happy woman professor day!

over yonder, dhawhee has started a wee tradition of devoting good old february 14th to thinking about why one (namely, woman professors) are so very happy about their jobs and why they love them, etc.  last year when i did it, someone who claims to know me and but who can't recognize a fucking joke if it stood up in their soup took some sniper shots at me because they read me as being, like full of myself or something.  (i'm not going to link to that little episode.)  well, this year, i'm going to say screw the dumbasses and let's have at it.  so here's what i like about being a woman professor:

having authority.  yes you have to listen to me, i'm your professor!  and guess what?  i'm the one who gets to grant extensions and cancel class!  but you're punished for turning in papers late and for absences!  ha!  so suck it!

experimenting with iconoclasm.  so what if i ate at outback steakhouse over the weekend?  i'm so sick of all this pressure to be cool.  dammit, i like kelly clarkson.  and you know what else?  i'm sick of barack obama's cheerful forthrightness.  and also?  i really like makeup and nail polish.  so suck it!

the kind of satisfaction that comes from colleagues finally seeing the errors of their ways, errors that i pointed out a long time ago.  haha!!

finally finding the right, and right-fitting bra.  never, ever, ever, ever underestimate the power of a really wonderful bra and the confidence it can give you (and therefore pedagogical effectiveness) in front of a room full of 20 year olds.

laying on the couch, blogging, knowing that my quarter is almost over and that i'm mostly caught up.

and oh, yeah, the part about actually getting paid to read, write and teach.  my goodness, but what luck that is, to have a creativity-based job with flexible hours and good benefits.  getting rewarded to follow one's curiosity and to learn stuff and make things?  actually makes all those dark-nights-of-the-soul and neuroses and setbacks and blows to the ego feel kind of worth it.

and let's not forget:

the physical pleasures that go along with having cultural capital.  knowing what scotches are good and enjoying art and movies and sushi and travelling and high thread-count sheets.  i mean, come on.