Happy Woman Professor Day

The backstory: A few weeks ago Curly Haired Professor Debbie at blogos noticed that someone had accessed her blog by using the google search string <happy woman professor>. She wondered what would possess someone to do such a search. Others commented and speculated. I repeated the same google search, but used quotation marks around "happy woman professor" instead in order to isolate the exact phrase. Sadly, this was the message I got: "Your search for 'happy woman professor' returned no documents." I declared that this was depressing: are there no happy woman professors out there? Anne suggested that we must remedy this problem, to reassure folks that indeed happy woman professors do exist. Thus Happy Woman Professor Day was born, and February 14 was declared as the day on which happy woman professors would blog about what makes them so darn happy about being professors. And so I offer this, some of the reasons why I am a happy woman professor:

Getting paid to think up stuff. An office that overlooks trees which flower every April. The chance to dedicate a book to my parents. Sabbaticals. Looking at pictures counts as research. Students who tell me that what I teach changes them. Living in a college town. Grants. Scholarly writing=creative writing. Fellowships. Control over 70% of my workday. Junkets. Students are a captive audience and I'm a natural performer. Travel. Partner hire policies. Deducting newspaper subscriptions from my taxes. Book reviews=free books. Strangers e-mailing to ask for help with 7th grade history projects. Liberal dress code. P-H-D more lucrative than M-R-S. Being around smart people is the rule, not the exception. Working at home always an option. Committee work where you give money away to smart students. Conferences=old home week. Being called "professor." Ticking of tenure clock more exciting than that of biological clock. Even the most annoying students are hilarious. Regalia. The privilege of mentoring graduate students. "Free" computers, one for home and one for office. Colleagues I would choose as friends even if they weren't my colleagues. Nation-wide gossip network. No cubicles.

Check out other Happy Woman Professors: blogos (with lots of links); awysocki; blogher; see jane compute; necessary but sufficient; Peter's Cross Station; technorati tag;and the new google search string.

Comments

[Lu]

What - didn't being called "Tenured Doctor Professor Auntie Cara" make the list?

[Scott Springman]

You forgot..."Have a Men's NCAA Basketball team to cheer for at work." Maybe even, "Can watch March Madness and say it is related to work."

[dhawhee]

My favorite here is the first one-word sentence: Sabbatical.

[katka]

Regalia! And the book dedicated to my parents. Yeah.

[anne]

ah, yes, looking at pictures as research.

it still makes me giggle.