The Wonderful World of Academia

I had my first class yesterday and it was great.  While I was relieved to discover that I am not the oldest person in our program, or the only one with a grating American accent, I was less happy to discover that we have an interrupter in our class.  For those of you who are not part of the discipline of history, I’ll explain a bit about the annoyingness of some historians.  (Now I don’t mean to say that this can’t happen in other disciplines, but I think historians are the biggest offenders.)  We have a tendency to think we’re smarter than most other people and that, as a result, we are duty-bound to share our knowledge and thus make the world a better place.  That’s all fine and dandy when you’re the only historian around, but when you get a room full of us, it’s just out of control.  Everyone has to try to prove how much more they know than everyone else by interrupting the presenter with snarky history comments.  It’s annoying and I never do it, unless it’s absolutely necessary.  Hopefully, “the interrupter” will be held at bay in future discussions.  Nevertheless, I am enjoying being a part of academia once again.  Even our discussion yesterday about how and what to research for our theses blew any discussion I had with my students out of the water.  It makes me feel kind of cool to be walking around campus in England as a Master’s student.  I’m considering wearing a tweed blazer and smoking a pipe in an effort to complete the transformation from American teacher to British student.