Business people keep score using salaries, sales, and size.
Golfers keep score with handicaps and best rounds.
But, us academics can beat them all! We have more ways to keep score, than Congress has hypocrites. We count publications, presentations, and prizes. We count grants and funding and salaries too. In fact, there's not much that we in academe fail to count.
You see, my fellow academics and me want to make sure everyone know just how good/bright/creative/innovative/clever we are.
I just read an article about when academics go home for the holidays and must associate with the great unwashed masses of non-academics. It spoke about the grief we must patiently endure at the hands of those who don't understand our obscure research areas, and those who are unfamiliar with the importance of our research papers, which may be read by 2-3 thousand (sometimes only hundreds) of people in the world.
To be honest, I quit reading that article after about the third paragraph of whining. I am an academic, so I know too much already about my own over-sized ego. I already know why real people don't enjoy hearing us professors wax eloquent about our genius. To be honest, I think the less real people know about us academics, the better for both parties.
Perhaps I am being too hard on academics. We are sinners, in need of saving.
Why are we so anxious to keep score? I think we want to be "significant". We are smart, we want everyone to know how smart and how significant we really are.
And, sadly most of humanity shares our desire. And sadly we fail to recognize our own significance. whether we have a Ph.D. or not, G^d came to earth and died so that we could have an ETERNAL relationship with the G^D of the UNIVERSE.
Now's that's real significance!
Golfers keep score with handicaps and best rounds.
But, us academics can beat them all! We have more ways to keep score, than Congress has hypocrites. We count publications, presentations, and prizes. We count grants and funding and salaries too. In fact, there's not much that we in academe fail to count.
You see, my fellow academics and me want to make sure everyone know just how good/bright/creative/innovative/clever we are.
I just read an article about when academics go home for the holidays and must associate with the great unwashed masses of non-academics. It spoke about the grief we must patiently endure at the hands of those who don't understand our obscure research areas, and those who are unfamiliar with the importance of our research papers, which may be read by 2-3 thousand (sometimes only hundreds) of people in the world.
To be honest, I quit reading that article after about the third paragraph of whining. I am an academic, so I know too much already about my own over-sized ego. I already know why real people don't enjoy hearing us professors wax eloquent about our genius. To be honest, I think the less real people know about us academics, the better for both parties.
Perhaps I am being too hard on academics. We are sinners, in need of saving.
Why are we so anxious to keep score? I think we want to be "significant". We are smart, we want everyone to know how smart and how significant we really are.
And, sadly most of humanity shares our desire. And sadly we fail to recognize our own significance. whether we have a Ph.D. or not, G^d came to earth and died so that we could have an ETERNAL relationship with the G^D of the UNIVERSE.
Now's that's real significance!
No comments:
Post a Comment