A decent interval
Call it graduation anxiety, or whatever you will, but I've been convulsing at night thinking of exactly what I'm going to do with this silly degree and all this newspaper experience. I've settled on a couple of dream jobs, but negotiating the interim should prove most difficult.
I've all but abandoned any hope of a career in academia. The professional environment in which academics work is absolutely poisonous, and I couldn't even function in it even in the most routine of positions. Curricula are a mess. Grades hardly reflect an individual's learning. Bogus disciplines and POSTCOLONIAL CONQUEST NARRATIVES are given equal time (and funding) with history and mathematics. Dumbass, new-age DIFFERENTIATED LEARNING STYLES haunt good lecturers. Get that fucking PowerPoint off the screen, you morbid piece of shit. No, I'm not grouping up with these adolescent fucking dweebs. I have cooties, leave me the fuck alone. What went wrong with the classical liberal education? Languages, history, arts?
And the entire industry rests on the shakiest of foundations. All those high-paying jobs at public universities rely on a great deal of public funding to prop them up. If that base was ever seriously threatened, either by economic recession or by policy, I wonder whether or not the whole system would crumble. Would students be willing to pay 50, or even 60 percent more for an education? Would academic types be willing to take a pay cut, after burying themselves in debt just to secure their own futures? And how would the surrounding communities react? Would Saginaw deteriorate into anarchy without SVSU?
That's a shaky system on which to base our future. The government is propping up a whole lot of universities, and in turn, a whole lot of communities. I feel as if though, in forgetting its roots, higher education has expanded beyond its means, and beyond its duty.
While I'm on government...
I've made my peace with next year's elections, no matter how big of a joke they'll be. In all likelihood, we'll get to choose between two gaping assholes, and I'll be forced to pick the one that has light at the end of of the sphincter.
But really. If Hillary Clinton is the pragmatist's vote, I'm scared to fucking death. She wants to preserve (if not improve) medicaid, medicare, and social security, but she'll never get elected if she's too antiwar. And at the same time, if a recession were to hit around election time, her platform would just crumble regardless.
Barack doesn't exactly seem like a shot in the arm, either. If anything, he seems even more satisfied with the status quo than Hillary. As far as the Republicans are concerned, well ... one of them wants to destroy the world economy, and all the others are fucking mongs.
So here's my prediction: Clinton wins the nomination, takes New York and California, but loses the presidency to Giuliani, who takes Jesusland. Clinton is simply too reviled by anyone who has ever leaned one degree to the right. Now let's just hope none of that shit happens.
I've all but abandoned any hope of a career in academia. The professional environment in which academics work is absolutely poisonous, and I couldn't even function in it even in the most routine of positions. Curricula are a mess. Grades hardly reflect an individual's learning. Bogus disciplines and POSTCOLONIAL CONQUEST NARRATIVES are given equal time (and funding) with history and mathematics. Dumbass, new-age DIFFERENTIATED LEARNING STYLES haunt good lecturers. Get that fucking PowerPoint off the screen, you morbid piece of shit. No, I'm not grouping up with these adolescent fucking dweebs. I have cooties, leave me the fuck alone. What went wrong with the classical liberal education? Languages, history, arts?
And the entire industry rests on the shakiest of foundations. All those high-paying jobs at public universities rely on a great deal of public funding to prop them up. If that base was ever seriously threatened, either by economic recession or by policy, I wonder whether or not the whole system would crumble. Would students be willing to pay 50, or even 60 percent more for an education? Would academic types be willing to take a pay cut, after burying themselves in debt just to secure their own futures? And how would the surrounding communities react? Would Saginaw deteriorate into anarchy without SVSU?
That's a shaky system on which to base our future. The government is propping up a whole lot of universities, and in turn, a whole lot of communities. I feel as if though, in forgetting its roots, higher education has expanded beyond its means, and beyond its duty.
While I'm on government...
I've made my peace with next year's elections, no matter how big of a joke they'll be. In all likelihood, we'll get to choose between two gaping assholes, and I'll be forced to pick the one that has light at the end of of the sphincter.
But really. If Hillary Clinton is the pragmatist's vote, I'm scared to fucking death. She wants to preserve (if not improve) medicaid, medicare, and social security, but she'll never get elected if she's too antiwar. And at the same time, if a recession were to hit around election time, her platform would just crumble regardless.
Barack doesn't exactly seem like a shot in the arm, either. If anything, he seems even more satisfied with the status quo than Hillary. As far as the Republicans are concerned, well ... one of them wants to destroy the world economy, and all the others are fucking mongs.
So here's my prediction: Clinton wins the nomination, takes New York and California, but loses the presidency to Giuliani, who takes Jesusland. Clinton is simply too reviled by anyone who has ever leaned one degree to the right. Now let's just hope none of that shit happens.