I have a new piece at the Pope Center on my decision to never seek employment at another university ever again. I am basically giving up on ever getting what I have for a long time now considered my dream job. Unfortunately, my dream of doing academic research and talking with young people about ideas and literature turned into a bureaucratic nightmare of endless adjuncting with no hope of making enough to survive or of getting health insurance.
My experience was psychologically destructive, soul-killing. What else could it be when you so desperately want to give and nobody wants your gift? That is my experience with teaching. There are some exceptions, of course, but the rule is rejection. The students reject your gift of knowledge; the administrators reject your gift of teaching and academic work. The institutional support for my academic work has never materialized. In fact, most of the support for my work has come from non-mainstream sources. Which is why I have ended up doing so much work in economics -- specifically, spontaneous order theory. I have yet to receive even a modicum of support from with in the humanities or literary studies.
I will thus concentrate on developing Camplin Creative Consulting. I will work on getting clients for my writing consulting and my workshops based on my academic publications. That way I can continue to work on my academic work. I can write papers and books and do my true work. I cannot do that while teaching.
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