Could Be Worse Than Expected. Depressing findings and altogether bad news.
The Covid Academic Slide
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Category Archives: Education
Birds Aren’t Real
Not Proof Of The American Dream
The best thing you’ll read today. “I Am Not Proof of the American Dream”. As a general policy, if Tara Westover writes something, you should read it.
Upon receiving a $4,000 Pell Grant, Westover writes:
“In those desperate years a few thousand dollars was enough to alter the whole course of my life. It contained a universe. It allowed me to experience for the first time what I now know to be the most powerful advantage of money, which is the ability to think of things besides money. That’s what money does. It frees your mind for living.”
How on earth does the Right, with their knee-jerk complaints of Big Government waste and social program dependency make sense of the Tara Westovers of the world?
The World Needs More Beau Miles
I was mountain biking in Sunriver, Oregon once on a treacherous, hella rocky, single track trail. When lo and behold, I went head over handlebars over a similarly big ass rock. I wish I could say it had been dark.
Funny thing though, my “friend” that I was with, who has a place in Sunriver and visits there every few months, never returned to dig it out.
Forget the world needing more Beau Miles, I need more Beau Miles.
Vid assist—SMW.
Stephen (The) King
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When The ‘Rona Closes Your School
Two students in India get after it at home.
When You Just Don’t Give a Sh*t Anymore
US professor suspended for bizarre, profanity-laden ‘welcome’ video to students. There are no words. Takes him awhile to catch his stride.
A Writer Threads The Needle
As a writer, there are some impossible assignments. Where the degree of difficulty is just too great to put pen to paper.
You can’t write anything sympathetic to Republicanism in The New York Times, just as you can’t write anything sympathetic to the Left in The Washington Times.
If you identify as male, you can’t write about the “female experience”. If you are rich, you can’t write about the poor. If you’ve never had kids, you can’t write about parenting.
I mean, you can, there’s a First Amendment after all, but good luck to you.
And if you’re on “the tenure track”, or a tenured professor, you can’t complain about anything higher education-related without understandably unleashing the growing army of adjuncts who struggle to feed themselves and make rent. They. Aren’t. Having. It.
Unless you were an adjunct before you landed your tenure-track position? And you acknowledge your good fortune. More than once. Then, just maybe, you can pull off the rarest of feats.*
Cue Sarah Emanuel’s essay, “The Deflating Reality Of Life On The Tenure Track” with the provocative subtitle—”Walking dogs helps me make rent.”
Props to Emanuel for her hustle and her risk taking as a writer. And her good humor.
Historical footnote. The Good Wife and I started our journey in a one-bedroom Venice apartment.
*I haven’t read the comments yet. Kinda afraid to.
Thursday Required Reading
Harvard first year becomes youngest person ever to serve in Icelandic Parliament. Extra credit if you can spell her name.
Kohler can now run a bath with just a voice command. Need.
Forget giant asteroids, the Doomsday Glacier is coming for us all.
Next up in Ethiopia. Deepest bench in the world.
Do You Remember?
That kid in science class that was so smart they had a hard time relating to others of lesser intellect. Yeah, the one with thick hard plastic framed glasses that you weren’t very nice to. Your similarly insecure friends and you called her a brainiac and other not so nice things.
Remember losing track of her after high school? Probably not since since no one ever paid her much attention to begin with.
While you were spinning your wheels drinking too much and trying to “find yourself”, she completed three degrees in biology and other sciences. Threw in a post-doc for good measure.
Initially at least, you may wanna call her Doctor at the next reunion, but why would she attend given the grief your knucklehead friends and you gave her?
She’s a contact lens wearing tenured professor of epidemiology now with 162,000 twitter followers. Drives a Tesla Model S Plaid and knows more about viruses than all your high school homeboys and you combined. Turn on the right cable news station at the right time and you might catch her helping everyone who slept through science better understand covid’s innumerable complexities.
Finally, she’s the center of attention.
Pressing Pause 