There’s an enormous amount of extreme helplessness that I’m observing. I spent an hour yesterday with an early-career academic who’s stressing out about the job search process. After listening to him go on and on about how there are only 9 jobs in his field this year, I asked where he’s looking and was stunned to discover that he used a single website where people have to pay a bundle to place job ads. He never attempted to consult the big free websites that post jobs. We looked at one of those websites and found almost a hundred job ads in his field. A hundred! It’s November, and most departments already started interviewing, so he pretty much destroyed his chances of getting a job this year.

I also am receiving job applications for a graduate assistant position. This position carries a 100% tuition waiver in addition to the salary. Our GA position pool has been cut by 66% university wide. For many people, not getting this job means not being able to go to graduate school at all. One would think people would make a minimal effort, at least, to get the job.

But no. Out of the 12 applications I have received so far, only one applicant addressed me by my name. The name that is prominently mentioned in the job ad. Most address me as “Hi!” Two don’t address me at all. One went really far and opened with “Dear Sir/Madam” and then proceeded to inform me that he’s very detail-oriented.

At this very moment, I’m sitting at an event where we offer CV editing services to graduate students who are going on the job market. I’ve been doing this since 2012 (with a break for COVID). And guess what? There have been zero people coming by. Before, I’d have a line of people seeking help. But now it’s like everybody just gave up.

People aren’t even trying. It’s sad but it’s everywhere.

I was finally able to open a section of American Sign Language. When students were allowed to enroll, the section filled up completely with a wait-list within two days. This never happened to me before with any of the courses in the other 8 languages that I offer.

What would happen in a profit-oriented organization in the midst of a severe budget crisis?

A second section would immediately be opened, and people on the wait-list would be moved there, right?

But no. In our supposedly corporatized university, it will take me a million years to ask and ask and ask for a second section.

I’m giving an interview to our student newspaper today about our ASL course. I’m holding a promotional event on the 14th. This will undoubtedly bring many more students eager to enroll. It would be great to have an unfilled section ready for them. Instead, I’ll have to go through an entire crowd of scared bureaucrats who wouldn’t be able to make a decision.

I dream of a corporatized university. I have almost erotic fantasies of working in an environment where it’s all about bringing in the profit, innovating, achieving, and making things happen.

I’m not a hinting woman. I’m an oversharing, excessively verbalizing woman. Fifteen years in, it’s still a struggle to explain to my husband that I don’t hint.

I’d say something like, “Get this, Tom and Janey are getting divorced. She says the marriage hasn’t been working for a long time and she’s ready to give up.”

And he’d come back with, “Are you trying to say our marriage isn’t working and you want a divorce?”

“No. I’m saying exactly what I said. Tom and Janey are getting divorced. This isn’t about us at all.”

“Really? Then why are you saying it to me?”

“I’m sharing. This is a story I’ve heard, and I want to share it with my husband. With whom I’m in a great marriage. Where we share.”

“Ah, well, you should have said so from the start!”

So now I start every other story with “Our marriage is great. I’m very happy. I have no plans to criticize you for anything. But get this, Tom and Janey…”

This doesn’t eliminate the problem completely. Sometimes, I’d be doing something in complete silence and he’d stare at me with a severe look.

“So …” he’d say. “Any complaints? Do you have any thoughts about getting rid of me, throwing me out of the house and divorcing me?”

This is actually great progress. Years ago, he’d imagine that I was planning to divorce him because of something really trivial, like I’d suggest a movie and he didn’t want to watch it. He’d torture himself for weeks and then finally erupt, begging me to put him out of his misery and just say that I hated him because of the movie that I had forgotten about 3 seconds after the initial discussion.

I feel great compassion because none of this is about me at all. His favorite quote that he repeats regularly is from A Dog’s Heart by Mikhail Bulgakov. At the end of the novel, a stray dog who was picked up by a genius surgeon for medical experimentation says, “I’m so lucky. I’ve really been accepted into this apartment.” This is very sad.

So yeah, I don’t hint.

Another really good read for the day:

This pandemic pandemonium was an iatrogenic social experiment. One that weaponized fear, panic and pseudoscience to reorder our social hierarchy into a more primitive class pyramid of autocratic nobility at its apex and a sea of serfs at the base; the two separated by an impenetrable chasm of discrimination mandated through bureaucratic fiat. It was, by every metric, class warfare conducted at a scale and intensity with no modern parallels. And like so many other paradoxes and ironies that pockmarked the pandemic landscape, was waged by the very devotees of equality and worshippers of equity. Many aspects of this iatrogenic feudalism bore uncanny resemblance to the caste order system of ancient India.

https://thesovereignmind.substack.com/p/iatrogenic-shudras-the-birth-of-covid

This article by a Jewish person in London really spoke to me. This is exactly how I felt in 2014. I’m sad that other people got to feel it, too.

Jewish people need to be aware that there’s psychological pressure deployed against them through the many fake videos and reports about Jews in America being assaulted on campuses and in the streets. That video of a Jewish student being crowded at Harvard, for example. It’s a craftily edited, manipulative piece. The student got in the face of some protesters, and they got in his face in response. That’s what students do. Nobody was harmed, and the Jewish student clearly felt very safe to confront the protesters. And the same goes for the obviously fake video of “Jews hiding in a campus library”.

This is done on purpose to make you weak. Every time you get scared, angry, upset, you become a leaky vessel. Don’t watch videos where you are a victim. Watch the ones where you are a winner.

It’s good advice for everybody.

The airplane was very tiny, and the gentleman sitting next to me was not. Neither am I, so when he reached for his seat belt, his hand brushed against me.

“I’m not trying to do anything!” the poor guy exclaimed. “It’s the seat belt! I’m trying to get the seat belt!”

I understand his stress. At any moment one can run into a crazy person who would start posting TikTok rants about “feeling unsafe” on airplanes.

✅Congress has passed $113bn of Ukraine-related aid

✅63% ($69bn) was spent in the U.S., in our defense industrial base, creating well-paying jobs in Missouri, Alabama, Arizona, etc

✅39% ($44bn) of this has gone *directly* to support the U.S. military

That’s what you oppose when you oppose aid to Ukraine.

Yesterday, it took us exactly an hour to sign the hiring paperwork for our new ASL instructor. This wasn’t because of his deafness. We had an interpreter. This is what it’s like for every hire.

We are starting off with just one section of beginner ASL. An hour. Not to prepare the paperwork. That took much, much longer. Simply to sign. The pile of documents was ankle-deep. Sign here. Initial every page. Tick boxes here but not there.

There’s something deeply wrong with how this works. There is a paper testifying that I evaluated the candidate’s oral proficiency in English, which is really relevant for a deaf person. There is a paper where he confirms that he knows he’ll need to do the sexual harassment training. And a paper where he confirms he knows he’ll have to do the ethics training. Which he won’t have to do because it’s completed in October and he’ll only teach in spring. And a paper where he confirms that if he were a retiree of our university (which he isn’t), he knows he has to file paperwork with the retirement system. And don’t get me started on the diversity paperwork. Or citizenship / immigration status paperwork. Or the paperwork which I don’t even comprehend because it’s endless and weird.

But we’ll get our ASL course. I’m planning to add Swahili next Fall, so this will be 3 new languages I brought to the department.

At the convention where I’m going, we will have an 8-hour meeting of the executive board. 8:30 to 4:30. People keep saying “corporatization” but in the corporate world nobody does this crap anymore. Nobody. Expecting people to sit on their asses all day is ridiculous. Useless. Stupid. Only in academia are we outdated enough to do this kind of an insane exercise. I’m already in a shitty mood, and I’m not even there yet.

We used to have 3-hour department meetings but I put an end to that when I became “the hiring manager of this esteemed unit”. My position is, if you can’t get it done in under an hour, you suck.