Anyone remember or care about the R51?

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Stone-cold truth. I tell every single one of my undergrads and early career grad students this when they tell me they are thinking of academia. "You do not do this to make money. You do not do this to get rich. You do not do this to become famous. You do this, because you are obsessed. Because you get up in the morning and have a drive to find the questions and the answers. Because you want to pass it on to the next generation. Because if you didn't do this you would feel like there is a hole in your soul. You do it because you are passionate. Because passion and hard work are the only things that will give you the drive to push through to succeed. If you don't have that? Do something else."

And while most liberal arts and academics in general isn't the career path it once was. You can succeed in that path. You just have to game the system. You have to play it like it is the most politic game of chess ever. You sister makes about $15/hour as an adjunct lecturer...I make $50/hour as a graduate student. The difference isn't just being in a STEM field relative to Liberal Arts (though that helps). It's having the fortune of being taught early on, to succeed you have to play the game at a high level. I'm at the #1 ranked program in my field. The year I was admitted to my PhD program, five other students were admitted, out of 600 applicants. We are literally the 1% that was accepted here. I beat people with Ivy League Educations and parents that are legacies in my field of study. People who have some of the highest awards and honors named after them. And I did it by being smart and working hard as fuck. And the result? Overnight, my chances of long-term academic success quadrupled. All because I played the game hard and I've continued to play it since I got here.

I empathize with your sister. And long-term I'd love see an academia that doesn't abuse adjuncts and most grad student and treat them like slaves. We're a long way from that happening. I know it sucks, but in your position, I'd encourage your sister to seek employment elsewhere. If the average homeprice in her area is 1.8 million, there must be an relatively elite private school that will pay her better than any university would as a lecturer.

This may help her and you with insight: http://www.chronicle.com/article/Why...o-Leave/233670 - http://theprofessorisin.com/its-ok-to-quit/

That is a really interesting suggestion. I'm not sure if there are any that accept non-chinese staff but I will look into that.

[Totem Polar]

My sister is a prof at a university and will probably die from stress or overwork or just plain old age before she gets tenure because none of the 70+ year old tenured english profs will leave, because they teach about forty minutes a year and collect six figure salaries. My sister teaches 5 classes a semester and her university has a 50 hours/week minimum expectation not including marking. Every semester, around mid-terms and finals, she looks like she's undergoing chemo, and in the off-season she basically self-medicates with anything she can find. She makes around $55k/year in a city where the average house price is $1.8m, and isn't sure how she's going to make it through the end of the year and I check on her regularly to make sure she hasn't had a nervous breakdown. That's what 10 years of post-secondary training got her. Probably works out to around $15/h.


...I love education and I recommend it to everyone, but man...it is not the career path it once was.

Yup. The thinking skills and personal development can be great, but you've got to have a plan. Everything you said about your sister rings true at a majority of universities in North America. Everything you said about the tenure track profs in arts and letters rings true as well. I personally know a guy currently making 76K with a *single* major student in his field under him, as well as an absolute dipshit of a tenured chair in one dept who makes 114k and only teaches one class with 6 people in it--along with a grad student to help instruct, if you can believe it. It's fucking insanity. But wait, it gets worse: when those old-time liberal arts profs hit 70++ (as opposed to just 70+) and have finally had it and decide to retire, many of their positions will just get cut to lecturer anyways, precisely because it's a slam-dunk way to save 50-80percent on the cost of teaching the course loads. As RevRob notes, it's not all gloom and doom, but you've got to be able to angle your way into joining a gang to make academia work out financially: either go engineering or sciences and join up with an established tech gang (Microsoft, similar), or get in with a gang that weaponizes science and engineering (Boeing, similar) or get in with the big pharma or medical or finance gangs. Or, barring that, stay in academia, but don't be a prof: take your art history PhD and go into admin. It works for shitbirds in LE and academia alike.

Stone-cold truth. I tell every single one of my undergrads and early career grad students this when they tell me they are thinking of academia.

Per above, I tell my students that academia still has careers, so long as you are a provost, vice-provost, dean, assistant dean, deanlet, marketeer/development or secretary to any of the above.

And long-term I'd love see an academia that doesn't abuse adjuncts and most grad student and treat them like slaves. We're a long way from that happening.

As an aside, the national labor relations board just decided in favor of grad student's rights to unionize. That'll be interesting to follow.

You make another great point: the top 1 percent of damn near *anything* are always employable. The reason that teaching at a couple of universities works for me is that I *also* teach at a couple of universities. I have some demonstrable skills in my area that keep people interested, regardless of whatever credentials I may or may not have, so it worked out for me. But I worked pretty damn hard for decades to get to where I was observably better than average. Gotta love what you do enough to immerse yourself--along with putting yourself under deadline pressure over and over, as Paul Sharp noted about his own sport combatives in an excellent post elsewhere. Gang up, or be the best. Or maybe marry up or some shit like that, I guess that can work too.

[RevolverRob]

Per above, I tell my students that academia still has careers, so long as you are a provost, vice-provost, dean, assistant dean, deanlet, marketeer/development or secretary to any of the above.

There are three things that will make you in-fucking-valuable to the administration and peers in my experience:

1) Publishing on average 2-4 publications a year, depending on your field. If you're bio like me 2-4 is an excellent average and not impossible to maintain. If you're history or english? One book every 18-24 months with an advance on next one as soon as the first is off to edit.

2) Grants. In STEM grant dollars nearly trump publications. Applying for them gets you some leeway (for instance, this year I've had two papers rejected of two submitted, but I've received two of six grants applied for; therefore my committee and colleagues view me as a medium to high producer despite no published papers). Getting grants gets you more leeway (last year I was a co-author on a $496k grant...which has continued to buy me considerable productivity leeway on publications).

3) Donor dollars. If you can schmooze donors, get donors, get money in any way, shape, or form following development? You've become instantly invaluable as an academic resource. To date I have helped fundraise $125k for my professional society, and another 25k for my museum. I get asked about once every 4-6 months to meet with a potential donor as a stand-out exemplar for graduate students. I can tell you straight up, this skill alone, makes me virtually irreplaceable as a grad student. As a future faculty member? It's going right into the consideration pool with my grant dollars and publication record.

I also always advise students that you can't win every meeting/battle/interview/discussion with peers and colleagues. You cannot please everyone. So you rank those you please based on seniority, power, and genuine ability to tolerate them. And from there you just have to follow the "EESF" acronym: be Enthusiastic, be Engaging, do not be Stupid, do not Fuck up.

As an aside, the national labor relations board just decided in favor of grad student's rights to unionize. That'll be interesting to follow.

We're already deep in the poo on the NLRB ruling. The day after the president of UChicago dropped a letter to the graduate students, "Encouraging them to think about the potential negative consequences of unionization. Particularly with respect to the non-comparable relationship between student and advisor." - Reading between the lines they are scared at the thought that they may have to treat grad students like actual employees who have power to negotiate and actually influence the academic sphere. It's a fascinating power struggle to watch and be part of.

You make another great point: the top 1 percent of damn near *anything* are always employable.

Totally. If you look at the top 1-3 programs in any field, you'll find graduates of those programs are finding tenure-track jobs. It's incredible, in a world where we think a Liberal Arts PhD is a ticket to the poor house? If you graduate from Harvard or Yale in history? 90-98% of their students are getting tenure-track jobs...They are the only ones reliably doing so. And the bottom line is they are doing it, because those programs take ~3-5 students a year and you have to be the most elite to get there. - I think mentioned it elsewhere recently, but the world always needs more ditch diggers and garbage men than tenured history professors. Sure every university should have/need a handful of tenured history profs. But we are not building new universities every day (by contrast we are damn sure making new garbage everyday, just look...this thread is about garbage..err I mean the Remington R51...). Bottom line for new academics/grad-students there is just a finite number of jobs and a virtually infinite number of people looking to fill them. And to get back full circle to my original post in this thread, labor and demand rules the day. Demand is low, the labor force is saturated, and thus only the very best, the very lucky, or both will be successful at least in the near term (over the next 20-30 years).

[Tamara]

Come on man! That's what this thread is all about: https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....DA-SA-Glock-19

While I'm sure there's someone who likes it for the rotary barrel and keeps it in the display case next to their Savage, Mauser M2, Cougar, AA2000, and Browning 1897 prototype, I think most people here could care less about the lockup method and dig it because it's a polymer-framed hammer-fired TDA about the size of the G19.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

I empathize with your sister. And long-term I'd love see an academia that doesn't abuse adjuncts and most grad student and treat them like slaves. We're a long way from that happening. I know it sucks, but in your position, I'd encourage your sister to seek employment elsewhere. If the average homeprice in her area is 1.8 million, there must be an relatively elite private school that will pay her better than any university would as a lecturer.

This may help her and you with insight: http://www.chronicle.com/article/Why...o-Leave/233670 - http://theprofessorisin.com/its-ok-to-quit/

Just wanted to tell you that I forwarded the article to her and mentioned private colleges and she both really liked the article, and emailed me to talk about private college options and she's researching that fairly seriously, so thanks very much. Apparently one of her friends went the private route last year and really likes it (although he's in Toronto and the market there is less monocultural so how well it will translate here I'm not certain...we literally have one wealthy group driving everything and they're all from mainland China and it's done really weird things to the city) and she is looking to make some changes, possibly including relocating, so according to her this was a very well-timed push.

[Kirk]

I bought one on Monday. Traded it on Friday back to the gunstore for (another) G43.

The gun had probably 30 FTF/FTE in 250 rounds. I'm not over-exaggerating. In fact, I may be UNDER exaggerating. It was unreal. Also, it chewed up the webbing of my hand pretty bad. I don't recommend this whatsoever. I really wanted to love the gun. I've been shooting the heck out of my Les Baer in prep for competition's coming up, and the gun FEELS to me very similar for some reason minus the manual safety. However, it had to go. The reset sucked, too, and the trigger was meh. Just my experience with 1 of the R51s.

[GardoneVT]

I bought one on Monday. Traded it on Friday back to the gunstore for (another) G43.

The gun had probably 30 FTF/FTE in 250 rounds. I'm not over-exaggerating. In fact, I may be UNDER exaggerating. It was unreal. Also, it chewed up the webbing of my hand pretty bad. I don't recommend this whatsoever. I really wanted to love the gun. I've been shooting the heck out of my Les Baer in prep for competition's coming up, and the gun FEELS to me very similar for some reason minus the manual safety. However, it had to go. The reset sucked, too, and the trigger was meh. Just my experience with 1 of the R51s.

Thanks for sharing.

I get the sense Remington may have done their homework more then it seems. They probably figured the typical person wouldn't even shoot an R51 more then 100 rounds and designed the pistol around that requirement.As long as it's cheap and doesn't blow up inside of 50 rounds they'll make a profit.

On that subject- I see a lot of strum and drang about QC and the evils of corporate greed, but little is said of the benefit. Corporate greed is why we have affordable computers and Sig pistols(among other products and services). Rob Cohen gets a lot of hate for "what he did" to Sig Sauer & Kimber, but putting on my businessman hat I see exactly why he did what he did. Capital spent on quality your end customer will never see or use is wasted, and is better allocated elsewhere in the firm.

If guns were made the way fanboys wanted-"higher quality" using old capital and manufacturing methods- Sig and HK would be out of business by the end of the quarter, and Taurus would be the last firm standing. You guys don't want that scenario do ya?

[Tamara]

I bought one on Monday. Traded it on Friday back to the gunstore for (another) G43.

The gun had probably 30 FTF/FTE in 250 rounds.

Hearing this from more than one source.

[BillSWPA]

Thanks for sharing.

I get the sense Remington may have done their homework more then it seems. They probably figured the typical person wouldn't even shoot an R51 more then 100 rounds and designed the pistol around that requirement.As long as it's cheap and doesn't blow up inside of 50 rounds they'll make a profit.

On that subject- I see a lot of strum and drang about QC and the evils of corporate greed, but little is said of the benefit. Corporate greed is why we have affordable computers and Sig pistols(among other products and services). Rob Cohen gets a lot of hate for "what he did" to Sig Sauer & Kimber, but putting on my businessman hat I see exactly why he did what he did. Capital spent on quality your end customer will never see or use is wasted, and is better allocated elsewhere in the firm.

If guns were made the way fanboys wanted-"higher quality" using old capital and manufacturing methods- Sig and HK would be out of business by the end of the quarter, and Taurus would be the last firm standing. You guys don't want that scenario do ya?

I have owned my own business for over 9 years now. You make money by genuinely caring about and addressing the needs of your customers. This means making decisions that don't profit you in the short term, but build your long term reputation.


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[SLG]

I have owned my own business for over 9 years now. You make money by genuinely caring about and addressing the needs of your customers. This means making decisions that don't profit you in the short term, but build your long term reputation.


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What does this mean?
Remington has been around for a very long time, maybe longer than 9 years, though I'm not sure. :-)