I’ve known dozens of people who got tenure track academic jobs and fully, openly admit to doing barely any reading throughout the whole of their MA or PhD programs. They were able to graduate–not sneak by, but excel and become leaders in their fields–by skimming wikipedia pages and connecting what they read to some pet issue of theirs in an extremely tenuous manner. They then go out and become recognized experts on texts they haven’t even read yet and their misreadings become canonized.
It’s gotten so bad that actually reading the theory you’ve been assigned can harm your job prospects, because basing your analysis on what authors actually wrote–rather than the vague summaries and half-assed analyses that have entered into the wider discourse–requires you to alienate yourself intellectually.
—White Hot Harlots
Stuff about academe and politics, mostly.
What exactly do you find motivating in this post?
rhahl wrote:
The above quote explains how to succeed in academia of the humanities clearly and succinctly. Wouldn't you want to know all this if you were just starting out?
That is pretty much what I figured out when I went back to school in 2001 to get my BBA. Give the instructors what they wanted. Jump through their hoops the way they want you to. It worked, remembering what my father told me long ago about a college degree. It doesn't mean that you know everything the degree is supposed to represent, it means that you know how to properly finish a course study and find the answers needed to do so.
I’ve known dozens of people who got tenure track academic jobs and fully, openly admit to doing barely any reading throughout the whole of their MA or PhD programs. They were able to graduate–not sneak by, but excel and become leaders in their fields–by skimming wikipedia pages and connecting what they read to some pet issue of theirs in an extremely tenuous manner. They then go out and become recognized experts on texts they haven’t even read yet and their misreadings become canonized.
It’s gotten so bad that actually reading the theory you’ve been assigned can harm your job prospects, because basing your analysis on what authors actually wrote–rather than the vague summaries and half-assed analyses that have entered into the wider discourse–requires you to alienate yourself intellectually.
—White Hot Harlots
Stuff about academe and politics, mostly.
What exactly do you find motivating in this post?
The above quote explains how to succeed in academia of the humanities clearly and succinctly. Wouldn't you want to know all this if you were just starting out?
Here is how to succeed in slumlording, which may become even more useful if they really evict 4 million families next year; will probably get back on the NYT Bestseller list. I would pull out a quote, but I gave mine away to an aspiring property owner.
Iâve known dozens of people who got tenure track academic jobs and fully, openly admit to doing barely any reading throughout the whole of their MA or PhD programs. They were able to graduateânot sneak by, but excel and become leaders in their fieldsâby skimming wikipedia pages and connecting what they read to some pet issue of theirs in an extremely tenuous manner. They then go out and become recognized experts on texts they havenât even read yet and their misreadings become canonized.
Itâs gotten so bad that actually reading the theory youâve been assigned can harm your job prospects, because basing your analysis on what authors actually wroteârather than the vague summaries and half-assed analyses that have entered into the wider discourseârequires you to alienate yourself intellectually.
I’ve known dozens of people who got tenure track academic jobs and fully, openly admit to doing barely any reading throughout the whole of their MA or PhD programs. They were able to graduate–not sneak by, but excel and become leaders in their fields–by skimming wikipedia pages and connecting what they read to some pet issue of theirs in an extremely tenuous manner. They then go out and become recognized experts on texts they haven’t even read yet and their misreadings become canonized.
It’s gotten so bad that actually reading the theory you’ve been assigned can harm your job prospects, because basing your analysis on what authors actually wrote–rather than the vague summaries and half-assed analyses that have entered into the wider discourse–requires you to alienate yourself intellectually.
He [Donald Trump] more or less completely destroyed the old Republican Party in 2016, while the damage he did to Democrats was lasting in a different way. He forced them to abandon their pretensions tokumbayaliberalism and announce themselves as the elitist authoritarians they’d always been.
Everyone has a responsibility to not only tolerate another person's point of view, but also to accept it eagerly as a challenge to your own understanding. And express those challenges in terms of serving other people.
The single biggest and most consistent difference between the successful Asian countries and those Western countries that continue to struggle with COVID-19, is universal adoption of high-quality mask wearing and strict adherence to social distancing measures passed, and enforced by,national governments. These governments correctly calculated in advance that the costs of producing and distributing masks for everyone, imposing social distancing, and supporting the poor through short but effective lockdowns would be dwarfed by the longer term economic damage of continuing viral surges and the ongoing stimulus required as long as the virus rages unaddressed.
“At the beginning of a pestilence and when it ends, there’s always a propensity for rhetoric. In the first case, habits have not yet been lost; in the second, they’re returning. It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth – in other words, to silence.” (Albert Camus, The Plague)
