As I watched over 130 students descend upon 1200.00 worth Chinese food like vultures at the sight of dead rotting cattle flesh, it became perfectly clear to me.
I am wasting my education, or what little of it I remember of it. (I blanked on the name Horatio in Hamlet the other day while talking to a friend who is writing a paper for SAA. What the fuck is that?)
I haven't been interested in reading my architecture magazines; they are piling up--unopened-- in the pretty red box I bought to house them. I am too tired to read them or anything when I get home after solving uninteresting problems for students.
I have these dilettantish fits and starts and I haven't finished a book in a few weeks and now I want to. I haven't had an intellectual conversation not having to do with the inabilities or stupidity of students in weeks. I'm tired of being addressed as Mrs. Academic and even more tired of being treated like an unappreciated mother or housekeeper.
I'm tired of doing a two and a half jobs. I'm tired of unappreciative "customer service" oriented students.
I am tired of not teaching something I know and know well.
I'm tired of the bullshit politics at work.
I'm tired of not having enough time to do my job well.
Oh, and apropos of nothing in this post, I'm tired of hearing about the tanking economy and I think you jerkfaces in banking and finance should have taken more humanities courses and gotten something out of the liberal institutions you hate. Take your millions and go away.
I'm tired of being tired of being tired.
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Allow me to cut-and-paste my favorite line from my favorite movie (Network):
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
First things first ... you said "fuck".
You're tired. That's the first sign of knowing that you need a change. Now that you know that this chapter of your life is coming to a close, figure out what the next part of your story will be and start working with that draft. I'm always tired and therefore constantly changing. I'm waiting for that time in my life where I can just feel content with what I'm doing.
Will you help me with my SAA paper now?
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