Judge, 1925-05-16 · page 12 of 36
Judge — May 16, 1925 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "Choose Your Career Now!" – A 1920s Satire on Academic Life This page contains two humorous pieces satirizing 1920s social trends and professorial stereotypes. The upper section mocks "Night-time Day" parties—exhausting weekend gatherings where wealthy socialites arrive Saturday morning, immediately sleep, then stay awake dancing and dining from evening through morning. The satire targets the absurdity of inverted schedules among the leisure class. The main article, "Choose Your Career Now," is a tongue-in-cheek guide to becoming a professor. It humorously claims professors must wear tortoise-shell glasses from childhood and possess peculiar habits like absent-mindedness, eccentricity (wool caps in summer, coats worn inside-out), and forgetfulness about their own children. The darkest joke: a professor's wife invariably leaves him for a "butter-and-egg man" (a nouveau riche businessman) after three years of marriage. The satire mocks academics as socially awkward, poorly paid, and destined for domestic betrayal—portraying professorship as a career only the eccentric or delusional would pursue. Authored by Corey Ford, this reflects 1920s cultural attitudes toward intellectuals as impractical outsiders.
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**\Jront-time Day” parties are the +™ last gasp at high hat week- ends. The guests arrive Saturday morning around cleven o'clock and immediately to to bed! They get up around 9 P.M., dress in sport clothes, have breakfast, light up the tennis courts and play tennis! Then a cross country gallop, or a game of bridge. At 6 a.m. they take a swim, don their evening ctothes, go to some big hotel at breakfast time and have a big dinner—then dance all morning! Can you beat it? > The hit of the week! “Why DoI Love You?" from ‘Tell Me More,” another Gershwin show. You'll be dancing it all summer! The Lido boys have published their “Stepping in Society” number. It’s a peach! Moss and Fontana are at the “Rue de la Paix.” The Six Best “Steppers”: “Why Do I Love You?" “['ll See You in My Dreams.” “So Am I.” “Honest and Truly.” “Stepping in Society “Titina.” <i The “Step Outs” are now going in for “Breakfast Calls.” The idea seems to be to descend on your poor friends around 6 a.., rout them out of bed and demand breakfast. Evening dress is absolutely necessary! Choose Your Career Now! Is orvER to be a professor you should have worn tortoise-shell glasses from the age of three, and have always wanted toteach. When the other little boys wanted to play leapfrog or go swimming, the little professor will ask them to study and play school instead. If you want to be a professor, you should tell this ambition to all your relatives and call it a thirst for knowledge. The only drawback to being a professor is that your wife invariably deceives you after you have been married three years, and runs off with a butter-and-egg man while you are lecturing on the aspects of Indo- Caucasian Culture in the Early f you still want to become a professor, you can hope for success only by following these directions. Directions for Professors When you have become twenty- three and spell your name by degrees, you should set out to secure a chair at some university, This is done in the following manner: You must suffer a relapse and become very absent-minded. For example, you must go around insisting you have left your watch home, and take it out of your pocket now and then to see if you have time to run home and get it. Or else you must meet your son on the street and exclaim: “Hello, John, how's your father?” In addition, you should cultivate some few eccentricities, such as wearing a woolen skating-cap in summer, wearing your coat inside out or hopping on one foot every other step. By middle age, some institution will offer you a chair, either mathematics, wheel, or elec- tric. Corey Ford comicbooks.com