05 March 2008

caught red handed.

Shit. They are on to me again.

Stuff White People Like, #81: Graduate School

"Being in graduate school satisfies many white requirements for happiness. They can: believe they are helping the world, complain that the government/university doesn’t support them enough, claim they are poor, feel as though are getting smarter, act superior to other people, enjoy perpetual three day weekends, and sleep in every day of the week!"


This is my life.

Might I suggest some other requirements for happiness that it satisfies:
*opportunities to attend countless meetings that culminate in free lunch, cookies or coffee

*filling shelf after shelf with expensive paperbacks bearing provocative titles: "Whiteness of a Different Color" "The Way We Never Were" "Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptive Technology"

*ceding personal agency to people you barely know who will "help" you determine what you work on and how you do it, and the ultimate trajectory of your career, and therefore, your life

*feeling impressed because those people were on a British radio show or nominated for a Pulitzer (and subsequently impressing your colleagues with your superior knowledge of the faculty's resume data)

*spending any extra cash on alcohol, clothes and plane tickets in an endlessly hampered effort not to go crazy. (wait, what extra cash?)

*endlessly accusing your friends of being bourgeois or romanticizing the working class, preferably in the same breath

That's all I could muster. Are there any I forgot?

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