{"id":2411,"date":"2023-01-27T19:27:51","date_gmt":"2023-01-28T03:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/?p=2411"},"modified":"2023-01-27T20:46:52","modified_gmt":"2023-01-28T04:46:52","slug":"pre-planned-feelings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/2023\/01\/27\/pre-planned-feelings\/","title":{"rendered":"“Pre-Planned Feelings”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We have discussed our friend Clarissa<\/a>‘s opinions on American academia and other topics in the past. She is an Hispanic Studies professor at a midwestern public university whose blog is always vividly written (and is contentious by design, I would say). I asked her if we could quote a truly startling post from today<\/a> – in its dystopian entirety. Her title tops this post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Today we received a document that describes the new procedure for creating an academic budget. It\u2019s written in the most atrocious bureaucratese and lists 17 (seventeen) additional meetings on top of the ones in the already existing procedure. Every meeting is described not only in terms of the date, attendees and action items but also a list of feelings (yes, feelings) people should experience after each meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Example. \u201cFebruary 16, 2023. We leave the meeting with a sense of confidence in our capacity to improve the budget and a sense of excitement regarding the new strategic budgeting process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a separate column for these feelings. Every sentence in it starts with \u201cWe leave the meeting with a sense of.\u201d Please note that these meetings haven\u2019t happened yet. These are future meetings. But the feelings they are supposed to inspire have already been pre-planned. And put down in writing by people who lack any sense of humor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know everybody is already tired of me bringing up the USSR but I\u2019ll say it again. We weren\u2019t this stupid in the USSR. The pre-planned feelings worked only until Stalin\u2019s death. Once there were no mass executions, nobody took pre-planned feelings seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a long, very detailed document. 5 pages, single-spaced, 10 pt font. Somebody got paid actual money to write this unreadable, moronic garbage. It was approved by the administration. What is wrong with us that we let this happen?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Two addenda<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The \u201cpre-planned feelings\u201d document refers to people, and again, I quote, as \u201cfolks especially faculty.\u201d This \u201cfolks\u201d is so grating because it aims to create a folksy, conversational mood in a situation where the guiding idea of the project is to get rid of as many workers as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The concluding section titled \u201cOpportunities and Threats\u201d ends with the following statement: \u201cIdentify which departments have more faculty than can be justified.\u201d What\u2019s going to happen with these unjustified professors \u2013 or \u201cfolks\u201d \u2013 is never explained. …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here is the absolute pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance of the \u201cpre-canned feelings\u201d document:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

We must lay the groundwork for a deeper and wider change in culture\u2014one in which eventually all folks (faculty in particular) realize that their work in the classroom has some \u2018economic\u2019\/fiscal\/financial aspect\/consequence.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

After which \u201cwe will leave the meeting with a sense of\u201d bla-bla.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The textbook definition of neoliberalism, by the way, is \u201cmarkets in everything.\u201d What does that mean? See above for the perfect example.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have discussed our friend Clarissa‘s opinions on American academia and other topics in the past. She is an Hispanic Studies professor at a midwestern public university whose blog is always vividly written (and is contentious by design, I would … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[9,42,65],"class_list":["post-2411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roberts-posts","tag-academic-writing","tag-for-educators","tag-mental-hygiene"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2411"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2419,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions\/2419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}