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‘I’ve spent my whole adult life in rarefied academic circles, where everyone has a good income and excellent working conditions. Yet I know many people in that world who are seething with resentment because they aren’t at Harvard or Yale, or who actually are at Harvard or Yale but are seething all the same because they haven’t received a Nobel Prize.’

SING IT.

Welcome to my world
Won’t you come on in?
Ivies and Nobels
Are there for me to win

Step into my heart
Leave your cares behind
Welcome to my world
Built with me in mind

Knock and all doors will open
Seek and I will find
Ask and I’ll be given
The key to this world of mine

*********************

Seething all the same
A hedgie lives next door
See how they rig the game
He makes ten million more

Krugman’s in the Times
Every week or two
I am far behind
In the Chronicle‘s The View

Ivy? Sure. Cornell.
But it’s rated last.
Life’s a living hell
My rage is unsurpassed

**************************

Related:

[T]he eliter-than-elite kids [at Ivy League schools] themselves help create a provisional inside-the-Ivy hierarchy that lets all the other privileged kids, the ones who are merely upper-upper middle class, feel the spur of resentment and ambition that keeps us running, keeps us competing, keeps us sharp and awful in all the ways that meritocracy requires.

Margaret Soltan, October 2, 2018 7:55AM
Posted in: professors

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3 Responses to “‘I’ve spent my whole adult life in rarefied academic circles, where everyone has a good income and excellent working conditions. Yet I know many people in that world who are seething with resentment because they aren’t at Harvard or Yale, or who actually are at Harvard or Yale but are seething all the same because they haven’t received a Nobel Prize.’”

  1. dmf Says:
    October 2nd, 2018 at 10:52PM

    This paper considers the degree to which events that intensify partying increase sexual assault. Estimates are based on panel data from campus and local law-enforcement agencies and an identification strategy that exploits plausibly random variation in the timing of Division 1 football games. The estimates indicate that these events increase daily reports of rape with 17-24 year old victims by 28 percent.
    http://www.nber.org/papers/w21828

  2. theprofessor Says:
    October 4th, 2018 at 10:36AM

    Every time I start feeling really sorry for myself, I try to remember that 1) I DID sign that contract last spring and 2) compared to outdoors jobs I did in what felt like 150 degree heat and 140% humidity, or feeding Parts A and B into the production line to make Part E for endless hours, things are not so bad. One of my offspring is a genuine proletarian who gets to deal with balky machines, drug-addled co-workers, and crazy managers. At 2 AM.

  3. Margaret Soltan Says:
    October 4th, 2018 at 10:52AM

    tp: Yes. Normal people think this way. Krugman and Douthat are describing abnormals – but I understand perfectly well that without a class of constantly itchy status obsessives the American economy would lose a lot of the heat that makes life lovely for people like you and me. Three cheers for them.

    (PS: My favorite story along these lines: ‘When October, Nobel month, rolled around a few years after [Saul Bellow and Edward Shils] had become estranged, Shils warned [another University of Chicago] colleague: “Better watch out for Saul today; he’s in a bad mood. The Nobel Prize is being announced, and you can’t win twice.”)’

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