It's a bad sign when you fall asleep and then wake up with a splitting headache. Given the hour was too-early o' clock, I wasn't really thinking and didn't bother to take some Advil. It's now about 1 in the afternoon, and boy am I paying for it. Thankfully, Don had some Advil, which was promptly consumed. However, the dull throb has just began to subside.
With graduation looming on the horizon, and the daunting task of further education also near, I am finding myself in an awkward position. My desire to pursue higher education is frequently in conflict with my lack of desire to remain impoverished and formally schooled. The Crooked Timber made a worthwhile post titled "On not having a PhD" that is directly related to this. Unlike Britain, for the longest time, the academic process of the PhD has existed, and in order to instruct others in the field, you must achieve the highest level of academic certification possible. However, this system has one very large flaw: there are now too many PhDs out there, and there is a higher emphasis on the paper than there is on the learning. I was instructed by the dean of my college that they only look at candidates from some of the most prestigious [top 10%] universities for hiring into the department. There was no mention of accomplishments or their performance in a teaching environment, but instead the most fundamental piece is if you have the doctorate. Unfortunately, while this results in very knowledgeable faculty at the University, it also results in the same faculty who may not have the ability to instruct or teach. So then, at an institute that promotes higher learning, why is it that there is a higher emphasis on what was learned as opposed to the learning taking place. As a side-effect of this, there is immense pressure on anyone who wants to teach at the higher-education levels. Those of course, who already have bled for the doctorates would probably argue quite to the contrary.
If you need something to listen to while working (like me), you might be interested in http://radiovoxpopuli.org/: Weblog Radio. It spiders the world, it grabs the text, it turns it into speech, and it sends it out to the world. It truly is the people's radio. In listening for only the past 10 minutes, I have heard:
- Several opinions of Kerry and Bush
- Oregon and Gay Marriage
- Day to Day on goings
- Someone who is now single
- Someone who is new to weblogging
- A cosplayer
- How to know you are a Band Geek
- "this class sucks, this class sucks, jenson is an ass"
- The One Ring (Fox in Socks)
It's a never ending supply of the everyday entries! Calling it brilliant doesn't quite do it justice, it is better than that.
Oh, and Lord of the Rings Dr, Seuss is located here.
In response to "We all waste our time some way it seems":