If there’s one thing we’ve established in recent months, it’s that I love provoking established academics. So when Slate asked me to write about Zac Ernst’s very interesting recent “I Quit” essay, “Why I Jumped Off the Ivory Tower,” I also jumped at the chance.
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A friend referred me to your essay at Slate, which I enjoyed.
I have to say, when I read “what many would consider a dream job: a tenured position as a philosophy professor at the University of Missouri,” my first thought was, “Wait, ‘dream job’ and ‘University of Missouri’ don’t belong in the same phrase unless there’s a ‘not’ in there too.” Missouri is the state that installed a statue of Rush Limbaugh in its capitol building, so I can’t imagine life in the state’s public universities is any too dreamy. But I gather Prof. Ernst’s decision to resign wasn’t about anything particular to Missouri.
Also, when I read “contract syphilis,” what leaped to mind was, “Now that’s a colorful way to talk about the adjunct crisis!”
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Just for your reference, in case you are interested in some more historical examples, I wrote a piece in 2001 called “On Being Postacademic” in which I wrote about leaving a job with tenure in the University of Tennessee English Department. It is excepted at: http://www.leavingacademia.com/blog/career-planning/what-it-means-to-be-post-academic/
The piece was publicized by email and word of mouth – neither WordPress nor Facebook existed and as a result the entire essay isn’t archived anywhere on the web. It was quite widely read, though, and you can find references to it easily enough on Google. If you’re curious to read the whole essay, I’ll send it to you. Send me email privately.
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Amazing! You’re a pioneer!
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Can I get a copy, too?
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