HOLY JEEEEEZUS !! MOTHERFUCKEN FUCKE!!!

Hell, yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Easter, CPP, and all the rest of you crazy bastards out there! Happy Easter, Passover, and whatever other crazy fucken spring festivals you may be celebrating this weekend!

Dear Prospective Graduate Students

I felt a little bad the other day when a prospective graduate student who blogs here fell, like the rest of you, for my April Fool's Day post about getting an interview for a tenure-track job. The fact that the prospect of getting an interview for a tenure-track job has become the stuff of jokes tells you something about the state of the profession. The fact that you all fell for it says something about how academe has programmed us to view such opportunities.

While it amuses me that you post-academics and other presumably rational adults fell for my fake post, I very much do NOT want to mislead idealistic, optimistic prospective graduate students who may have found their way here by searching the intertubes for stories affirming what they fully believe in their naive young hearts to be true: that is, if you work hard enough, set your goals high enough, follow your passion, please your advisers, and do everything right along the way, things will work out and you will have a career as a professor. After all, it's only the losers and fuck-ups who don't make it, right? And you, for sure, won't be one of them because you've done everything right so far! Why should graduate school and the path to professorhood be any different?

One of the criticisms by prospective and new graduate students of the graduate school naysayers -- naysayers, for example, such as the blogger and commenters over at 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School -- is their negativity. Those whiners and complainers, the critics say, need to just suck it up and shut up. Whoever said graduate school was supposed to be easy? You should expect to work hard. You should expect it to be competitive. You should expect to make sacrifices. And if you don't have the stomach to roll with the punches all the way to tenure-track professorland, you should leave and do something else with your life rather than complaining. Your bad experience with academe is your own fault, and you have nothing and no one to blame but your own negative attitude.

Here's the thing: I'm all for encouraging optimism and positivity. It's a heathier way to live, most of the time. But, unfortunately, academe these days is far, far from Dr. Pangloss's "best of all possible worlds." (or here if you don't feel like reading Voltaire right now). Negative emotions -- to the extent they do not lead to debilitating depression, suicide, or violence against others -- can be a normal and healthy reaction to a wrong or unfair or otherwise problematic situation. Some might even argue feelings of discontent are what lead to action and ultimately positive change and progress.

And graduate students have A LOT of very good reasons to feel discontent and anger, frustration and betrayal. But many of these reasons are evident to new or prospective graduate students only in the abstract since they have not yet had to confront them personally. It's easy to believe you would respond differently or make different choices when you have nothing to base your perspective on but undergraduate experiences of academic success and advisers who challenged you, showered you with praise when you met the challenges, and encouraged you in your aspirations to follow in their footsteps. Be especially wary of the influence these people have over you. They mean well and sincerely want you to become professors like them, but your success -- and getting into graduate school is the first milestone -- also validates their sense of professional (and, in some cases, personal) self-worth. Don't expect them to tell you the truth, either about what graduate school may have in store for you or about what awaits you after you finish -- if you finish, that is. They'll tell you their truth, but their truth will not very likely be yours.

If you feel that graduate school, right now, is your calling, I'm not going to be the one to tell you not to go. Maybe you have Deep Questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything. Maybe you need to spend some time exploring them before you can move on with your life, before you can perhaps expand your horizons to include other pursuits. Maybe graduate school is the only place for you right now ...

If you are a new or prospective graduate student, let me put this to you bluntly: From the get-go, assume you will NOT end up with a job as a professor. Even though there still are a few tenure-track jobs out there and recent Ph.D.s do get them, you should operate under the assumption you will NOT get one. EVER.  There are several reasons you should do this, and they have nothing to do with whether you're good enough, smart enough, or assiduous and hard working enough to BE a professor. Rather, they have to do with the structural realities of higher ed and the unfortunate consequence that your future, beyond simply finishing your program, is NOT in your own hands:

1) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because you will have more motivation to prepare a back-up plan. Despite what your current advisers, blinded by your brilliance, may tell you, you NEED one, even if you never end up having to fall back on it. If you're not a trust fund brat or the spouse of someone who can support you indefinitely and you want to be assured you will be able to eat and pay your rent after the age of 30, you CANNOT afford to rely on optimism alone. The academic job market is fickle at best. Beyond writing a great dissertation, publishing a few articles, having strong recommendations, and teaching a class or two, even getting called for an interview is COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR CONTROL. When you're an undergrad, a clear correlation exists between how hard you work and how successful you are, including your ability to get into graduate school. That correlation does not exist between your success as a graduate student and your ability to get a job as a professor. You do not want to put in all the time and effort it takes to earn a Ph.D. -- no matter how much you enjoy the process -- only to find yourself 30+ years old and facing only two choices: another semester of adjuncting on three different campuses for barely enough money to keep your ass warm in winter or just plain unemployment.

2) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because you will have more freedom while you are "still in school" to make life and career choices that are the best choices for YOU rather than the choices you think you have to make in order to have a shot at a tenure-track job down the line. Simply completing the requirements to earn a Ph.D. -- coursework, exams, and dissertation -- is challenging and a real accomplishment if you can get through it. However, many graduate students put themselves under unnecessary additional pressures to publish multiple articles, present at conferences, and build up a teaching portfolio because they've internalized the message that doing these things will make them better job candidates. The reality is that beyond one peer-reviewed article and two or three semesters of teaching, what matters to a committee is how well they think you'll "fit" in their department. For the initial screening of candidates, they base "fit" on how you represent your research and teaching in your letter rather than what you've actually done. Since you don't know what "fit" means to any particular search committee, you have no idea of what they're looking for or what to say to make yourself "fit" it. I know this is hard to fathom at this point, but there are so many candidates these days so far exceeding the required qualifications that committees really have no choice. My point is that if you operate under the assumption that you WON'T get a tenure-track job, you will do "extra" things like publishing articles and presenting at conferences only if you want to and can afford to in terms of both time and money rather than because you think you have to. You'll save yourself, at the very least, one or two minor breakdowns.

3) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because it will allow you to create some very important distance between who you are as an academic and who you are as a person. Even as you are finishing up your undergrad program, to what degree is your sense of self-worth caught up in the quality of your academic work and the recognition you get for it? Be honest. It's not an easy question. If your answer is that a grade on a paper or a professor's praise or criticism can make or break your entire day, you should know that those feelings only get more intense in graduate school and beyond. A full professor at my Grad U confessed to me once that ze couldn't look at peer-reviewers' comments on articles ze had submitted to journals without having a drink first. Ze said even a "revise and resubmit" response, nevermind a rejection, would make hir depressed for weeks before ze could face the process of revising and resubmitting. Do you really want to subject yourself to this kind of emotional drama when you're 50? No, you don't. But if you go to graduate school to explore Deep Questions recognizing from the outset you might have to do something else to earn a living, you will focus on those Deep Questions rather than on what other people say about you. Your "career," whatever it may turn out to be, will be separate from your personhood. And your well-being will not be held hostage to how people react to your work, academic or otherwise.

If you follow this advice, make it through graduate school, and end up with a tenure-track job, great! Remember, all is grist for the mill. However, if -- as is much more likely despite your passion and brilliance -- you end up having to build up some other career for yourself, following this advice will prepare you much better to do so than conforming to academe's expectation that you put all your eggs in one basket.

Holy Shit! I Could Have a Tenure-Track Job Yet!!

One of those few tenure-track positions I applied for back in the fall apparently has not closed their search yet. I learned this on Friday. I've been too overwhelmed to post until now.

They requested additional materials from me in November, and I dutifully sent along a writing sample, recommendations, and my teaching philosophy. But then I didn't hear anything. I assumed they had moved on and had just not gotten around to sending out the rejection letters. By January, I had totally given up on the academic search -- my third and last, as you know.

Friday I came home from work, poured myself a drink, and checked voicemail ... and ... Holy shit! There's this message. It's from Regional State U only an hour away from Crapital City. They were impressed with my application when they received the additional materials back in November, but they'd had to put their search on hold because funding was uncertain. They didn't do MLA interviews and hadn't contacted anyone since the request for additional materials. But ... their funding came through and they would like to know if I am still available. They need to move their search along quickly, and I am on a short list of candidates. They would like to do a phone interview, which will possibly lead to a campus interview ... and then, possibly, a return to academe on terms I can accept!!!

Aarrrgggghhhh, I'm getting ahead of myself. Nothing is certain except the phone interview, which is this coming Thursday.

There's a lot to think about here. Given that I am a type 2 leaver, as JC puts it ("people who still love academia, but who know that their ability to get a job that pays them a fair wage in an area they'd like to live is severely hampered by the academic job market or some other factor"), I've never really been happy about leaving. I left because it was unsustainable to stay. But, the prospect to  return in a position that pays a reasonable wage and allows me to live where I want? ... and, most importantly, do what I love and am good at?? I don't think I could refuse (are you kidding?!?), even given my ambivalence -- which has only grown in the time I've been away -- over academe's many, many flaws.

I spent all day yesterday ruminating over my old syllabi, pondering "ideal" courses I'd like to teach, book lists, my research plans (sort of on hold since the conference I blew off but still in my head), and other things they're likely to ask about. It felt, in a way, like I was returning home after a long, wearying absence. I really do miss all this shit, you know?

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Keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck.

Adventures in Secretaryland

Email conversation a few weeks ago:

Industry Executive's Assistant (IEA): "Hi Recent Ph.D., I hear Think Tank Boss wants to meet with Industry Executive at our office in City Three Hours Away. Let's find a date and time."

Me: "Hi IEA, How about Days X, Y, and Z? Anytime after 11 AM since TTB will be driving."

IEA: "OK, Let's say Day Y. Send me an Outlook meeting request."

Me: "Sure, will do."

So, I create the meeting request and send it off to Industry Executive's Assistant, who then "accepts" the meeting. We're set. Think Tank Boss will go drive three hours to meet Industry Executive, talk about the great work Think Tank is doing, politely ask if Industry Executive's company would like to "support" Think Tank this year, hopefully receive a positive response, and drive three hours home.

At least ... that's how it usually works. However, this time, Industry Executive's Assistant added the meeting to hir own calendar rather than Industry Executive's calendar. IEA can see IE's calendar but not the other way around. IE had no idea about the meeting. And Think Tank Boss drove three hours to Other City only to find Industry Executive was not in the office but here in Crapital City today!

Industry Executive's Assistant was mortified. Ze said ze thought I had also sent a meeting request to Industry Executive. But why would I do that when IEA was so clearly the person who kept IE's calendar?Also, you can see who else the meeting request was sent to. And if IEA saw this thing on hir calendar but not IE's and saw IE had never been "invited" in the first place, ze should have sent an email or made a phone call to confirm or reschedule.

At first I thought I had screwed up because IEA asked me specifically to send an Outlook meeting request. I know my way around Outlook, but we use Google Calendar here. I thought maybe there was just something I'd missed. But no. The same thing would've happened if I'd used Google. 

Think Tank Boss had every right to be pissed but took it very well. At least there wasn't an expensive plane ticket involved. The meeting was rescheduled for next week, when ze will have to drive three hours each way again. I will confirm with IEA the day before this time, though normally such back-and-forth is unnecessary.

Hopefully, IE's company will make a substantial donation. Then all will be well.

Via

Possibly I have Lost My Critical Reading Ability?

Or, maybe, that's just me being a smartass.

Less funny is that some people, it appears, actually have lost this ability. Or maybe never had it to begin with. Or maybe, possibly, never developed it in school because they skipped all the classes taught by "liberal" English professors?

In one of those wonderful little morning missives we sometimes get in our inboxes here at Think Tank, we were treated today to some good, old-fashioned libertarian literary criticism. Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 story Harrison Bergeron (if you don't know the story, click the link and read it -- it's short), we are informed, "helps explain" why "taking from some by force of law what they have produced and consequently earned, and giving to others merely to make ìncomes and wealth more equal is not justifiable."

True, in the story,

everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.

But what the story satirizes is not a society leveled by "taking from some" to make the disadvantaged "more equal" but rather a society literally weighted down by a misguided vision of equality in which the lowest common denominator rules. People who are smarter or stronger or quicker or better looking are forced by the "Handicapper General" to mask or disable these advantages. Yet nobody else gets to benefit from these advantages, either. Nobody competes, and no one ever gets to fulfill their potential. This is oppression, not equality. It's equality misunderstood, backwards, and upside down, and this paranoid vision of equality-gone-wrong is what the story satirizes, not equality as most Americans idealize it, whatever their politics.

What role do economics and class play in this satire? Contrary to free-market interpretations going back to William F. Buckley, Jr., who reprinted the story in the National Review in 1965, income and wealth play virtually no role at all. Indeed, they are conspicuously absent. If anything, income and wealth represent the only unequal aspects of this society, as suggested as much by their near absence as by a passing line about a TV news broadcaster with a speech impediment (all the TV newscasters have speech impediments) who "should get a nice raise for trying so hard."

Historical context helps explain how Vonnegut, an inveterate political liberal, could fool so many conservative readers. Darryl Hattenhauer looks at the opening lines I quoted above in this way:

This absurd dystopia's version of equality sounds like something from the pages of popular magazines during the Cold War--because it is. Vonnegut depended on those magazines to establish himself as a writer. ("Harrison Bergeron" first appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.) Just as Twain could not have sold Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Pudd'nhead Wilson if their sympathy with African-American characters had been obvious, so Vonnegut could not have sold a story overtly sympathetic to leveling. Instead, the Handicapper General apparently recalls the likes of John Wilkes Booth, proponent of slavery. [...] As a struggling writer, Vonnegut had to put a surface on this story that would appeal to his audience. And it did. More specifically, it did so because it appeared to rehearse central tenets of the dominant culture's ideology. It appealed to the literal-minded with such accuracy that William F. Buckley's National Review reprinted it as a morality tale about the dangers of forsaking private enterprise.

Source Citation: Hattenhauer, Darryl. "The politics of Kurt Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron'." Studies in Short Fiction 35.4 (1998): 387+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Mar. 2012.

And so, conservative readers like Think Tank Senior Fellow, whose prose so freshly and eruditely greeted us this morning, continue to hold up this story as a dire warning about the end result of our nation's "liberal" efforts to promote equality. Senior Fellow writes,

The goal of a society should not and cannot be to make people equal in outcomes, an impossibility given the individual attributes with which we were each endowed by our creator. It is the opposite of justice and fairness to try to equalize outcomes based on those attributes. It is not fair to the beautiful to force them to wear ugly masks. It is not fair to the strong to punish them by holding them down with excess weights. It is not fair to the graceful and athletic to deprive them of their talents. In the same way, it is not fair to the productive, the risk taking, or the hard working, to deprive them of what they have produced, merely to make them equal to others who have worked less, taken less risk, and produced less.

Hey, dear readers! Didn't you know the reason you have an advanced degree and are working as a secretary is because you're not productive, don't take risks, and don't work hard enough? Wow! I feel so enlightened.Why didn't I think of my plight this way before? I guess I just wasn't smart enough.

Sure. I agree it would be tragic if we made the Virginia Woolfs of this world

go out and about their business every day wearing Slipknot masks:

But the analogy between physical and mental "advantages" and socioeconomic ones is false. Think Tank Senior Fellow wants to believe,

As Vonnegut’s story shows, putting social limits on the success people are allowed to achieve with their own talents and abilities makes everyone worse off, because it deprives society of the benefits of their brilliance and beauty and skill and talent.

Yes, true. However, requiring people who make more money to pay more in taxes does not "handicap" them in the same way as requiring smart people to wear thought-disrupting devices in their ears, as they must in the story. Being born into privileged socioeconomic circumstances (define that as you will) opens up a host of compounding advantageous opportunities that have little to do with an individual's own talents, abilities, or efforts -- their brilliance, beauty, skill, or talent. Two people can be equally hard-working, equally smart, and equally good-looking but end up in very different places in their lives at the age of 35 because of how much money their parents had and what circles they traveled in growing up.

Hattenhauer's analysis of that opening definition of equality further clarifies where Think Tank Senior Fellow goes astray:

This definition codifies the common American objections not just to communist states, but also to socialist ones. The narrator begins with the widespread assertion that the United States not only can and does know God's law, but that God's favorite country is instituting it. (American history is replete with statements like Ronald Reagan's that his policies reflect God's will--see, e.g., his 1982 address to the National Catholic Education Association). So the narrator's definition of America's equality begins not by positing a future equality as much as exposing the misunderstanding of it in the past and present.

The narrator continues to give not a possible egalitarianism of the future [...] but rather an enactment of how absurd society would be if egalitarianism were what America's dominant culture thinks it is. The narrator defines equality only in terms of intelligence, looks, and athletic ability. There is nothing about kinds of intelligence, or how it is used. Similarly, beauty includes only the human appearance; there is nothing about painting, architecture, etc. The first two concerns, intelligence and looks, address two of the traditional categories of philosophy: the true (epistemology) and the beautiful (aesthetics). The third category, the good (ethics), vanishes.

What truly perplexes me is not Think Tank Senior Fellow's superficial reading of the story but the failure to grasp the significance of that absence of ethics from the story's representation of "equality." TTSF continues:

But doesn’t the Declaration of Independence itself say “All men are created equal,” and isn’t equality a fundamental American ideal? Yes, but these expressions invoke a concept of equality different from the social justice concept of equal incomes and wealth for all. The original and traditionally American concept of equality is “equality under the law.” That means the same rules apply to all, not the same results.

First, most progressives (I guess I'm speaking for myself here, but correct me if I'm wrong) are NOT saying equality SHOULD mean equal incomes and wealth for all. That's just blatantly false.

But, more importantly, we've had "equality under the law" since the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868. On February 26, 2012, Treyvon Martin was shot dead. His killer walks free. Before we can talk about whether the same results should apply under the same rules, we should first consider whether the same rules DO apply to all, just because the law says they do.

This and That

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately. The weather is beautiful here, always a distraction, and there's this and that to do at work. But I figured I owed you something since it's been a week now. A little something is better than nothing, eh?

One of the recurrent themes on these post-academic blogs of ours is the fabulousness of having weekends you can actually enjoy. Of course, you should never disrupt that fabulousness by trying to take your cat out on a leash:

If my cat had been like the one in the cartoon, all would have been well because I would have given up and taken him in. But Hobart, the Evil Bastard, was more like this one:

And, once outside, he got himself out of the leash in less than a minute. I won't bore you with the details of how that afternoon went, but, suffice it to say, there are a lot of cats in my neighborhood, a few look like the Evil Bastard from a distance, and I spent a good half hour chasing the WRONG CAT. Oh, you have no idea! Truly, I was herding cats -- and that's no metaphor!!

Via

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On a more serious note, the blog has been getting a lot of hits lately from people searching the phrase "adjunct quit mid semester" or some variation on it. If you're here because you want to quit adjuncting and you want to know if quitting mid semester is the right thing to do, see my post on the subject here, if you haven't been there already. The bottom line is that if you have another job waiting and you know you aren't ever going to adjunct again once you get out, then take that ticket the hell away and never look back. Trust me, your department will have your classes staffed with another adjunct in less than a week.

Peace out, for now.

What Counts as an Academic "Success" Story?

Spanish prof's post about how her department measures success among their recent BAs got me thinking about what counts as success at the graduate and early career levels for academics. Really, it's a matter of perspective, but whose perspective dominates and why? Perspective is relative to position, and it's worth observing how someone with a particular set of accomplishments looks very different to those comfortably ensconced within than it does to those on the margins of academia. And yet, not surprisingly, it's the dominant perspective that informs starry-eyed, prospective graduate students and other outsiders who romanticize what academic life must be like and prevents tenure-track faculty and administrators from having to confront the real life consequences for their students of the system they prop up.

Here are the facts of our "Success Story":

Success Story finished undergrad at the top of hir class and was accepted to a PhD program at Fancy Pants U. While a graduate student, Success Story continued to earn many accolades. Because ze produced poetry in addition to the required research and analytical writing, professors praised hir "originality," fellow graduate students admired hir "devil may care" attitude, and the undergraduates ze taught for nearly 8 years enjoyed the edginess of hir classes. As a graduate student, ze published a handful of poems in very respectable venues and handful of reviews in obscure academic ones, but ze never published any substantive criticism or interpretation. Nonetheless, during hir last semester ABD (hired ABD perhaps because ze went to Fancy Pants U and hir brilliance was a foregone conclusion -- I digress), ze was hired as Visiting Assistant Professor (VAP) at a 3rd tier, teaching intensive, regional public university in the rural South, thus smoothly transitioning from graduate school to professorhood. A year into this 3-year appointment, ze publishes a book of poetry but still has no academic publications, other than a handful of reviews.

Here's how former professors, advisers,  and other drinkers of academe's Kool-Aid will see Success Story:

Ah, of course Success Story got a job! How could ze have done otherwise? Ze is brilliant, a brilliant poet with a promising future. And, of course, everyone from Fancy Pants U DESERVES a job. They wouldn't have gone to Fancy Pants U in the first place if they weren't true professor material, truly ready to dedicate themselves to the Life of the Mind. This wonderful VAP position is a great step ahead on the career ladder for Success Story, with the market as terrible as it is. Only the best and brightest get jobs of any kind, and this one will give Success Story the opportunity to prove hirself as a teacher with a VERY different set of much more challenging students from the ones ze taught SO successsssfully at Fancy Pants U. And we congratulate Success Story for having hir first book of poems published. Ze is as much a poet as a scholar, and we have no doubt ze will soon be able to turn hir attention to producing the scholarship ze needs to progress from successsssssful VAP to even more successssssssful tenure-track assistant professor. We have faith ze will be hired into an even better position when the term of hir VAP ends.

 Here's how other graduate students and adjuncting recent PhDs still entertaining hopes of an academic career but somewhat sobered (if schizophrenically) by the realities they see all around them might see Success Story:

Oh, Success Story is soooooooo lucky to have gotten a job, any job at all. I'd kill for a 3-year VAP position, even if it was in Rural Subtropical Wasteland. But ze really does have to teach a lot down there. The load is 4/4, which doesn't give hir a lot of time for research. No wonder ze chose to work on that book of poems. At least it was something ze wanted to do and is getting recognition for. But ... it won't look great to tenure-track hiring committees if, 3 years out from the PhD, ze still doesn't have any academic publications, not unless the position ze is applying for is in creative writing, ideally somewhere that offers an MFA. And we all know how many of those there are! Still, ze went to Fancy Pants U. Ze will get something. I sure wish I had gone to Fancy Pants U! Then I wouldn't be stuck adjuncting. Everyone knows it's not the quality of your scholarship but where you did your degree and who your adviser was that committees look at first. If only I had a better pedigree, if only I'd gone to Fancy Pants U! After all, I applied for that same VAP position. I have 5 full-length, peer-reviewed articles and a publisher is currently reviewing my monograph, and I didn't even get an interview. Sigh. Maybe next year. Success Story is an inspiration to us all. After all, you can never hope to get anywhere in this profession unless you try and try again.

 Here's how cynical post-academics might see Success Story:

Are you kidding me? You'd have to pay me a lot more than $37K a year to take a 3-year VAP in Rural Subtropical Wasteland teaching 4/4 to a bunch of brats who shouldn't have passed the 9th grade. Oh sure, it does have a decent honors program. But do you think, as a VAP, you're going to get to teach the honors kids? Hell no! Success Story is mostly teaching comp, not poetry, and that's hardly good for building hir CV. Moreover, I don't know whether Success Story is single or has a partner, but I certainly would not drag a partner to Rural Subtropical Wasteland. There's nothing there but the university and Walmart. Ze would be unemployed and we'd both have to get by on my $37K. Even if the cost of living is lower, what happens after 3 years when the VAP ends? If Success Story doesn't get another gig, tenure-track or otherwise, ze certainly wouldn't be able to afford to move back to Fancy Pants U City, not unless ze has rich parents. Maybe the book of poetry will bring royalties? Ha, good luck with THAT! And why hasn't ze published any scholarship anyway? It's not as if ze can get by on just having a degree from Fancy Pants U forever. Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Yet another awesome reason to leave academe!! Good luck to you, Success Story! You are academe's future, so make the most of it!

Good God, you get the nerdiest fucking people when you do a Google image search for "visiting assistant professor" and why-the-fuck are people who got their PhDs more than 10 FUCKING years ago at places like Emory, UNC Chapel Hill, and the London School of Economics still Visiting Assistant Professors (just click on the link)?