So I’m plodding across the freeway and thinking how much I hate wasting 90 minutes to two hours driving back and forth to the campus when it occurs to me that what I really hate is my job.
Oops! Say what? I hate my job? Come ON! Sure, the pay’s not equitable (my new opposite number is coming in at six figures on a 9-month contract, very annoying), but it’s still a decent living and it ain’t cleaning terlets or flipping burgers. The problem is, I am soooo flicking bored!
Writing the index for the current issue of the renaissance and medieval history annual meant having to read all that stuff AGAIN. Once was quite enough. Twice was more than enough. Three times is decidedly not a charm.While a couple of the essays are pretty interesting (relatively speaking), the archival study where the author notes every single sale of every tiny plot of land in the ninth-century Spanish March, with the name of each buyer and seller, was almost as mind-numbing as the excruciatingly detailed analytical comparison of Bromyard’s Tractatus iuris ciuilis et canonici ad moralem materiam applicati with his Summa praedicantium, a lively work when set next to the endless dissection of Milton’s educational theory and practice.
The index took all day Friday, all day Saturday, half of Sunday, and all of Monday and Tuesday to complete. By the time I sent it off to one of the RAs to be edited, at 4:30 Tuesday afternoon, I thought I was gunna die.