" Not to my knowledge,” Domenica replied. “Academics like to study everybody else. They don’t like to look too closely in the mirror.” Even as she said this, it occurred to her that it would be a rather enjoyable project – with fieldwork possibilities in agreeable places like Heidelberg and Göttingen. Perhaps, after she had completed her long-awaited study of Watsonians – if she ever got round to starting that – she would move on to an anthropological study of the German professorial class. She heard the mood music: Carmina Burana, of course, the Gaudeamus, naturally, and Brahms’s Academic Overture. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , A Promise of Ankles (44 Scotland Street #14)