The Droves of Academe Their friend Tom Harris said that he?d dropped out of the Rutgers program to become a private investigator, a job which he characterized as "involving long periods of boredom punctuated by terror." Mr. Koslow, looking calmer now that most of his beer had disappeared and his tie was looser, agreed with The Observer that this description also applied to the academy, except "there?s less terror, more despair."