Taking Stock, Pt. III

I am a bit distressed that I view the upcoming year with weariness rather than anticipation. But it is what it is. Some of the things that make me weary (and I do understand that these are my issues):

1. Colleagues who poor mouth every little thing. Every single day. The Perpetually Aggrieved Grad Student is an okay stance for a while, but maybe at some point north of 40 years of age one needs to find a new approach.
example:  today's "outrage" was that the Chancellor of this institution remarked in a department meeting that he doesn't really bother with reading the NYT or the WP every day.  ZOMG! Doubleplus ungood crimethink!

2. Colleagues who wrangle about word choice as a way of controlling the direction of conversations...and the ways other people think.
example: In our department meeting the other day, I remarked that since the English Society (a former student organization attached to our department) had died, we need to do a better job actively communicating with our students.  One of the department's most notorious busybodies took it on herself to correct me--"you mean to say it's inactive," she said.  Those who know me can anticipate how I responded.

3. Constant breast-beating about the debt burden students face . . . while the students post on Facebook about spending their "refund" checks on electronics and video games.

4. Constant uses of the following words, even by fellow academics, no matter whether they make any logical sense: vitriol, outrage, hate, rights, diversity.
example:  All last year, this institution celebrated 50 years of "diversity."  What they meant is that it was the 50th anniversary of certain milestones of racial integration on campus, but they didn't even take it on themselves to say "racial diversity."  It was just "50 years of diversity."  At an institution of higher learning. 

5. That one colleague who is now insisting on "pay parity" across colleges and departments on campus, apparently in the service of some mythical-yet-authoritative notion of "equal pay for equal work." He has been in higher ed for more than 40 years.  When he used part of our department retreat to pose this question statement to the provost, I admired the provost's restraint in not responding, "how long have you been in this business?  Since when has pay parity ever existed?"