Penetrability

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This I think may count as Philosophy, not without Political overtones.

We had a student. Beyond obtuse. After years of marriage she could not even learn how to say her husband's name correctly.

She not only did not get hints ["Do you think you might find t more congenial in a different department?] she did not even here direct statements. [You have no future here.]

The Department was to genteel to kick her out - the system always retains the duds while hoping they will go away. She was too dumb and unaware to know everybody wanted her gone.

They kept giving her passsing grades and hoping she would afflict some one else's course.

Eventually she atrtained a PhD - because of the two who WOULD have had the guts to vote her out I was not on the committee and the other was out of the country.

Some people are like that. I do not know what cane be done when so many people see the rat in the pantry and will not shoo it away.

That is a very sad story.

During a visit, my mother once freaked when a mouse came around the corner of the sofa ...

... and I said, "Oh, there you are!" ... and then went and got the little critter a crumb.

One thing I came to appreciate during my professional career--most of the people who have PhD degrees are, in fact, dunces. However, they are particularly talented at posturing.

And good at using other people's funds.

I gave up on academia after one year of university.

Anyway, I've heard it said that to attain a PhD in the first place is to work like a drudge, do imponderable amounts of research, and all so your thesis can wither and die in some musty archive that only the next PhD student would then visit. Is it any wonder, then, that people use their degrees to get into the real world and then never go back despite their numerous claims of the beloved and beneficent, one day...

These would be either the most talented or driven people. Which, I guess, leaves everyone else for PhD candidacy and teaching.

Anyway, that's only what I've heard.

At least two people have actually requested copies of my dissertation. Hey hey.

I am MIGHTILY resisting the temptation to launch into an infinite loop of rants against the system.

My wife and another Inner Circler, both females of a certain type with a claim to some piece of the spectrum, got fairly along in the grad school system but were overwhelmed into oblivion. To be a female academic you have to be mentally invulnerable and it helps if you are a holy terror especially to other women. Though I know a good few who have not found evil necessary.

I - not without talent if I do say so and very determined especially when someone wants to kick me out - carved my way to tenure by the grit and skin of my teeth, but I paid the price.

My brother - the one will not speak to me politely - is a fairly fierce NT, but like me he will NOT politic or groupthink in any productive way, and his career is a bit backwatered.

You want to find scholars? Look first at people outside the system but in University townsd where they can use the library. You want politicians who are not motivated to seek office? Check the faculty roster at the nearest major university.

Yes, it was a very sad story.Only one from our files. I should create a TV series - each week reenacting a travesty from he annals of Academe.

Thing is, almost nobody outside the system would believe it, and nobody in the system would watch it.

Pandissimo - professional as what?

For many of them in fact it is not a posture - what you see is often what you get, and they believe they is what they ain't.