Wednesday, July 06, 2005

the admiral and me

I learned just now via CNN.com that Admiral James Stockdale has died. The memory which sprung immediately to mind:
"...and hopefully, I'll answer the two incisive questions that Admiral James Stockdale posed at the beginning of the 1992 Vice Presidential Debate: Who am I? And why am I here?" --Jeremy Freese, job talk for position of Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison, September 1999
Update, 11:30am: A colleague e-mailed me the Stockdale obit with the message: "You referred to him, as I recall, in your job talk -- and very humorously. May he rest in peace!"

4 comments:

Ang said...

I was told by a tenured prof that when the faculty heard your job talk, they were like, We've got to get this guy. So it must have worked.

Anonymous said...

You had them at "Who am I?"

dorotha said...

and i just heard that people thought that you were clever when they heard your job talk. i mean, there were moments that were clever. perhaps this was one of them?

jeremy said...

Dorotha: Remember when you did that presentation and your last slide, where you opened things up for questions and comments, had a photo of a deer on the left side and a photo of car headlights on the right? That was clever. (Truly.)