Full of vexation come I, with complaint against my department, called English

This morning I do not have the strength to be angry, but rather I'm in that space that exhaustion and frustration are no longer even possible; only deep sighs and the feeling of wanting to shut down or run away.  That isn't a boo-hoo me moment, either.  I'm not holding a pity party, but I am just plain tired.  And still sick, which far more likely exacerbates the situation than anything else.

The English Department at DU - and in my use of proper name here I mean the royal English Department, the powers-that-be, and not those whom I love and hold dear (these folks know full well who they are) - is a ridiculous institution that has lost sight of its goal in higher education.  I know I have lamented this before, but I am positively stunned at how little a private school (and private school priced) education earns one these days.  For at least a decade, I have heard my beloved Metro dismissed and belittled with vituperative commentary about its open-enrollment status and lack of exclusionary politics.  Yes, Metro is open-enrollment but that does not mean just anyone can walk in off the street; it does mean, however, that people who need a second chance, or work full time, or want to better their lives or their minds, or need a first chance that no one else would give them (e.g., kids who maybe didn't live up to their potential in high school, had social or emotional issues, learning disabilities, ESL, etc.), can have a place and chance to shine despite those factors.  Experience tells me that for the most part, students at Metro are far more ambitious, dedicated, and appreciative of the opportunity they've been offered than the kids at DU are.  This isn't to say I don't like my DU students because I do, but the general environment of DU on the whole is affluent and apathetic.  The students at Metro who stick with people like me work ten times harder to reach the same goal and then have to hear how Metro isn't as rock star as DU.  In short, fuck that.  

In the same vein, then, I can't help but stand incredulous at the intensified version of this at the graduate level.  Metro, of course, does not have a graduate program, but if it did, I would choose it over this group of pretentious people any day.  Even UCD in its petty pace from day to day was better than this.  There are 11 people in my current class at the Ph.D. level, and at least half of them, I think, are creative writers.  This department, therefore, is distinctly divided among the faculty in key ways: creative writers vs. literary studies people (despite the fact that we're basically all the same - writers read and readers write), rhetoric vs. non-rhetoric, old school vs. new school, and these divisions don't even account for the bloated egos and leftover feminist angst that insidiously pervades this small department.  One can feel it in the air.

Laura, Andrew, and I have often marveled at why the stairs to the fourth floor in Sturm Hall always seem to take more energy than stairs anywhere else.  At Metro, my office is also on a fourth floor (technically fifth when I walk in on the garden level), and I can speed to the top like a freakin' gazelle, but in Sturm, it's a chore and I'm winded.  Andrew thinks it's because there is a lack of oxygen in the building, and I have often commented that it's because the gravitational pull of the earth is simply heavier under the building.  The answer was always there: oppression.  Oppression of the air in the building emanates from English, winds its way down the stairs, and the closer you get to it, the more tense you feel, the less air you can get, and that overwhelming sense you get when walking in a desecrated graveyard in Europe overwhelms you.