Is it Still Schadenfreude If It Hurt Me Too?

Here's my old scrapbook of articles on the annual MLA convention (Modern Language Association, that is, supposedly the nation's largest convention, at 10,000 professors and grad students strong) and a few scared-straight articles on the market for humanities PhD's.

1. A classic MLA undercover with a focus on job seekers and plenty of boilerplate observations. A good warmup.

2. Here's one on the 2003 MLA convention from the Believer -- sharply observed, but suspiciously sympathetic.

3. Smug-on-Smug action. Some stylish potshots on the 2002 MLA convention from the NY Observer. Lead sentence: "The famous line about the MLA is that you’ve never seen a convention where people drink so much and fuck so little."

4. A Villiage Voice piece on grad student strikes from Anya Kamenetz, whose book "Generation Debt" vaporized her student loans along with her generational spokesperson privileges. Includes a nice tidbit from the pseudonymous Thomas H. Benton of Chronicle of Higher Ed fame: "Top undergraduates are arrogant; they lack perspective. They've been fawned over all their lives, and they think grad school is there to help them realize their potential, not to use them up and toss them out."