I have found it amazing to see which photographs of mine people find interesting on flickr. I put up one photo I never printed or have shown, thinking it too boring, and it's a big hit. Of course, the photos I think are awesome can't get more than a glance. So weird.

I interviewed for a full-time job a few weeks ago, and they have recently started to check my references. This usually means you're 99% hired. This has brought on a wave of reflection and a bit of depression as I start to grapple with the idea of leaving teaching. Oh, I should mention, the job is as an academic and career advisor for a local First Nation. The job sounds really interesting. First and foremost, because I get to work for a native American nation. Second because I would get to help "disadvantaged people" get what they want or need out of a culture and system that still might be somewhat foreign to them. It involves making regular contact with high school and college students of the tribes, and occasionally driving out to the college to make a visit.

What causes me a bit of a downer is that it is just one more step away from being a college teacher. Hell, it doesn't even look likely I can get a job as a community college teacher, which, in my opinion, is fucking ridiculous. You what I find absolutely torpedo-fishing? The fact that the community college is so rigid on hiring faculty that have a masters in their content area, that someone who wasn't even allowed into a chemistry class under quantum chemistry as an undergraduate and got a B in it without ever showing up is somehow deemed incapable of teaching pre-calculus full-time. Let's get something straight about academic credentialing, people. And lets do some fricking basic logic.

Yes, I agree that an academic credential is a good indicator that someone has certain skills and knowledge. BUT the absence of an academic credential DOES NOT prove the opposite. This is called Denial of the Antecedent, and it is a Fallacy of Propositional Logic. And what I can't get is how people who teach college can't understand this. It is quite possible that someone without an academic credential is fully capable of the skills and has the knowledge to carry out the task. What is more infuriating is that one can PROOVE this by teaching the course, and nonetheless they will still want some fricking certificate of hoop-jumping. So here I am - a fricking Mensan who can pick up a math book and teach himself vector calculus - and I can't get a job teaching calculus full-time because I didn't spend $30,000 on a credential.

A mathematician without an understanding of basic logic? How unfortunate. I guess that credential isn't really worth what you thought it was, now was it?