Some months ago when Charles the Prince of Wales (then) succeeded Queen Elizabeth II in the throne, a friend wrote a SNS post about the ways in which royal titles are passed on and inherited in the line of succession in the royal family. The information was not particularly niche but still rarely understood. It was new to me, too. My focus here is not about the information but the last line to his post.
"That's it. Useless knowledge," he wrote in the end.
Immediately, I believed that I knew exactly that he was using the line, casual as it might have seemed, to harm himself by trashing his own specialty and profession. I know, because I have been doing the same to myself, too.
Around the time of his post, he was removed from a job, and his search for a tenured position in higher education hasn't been fruitful, just like most doctorates in the world now. I have been one of them, for more than ten years.
My signature for my email account consists of my part-time affiliations and academic title. What would a secondhand bookstore owner have anything to do with my professional title? (the image above) Anyways, I just let the signature show. They are not the things that I am proud of; instead, the part-time status has been to me a mark of failure and shame. I insist on keeping it there partly to identify my social relations but mostly to humiliate myself. Recipients of my email would probably pay little attention to what tails to an email, but I know. The signature stabs my pride over and over again whenever it appears, and I let it. Publicly ridiculing one's own profession is exactly the same approach I take by exposing my peripheral existence.
