How Bad Are Things in the UK?

~ Clarissa

OK, how bad exactly are things in UK’s academia? When professors put lengthy quotes from T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” in their automated signatures, including the verses “Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song” and “Their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors, departed, have left no addresses,” I begin to worry.

T.S. Eliot is a genius. But his poetry doesn’t normally make it into one’s signature unless one is very depressed. Or am I mistaken?

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Published by Clarissa

13 thoughts on “How Bad Are Things in the UK?”

  1. at least they don’t say this:

    I Ain’t Got My Balls (On The Chip/On my Shoulder) page 2

    Sure, I’m going, looks like I’m always getting through out of things

    Sure I’m bollocking off like I’m always being fucked out house and country

    Christ, don’t touch me. What the shit, I’m beating a hasty retreat
    like I’ve always done in your
    fucking history

    I’m always going off somewhere but you pigs always make sure I
    never arrive

    I’m always on the point of ejaculation but you fucking bitch of a
    country just fall dead asleep
    snoring

    You talk of the culture that I come from how come you know I got
    a distinct culture and know too
    but I don’t want to know

    You say I’ve got it this authentic ethnic balls but you don’t give
    much room you define it so
    small I can’t get in

    Yeah and one more thing I aint got my balls (on the chip/on my
    shoulder)

    He’s got
    A Chip

    One more thing motherfuckers!

    He’s got
    A Chip

    Just one more time you crass craven cantankerous fucking cunts!

    He’s got
    A Chip

    I aint got my balls /on the chip /on my shoulder

    On his
    Shoulder

    I just got a historical notion I can never be quite right seeking you
    out in pubs and universities and
    park benches and prison and
    hassles and health food racket

    I AINT GOT MY BALLS (ON THE CHIP / ON MY SHOULDER-)

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  2. Talking of universities, I read about a situation here in France that affects kids applying for certain over-subscribed courses. Instead of taking the best based on the marks they get in the Bac which is apparently not allowed, the university administrators put all the names of the students into a hat and pull out the number they need.

    I find it sickening and I suppose the teachers must do too, but that’s the law in France. Access to higher public education is equally available to all whether you get a Bac with fantastic results or just scrape through. It’s not really a motivating system.

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  3. It’s pretty darn bad. And the worst of it is that the situation is highly dynamic – there’s this constant sense of being in a fog and knowing there’s a precipice out there (this applies when I’m NOT depressed! And to pretty much everyone I talk to at UK universities apart from those who retire soon).

    I’d choose “A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
    And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
    And the dry stone no sound of water” as my Wasteland sig quote…

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    1. Yes. And there are people in the adjunct crowd in US who actually imagine that if we go the way of the UK, their lot will improve. A naive view.

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      1. I don’t want to sound cruel but we should look to the UK for an example of what we must avoid at all costs. UK’s academia is imploding and soon there will be no scholarship at all left in the country.

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