Let’s call what we do WORK, and let’s stop wearing white monogrammed dinner jackets when we do it.
Once again: the problem I have with that sentence is that I never didn’t call it work or wear a white monogrammed dinner jacket to do “it.”
Writing is fun, publishing is easy, teaching is a pleasant social and artistic experience, and administration is creative.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a trick to these things or that I wouldn’t rather have gone to law school but here are the sentences against which I am in open rebellion:
1. Writing is an onerous, and also meaningless exercise you must undertake for form’s sake.
2. Publishing is almost impossible.
3. Teaching is dangerous since doing it responsibly can cost you your job.
4. Service and administrative experience prove that you have no intellect.
In this liberation front we say instead that writing is fun, publishing is easy, teaching is a pleasant social and artistic experience, and administration is creative.
We are saying these things with a bad situation, that we recognize as such. We recognize your bad situation as well.
I would rather organize than mourn and that is the difference between me and most academics I have met. That is why this is not and never has been an academic weblog.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Yes!
Everything you’ve been posting recently is so fantastic that I can’t stop posting it on my blog. 🙂
Amen. Although I will still avoid administration if I can.
Realize, though, that I am not joining the professor boy crowd who says what? this isn’t work … I enjoy it … or that it’s the best job in the world, or other Pollyannaish things like that that boys say.
Oh, no, I realize what you’re saying. It’s work. It is good, honorable, interesting, worthwhile hard work. And I have always liked your posts about work.
I’m in!