This is for Emily....

Over at It comes in pints?, they're having too much fun with the Demotivator make your own "motivational" poster tool.

Emily quoted a member of Pink Floyd who couldn't bear to eat pie with crust, and then finally came to accept the crust...and there's a deep philisophical truth in that, that sometimes life just gives you crust, and you have to accept that.

As for the "motivational poster" trend...well, it's something I hate with supernova power. With wonder-twin-activated-to-the-form-of-an-erupting-volcano power. Because to me, it's all that's wrong with how we do business these days...instead of having real loyalty or real mission or a real sense of accomplishment, instead, we get these crap posters telling us to "Achieve" or have "Compassion" or seek "Excellence."

And it's even crept into academia. No, the posters haven't shown up yet, and when they do, that'll be my cue to get out and find some other kind of livelihood (what, I don't know...). But we do have Mission Statements and Vision Statements and damned Five Year Goals and all that...and my contribution usually is, "What about: we teach. They learn. They graduate. They get jobs. So their Social Security dollars support us when we're too old to teach?" I usually wind up getting shot down in favor of some vague and syrupy statement including words like "strive" and "excellence" and "community spirit." But of course, we all know that the REAL goal is to do a good job get paid while still having enough free time that we don't feel like robots...which is partly why I hate these motivational-statement meetings; because they take away time I could spend either honing my teaching or research OR having a life. Maybe I'm a closet anarchist, but I just don't see the value of sitting around a room and trying to decide on what face we are going to present to the world...