(((((( To be honest, I kinda-sorta-little feel the same way about Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" as the reviewer...)))))
Sorry. Best. Hemingway. Novel. Ever. I would have loved to have been an expat, in Paris, with a lot of dinner and drinking. Hemingway, in A Moveable Feast, also said that one shouldn't look like one is making an effort to be a journalist. Not the exact quote, but if you replace "journalist" with "academic," it's still good.
Besides, it wasn't just dinner and drinking. It was dinner, drinking, fishing, bullfights, and impotence. What's not to love?
Now, if we want to talk about what a hack Faulkner was....
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/37422.
Is the OP really serious in his/her complaint? It sounds like the words of a frustrated teacher, except an order of two of magnitude more angry and bitter. Which is why we have these fora. But, really, if it sucks this bad, why not quit? It's not the same everywhere. Yes, assessment of teaching generally sucks (ya know, enough EdD's in a room with enough typewriters and scantrons....) but there are other ways to demonstrate performance, enhance student outcomes, etc.
And I say all this with full knowledge that (1) "student outcomes" is edujargon whose "coiner" should be punished, and (2) I am a pretty mediocre teacher. Yet I am getting better, and having more fun with it. It just takes time, I think.
Sorry, thread hijacking
I didn't like The Sun Also Rises mostly because of that expat fantasy; I did the expat in Europe thing and was EXTREMELY crestfallen to find that I wasn't spending my time languishing in cafes and talking to brilliant eccentrics. Instead, I was getting aggressive nationalists demanding why I voted for Bush (I didn't) in broken English.
Okay, that has absolutely nothing to do with Hemmingway. But The Old Man and the Sea will remain my favorite book of all time.
