Monday, September 06, 2010
In praise of academia
Doubt any of that, and that laid-back elbow-patched joking prof who told the class “Call me Bill,” in a flash, Gollum like, turned into a snarling jackal, screaming, “I am Doctor Jones, with important publications on climate change and a doctorate from Berkeley! How dare you question me!”
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7 comments:
I remember in a tenure appeal, the aggrieved professor of theater arts wrote a furious (and successful) letter to our committee that began, “Witch charges about me…”
Rot writes likes this all the time!
Useful advice: Be careful about eating or having coffee with academics. Most stiffed you for the bill or, better yet, stiffed the coffee shop by getting free refills for you.
From the comments, a student fondly remembers her class with das Rotter:
In my Senior year at University of California, Irvine, one of my Music Composition classes was one day graced by the arrival of the actual Professor. It had been the assistant teaching every day until there were rumours we might actually glimpse the Teacher.
He was considered a star, brought over from USC or UCLA. Seventyish, he came nattily attired in super-tight black bike shorts, presumably to attract some cuties. But the ZZTop beard and leather beret probably didn’t help.
We sat through the entire hour class as he perched on a stool, legs apart, with his testicles hanging out of the bike shorts. Nobody would say anything.
outstanding line: (Wait reader: you ask, well, smarty-pants Mr. Hanson, how exactly did a supposedly inept professor learn how to chain saw someone’s head off? I confess, I wonder about that still.)
In an article with many great lines, this deserves a Hero of the Revolution medal: "Academia is the strangest mix of a Soviet nomenklatura for the tenured, and Eastern European socialism for the part-time"
VDH is back in shape. He seethes best when he picks on the academia. It's like shootin' fish in a barrel.
One quibble, though: clearly, for him academia=humanities. Fine, that's all he's seen. But how about the real stuff, where academics actually do experiments, or prove theorems, or something? It's gotta be a tad different, no?
The difference, outside of the field of expertise, may in fact be just a tad or two. But you have to figure most engineering professors would know how to use an electric saw.
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