Tiredth, a unit of tired...

I swear to fuck if I have to sit through one more completely useless and rottenly delivered motivational speech about working at Big Deal University, I'm going to scream. It's just a week of this new faculty orientation, but it could not have been worse. Seriously, the first people to speak quoted out of motivational books, which is fine, but everyone in the room has at least one advanced degree. Give us something a little more meaty than bumper sticker platitudes. I zoned out and heard almost nothing else for the rest of the morning.

I met a geneticist today. He was hired as a full professor and simply left after the first stunningly disappointing and Oprah-esque display of stupid. He looked at me and said, "I think you want to be here as much as I do." So, instead of doing the dopey "What's your dream" exercise, we talked about, well, stuff. He has just published a book that came out in the last few weeks, and we talked about writing about science, and he really wanted to know my opinion about why communicating science was so hard. I said I thought that a big part of it was with being prepared for the natural complexity. I suggested that a lot of people were not intrigued by it. He was doing research on the relationship between genes and environment and disease--really complex stuff. Very interesting. I may get his book, one day. 'Cause, hey, I met him. Support your local faculty, baby!

HJ