I’m so exhausted from my full schedule at school and all the stuff with the kids that after breakfast at the diner on Saturday morning, I went back to bed for two hours. I never do that. Instead of prepping for classes in the afternoon, I watched four back-to-back episodes of Prison Break that I had rented from Blockbusters. I never do that. I have to get my act together tomorrow and make up for Saturday’s crash.
Slightly recovered, I had Palm Sunday dinner at my sister’s today. An alarming number of family members are teachers and professors, so we griped about grading papers over coffee and cheese cake. My sister in law mentioned an article in the Times about the pressure on young women to super achievers. Bitch PhD is talking about the article, too.
Are things out of hand? Where is all this pressure coming from? Are guys working this hard, too? Now, I really have to get back to my lecture on elections.
Apt. 11d 
You’ve made me feel less alone. I’ve often wondered if I’m the only one watching Prison Break.
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Oh, it’s excellent. I’m glad you like it, too, Clancy. How cute is Michael Scoffield? The best, more interesting, inter-racial cast on TV. When was the last time you saw a show with an Asian bad guy? I had missed the first few episodes, so I’m catching up.
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after getting up at 10 on Sunday, I fell asleep reading the paper on the sofa by noon.
that article about the high school girls is my daugher and her friends, midwest edition.
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Just wanted to let you know it’s here and in National Scold and in Althouse.
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Over at Unfogged, there was some attention paid to the notion that affirming competitiveness would be a better approach than just reducing pressure. That is, the double bind of pressure to compete along with the old idea that girls shouldn’t be competitive is behind much of the difficulty. So what we should discard is the “nice girls don’t compete” nostrum. It’s interesting enough to have provoked 360 comments over there…
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looks like a real infestation…
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Spam be gone. Thanks, Doug. First time to get to the blog in two days. 3-1/2 weeks to go until the last lecture. Not counting or anything.
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“How cute is Michael Scoffield?”
Blazing, smoking HOT.
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Some admissions officers of relatively selective schools have been confessing that their admissions cut-offs for boys are a LOT lower than their cut-offs for girls, because they want to avoid a 75% female class. There’s been spitting outrage from some, others carefully ignore it.
So my best guess is, guys are NOT working this hard, too.
You’ve just taught a year at a less-selective college – what is your current impression of boys vs girls on on the hard work front?
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