Rat Race among Classicists

[Talmid]

I had a good boss who used to say, "If you win the rat race, you are still a rat!" Unfortunately "rat racers" are in every career field, and I suspect there is a higher concentration of them in academia because of the political atmosphere on university campuses.

When I served in the Air Force, they were despised and deemed as non-team players. We gave them the pejorative nickname of "careerists" -- because they sought to advance their own careers by trampling on others in the process. Whereas being a buddy in the military is essential for saving lives, the careerists or rat racers get promoted by snubbing everyone else.

That said, I wonder what your experiences have been dealing with rat racers in the Classics department (if you have any). Tell me you story. Is there a high concentration of them showing off how much they know, or how good they are at parsing verbs? Do your professors despise them? How do they manipulate others to their own advantage? Do their schemes work for matriculation into grad programs? Etc.

I hope this will generate some interesting and enlightening discussions. Thanks!

Edited May 10, 2012 by Talmid

[Frostfire]

I've really only had to deal with one who very clearly fell into this category. Of course, I'm in a Master's program rather than a PhD program, and I can't speak to the environment for the professors. That having been said, the student in question was rather obviously a douche in more than just the academic environment. Still, the insistence on "showing up" everybody around got old really fast, and I know that at least one of the professors appeared sympathetic, or at least amused, towards those delivering the occasional smackdown. Particularly if the smackdown in question was of the "I literally just looked this up last night for another class" variety.

In fairness to the guy in question, some people had no issues with him. Although even they fully admit that he was often full of unprocessed fertilizer. But other people actively disliked him, so I was certainly not alone in being annoyed by him. *shrug* But he still got into some PhD program somewhere, so ... I guess it worked for him?

On the other hand, classicists being necessarily elitist, there's far more ... hmm, not quite outright contempt, but certainly the likelihood of it, for those who rather obviously can't be bothered to "do the work" on a subject. Especially if they can't at least fake it well enough to get by in class.

It's hard to say how much the professors are aware of individual "rat racers" among the students. Certainly, they can tell when folk are coasting by in a class or discussion, but there IS a difference between the usual "lazy ass students" stuff and ass-hatery. And most students at least try to be on good behavior, ass-hat wise, in front of their professors. Of course, it may also depend on how competitive the department environment is too.

Of course, a few weeks back I had the guilty pleasure of hearing two of my professors bagging on a very publicly well-known classicist, so my guess is that even when you make it to full, proper professor, there's still plenty of "rat race" to be had and bitched about!