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At softball the other night, a classmate asked what my plans were after grad school. I cannot answer this question to my own satisfaction, much less anyone else's. Then he asked the reasons for my great discomfort in the program. For the first time, I was able to answer that I resented the department for (not intentionally) deceiving me about whether they were going to hire a con law professor. The fuller explanation is that my trust was violated: the folks I turned to for guidance were the very ones who had given me the bad information.
Other folks appear to have been placed in a similar situation. Now they are scrambing to assemble committees out of the few remaining faculty with tenure in their field.
In happier news, I met last night last the willing and available members of my cohort for a drink. I think my other idea, a cohort listserv, went over slightly better: there were six of us present at Old Chicago, about a third of the original group. Others had family business to attend and Star Wars movies to see. Last night, I thought that would be the largest assembly of our group for some time, but I forgot that those who are staying will all be taking the professional development series together. They will see each other all next year, but last night was as big of a gathering of my cohort as I will see for some time.
I will miss them. But as I have said before, it is just a matter of time until we go our separate ways in any case. I hope that we manage to keep in touch with each other.
Malcolm Gladwell once did an article about the sociology of office space. In it, he described how different personality types play specific roles in the distribution of information. As anyone in our department will tell you, I am what is called in Siliconvalleyspeak a "prairie dog." Last night, one of my classmates mentioned that he did not know that I was leaving until he came across my blog. I suppose we know that others are talking about what they see in the blogosphere (that sometimes appears to be the whole idea), but I am vainly curious as to how this particular word got out.
Posted by Underblog at May 20, 2005 5:50 AM
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