Things Academics Like

Here are some things academics (in the Humanities) like. I know because I am one.

1) NPR. Nuff said. Without academics and college towns where they live, there would be no NPR.

2) Being busy. Even if you're not busy on a particular day, it is bad form to say so.

3) The "book-length project." We are always at work on one, by definition. There is always a book waiting in the wings to be written. Even if there's not, we will say there is. Confessing to not being engaged in writing a book is like saying you're not busy.

4) Feeling superior to other people, especially students and people who don't listen to NPR. Face it, we are the best educated segment of society, by definition, but the least well remunerated in proportion to educational level.

5) Feeling at the same time guilty about privileges enjoyed and resentful about privileges not enjoyed. It's an oddly privileged life, since we are payed to think about and teach literature or music or art or philosophy. We can feel guitly about that, or about not being oppress't, while at the same time feeling we really should have more money and get to live where we want, not in some podunk midwestern college town with an NPR station.

6) NPR.

7) Hating Republicans. (No explanation needed.)

8) Tenure, unless we don't have it yet.

9) Ugliness. Ugly clothes, cars. Bad music on Garrison Keillor's show. The execrable prose in our own book length projects.

10) Complaining about things. Maybe that should be first on the list; it's inherent to the job.