Originally posted by Nynaeve506
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I felt the same way in a sense. My mom was a university professor, and I lived in a small campus town. Everyone had this sense about them that academia was where "it" was at, and that those not involved were provincial, or lacking, somehow. It took several years living away from that, and married to someone who had been the son of a tradesman, to change my mindset. I know it's not nearly the same as being military, but there were some parallels, I'm sure. For example, someone finishing a dissertation was afforded massive amounts of help by those in the department--meals brought in, children cared for when the occasion called for it, etc. There's an unspoken hierarchy amongst them--those that publish are more respected than those that don't, division and department heads are given the benefit of the doubt, and length of time on campus and number of committees chaired are key to respect. It's a very insular community.
And faculty and staff dependents don't, in general, associate much with each other.
I can totally see your arguments making a huge impact on Sam in her formative and then later years--especially the part bolded above. If I hadn't been the child of an English teacher--I thought that the Language arts were MOST important--then I would have found other fields--science, and business, for example--interesting, too. All of my siblings have at least a bachelor's degree in English. To say that a unique identity is lacking here, is profound and insightful.
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