what we gain from our labors under the sun
I spent about one hour working on a response to the horrifying Sandusky scandal, which led me to an inevitable evaluation of American academia. I’ll paraphrase, cuz it’s gone:
I once thought of myself as a teacher. I’m a (bad) comedian now, working _horrible_ rooms in the Language and Literature Building at ASU.
In my first year of trying this out, in Texas, 2001, I had a dumb kid who was quarterback. He was lazy (which is what dumb means, after all). I failed him, of course, and, pretty quickly into the semester (my mistake). Upon failure (re: before the _big_ games), coach called me at home, “Don’t fail him,” he said. How did he get my home phone number? I wondered. I felt enough pressure not to fail him that I didn’t. I wouldn’t do that today, but the structure and attitude persists, ten years later, which informs my inclination to skip this joint.
