UCLA is (not really) hiring

My friend Diane Schirf sent me a job listing:

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA seeks applications for an Assistant Adjunct Professor on a without salary basis. Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.

Yes, it’s real. I’ve seen speculation that an insider — perhaps a UCLA researcher — may want to do some teaching and that fair-hiring practices require a job listing. Who knows. But I don’t doubt that UCLA will receive applications from outsiders — wishful thinkers who imagine that this position will afford a chance for future UCLA prospects.

As I thought about this job announcement, I was reminded that academia is indeed something of a cult. Cults, too, expect members to work with little or no compensation.

*

March 20: The job announcement has disappeared. (It’s still easy to find on Twitter.) The Facebook page for the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry now has a fogged-up, poorly written apology of sorts:

[Click for a larger apology.]

I can only conclude that someone already affiliated with UCLA is the intended candidate. I am imagining a dimly lit lab:

“You got a nice set-up here. A nice little grant. It’d be a shame to see anything happen to it. Now get in that classroom!”

Two more job listings
An extraordinary amount of work for $28,000 a year : “Our students tend to be poorly prepared”

At the MLA

“It was as if we had arrived after the fact — not in the midst of an event, but long after some catastrophe, the story of which we could tell only through fragmentary evidence”: in The Washington Post, Jacob Brogan writes about a visit to the Modern Language Association convention.

An excerpt that brought back memories:

Even in the good years, the convention was a bad place for graduate students searching for work. In a custom now officially discouraged by the association itself, interviews were traditionally conducted in hotel rooms, often with the interviewee sitting awkwardly on the bed as the tenured interviewers perched around them, a flock of judgmental ravens peering down from the eaves.

Even worse, perhaps: a hotel-room interview with just one interviewer.

I wrote out the story of my MLA job-seeking in this post: Fluke life.

Misheard

On the news tonight: “assured and unassured Americans.”

No, “insured and uninsured Americans.”

I’m insured. But it's difficult to feel assured about anything right now.

Related reading
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Cellar music

Vera Lytovchenko, violinist, plays for the dozen or so people in a bomb shelter in Kharkiv, Ukraine: “Ukraine’s ‘Cellar Violinist’ Plays On Amid Heaving Bombing” (Billboard ).

More videos at TikTok.

“Puffing defiance”

Monica Gall is back in Canada a a long sojourn abroad.

Robertson Davies, A Mixture of Frailties (1958).

A Mixture of Frailties is the third novel of Davies’s Salterton Trilogy.

This post is for my blogging friend Jim Lowe.

Related reading
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Schwarzenegger speaks to Russians

You may have already seen the video. I didn’t know until I read a New York Times article this morning that when the video was posted, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Twitter account was one of twenty-two accounts that Vladimir Putin followed.

Schwarzenegger’s talk is a model of ethos, logos, and pathos.

Recently updated

Run DST Experts come out in favor of year-round Standard Time.

Gall and grammar

Mrs. Alfred Gall, Ma Gall, has ideas about grammar:

Robertson Davies, A Mixture of Frailties (1958).

A Mixture of Frailties is the third novel of Davies’s Salterton Trilogy.

Related reading
All OCA Robertson Davies posts (Pinboard)

On Saint Patrick’s Day

[Hi and Lois, March 17, 2022.]

Attaway, Hi-Lo Amalgamated: have Thirsty Thurston, the strip’s resident alcoholic, dress as a leprechaun and offer greetings.

This panel also loses points for Hi’s announcement. Yes, Hi, we see your tie.

Today’s strip worsens in its second panel: “You’re not even Irish,” says Thirsty. (As if Thurston is a recognizably Irish surname?) And Hi replies, “I can still be lucky, can’t I?” What a wag. But don’t you mean “get lucky,” Hi? Uh, no — it’s a family strip. There’s room for alcoholism, but there’ll be no fooling around.

If I may take a place on the Hi-Lo assembly line for a minute, I’d like to offer an idea. First panel: Trixie stares with a puzzled but happy expression. Second panel: we see that she’s staring at a green sunbeam. (Pantone 347 U.) And she thinks, “On Saint Patrick’s Day even sunbeam’s wearing green!” Aww.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

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[The name Leddy is Irish.]

The Braingame

Norm and Dutchy (Yolande) Yarrow are at Waverly University; he in the chaplain’s department, she is an assistant director of recreation. They are giving a party. There has already been one party game, with people tied back to back having to get free. That was Dutchy’s idea. Now another game, suggested by the secretary to the registrar.

Robertson Davies, Leaven of Malice (1954).

Good grief. It reminds me of a game of charades from my grad student days. Book title, two words, first word, first syllable, the gesture of pouring. I got it right away: Philosophical Hermeneutics, by Hans-Georg Gadamer. We’d all read it in a seminar. Good grief.

Leaven of Malice is the second novel of Davies’s Salterton Trilogy.

Related reading
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