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September 23, 2005

Oops.

So, it's been a few days since I last posted. Sorry about that.

It's like this. The lovely and talented Sster (she of Boomerific fame) sent me a lovely e-mail. She'd been reading Academic Coach and had decided that she wanted a writing buddy. (For more on writing buddies, see here.) Strangely enough, she chose me to be her writing buddy.

So, looking at the complete and utter lack of forward progress on my research since the semester started (I'm told that this is normal in the first month of one's first year teaching at a new school while on the tenure track), I accepted her kind offer.

And then promptly stopped writing anything.

We'll try to ease into this "writing every day" thing.

Or maybe we'll just chuck it all and go back to school. I hear there's a lovely MRS program at Yale...

(For those of you who are not readers of the New York Times, Louise Story wrote an article than ran on the front page of Tuesday's paper, entitled: "Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood." I'll leave the link, but be warned: it will cease functioning soon because the NYT is evil and hordes its data.)

Now, this article explains the radical shift happening on so many elite campuses these days:

At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken for granted that, just as they make up half the students at these institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis with their male classmates.

There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want.

Duhn-duhn-DUUUUUUHHHHHHNNNNNN!!!!!

The problem is, as Kevin Drum notes, "Not only was [Story's] piece weak and thinly documented, but the actual documentation she does provide indicates that there's no trend here at all."

For more fun with Story's "story," check out Jack Shafer at Slate, and David Goldenberg at Gelf Magazine, who not only demolishes Story, but provides the "survey" Story used.

But my favorite critique has to be from Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber, because it was Healy who put all the pieces together for me in one white-hot ball of raging gender/class fury.

And I saw, for the first time, the golden dream of having "fun" at a college like Yale, of doing whatever I wanted -- provided I stayed slim, tan, and toned, of course -- and of leaving school with my MRS degree. Summa cum laude if I manage to snare the only child of a Forbes 400 member.

Now, I'm not saying that the rich have no worries. That's just silly. But I'd be willing to try out the worries of the rich if I could trade them for the worries of the not-so-very-rich-at-all, which I have in spades at the moment.

Yes, and then I, too, could look down my rhinoplastied nose at everyone who wasn't doing exactly what I was doing. Because, you know, they'd all be wrong. Of course.

- * - * - * - * -

You know, on second thought, as the level of cynicism on the blog rises into the toxic zone... maybe it's better that I not write every day.

Or maybe I should simply resolve to end every post with something like this:

Posted by reparent at September 23, 2005 2:28 PM