These days, most faculty members are tired, sad and as anxious as our tired, sad students. We spend time doing things that aren’t what our advisers did, or what they trained us to do, or even really what we want to do.

We serve on too many committees, busy with work that’s unrewarded and mostly invisible, and we must explain to civilians that, no, we don’t have summers off—we just don’t get paid to do the research we have to produce to survive, even if no one ever reads it. Some of us juggle zillions of courses at multiple institutions and can barely afford dog food. Most people getting Ph.D.s these days can no longer expect to land a permanent job. And many of us who were lucky enough to get on that last gravy train to tenure are ready to hop off, if we could only think of something else

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