My parents, as they get older.

I love talking with my parents as they get older, and I get older too.

The other week I was talking on the phone with my mom and I was bitching about my dissertation fellowship duties, since not only does the fellowship pay little, but it eats up your time by making you do all these sessions learning how to present your work to a general public.

“But that sounds helpful,” my mom was like.

“It is,” I was like, “But in terms of how that time could be spent, you could be writing up an article, which is relatively more important to get you a job nowadays.  It’s so weird, they expect everyone to get this grand podium from which you can speak to the world, and not only do a lot of their students not get that, but by making people train for that, you’re probably actually increasing the barriers to them getting any sort of worthwhile academic job in the first place.”

“Hmmm,” my mom was like, “Then I wonder why they do that.”

“Because the whole thing is a wet dream of tenured professors from a different generation,” I was like.  “’Look at us, we speak to the world, we train students who speak to the world,’ it’s all an ego and self-image thing, it’s just not lined up with reality, and because of that, they fuck their students over when they think they’re really helping them.”

When I dropped that line about the wet dream, my mom really laughed. 

I like being older, so I can relate to my parents like that.