Independence Inc.

After thirty years in American higher education as first a non traditional, or, as the Brits say, "mature" student (1989), then a student employee (1990-1999), then a faculty member (1999-2020), I was getting weary of the grind. I was particularly tired of all the different kinds of dishonesty I encountered. Students, senior administrators, and even other faculty demonstrated time and again that they had only tenuous ideas of truth. 

The student lying was tiresome and sapped my morale. If a student lies about an assignment or cheats on it, that's a pretty clear indication that they don't need to be in higher education, which, after all, is or should be to participate in the search for truth. I wanted students that wanted to be there. I was lucky to have hundreds of them over the years. But I also had hundreds of the other kind.

Senior administrators that are not scholars at heart should be banned from the face of the earth. I can count beans. My dog can count sheep, if not beans. Any idiot can run a cost analysis to determine if a class or a program is covering its costs. 

But is it worth teaching? Is it going to contribute to the well-being of humanity, to our understanding of ourselves and our precious planet? That's the real question.

(I was once laughed at by an administrator who shall remain anonymous (but whose reputation is increasing among the hoity-toity of the AGB) for reading a big book! I was carrying my current academic reading around campus with me that day, a big history book, it didn't fit in my satchel so I had to carry it, and I got laughed at. That should have been a disqualifying event right there.)

Then there are faculty who are lying to themselves about their teaching abilities and the importance of their research and so on. The professor whose students complain that the homework is confusing and they're never available to help. The wielders of red ink whose office door is always closed. The R-1 wannabes who can't wait to get their dream job in a research shop, trying desperately to get published in second- and third-tier journals while the students are lined up in tears down the corridors.

It's all a bit of a con, isn't it, until, one fine day, all of a sudden a real student asks a real question and you give a real answer. 

I was lucky to have that a lot. It was a great career. A lot of those students are in touch. One, a newly tenured professor herself, just wrote to thank me from her new home university, putting me again in mind of her and all the others whose honest questions I lived for at work.

But I always had a rich life outside of academia. I had the farm and my construction projects and my marriage and now my kid. I was looking forward to full independence if not yet able to enjoy it.

These days I run my farm, look after my kid, and tend to my rental. 

I still run across people that lie to themselves and others and behave badly. 

There are local anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers making life hell for the workers at the local coop for whose Board I'm an officer. Nothing quite like a screaming match with a deranged homeopathist to kick off your day's work of cashing out the punters and stocking the shelves. Better than caffeine. 

Then there are former students that are gun nuts, dreaming of the coming civil war, posting on FaceBook about what they plan to do when the lights go out. These are mostly the ones that took the law enforcement program but never made into the ranks. And thank heavens they didn't.

I'm an RAF Mountain Rescue veteran and spent thirty years on various civilian teams. I picked up dead people and their body parts from crashed aircraft. I lowered screaming, mortally-injured people off cliffs. I helped carry dozens of bodies off of mountains. I talked to the families and helped console them, which often simply can't be done. 

What is wrong with these people? No-one should ever dream of hurting others like this. Each hurt and each death is a family tragedy, a tornado that rips apart someone's life. It's wrong to look forward to something like this and they probably know it. It's politics we need, and better politics at that, not the wet dreams of some thirty year old loser with a mental age of ten.

And they should get over it already. The election wasn't stolen. It was won, fair and square, by the other guy. It's right wing media and the orange guy that are telling you this, to line their pockets with your money. 

Biden hasn't come for your guns. He won't. It's bad politics. He has enough to worry about with the virus pandemic and inflation and Russia.

But not very much of this trouble makes it into my dreams. I sleep a lot better. And I don't have to pretend to be nice to anyone anymore. I still am as nice as pie most of the time. That's how the world goes around. But it's a great relief not to have to deal as closely with the liars.

When I get to run my own life without these kinds of hassles, even when I'm just cleaning an Air BnB rental, life can be pretty good.