Thursday, July 27, 2006

Life outside the bug jar

What to do, if you're a mature academic who honestly loves what he/she does, but realizes he/she has overstudied the wriggling bug in the jar, to death, studied maybe, real exotic bugs, malcontent writer revolutionaries, amino acids, history changing Napoleons, or whatever keeps the creative synapses firing, and no longer is he/she a bug in the jar him/herself blogging, painting, writing, creating, has in fact lost the will to wriggle, realizing that there is no Faustian bargains a non-wriggler can strike, to turn back the wriggling clock, to wriggle once more, perhaps it is time to donne the Hawaiian shirt and retire to the beach, or write a First Person confessional in the manner of Sartre's Nausea for the Chronicle of Higher Education, it only takes a few seconds with Little Professor's handy little multiple choice cheatsheet, that makes essay writing as easy as painting by numbers: "How to Write a CoHE "First Person" Essay: A Handy Multiple-Choice Guide"

[P.S. this dissection of lab life is interesting also]