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[anon]

Jesus, you people are ALL pathetic.  If your job puts you in a situation where you compare yourself to a battered wife or returning vet, look at alternate employment options in a new field.  How would you feel if a friend joined the military and attempted to "unload" on you about the trials of bootcamp and later combat. (And these are legitimate concerns!) I'm always impressed by how gracefully the friends of mine who are in the military handle their difficulties while attempting to keep the concerns of friends and family to a minimum, placing their situation in the most positive light possible. A whining 30 year old child seeking a vanity position in English Lit makes a joke out of him/herself by not only lacking the balls to either take the heat or get out, but also needing to whine constantly and compare themselves to those with real problems and concerns.

[job candidate]

Bottom line is that academics are extremely narcissistic.  And I'm an academic so I can say that.

Nowhere is this better evidenced than in the Chronicle Forums, where people whine about how their family doesn't "get" their profession, or that 18 year old students act like 18 year olds (to the Mighty Prof's terrible inconvenience), or that although I'm in a field where 60% of us won't get jobs, someone else  A) should be denied the job instead of me and B) should have told me that the job market was so tight before I went to graduate school, because there was simply no way *I* should have been expected to take charge of my own life and consider the odds.  (Or, if I did consider the odds and went for the PhD anyway, then someone should have nonetheless fixed it by now).

And so what if this columnist is at a Baptist College?  That doesn't entitle us to assume that he thinks all candidates are or should be married or have SO's (HE used the term "your spouse or significant other", which to the non-braindead is a larger concept than "spouse", so Ronald's "what are gays and lesbians supposed to do?" is completely irrelevant to the column.  Gays and lesbians, like heterosexuals, either have spouses or significant others, or they don't.  Next question).

And as "laughing" said, ALL OF/ EVERY ONE OF/ MOST OF... PLUS THE REST OF the columnist's references to sharing with the spouse/ SO refer to logistics and preparing for the move-- NOT/ NEVER/ NOT AT ALL/ NOT REMOTELY to the issue of who you should attack with your venting/ whining.  If you have a spouse/ SO, then you "need" (columnist's word) to keep that person up to date on your search.  If you have a "vent buddy" then you don't NEED to keep that person up to date... but you're free to do so.  The columnist has IN NO WAY/ NOT AT ALL/ NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT said otherwise.  So why read into it what doesn't have to be read into it?  Is it FUN to be thin-skinned and narcissistic?  I'd like to know.

You may find my post insulting, and maybe you should.  But anyone who finds the original article insulting is feeble-minded indeed.  "Oh my life is so bad... and the latest indignity is that someone had the nerve to write an article that doesn't affirm my personal situation.  He didn't specifically say that I can vent to a friend so he must think I can't.  Why oh why would someone do that?  Why does he hate me?  Or is he just an evil old patriarchal bastard who is trying to keep people like me marginalized?  Yes, that's why my life is so bad-- it's people like him!"

If you read an article on MSN.Com that says it's a good idea to save 10% of your income because of the wonders of compound interest, but you're a student and can't afford to, do you equally whine at the mean old bitty who didn't take your own specific case into account before writing her column?  I hope not-- it's still good advice.