The Hidden Silly Side Of Higher Education

Title: Academia Obscura: The Hidden Silly Side Of Higher Education

Author: Glen Wright

I bought and read this book in 2018 as soon as it was published, but I never put up a post on it, thanks to my inactive stint during that time. 2018 was a year that saw just one post from me- on a library very dear to me that closed. So, I decided that not having read it now is no reason to introduce this crazy book to those who don't know about it. 

@AcademiaObscura is a popular twitter handle, but this book- Academia Obscura- is probably everything you want to drop your project hours to read instead. And, that's kind of how it was written too. When you pick to see who really the author is, you get the answer immediately.

"Glen Wright is an academic. Sort of. Actually, he started his PhD in 2012 and is yet to finish. In the meantime, he started Academia Obscura, a blog about the lighter side of academic life."

This man wrote a crazily relatable and funny book on academics, and you won't be able to thank him enough for it! Academia Obscura is an encyclopedic compilation on everything that you can ever find silly in academics- and there are tons and tons of it! Footnotes, peer-reviews, language of the writing, cliched phrases that we use to bridge the lack of content- it's all in there! Filled with extremely cute and heartwarming drawings, from Wright, who in his own words says:

"Occasionally there are figures that appear to have been drawn by people like me, whose artistic inclinations never surpassed shaky stickmen and who struggle to write their own name on the whiteboard."

If you think academics is all "stuffiness"and "elbow patches", then this is the right book to pick up to change your mind. It explores the love of an academic on his subject, and at the same time takes a dig on how the strict structural formalities can bend the patience and the capabilities of the best of academicians.

Everything in the book is simply put, but would tickle your bones with humour. Most of what you would read is something that you would be going through or would have gone through, or at least would know someone who has gone through a similar patch. That way, this book is incredibly relatable and real.

I love it. And, I can guarantee a hundred percent that you will, too!