Joy sucking bastards

[KStockHERO]

Does anyone else have joy-sucker colleagues?

I’m a social sciences academic, I understand that everything in life is socially, culturally and historically contextual. I understand that everything in life stems from wider structures which are inherently unjust and unequal. I get that we’re trained to make these contexts and injustices visible.

But, fuck me. Some of my colleagues are absolute bloody joy-suckers. They can’t enjoy anything without reflection, commentary and analysis.

Let me give you some examples:

This thread about Eurovision has been doing the rounds on social media today. Why can’t these people just enjoy the ridiculous spectacle without this kind of hand-wringing?

I spotted a lovely plant to buy when I was in Tesco with a colleague. I got excited because it was beautiful. Colleague got sad because of the carbon footprint to import it.

Another colleague was sharing holiday plans, specifically saying she was excited to get away after four years with no holiday, her daughter being critically ill for a time, and her husband having a cancer scare. Colleague (a different one from the plant one) offered a commentary about the terrible way her destination country had handled Covid.

There are so many more examples I could name – major ones and minor ones.

I get that all these points are valid, I really do. But sometimes you need to just say “Fuck it, that problem is bigger than me” and get on with doing what you love in life. Why are so so so many academics incapable?

IME they’re busy reflecting and handwringing about other people’s choices. But much less reflective about the environmental impacts of their latest publication. 🤣

This is typical of my department. I long ago decided that some people are happy being unhappy. They also would be happier if even more people were unhappy.

I give you another example of academic joy-sucking bastard-ery

Feeling pleased about your excellent teaching evaluations? Stop it because the odds are stacked against women.

Feeling pleased about your excellent teaching evaluations despite you being a woman? Well, stop that too because the labour you're being praised for as a woman is the wrong kind of labour.

Rookie mistake right there. I never look at my teaching evaluations.

That’s hilarious because that crowd definitely brags about their wonderful teaching and how much their students love them on a regular basis. Maybe Laura got some shit evaluations this year and felt bitter. Also if you dare moan about your (anonymous) students, this lot will come for you and tell you it’s all your fault because you’re a shite teacher. It’s really hard to keep up.

In my experience that crowd weren’t even good teachers.

What they often are is crowd pleasers who expect little and pass everyone. But, if you actually look at it in terms of whether the students learned what they needed to… nope. Absolutely awful.

That makes the students even more critical when you have them next and have (a) standards and (b) to teach things that are supposed to build on what they’ve already learned.

The QA processes in HE are pathetically not fit for purpose and do not identify or prevent this.

This post has resonated with me in a sort of oblique way. For the past several months I've been thinking a lot about how nihilistic academia tends to be. My DH, unusually for an academic, is extremely close to his family and his community of origin; we still live less than 3 miles from where he grew up; he gets a sense of purpose from playing a significant part in ensuring the wellbeing of his family (even though we don't have children of our own). I've seen that this sense of purpose helps him put his academic successes or failures, and also the wider world, in perspective.
What I see in most academics (and in myself too, although I am trying to change this) is a nihilistic attitude in which this sense of purpose is not gained from being part of a family or a community (in fact, being too attached to a community, eg. being patriotic, is often derided in academia). Instead, people focus on career and sometimes on political stuff. In the career sphere, we know how it is: one day you're doing great, the next day you've got two grant rejections in a row and you feel like crap; there's always a brighter new thing; after you die people might still read your articles for a while but eventually they'll dennounce you for being racist and transphobic or something. So it's difficult to get a sense of purpose there. Getting involved in politics I think could be a good way of gaining this sense of purpose if you are so inclined (I am not), but I don't see people e.g. becoming involved in local politics in deprived areas, or volunteering for charities, etc. - in most cases their political involvement seems to be limited to posting witty memes on social media or as you say @KStockHERO making wannabe witty comments in in-person conversations. So again difficult to gain a sense of purpose if you aren't making any tangible contribution to anyone's life.
Of course I know that family and community shouldn't be the be-all and end-all, and in fact focusing on those to the detriment of everything else can be very negative, especially for women; however, to me the problem is when you do away with these things (which let's face it still provide many people with a sense of purpose) and don't replace them with anything else.

I agree with you so much @aridapricot

The derision of academics who have strong family or community connections, who get their joy from completely non-work activities, and who don't necessarily care about 'legacy' is awful. I actually read it as being very classed as well - to me, close community, living close to family, seeing work as 'just a job' etc. are very working-class traits and values.

I'm talking as someone who grew up in a very working-class environment, family, school, community but now find myself in a very middle-class life - both me and DP are academics.

I have different issues with working class-family connections norms. I come from a working class background, but am not particularly close to my family, largely because of their disapproval of my life/career choices. Over the last few years, with elderly parents, I've been caught between family who think I don't do enough for them (nothing short of giving up my life and job, moving back to where I grew up and devoting my life to caring for them would be enough...) and academic colleagues some of whom don't understand why I'm doing so much for my family.