“Yay! You’re Almost There!”

Abstract

I used to run ultramarathons, and it was common for spectators and volunteers to cheer on the runners with encouragement. I window the allegory of misplaced cheering (on a day when I was seen as being in last place in a race in which I was not competing) to revisit our vocational landscapes, and illustrate this revisiting with reference to my recent variously flawed viewing of a group of graduate student runners.