I’m terrified this might one day happen to me:

I also tend to intersperse my articles with comments like “Professor X says [and what a stupid piece of shit he is] that this novel. . .” Maybe I should stop doing that.

Tonight, I was awakened twice by screams. Both times, the person doing the screaming was me. In the dreams (if we effectuate a Jungian reading), I was being violated by the male part of my persona. I urgently need to give nourishment to my female persona, it seems.

The good news is that tomorrow is my wedding anniversary, so there will be a chance for the female persona to come out.

In other news, after working as a salesperson yesterday, today I tried myself in the capacity of a secretary. We still have no departmental secretary, so I volunteered to stuff the envelopes with scantron sheets and forms for student evaluations for all of the courses we are offering. This is an intensely pleasurable activity because it’s so mechanical and relaxing that I feel rested after it.

Being a professor is great because it gives one a chance to try out many different careers.

Spent some time with people who are passionately opposed to the Common Core. When I asked them what it is they hate about it, they regressed to the pre-verbal stage and responded with moans and eye-rolling. I wanted to ask what educational standards had been used on them to make it so hard to express a deeply held belief of their own in a complete sentence but thought better of it. The moaning continued for quite a while, becoming very complex and inventive.

I’ve been trying to get people to talk about the reasons they dislike Common Core for months. But the result is always the same. As a result, I’m not sure if Common Core is dangerous but the discussions about it obviously are.