irrational academic neurosis #1

Music: Love Like Blood: Enslaved + Condemned (2000)

The longer I do this professor thing, the more I find myself offering advice to newer professor things, sometimes solicited, sometimes not solicited. In recent conversations with a number of first-year professors, I am reminded of what shall be known as "Irrational Academic Neurosis #1" (IAN 1): that what you have to say is obvious. Most of what I say on this blog, for example, occurs to me to be "obvious." But I say it anyway. Why? Because what I have to say is probably not obvious to everyone. Besides, even if what I say is obvious to everyone, some of those everyones experience pleasure when my and their obviousnesses converge.

There is nothing wrong with the covergeance of obviousnesses; we call it consensus.

In the academy, there seems to be constant pressure for "brilliance" and "novelty." This pressure is in part self-imposed. This pressure is in part commercially driven ("produce . . . or else!"). And I think this pressure is in part a structural determinant in the paradigm psyche of the academic: most of us were not the popular kids on the playground, and I daresay thrive on an underdog, "not good enough" mentality. We gotta grow out of this "not good enough" mentality folks--but keep that underdogness intact! We have to embrace our obviousness as potentially useful for someone!

This said: Matt Lauer is interviewing Debra Lafave on dateline tonight. I cannot wait to watch it so I can blog something obvious about teacher/student sex tomorrow!