The Invisible Adjunct’s post from yesterday offers a delectable selection of possible academically-themed reality show concepts, including such gems as PhD Island: “Ten or so (somewhat attractive) men and women in their early twenties, maybe with a token older contestant, endure a numbingly drawn-out series of trials and humiliations. These include hostile dissertation-committee meetings, labyrinthine statistical methodologies, and ramen. Some contestants are eliminated along the way — we watch their tearful exits with the comforting knowledge that by the end of the show, it is the survivors who will envy the escapees…There will be romances and sexual liasons. Alliances, rivalries, sacrifices, even a betrayal or two — and we’ll see it all! In the end, the contestants who survive the early trials must compete with each other for the ultimate prize: a tenure-track assistant professorship at a pretty-good college in a not-bad city.”

Although it’s still only the first week of August, it’s also less than a month before fall classes start at NYU. I’m looking forward to it, despite the now-familiar ambivalence about finally graduating - part of me wishes I could just do the undergrad thing perpetually, because I’m fully aware that right now I’ve got it pretty easy. My Tuesday/Thursday schedule doesn’t involve arriving in Manhattan before 3pm (although I’ll probably hold office hours on one of those days, since my Mondays and Wednesdays are awful). Incidentally, and speaking of both the Invisible Adjunct and undergrad TAs, here’s an old post suggesting the practice is nothing more than exploitation. Of course, that’s in the case of unpaid undergrads - of which group I’m luckily not a member.