http://www.elifbatuman.net/2008/07/27/whats-wrong-with-academia/ Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories." Mario Vargas Llosa Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:08:38 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8 hourly 1 http://www.elifbatuman.net/2008/07/27/whats-wrong-with-academia/comment-page-1/#comment-726 Ann Gelder Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:56:08 +0000 http://www.elifbatuman.net/2008/07/27/whats-wrong-with-academia/#comment-726 Elif, this post is hilarious. There is something both brilliant and distinctively academic about the practice of selling you your own work, for a bargain price. Also, ProQuest seems to have found a way to wedge itself into a certain ambivalence that some of us have about our dissertations. What is it, exactly? A process to be completed or an actual thing? If the latter, do I want the thing in my house? Freud's fort-da game comes to mind, although I suspect I'm badly misusing that analogy. When I quit the academy--only to slink back years later--I didn't think I would have any need for my dissertation. So the only "copy" I had of it was on a Macintosh floppy disk. Then, upon the aforementioned slinking, I decided I should have a copy, the disk being both unreadable and lost. I ordered a copy from that place in Ann Arbor, and it arrived, a pile of loose pages, in a US Post Office envelope. It remained there unopened until I lost it again. Elif, this post is hilarious. There is something both brilliant and distinctively academic about the practice of selling you your own work, for a bargain price. Also, ProQuest seems to have found a way to wedge itself into a certain ambivalence that some of us have about our dissertations. What is it, exactly? A process to be completed or an actual thing? If the latter, do I want the thing in my house? Freud’s fort-da game comes to mind, although I suspect I’m badly misusing that analogy. When I quit the academy–only to slink back years later–I didn’t think I would have any need for my dissertation. So the only “copy” I had of it was on a Macintosh floppy disk. Then, upon the aforementioned slinking, I decided I should have a copy, the disk being both unreadable and lost. I ordered a copy from that place in Ann Arbor, and it arrived, a pile of loose pages, in a US Post Office envelope. It remained there unopened until I lost it again.

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