I think she was spending it all on her loans, since she'll make $50 or $60K next year.
That is precisely what I want. I want for someone to offer me a $230,000 salary for one year so I can just pay off my debts and open a savings account for the first time in my life, and then, yes, I will happily grovel for this 4/4 $45K job with no security and two campuses.
The North Dakota shale oil fields beckon.
221.1: how useful to other employers, so they can judge how low to aim.
When I was growing up in the 80s in karP tcepsorP in silopaenniM, we had an annual ice cream social at the old ttarP School. It included a cakewalk, and was the one time a year they opened the water tower, from which there was a nice view.
Looks like you can clear north of $100k/year as a hydraulic fracturer in North Dakota without much experience, but the job is dangerous and you only get 4 hrs of sleep/night. Probably a year as an oil field boomtown stripper is a better choice if one is qualified.
I was about to say, that must be another UK/US difference. $53 wouldn't be expensive for a hoodie, here. But then I looked, and my mental exchange rate is off these days. The Oxford hoodie is a little over $60.
My sense of what reasonable salaries are is kind of compressed, I guess. $230k/yr seems absurdly high and $45k/yr uncomfortably, though not absurdly, low.
Probably a year as an oil field boomtown stripper is a better choice if one is qualified.
That kind of affective labor is starting to require a graduate degree. Fortunately, there are ways to work off your debt while in school.
Basically, I want a world where everyone's wages are within a factor of 2 of each other.
||
Good grief. Did Paul Krugman just say the New York Times forbade him to use the word "lie"?
I was deeply radicalized by the 2000 election. At first I couldn't believe that then-candidate George W. Bush was saying so many clearly, provably false things; then I couldn't believe that nobody in the news media was willing to point out the lies. (At the time, the Times actually told me that I couldn't use the l-word either). That was when I formulated my "views differ on shape of planet" motto.
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255: It's all part of objective journalism. I vaguely remember reading something at Slate a few years back about how rare it is to see mainstream journalism use the word "lie" even in cases where the reporter might actually be trying to signal "this is not true."
Well, yeah, but I had assumed that was self-censorship by journalists who value being seen as "savvy" by their peers more than being straight with readers. I wouldn't have predicted any editor would actually have *said* not to use the word.
227: Yeah, in the US the supply of new MDs is kept artificially low by restricting the number of Medical schools.
One solution is to open more medical schools and grant more medical licenses, but good luck trying to allow that to happen. The current 'winners' in the existing system won't allow that to happen.
I wonder if 'tele-medicine' will crack the medical monopoly? It could, but it would take a change in the laws which limit who can practice medicine on US citizens. The whole pharmaceutical/insurance/medical cartel will be very difficult to break up. Teddy Roosevelt was a trust-buster. Obama? Not so much.
256
... to see mainstream journalism use the word "lie" even in cases where the reporter might actually be trying to signal "this is not true."
Being mistaken is not the same thing as lying. People make false assertions all the time but that does not mean they are all lying.
I guess the idea is that "lie" imputes an intention to knowingly state a falsehood, and one cannot know that for sure, so at best one may say of another's statement that it's false.
A solution recommended by Dean Baker is making it easier for foreign MDs to be licensed in the US. Presumably they would mostly be Asian, though maybe not. Medical care is a lot cheaper in Mexico too, and maybe it was Mexican doctors he was thinking of.
How time flies. I remember when Ogged was counseling Ben in comments on whether to go to grad school. I believe "keep up your coding skills" was part of the advice. (wish I could find the link, and I'm sure it's insensitive to bring it up here and now).
I'm very sorry to hear the market is such shite. It's such a soul-crushing experience. Hope you both find good options soon.
Oh, and thank your for the Italian fashion info.
I've been wondering what the story was with that Hogwarts chain since I see their stores all over my newly adopted town. Very amusing to see they own the name in every country outside the US.
It seems to me that in the last five years, moving back in with your parents right after graduating college has gone from the mark of a loser, to something you expect to do and feel fortunate if you can avoid.
This, definitely. It's extremely common for people my age and younger.
It's OK to say that Chomsky lies, or Ahmadinejad, or Hamas. The rule is not universally applied.
The epistemological and philosophical questions are not relevant. How much epistemological sophistication to the media have in general.
The issue is mostly about the media allowing the Republicans to lie freely about the Democrats. The demand that the media catch liars isn't a bold innovation, it's a proposal that they return to the earlier practice.
The worry that somehow this will backfire against The Left is ludicrous. Their treatment of The Left couldn't be much worse than it is. The demand is really just that the media quit treating mainstream Democrats as badly as they treat The Left.
"do the media have in general?"
227, 258: The limits are hardly dramatic, though they are there. The U.S. has fewer doctors per capita than the OECD average but it has more GPs per capita than that average. I think we're still above Canada and the U.K. as far as the total number of doctors per capita.
Did Paul Krugman just say the New York Times forbade him to use the word "lie"?
He's been quite open about this for years. One thing that I truly love about Krugman is that while he is enough of a creature of the system to obey a command not to call people liars, he is still sufficiently independent to tell people the instructions he's been given.
He's pretty openly taking on Brooks now in a way that was also forbidden - and that he openly acknowledged was forbidden. I don't see it ending well between him and the Times.
Being mistaken is not the same thing as lying. People make false assertions all the time but that does not mean they are all lying.
Yes, yes, and we're not allowed to call people racists, either, because who really knows what's in their hearts.
But there's a such thing as reckless disregard. And if you burn a cross but haven't spent any time thinking about the racial implications of that action - guess what? That makes you a racist.
Likewise, any news article that quotes Romney's ad regarding Obama's alleged fear of discussing the economy is just repeating a lie - unless they call Romney out for it.
It is possible to know things.
Colin Powell gambled his credibility on the existence of WMD in Iraq - and lost that credibility. But who cares? He's still treated as someone who didn't directly, knowingly lie to the cameras in order to spur on agressive, needless war.
By being uncritical reporters of falsehood, the media are complicit. The media should stop it.
They're selling soap. And apparently more soap is sold if you don't call Republicans liars. At least to the people they're trying to sell it to.
I'm glad my husband was offered and took his job at the national university of narnia. his one other offer was a 4/5 one-year appointment at a school in arkansas but not even in little rock, some ass-lick town 1 hour away. I had been to narnia a few times before and he had never been, so he asked, "could we really move there?" and the answer was "yes, totally!" and here we are. tenure, [sifu tweety: pay of about $90,000], and respect. lots of respect.
I wish it were just a bit closer to america. say, where hawaii is, I could deal with that. 24-hour flights that change in frankfurt or narita, and only get you to NYC, and cost a fuck ton of money, and a 12-hour time change for literally the worst jet lag possible all equals not enough time with my family. nonetheless we are extraordinarily fortunate.
Fayetteville is one of the most important centers of the Ozark civilization, you racist.
I met an AA returnee/newcomer who is also from S.C. the other day, who said (when asked by another member) that he was 'scots-irish' and that his family lived outside columbia I refrained from noting that this is the official polite name for "white trash." really, though. flippanter can come call me racist and be totally right for a change, but he's still asleep.
If you had moved to Fayetteville you would have met not only an old friend of mine who was also glad to get a job, but almost certainly some of my father's second cousins and their progeny. Around 1905 my grandfather's brother rehabbed by becoming a tent preacher in Turkey, Arkansas, which is now just a wide spot in the road. "Why would anyone want to move into a place everyone else was trying to get out of?" you might ask.
So i answer to your other question, no, I didn't have much contact with my extended family.
My friend that got the Fayetteville job was originally from rural Idaho. I think that there's a tendency for schools located in shithole towns to prefer candidates who have proven ability to live in shitholes. Another guy got a job just recently in Grand Forks, close to his family, after getting his PhD in Pullman.
Separated at birth: Gary Bauer and Mr. Bean. I suppose all you media freaks knew this already.
old ttarP School
They have a school for old ttarPs? "Now, observe the angle at which I am holding my rake. That's right! Now shake your rakes and repeat after me: 'Get... the... hell... off... my... lawn'. Very good."
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This one will upset LB - NMM Reginald Hill.
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279 280
That's too bad, I liked his books.
279: I really really like many of his books, but he seemed to go a bit off the rails wrt women. But maybe I hallucinated that (mean to Peter's feminist wife, and then a whole book about nasty women's studies types?)?
I really really like many of his books, but he seemed to go a bit off the rails wrt women.
That could be about anyone.
282
... but he seemed to go a bit off the rails wrt women. ...
I wasn't under that impression. Maybe he was more comfortable with male characters. And I think perhaps evil women are statistically over represented in the crime fiction genre because they are more interesting. Just like you have more rich criminals in TV dramas.
I read most of these books in my early 20s, so perhaps I'm way off, but I do remember being annoyed in general by the treatment of Peter's wife (Ellie?). Liberals are just immature, but then they have babies and grow up and understand the importance of ditching the NHS.
I don't actually recall that happening. I agree that the one about the revolutionary feminists was weird, because it simply didn't seem grounded in any recognisable reality, but as far as the rest of the series (we're talking Pascoe and Dalziel here?) goes, I think Ellie's development tracks fairly accurately what was happening in the minds of left wing professionals in Britain during the period of defeat after 1979, whereas Peter actually develops better positions on feminism and other issues as he ages, through her influence.
286: Oh, the NHS thing definitely happened, but my visceral reaction to it could be off base -- for reasons you mention; perhaps this was bog standard reaction of leftie professionals, rather than didactic Toryism. I wouldn't know! And my knee-jerky 22yo self would know even less. Basically Ellie is struggling with a father with Alzheimer's, I believe. After disastrous attempts to get him adequate treatment via the NHS, she goes private, where he is nicely taken care of. This is all accompanied by much weeping and lessons about letting go of one's politics when it comes to family.
288. Yeah, but if I had a quid for everybody I know who's been in that position I could afford to go private myself.
Slightly more seriously, this is a hugely familiar moral dilemma for many middle class Brits. You are deeply committed to the NHS; you watch first Thatcher, then Blair gradually eroding its funding and you campaign as hard as you can and warn anyone who'll listen that unless something is done to reverse the trend the time will come when the thing won't be able to provide an adequate service any more. And meanwhile the politicians are bullshitting about efficiency, which means reducing the number of GP surgeries and making people travel further for fewer hospital specialities.
And then the day you've been warning about comes, and it's you on the sharp end. But, fuck me, you've got money, you can buy your way out of the problem, unlike all the other people you've been campaigning with, and who you've sat round the dinner table with denouncing consultants who spend half their time in private hospitals.
But it's your dad. What do you do?
You protect your dad and pay for what it takes.
This is the same problem as "Should I send my kid to the completely horrific public school?" (when it is actually horrific, which sometimes it is) and sometimes the answer is to lobby and work as hard for public equality, and then do what's best for your own family in the face of a fucked up system.
290. Which is I think what Hill was saying in that book.
Right. I was annoyed at the book at the time (either very end of Thatcher era or very start of Major era) for asserting the NHS was incapable of taking care of patients with Alzheimer's. Maybe they were!* But at the time it was sounding just like what all the Tories were saying.
*Possibly also some kind of Stalinist aesthetic on my part that *even if it were true* no one should say that. In that environment.
I did the thing where you read the last comment and nothing else. Then after I commented, I read back and realized there was a book and an author I'd never heard of, and not actually Chris Y's sick dad. So I felt dumb but this is a good place for feeling dumb, so.
Also, it was sort of Ellie's job in the books to have those sorts of life lessons. You *think* you want a career, but you find you're happiest staying home with your children! Again, this is certainly true for some people, but the fact that this one character had often to "unlearn" her liberalism* grated.
*Sometimes the poor people you want to help are shites who take advantage of you!
Dame Jo Williams, the chair of the CQC, said, 'The fact that over half of hospitals were falling short to some degree in the basic care they provided to older people is truly alarming, and deeply disappointing,' Dame Williams stated that the report must result in action.
Yeah, as has been said before, the NHS is really rather good at acute care, emergency medicine, and so on, but it's not funded well-enough to handle long-term care or preventative stuff very well in all areas. Some people live in areas where those services are excellent, and some, unfortunately, don't.
I would guess that half of the US institutions providing long-term care for the elderly don't meet standards. We have regular scandals about it.
Also inadequate: a single loving family member who does anything else.
When the family member who does nothing else but provide care is past 80 and be-stented, it is still a bit of a concern.
If Oudemia paresti, there's a conversation about Ellie Pascoe at Twisty Twigs, where she might want to weigh in.
