Continuing Education, Or Beyond the Ph.D.
Samuel Pickering
I am the best unemployed teacher in the country. When I taught a course, Dartmouth rented the Knights of Columbus meeting hall. Students followed me like canine gentlemen followed Fifi in the spring—that is before the milk truck ran over her. I'm so nice I pour rose water on toads and sprinkle cologne on terrapins. I am the walking Sermon on the Mount. Not only that—I am almost normal. I help children cross streets and kiss old ladies. I am a latent athlete and watch Monday night football. Yet I'll never teach again. I'll remain unemployed because I refuse to endure any more interviews, I haven't been burned; I've been cindered. I haven't been whipped; I've been minced. This all started in 1970 when I was a fuzzy-cheeked graduate student at Princeton.
The first school that interviewed me was a small college in Ohio, In the beginning things went well. The school had obviously fallen on hard times, but aside from shuddering at the leafy campus, I was gracious and danced about exclaiming "everything's all right with the one horse shay." I first realized, however, that I was not for that bucolic place over cocktails. When I expressed reservations about a distinguished critic, a fat kook wrapped in beads pranced to his toes and waving a finger at my nose snapped "You, sir, are an ignoramus." Thinking that such familiarity must be an honored local custom, I responded in kind. After elevating my middle finger with solemn dignity, I informed the spangled sausage that if he did not sit down I would kick him in the bottom and he would suffer massive brain damage. After this sparkling exchange, conversation paused and a gaggle of faculty members rushed honking to the bar and dove deep seeking cool intoxication, By the end of the evening, the group resembled Episcopalians on a church picnic: all were possessed by spirits.
