Ailment: Willy Loman Syndrome (formerly known as Hopeful Karma Disorder)
Manifestation: there will be a big payoff in the future if they like me
Case study: Subject (dr. m) has self-taught skills at web design and maintenance, obtained through reading source code and playing around with free trial html editing software before buying fancy web software studio. He cut his teeth on making websites for Dr. Yidg and Performance Artist Friend (both of which were given complete re-designs after skills were honed). Also made website for digital performance collective of which subject is a member. Having confidence, and hoping to score future favor with academic cohorts (a low percentage idea at best), subject has redone academic department's website, created website for tenured-colleague's institute, and (just this past week) coded and designed another tenured-colleague's media-rich essay for on-line publication. The latter turned out to be time-intensive tenfold of subjects original estimate (and, in humble opinion of subject, presents the essay in a way more interesting manner than prima facie content suggests). Subject, who has been toiling (thankfully and grovelinglily) as underpaid Visiting Instructor--benefits: yes; bonus and raises: no--thinks that such donation of creative and technological gifts will result in positive countergift [analyst's note: subject seems to be well-versed in, yet delusional about contemporary application of, research on gift logic by Mauss, Bataille, Derrida, etc., and thinks that moral reciprocity of countergift has now been put into play]. Though surface talk from "those in charge" has expressed effusive desire to secure more permanent academic job security for subject, the past three years have seen, in turn, no permission to search for a line, an unsucessful search for area unrelated to subject's work, and a possibly-successful search for other unrelated area. Subject, who attends all faculty meetings, has yet to hear anyone suggest a need for any position remotely related to subject's area(s) of expertise, yet somehow harbors hopes that an obscure non-grant-securing, humanities-based position will eventually (nay, magically) appear. Subject seems mostly unaltered in delusions, even after hearing early this day that probable ridiculously-high-paying non-university-alternative-job for-which-he-has-serious-insider-contact is "in a really slow period right now, so it doesn't look good." Subject appears slight bitter, but (inexplicably) remains hopeful that good things will come to those who are helpful, committed, and likeable. Analyst thinks subject is precious, and wishes the best for the poor bastard.
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3 comments:
Wow, this sounds very much like my husband's position/dilemma when I was working at Rural Utopia (previous job). There is this really weird kind of cognitive dissonance when one does all sorts of things that are valuable to one's colleagues and earn all sort of goodwill, but don't actually lead to something permanent. I've grown very cynical myself about how much effort non-t-t faculty should put into any position. And yet it's this inescapable catch-22 - they won't hire you if they don't like you; yet if you do all the things they like without being in a permanent position, why should they hire you?
Sorry, hope that doesn't come across as too negative...just wanted to sympathize with the post.
I'm right with you on your analysis. Every school year I teach either the most or second most students, all for nearly $15 less than the worst paid Assistant Professor. From the perspective of economic rationality (the same epistemological lens that the Bush administration uses) this is a slam dunk of cost-efficiency for the university.
hee hee, that was supposed to be $15K less, not $15 less. Oh, I just crack myself up.
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