What leaped out at me when I read this was this: "Most academics I know can rank-order everyone in the room at a professional conference with the speed and precision of a courtier at Versailles." What kind of an asshole does that? Then I thought back to my brief and utterly undistinguished days in grad school and remembered how one of he things that turned me off to that scene was being surrounded by so many basically smart, very well-trained mediocrities for whom any idea that had not been inculcated to them by an authority figure (i.e., someone who could their careers) was indistinguishable from a headache.
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