.edu bashing

[Thomas N. Dennis]

> Vaska Andjelkovic wrote:
> > >> Check out the job market for Humanities majors...
> > >
> > >This arguement won't generate a lot of sympathy.You made your choice,
> > >hopefully with a full understanding of your employment options.
> > 
> > [big snip of good detail] The suggestion that the younger scholars who,
> > if *lucky*, are now working in academic ghetto-jobs had made their own 
> > beds, etc. is simply oblivious of the actual facts.  
> 
> I was an English major in the 1970s during the recession. I did not
> pay attention to the world. I assumed hard work & good grades would
> produce a career. Instead, I had to rethink everything, retool, retrain,
> and go bootstrap myself to survive. With choices comes responsibility.
> So
> if young academics today listen to the advisors & things don't work out,
> who is to blame? Did they explore other opportunities? Look at the 
> market place? What are they doing to change their situation?
> 
> > One of my colleagues who was fortunate
> > enough to snag a one-year sessional last year is currently working as a
> > bar-tender and, incidentally, making more than she did a year ago.
> > Neverthless, she'd prefer to be teaching.
> 
> I would've killed to teach. Wanted to specialize in Pynchon studies,
> in fact, and wrote some swell papers in grad school courses. Lots of
> encouragement, but no work. Dropped out & changed. Shit happens. Sorry
> if this sounds harsh, but that's how things work in the 90s...
	
But wait:
I went back to school, age 37, about 6 years ago, to finish up an English
degree begun and dropped in 1972. An English major, yes, and I went
intending to teach at college level...but by the time I'd  finished I was
so sickened and dismayed by the quality of the teaching, by the
professorial propensity--perhaps it was something they had to do--to demand
mediocrity and penalize all and any experimental tangents, that I gave up
the teaching idea. 
	There seemed to be two schools, one rooted in modernism, one in
postmodernism.
	The only paper I wrote directly about Pynchon was returned as too
"paratactic." Instructors in Postmodern Studies confessed they'd never read
G R, but put up brief synopses of the "plot" on the board, nonetheless.
It was an enlightening experience. I remember raising my hand, asking, "So
you haven't read Gravity's Rainbow?"
	"No..." Smiling, continuing to chalk down pre-dominant themes. "I got part
way and then got lost..."
	Except for that class, I had decent grades.
TND