I'm so drunk and maybe I will regret having submitted this very brief screed to you, but I feel so strongly right now that 95% (or so) of the employees at my school are just eking out an existence. I'm not destitute myself, but there's something about the bitterness and struggle being so perilously close at all times and palpably feeling the desperation and anxiety. We live in this world in which twentysomethings are "self-made" billionaires. Mon dieu. POTUS seems so utterly unconcerned about handing over money and intellectual property to Russia, China, etc. . . . Pearson, BlackBoard, Canvas, and the others hold so much sway on campuses. I wonder how the adjuncts cannot or do not foment an uprising. Every day is mind-boggling. There seem to be more liars than ever. It just seems like something's going to snap.--Southern Bubba, Ph.D.
Hey, Bubba, you could always come to Fresno. Things are pretty good here now, at least in my department: enrollment is up, and ever since I got a Linked In account, I have been able to check up on what my former students are doing. Many are prosperously employed as engineers, many working on the problem of water in the Central Valley. Many others are working in renewable energy, and other areas that genuinely help people.
ReplyDeleteAlso, cherish the good administrators, for they are rare. In 2009, we got a provost who had the nasty habit of acting in major ways, before consulting or apparently thinking much. He's gone now, having found a job as a university president somewhere mercifully far from here.
Of course, he had to beget a dastardly dean who destroyed everything she could, and put everything as line items on her resume. She’s now is mercifully a provost somewhere far from here. She begat a department chair we removed from office with a vote of no confidence for being blatantly dishonest, not without a fight, naturally. She also begat an asshole associate dean who mercifully is now a dean somewhere mercifully far from here. Since I am apparently the only person in my field he knows, he called me up recently since the president at his new university wants to do something related to my field. It was like getting a phone call from the devil: "Hi, I've changed my mind, I’ve decided to be good." My initial reaction was, "This is a joke, right?"
It took 7 long years to get rid of all of them, a drawn-out process that felt much like passing a kidney stone. Let’s hope the new administration that has replaced them stays cordial and competent, although our provost has now found a job as president of another university, so who knows what will happen next year.
So, until then, come to Fresno. Of course, you will need to put up with Fresno's thoroughly fucked-up social milieu. One of the reasons we do so much good educating our students here is that Fresno is the worst-educated and poorest large city in California.
Here at Fresno State, we have relatively few adjuncts. There aren’t any at all in my department. We just can't get them. Heck, it’s not easy even to hire tenure-track faculty. The last time our College of Science and Mathematics did a search for a dean, it failed to find one in its first round of candidates.
Fresno is quite far from anywhere else, and it’s the car-theft and meth-manufacture capital of the U.S. It’s also perennially among the top five for air pollution: one in five children in Fresno suffers from asthma, chronic bronchitis, or some other chronic respiratory ailment. The schools are absolutely horrible. Anytime some fool from the administration or ed school waxes enthusiastic about what a great place Fresno is to raise kids, those of us not drunk on Kool-Aid just give each other looks.
If Pearson et al. are bumming you out, you could always write your own textbook. It often makes me feel like my grandfather Viktor, back when the family still spelled it “Frankenstein,” but it’s been lots of fun, despite how during the time spent I might have published a dozen papers in refereed journals.
So you see, we do a lot of good here, because it’s so sorely needed. So, you’ll need a society as thoroughly dysfunctional as what we have here in Fresno. Just effing great.
ROFLMAO.
ReplyDeleteI hope there is a way for me to laugh, but also to express the great respect and gratitude I feel.
"Come to Fresno. It's great--aside from the pollution, bad schools, crime, meth-manufacturers, and dreadful administrators. . . ."
:-)
I love your honesty, Frod.
Well, you know what they say, Bubba: as goes California, so goeth the nation! Just effing great.
ReplyDelete