Suboptimist

I Go to a Real School. Or Do I?

I got really sick last week, keeping me out of commission from Wednesday night until about Saturday afternoon. Now, after getting over whatever the hell got me last week, I am weakened and open to whatever is going around now. I predict a few weeks of low-level illness coming my way. So…yeah…I never got around to updating. In other news, feeling too poorly to put up with teaching my community education class, I sent out a mass email to the students saying not to come. The email was returned, so now my class probably thinks I am a bad teacher. Yeah, this week is starting on the right foot, alright.

In other news, the University of Utah has passed accreditation, which is a good thing, because it means that when I graduate, my diploma will be somewhat meaningful and appear marginally legitimate. I can only imagine how embarrassing it would be to the state of Utah if its flagship university failed to meet accreditation standards. I would never stop hearing about it from my elder sisters who attended the school to the south.

Of course, passing accreditation doesn’t come without strings attached. The school has 2 years to implement a number of changes recommended by the accreditation board, including the implementation of a formal policy for evaluating and hiring auxiliary faculty (faculty not in tenure-generating positions).

Wow. Imagine if the University of Utah would start hiring fantastic professors and offer them tenure. I am thinking of a particular Arabic and linguistics professor who is leaving as she was offered a real job at Georgetown. In fact, I am thinking about nearly the entire Middle Eastern language faculty at the U. The only language that will survive is Persian.

Perhaps a conditional accreditation will encourage the U to start putting students ahead of prestige.

Now, for a list of things that need to go:

· Underage college students who bitch about Utah’s alcohol laws. You’re under 21, so you can’t drink anywhere in the US. Shut up.

· People insisting they take me drinking on my 21^st birthday. I am still not interested.

· The Utah state legislature.