The changing of the pedants
Yesterday I spent the day moving my puny grad student office up to my spacious new professional digs at l'ecole. I am amazed at how much kitsch a nostalgic 30-year-old wannabe hipster like me can accumulate. I don't know where the New Kids on the Block action figures even came from. I think they were there when I moved in. But that's neither here nor there.
KW, the woman I'm suceeding, had to drive up from Madison to get all her crap out of the office--which apparently used to be Spencer Tracy's dorm room; he's our main big alum--and she let me come and bring up my crap so there'd be an even crap swap. KW is the kind of woman you'd be in love with forever if you found one day that you were her three-year-old son. Smiling and glowing and very momlike. We had her 6-week-old bundle of sleeping, sucking fun with us. She showed me the cool zippy back roads that one can 90 mph on, and we enjoyed good conversation and beautiful countryside.
The little symbolic stuff was pretty cool. Taking her nameplate off my office door, putting my Shakespeare on the shelves. (Finally I'll have more shelves than I can fill! (for now)). Getting the keys to the building and the copy room and the mail room. Getting a faculty parking tag that I will put in my car if ever I get a car.
Here's a question: do the printing houses that keep pumping out books like "Arguing for the 21st Century" and "Culture and Critical Thinking: a college reader" think they're doing anyone a service or making a profit? As far as I can tell these books are only distributed free to professors who feel too ashamed to throw them out, or keep them because they might be useful. This office has accrued at least five inhabitants' hand me down copies of such books, not to mention all seven editions (mostly untouched) of the Norton Anthology of English Literature.
I'm going to find a way to get rid of them by spreading them around. I'll manure the student body with them, I think. I'll give them out as prizes for unofficial pop quizzes or something.
KW, the woman I'm suceeding, had to drive up from Madison to get all her crap out of the office--which apparently used to be Spencer Tracy's dorm room; he's our main big alum--and she let me come and bring up my crap so there'd be an even crap swap. KW is the kind of woman you'd be in love with forever if you found one day that you were her three-year-old son. Smiling and glowing and very momlike. We had her 6-week-old bundle of sleeping, sucking fun with us. She showed me the cool zippy back roads that one can 90 mph on, and we enjoyed good conversation and beautiful countryside.
The little symbolic stuff was pretty cool. Taking her nameplate off my office door, putting my Shakespeare on the shelves. (Finally I'll have more shelves than I can fill! (for now)). Getting the keys to the building and the copy room and the mail room. Getting a faculty parking tag that I will put in my car if ever I get a car.
Here's a question: do the printing houses that keep pumping out books like "Arguing for the 21st Century" and "Culture and Critical Thinking: a college reader" think they're doing anyone a service or making a profit? As far as I can tell these books are only distributed free to professors who feel too ashamed to throw them out, or keep them because they might be useful. This office has accrued at least five inhabitants' hand me down copies of such books, not to mention all seven editions (mostly untouched) of the Norton Anthology of English Literature.
I'm going to find a way to get rid of them by spreading them around. I'll manure the student body with them, I think. I'll give them out as prizes for unofficial pop quizzes or something.
posted by James at 8:24 AM
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