Why would I want to be that?

My PhD history program includes a one credit practicum in college teaching. The graduate director coordinates the class, but it functions as a parade of professors. Each has one class period (an hour in earth time but about 1 1/2 hours in professorial time) to discuss how they found themselves in the profession, their philosophy on teaching, and how they balance research with teaching. Relatively interesting stuff, because you are essentially getting the professional life story from each of these individuals.

Maybe in addition to "interesting" I should call this "stuff" they tell us demoralizing.

Today's professor has been teaching at the University at Albany, SUNY for 39 years-- he started in 1971 after grad school at Columbia (with some of America's leading historians at the time) and a two year fellowship in Rome. Sound impressive? He certainly thought it was.

He cemented the theme of the hour-and-then-some talk pretty early on. I wish I had kept a running total of the times I heard the words "idiots" and "mediocrity." He lamented undergraduates who know nothing--some of whom, he admitted, might even have potential, but unfortunately come from low-class backgrounds (not shitting you). Continuing on, he bemoaned scientists who are convinced that they seek ultimate truth and that their discoveries won't be reversed in a century, and then proceeded to tell us how he has, of course, succeeded in finding ultimate truths. His wafts of modesty came as he briefly referred to his former self as one of those "idiots," but carefully never left such a statement without returning to his older self's world-renowned expertise.

Probably the most insulting bit of the evening was his twenty minute tirade about the horrors of the SUNY system and the abysmal quality of students and teachers such mediocrity attracts. Need I remind you we are all first year graduate students at this very same school? I know it's not Harvard or Berkeley or even Wisconsin or Colorado, but it's an advanced degree. I'm not trying to be the world expert in my field--and even if I were, the place is probably already taken by a Columbia grad-- maybe someone who hates teaching undergraduates who grew up in steel towns.

If that's what being a professor is like, I like my place as an idiot very much, thank you.