Quote of the day: on academic promotion

From Structured Procrastination:

[Upon] promotion to Full Professor... the golden era begins.... The various committees that agreed to tenure and promotion, probably grudgingly, have ceased to remember the details. People just know you are a Full Professor and have been for a while. By this time, with a little luck, your hair is grey and you look distinguished or at least old. At this point, everyone assumes that you must have done something quite important, although they can't quite remember what. Once you realize that you will never again have your work crawled over by various committees charged with evaluating your basic worth as a human being, it becomes more fun. Bliss.

The trick, then, is to get a job based on work you haven't done, and stick around until the details of what you did are forgotten. That's when the true rewards of academia set in.

[To the tune of Elton John, "Bennie and the Jets," from the album "Greatest Hits".]

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