Orin's defection: the prorector's berth as sad and purgatorial
a prorector’s job was only for maybe at most a few years, and was regarded as sad and purgatorial… and then of course what then, what are you going to do after that, etc.
Context
E.T.A.'s own hedge against the awful age is itself a small purgatory: the postgraduate prorector berth, a couple years of room and board and small-satellite travel in exchange for coaching, "regarded as sad and purgatorial… and then of course what then." The academy can defer the reckoning but not cancel it — the failed-Show body gets a few years' grace on campus and then must still face the "what then." It's the same institutional cul-de-sac 070's washed-out prorectors inhabit, seen from the entrance rather than the far end.