Our survivor’s gilt. Our mediocrity’s guilt. Our shouldn’t-be-here guilt. Our here-by-mistake guilt. Our shouldn’t-be-here guilt. Our here-by-mistake guilt. Our usurped-better-people guilt. Our here-as-a-joke (as Zevi’s joke) guilt. Our should-have-been-drowned-like- kittens guilt. Our lives-predicated-on-a-lie guilt.
The unis lie! The unis pretence that it’s a uni. Which is can’t really be. Because it gave us scholarships. Gave us PhDs. Gave us jobs.
Our presence here is a lie. How can it be otherwise?
Why would the uni accept the guilt? Why won’t the uni sack us? Why won’t the uni kick us out? Retrospectively! Memory-hole our publications. Unteach our teaching. Unmark our marking. Fail all our students. Clear out our offices. Erase all our computer files. Strip us of our PhDs. Of our jobs. Make us pay back our scholarships …
A great purge. As if we’d never been there. Our names erased from the door. Our email addresses deleted. Our filing cabinets emptied. Our pot plants binned. The art on our office walls, thrown out. Our desk-drawers, emptied. and our publications, memory-holed. Disappeared from the archives. Progressively erased.
Part of the reason we hate the uni so much is because it’s tolerated us. Because that means it has no standards. That it’s utterly collapsed. That nothing about it means anything.
The great mistake of hiring us. Correct it at once! Disallow it! Kick us out!
We’re still here – isn’t that the horror? We’re actually having meetings. We actually have offices. Out smartcards work – we can actually enter the building. How is that allowed?
We actually have jobs. We’re in charge of educating young minds. Stop us! Rugby tackle us! Wrestle us to the ground! Make this world mean something!
You made us believe we were university lecturers. You let us play-pretend. It was like take-your-child-to-work day. To let them see what the grown ups are going.
Work in Progress 