Firemen, Policemen & Teachers

About once a week I go out to lunch from UIC. After one year, I believe I have a firm grasp on what are 'the best' restaurants for lunch. Here is my list:

• Carms - Italian grill, good place for a hot-dog
  
• Conte di Savoia - Italian grocery, great subs
  
• Manny's - cafeteria, pricey, but good corn beef
  
• Busy Burger - Cheap, quick, fresh and greasy.

These are the places I go to for lunch when left to my own devices. When dining with others I often go to Artopolis (in Greektown) or Yummy Thai. My own preferences lean more toward the above list, where every other time I am joined by a police officer or a fire fighter. I find this to be the most ringing endorsement an eatery can receive. Who is more local, and has a better network through which to evaluate a lunch spot, than CPD (or CFD)? One rarely sees police officers or firemen at Artopolis or Yummy Thai, which is popular with a number of my colleagues (these later two restaurants are more commonly frequented by lawyers and doctors).

I think that being a postdoc is kind of about deciding who you are. Am I a researcher first, or a teacher first? Do I identify more with the policemen, or the lawyers? On the one hand, teachers have historically been lumped with the other public servants (especially at the secondary level). At the university level, many of my colleagues seem to identify more with the city's cultural elite - the lawyers, doctors, day traders etc. Personally I much prefer a baseball game, hotdog and beer to a french restaurant and some Gilbert and Sullivan.

I have recently become acutely aware of an elitism that seems to pervade my current and former universities. Not only is it hip for academics to be culturally refined, but also to hate on people who are not. You can see this when professors and graduate students refer - with disdain - to their undergraduates' preferences for entertainment (football games for example). Also when my colleagues, or former fellow graduate students, disrespect my fiance for "only having her masters". This type of attitude is digusting, and makes me ashamed of to call my self a professor. Often at gatherings of mixed professionals I refer to myself as a teacher rather than a professor, because of the extra connotation.

I just finished reading Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope". He notes that the polarization of this country into red/blue states is so stark because politicians have focused so much on our differences rather than our similarities in their campaigns - driving the country apart. I think that academic elitism has a similar effect to drive a wedge between professors and students. Moreover, I think sometimes about the 'only a masters' sentiment while walking around Chicago and am appalled. What does this person think when walking by a panhandler?

This is not to say I don't like fancy restaurants, or my colleagues. Artopolis and Yummy Thai are delicious. Similarly I don't hate doctors or lawyers. What I don't like is the attitude. I think people get brainwashed in graduate school. Priorities get shifted, ideas of success redefined. Because we aspire to achieve our advisors positions, there is a tendency to try to emulate them outside of the classroom. I don't think that most professors are poor role models. I do think that believing one person's likes, dislikes and beliefs are the right ones is elitist and poisonouos. In fact, I have had enough talking about it.