- by Tara Maya
The Grad Student and the Fairy
A parable with Amazon Associate links. 😉
One evening a grad student working on her Master’s degree was studying alone in the library, nodding off over an impenetrable tome of postmodernist literary theory, probably something by Butler
He searched the stacks with increasing alarm as the tiny plea grew more desperate, then sputtered into a scream of pain.
At last he saw it…a big, ugly rat, dragging a little pixie girl by the ankle. The rat was as fat as the hardcover edition of Of Grammatology
The grad student, quick of wit, grabbed Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach
“Thank you, thank you!” she cried. She fluttered in the air and alighted upon The Judgment of Paris
The grad student thought long and hard. He was pretty tempted to go for sexy. But he was, after all, an academic.
“Please make me the wisest man on Earth,” he asked the fairy.
She aimed her magic wand. Light burst everywhere and he had to close his eyes.
When he opened them, all which had been obscure to him before, he now saw clearly, without illusion and without bias.
“Damn,” he said. “So I should I have gone for the money.”
* * *
🙂
In other words…I’ll be busy with grad school this week, so I probably won’t have much time to blog. Unless I choose to write blog posts to procrastinate doing my schoolwork. Like this post, for example.
Meanwhile, if you have a self-publishing emergency, try dialing this operator. When she asks you, “Which do you want more, sir? The prestige or the money?” just remember the Parable of the Grad Student and the Fairy.
