Lazy College Professors

[Farren]

True, true....

And what about the people who are good teachers, but only when their students are brilliant telepaths? What about them?

TLR, you forgot about all the time you also have to spend on exciting adventures in faraway lands amidst exotic cultures. The dry-cleaning costs for your hat alone have to be astronomical, especially since you keep forgetting it in tombs and stuff. Oh, and the time you spend fighting Nazis.

[BDS]

Originally Posted by Uthgar the Brazen

. Oh, and the time you spend fighting Nazis.

It's not just the hours -- it's the hassle of having beautiful coeds close their eyes to reveal "I love you" written on their eyelids.

In the business world, people love to brag about how many hours they work. Whenever I hear them start bragging (they pretend to complain, but we all know they're really bragging), I always try to one up them -- to the mirth of any colleagues who happen to be listening and know that I rarely work at all.

(Weren't you once an anthropology grad student, Uthgar -- just like I was? Hence our love for Indy -- our role model.)

[Farren]

I recall one night sitting on the scaffolding supporting a highway sign, smoking a joint with an anthropology nut/student who was inspired by Indy, watching the cars go by underneath and listening to him enthusing about ancient African bones... Good times.

Nope, but I spent a good bit of time with those folks. I was a music major.

* Uthgar the Brazen waits for the many light bulbs of sudden understanding to appear in the forums.

[Sock Puppet]

Originally Posted by Farren

I recall one night sitting on the scaffolding supporting a highway sign, smoking a joint with an anthropology nut/student who was inspired by Indy, watching the cars go by underneath and listening to him enthusing about ancient African bones... Good times.

Wow, I've done exactly the same thing! Oh, but without the anthropology student. I'm pretty sure there was talk about ancient African bones, though.

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

Wow, I've done exactly the same thing! Oh, but without the anthropology student. I'm pretty sure there was talk about ancient African bones, though.

Bones =/= boners, dude.

[BDS]

The truth (unfortunately) is that archaeological research is boring. It comprises picking meticulously through the dirt in the hope of finding – well, you ain’t going to find no Lost Arks of the Covenants. When I was in grad school (some time ago, now) the archaeology grad students did have lots of money (by my impecunious standards), because all new subdivision builders were required to hire archaeologists to meticulously pick through the dirt before construction could start. I remember one Archaeology Prof in my undergraduate days rambling endlessly about the “New” Archaeology (not so new anymore), which consisted of endlessly recording exact positional data on every tiny artifact one discovered. It was supposedly more “scientific” than rappelling into ancient tombs in search of Lost Arks, but it didn’t seem like much fun.

Cultural anthropology rules!

[Farren]

Originally Posted by Uthgar the Brazen

Bones =/= boners, dude.

In SA, is =. However, we were, in fact talking about skeletrons.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by Uthgar the Brazen

TLR, you forgot about all the time you also have to spend on exciting adventures in faraway lands amidst exotic cultures. The dry-cleaning costs for your hat alone have to be astronomical, especially since you keep forgetting it in tombs and stuff. Oh, and the time you spend fighting Nazis.

There are Nazis to fight in the frozen tundra of Tulavit whilst collecting rabbit scat? TLR's specialty is bunnies...Snowshoe hares, IIRC.

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

Of course not. It's damned nearly impossible to maintain that much consistency when you're drunk.

Only on power, baby.

But srzly, I've met a few lazy professors. Not many, but a few. The worst was one who "taught" a creative writing course by rambling on and on about his favorite movies. He got all of his quotes wrong, to top it off. Granted, creative writing courses are the nadir of English classes, but still -- he could have at least pretended he had something prepared ahead of time.

Yeah, there are a few. If you don't care about the well-being of your department, your legacy, and the opinions of your colleagues, students, staff, and supervisors, a tenured prof can get away with doing very little work. And poor quality work at that.

Yet almost everybody does care about at least some of those things, to at least some extent, all the time. And most people care about almost all of them, a lot. Even though I could get away with doing shockingly little and shoddy work, I do an awful lot of work and most of it to the best of my ability. If I didn't think that way, it's most unlikely that I would have done the things necessary to get my job in the first place, so it's not that surprising, I guess.

[ChuckF]

As a graduate student, I am sick to death of my lazy professors. If they weren't lazy, how would they have time to teach seminars, read and correct my well-written and theoretically dense but frequently wrongheaded papers, serve on my thesis committee, publish, and teach 100-person undergrad classes? Only a lazy person would have the free time to do all of that.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by BDS

Cultural anthropology rules!

That's because it has no rules...

wait...no...

it makes them up as it goes along!

[BDS]

Cultural Anthro does too have rules. Haven't you ever heard of cultural relativism?

Archaeology would be more fun if it had fewer rules. Indiana Jones was never found carefully marking the location of each ancient treasure he found with a little flag, and recording it in his notebook. If he'd taken the time to do that, we'd all be speaking German.

[Angakuk]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

Don't get me wrong; I love my job. But somehow, I don't feel like I'm an underworked and overpaid bum who sits around all day doing nothing.

Preach it brother. I feel your pain.

In my case, of course, the canard is true. I, like all preachers, work only one day a week and then only for an hour or two. Now excuse me while I go take a dump in my toilet with the gold plated fixtures.

[Qingdai]

Originally Posted by godfry n. glad

That's because it has no rules...

wait...no...

it makes them up as it goes along!

Ohhh! Cultural anthropology fight! (It was my B.A.)

[Angakuk]

Shouldn't that have been a B.S.?

[Qingdai]

Cultural Anthropology B.A., Physical Anthropology B.S.

Although there usually enough B.S. to go around.

[godfry n. glad]

Heh...

I took one, and only one, cultural anthropology course in my entire university career, "Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthrolopology".

I signed up because I needed to fill out a full-time schedule to qualify for credits on my Japanese language classes, which were offered through the night school extension.

I sat through that class in a state of confusion. The professor droned on...and on...and on...about the most minute of details (and about his experience amongst the Tooba people of the Phillipine archipeligo). By midterm, I had only five pages of sketchy notes. The midterm was one take-home question (whiners who request take-home exams should be strung up by their thumbs and flagellated with a vine of poison ivy)...."What is "freedom" in social-cultural anthropological terms.

Luckily, the prof had regularly repeated the names of his favorite authors during his lectures, and I'd actually written them down....Off to the library I went. I looked up texts by his favorite authors, checked the indices for "freedom" and copied down all the text quotes indexed. I then went home and strung those quotes together with pure, unmitigated bullshit.

When the tests were handed back, I was sitting next to a anthropology major, for whom it was a required class; he got a "C" on the midterm. Me? I got an "A".

I did the same on the final, and finished with seven sketchy pages of notes. I tore those out and used the notebook next term.

I got the impression that it was mostly bullshit. But I aced the class.

[Brimshack]

One of the more malicious fuckwits to serve as an administrator where I used to teach decided to make a very big deal out of ensuring that the college got an honest 40 hours a week from each of its faculty members. As one of my colleagues put it; "Fine all go home on Wednesday."

[Qingdai]

One night school class, does not a career in cultural anthropology make.

Fight! Fight!

Much of what I found interesting in anthropology of culture was learning how much can be different from culture to culture, and unreliable narrators (shh. Don't tell, but I think Lisarea may be one!).

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by Angakuk

Preach it brother. I feel your pain.

In my case, of course, the canard is true. I, like all preachers, work only one day a week and then only for an hour or two. Now excuse me while I go take a dump in my toilet with the gold plated fixtures.

Just the fixtures? I heard the Jesuits across town have a gold bowl and tank, with platinum fixtures.

Piker.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by Qingdai

One night school class, does not a career in cultural anthropology make.

Fight! Fight!

Much of what I found interesting in anthropology of culture was learning how much can be different from culture to culture, and unreliable narrators (shh. Don't tell, but I think Lisarea may be one!).

Heavens...I'd not want to make a career of it.

Besides, it wasn't night school...the Japanese was. You got something against night classes?

Sure...it's anedotal, but hey...it was enough for me.

Heh...Unreliable narrators. Maggie Mead was taking her lumps just about that time, too.

[Qingdai]

I do have something against night classes, they are too late and I get sleepy.

[Angakuk]

I felt much the same way about morning classes Qingdai.