¶ Old
I’ve been otherwise occupied for a while. You know the drill: go to the hospital, get sick at the hospital, stay sick. Get sicker. Stay sicker. Sleep, sickly. Forget what it feels like to be well. Call the doctor and finally call off the therapy that’s supposed to make you feel better. Stay sick. Finally, finally, feel magically well again, as if nothing happened. You know what I mean, right?
I’m just getting back into the swing of things. I can read and write and, well, read and write. I have some grading to do, but it’s just he final paper and then I’m done for nearly a month (woohoo!), except for trying to put together the content for a new class I’m teaching next term.
In my moments1 of procrastination, I read a number of blogs. At one point, I subscribed to a couple dozen blogs by fellow academics, but in a disgusted rage a couple of months ago, I deleted them all. I got sick and tired of hearing all the whining, all the complaining, and all the better-than-you-ness from many of them — most notably the anonymous ones. There are few things more annoying than anonymous academic bloggers, and, strangely, none of those more annoying things come to mind. Hm.
I kept a few. I still read the ones that make me happy. It’s a short list. I love to read about Miriam’s book collection over at Little Professor, because she’s both erudite and funny. And real. And she doesn’t whine. I read Rate Your Students because it feels kinda naughty. And I read Jonathan Mayhew because he doesn’t write about “academic life.” He writes about the poetry he studies, or about jazz, or about his writing. I love it when he writes about how much writing he’s getting done. Man, I wish I could write like he does. Someday, I will.
There are a few others, too. You don’t care about the specifics, and they change occasionally. But here’s what I realized just today: I feel more comfortable with Mayhew than I do with, say, Scott Eric Kaufman. Why? Because I feel like I’m more like Mayhew than Kaufman, despite one being a fellow PhD candidate and the other being already tenured. I feel more comraderie with the 40-something guy than the 20-something2.
I’m old.
How did this happen? I spend my time alone, with my family, or with people half my age. Aren’t they supposed to rub off on me? Shouldn’t I have some connection with the young people I’m teaching?
Or maybe it’s not age, or not age specifically. The 40-something professors are more stable, less prone to see department politics as highly emotional affairs and are through with the rigamarole of tenure. They are solid. The young professors still have an emotional charge I find tiring. And perhaps that’s a result of living with so many highly emotional (not to mention loud) individuals. Who sneak into my office and write on the walls. And mess up the piles of papers I have to grade. And steal my pencils.
——
1 er, hours
2 Kaufman might be 30-something, but he’s still in those heady childless years, like I was in my 20s. Wait: you don’t know Kaufman? He’s like a celebrity academic blogger; with Berube offline (mostly), Kaufman is becoming the resident snarky American lit guy, except Berube is widely published and SEK is still finishing his dissertation. Go ahead and google him, he’ll be easy to find.
5 December 2007