Academic humor

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 23:57:56 -0500

If you can't be self-deprecating or at least have a good laugh at your own expense, then you probably shouldn't plan on becoming an academic. We have to put up with savage peer reviews, the tenure process (if we're lucky enough to get a tenure track job), lower-than-average salaries for people with terminal degrees, and much more. Fortunately, the bloggers on the Research, Academia, and Education blogroll have a good sense of humor.

The Little Professor explains the differences between English professors and cats. For example:

CATS: Insist on eating only one kind of food, at one particular hour of the day, at one specific location in the kitchen.

ENGLISH PROFESSORS: Insist on teaching only one section of Brit Lit II, at one particular hour of the day, at one specific location in the office building.

NOTES: Cats generally get their way in these matters.

ADVANTAGE: Cats.

StyleyGeek chooses her executioners, er, examiners. She outlines the necessary qualifications:

There are a lot of considerations when it comes to choosing examiners. For one thing, they can't be dead.

You might scoff, but that rules out a large number of people in my bibliography.

Miss Information, our favorite librarian, offers some friendly advice:

Itâ€™s a long walk from the front door to the reference desk. Miss Information suggests you use that time to think about what youâ€™re going to ask the librarian. Try to phrase your question in a way that wonâ€™t make the reference desk staff spew coffee out their noses. Earlier this week a woman declared â€œI want osteoporosis.â€

Last month, Limon de Campo procrastinated in the face of grading and considered outsourcing the work:

I'm pondering the possibility of paying the kid who mows our lawn to grade my papers. When we hired him, he said he would do other stuff too. He didn't specify what "other stuff" is, but I'm guessing that grading papers couldn't be entirely out of his ability. He seems to be a very bright twelve-year-old kid.

If you are still reading this, then you must be avoiding grading too. If you can think of other time-wasting strategies, let me know.

Share your academic funnies in the comments.

Leslie Madsen-Brooks, a recovering academic and an fledgling academic technologist, blogs at The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and Green West Magazine.

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Academic humor