a comment

From someone named Steve at Crooked Pins:

I am more burdened by the boredom of a ‘normal’ job than I am by the burden of reading stuff that I enjoy reading-even when there is alot to read. Admittedly, I went to graduate school with the intention of learning what I wanted to learn, and not with the intention of getting a prestigious academic job.
I don’t really understand the line of complaint in this post, though. Gradute school is really divided into two groups; those that really want the prestigious academic job, and those that don’t (and you don’t necessarily know which group you are in until you are in graduate school-not before, when you apply). If you are one that wants a prestigious academic job, why are you complaining? That constant pressure to know, to politic, and conform and socialize IS the job-if you don’t like it, you’re not going to like the job you are working for either. But if you are in the second group, who doesn’t want the prestigious academic job, then the socializing crap is irrelevant to your career and irrelevant to your life (does the State Department, or a private computer firm, or a psychology clinic, care about how popular you were with the faculty of State U.?)-so why worry about it?

Incidently, the whole socialisation/culture/networking line of discussion above goes a long way to explaining how academia could be 90% of one political persuasion, doesn’t it?.

Every time I resolve to never read or link to CT again, they seem to come up with a post whose commenters and commentators, are helpful like so.

ps. Previous post citing Foucault on the beheading of theorists deleted for fear of being taken in the wrong way in certain petty contexts. This humble, petty blog now suddently aligning itself as if by its own accord with the same political interests that seem to encourage such habitual pronouncements of "humility" et cetera. Also, blockquotes without a smidgeon of original commentary or framing should probably just be avoided as a rule, don't you think? It's a brand new blog on the horizon, "folks," and it's about to get a whole lot more self-inblogged. If we are to survive this Darwinian world as apes.

John Emerson is also very helpful, but I'd seen that already.