Summer School

“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion”

-Democritus

You poor pale souls for whom summer is still a distant glimmer of hope on the horizon are no doubt dreaming of all the accouterments that accompany this ephemeral solar sojourn into our hemisphere. But we academics, having already thrown off the yoke of this most recent semester¹, find ourselves dreading summer’s odyssey of solitude and dusty computer screens, of arcane texts and arduous mental exercises. Having no other choice, we must take advantage of the dearth of sycophants² in the summer months to focus on the “publish or perish” aspect of our careers, a tortuous cerebral obstacle course of which you have no doubt at least heard. As a ratus juvinalus³ on the first rung of the academia treadmill, I have ample reason for feeling a modicum of panic when confronted with the evidence of my paltry publication record. To make matters worse, I have been informed (somewhat emphatically I might note) by various members of the tenure committee that under no circumstances are blog entries considered “academic” publications.

It is therefore with great reluctance that I have made the difficult decision to forego the start of the Portland Marathon Training Plan so that I might find time to pad my publication record. It is a small price to pay for brilliance, but a price to pay nonetheless.

This decision was made slightly less onerous by a recent rare-flash-of-brilliance realization⁴ that, perhaps, all my recent efforts at blog entries were not for naught after all. What if, I said to myself after three very dry academic-like martinis⁵, I rallied this ad hoc brain trust into a focus group and used it to review my work in a quasi-organized fashion? And what if I then called this “peer review?”

Before we proceed, we should clear up a critical issue upon which this entire house of cards rests. Inherent in the concept of “peer-review” is the term “peer,” which has a variety of connotations and whose meaning is occasionally muddied. As is typical during times of pedantic confusion, I turned to the parsed language of the law to clarify terminology. According to that most scholarly of web sites, definitionsuslegal.com, the term peers is defined as such: “…an impartial group of citizens from the judicial district (e.g. county) in which the defendant lives. However, jurors are not required to be ethnically, educationally, economically or sexually the same as the defendant…”

I therefore put forth to you this question: Would you not be eligible to be selected as a jury of my peers if so approached by a District Attorney and/or his/her practicably designated staff?⁶ Exactly! What tenure review board could possibly find fault with that argument? Especially if I hire a more competent attorney this year?

Now that we have that settled, I’d like to present to you the first portion of a book that I’ve been working on for three arduous, forebrain crushing days. Like most sane authors, I’ve begun where one should begin, with the front and back cover, and am now working on the first chapter. I’m not quite certain how the book will end, as I seem to be caught in a negative feedback loop of some sort, but, let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?  

Front Cover

Back Cover

Stay tuned for Chapter 1, which I will finish as soon as I can figure out how to get an internet connection at the beach.

¹Yeah baby! As of May 18th!

²See definition of “college administrators”

³Occasionally the Old English title of “Assistant Professor” is used

⁴Second flash of brilliance in 6 months! I am on a roll…

⁵1.5 oz gin, 0.25 oz vermouth, 1.0 olives

⁶Assuming you would not use one of any myriad of excuses to get out of said jury duty, of course.

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