It's high time I finished with Academia, I realized today. I overheard some undergrads Researching for an assignment about James Dean (by researching I mean they were looking up his Wikipedia entry in the coffee shop). There were a few blanks in their knowledge that I was able to fill in for them, namely that the film released after his death was East of Eden, and that he died on the way to a car race rather than actually during the event.

It's bad enough that I need to use titbits of trivial information to impress people, but when asked whether I was a really big James Dean fan I was forced to admit that, on reflection, I have never even seen one of his films.

I'm on my way to becoming a stereotypical academic.