5/12/2005

Spring break for the Phantom Professor

As I've said, history blogs by professors tend to run too much to topics about academic life and to political psychosis and to a great, unseemly smugness (Mark Grimsley excepted).

But there's nothing at all wrong with a blog specifically devoted to academic life, especially if it's written from that gutter inhabited by the underclass known as adjuncts.

This adjunct, the "Phantom Professor," was recently found out to be a blogger and fired by her institituion. (Grimsley, previously, had been urging colleagues to overcome their fear of being fired in connection with blogging!) This Phantom has an outsider's eye for the hilarious. Try her post, Campus Crime Alerts:
Last year a law school professor was charged with maliciously and intentionally running down pedestrians with an SUV. [...] Maintenance crews working in the basement of the music building found a fully operating methamphetamine lab in one of the practice rooms. [...] A professor in another department was discovered over the long Christmas break to be living in her office. ... Janitors reported her status as a squatter after noticing a large number of catfood cans and empty vodka bottles in the trashcan outside her office.

Here's another one, featuring "Things students have said in my office during one-on-one conferences":
"The third time I got a DWI, I realized I had a drinking problem." "The company offered me $30K -- and with what my father gives me that's only $60K a year. Who can live on that?" "I haven't been in your class for two weeks because my doctor diagnosed me with a disease... (dramatic pause)... acid reflux."
Good luck to the Phantom Professor in her new job search. Meanwhile, there is a scaffold being prepared for the day the English instructor "Professor Shade" is found out.