When did Comp Rhet become mainstream?

[VirtualMessage]

If in any given employment situation the choice is between an adjunct making $3K a class with no contract, no benefits, no respect for research at all, no room for advancement and no hope, or a full-time, long-term, contracted lecturer making a living wage, earning benefits, and having the opportunity for promotion, which do you think is better? Making the perfect the enemy of the good does nobody any favors.

 

And I condescend to you because you have single-handedly hijacked this forum again and again, in a way that doesn't make it any easier for people like me to counsel others to consider a different path that grad school. I have been urging people here to consider forgoing grad school for years. I have been speaking out about the awful job market here for years. In my AFK life, I have been organizing and raising consciousness and fighting for better conditions with my fellow grad students for years. People like you do not help the situation at all. In fact, most people who hear your type of rhetoric become more emboldened to go to grad school and pursue their TT dreams, because you're so one-note, so didactic and patronizing, and so resistant to alternative opinions. You actually make the side minimizing the labor crisis appear more reasonable. Have you considered that?

 

Thank you, Lord Protector! I had not considered that prospective doctoral students are moved to enter a profession in shambles because they are trying to spite people on thegradcafe, but I would say your theory accords perfectly with your sense of self-importance. Keep up the good work. You would think a rhetorician could see that the call for "reasonableness"--i.e. resolving that NTT is the best that we can do-- has hijacked any effort to meaningfully challenge the erosion of TT employment, but then again, we are in the age of Obama when mealy-mouthed advocacy often equates with unashamed self-aggrandizement. Congrats again for that new job you keep mentioning. Is that tenure track? 

[ComeBackZinc]

You ignored the question, of course. By the way: I neither mentioned my job nor said that NTT is the best we can do.

[ProfLorax]

Since this thread is no longer a productive conversation among several members, I'm gonna lock it. VirtualMessage and ComeBackZinc, feel free to continue your discussion over PM.