Associate Dean of Eureka Moments
I wish I was making up that title, but that is the advertisement for a new position at the University of Bristol. I can’t help but think of the job position as “Manager of Spontaneous Discovery.”
Perhaps T.S. Eliot will not be offended;
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellarShape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;This is the way the academy ends
This is the way the academy ends
This is the way the academic ends
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
[Image source: Wikimedia Commons.
Well someone has to oversee the Planing of the Sublime Moments and make sure the Zen Discovery is on schedule.
I also can’t get it out of my hazy memory that on the Benny Hill show “Bristol’s” was the most common euphemism for womens chesticular regions. So there is that.Report
on the Benny Hill show “Bristol’s” was the most common euphemism for womens chesticular regions
Well, that trivia makes this song either disturbing or intriguing, depending on how you read its chorus:
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Not sure if they are stomping Bristol’s, or being stomped by them. One sounds like an unpleasant form of an early mammogram, and the other sounds like an S&M play session.Report
And we wonder why tuition costs are out of control.Report
in the uk?Report
You know, anarchy? For the UK? It’s coming sometime? Maybe?
– Johnny Slightly-Past-The-Sell-By-DateReport
I kind of want that title….Report
FWIW, there are a lot of really, really successful for-profit companies that create similar types of positions with similar woo-woo sounding names. (Nike, Apple and Starbucks each come to mind; they’ve all been doing it for over a decade.) In fact — Super Bowl Bonus Fun Fact!! — the creation and the buy in of just such a position is largely what Pete Carroll and the players under him credit for their turnaround over these past couple of years.
Certainly, there are probably just as many if not more examples of companies that use that kind of verbiage to mask meaningless titles of positions that do nothing, and I have no idea if Bristol’s position is a useful one or not.
But such a position — both in name and in job description — is becoming more and more common with progressive for-profits.Report
Good point. Isn’t the much derided Shiggy called AOL’s “digital prophet?” I know Techevagelist is a position given to a lot of senior engineers who can talk in front of crowds.Report