You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
cemistry101 's review for:
Dear Committee Members
by Julie Schumacher
Considering my anxiety-producing post-dissertation unemployment (and don't tell me four months is nothing since you have not seen my bank account), I had to find something to give me a laugh or two. Dear Committee Members did the trick.
Schumacher provides joy to the reader by expounding on the reality of the incestuous Ivory Tower (these people don’t get off campus much so they tend to shit where they eat) of academia: ever shrinking budgetary support for any program not directly aiding sports teams (well, actually, only those not aiding men's football and basketball) or extolling the brilliance of the free market system. These realties have interesting effects: mouldering tenured faculty without research support and departments with no hope for innovative, tenured successors; students with no hope for tuition alleviating departmental fellowships or research and teaching assistantships left to sign promissory notes to the tune of $300,000 in order to live at poverty level while completing their education (and left with no career preparation except to cross their fingers they will land a job after graduation; not that the tenured profs care about this reality – they don’t); and underpaid, overworked, uninsured, un-pensioned adjuncts piecing together jobs in multiple disciplines at multiple schools to pay the rent. Those realities leave too many departments fighting ridiculous battles, such as voting on whether or not to keep the department’s telephone landline operating (a real-life example of a philosophy department at an winning PAC-10 school that had to disconnect their landline while the football team cut the ribbon on its own state-of-the-art study center).
To one, like me, whose complete acculturation into the Ivory Tower somewhat failed, Schumacher’s small volume commenting on the realities of academia gives many, many smiles. Don’t get me wrong: I firmly believe in and staunchly advocate for education. I just fail to see the point of faculty throwing temper tantrums like kindergartners and finding normalcy in reenacting the high school antics of deciding who no longer gets to sit at the lunch table with the “cool” kids. Past the age of 18 such antics turn from eye-rolling annoyance to downright revulsion. That Schumacher is able to effectively satirize such antics precisely because they are so familiar to those inhabiting (or having brushed against) the Ivory Tower demonstrates either brilliant creativity or sad commentary. I leave it to you, Dear Reader, to make a reasoned determination for yourself.
Schumacher provides joy to the reader by expounding on the reality of the incestuous Ivory Tower (these people don’t get off campus much so they tend to shit where they eat) of academia: ever shrinking budgetary support for any program not directly aiding sports teams (well, actually, only those not aiding men's football and basketball) or extolling the brilliance of the free market system. These realties have interesting effects: mouldering tenured faculty without research support and departments with no hope for innovative, tenured successors; students with no hope for tuition alleviating departmental fellowships or research and teaching assistantships left to sign promissory notes to the tune of $300,000 in order to live at poverty level while completing their education (and left with no career preparation except to cross their fingers they will land a job after graduation; not that the tenured profs care about this reality – they don’t); and underpaid, overworked, uninsured, un-pensioned adjuncts piecing together jobs in multiple disciplines at multiple schools to pay the rent. Those realities leave too many departments fighting ridiculous battles, such as voting on whether or not to keep the department’s telephone landline operating (a real-life example of a philosophy department at an winning PAC-10 school that had to disconnect their landline while the football team cut the ribbon on its own state-of-the-art study center).
To one, like me, whose complete acculturation into the Ivory Tower somewhat failed, Schumacher’s small volume commenting on the realities of academia gives many, many smiles. Don’t get me wrong: I firmly believe in and staunchly advocate for education. I just fail to see the point of faculty throwing temper tantrums like kindergartners and finding normalcy in reenacting the high school antics of deciding who no longer gets to sit at the lunch table with the “cool” kids. Past the age of 18 such antics turn from eye-rolling annoyance to downright revulsion. That Schumacher is able to effectively satirize such antics precisely because they are so familiar to those inhabiting (or having brushed against) the Ivory Tower demonstrates either brilliant creativity or sad commentary. I leave it to you, Dear Reader, to make a reasoned determination for yourself.