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He makes 8 points, but the last 7 are all things that are presumably true throughout a person's career in philosophy/academia. The only condition that changes

by rdiddly 11y ago

He makes 8 points, but the last 7 are all things that are presumably true throughout a person's career in philosophy/academia. The only condition that changes when one gets tenure is #1, and I believe that's the root of it. But I don't look at it in terms of freedom, but rather of adversity -- adversity as a BENEFIT, that the tenured faculty (or the miserable lottery winner) abruptly LOSES. Adversity is what gives life meaning, improves us as people, and (paradoxically) creates happiness. You are a knife and adversity is the rock against which you sharpen yourself. Not necessarily because you need a sharp knife, but because a knife is best when it's at its most knife-like. Heirs, except when they reject or are excommunicated from the family fortune, usually have no concept of adversity and grow up to be shitty, weak people. They never have to strive and hence never learn what they're made of. Once you get tenure, that is what you lose.

joe_the_user 11y ago
It's not really true that the only thing that changes once you get tenure is decompression. The other thing that changes is that your workload switches from lots of tenure-qualifying stuff to lots of administrative stuff. As his other point highlights, you still have an unreasonable workload, it's just that now you aren't directly fighting for your job. You can slack off, meaning do a mediocre job at the many, many tasks assigned to you. And that goes to problem #3, especially the impossibility of teaching well when a huge load of administrative BS is required and great teaching isn't required.
- WaltPurvis 11y ago
  I think talk about "the impossibility of teaching well" is stretching things a bit. In my own experience, I had some philosophy professors who were phenomenally great teachers and some others who were downright awful. Some of the difference might have come down to innate talent for teaching, but I'm quite sure that none of the difference was attributable to the amount of non-teaching duties they had. The best teachers I had were professors with heavy administrative and advisory duties, while the two worst had comparatively little non-teaching work to do. The main reason they were terrible teachers is because they just didn't give a shit; they were clearly just phoning it in.
gopalv 11y ago
> Adversity is what gives life meaning, improves us as people, and (paradoxically) creates happiness And one must imagine sisyphus to be happy? I suspect, the attacks is what gets boring. Attacks that you need to fend off which have only an impact on your imagined legacy, not your present state of existence. Fighting something you should be ignoring (rather, can ignore without consequence to your next day) is just soul crushing. It's the same sort of reaction to writing a random comment and reading the responses, most of which do not deserve a response from you - but it's so hard to let it go and live your life when someone's being wrong on the internet. That is an adversity without meaning - experience being willfully misunderstood by people. I would imagine it would dull me, if I forced myself to explain my mind ad nauseam.

by rdiddly 11y ago

joe_the_user 11y ago

It's not really true that the only thing that changes once you get tenure is decompression. The other thing that changes is that your workload switches from lots of tenure-qualifying stuff to lots of administrative stuff. As his other point highlights, you still have an unreasonable workload, it's just that now you aren't directly fighting for your job. You can slack off, meaning do a mediocre job at the many, many tasks assigned to you. And that goes to problem #3, especially the impossibility of teaching well when a huge load of administrative BS is required and great teaching isn't required.

WaltPurvis 11y ago
I think talk about "the impossibility of teaching well" is stretching things a bit. In my own experience, I had some philosophy professors who were phenomenally great teachers and some others who were downright awful. Some of the difference might have come down to innate talent for teaching, but I'm quite sure that none of the difference was attributable to the amount of non-teaching duties they had. The best teachers I had were professors with heavy administrative and advisory duties, while the two worst had comparatively little non-teaching work to do. The main reason they were terrible teachers is because they just didn't give a shit; they were clearly just phoning it in.

gopalv 11y ago

> Adversity is what gives life meaning, improves us as people, and (paradoxically) creates happiness And one must imagine sisyphus to be happy? I suspect, the attacks is what gets boring. Attacks that you need to fend off which have only an impact on your imagined legacy, not your present state of existence. Fighting something you should be ignoring (rather, can ignore without consequence to your next day) is just soul crushing. It's the same sort of reaction to writing a random comment and reading the responses, most of which do not deserve a response from you - but it's so hard to let it go and live your life when someone's being wrong on the internet. That is an adversity without meaning - experience being willfully misunderstood by people. I would imagine it would dull me, if I forced myself to explain my mind ad nauseam.