Mental Health from Monty Python

Not a good day thus far.  I need a dose of perspective, so taking a Monty Python break.  I also would love it if I found Eric Idle living in my fridge.  (Much better than Zuul, anyways... :-D )

So, started talking to Navy recruiters today, which is I suppose a good thing.  It's a steady job with a paycheck and health insurance, anyways.

Luckily, this was seconds before I opened my work email and found another "I'm sorry, but you weren't selected for this tenure track position.  Keep trying, though!"  It was more polite than the last one, but it still took months to get an answer.

Where I work is theoretically offering me a full-time, permanent position, although not tenure track.  However, even tenure doesn't mean anything anymore; at National Louis where I just did an adjunct professor teaching gig they just dumped all their tenured faculty.  Why?  Well, why keep permanent employees around when there's so many itinerant PhDs available?

People at the university say when anyone complains about the situation: "Well, you didn't just get an education to get a job, did you?"

And I want to hit them and say "Well, I kinda assumed from everything you told me while going through that there would employment at the other end.  Silly me!"  Because at the end of my master's I was offered a job at Texaco that I wish I had taken rather than continuing for my PhD.

In a sense, it's okay and I don't feel so badly because there are so many good people in the same boat.  However, I don't want to do the pay-check-to-paycheck adjunct professor work forever.  I need some stability, especially because of more private factors in my life.

So!  More Monty Python, to keep me cheered up.

This one is great and applicable to nearly any online argument; in this case, I'm Eric Idle (although I don't doubt that the feeling is often mutual):

Another extremely theraputic Monty Python - "She's a Witch!"  This comes up everywhere, from death penalty arguments ("If Troy Davis weighs as much as a duck!") to political arguments ("What do you also burn?... Wood floats... therefore, if she weighs as much as a duck!!!") to, well, a variety of other things.  Also, I sometimes get the feeling that the people around me want to stick a parsnip on my nose:

Ah.  Feel much better.  I live among Les Shadoks.  It's cool; I will cope.  :-D