everything is ruined

serazienne:

budgie-studies:

historyandmyself:

Anyone else feel like academia is slowly killing them? 

Slowly?

Okay I’m re-reblogging this because guys. I know that I am a burned out PhD student going through comprehensive exam hell but I have said and will say again that academia is an inherently abusive system in the way that it’s currently structured in the U.S. You don’t feel this so much in a master’s program in my experience, though you do feel the imposter syndrome, crushing stress, fears of never being good enough, etc. But in a PhD program (again, caveat, my experience is in the humanities), you are literally put into a system where you are fully under the power of your PhD adviser and to a lesser extent the hierarchy of your department.

You are expected to do all of your own work for courses and for your dissertation and excel at it. In addition, you are expected to constantly be applying for 1) grants/external funding (”because it looks good on your CV” but actually because your department is hemorrhaging money and needs students to get outside funding), 2) conference presentations, and 3) publications (and “if you want tenure you have to have at least one publication in a major journal!”). In addition to that, you are expected to do basic labor that keeps the university as a whole functioning. This includes teaching and TA-ing for classes for an incredibly low salary that ultimately isn’t a living wage if you don’t have 1) funding from your department or 2) external funding. And then on top of all of that work, you are also expected to  do whatever favors or extra work that your PhD adviser demands. My adviser is very good about not asking me for extra stuff, but when a professor has generously agreed to write me a letter of recommendation for a funding application and then, in the same email, asks me to go through the footnotes of a paper and edit them, am I supposed to say “Thanks for the letter but I can’t do this paid work for you”? Even if I have no time to get my own shit done? If my friend’s adviser has a reputation for being very egocentric and can definitely get you a job but only if you stay on his good side, is she really allowed to say no to his request that she serve as an unofficial TA and grader for his class? The work is paid, of course, but since she already had a fellowship she wasn’t desperate for money. And doing all the work for him put her way behind on her own work.

And this is benign. This is the faculty doing favors for us, helping us out. These requests you can’t say no to, that aren’t part of your job description or your required work, that take up so much of your valuable time anyway, are tiny drops in the bucket compared to what can and does happen to PhD students who are in vulnerable positions and totally under the power of domineering, abusive, or otherwise nasty advisers, who draw support from their tenured colleagues (friends) who are blind to these abuses of power because they view them as favors, as friendship, as power-neutral exchanges. Just look at the case of NYU professor Avital Ronell, She denied accusations that she sexually harassed one of her PhD students over years; a group of very influential faculty members banded together to stick up for her. This article discusses the letter they wrote; this article discusses the personal experience of working for Ronell, who is faculty member with a huge amount of charisma and clout in her department. (Warnings in both for quoted creepy language, discussions of abuses of power & sexual harassment.)

That’s the graduate student perspective. From the faculty perspective it’s equally toxic. They view themselves as the underdogs, who are constantly devalued by university management even as (they believe that) they put themselves on the line for their students and graduate students. They are constantly pressured to publish their work (”publish or perish” is the cute little catchphrase); they have to do just about as much constant work as graduate students: 1) teach classes, 2) do their own research, 3) write and publish, 4) read and review books. Most of this is unpaid labor. The situation is even worse if you don’t have tenure and you aren’t guaranteed a stable position or a living wage. And here I’m not even getting into adjunct professors/lecturers and their job/wage/insurance insecurity. But basically, professors think that they are the ones getting beat up on all the time. And when graduate students try to push back against faculty members’ abuses of power, the first instinct is generally to push back, to say something like “How could you do this to me? How could you say these things? Don’t you see that we are doing it all for you? Don’t you see how hard I’ve worked for you?”

It’s Gaslighting 101. And you’d think, you would think that all of these very smart people who, especially in the humanities, spend their entire careers discussing how power works, how abuses of power happen, how people are marginalized and hierarchies are created, would understand what they’re doing. That they would be able to step back and examine their own actions in the light of the abuses of power that they’ve built their careers exposing. But in general, they’re not. And I don’t know if it’s because having absolute power over people corrupts as a general rule (though I do believe that), or if its because these professors have been so molded and so traumatized by the academic abuse that was enacted on them that they just can’t see it any more. That they’re forever the underdogs, the people getting beat up on, the most powerless in the situation. But it’s infuriating and frankly, it’s stressful, it’s destabilizing, it’s debilitating to be in a situation where you are trying to advocate for yourself in an atmosphere where you are expected to do everything, say yes to everything, and accept everything, and where any complaint against that is met with stonewalling or hostility – and ends up as gossip about you in the department, or a black mark in your “file.”

I don’t want this post to sound like “aw faculty members are mean sometimes :(” or “getting a PhD is hard and I’m whining even though I’m in a privileged position.” I get that I’m lucky. I get that, as a young, able-bodied, single person I am in possibly the best position for a graduate student. I acknowledge that and I accept it. But I do not accept the way that this system works. And I’m going to get my goddamn PhD because I’ve worked hard for it, dammit. But after that I’m getting the hell out of here before I get sucked into this system too, and continue the cycle of abuse, where I’m in turn given full power over graduate students who are not in a position to challenge me or to say no. I’m not so optimistic to think that I can be the one to change the way that U.S. academia works, and, at least personally, I feel like I can work better when I’m out of it.

hustlerose:

here’s a new ideological movement for you: internet iconoclasm

• stop putting random internet people on pedestals because they’re funny or quirky or for any reason at all actually
  
• self examine and self criticize: are you putting too much stock in parasocial internet relationships? are you being mindful of the humanity of others?
  
• never lay down your pride to defend someone you’ve never even talked to
• remember that the person and the persona can be very different
  
• if an online celebrity or influencer deserves to be torn down, then let them be torn down.
  

(via tomatomagica)

sovietpostcards:

Decorating a shop window (1967)

knightingaleforce:

emmeryn

fer8girl:

goddamnshinyrock:

v-diggety:

did U GUYS KNOW, that the way stores get the balloons off of the ceiling is with ANOTHER balloon, w tape on the top??? and they just dont cut the string so it’s like super long and u gotta aim it right n reel it in. i just found that out today when i DID IT and it’s been the best working day of my life i had a blast blowing up balloons and fetching some off the ceiling. i had so much power? and NO ONE ELSE in my department likes that job so now it’s MY job when need be

omg so I work at a museum and one of our buildings has a) very high ceilings and b) a bizarrely sensitive alarm system that will go off if anything touches the ceiling. Because of this, helium balloons are considered public enemy #1 and are strictly forbidden from entering the museum. But just in case an illicit balloon is successfully smuggled in, the museum has acquired a fucking b.b. gun for the express purpose of shooting down rogue balloons.

lawful good vs chaotic good

(via myles-gone)

oldchildrensbooks:

The Fairy Tales of Christian Hans Andersen

Philadelphia

J. B. Lippincott Company

Artist : Helen Stratton

lvl-5-kobold:

i just had the funniest experience in vr chat, i joined a random server and the one i joined had Japanese people so i waddled around in my goofy club penguin avatar that i have saved, after a while a guy walks up to me and clones my avatar so were both penguins then another guy shows up and clone my avatar

now keep in mind there only speaking Japanese i don’t know what they are saying, then another guy joins in, so i got a group of three penguin friends

we just waddle around and goof about, the one of them tries to talk to me, but not only do i not have a mic i also don’t speak Japanese, they figure out i don’t speak Japanese and start listing various places, they get the part of being European right, and after listing a lot of places they ask if im from the UK and when i nod they all just start cheering. after hanging out for a while one of them gets real close to me and whispers…

“penguin brothers forever”

(via rydiabun)

barrenwonderland:

“this doesn’t concern you Robert please close the door”

(via alyosha-karamazov)

photinus:

I’m going to redesign these Plague guys a little here and there, since they’re relaxing to do. Here’s a retake on the ship in the bottle plague; old one is to the left, and the new one is to the right.

photinus:

Commission chibis from this batch! :^) More to come soon.