In Which Underpants are Removed

This year, I narrowly escaped being kicked out of grad school--mainly due to my fondness for not doing any damn thing ever--and spent far too many hours under fluorescent lights at the library, finally doing some damn things.  I tell people that this was a very clarifying experience for me, but you will have to take a raincheck on learning just what exactly it clarified, because I'm not, in fact, all that clear about it just yet.  In any case, it did show me the importance of embracing humor.  Which is a nice way of saying "pointing and laughing at stuff."

For example, being an academic with a blog is very dangerous.  I mean, what the hell, grad student--I am now pretending to be scary and important people with tenure, who are interviewing me for a job with their department--if you are keeping a blog--this is said with as much disgust as possible--how can you possibly have the time to read every article available in your field, write deeply brilliant and impressive stuff that will incline someone, probably not us, but someone, to bestow a job upon you, and also attend conferences, schmooze, and shop the sales rack with the kind of assiduous care required to buy grownup clothing on a grad student budget?  Not to mention, if we read your blog and find you have ever said anything negative about anyone above you on the academic hierarchy--which is everyone, by the way, and yes, that includes undergrads--we will never never never hire you--not that we were going to anyway--because you are desperately unprofessional.  PS: this entire paragraph counts as negative, even though we are only hypothetical.  BZZZZT!  We sink your battleship.

Yet, here I am, brazenly blogging.  Well, clandestinely blogging.  It is kind of like going commando.  No one knows, but you know, and it is ever so satisfying in its potential-yet-never-to-be-realized danger of exposed buttocks.  It's like mooning academia, only with my pants on.  Tee hee, I have no undies on!  Metaphorically!

(Although considering how hot out it is, I am considering making that literally.)

(Not that I would ever overshare like that, gentle reader.)

OK, yes.  Yes, I would.  This is the kind of blog this is going to be.  So I extend the invite to you: come join me in a world where, rather than getting our knickers in a twist, we take them off, enjoy the breeze, and share a sly giggle.  Hee hee hee, if only they knew!