a philosophical windfall

Somewhere in the backwaters of twitter I came across this gem: an investor and fund manager has given $75 million dollars to the philosophy department at Johns Hopkins. Notably, this is the same department where he failed to finish his PhD.

My immediate reaction was, "I wouldn't give five cents to my grad school department." Upon additional reflection, yes, that's still true: I wouldn't give them a cent. Perhaps that's because they didn't kick me out when they probably should have? Regardless, I remain astounded that anyone could have had such a good time in a doctoral program that they decided to donate their hard-earned money to perpetuate that program. And I'm not even particularly bitter about my grad school experiences!

When I told Josh about the article, his very sensible question was, "What are they going to spend $75 million on? Books?" I imagine they will buy books, and also the very best graduate students in all the land. Too bad money won't be enough to get them all a job. Though I guess it will be enough to hire them all as lecturers for the next 30 years? 

mischief-making

"But, dear aunt," Isabel broke out, "I have no one, no one to advise me!"

"Then count yourself fortunate," Mrs. Touchett implacably replied, presenting to her niece the blank aspect of a sphinx. "Advice is another term for mischief-making, and anyone who asks for it deserves the consequences. One cannot be told how to live, my girl—and one shouldn't wish to be."

—John Banville, Mrs. Osmond

sincere questions

1. Why is it illegal for me to sell my kidney but totally cool for me to make a small fortune "donating" my eggs? Or renting my uterus? (Of course, now that I am 33 my eggs and uterus are probably not as valuable as they once were, but I'm sure I could get something for them...even with my mediocre SAT scores!)

2. Why don't we eat more venison? I can't find it in any grocery store, despite the fact that it is really delicious and deer appear to be everywhere. Ordering meat online (from New Zealand, no less) seems unnecessary when the actual animal I want to eat is all over my neighborhood.  Maybe it's time to break out the bow and arrow?

3. Why is Andrew Sullivan the only person who seems to make any sense these days?

4. Why do we celebrate birthdays? Mine is tomorrow, and taking joy in my advancing decrepitude seems unnatural. And it always has: I've felt birthday ennui for as long as I can remember. I guess the presents are nice? Meh. 

ch-ch-changes

Three weeks ago, I started a new job. In brief: it's a good job, and I'm happy to have it. I'm also happy to report that finding a second job out of grad school was a lot easier than finding the first one.

As I was going through the process of changing jobs last month, I realized that I've never done it before. I've left jobs, but I've never gone straight from one job to another. The last job I quit because I wanted to travel for three months. And like any insane 24-year-old I did it just as the global economy was collapsing. Suffice it to say: I didn't work for a good long while after that.

Let me be clear: I have no regrets! I feel honored that at the ripe old age of almost-33 I am just now changing jobs like a real adult employed person who has a retirement account and an FSA. I don't know if this job history does me much credit, but I have no desire to trade all that time I spent unemployed or under-employed for any type of cash equivalent. I went a lot of interesting places and read a lot of good books during that period! It was worth whatever it cost me.

Anyway, if the process of changing jobs has taught me anything, it's that I'm not very important. I definitely knew this, intellectually, but the experience of leaving a job with various projects unfinished, and starting a new one where you know nothing, is humbling. You realize that nothing you were working on was that crucial, and that nothing you've been hired to do couldn't be done by someone else. In fact, whatever you've been hired to do could be done a lot more efficiently by anyone who has worked at your organization longer than you, because you can't even find the bathroom key. In other words: I feel like a superfluous idiot.

This feeling is useful, if only because it's accurate. I could very easily have remained at my old job, or I could have taken a different new job, and at the end of the day it doesn't matter all that much to anyone except me. And working on a new project, with new people, at a new organization means that I have very little idea what's happening, and am therefore kind of an idiot. And I am here to tell you that feeling like a superfluous idiot is kind of exciting. It may very well be the antithesis of boredom. 

everything > PhD school

A lot is happening in higher ed these days, and since my life is deeply enmeshed in higher ed stuff, I have Thoughts.

In an nutshell: the general public no longer thinks it's a good idea to spend most of your entire adult life paying for a degree from a mediocre school. As a result, the vast majority of schools are having money troubles and some have decided to eliminate subjects like English and/or university departments entirely. And the government has decided now would be a good time to make it more expensive to get doctoral degrees.

All the academics in my twitter feed seem to think this is a coordinated assault on higher education. But...doesn't it seem obvious that the cost of college is insanely high? And shouldn't students who are going heavily into debt major in something with clearly transferable job skills? Who could argue with a straight face that there aren't enough doctoral students in the world? Who among us disagrees that most PhDs (myself included) may have been better off doing something else with their time? And do we really think that all those entry-level jobs that require a 4-year degree couldn't be done by a high school graduate?

So am I crazy or are all the people in my twitter feed? My hunch: the tweeters (twitterers?) are actually just worried about their jobs. School and department closures mean fewer jobs for new PhDs. No grad students means professors will be deprived the pleasure of replicating themselves through their students. An army of administrators will no longer be available to fill out all that pesky paperwork. Academic jobs are disappearing, the means of (academic) production are changing, and many of us may need to re-train when our positions are eliminated. Who knew that factory workers and academics could have so much in common?! 

And the cherry on top: Ben Sasse saying that the humanities, hard sciences, and sports are all "greater than" the social sciences. Reader, I laughed! (Social scientists, of course, are pissed.) Now what I really want to do is find a way to make Sasse's tweets and the responses into a modern version of the Protagoras (a version where Socrates is too busy with his day job at Google to chat with the sophists). Obviously, the conclusion of the dialogue will be that sports management is in fact the highest form of knowledge. 

peripheral tidbits: grant edition

A couple nights ago I finished Ron Chernow's new biography of Grant. I'm feeling pretty accomplished, too, because the book is 960 pages and I managed to read it in three weeks. (I checked it out of the library so there was a hard deadline.) It's easy to read 960 pages when they're interesting, though, so it's actually Chernow who ought to be feeling accomplished.

Anyway, it's a good book and I learned many things. (Notably: reconstruction was hella important and I should know more about it.) However, as is my wont, I would like to make note of two peripheral tidbits:

First, I hadn't fully comprehended just how crazy office-seeking and patronage politics were in 19th century America. I feel like an idiot, but I finally understand what Tocqueville was talking about. Also, I think he's probably wrong, since Americans were clearly obsessed with place-hunting. Though I guess the French were worse?

Second, I learned that campaign tactics were infinitely cleverer before television and the internet: in the 1880 election, Republicans printed a pamphlet about Winfield Scott Hancock's political achievements—a pamphlet that contained nothing but blank pages. Why did no one think of this in the 2016 election? If either side prints a clever pamphlet in 2020 I will vote a straight ticket for them. 

online doppelgänger

I get a lot of German email. I don't speak German and I've never lived in Germany, but my last name is very German, and this leads to a lot of spam and misdirected emails. For the first few years, I just deleted and ignored everything. Then, over time, I realized that there is a particular German Julia with my last name who keeps using my email address. First, she tried to create a Facebook account using my email address. Then she signed up for Pinterest using my email address. Pinterest, unlike Facebook, doesn't require you to confirm your email, so she just kept logging in using my email address and I kept getting notifications about it. 

So one day, after the umpteenth notification, I used my email address to change her password, and then logged in and deleted her account. It was so satisfying! No more emails from Pinterest, and I figured I had taught German Julia a lesson. I felt slightly bad about it, but figured she would now realize that she really needed to use her own email address. 

Then, a couple months later later, I got an email confirmation for a gynecologist appointment in Köln. First, I was impressed that women in Germany can make medical appointments online. Then I was intrigued that this Julia is apparently from the same city as my grandmother (maybe we're related?).  And then I became frustrated that this other Julia really is too dumb to remember her own email address. I wrote to the doctor and explained they had the wrong email, but nothing changed. So after the third email asking me to confirm my appointment, I canceled it. Ha! Take that, German Julia! Now, I was sure, she would finally realize that it's my email address, and that I happen to be a person who is not at all above messing with her life. 

But alas, today I received an email confirmation for an appointment at what appears to be a nice nail salon in Köln. This time I didn't even wait for a second or third notification. Appointment canceled! No shellac for you, German Julia!   

And now I'm really, really hoping that she will use my email address to sign up for a dating site next! Because then I will really get to mess with her and it will be so fun.