The more I write for the general public, the more allergic I become to most academic prose -- even the kind that is "stylish" in its opaqueness.

What to do?

I worry that if I told my scholar friends what my true feelings are about the adjective "luminous" I might have no more scholar friends.

I've started accosting friends with trendy phrases and asking them, "but what does this really mean? I mean in normal words? does anybody *know*?"

I appreciate the likes but I guarantee there is a phrase you consider elegant and profound that I think is so much hot air.

I know this kind of complaint is a typical talking point of people who want to destroy academe for their own nefarious reasons. So I tend to swallow it. But sometimes I read a piece and think: there's no there there.

I will say more: my experience of having a child and then steadily increasing admin responsibilities is that my patience with abstruse prose gets lower all the time. Maybe it's a cognitive decline, but it's one many go through.

In grad school I had enough time and mental space to give every author the benefit of the doubt that their difficult prose might be required by the profundity of their ideas.

Now I need to be convinced.

Maybe if I had proof that difficult writing went hand in hand with precise, rigorous, critical thinking, either about the subject or about the world at large, I would be more generous and less tired.

But I haven't observed that correlation.

It's Saturday evening and I'm not here to make friends.