What I find really interesting about the OJ documentary is how easy it is to manufacture racial solidarity and how impossible it is to make people at least consider gender or class solidarity. Just look at the current election for an example.

Maybe racial solidarities are so strong because no other kind of solidarity is accessible.

Academaze was written under the pseudonym Sydney Phlox by the blogger Xykademiqz who often contributes valuable observations here at Clarissa’s Blog.

There’s been a steady stream of publications that describe academia as a horror show of massive proportions. My non-academic friends and relatives often bring me these whiny and moany treatises as a gift (or send links to them) and joyfully exclaim, “Here! This is a book / article / blog post about academia!” I am, however, one of those academics who’d rather read the phone book than a book about academia because I can’t take any more diatribes about everything being absolutely horrible and hopeless to the point where we all need to don a shroud and crawl straight to the cemetery.

Academaze is a welcome exception to this annoying trend. The author is a successful tenured STEM academic who discusses the good and the bad of academia with insight and humor. The ideas behind some of the sub-chapters are accompanied by really cool cartoons that even I – a passionate hater of the cartoon genre – enjoyed. This book can be an invaluable resource not only to young STEM scholars who are contemplating a career in academia but, with some modifications, to beginner scholars in all fields. The author clearly loves her work, loves her life, and writes in a way that will make a budding academic less – instead of even more – nervous about her career choice.

Among the defects of the book, I can name the excessive use of the word “Gaussian” (it is used once in the book, which I, as a professor of literature, find hugely excessive), the dearth of cartoons (they are so good that I would love to see more), and a slight disconnect between the introductory chapter and the rest of the book. From the intro, one can arrive at the conclusion that the book is aimed at the general public and hopes to convince readers that academic schedules don’t mean that academics do nothing all day and especially all summer long. However, the rest of the book makes it clear that it will be most useful to academics and probably their family members who need to understand that saying things like, “Why can’t you come over / talk / pick up the dry cleaning / join the yoga class with me, etc. if it’s summer and you don’t have to work?” is obnoxious and unfair.

The book is fun, there are tons of RL stories that illustrate each point – I highly recommend it. Especially if you are a woman in a STEM field who lacks a female mentor, this book can answer your most pressing questions while you chart your course in your field.

I don’t think that thevRussian secret service organized the attacks by Russian football fans in Europe, like the Guardian suggests. Pigs will be pigs without any governmental involvement. But the gleeful reaction of both the Russian authorities and the general public in Russia is disgusting.

The Russian authorities may not have organized the attacks but they have been fostering an environment of hatred towards Europeans for years, and now we are seeing a result. Football fans are always rowdy and obnoxious, yes, but when they put a person in a coma and a society erupts in cheering, there’s something wrong with that picture.

I understand that there are people who were born and lived their whole lives in different circumstances than the ones available to me. I don’t begrudge them the existence where they have no idea what it means to worry about making a living, to be terrified by mounting credit card debt, to know that a third of all hours in every day belongs not to you but to your employer, to structure your life around the knowledge that between such and such hours you have to be at work no matter what else – illness, bereavement, exhaustion, the concert of your favorite band – is happening in your life.

I understand such people exist and I have even grown to accept that there is no way to live my life without coming into contact with them. 

What drives me nuts is that such people don’t even try to understand the reality of those of us who know the words “I have to.”

Example. I tell yet another prospective nanny that I teach for a living. I have to be in the classroom every Monday and Wednesday at 11 am no matter what.

“Oh yes,” she says, “I understand.”

Three minutes later, she reveals to me that she is pregnant and due in October. 

“Jessica,” I say hopelessly. “As I said, from August until early December I HAVE TO be in the classroom every Monday and Wednesday at 11 am no matter what.”

“I know,” she responds. “I get it.”

“And when you are giving birth and then recovering, you wouldn’t be able to help me, would you?”

“Oh, that’s OK,” she says happily. “I will come back to work a few weeks after giving birth.”

By this point, the desperation I feel gives way to rage that locks up my throat and makes my blood pressure almost take off the top of my skull.

“But I have to be in the classroom every Monday and Wednesday,” I repeat robotically.

Jessica stares at me with an incomprehension that could not be deeper if I had suddenly addressed her in Ukrainian. She sincerely fails to udnerstand what the problem is.

I have now had this conversation hald a dozen of times. It’s not always pregnancy. In one case it was a beauty pageant. In another, a visit to Las Vegas. It’s great that people are giving birth, participating in pageants, and going to Vegas. What would make me really happy, though, is to see one of them lose the blank stare for a moment and say, “Oh, wait, if you need me to be here every week from August to December, then I can’t help you.”

That would be such a beautiful instance of mutual comprehension.