A discussion in the administration building, as imagined by faculty:
Senior administrator: It was nice visiting the moon.
Junior administrator: I imagine it was. I will need to wait for my guaranteed end-of-year bonus before I can go to the moon. I am bored of visiting New Zealand.
Senior: I was also bored of New Zealand at your age. Once I was so bored in New Zealand I tipped a bag of money into a volcano in New Zealand.
Junior: You must have been so bored. To get through the day I sometimes throw money out the window. But sometimes the wind isn’t fast enough, so it just accumulates on the ground. I don’t like seeing piles of money outside my windows because I see piles of money too much each day. I don’t know where to put this money.
Academic administrator: The faculty are upset again.
Junior: Shall I go and tear up the contracts?
Senior: Yes. They never complain about that so it must be fair. Also, go and get more adjuncts from the pit.
Academic: The pit is overflowing with adjuncts. How many shall I take?
Senior: Take ten. We can put them back in the pit if they are bad adjuncts.
Junior: Bad adjuncts? I thought all adjuncts had a natural respect of authority?
Senior: Yes, in general most do. But some enjoy reading too much and then tell me about their reading. It makes me puke.
Junior: Reading does not make money, but faculty seem to think so. I think it is because they are all Marxists.
Senior: I think so, too. Marxism has been proved wrong by facts. They should read the facts more.
Academic: Some of the adjuncts at the bottom of the pit are suffocating.
Senior: That it because they are at the bottom of the pit: they should try and climb to the top of the pit where there is air. That is the rational thing to do.
Junior: Faculty are so irrational. I think it is all the money they make for doing reading.
Senior: I hadn’t thought of that before. We should deny them tenure.
All: Yes. Tenure is a job for life and that is stupid because Marxism was proven wrong by facts.
***
A discussion in the faculty club lounge, as imagined by the administration:
Assistant professor: Don’t you just love sitting and reading?
Full Professor: Yes, I do. It is all I do in fact, which is nice.
Assistant: How many books have you read?
Full: All of them.
Assistant: I, too, have read all of the books.
Full: I enjoy leisurely re-reading all the books that have ever been written in my oak-panelled office while smoking my pipe.
Assistant: If we didn’t have the time to leisurely re-read all the books then we wouldn’t be able to notice subtle variations or find ambiguous points that we can debate the meaning of for the next tax-year.
Full: Exactly, that is why we need money: to write more books. Because we have read all the books that exist. We are providing the world with a very valuable service by writing more books.
Assistant: But we must not write too fast. If we did that then the books would be read too fast, and then there would still be nothing left to read.
Full: Yes.
Assistant: That is why we also invent new words and terms: to fill up the new books.
Full: Reusing old words is boring.
Adjunct professor: It is fun sitting at the big table.
Full: Another way of inventing new words is simply redefining old words. Did you know that ‘a public’ is a group of no more than 100 people gathered together to light fires?
Assistant: No, I did not.
Full: Yes, I defined the public as such in my latest academic paper. Writing that paper gave me a sense of well being and fulfillment and a deep satisfaction at having contributed to society’s knowledge.
Assistant: Yes, this job is satisfying but, more than that, seeing your name in an academic journal is why I started this job: publishing is what I live for.
Full: I would publish for free, but I also like my wage because I use it to buy more vintage oak panelling.
Assistant: I just oak-panelled my bathroom.
Full: I just oak-panelled my leg.
Adjunct: I am very young and just have fun being here. Being young I do not need to eat; the money the administration gives me allows me to buy extra popsicles for fun.
Full: Well, I best go home now. It is the end of the working day.
Assistant: Yes, 1 p.m. is time for tennis and golf.
Full: But first we should finish this vintage single-malt whiskey and think about the way things are.
Assistant: The way things are is complex and requires thought.
Adjunct: Thinking is fun. I think I can do it!
Other professors: Shh booboo. Sleepytime for you.
Adjunct: Yes, I must get a minimum of eleven hours sleep a day. Thankfully that is tolerated by the institution and society at large.
Thinking happening
Full: Well, that was a good session of thinking. Maybe we should write some of those thoughts down.
Assistant: Tomorrow. First we need to go and be respected members of our community that are influential and regarded as sexually attractive because we combine brains with a good dress sense because we only buy designer clothes because everyone buys our books.
Full: Yes. Also I need to oak-panel my windows.