shootings

Nobody ever thinks about tenure growing up. It's the kind of adult possibility that doesn't register on kids, and rarely registers on college students. If you end up in a social circle of people in which post-graduate education is common, eventually the reality of tenure becomes all too real for you.

A few years ago, I watched the drama of tenure unfold for a friend of mine, and it caused me to look back at my college professors in a different light, knowing every one of them who had gotten tenure went through this process. In academic circles, tenure is "go big or go home" on a grand scale. You've just finished undergraduate and post-graduate work. You've survived the thesis process, and you're out in the work force armed with your brain and enough college loans to float a Third World country or two. Your tasks are as simple to describe as they are difficult to execute:

Greetings from Huntsville, your latest source of American workplace shootings.

Pass the chicken.

There’s nothing quite like waking up one morning to learn that your adopted hometown is the news event of the day. “Four men dead in workplace shooting; police say that the gunman is holed up in some…” … unnamed apartment building that’s apparently over on my side of town.