No Resolution

I just unclenched my jaw for the first time in about three weeks.  As is usually the case, UNO had been failing to pay me.  This time around, they were paying me for half the work I'm doing, which is better than their usual approach: not paying me at all.  I wasn't starving, I had loan money and savings put away that would prevent starvation, but I was agitated.  Not getting paid is so galling to me that I spent these weeks in a constant state of indignation.  How dare they not pay me (or anyone) for the work we do?  How do you get away with bureaucratic screw up after screw up so that employees aren't paid for seven weeks?

This is why people need to hit the lotto.  All this hustling to make a living is for suckers.  Or maybe I just need a new hustle.  Academia is for suckers.  I've been saying that for a while and not doing anything to get off a path where all I'll be qualified to do is teach in universities that are not hiring.  What will I do in a couple of years when I have this degree that I've struggled and sweated over and I'm working at the Whole Foods?  Will that bother me?  Will I feel compelled to join the PhDed masses on the global job-hunt circuit?  Hitting the lotto is the only sane option.

I should have gone to law school.  Were I to do so, there would have been specific options.  I would have finished school and started working for one of the overburdened underfunded capital defense entities in Louisiana.  What's the academic equivalent of that?  It's the job no lawyer in her right mind wants to do.  You never win, you never make money, you develop substance abuse problems that rival rock stars'.  Perfect!  Wait, the academic equivalent of that is trying to get jobs at defunded public universities.  Shit.  Oh well.  Back to the article I'm writing and probably not submitting because the argument has more holes than this blog post.  Deadline today!

 

Comments

[Carolina Gasolina]

they're not even hiring lawyers...

the only thing not for suckers these days are: big oil executive, bank executive, drug dealer, human trafficker, Tea Party candidate, mega-church evangelical preacher.

you need a career change! me, too!

but which one?? they all sound so good!

[Lauren Lastrapes]

I think we should be big oil executives. We'd be good at it. We already know how to repackage really bad things as being really good. Example: learning to do queda de rins. You'll be glad to know it!