Here's to you, Professor Gradgrind

Over the past few days I have written five very good chapter abstracts. One to go (the one in which I bullshit most spectacularly--but I'm pushing myself to follow Gracious Mentor's model of considering the book proposal a "plausible fiction," which frees me from my compulsion to prove everything I'm saying with a jostle of footnotes). More importantly, especially in light of this eye-roll-inducing column in the Chronicle, I taught Thing 1 to ride a bike. Because training wheels are SO five years old. And because the job is, even on its very very best days, just a job. As it turns out--with apologies to all those serious researchers who supervised my graduate work--"family considerations were paramount after all."