Why are people downvoting my posts about the post-Soviet economy and the disappeared advisor?
I understand that you can disagree with my joy over the Daniel Penny verdict. But you can’t disagree with the story about the advisor because it didn’t happen to you. You can’t have an opinion?
Or are people downvoting for another reason?
“are people downvoting for another reason?”
Bots?
Jerks with a grudge against you?
Deadbeats who resent the idea of having to work?
Commies who are convinced the USSR wasn’t real communism?
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I don’t remember down-voting your post about the advisor, but I did note to myself that perhaps you were making an unwarranted extrapolation from this one example. My partner almost always works from home (her preference) and is massively productive; I mostly work from home (not my preference, but my university went massively online during the pandemic, and students prefer that platform for some reason); I’m still productive, though not as much as I was twenty years ago (age!), and I work pretty much every day.
My husband barely left the house in 4 years, too. 😃
But these are exactly the highly organized, self-motivated, extremely self-controlled individuals. What’s easy for them (us, actually) is deadly for others.
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An adjacent note: While I often disagreed with your analysis of the Covid Era, there’s no question that the shutdowns had a deleterious effect on students at my university – and not just in their performance academically. Many of them have become sour. Students are now even banding together and crowd-complaining to the administration about various instructors. (I received my first – and second – complaint in 2024.) I’m happy to be retiring next year.
“shutdowns had a deleterious effect on students at my university – and not just in their performance academically”
Was talking with a colleague today about second year students (Polish studies are almost all lockstep programs).
We both agreed that the current second year is the first…. recovered…. year since the lockdowns (which ‘only’ lasted from spring 2020 to the end of summer 2021, just under three semesters). The previous classes affected by lockdowns were all…. very difficult to work with. They were willing and happy to back but many had little idea how to deal with in person studies.
Very deleterious. But that’s not even the worst part.
While professors were off-campus, administrators took over many of the functions of academic self-governance. Professors relinquished it for convenience’s sake and now can’t wrestle it back.
This was a gigantic mistake. Students will recover but our self-governance is not coming back.
Very deleterious. But that’s not even the worst part.
While professors were off-campus, administrators took over many of the functions of academic self-governance. Professors relinquished it for convenience’s sake and now can’t wrestle it back.
This was a gigantic mistake. Students will recover but our self-governance is not coming back.
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Always great to hear from you, Jonathan! 🙂
My secretary got permission to work remotely (which I wholeheartedly supported because I love to be surrounded by no people whatsoever). But she returned in person within two weeks because she said she didn’t know when work ended and rest began because it was always overlapping and giving her anxiety attacks.
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Who knows? They probably knee-jerked at you citing Elon Musk and approving of something he said. [ I will not cover Elon or Tesla’s track record of shipping great products.]
Clarissa, How would your colleague have contacted you or communicated with you (or vice versa) if she was on campus instead of being remote? What on campus would’ve specifically stopped her from disappearing? [I cannot assume anymore, that it’s oh I’ll drop in during her office hours or run into her on campus.]
Sometimes people will disagree the sky is blue out of contrariness.
In general, I don’t think it’s a question of discipline or structure. In general most working environs are very poorly designed for discipline, structure or collaboration or work flow [blegh].
It’s the body doubling which is key. Context switching at work has gotten worse and worse, by design or chance, whether you commute to work or you’re remote.
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We always communicated by email with the adviser. But this is what happens. Humans are inevitably social. Even I am to a degree. If they sit at home in pajamas all day, they get depressed, miserable, woozy. Time escapes them. They don’t know how to keep themselves together. Being around other people, in an office buzzing with activity is like a corset. It keeps them upright and whole.
Yes, it’s impossible to understand if one is a highly organized individual with a fully and happily neoliberalized mentality. But that’s how most people function. That’s why lockdowns turned so many people in utter neurotics and it’s still there.
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Oh yeah, absolutely. My first job was an amazing improvement in my mental health, *because* it was keeping me for 8h in a … shallow, but energetic environment.
I’ll do a lot to not get back to the office again. I really value the extra free time. However, I’m not going to pretend that I’m as productive out of office as I’m in-office. It’s much easier to get one of those deep-focus lots-of-shit-gets-done streaks started at home where I don’t have the distraction of other people in an office buzzing with activity, but I also don’t work as many hours at home as I would in-office. This works, because I’m very good at what I do work-wise and because I have a hobby that works, psychologically, like the corset of work would function in a more classical lifestyle, but I’d earn more with the more classical lifestyle, and I really wouldn’t have the inner stability to make this function at 25 rather than 35.
A conservative literary critic and college professor
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