Snark: the first of two acts

Act I - The Past: A Further Salvo in the Senior Faculty¹ War against Special, Special Snowflakes

I can't decide if this makes me sad, or makes me want to break things. In either case, this piece from (where else?) the Chronicle Review, by philosophy professor Gregory Pence, was distressing. (I think that link will actually connect to the whole article, at least for five days; if not, my apologies, because it is a subscriber-only piece. But I excerpt almost the whole thing below.)

Shorter Pence: Kids these days!!

Longer Pence: apparently, those of us junior faculty people who have chosen to leave academe when we have not found jobs to our liking are special, special snowflakes who need to lower our standards.

Recently a young male professor in philosophy astonished me when he turned down a tenure-track job offer at a small, rural public university and then decided to leave academe. If he couldn't get a great job at a research university, he told me, or at least a job in a great city, he would change fields.

Another junior acquaintance in philosophy, a single woman approaching 30, confessed to me recently that she might quit her tenure-track job at a private college in a large city, a job she has had only for a year and that she obtained after a series of one-year appointments. Her major complaints? Her school has old buildings, average students, and lousy computer support, and her department doesn't organize socials like her department in graduate school did.

Those discussions made me realize that today's young academics might need to lower their expectations, especially in light of the country's current economic woes. But judging by my experience, that mental adjustment could lead to rich opportunities. My struggle to establish a career in philosophy turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.

Oh, look! Analogies based on experiences in the 1970s! How sweet!

In philosophy at NYU, no one felt entitled to a job, much less a good job. For two years before and after graduation, I taught as an adjunct professor at Brookdale Community College, in New Jersey, and St. Francis College and LaGuardia Community College, both in New York. One year I taught 12 courses. To make ends meet, during the summers I also managed a pool and taught swimming lessons at apartments in Riverdale, N.Y. I envied professors who had an office in which to talk to students, who knew they would be teaching the following year, and who didn't need to kowtow to the person who decided which adjuncts taught each semester. I looked for a full-time job at the American Philosophical Association annual meetings, sometimes doing 10 interviews in three days, but I never got an on-campus interview.

So in addition to teaching, I started selling real estate in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y., working for a man who, before he quit to become a broker, had been a philosophy graduate student at Cornell. During the first year, I made good money, and I soon started to emotionally detach myself from the idea of having a career in philosophy. Then, when the APA met in Manhattan in December 1975, I had a bit of luck. A former professor at William and Mary had been hired to start a new department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He had only a two-quarter job to offer, and no guarantee of anything after that.

I got the job, but then I had to decide whether to take it. It was a big risk: I would be leaving a budding career in real estate, a good apartment, and friends, and six months later I might have no job at all and be stuck in Alabama.

But what the heck — this was what I had wanted for years. So a week later I quit real estate, packed a rented station wagon, and moved to Birmingham with my future wife, a native New Yorker. We both feared moving to Alabama, especially after our New York friends made constant jokes about outhouses and the Ku Klux Klan....

And no, Birmingham wasn't Manhattan or San Francisco, where some of my classmates from William and Mary moved to become cab drivers, waitresses, and bartenders. But over the past decades, Birmingham has soared: It has transcended its racist past; its medical center has flourished; and its suburbs now contain good bookstores and three Indian restaurants. We can get The New York Times delivered at home and cable TV with 200 stations.

Wow, glad to hear you're so positive about Birmingham, dude.

I'm not saying I didn't work hard. But as I look back, my major feeling, after teaching for years as an adjunct and working 80-hour weeks in real estate, is great satisfaction in having any job at all in philosophy. Because for many years, I never expected to get one — and even after I did, I kept looking over my shoulder at the shadow of what might have been.

I now believe that too many graduate students feel entitled to a great job. That attitude sets them up to fail. Some of the graduate students I knew at NYU's philosophy department, then a program of slight stature, eventually forged careers because they endured — they moved, they compromised, they published, they would not give up. They had the right attitude.

Some colleagues from elite Ivy League programs who say they are "stuck here in Alabama" feel as if life has passed them by, that they missed the boat because they never got a job at Yale or Berkeley. Maybe the current economic downturn, which is already affecting universities, will make those young professors more thankful for their tenure-track jobs, no matter how imperfect. [emphasis added]

To be happy as a professor, you don't need to teach in buildings that win architectural awards. You don't need a two-course-a-semester load to publish (I published during my first years in Birmingham, despite teaching nine or 10 courses a year). You don't need your university to give you a dedicated blog site or IT personnel to support your home computer. You need a tenure-track job, and then you need to work hard at the three things we are expected to do: teach students who want to learn, publish about things you care about, and be a good academic citizen through service to your institution and field. That's the deal. If it doesn't sound good enough, then maybe you should try bartending in San Francisco. And when you do, lots of adjuncts will apply for your job.

[Sorry, those are really long excerpts.]

So, where to start??

With the extrapolation from two anecdotes about an entire generation of young academics?

By pointing out the charming attitude that, "I paid my dues, so everyone else should, too?"

There are just so many things wrong with this.

First, it's kind of sad to read that someone experienced the hell of adjuncting and frantically scrambling for an academic job, and his reaction is not, "There's something wrong with academia," but that you should then take and be grateful for any job you can get. (NLLDH's comment was, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?")

Second, he critiques junior faculty for not wanting to move further afield than New York or San Francisco, and I understand his point. But his own journey took him from NYC to a flagship state university in a major city (not one often on, say, New Yorkers' radar, but a major city nonetheless). I know a lot of people who would consider a job at the U of Alabama a fairly plum position. So his adoption of the "I took the suckiest job in the world and thrived!" persona is a little disingenuous. Your personal experience does not make you an expert qualified to comment on people's experiences at every kind of job. Guess what? There are some jobs not worth having.

The whole trope of "evil junior faculty who don't want to live outside coastal major metropoles" has, I'd argue, turned into a horrific cliche, but what those who trot it out usually fail to acknowledge is that people who go into academia are not a random sample. They start out as people inclined to want the kinds of amenities that cities have to offer in greater quantity and quality than other areas. At least in the humanities, people who go to grad school tend to like books and films and art. Even if they don't care so much about such things when they start, academia trains you to value museums over snowmobiling and fine dining over Perkins (or, at least, to say you do). There are all sorts of problems with these attitudes, I'll grant you. But it seems a little disingenuous to take a group of people who've spent 5-10 years, usually in some kind of vibrant metropolis (because few major research universities are in the sticks), learning to value what major cities have to offer, and then tell them that if they're not thrilled about living absolutely anywhere, they're not dedicated enough.²

Third, where does he think junior faculty get these attitudes? Graduate students don't spring, fully-formed, from the head of Zeus, with Ivy-League elitism implanted in their psyches. They learn these attitudes somewhere. Why not critique programs like the U of Rochester [where he studied prior to NYU], where he and his fellow students "were led to believe that we could get hired at Princeton or, if not there, at least Columbia" and "when someone took a job at Colgate, we felt sorry for her"? The academic prestige hierarchy is not determined by what junior faculty think, and there's no sense in blaming the victim.

Fourth, Pence talks as if there has been no crisis in academic hiring between the 1970s and today, that the "current economic downturn" is what will open people's eyes. Honey, anyone who's made it to junior faculty status today is very clear about the crisis in academic hiring. They knew they couldn't expect jobs at Princeton or Columbia, or hell, Colgate (sounds like a great job to me!). They go into current academic jobs with their eyes open, and, yes, are in fact extremely grateful to have landed those positions.

But that does not mean that they have to want to stay in those positions for the rest of their lives.

You can be grateful to get something, and still decide that it's not what you want to do.

And you have the right to do that.

I think that this, after all, is what most gets me about this piece. Is Pence resentful of people who know what they will find necessary to have a satisfying career AND life, and who are willing to turn to something else if their current jobs don't cut it? "Kids these days" change careers a lot - people no longer work for the same employer for thirty years and retire with the pension and the gold watch. Why should academe be exempt from that? If a job doesn't meet someone's satisfaction, for whatever reason, why should that person not change jobs? And who is Pence to decide for someone else what is and isn't satisfactory? Just because teaching nine to ten courses a year wasn't a deal-breaker for Pence, doesn't mean it can't legitimately be a deal-breaker for someone else. (Which isn't to knock jobs that require teaching nine to ten courses a year - I just pick that as a random example.)

Pence is correct in that no one job will have everything that a given individual wants, absolutely. But that doesn't mean that junior faculty have to put up with everything and anything in a job. Just because Pence was willing to suffer through conditions that were not his ideal does not mean that junior faculty not willing to work under those conditions are selfish or overly entitled.

Finally, why does it matter? If these people are, as Pence implies, selling their jobs short, AND, as he acknowledges, there are "lots of adjuncts" waiting in the wings, desperate for positions, why doesn't he just say, Good riddance? The disgruntled will leave the profession, and those who are truly grateful for the opportunity to teach under any, even the crappiest, circumstances, will be left. Won't everyone be better all round?
    

¹ With all apologies to the senior faculty I know out there who do DON'T think like this, which is most of them.

² I mean no disrespect here to people who live in rural areas and people who prefer rural areas. I think people should be able to live wherever it is that suits them best, whether that's cities, rural areas, or the much-maligned suburbs. I'm just suggesting that grad school is probably a somewhat urbanizing experience, in the aggregate.

Comments

[small town prof]

What do you mean that "grad school is probably a somewhat urbanizing experience"??

[meg]

I love the fact that a *philosophy* professor is coming out against an individual's right to seek fulfillment.

[I went to grad school with a special, special snowflake who got a great job at an Ivy and then quite after one semester because he decided that he didn't really like academia. Much as the rest of us were all "You WHAT?!?" I think he did the right thing.]

[New Kid on the Hallway]

small town prof - just that most people will end up moving to a big city to go to grad school (and they'll attend conferences in big cities), which by no means guarantees that they will love living in a big city, but they may (and are more likely to do so than if they never live in a big city, I'd wager), and therefore may end up less willing to live anywhere and everywhere. (I know a number of people from Berkeley who have said the problem with going to grad school there is that you never want to leave, so it's hard to get a job. Granted, one person told me this as a way of suggesting it would be easier for me to find a job, because it was obvious I would WANT to leave the big midwestern city where I went to grad school, because, well, it wasn't Berkeley!)

Also, like I said above, I think that grad school in the humanities tends to train people to like things that are more readily available in cities (or, that people who like things more readily available in cities are more likely to go to grad school in the humanities). This is obviously a gross generalization, but I thought I'd throw it out there. It's just that people who go to grad school in the humanities tend to like books, films, and art, and then other people are surprised when these people don't want to move to small towns that don't necessarily have as much of these things. (My completely unscientific experience has been that people in the sciences have been happier in small town life than those in the humanities. Don't know what to say about the social sciences. ;-D)

Which *isn't* to say that people in small rural towns or wherever DON'T care about art/books/films/etc. - not at all! It depends on the small town, and how you want to engage with these things. The small town I used to live in - < 6000 people - has what is in many ways a wonderful art scene, because it's a small enough place, that if you want to participate, bingo! you're in! But if your idea of an art scene is seeing new exhibits at big museums or going to gallery openings once a month, no, it won't fly. Amazon delivers anywhere, so of course you have access to books anywhere, but if your idea of fun is roaming the magazine section at your local mammoth B&N, or checking out used bookstores, that town wasn't for you. Myself, I got very very very very tired of the restaurant choices and the supermarket. I'm not a foodie snob; I'm just lazy, and there are a lot more easy good food options in a bigger city. And I missed shopping for clothes in an actual store, not online.

And this isn't to justify the kind of unknowing snobbery of someone who's never lived outside of NYC not wanting to move anywhere below the Mason-Dixon line. People can hold a lot of really wrong, bad assumptions about what life is like in a different place (whether that's coast/flyover/north/south/urban/rural/whatever). I'm not advocating people turning down jobs willy-nilly just because they're horrifed at the idea of living in a red state when they've never visited or something like that.

But I am saying that if someone knows they want to live in a city, why the heck do we malign their dedication to academia? And that people who've gone to grad school in the humanities may be statistically somewhat more likely to want to live in a big city than those who haven't.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

meg, that raises another point - I think a lot of people can end up getting an academic job without actually knowing very much about what it's like to be a prof. Some programs professionalize their students a lot, but others don't; there's a saying about law school, that people can hate law school but love being a lawyer, and vice versa. I think something people don't always realize is that you can love grad school and hate being a professor (and vice versa). This is much less the case, I think, if you're at a grad program where you teach a lot, or adjunct much before starting a t-t, but yeah, there are definitely people who thrive on grad school but don't find the nitty-gritty of being a prof all that much fun. And yeah, I'd say "you WHAT??" too, but then I'd agree, it was probably a wise move.

(Sorry, I am wordy today!)

[small town prof]

I completely disagree, because of the allure of college towns which also have thriving arts and culture scenes. My grad school town had 150,000 people.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Well, to me 150,000 isn't a small town!

I think college towns often - but *not* always - have thriving arts and culture scenes, but it can be claustrophobic to be around students and faculty ALL THE TIME (which often goes along with being in a college town, if the college is the only thing in town). Even the most vibrant college town isn't the same as being in a city and honestly, they hold no allure to me. (and not all cities have great arts/culture, of course.)

Again, I don't mean that *everyone* feels this way about cities/small towns, or that anyone SHOULD feel this way. I'm not saying cities ARE better. I'm just saying I don't think it's weird or unreasonable that there are quite a few academics who want to live in cities.

(Looking at what towns in the US are ~150K, I actually would consider all of them "cities" as I'm using the term in my post.)

[dance]

I am quite happy in my 200K small city, and I do agree that people need to learn not to romanticize the big city. I thought my 40K grad school town was great. But I think there are far more constraints on engaging in a vibrant college scene for a faculty member than a grad student---faculty are public figures recognized by strangers in a way that grad students aren't, and that matters FAR more in a town or small city.

The thing that struck me about the Pence piece that that maybe both his jobs were acquired via old boys network? hard to tell.

EotAW also commented on this piece.

[Anastasia]

it'd be one thing if they were whining about their jobs or whining that they couldn't get anything as good after they left but what the hell does this person care if people leave the profession?? It's not like there isn't a fair queue of other candidates, right? I mean geez. Let people live their lives.

I think you're totally right about people no longer working at the same job for 30 years. That's true in all kinds of professions, so why not this one? People who aren't satisfied can try something else and no, it isn't necessarily that they think the change will solve of their problems or be perfect. But maybe it will be better. I say that as the wife of someone who just left a successful career as a software engineer to become a philosopher. He knows what the job market is like. He knows what grad school is like. But the potential benefits of a change are great enough that he's willing to take a risk.

As for the big city thing, I think you're right....some of my friends have landed in complete backwaters, the likes of which have never (nor likely will ever) nor likely will ever host a phd granting university. My mental cut-off is 100k people. I would not happily move to a smaller place unless it were a reasonable proximity to something larger. The job I was offered at HLC is about 15,000 but near a bigger city (just over 500k).

[Anastasia]

sorry for the redundancy there.

[undine]

Good post. I had thought about writing about this column but didn't, mostly because I share his gratitude for having A Job. That's a personal thing, though: I have always thought that any job that didn't have me cashiering in a supermarket as I did during the summers was a great job, and I do like the job I have.

Two things:

1. First of all, being grateful for having a job and writing about seems too much like rubbing it in, frankly, in this wretched market.

2. I'm puzzled by his animus toward people who want to change jobs. What's it to him if they do? Can't people move if they're unhappy, as you said in your post? Sometimes they move and will be happier. Sometimes they won't be happier. Sometimes they'll leave academia altogether, but isn't that a good thing for everyone? You can't argue people into changing their expectations: they think what they think, and if that leads them into not having a job at all--i.e., leaving a t-t job for whatever reason, even if the writer thought it was a frivolous one, and not getting another one--it's still not a cause for indignation.

And if someone leaves a job, that leaves a job open for somebody else, doesn't it, or did I miss some critical math point in this equation? So what's the problem?

[ceresina]

I like how he was a real-estate broker for a year or two before getting his TT position. Now, people have trouble getting jobs if they've "taken time off" (1) to adjunct. Can you imagine trying to get TT position after "taking time off" to do something completely unrelated to academia?

(1) as if that was by choice.

[Another Damned Medievalist]

Excellent, as usual! And as someone who lives in a town of approx 25k, can I also say that I consider 150k to be a city, too? Hell, my R1 uni was in a town of about 25k, but the contiguous, very densely packed sprawl made it about 100k -- still, it had lots of the aspects of a small town where everybody knew the profs.

I'm very happy I have my T-T job. It won't keep me from looking around, though. And you know? the more special snowflakes leave, the happier I am -- more room for me!

[squadratomagico]

Yes, great post. I knew someone who made those choices, refusing to look at any job that was not (a) tenure track; (b) in a city; (c) an Ivy, big 10, exclusive SLAC or otherwise prestigious institution. He ultimately left academia, and I think it was the right decision for him. Having the prestige affiliation and name recognition was an intrinsic part of his vision of himself as an academic; once he realized that that was not immediately forthcoming, he lost interest in the career.

On the other hand, his response to the situation ("the old "I can't get a 'good' job because only women and minorities can succeed in academia" line) annoyed the hell out of me.

[Another Damned Medievalist]

Yeah, I think it's more "people who don't wear their asshatitude on their sleeves get hired." But hey, what do I know?

[squadratomagico]

:~)

[philosopherP]

As a philosopher, I tend to like Pence --- but I think his problem with the mobility of our generation of academics is probably increased by the tendency to hire out of the top 20 programs.

I know of a department in a decent midwest city -- and a pretty decent university. It isn't swanky but the students work hard and the school is well-respected in the area. They keep hiring the same sort of person -- ABD or fresh Ph.D. from a top 20 program, always male. They stay for 3 years and rarely get a 3-year review. They complain about a 3/3 load and publish a lot, then get better jobs. This cycle has happened at least 3 or 4 times --- and will likely continue until they hire someone who actually wants to stay at the school.

[What Now?]

Good post. His "leaving academia = failure" equation is annoying (especially to someone who left academia!), and really the whole post seems like a needy justification, insisting that the choices he made are the only reasonable choices that one could make.

[Dr. Moonbeam]

Well said, and I completely agree. There are limitations to academia, as well as the benefits, and it may not be easy for a person to know in advance whether s/he will be able to live with the conditions s/he ends up in. If not, it seems to me MUCH better to get out, either to a different position or out of academia. Better for the person, better for the students, better for the institution. Lingering in bitterness and resentment isn't good for anyone.

[Dr. Moonbeam]

Addendum - and yes, 150,000 is IMO a city. 15K or 35K or even 50K, probably I'd call it a town, but 150K is big enough for quite a lot of amenities.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

philosopherP, I definitely get how such a situation is frustrating - but don't you think it's the school's responsibility to do a better job of hiring people who might want to stick around? :-) (I mean, the example you give isn't of people giving up on academia as much as it's of people getting other jobs - by working hard, which Pence advocates in his column! And if there are so many adjuncts who want jobs, what can that school complain about?)

[Flavia]

Great post, to which I have nothing to add--except am I right in thinking that the main campus of Alabama is actually in Tuscaloosa? So Birmingham would actually be a satellite campus (although possibly one in a more desirable location, if you're an urbanite--I don't know Alabama).

[Amy]

Right there with ya! I feel like I'm reading a student paper when I read the excerpt you provided and I need to write a big "AND???" at the end of it.

So what? What does he care if the young folks leave? Does he think it is a reflection on him? Does he resent the fact that their leaving doesn't validate his own decision to stay?

Face it. We are a generation that has been taught that we should do what makes us happy. Most of us went to grad school b/c school made us happy. But grad school and the professorial side of academia (at least from my lower-floor view of the Tower) are not the same thing. I forget which one said it, but one of our grad profs said the work began AFTER grad school... and even without research requirements at my job, that has been true. If my job did not make me happy, I would be insane to stay (not to mention that it would be hugely unfair to my students and colleagues). So, enjoying grad school but not enjoying being a professor is understandable (same as your law school/lawyer analogy).

And one last thing. As someone who teaches AT LEAST 12 courses a year (normally I teach 14+), I resent the notion that this is somehow the lowest kind of professorial job ("What? You *teach*??"). Sure, I'm not doing it as an adjunct... I have my own office, a title (that at least *looks* like I'm tenured!), benefits, a revolving contract. But it is hardly a plum spot in the grand scheme of academic possibilities. But I do not keep and enjoy my spot out of some sort of sick dedication to my original plans as a 22 year old. I keep my spot b/c I enjoy teaching and enjoy the kind of life my job affords me. But the moment I no longer feel this way about my job, I'm outta there.

[Janice]

These columns bring out extremes, don't they? Senior faculty tend to take someone's departure as a put-down of themselves and the institution, junior faculty or prospects take the senior's comments about 'having to settle' as privileged and ill-informed. Both sides get their backs up and that just makes it worse.

Grad schools in the humanities which instill an expectation of getting an R1 dream job fresh out of the program: do they seriously exist these days? I think that everyone knows that times are tough and getting tougher. This rhetoric about wildly unrealistic new grads strikes me as very out-of-touch with what I see in the trenches.

If a junior scholar looks at their own situation and says "this is not for me", everyone needs to respect that. Likewise, if a senior scholar says "this place has some merit from my perspective", we should acknowledge that viewpoint. For some people, it's all about location; for others, it's about the type of academic fit. Some need to balance their family duties; others need to worry about their health. Everyone's right that we need to respect that our peers can see what's best for themselves.

What I don't like is when anyone in this situation makes the sweeping generalization that what they want is right for everyone and what they don't want can only be desired by the hopelessly naive or idiots. People on both sides of this divide have been guilty of this, I'm afraid -- particularly when it comes to the Chronicle columnists!

[Citronella]

I'm actually wondering what's wrong with not being dedicated enough.

Or, more precisely, I'm wondering what's going through the mind of someone who says that you should love your (and his) job so much that you'll be blossoming even if you have to execute it in damn poor conditions.

Moreover, if kids those days are so unbelievably stupid, why is he complaining that they leave the world in which he thrives?

[phd me]

I always enjoy your "review" of Chronicle columns! And I certainly agree with your point about graduate school socializing graduate students to look for specific environments. Big, small, urban, rural: you gain a sense of yourself and your future while you're in grad school and it can be very difficult to adjust that to the realities of the job market - rightly or wrongly.

[The Bittersweet Girl]

I look forward to continuing to do my job responsibly -- but not gratefully.

[Bardiac]

Good work, NK. Gah, this sort of article leaves me boggled. Effing privileged special snowflake himself.

[Jackie]

Flavia, you're correct-- the flagship campus of U of Alabama is in Tuscaloosa, and not Birmingham.

Plus, maybe this is just me, but isn't it fair to say that candidates of color, or queer candidates, might have justifiable reasons for assuming that they will feel more at home in locations that are not Southern small towns, say? Not to say there are no people of color or queer people in Southern small towns, just to add the race/sexuality dimension.

[small town prof]

This is just another rant that the current generation is spoiled, and look how much harder the older generation had to WORK. Hoo ha. BTW Flavia: the main campus of UA is indeed in Tuscaloosa. But UAB is a thriving, independent campus not affiliated with UA at all. They may or may not have the same board of regents / provosts etc, but UAB is not a lesser school than UA. In fact a UAB posting may be more desirable because of its urban location compared to the small college town where the elephant's appendages are not tighter (the "tusks are looser") :)

[kellyinkansas]

Ditto on your takes on the Chronicle columns.

Isn't it interesting that academics who are expected to be "thinking on a higher level" assume that some "commonly-held" assumptions are the holy grail? Should career success only be measured by ending up at top-ranked U? What if teaching is your primary interest and a community college offers the perfect setting (and aren't many of those in large cities???)

One of the biggest favors anyone could do the profession is to point out to those seeking jobs NOT to send out blanket apps to anyone who might have them but, instead, think about the institution AND its location, and think about how they might be match. And, finally, as you so adeptly point out, figure out whether academe is indeed a match or not. I think God every day I'm not working in a cubicle each day having to punch a clock. There are more than a few smart, creative people who only have that option if they want to put food on the table.

Keep up the great work, NK!

[Professor Zero]

Love your post!

I was of course trained to believe one should be willing to go "anywhere." Having lived in various pleasant places and enjoyed them all, I thought that would be all right - but I had no idea at all what most of the U.S. is like, what it is to be in the rural suburbs as a single person, what it is to have to drive so far to get to an adequate library, etc. etc. People who say "but there are problems everywhere" are also those who wrinkle their noses and look away when I tell them what my actual job description is.

[Z]

P.S. His supercilious article really pisses me off, as does his paternalistic and condescending tone. Punitive fool.

1. He was really wanted at UAB, got the job via a friend, etc.

2. He was a white man.

3. He moved with his wife.

One of my students dumped Birmingham after working there for some time - she's white but she's a woman, and she's single, she's not Christian/Protestant. These things just weren't acceptable there, and quality of life DOES matter if you are going to be productive.

[Z]

P.S. His supercilious article really pisses me off, as does his paternalistic and condescending tone. Punitive fool.

1. He was really wanted at UAB, got the job via a friend, etc.

2. He was a white man.

3. He moved with his wife.

One of my students dumped Birmingham after working there for some time - she's white but she's a woman, and she's single, she's not Christian/Protestant. These things just weren't acceptable there, and quality of life DOES matter if you are going to be productive.

[Kate]

Citronella said: "I'm actually wondering what's wrong with not being dedicated enough.

Or, more precisely, I'm wondering what's going through the mind of someone who says that you should love your (and his) job so much that you'll be blossoming even if you have to execute it in damn poor conditions."

Exactly.

[af]

I agree with a lot of the criticisms of Pence, but I was sympathetic to some of the statements about location. I've always lived in larger metropolitan areas with good restaurants and bookstores, and culture; here, at my middle-of-nowhere state university the closest big bookstore is 75 miles away from me, as is the closest Thai restaurant.

But most of the time it's just not that big of a deal, for me or for most of my culture, book, and food-loving friends here at the college. You get used to it. You get Netflix. You learn to cook better, or make friends who do, and/or stock up on Trader Joe's vacuum packed Indian food. You browse on Amazon and you actually read all of the books you buy. If there's a cool cultural event 90 miles away, you figure out how to get to it, even if it's on a weeknight when someone's on the road between two big cities. On vacation and at conferences you eat out a *lot* and appreciate it more, and go to independent movies and buy lots of books and (what amazed me) learn to love the enormous shopping malls in the big cities.

So when people complain about how they couldn't handle life outside a big city, I think most of them just don't know what it's like. It can be difficult at times, but for most people it's just not that hard.

[Chaser]

Sometimes I wish humanities types would stop and think that their academic experiences aren't necessarily representative of everybody, everywhere in every field. For those of us in the applied fields, having a job in a metro area is a HUGE career boost. It's not about our desire to eat Thai food or be part of the urban chic; it's the difference between a lot versus a little grant funding, whether your work gets media attention or not, and whether your career takes off or not. It's not just silly self-indulgence for scholars in my field to want to move into major metro regions (not just in the US).

[Rosemary]

From someone who grew up in Alabama:
University of Alabama in Birmingham - a satellite campus to the main campus in Tuscaloosa, but one that has grown considerably in the last 20 years or so. They have a first rate hospital and medical programs. Birmingham is the state's largest city, though it's a lot smaller than Atlanta. There's a decent arts/music scene downtown, and it's easy to get to the (very beautiful, IMO) countryside if you like. The area south of town has grown quite a lot, lots of suburbs. Tuscaloosa is a college town that's become kinda sprawly. Both places have good BBQ.