A Fred’s University workshop called Get Rich Quick For Academics unexpectedly stole the majority of the audience for last night’s Annual Memorial Departmental Prize Committee Lecture Series Inaugural Address. The Get Rich Quick lecture managed to do this despite the extremely relevant topic of the Memorial Lecture, basket tax subsidies in 18th century Lyon.
For those few professors who attended the basket tax lecture and were not able to attend the Get Rich Quick lecture, here are some of the highlights of the popular talk:
4 Ways Academics Can Get Rich Quick:
- Turn your basket tax presentation into a TikTok video that teaches people how to make authentic French baskets to sell on Etsy.
- Make Etsy stickers of your favorite side characters in literature from Hamlet’s school friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Phoebe Caulfield in The Catcher in The Rye. Charge a high price.
- Your equations would make great T-shirts to sell on Amazon. Really long equations can cover both sides of a T-shirt for which you can charge a higher price.
- A lot of lab equipment gets thrown away at the end of a project. Re-sell it on eBay at Halloween for use in haunted houses, or sell it as steampunk accessories. Watch out for the legal issues: reselling government property, even if you got it on a dumpster dive, can have legal and tax consequences.
The presenter noted that there are some significant roadblocks that make it harder for academics to Get Rich Quick.
4 Things Holding Academics Back From Starting A Business
- Friends. The best way to jumpstart your side hustle is to ask your friends to buy your services in order to build up a sales presence and get some initial positive reviews. Since academics are pitted against each other and locked in bitter rivalries, it can be very hard to ask another academic for a favor.
- Thinking. Thinking about starting a business is well known to stop you from actually doing anything. The better you are at thinking, the more reasons you will come up with not to do anything. This is a serious business liability for anyone in a thinking profession.
- Shame. Shame is a central part of academic culture: a teacher’s job is to administer shame to the quarter of students intentionally chosen by the grading curve to do badly. And teachers are themselves controlled by the cultural shaming effect of low pay and low status. Your shame is holding you back from even thinking it is possible to make money outside of the academy.
- Bob. Bob is always implying you are not good enough/won’t get tenure/won’t get the book blurb/won’t get the prize nomination/won’t attract the star students/didn’t get invited to the after-talk-party. Everything you do is in the Shadow of Bob. Imagining that Bob will make fun of your Etsy sticker shop is holding you back from your dreams. F Bob!
A summary of the Basket Tax lecture is not yet available due to the fact that the Committee Secretary who was supposed to type out the notes attended the Get Rich Quick workshop instead.
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