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Thanks for your comment. I left a good career to go back for the PhD and obtain my dream of becoming a professor. It was hard work but I completed the PhD and got a tenure track job on the first try.

Most people have no idea that professorships are national job searches. In some fields 200-400 people apply for every job. The competition can be intense and then when you get a job, your day doesn’t end at 5 o’clock or just because it’s a holiday or weekend. I’m not complaining; I choose the work, I’m just saying that most people have no idea what is involved in a PhD or becoming a professor.

I drive an SUV. I’m not a commie or socialist and work hard for myself and my students. I am the only conservative in my dept and I catch ‘good-natured’ (whose opinion?) flack about it all the time, but I try to fight the good fight. People have issues with black conservatives, as if I cause too much cognitive dissonance in their little minds. Unlike the libs, I try to keep politics out of my classroom - except when I’ve had to defend McCain as a disabled war hero, or the ‘evils’ of capitalism, or the fact that not everyone who is against same sex marriage or abortion is a knuckle-dragging moron.

I know FReepers like to make jibes at lawyers (used to be one), professors, school teachers, doctors, and just about anyone else in the professions, but it gets tiring sometimes.