meatcheesebun

In which I seem to have wandered off

2008-05-17T23:00:00.001-05:00

...for, like, a month? Or something. How 'bout some bullets then?

I am in a very bad grading place. I've had assorted midterm crap for more than a week, and have only started in on it this weekend. And I've promised everything back on Monday and Tuesday of next week. The UChaos papers are pretty good, and I only have about 8 more to do, but the Big Willie class has exams and essays, and I'm kind of dreading them.
The official annual meeting with my committee was last week and... it went surprisingly well. I have a new title and conceptual structure for the diss (basically, I'm sticking a keyword on each chapter to guide the argument a bit more), so I wrote up a little outline for the committee, along with summer writing deadlines. Prof. Persnickety? Loves the new approach, and has revised his memory of the past year so that he's always been a fan of my topic and my approach. I'm finding this simultaneously encouraging and even more frustrating than before.
Currently, however, I am not actually writing anything. My already-awful time-management skills have been further deteriorated by this four-day-a-week teaching schedule.
Did I mention that my new title is awesome? C. suggested it, and it is indeed all poetically evocative and crap.
Jobs for next year? Who knows. I've put out a whole bunch of applications for UChaos stuff, in hopes of covering at least my tuition (because I'll be damned if I'm paying them for making me stay an extra year), but I've heard from exactly none of them, and I'm not expecting to until god-knows-when. Last year, I didn't hear about my fall teaching for the first-year thingy until July or August.
I did at least get some departmental funding to cover the last conference I went to. It's a pittance, but it's something.
As for non-complainy, non-schoolish stuff, there was visiting mom, going to Cubs games, a very pleasant Cinco de Mayo party, and what may be permanent success in quitting biting my fingernails. Go, me!

In which I am conspired against

2008-04-17T10:32:00.001-05:00

I'm pretty sure the Chicago Transit Authority is trying to kill, or at least maim, me. Last week, I slipped on a rainy train platform and went down hard. Result: Two days of a very achy flank (Achy Flank--either an awesome imaginary band or the saddest burlesque performer ever). This week, I was on a bus with a driver trying really hard to play human dominoes with us poor bastards standing in the center aisle. Result: Becoming new best friends with the young man whose lap I ended up in, and a rather wrenched left arm.

On a more positive note, the two days of 60-degree weather is making me forget that it freaking snowed last weekend.

Classes: Good, chatty, interested. I'm a little suspicious of my Big Willie class, as they keep asking questions about precisely the things I have planned to talk about for the day. I wonder if they have insider knowledge from friends who have already taken this class with me. Which, on the one hand, makes me feel boring and predictable. But, on the other, I'm just happy they're asking things, even if they're set-ups. And, really, if they're doing that kind of research outside of class, at least they're thinking about the texts, right?

In which I am addled

2008-04-10T11:15:00.001-05:00

You know, without the little thing on my phone that not only tells me the date, but the day of the week, I would be utterly lost. Apparently today is Thursday--quelle shock!

Also, the left side of my head is trying to secede from my skull and we're experiencing a very rare midwestern monsoon. In five hours, I will be able to nap and then watch baseball while recording 30 Rock. All will be well, soon.

In which the prophecy fulfils itself

2008-04-08T21:58:00.001-05:00

I wound up forgetting my text yesterday. I was so exasperated with myself that I came clean to the class, told them about my stupid dream, and relied heavily on them for specific quotations. They came through like champs and we were able to move quickly along to Ovid, which I did have with me.

Which reminds me that I want to write up my thoughts on my new How the Sausage Is Made theory of pedagogy. Anon.

In which we are back at it

2008-04-07T09:04:00.001-05:00

Week one, in the books. Week two, just now dawning. I'm feeling ok about my classes (despite an anxiety dream this morning which involved me losing control of the class entirely, neither bringing my text nor having read it--Frankenstein, for some reason--and, most mortifyingly, wearing a scrunchie in public). The UChaos class is talkative and interested (or at least faking it convincingly), and the St. Happy class contains students who are willing to disagree with me, which I lovelovelove because it gives me a chance either to be ostentatiously right or to model ways of researching and testing claims. Be still my nerd heart!

Nothing going on the dissertation front, though. I haven't yet figured out where best to shoehorn in the work, before class or after. A crucial book just came into the library, though, so maybe that'll jump-start my brain.

The very best thing about this week, though? Sun. Our weather is finally at least entertaining the possibility of spring. I was out with bare knees on Saturday, and it felt marvelously decadent after four months of wool tights.

In which I come to account

2008-03-30T22:26:00.001-05:00

What I Did on My Spring Break, by St. Eph

On my spring break this year I reached level 70 on World of Warcraft. It was a good break.

Yeah, so that happened. And there was the conference in Post-Apocalypic Zombieville (but with lovely public sculpture), which was a nice break from this terrible, horrible, no-good winter that will never end. I fell in with a bad crowd (Marlovians!) and had a good time and some decent Tex-Mex food. My seminar was beautifully run, with a good-sized crowd of auditors as well, and I think I'll be in touch with a couple of participants about some diss-related topics down the road. And the professors' dance party was fascinating and delightful. I can see why Cheerleader Advisor has been pressing me to attend this particular conference for years.

And then I came home and perfected my chocolate-chip cookie recipe. Seriously, it's absolutely perfect now. I can do no more. I also slept a lot, played video games, studiously ignored my diss, and finally cleaned my apartment. (This last because the landlords had work done on our floors and then surprised us with one day's notice that an appraiser would be coming by. We do nothing, apparently, if not on deadline.)

The one real accomplishment, though, is that C. talked me through a total re-structuring of the dissertation. I had already planned for a introductory chapter where I'll do a kind-of lit review, but I wanted it to be more conceptually organized. So, now I have a keyword for each chapter (report, account, register/narrative, reckoning) that I'll set up in the intro as the argumentative thread. Yah! Like so! It's really far more exciting to me than it should be, but I take what I can.

And with this accounting here, I'm officially putting the mess of winter term behind me. It was a dire time, a hangover of a quarter, but it's done. Now we look forward to: my really cool UChaos class, which has a waiting list, even! And another jaunt through Big Willie at St. Happy, which is as familiar as a bathrobe by now. In both classes, though, I'm going to try out an approach to presentations that I heard about from a fellow seminarian in Zombieville--a mini-panel each week, with 3-4 students acting as the experts on the texts. I think the UChaosers will dig it, but I'll have to pitch it to the Happys as being experts on their own critical opinions, which may still be a hard sell. But the more I teach in my own field, the more I think that having some kind of accountable ownership over the text adds immensely to both the individual experience and the group dynamic. I'm probably projecting here from my own undergrad experience, where it was exactly the feeling that a particular text was mine that lead me to... well, where I am now, actually.

Also on the horizon: baseball! Opening day! (Sadly, I'll be on a bus or train for the first pitch. Grr.) A trip to see my mom and visit Niagara Falls! Old 97's releasing a new record and playing my town! Possibly leaving my apartment for things other than class! Rumors of spring and/or summer!

In which my grasp on time is tenuous

2008-03-13T20:04:00.001-05:00

It occurred to me at about 11 this morning that in order to be on a plane at 8:15 tomorrow morning, I will have to leave my apartment at 6, which, in turn, requires me getting up at... 5? 4:30? Right now?

And I had thought all these farmers'-waking-hours were over with my last early class. Alas.

Making up for this, though, is the promise of 84 degrees and 15% humidity in Dallas.

In which I remember

2008-03-12T23:59:00.001-05:00

It strikes me that I should have done this earlier, but if any of the four of you who are reading who are not my mom (hi Mom!) are going to be in Dallas this weekend, I will be too! And we should totally get coffee! Or go see the Turner exhibition! Write me!

In which I clean house

2008-03-12T15:13:00.001-05:00

Literally. It must be the end of the quarter, since I only just now got rid of the eight giant boxes filled with packing material that have been hanging around my dining room since January. I am not proud.

I picked up another class for next quarter: Big Willie at St. Happy again. It's at a good time, my syllabus is already set (though I may swap in a new play just to keep me interested), and the cash is welcome. I'm also thinking that I need all the help I can getting out of bed and working every day.

The other excitement yesterday came from the arrival of my new phone. So tiny! So shiny! So slide-y! I spent all last night making new ringtones for it; C. is now "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," replacing his previous status as "This Charming Man." And I, in turn, am "Trouble" on his phone. Yes, I'm easily distracted by fancy new electronic whatsits. Blame my dad, the gadget-man.

In which we conclude

2008-03-10T20:09:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow's the last day of the first-year class I've had since fall. I kept 17 of them in the transition between quarters, and I'm really glad to have had the extra time with them. Fall was very much about them moving from being the smartest kids in their high-school classes to just another average brain in a very smart place. For some, they were just managing to keep their heads above water, but others were flopping back onshore, gasping, just about every day. While I really liked teaching those classes, every one was a challenge; I could never tell what they'd immediately get and what would take some hammering on to make sense of.

This quarter has been a really fruitful continuation of the work we started last quarter. I've leaned pretty heavily on the collection of ideas that we've built up and the continuity of discussion. I know this sequence doesn't follow the standard freshman-composition structure, but I've seen marked improvement in the critical-writing and -thinking skills of just about everyone. I feel ok sending them off into their real interests, which mostly lie outside Humanities.

We're doing an in-class peer editing thing tomorrow, and I'm still working out the structure of it. I've never done this kind of in-class work on argument, though I've done small workshop versions of it. This is why it's nice to have C. around; even though he's incredibly burned-out on comp, he's a good teacher of writing, and he has some good suggestions for how to run such things. I think I'll have them do some mirroring of claim and organization of evidence in pairs, and then have the pairs turn into quartets and do the same thing. Or maybe after the pairs, I'll have the "listening" partner present the "speaking" partner's argument to the class as a whole.

(This reminds me that I need to bulk up my bag o' tricks when it comes to composition-based teaching, as I know that's inevitably in my future. Tips welcome.)

In which I write like a man

2008-03-09T21:33:00.001-05:00

According to this odd (and oddly defensive) thing, I write 69.58% male, based on my most recent conference paper. Hm.

I'm actually feeling a bit better about that haphazardly-constructed paper, as I received a very nice e-mail from a fellow would-be conference-goer about it. My correspondent has had to pass on attending, but said correspondent read the paper and had nice things to say about some of my more worrisome points. I'm feeling especially good about the section on two second-tier characters in Most Famous Play that addresses some of the weirdness going on in their interaction. I think I'm on to something there--Persnickety Prof was also very provoked (in a positive way) by it in our last discussion. Plus, my correspondent is working on the same play (let's call it Hank the Sad, in 12 Parts) that I'm writing on in the chapter that precedes the chapter this paper is heading toward, so I'm hoping I can start a conversation on that, as well.

This e-mail message further bolsters my theory that UChaos makes its students unfit for anywhere else in the world. What they expect of us, as such a matter of routine that it's never really spoken of, is leaps and bounds above what is regarded as pretty damn good by the rest of the world. On the on hand, great, I'm glad that I'm being pushed to produce the best, most intellectually-rigorous, most well-crafted work that I can. But on the other, seriously? Can I sometimes be just good enough? Or even very good? Can the diss be a diss and not a publishable manuscript? Can I be done?

Oh, look, I started out happy and wound up ranty. How on earth does such a thing happen? Luckily, I have cookies to take out of the oven.

In which I am a glass of orange juice

2008-03-07T01:15:00.002-06:00

(with vodka)

You are 10:02 a.m.

You are breakfasty, like a pile of pancakes on a Sunday morning that have just the right amount of syrup, so every bite is sweet perfection and not a soppy mess. You are a glass of orange juice that's cool, refreshing, and not overly pulpy. You are the time of day that's just right for turning the pages of a newspaper, flipping through channels, or clicking around online to get a sense of how the world changed during the night. You don't want to stumble sleepily through life, so you make a real effort to wake your brain up and get it thinking. You feel inspired to accomplish things (whether it's checking something off your to-do list or changing the world), but there's plenty of time for making things happen later in the day. First, pancakes.

In which I talk for a very long time

2008-03-07T00:39:00.001-06:00

Finished up the conferences today, and I'm thinking I was able to accomplish some useful pedagogical crap in them. It's never ceases to amaze me how saying exactly the same things to a group and to an individual can have such different receptions. I basically repeated the same ideas to each student today (conceptual associations between texts, show your reader how to read your evidence, be aware of your audience's expectations) and these are the same things I've been saying in every writing-focused lecture, but during the conferences I saw nearly every single student suddenly get it. And this isn't even a large class, but it really reinforces my suspicions that the standard class structure is about the worst way to produce intellectual advancement, and really isn't even very good at basic transmission of information.

Then again, maybe I suck as a lecturer and should rent myself out as a private tutor. Or maybe first-years are a strange and mysterious breed that needs special handling. Like those pugs with the congenital floppy tongue thing.

[Insert coherent segue here] I was talking to my fellow ABDer and office neighbor J today, and he articulated my problems with next year's funding in a way I hadn't quite put together yet. Due to the problems that resulted in my committee pulling me off the market, I'm stuck finding a plan for paying for next year. At the same time, the department is so convinced that I should be already done that I'm ineligible (that is, "don't even bother applying" rather than "it's unlikely, but you can give it a shot") for any further funding.

So, basically, they're telling me that I can't leave, but can't stay here.

And now... oh, there's the anger again. I do have a lead on a gig that would make everything better, but I'm trying not to count those ducks (chicks? lizards?) just yet.

In which I catch up on some correspondence

2008-03-05T21:36:00.001-06:00

Dear World,

You smell really bad. Please stop.

Love,
St. Eph

*****
Dear Campus Coffee Shop,

While I appreciate your committment to my hydration goals, I would rather carry around a single-serving size of bottled water, rather than the 50-gallon tanks you think I might need. Please let me have less than 20 oz of water at a time.

Love,
St. Eph

*****
Dear Chicago,

Why you gotta be so mean? Remember how happy we were back in the fall? When it didn't snow every goddamned day? When sometimes it was above freezing for more than an hour? Let's do that again sometime. Seriously, you're like the worst boyfriend in the world.

Love,
St. Eph

*****
Dear Spring,

I miss you. Please come back.

Love,
St. Eph

*****
Dear Winamp,

My name is St. Eph. You broke my Firefox. Prepare to be deleted.

Adieu,
St. Eph

In which the end is in sight

2008-03-04T19:31:00.001-06:00

The schedule, she is killing me. I came home today intending to nap only briefly, since I have to be up again early tomorrow for individual conferences. And then I fell into a coma--the kind where you wake up and have no idea what day, time, or continent it is.

The good news is I only have one more ridiculously early day, and it's not until next week. Conferences are tomorrow and Thursday, and while I dread how I'll be feeling after repeating the same things for three hours, I do think this kind of individual attention is amazingly effective when it comes to writing skills. I really should have done conferences with this crew in Fall, but my schedule was already so ridiculous I couldn't figure out how to fit them in. Enh, better late than never.

The thing that keeps falling off my to-do list is my book order for next term, which seems fairly important. I'm fairly confident that we can do a play a week, but I'm worried about the three or four weeks when I'm planning for two plays. Then again, having once slogged through a whole week on Jonson's Sejanus, I'm much more scared of too little material than too much.

In which I slack slightly less

2008-03-03T18:58:00.001-06:00

Papers? Graded! Cookies? Made! Rabble? Roused!

I also spent a good long time wrestling with Winamp, because iTunes exploded on me a while back and pretended like it had amnesia. I switched to another music-management application, but it was cranky about podcasts, so I switched again. Still not happy, though. All I want is to listen to Neko Case and Elvis Costello on the way to school and The Bugle on the way home. How hard is that? (Seriously, are you listening to The Bugle? It's my new favorite thing in the world. And LOLManuscripts is my second-most new favorite thing in the world, in case you were wondering.)

Yeah, I still have to prep for class, read conference papers, rewrite my abstract, and... probably some other stuff. But I accomplished three whole things today!

In which not much gets done

2008-03-02T20:19:00.001-06:00

Today's accounting: three papers graded; one delightful hamburger eaten; many blog feeds read; no cookies made (yet).

But I did leave the house to enjoy a 50-degree day, finally. This winter has battered me, and I'm so very, very over it. But! More snow! Coming tomorrow! Because winter will never, ever end!

And, now. Off to make cookies. I'm aiming to grade three more essays tonight, leaving me with three tomorrow (I know, nine whole essays. I have not one reason to complain. I'm more annoyed by my own procrastination than the grading itself. That, and since I have so few, I feel like I need to write ridiculously extensive comments). And there's that abstract I need to slap together.

In which I consider starting something

2008-03-01T23:17:00.001-06:00

So, I thought that maybe I'd try to actually use this space for progress reports, or accountability, or useful rants, or something. I'm still not sure what I want this to be, but it'll never be anything unless I get some stuff on the page, right?

Ok, today's accomplishments: grocery shopping, clearing out the backlog of school-related messages in my in-box, beginning to organize a concerted student response to the denial of tenure to Cheerleader Prof, making dinner, quality time with both cats, adding sports package to our channel lineup so I can watch some goddamned baseball, please.

Not accomplished, but pondered: What if I write a paragraph a day? I can do that, can't I? What if I got that book out of the bag by my feet and did some reading? What if I rewrote my conference abstract so that it actually has something to do with the paper I wrote? Wouldn't that be fun? More or less fun than grading essays?

On deck for tomorrow: grading essays, reading that book, rewriting conference abstract, writing a paragraph, making cookies, watching pre-season baseball.

In which things are accomplished

2008-01-30T23:09:00.001-06:00

First, Citation Machine, you are my new best friend. There was a point this evening when my brain could no longer process basic information, and you saved me.

Second, don't tell anyone, but I wrote an entire conference paper today. And by "wrote," I don't mean I assembled pieces of notes and drafts into a coherent whole. I wrote the whole thing, from scratch, between 1 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Yes, the ideas had been rattling around my head for the past month or so, and I knew exactly where and what I was doing with the close reading, but every word in the paper was written today. I'm both incredibly proud and utterly shamed. Every time I do this last-minute thing it reinforces that I can do this last-minute thing, and the cycle continues.

The best part of this, though, is this is the first piece of substantial writing I've done since the Bad Time last term. In retrospect, I reacted really badly. I not only fell off the horse, I rolled around in the mud for a while, contracted cholera, dragged myself back to town, and spent the last three months recuperating in a shabby rented room upstairs for the saloon. Or something. But now I have the scaffolding for the first half of the Big Play and Other Big Play chapter, as well as a hook for attaching it to the second play.

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In which we are done

2007-12-31T14:38:00.001-06:00

We are, aren't we? With this whole damn year? It hasn't been bad, exactly, just eternal and exhausting. I feel like I should do a year-end wrap-up to properly situate my personal history, but I can't even remember last January. There's a vague sense of writing feverishly to make departmental fellowship deadlines, and then... nothing for a long, long time. And then writing feverishly to make job-related deadlines, and then... suck, lots of suck. The End.

So, anyway. More recent history has included a lovely trip to the sunny, balmy climes of the American Southwest. Oh, Tucson--I love you, I miss you, and you make me ineffably sad. I ate a lot. I got a trucker tan on my right arm (so, really, a passenger tan).

And then we came home for MLA. Went to the blogger meet-up (Hi! Hi! You all were awesome!), drank fancy hotel-bar drinks, chatted a bit, and scurried home. C. had an interview on Friday, and I went ahead and registered so I'm covered for next year. I popped into a session Prof. Persnickety was presenting in, and got a smile and wink from our department's Gloriana (been there forever, brilliant and ballsy, so kind and gracious to those she likes, so terrifying from the other side). I slipped out before the hobnobbing after, preferring to disapparate instead. Strolled the book exhibit, spent not so much but got so much (see below). I had intended to go to some panels on Saturday and Sunday, but the inertia of my couch proved too much for me.

The theme of the last week or so has been How Many Books Can I Buy, and Will They Make Me Feel Better? Answers: 36 and Kinda.

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In which I find an excuse to go to the archive

2007-12-13T16:46:00.001-06:00

Here's my secret shame: I don't do archival stuff. It's not that I don't want to, it's more that the whole research portion of my graduate training has been... sad, to say the least. Non-existent is another apt term. My home library has, allegedly, a fantastic collection of stuff. My city has yet another fantastic private library with archives right up my alley. And yet, I've never delved into them.

But! I met with Don Music yesterday to discuss cabbages and kings and how on earth I can finally put at least one chapter to bed. After the last committee meeting, I came away with a new framing idea for the whole diss, and Don and I talked yesterday about how to pursue that idea and what kinds of critical and contemporary sources I need to bring into my argument. Which then led to him getting all excited about a tiny little genre of 16th-century how-to manuals in a tangential field. Of course, none of these manuals are of the kind of literary or historical importance to have been put out in modern editions. So it's off to the archive with me, because there's no way in hell that I can skim that ridiculous blackface type on a computer screen (not that EEBO isn't awesome).

UChaos's library doesn't have a copy of the one manual I most want to look at, but the private library does. As well as what looks like a few other related books. So, once we get back from our holiday trip to the balmy southwest, I'll be hieing myself downtown to get my official reader's card. Whee!

I do hope, though, that this new approach doesn't derail the work I've done so far. It looks like this material will fit neatly into what I already have written and give the chapters the critical grounding the committee thinks I need. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by my talk with Don, but also tentatively excited that I'm finally getting specific advice toward producing the work they want to see.

Also, I went a bit hippie-flaky earlier today and cleared out all the crap that was cluttered up in front of our household shrine (what, you don't have a household shrine? Made up of saint candles, Elvis memorabilia, milagros, conference nametags, and casino chips?) because I felt like the energy was totally trapped, man. Also, my bamboo plant was nearly dead.

Oh, and I celebrated turning in my grades by buying an awesome bag. It's big enough to fit file folders!

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In which I give myself enough rope

2007-12-07T19:30:00.001-06:00

Hell with it, then. I just sent off the abstract, proposing a paper on our favorite mopey Dane. What are they going to do, kick me out of the Smart Kids' Club?

It is now my intention to sit down and play video games for several hours.

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In which the end is in sight

2007-12-07T14:41:00.001-06:00

St. Happy's in the books. UChaos has just turned in final essays, and grading is set to commence. This term was rough, and I'm so glad that the end is finally here. I'm a bit disappointed in my own performance this term; I feel like I just let go about halfway through. St. Happy took the brunt of my flailing, but the overall grade distribution came out acceptable, so I didn't drive us off the rails or anything. I did, however, not receive five (5!) final essays from that class, which is just inexplicable. I'm more astonished as a student than as an instructor; when I gave up on a class as an undergrad, I gave up. Just stopped acknowledging its existence. I don't understand showing up and doing the work through the term and then just bailing on the thing at the end that's worth nearly half of the final grade. Who does that?

UChaos came along a bit better, mostly because it was an all-new prep for me, which forced me to pay better attention and adjust as I went along. I think I managed the connections I was trying to make across the materials, but the final essays will be the proof of that one way or the other. I had forgotten, though, what different creatures first-years are. They're fascinating in their weird array of knowledge and ignorance. They know such obscure and fantastic things, and then turn around and call every bit of published text between two covers a "novel." They've exposed a number of my own blind spots (like, how is everyone in the world not enamored of the humanistic approach to text?), and I'm sure they'll be exposing even more next term. I'm really happy that I have another term with this bunch to expand on the work we've done so far and to patch up some of the mistakes I made with them this term.

Ok, and as for my own work. Not good. Or, rather, not happening. The word-count has not budged, because I have not yet opened a document and named it "Most-Famous Play and Second-Most-Famous Play Chapter." I'm reading toward it, but I haven't yet put words to it. There was a meeting with 2/3 of my committee before Thanksgiving in which we figured out what was producing the disastrous miscommunication that led to the Bad Thing that happened in October. It was useful, but I'm still shaping my rage into the constructive engine I need it to be.

I also need to submit an abstract for a conference-thing. Today. I think I'll be presenting on Most-Famous Play, but I'm feeling a bit wary of submitting such a thing to a conference of Big Willie bigwigs. Is it absolute folly to do so? Or are we all so over that play that now we can actually start doing things with it again?

(It also occurs to me that this wariness is a product of the Bad Thing. One of the greatest compliments I've ever received came indirectly from Persnickety Prof., who told Mr. Eph that I was "fearless." Which, although it may have meant "too obtuse to know better," I held as a badge of honor. And now... now I fear I may be fearful. God damn it.)

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In which irony swings by a for a visit

2007-11-28T13:14:00.001-06:00

Those three little applications I sent off, back when I was hopeful and ambitious about this year's market, before the world ended? Remember those?

One has requested more materials.

On the one hand, I feel vindicated. On the other, I suspect it's the UChaos name that did the trick.

But, still. Now do I respectfully retract my application, ignore the request, or forward the message on to my committee with a smug and disingenuous request for advice?

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In which we engage in a rite of passage

2007-11-16T23:40:00.001-06:00

For the first time ever, in the history of time, I cried in front of a professor. Two, in fact, during a three-hour meeting with two-thirds of my committee. Goddamn it.

In my defense, it was more minor leakage rather than a full-on jag, and it was prompted by Persnickety jabbing at a very sore spot. He suggested that what my chapters are lacking is a certain level of "professionalism." Ahem. This "professionalism," to judge by my training in this program, appears out of nowhere, or perhaps descends upon one, like grace or manna or bird droppings. It is not, so far as I can tell, an aspect that is taught as part of the curriculum for doctoral students. It is also not something that could have been mentioned at point earlier in the three years I've spent on the dissertation so far.

So, yeah. It was crying in lieu of stabbing someone with a pen.

Other than that, it was a useful meeting. I have a strategy now for establishing my argument in a way that satisfies Persnickety and is interesting enough to keep the newest member of my committee (we'll call him Don Music) engaged. I still need to run it by Cheerleader, but I'm sure she'll be on board.

There was also some weirdness around the question of my engagement with the critical and contemporary background for my primary texts that, the more I think about it, sounds like Persnickety may have been suggesting that I haven't done my research. Which, combined with my feeling that this whole denial-of-letters has the effect of accusing me of being a fraud, just ups my rage yet again. Because in the past half-dozen years I have felt anxious, doubtful, unsure, confused, and absolutely at sea at times, but I have never felt like a fraud. I know what I know, and these suggestions that I don't seem to be about the most counter-productive advising techniques I can think of.

Hm. It appears that I'm still angry. I wonder if that will go away at some point.

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In which we revert

2007-11-11T21:12:00.001-06:00

Since I can't manage to make Google searches ignore me, I'm switching naming conventions back to this older style. Annoying, because I liked using the song titles, but what ya gonna do. So, I've added odd characters in the middle of some of the older post titles to head off those looking for lyrics. But if anyone has further suggestions for cloaking myself in secrecy (wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce), they'd be appreciated.

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"Do You Realize?" The Flaming Lips

2007-11-07T22:10:00.001-06:00

Dude, the universe is whispering at me. A local newscaster just quoted a line from Bacon that a good chunk of my first chapter hinges on. And last night's Boston Legal featured a closing argument that weirdly paralleled the last chapter I was working on. Something's in the air.

But, seriously, what local tv reporter quotes Bacon, for Francis's sake?

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"Wish I Were the Moon," Neko Case

2007-11-06T20:43:00.001-06:00

Somehow that little counter/bar thingy over yonder hasn't budged. Hm. Perhaps because I have yet to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) in pursuit of the Major Plays chapter. I know I'm a slow started, but this is a little silly.

I did, however, finally talk to Cheerleader Advisor last night, and she was just as gung-ho on my project as ever. She also gave me some good strategies for my meeting with Persnickety Advisor, where I hope to convince him once and for all about the feasibility and importance of the topic. It's just so frustrating to be two years into the writing portion and I still have to convince him anew with every meeting. The current attempt to fix this involves outlining an introduction that covers all the critical background I'm not directly addressing in order to free up space in the chapters for what I do care about. Persnickety is an excellent editor and thinker (which is why he's on my committee), but I'm just so tired of defending my work every single time I meet with him.

I was also able to let Cheerleader know how this decision on their part affects my personal life, reminding her that I'm part of a two-career partnership. She suggested I set a writing schedule that (best-case scenario) makes me hire-able come spring if things go well with C.'s search. Which, again, was my original schedule, so I'm even more committed to sticking to it now.

So that's that. In teaching, I'm in the middle of what should be an awesome week: we're doing two of my favorite texts (forgive the 133t-speak, but I can't figure out how to make Google ignore me), The W@ste L@nd and The W1nter's T@le. And I feel like today's classes were good--the first-years really got the fun and utility of close-reading, and the Shx class liked the play more than I had expected after the pain and suffering last week's Tr0ilus and Cress1d@ caused. But I'm so, so worn out and unmotivated. It's an effort to turn it on at the beginning of class, and I'm more wiped-out than usual afterward. I'm entirely ready for the Quarter of Crap to be over and done with.

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Poetry Friday

2007-11-02T14:24:00.001-05:00

No progress on the chapter just yet (Thursdays absolutely destroy me), but how's about a little Ovid? This is a little bit from the section on Arachne (Book VI), and for some reason, this translation from the Oxford cheapy edition absolutely slays me:

Only Arachne had no fear. Yet she
Blushed all the same; a sudden color tinged
Her cheeks against her will, then disappeared;
So when Aurora rises in the dawn,
The eastern sky is red and, as the sun
Climbs, in a little while is pale again.

She stood by her resolve, setting her heart,
Her stupid heart, on victory, and rushed
To meet her fate.
(Translation by A.D. Melville.)

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"Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," Bob Dylan

2007-10-31T19:34:00.001-05:00

All right, fine, then. I'm in with InDWriMo, because somehow the next chapter has to be written, come hell, high water, or crazed advisors. I'm pledging 15,000 words as a lowball goal, because this is the chapter on Most-Written-About Text in my field, and Second-Most-Written-About Text. And, of course, the one that my chair thinks has nothing to do with the rest of the argument of the dissertation. Woo.

As for the previous thing. Still processing, still mad, still not ready to talk to the committee.

(Thanks, Flavia, for the words of support. Did help.)

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"Happiness Is a *Warm Gun," The Beatles

2007-10-25T23:11:00.001-05:00

The very bad things that happened previously with my committee have transformed into catastrophic things. They withdrew their support for my job search this fall. Which is, clearly, a non-negotiable decision.

So, that happened.

I don't know if anyone's paying attention here other than my mom (hi, Mom! I'll call you tomorrow), but for my imaginary friends, I'm still processing, and I'm not sure if I'll be doing that here.

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"That Teenage & Feeling," Neko Case

2007-10-19T18:18:00.001-05:00

I'm in grading hell this weekend: thirtysome midterm exams, an equal number of essays, two days' worth of reading responses for my first-year class, and a bunch of weekly quizzes. All but the essays should go quickly, but gah all the same. My own stupid fault for having a week that kept me on public transit for approximately twice the number of hours I spent in class.

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"You Just Haven't ^ Earnt It Yet, Baby," Kirsty McColl

2007-10-17T23:04:00.001-05:00

Apropos of nothing other than Flavia's new, pretty things, I recalled the one good thing that's come of this quarter's hellish teaching schedule: Because I have a hefty commute between UChaos and St. Happy, I wear my Chucks to trek, and take my lovely but brutal shoes to wear for class. Yes, it's reminiscent of office-ladies wearing their Reeboks on the subway while carrying their sensible pumps in their shoulder-bag, but it's also an excuse to break out the high, high-heeled pointy, pointy-toed lovelies for stalking around in front of the chalkboard.

In other news, this week still sucks. But Big Fancy Name in my field seemed persuaded as to the interestingness of my project.

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"Weird on Me," Lloyd Cole

2007-10-14T13:42:00.001-05:00

I managed to fix up the writing sample last night, and while I'm now plotting to substantially rework the opening so I have a properly snappy intro, it's currently good enough for the school with the Monday deadline. Yeah, fine, whatever.

As I was writing up yet another abstract, this one for the sample, I realized why I hate the form so, so, so much. Waaaay back in my formative years--fifth grade, maybe?--I had a teacher who gave us an assignment to write one-sentence book reviews. Oh, god, how I hated that assignment. As I recall arguing to Mrs. Tanner, whom I otherwise loved, if the book can be summed up in one stinkin' sentence, why did the author bother to write the whole thing?

I feel the same way about abstracts. If I can distill the whole of the sample/chapter/dissertation into three or four sentences, why the hell am I writing 20/50/300 pages? Yeah, yeah, I get the usefulness of the abstract, in that it articulates the main points of the argument without getting into the whole process, and a good abstract can prepare your reader to approach the material with the most favorable attitude toward it. But. Gah.

I'm just so very tired of writing about my writing. On the other hand, though, the more I look over the summary of the next chapter on the docket, the more excited I am to write it. As C. said when he read over that chapter summary, "I really want to read this one!" Encouraging, at least.

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"White Girl," X

2007-10-13T14:56:00.001-05:00

So, hi. There was a very bad weekend, followed by a rather bad week. There were tears, and general freaking-out, mediated by an emergency meeting with Sympathetic Job Committee Chair, where she talked me down and helped me sort out what needed to be done with the materials. And then I spent the whole weekend rewriting the letter, abstract, and c.v., as well as line-editing the two drafted chapters and slapping the Monster Chapter into draft status. Nearly kilt me, I tell ya. But! I was able to send an entirely new and complete batch of materials off to my committee on Sunday night.

Which meant I was able to show my face at My Field Event on Monday evening. I suspect that my chipper presence did as much to persuade as the materials themselves did. At least, I'm telling myself that, as I've heard not a peep since then from any of my referrers. Hm.

And then! Then, I crashed. Thank goodness this was midterm week for one class, because there was no way I could have done any more prep than I managed on the (very early) bus to campus.

There are now two application packets resting quietly in my desk at St. Happy, waiting to be sent out on Monday, along with one electronic application to be submitted the same day. But I still need to line-edit my writing sample and write up something that looks at least a little like a teaching philosophy for deadlines later this week.

Aaaaaannnnnndddd...I don't want to. I'm feeling sulky and recalcitrant. This is the nasty flip side to my short bursts of intense productivity. They wipe me out for, like, a week, and I have a miserable time re-motivating myself. Which is bad, because there's a heck of a lot to be done this weekend, in addition to the job stuff. I have midterms to grade, along with two piles of essays, plus reading for class, reading for another My Field Event on Monday, and reading for a Superstar Guest meeting on Wednesday. Who sucks at time management? I do!

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"This Is What I Do," Rhett Miller

2007-10-05T15:00:00.001-05:00

I am finding myself in a very bad place. I sent off my job materials to the committee (late, I know) and immediately received a message from Cheerleader Advisor, in which she noted that my letter was riddled with typos and grammatical problems. And that my c.v. used the wrong format for degree titles. And that all versions of my abstract suck.

Now, my abstract probably does need work, which is why I'm sending it to you, damn it. And the vita thing, whatever, it's what my reference book said, but easy to change. But for the life of me, I cannot find the typos in the letter. And it's not like I'm bad at proofreading; I used to do it for a living. And when you tell me you need a "clean copy" of the long abstract, the copy editor in my rises up to cut a bitch for suggesting that I'm responsible for dirty copy.

So, ok, I fixed some things up and tried to clarify what she specified she was having problems with. And then I looked up some recent Chaos dissertations, purportedly to check citation style (MLA or Chicago?) but really to see what's been coming out. And, the abstracts for these completed dissertations? On par with my abstract for a still-partly-imaginary project. Or, excuse my snobbishness, worse. Obfuscatory language? Yep. Jargon for its own sake? Yep. A distinct sense of so what? Yep.

Possible explanations:
[all redacted now, because I'm indulging a spot of paranoia]
Luckily, I have versions of all this stuff off to the rest of the committee, the job-search chairs, and our department secretary (a former academic editor). Unluckily, I have not heard back from any of them yet. I do hope some of their feedback balances this out.

N.B., This post may or may not disappear, in whole or in part, at some point in the future. Not that anyone's reading, but whatever. Safe>sorry, and all that.

Eta: You know what? I'm line-editing my first chapter, and it's freaking awesome. It's been at least a month since I've messed with it, and I forgot half the stuff I said, so it's like reading a brand-new piece. Repent and die, bastards. I'm good at some of this.

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"Think About It, Think, Think About It," Flight of the Conchords

2007-10-03T20:27:00.001-05:00

I have been warned in the past that there will come a point where I am so heartily sick of my dissertation topic that I will want to finish just to get it out of my head. I thought this was going to happen because I would spend so much time thinking and writing about it.

I was half right.

I have written three different versions of a dissertation abstract, because apparently one needs different wording for the letter, the CV, and the official abstract. I now hate my project, at least in the abstract. I have four key terms, and I don't know how many more configurations I can wrestle them into before I descend into some wacked version of Shakespearean Mad Libs.

Also, my letter is exactly two pages, but I forgot to account for the letterhead crap, so now I have to do some more trimming there. My CV is pretty, though, except for the part where I don't have any publications.

Aaaaaaaand... the chapter isn't done. I'm going to send the job materials off to my committee tonight, but they're just going to have to wait on the chapter draft. Gah.

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"Four Leaf Clover," Old 97's

2007-10-01T19:33:00.001-05:00

Accomplished:

One job letter
Two paragraphs of a teaching philosophy (including a clever metaphor)
Appointment with Fancy Scholar in my sub-field, who is visiting Chaos this month
A reminder that Terrifying Chapter (which is next on the draft docket) will be awesome when I finally write it.

[Seriously, reading over my proposal chapter summary for that one, I was like, "Damn, I want to read that chapter!"]

Still to be done:

Reading student discussion responses for tomorrow's class
Reading essay for same class
Prepping same class
Prepping other class
Answering e-mail from Third Reader, who wants to make an appointment to talk about my drafts at exactly the times I can't possibly meet
Finishing Nightmare Chapter

What I want to do:

Watch baseball
Watch Heroes
Eat dinner
Read about Britney's baby drama on the internets

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"Cruel to Be Kind," Nick Lowe

2007-10-01T12:31:00.001-05:00

Ok, so that was annoying. A week in a hotel, all items in the apartment shifted to the south wall and draped in black tarps, construction, cleaning, bah. The cats seem to have recovered from their week at the pet hotel (we told them it was a corporate retreat), and are only marginally clingy and complainy. All my clothes are still packed in plastic and I'm not sure where my socks or underpants are. But I'm home, I have wireless access, and now I have until Wednesday to write my job letter, my teaching philosophy, my extended diss abstract, and oh yeah, my freaking Nightmare Chapter.

Also, tomorrow is the first of an expected four Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Days this quarter, in which I get up at 6 for class at 9, hold office hours, run around campus collecting materials for an event, catch the train to St. Happy for class at 1:30, travel back to UChaos for an event, and then drag myself all the way back north during rush hour. I'm predicting this will be at least a 13-hour day, all told, and I'm not sure where little things like lunch fit into it.

Oh, and I ran into Persnickety Prof. last week, who's heading my diss committee, and he had apparently forgotten that meeting we had in the spring where I told him I was on the market this year. He's already written all his letters and was surprised that he had one more batch to do. When did I become forgettable?

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"Every Day I % Write The Book," Elvis Costello

2007-09-23T19:43:00.001-05:00

So here we are, officially homeless for the week, ensconced in a hotel in the first neighborhood we lived here in Big City, while the construction on our apartment commences. It's nice to be back around these parts. It is not so nice to cart six suitcases filled with class clothes, regular clothes, shoes, dopp kits, computer and accessories, and all the damn books and files I'll need to work on my chapter, chapter revisions, job letter, and teaching philosophy this week. Seriously, the book suitcase is very upsetting to me, as it's a concrete representation of what I have to distill onto the page. Luckily, the book suitcase is also topped off with back copies of Entertainment Weekly.

Also, we have two bathrooms in the room, due to the architectural oddities of old hotels.

Cats went to the pet hotel, and I'm sure they're fine, but I was a crazy cat mom while dropping them off, giving extensive and detailed feeding instructions. I did, however, stop short of explaining how you have to sing songs to Maggie in which all the words are "Maggie," "beauty," "beautiful," and "pretty."

Now I have to watch some football, mark some writing assignments, and finish writing my syllabus for my UChaos class. I'm confident that I can complete the first of those tasks.

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"Your Biggest Fan," Voxtrot

2007-09-17T16:42:00.001-05:00

Oh, dear. We're going to have to spend the next week in a hotel, with the cats at a cat hotel, while major construction is done on the apartment. The landlords are installing central air and heat, which involves cutting holes in pretty much every single wall in the place. Also, I'm losing my walk-in closet, because that's where the machinery goes.

Had this happened a month ago, we could have just grabbed some clothes and decamped, but now that classes have started, relocating means also relocating all class-related paraphernalia. Plus, this week is C.'s birthday, which he now gets to celebrate by placing all of our belongings in dust-proof containers. Fun!

Today, I went to get a cat carrier (one of ours has gone missing), only to discover that Maggie just barely fits into the soft-sided thing I got. Also, pet store overcharged me for it, by, like, $20. Tomorrow, the kitten crew goes to the vet for booster shots. And I alone will be carting the 40 pounds of cats around, as C. has an ungodly-early class.

Wah.

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"Sister Sonny," Holly Golightly

2007-09-14T14:14:00.001-05:00

Shockingly, perusing The Goddamned List and trying to work on The Godddamned Chapter simultaneously is decidedly unproductive on both fronts.

Edit: I split the difference by spending a while searching the list and setting up my job spreadsheet, so I could feel productive and organized. Then I turned to the chapter, and have managed a measly 3 pages (and one of those is mostly a 25-line block quote). Why is this chapter being so recalcitrant? I have 23 pages of straight-up close readings; you'd think it would be easy enough to build a frame around those, right?

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"Eye of Fatima (Pt. 1)," Camper Van Beethoven

2007-09-12T23:37:00.001-05:00

I've maintained for years that this is one of the best songs ever written, but today I discovered I'd been hearing one line wrong since forever. It's "No one ever conquered Wyoming, from the left or from the right." Which makes more sense than what I'd been hearing all this time ("called from Wyoming"), if only incrementally.

Today was a meeting at Chaos about Ambitious Intro Class that starts in two weeks. Somehow, hearing that everyone else is feeling anxious and confused about it made me feel less anxious and confused. I still need to look over some articles to fill out the syllabus, but I feel ok about getting to that next week.

Big Willie is continuing to make me scattered and time-management-impaired. I really need to scale back the information I'm throwing at them, but it already seems that every other sentence out of my mouth is "But we'll get to that next [class/week/text/etc.]." Tomorrow's their first quiz, next week the first writing assignment, so I'll start to see what they're taking in and what I need to focus on.

In dissertation news, I seem to be reading myself into paralysis again. Which means I need to get back to writing. I have Friday blocked out to just sit and produce words, after which I can go out and drink with a friend from out of town.

And just to round out this portmanteau post, today I enjoyed two delightful consumer goods: First, a fantastic clippy pressboard binder thing I liberated from the supply closet at Chaos. Second, these

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"Guided by Wire," Neko Case

2007-09-08T21:12:00.001-05:00

Why I Am Annoying (#614 in a series):

Every time I eat plums, I have to recite "This Is Just to Say" to Mr. Eph.

The solution? Pluots.

So, class happened. It was a hot day, with eight thousand percent humidity, and while waiting for the train I had sweat actually dripping down my face. I took to blotting my décolletage like a hot-flashing grandma. So, so pretty, I was.

The classroom was also too hot, which made me extra-manic, what with the pacing and the gesticulating (my gesticulations bring all the boys to the yard, damn right, they're better than yours). While the location of the classroom is fantastic (right across the hall from the adjuncts' office), it doesn't have a podium, and the desk is actually lower than the student desk/chair combos. There is, however, a comfy upholstered desk chair, all the better for lounging in during the cabaret performances that I'll be assigning, because there's also a piano.

Not the best opening day, overall. I screwed up my dates, meandered a bit, overshot the time and didn't get through my first exercise. Eh, whatever. Next time we dive in to Favorite Play and things will go more smoothly, I'm sure. If only because the weather's finally turned and I just got an awesome dress I eBayed for half its retail. Go, me.

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"Tangled Up in Blue," Bob Dylan

2007-09-05T21:26:00.001-05:00

Oh, happy day! I got Official Mail from a Crazy Person! It's a preview of a "groundbreaking" study of Big Willie. A 900-page study, in fact, that "proves" all kinds of juicy historical and biographical "facts." Delightful.

Of course, it's by one those ones, who are bound and determined that some poor kid from the country couldn't ever write well. They're just adorable, from a distance.

This is even more fun than unsolicited review copies. And far crazier!

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"Save a Little Room for Me," John Wesley Harding

2007-09-05T18:30:00.001-05:00

Do I win the seat-of-my-pants award for procrastinated preparation? I've just finished revising my Big Willie syllabus; the course meets for the first time tomorrow afternoon. Nah, not that bad, then. I've changed the instructions for the final paper and swapped the scheduled positions of the Popular Fairy Comedy and the Popular Cross-Dressing Comedy, but otherwise I'm doing pretty much what I did the last couple times I've been through this syllabus. I was thinking (after my useful meeting with Cool Prof in my field at St. Happy) about adding a performance aspect, but I'm still not entirely sold on it. More thinking is clearly in order.

I also had a meeting today about my minor service position at UChaos, which has been so beautifully set up by the career-office person that all I really have to do is send e-mail and show up for events. Excellent.

And, um. Then I did some shopping on the way home. Just school supplies. And a lip gloss. And a tote bag.

Now on to the last, most important part of my class prep: What will I wear for the first day? The temperatures are still working against me, and I have ridiculous blisters that are limiting my cute-shoe options (is it sad that the student evaluations that most amuse me mention my cute shoes?). I'm thinking a full-skirted black & white dress, light cardigan, and my bad-ass kitten heels with the buckle on the pointy toe.

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"When You Land % Here It's Time," The Shins

2007-08-31T23:09:00.001-05:00

So, there was a birthday. And there was a good dinner, and a deeply fantastic lemon tart. And a night out at the birthday party for my favorite bar. All fairly low-key, but nice.

Today has been spent cleaning the apartment in preparation for the new school term. Granted, the dining room table is still covered in piles of articles and books for Massive Chapter (which is stalled at 16 pages of unconnected close readings. I've been reading all week, trying to formulate a frame for the argument. Gah.) and bags from my mostly-failed back-to-school shopping trips this week. I've managed to buy lots of makeup, but no clothes except for a party dress. Because I clearly needed another party dress. For all my parties.

Ahem, so, makeup. I bought some. Lipstick is apparently back this fall, and I'm in favor of this development. I'm trying out a few different reds and wines. And I bought new eyeliner, which is more exciting than it sounds. There was also a haircut and color, and they are both excellent and delightful.

Tomorrow, Mr. Eph and I head out to locations southerly for my cousin's Backwoods Hippie Jamboree Wedding. I should probably be packing, and checking weather forecasts, but instead I'm watching What Not to Wear and catching up on blogs. And I'm apparently in denial about classes next week, as I have yet to even look at my syllabus for the Big Willie class. Eh.

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"When We're Dancing," Magnetic Fields

2007-08-28T13:07:00.001-05:00

I am mercifully without an earworm today, so this is a random track from the player.

How is it that, with a month to go before classes start, I've gotten my second library recall notice of the week? That makes four total for the summer, which is more than I've ever been victim to before. Has the Unspoken Law of Summer Books been changed or something? And this last one is a book I'm currently working with, so I'll be waiting until the very last moment to turn it in and then recall it immediately.

Haircut tomorrow, then a birthday dinner out. No writing, per se, the last couple of days, but lots of reading and note-taking. I think I can see how the frame for the argument is coming together.

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"99 Luftballoons," Nena

2007-08-26T13:39:00.000-05:00
Saw Branagh's new As You Like It last night and it was... not good. Really weirdly tricked-up for no good reason, with abrupt and pointless shifts in tone, and most of the great and strange lines were cut out. "Sweep on, ye fat and greasy citizens"? Gone. Touchstone's "Much virtue in If"? Gone. Rosalind's examples of "men have lived and died, but not for love"? Gone. Phebe's railing at Silvius that if she's killed him with love, why isn't he dead yet? Gone. And why is Kevin Kline only doing Sad Clown now? He's a perfectly fine Normal Clown. His Jacques here seemed to be an extension of his Bottom in Midsummer a few years back. Alfred Molina's Touchstone was great, but played as far smarter than he really should be, if you ask me. The epilogue was cute, though.

I just want Branagh to get back to the tragedies. Or the romances, which would fit his oscillation between serious and silly much better. I'd kind of love to see what he'd do with Measure or Winter's Tale.

Very little writing accomplished yesterday, but I did some reading and found a chapter in which the author does a whole lot of the work I'd otherwise have to do to make my point, but arrives at entirely the wrong conclusion. I'd forgotten the best part about other critics: you can make them do all the work and then sweep in to make the better point at the end. So, today, as a break from the ongoing close-reading I've been writing up (why did I think that I needed 20 pages of close-reading? Do I still think this?), I'll be arguing with Big Name Guy in this subfield.

"Touched by the Hand of God," New Order

2007-08-24T19:01:00.001-05:00

Clearly, C. has been influencing the music in my head.

Ok, the previous plan? Not terribly successful. I just sat at the dining-room table and looked at all the same online stuff that I look at while on the couch. I managed about two paragraphs over about two hours. The work-every-day thing, I just can't get myself to commit to. So, back to the short bursts of manic productivity that have been my compositional mode for my entire academic career. I'm too old a dog for that particular new trick.

Mostly, I'm trying to convince myself that I can get a full draft of this chapter together before we go out of town next week. Of course, also in the next week I need to: do some back-to-school shopping (clothes! shoes! random crap!), get my hair cut/colored, clean the apartment before classes begin, do a ridiculous amount of laundry, have a birthday. Still, possible!

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"The Frug," Rilo Kiley

2007-08-22T13:52:00.001-05:00

My treat today, if I manage to get enough work done, is to buy the album that contains the above song.

I'm trying to trick myself into working by altering my surroundings. Instead of playing around online while sitting on the couch, I've relegated the laptop to the dining-room table. I'm still wasting time before actually working, but I had my coffee while watching the news and reading a magazine, rather than getting sucked in to Jezebel for a couple of hours. Not sure it's working as well as planned, though.

Made my apple-cider pie last night and it turned out better than I had expected. Because I'm more of an improvisational baker than is probably a good idea, I used hard pear cider rather than the plain and sober kind. Still, quite good. Better than Jimmy Fallon's, even.

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"I Love to Hate You," Erasure

2007-08-21T18:45:00.001-05:00

I'm pretty sure I danced to this at Neo last week. Ah, the Roaring Nineties.

I'm actually writing right now--one whole paragraph written. I feel guilty when I don't write, I feel guilty when I don't write enough, but at least making a stab at it for a couple of hours helps take the edge off my bad-feeling.

And then I get to make an apple pie. That's the carrot at the end of today's stick.

EtA: Two and a half pages, one scene. Maybe I should look into one of those page-counter widget things. Also, my space bar is sticky, so half ofwhatIwrote looks like that, like I'm writing in classical Latin orsomething.

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"Maggie's Farm," Bob Dylan

2007-08-20T18:15:00.001-05:00

I don't even really know this song, but a bit of the chorus was in my head when I woke up this morning. Apparently, my subconscious wants me to know that it ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.

This weekend was a wash, work-wise. And now the rest of the world is heading back to school, which is making me more and more anxious-feeling. I have two weeks until St. Happy starts up, and two weeks after that before UChaos (which is also when I'll have to hand over two chapters to my advisors), so things are not dire quite yet.

But I am going to have to start looking over syllabi soon and decide if I'm going to try to incorporate secondary criticism in my Big Willie class. I'm sure it would be useful, and the best St. Happy students would definitely benefit from that kind of rhetorical model. On the other hand, though, there's a big chunk of each class that struggles just to get a handle on plot and imagery, and I worry that throwing criticism at them would derail even that. And, from talking to a student who was in the other Willie section last spring, I found that the other instructor for this class had assigned a 15-page final paper incorporating 5 different critical sources. Which seems just evil for everyone involved. While I'm still basing my assignments on a syllabus from the tenured professor in the field, I think I'll feel better if I talk to the dept. chair about what I am and should be doing.

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"More Adventurous," Rilo Kiley

2007-08-17T11:25:00.000-05:00
Managed about two and a half pages yesterday. I'm starting to get a feel for how much I can get done in a set time-frame.

I should set today's goals, but I have champagne-head from last night's festivities. There may be no writing today.

"Doreen," Old 97's

2007-08-16T13:03:00.000-05:00
Again, song in my head.

Today's plan is to work through the last bit of yesterday's scene (I think I know what I'm needing to say about that) and to sketch out the next one. Then I'm off to a thing at my friend A.'s house in celebration of another friend's upcoming wedding. I'm thinking there will be lots of wine drinking and complaining about the department on A.'s balcony. Woo!

I noticed yesterday that I'm struggling both with diction (where have all my words gone?) and the physical act of typing. Don't know what happened to my touch-typing skills, beaten into me by Mr. Greaser (first name Dick, son's name Scooter) in high school. Ah, the happy days of tip-tip-typing along to a Madonna 45 on the ol' Selectric. Good times.

"It's Magic," Pilot

2007-08-15T12:49:00.000-05:00
That's the song I woke up with in my head this morning. I had assumed it was ELO, but Google tells me it's a one-hit-wonder by a band called Pilot. Hm.

Yesterday was... not so good. My left eye leaked all day due to sinus stuff, making me unfit for anything other than shopping for shoes online and watching baseball. Will attempt again today.

And I think I'm really done with the hithering and yon-ing and have settled down here. Wordpress is lovely, but that's also where I'm keeping my reading-notes blog, and I couldn't figure out how to isolate that from the main frivolousness, so back to Blogger for me.

EtA: The goal was close-readings of two scenes (the series of close-readings makes up the middle of the chapter, where I'm talking about how a concept is being structured and manipulated). I managed two-thirds of one scene, but it's the knottiest scene I'm dealing with in this chapter, so I'll call that a minor success. Four pages, which is... ok, I guess. There's something more to be said about the closing of the scene, but I don't know what it is quite yet.

Re: Radio Silence

2007-08-13T23:20:00.000-05:00
In case anyone's still paying attention, I've moved shop again. This time over to a simple thing that I won't feel the need to prank up with sidebars and such. Just a place to keep track of myself: http://meatcheesebun.wordpress.com/

In which I make the leap

2007-02-18T15:14:00.000-06:00
Let it be known, I still hate Blogger. But I've made the switch over to their new template, losing my carefully (though amateurishly) crafted scheme, but gaining the ability to add things to my sidebar without journeyman-level html-wrangling.

But what I wanted to post is a delightful conversation I had with a student this week. He comes up to me after class and says, "One of my other professors, my marketing professor, was talking about Romeo and Juliet in his class."

"Oh, really?" I say.

"Yeah, but--and I may not remember the play right--he said that they were kept apart by their parents. And that's not right, is it?"

"Nope. As we discussed, their parents don't know about the marriage at all until the end."

"So why would he say that?"

"Well, because there are cultural assumptions about the play--like it's a sublime love story, it's about parental disapproval--that have very little to do with the play itself. But now you know what's really going on, because you actually read it."

"Huh."

"But I wouldn't correct your marketing professor. Just know you're right."

"Yeah, at least not until after the midterm."

In which I discover a new thing

2007-02-11T13:08:00.000-06:00
How is it that I had not previously been aware of this information? This will be making my life easier in so many ways.

That is all. (Oh, and the chapter did, indeed, get written, in two marathon days. It's not fantastic, but it's decent and needs only minor structural and logical revisions at the moment. Yay!)

In which I make some staggering observations

2007-01-31T17:38:00.000-06:00

When one waits until two days before an immutable deadline to write the final 2/3 of a chapter, in addition to whipping the first 1/3 into manageable shape, the concomitant stress may result in a certain wild-eyed demeanor and uncontrollable twitches.
When one achieves the completion of said chapter, one may spend up to five hours playing World of Warcraft in celebration.
When one's youngest cat, a normally hefty young fellow, suddenly refuses to eat for a number of days in succession, one may become panicked. After taking said cat to the vet for a battery of tests and x-rays, one may be confused at the lack of clear diagnosis. When the vet finally suggests that the cat may be suffering from low-grade asthma and maybe the cat owner could cease smoking in the closed-up-for-winter apartment in which the cat resides, the cat owner may feel overwhelming guilt.
When one ceases smoking in a closed-up-for-winter apartment, said apartment almost immediately becomes much better-smelling and more pleasant to be in.
When one begins smoking exclusively on a semi-enclosed back porch in Chicago in January, one's cigarette consumption is almost immediately cut in half.
Chicago in January is quite cold.
When one's cat finally begins eating normally again, even begging for extra treats in the middle of the day, one may be quite happy about this turn of events. One may even feed said cat canned chicken in celebration.
Addendum 2/1:
Just when one thinks all is well with the cat, the cat may develop a decidedly distressing UTI, resulting in even more anxiety and vet visits for all involved.

In which I make no small plans

2007-01-15T15:29:00.001-06:00
Hey! Guess what I'm doing today? Writing! No, really! I have at least half a paragraph of totally brand-new stuff! And about a page of copy-pasted stuff that totally counts!

Argh. I've been entirely off my game lately, with absolutely no progress being made on either the under-revision chapter or the new one that I want to have done by the end of the month. Part of the problem is that up to this point, I've basically be re-working previous material, which is not fun, but not terrible either. And now I have to make the turn into working from scratch on the rest of the dissertation. And I haven't started from scratch in a long, long time. I think I've forgotten how to start.

If I were smart, I'd take my own advice to my students: start writing somewhere in the middle and worry about the beginning later. But I just can't. So I'm cobbling together a provisional beginning (which will actually turn up in the middle of this two-play chapter) and hating every letter of it. Bah.

But my point here wasn't so much to complain (ok, maybe a little), but to plan. I want to churn out at least three pages every non-teaching day, and get some reading done on teaching days. Weekends will be negotiable, as I suspect once I hit stride I can (and will have to) do far more than three pages at a stretch. I need a reasonable version of this material ready for public consumption by the 29th, so we'll see if the threat of a deadline will help. And then I have two conferences back to back, presenting material that's in decent shape already. Wish me luck.

In which we take more quizzes

2007-01-05T21:40:00.000-06:00
This is because of the nail-biting question, clearly. And maybe the counting. And correcting the song. And the number of times I messed with the formatting of this stupid thing is probably testament to its truth.

My score on The Neurotic Test:

The True Neurotic
(You scored 52 anxiety, 60 awkwardness, and 51 neuroticism!)

Congratulations, you are The True Neurotic, you nail-biting, conflict-avoiding worrier, you. You're plagued by self-doubt and anxiety, which makes social activity hard--even though you may be well-liked, you feel under a storm of silent criticism. It doesn't help that people give you funny looks for organizing all your pens by color or sharpening your gnawed pencils to a delicate point.

Your high anxiety score implies that you are unable to relax, worry about the future often, and probably are plagued by irrational fears and self-doubt.

Your high awkwardness score implies that you are socially inept, probably stick out from the crowd, and feel uncomfortable in large groups of people, such as at parties.

Your high neuroticism score implies that you exhibit neurotic behaviors--probably organization, fanatic obsessions (can you recite the entire first LOTR movie?), repetitive mantras, constant checking, or orderly rituals.

Link: The Neurotic Test
(OkCupid Free Online Dating)

In which I make some lists

2007-01-02T12:38:00.000-06:00
Hi! I'm back from my hectic holiday schedule of sleeping all day and playing nerdy computer games all night. It was exhausting, but someone had to do it.

I'm clearly in denial of the fact that the winter quarter starts on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. for me. I did manage to update the syllabus, but I haven't decided what to do about the final exam/essay option. I really don't want to read 40 essays on Why Rosalind Is Awesome, but I'm also thinking that an essay exam in a class intended for upper-division English majors does a disservice to the students.

So, looking ahead, I have two lists to make, one domestic, one academic:
Domestic:
Laundry!
Take down the cute li'l tinsel tree
Organize my closet so I can dress like a grown-up again (strides were made toward this with the 10 bags of donations we dropped off on the 31st)
General dusting, sweeping, vacuuming
Call landlord about the tragically slow drains in the bathroom sink & tub
Make a hair appointment (only three months after the last)
Disassemble & felt sweaters for the felted-throw project I'm planning
Academic:
Revise Chapter One & resubmit to committee
Plan meeting with committee
Draft Chapter Three
Read a bunch of Marlowe-related stuff
Sort & file Fall class notes
Sort library books, renew & return
Turn in receipts for conference-travel reimbursement
Get an old essay into shape for journal submission
Get Chapter One into shape for journal submission
Well, it doesn't look so bad laid out like that. Now I just have to put it in motion. Oh! And I have a resolution: I'm going to stop being lazy and whiny about going out to eat. This is step one of the Plan to Enjoy Chicago While We Can, which goes into motion tonight with a date with C. to go for steak frites.

Oh, yes, there's also news on the Get C. a Job front: two interviews at MLA, both of which went well, both of which were with schools located in places that wouldn't suck my soul dry. Now comes the fun part of waiting for the campus-visit calls, as well as news from the schools that weren't interviewing at MLA.

In which I get uppity

2006-12-24T13:47:00.000-06:00

My Peculiar
Aristocratic Title is:
Her Eminence
the Very Viscountess
St. Eph the Disheveled of
Wallop upon Deane
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

{Something more substantial coming soon, I promise.}

In which nous n'amuseé pas

2006-12-14T16:05:00.000-06:00

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

Drat, I was hoping for Henry VI. (And please forgive the bad French.)

In which things are better now

2006-12-13T15:08:00.000-06:00
Two delightful things happened today. First, I got a response from one of my advisors, the Demanding Advisor who has never quite accepted my dissertation premise. He gets it now, and calls my approach "profound and promising." He also started the message with "Hooray!" and had some specific ideas for fleshing out the chapter to a more chapter-like length. So, yay.

Then C. got an interview call from the university where I'd most like us to go, and is high on his list as well. He's been itchy the last couple of days waiting for calls, so this has settled him down nicely. And tickets to Philadelphia aren't looking crazy-expensive, so it's off to MLA for him. So, woo.

Also, the quarter is officially done for me. Finally. I have two late papers to deal with, but I can't change the grades until January, so I'm not worrying about them. I'm also finishing up an incomplete with a student that requires some actual thought on my part, but that's not so bad and is making me reconsider the course and how it went. Oh, and the teaching observation thing was fine, kind of helpful but more telling me I'm fairly awesome, which is always nice to hear. I think I just waited too long to jump through this particular hoop; it would have been very useful the first year I was teaching, before I figured out how to stand up and use the board. I'm better now.

In which I am... not right

2006-12-09T22:41:00.002-06:00
I'm halfway through this last batch of grading and I just... enh. Nothing's particularly wrong with any of them, but nothing's spectactular, either. They're all solid A- papers, which is not a bad thing by any means, but I'm feeling... not right. I don't know if I'm not in a good enough mood to be grading, or not in a cranky enough place. I should be happy that this batch of upperclassmen know enough to foreground their claims, to engage with the quotations, to have a position from which to argue, but I'm getting hung up on their inability to format quotations and put the quotation marks in before the parenthetical citation.

I'm not sure what this feeling is that I'm sucked into right now. It's not the Mean Reds, it's not cranky, it's not depressed, it's just minorly annoyed with the ongoing minutae of day-to-day life. Which I'm not even engaged with, since I've left my apartment, like, twice in the last week. I have no excuse. It's almost like bershon, but the grown-up version, where the object of disgust is my pajama-wearing self.

But halfway done! Eleven more!

Oh, and I forgot to report back on What I Learned from My Teaching Observation. I don't get the official feedback from my observers until Monday, but I watched the tape and learned that I 1) wave my hands around my face all the damn time, making me look like I'm doing some kind of seizure-inflected dance, 2) say "all right?" and "yes?" pretty much constantly (I'm thinking about replacing the first with "aiight?"), and 3) I read textual quotations much too fast. C. says that, shockingly, my teaching approach, performance-wise, mirrors his. Because, of course, we share a brain. Which is just as romantic as it sounds.

In which I check in

2006-12-05T18:39:00.000-06:00
So, yeah, it's the end of the quarter and I'm mostly MIA 'round here. Sorry about that. How about some random bullet points?

I finished the chapter that I've been plugging along on since, oh, this time last year. It is somehow no longer than the last draft. Eh, whatever. I'm turning it in tomorrow, and I like its new title.
Attention: Internets--The word you're looking for is "simple" not "simplistic." Not synonyms, and stop pretending they are.
All my shows are fall-finale-ing! So sad! What will I do without Heroes and Betty and Gilmore Girls for the next month? Read books?
Speaking of books, yet another pleasure-reading novel from the UChaos library has been recalled. Uncool, people. Stop it. I'm going to start leaving nasty notes again in the books I return.
I've been sucked in to an online monster-killing game. It's only a bit compulsive.
Oh, dear, I have papers coming in tomorrow and grading to get behind. Drat.

In which my true self is revealed

2006-11-30T22:36:00.000-06:00

How evil are you?

Well, maybe, but I did return a Home Despot credit card I found on the street today.

In which we regroup

2006-11-26T13:25:00.000-06:00
Wow, it certainly has been a while. I'm, like, the anti-NaBloPoMo 'round here. Sorry.

Ok, first it was the end of the quarter at St. Happy U., which included a final-exam time-slot of 8:45 a.m. Dude, seriously. For all of four students who took the exam option. And now I have a pile of papers and exams to grade by Friday, so I really should get started on those soon.

Then, I dove into teaching Donne at UChaos. I was so excited about doing Songs and Sonnets (in which there are no sonnets!), but they're so tired, it was quite a slog through them. And tomorrow we do some Elegies and The First Anniversary, which I fear will further trample them down. And how about ending with some refreshing Herbert? Yes, that'll be awesome. Plus, I'm being observed for some Teaching-Certificate-related nonsense on Wednesday. Whee.

Then there's the good: Thanksgiving in Rural PA. Family, food, the whole shebang. Instead of cheesecake, this year I made this, which is so super-fantastic I want to eat it every morning until the end of time. And I've ascended to a new level of competence in my mom's eyes, as I was left singularly in charge of the kitchen for a good 45 minutes while she had to run out and pick up my brother from somewheres. I think I've perfected my green-bean recipe (pan-fried in olive oil with minced onions, splashed with balsamic, lemon, and lime juice, topped with crumbled cheese, fresh mozzarella in this case, though feta is better). And my mom introduced me to the wonder of fancy-schmansy gourmet salt. We are a salt-loving family.

Mostly, it was good to see everyone together and happy after a fairly tough year that isn't quite over yet. Sappy, yes, but we made up for that with the general mocking and hard-time-giving.

There was also shopping, of course, as this seems to have become an inadvertent tradition. We chose our spots wisely, though, and so were not trampled. Carl wound up with not one, but two velvet sportscoats. Because he clearly needed them. We might have to throw a party for the burgundy one.

Oh, yeah, and there was a party last weekend. Our friends look pretty swanky when we force them to dress up. But remind me that the weekend before Thanksgiving is no time to be throwing a party, though it did mean that we left a fairly clean apartment.

And how are you? Full? Happy? Thankful? Tired?

In which I catch up on some correspondence

2006-11-14T14:32:00.000-06:00
Dear Ohio,

Thanks for a lovely weekend. You were so very nice and gracious that I hate to mention this one little thing, but could you do something about the roadkill? I'm still traumatized by the chunk of deer that I ran over Thursday night (and then screamed for a mile) and the drive back to Columbus brought three more deer, two coyotes, and a wide variety of small, smushed critters. Just, ew. Also, aaaaaahhhhhhh.

And this may just be a small-town quirk, but that thing where you turn off the traffic signals at 10 p.m.? Is weird. But I did love your ranch dressing. Thanks for that.

Kisses,
S.

* * * * *
Dear UChaos,

Listen, I'm only telling you this because I'm your friend. You know you're super-cute and super-nice and super-cool, but you have, like, this reputation? Like, with other universities? They think you're like, mean and snobby and crazy. Now, I tried really hard this weekend to tell them that you're totally not like that, but for some reason they're kind of... scared?...of you. Did you, like, use to make fun of everyone else? I think that maybe you need to apologize to some people, because they would totally be your friend if they really knew you.

Just being honest because I love you,
S.

* * * * *
Dear St. Happy U,

Thank you so much for finally being done with the quarter. Could you maybe talk to UChaos about this scheduling thing? Because I don't think they understand it.

Love,
S.

In which all's well that ends well

2006-11-10T23:32:00.000-06:00
Good day. Presentation went well. Not a lot of questions for me, but I'm choosing to believe that the reason for that is that I blew their minds, baby. And the Grand Old Man who sat in on my session, the GOM who's editing a fancy edition of My Play, said it was one of the best papers he's ever heard (oh, heavens) and asked for a copy.

And then, because I do what I do, I rounded up a herd of grad students and junior faculty, got them drunk, and took them on a midnight field trip to Wal-Mart. It's a gift, what I have.

In which I live-blog my continuing procrastination

2006-11-09T20:13:00.000-06:00
9:14 p.m.: I'm here, wherever this is, ensconced in my tiny faux-Victorian room overlooking an impressive-looking river. I have wireless, but no phone except roaming. I have water, and yogurt, and snacky Gardettos, and cigarettes, and music. I have 17 pages that need to become 10, and if they could cohere at some point, that would be great, too.

Thanks for the good thoughts and cheerleading. I'll keep y'all posted.

9:56: Ok, earlier there was some kind of air-raid siren, and just now there was some kind of explosion outside that sounded not really like fireworks. Where the hell am I?

I'm now up to 19 pages. This is not the direction I'm supposed to be headed in.

10:51: Holding steady at 16 pages. It seems that I'm writing just as much as I'm cutting. Need diet Coke. Must put pants on.

12:21: Things were weird out there. The QuickyMart had, in its array of bottled iced teas, extra-sweet tea. Apparently I'm in the south.

But now I've read Carl what I have, and pieces are sliding into place. Kind of. Down to 10 pages. We may be in the home stretch.

12:45: Done! No, really! I think it might actually be good! Yay me!

1:18: Final update. Wow, had I only read my horoscope for this week before I sunk into crazyland:

Sometimes, Virgo, you're too damn smart for your own good. You may describe a problem so brilliantly, for instance, that you think you've solved it merely by talking about it, and never get around to actually fixing it. On other occasions your fine mind runs amuck in an orgy of razor-sharp analysis, cutting things apart in order to understand them but not putting them back together again. I beg you not to indulge in these excesses during the coming week. Your intelligence will be soaring beyond even its usual exceptional levels, and it would be a shame for you not to capitalize on it momentously. (Free Will Astrology)

Next up, then, capitalizing on my enormous, exceptional brain.

In which I freak out

2006-11-09T10:45:00.000-06:00
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh.

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhaaaaaahhhhh.

Paper still not done. At least I'm packed. Freaking out.

Someone remind me that I do this to myself, under the stupid idea that I work better under deadline.

In which I am clearly unprepared

2006-11-08T20:05:00.000-06:00
So, that conference paper? The one I'm giving on Friday afternoon, after flying to Columbus tomorrow and then driving to the conference college and then jumping on the hotel bed? Still holding at 16 pages gleaned from the much longer essay with a totally different argument. Still lacking its own argument or any connective tissue. Still lacking either a section explaining the title or the scene mentioned specifically in my abstract. And still not writing itself.

And yet, my head refuses to work properly. It wants to flip through the Sephora catalog while watching Top Model. At least I got all my class-related work done today, including a stack of essay grading, some pdf-making, and writing up a quiz and a whole slew of final essay prompts. (Let's not think right now about the final exam I'll have to write as soon as I get back.)

I need my own personal cheerleader for moments like this.

In which I further consider business cards

2006-11-03T19:51:00.000-06:00
Paying no attention to the swelling to-do list at my elbow, let's think about Al's suggestion for what else to put on my imaginary business cards. She's going with "Erstwhile Rockstar." Yes, this pleases me. Other tagline options:
Gal-about-Town
Better than you
Grammar Ninja
Freelance Crank
Hi.
and a new, strong contender, cribbed from Truewit at Blogging the Renaissance:
The early seventeenth century: shining Golden Age of EVERYTHING.
Ok, that bit of silliness aside, I now have to turn to the seven remaining items on this weekend's to-do, including such minor tasks as "write conference paper" and "grade pile of midterm essays."

In which I lodge a complaint and pose a question

2006-11-02T13:45:00.000-06:00
Item the first: My El station is closing in a month, for an unspecified length of time. Granted, I'm on a stretch where the stations are really close together, so this'll add only a couple of blocks onto my walk to the train, but one of the appealing things about this apartment was the fact that it's only two blocks from the train. Plus, how awesome is it to close a station just as winter, snow, ice, and unshoveled sidewalks are posed to make an appearance? Not awesome at all, actually.

Item the second: Would it be deeply cocky of me to make up some business cards for the conference? Nothing fancy, just something with my name and e-mail address--it seems pretentious to put my university or candidate status on it, right?

Item the third (unadvertised): I got a small travel grant for the conference. This means I can indulge in a large-ish car for the drive from Mid-Sized Midwest City (where I'm flying in) to Nowheresville Conference City. What should I get?

In which the light at the end of the tunnel heaves into sight

2006-10-30T07:59:00.000-06:00
Say it with me: Two more weeks. Two more weeks. Two more weeks and I'm free of the early class. Which is good, because they're working my last handful of nerves.

On the other hand, today I'm fully in favor of Daylight Saving Time, even though I continue to not understand it a whit--dude, I'm from Arizona, where we understand DST so little that we just gave up on it entirely. After last week's gloomy, pre-dawn wake-up times, today's happy sun greeted me. Just wait, though, I'll be cursing this evening as I trudge home in the 6:00 dark.

And the hotly-anticipated answer to Guess This Text? Troilus and Cressida, by Our Boy Will. Which, yes, I taught last week and with which I nearly prompted a mutiny. There was firm though irritated lecturing on the importance of reading, for pete's sake, followed by a class for which less than half the students showed up. So, today should be fun, then.

In which we play Guess the Text

2006-10-25T19:27:00.000-05:00
[Yes, it's a meme-thing, grabbed from Dr. Crazy, she of the miraculous grading checklist. I'll be back with complaints soon, but in the meantime, this can be a clue as to what I've been up to lately, as the book came directly from my bookbag. A clue: instead of the fifth sentence, I had to pick the fifth line.)

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

"Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
Without revolt. This is and is not Cressid.
Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
Of this strange nature that a thing inseparate
Divides more wider than the sky and earth"

In which I am a victim of my own good intentions

2006-10-18T23:25:00.000-05:00
Just finished responding to eleventy squillion midterm paper proposals. Every time I do this, I wonder why I do this. But if I can head off one student who wants to write about how this play/poem reveals a Universal Truth about Human Nature, it's totally worth it. I suspect I may still get some Universal Truths about English Literature, but that's more funny than sad and eye-gouging-making, so I'll take it.

Tomorrow=essay grading. All so I can have yet another Fun Wedding Weekend. Why are all my friends and relatives so intent on pairing off in legal fashions all of a sudden? Don't they know that I need my weekends free for lolling about and whining?

Oh, and I made the mistake of looking at my Winter Shx enrollment--35. Crap. So I have that to look forward to.

Lush update: I stopped on the way home from class to restock my Sexy Peel. I love that it's literally on the way home. Makes it less of an indulgence and more of an efficient errand.

In which I become jet-set

2006-10-16T21:15:00.001-05:00
I just can't stop with the buying of the airline tickets. No, the rush of three cities in four days has changed me. I'm a jet-setter now. In the next month, I'll be hieing my high-flying self off to such fantabulous ports-of-call as... Pittsburgh! And... Next-to-Nowhere (And West Virginia), Ohio! Jellus? Yes, yes you are.

Classes are kicking me when I'm down, what with that stack of midterm exams and essays waiting for me. And more coming next week, because even though both St. Happy and UChaos are on quarters, they're two weeks off from each other. Stupids. But at least some small part of my unconscious had a hand in my syllabi, as I'm teaching the same play in both classes this week. Which means that I'm only carrying around one slim Pelican edition, rather than the many and multiple copies of two or three different texts that I'm used to. It felt weird, though, so I had to go buy honkin' Arden editions of this week's and next's. Just so I'd be properly ballasted for my commute.

In happier, and more commercial news, there's now a Lush counter in the ~~Marshall Field~~ Macy's across from where I catch my second bus of the day. But, since I've decided I hate my campus office, there's nowhere to stash any purchases. Is it tacky to bring a pungent but lovely-smelling shopping bag to class with me?

In which we resume, yet again

2006-10-10T14:33:00.000-05:00
You wouldn't have thought the Wedding Weekend would have killed me so very dead, but it did. It was fun, it was awesome, but it did us all in. Evidence of the fun is on Flickr; evidence of the dead is the radio silence that followed.

But now I'm back, and in the throes of midterms, part one. I've written up the exam, but I'm feeling less-than positive about the essay prompts. And the UChaos class wants prompts for their essays (coming up in a week), as well. Bah. But there's hope: This idea is fantastic, and I'll be implementing it for these midterm essays coming in on Friday. As I mentioned in the comments there, academic blogs are my new, best pedagogy resource.

Oh, and the first sickness of the school year is upon us. Stupid students, who won't stop kissing each other and coughing on their papers. I'm trying to keep faith in the miracle cures of Zicam and Airborne, but I still feel like crap.

In which my decrepitude becomes apparent

2006-09-26T15:04:00.000-05:00
The fun, it is killing me. Our friend Gabi was in town this weekend and fun was pursued with a vengance, which meant that Friday night included trips to four separate bars and aborted attempts to enter two more before my committment to being a good time expired and I went home. Saturday was better; we parked ourselves at Delilah's and waited for fun to come to us. And Sunday, of course, = football and fried foods. A fun time, all around, but I'm clearly too old to go out on successive nights like that. So why not do it again next weekend, only with flying!

Toward that end, there was shopping. I found a dress for the Weekend of Weddings--a vintage heavy-satin wiggle dress with some interesting lacework detailing around the neckline. It looks late '50s and it fits me perfectly. Fishnets and some big hair should get me all set for the Vegas festivities, but I'm still undecided about what I'm wearing in Tucson.

Oh, and then there was class. UChaos started yesterday, and for the first time ever there I have a full house. And then some. We'll see how many I scared off yesterday with my rampage through English history ("Oh! I forgot James! He was kind of obsessed with witches! And had issues with women. But, considering his family history, that's not terribly surprising, no?"). But it was nice to see that I have five returning students from various classes in my past; considering the caliber of faculty we have, I'm fairly astonished that they'd choose to take a second class with me.

Also, the new tv season is killing me, what with all the shows all the time. Tivo helps, but I'm only one woman. Who should be reading Sidney's sonnets instead of watching Studio 60. And Gilmore Girls. And Top Model. At least Life on Mars is done for the moment (and it's awesome and you should find it on dvd), along with all my summer reality crap, so that clears the schedule somewhat. But I suspect there will be attrition in the future.

In which I make a (triumphant?) return

2006-09-21T11:51:00.000-05:00
I have to go down to campus today, for various and sundry reasons, but one is the Beginning-of-the-Year Reception. Whee. I suppose I'll make an appearance, if for no other reason than to make sure that Flaky Advisor gets the materials she needs to write me a letter for conference funding. But I'm spooked, for the first time ever, by the idea of the reception. I know fewer and fewer people every year. I have no idea who the people are who are heading the grad social-ish committee, the same committee I myself served on just a couple of years ago. I honestly thought that I'd avoid the diss-years alienation problem, but, alas. I've become that ghostly sixth-year haunting the department, quivering slightly in the light, scurrying back to the safety of the library (metaphorically, that is; I hate our awful, brutal library and avoid it as much as I can).

Let's pretend, however, that my on-campus absence is due not to hermetical ways but due to my having a life outside the academy. In fact, part of the reason I can't stay long at the reception and lead a drunken contingent of first-years to the local pub for further revelry (the highlight of previous receptions) is that a friend is coming in from out of town tonight and I have to pick him up at the airport. Yay for visits! (Never mind that I still need to plan the first two classes of my UChaos class that starts on Monday. I'm sure I'll have time... sometime? On the bus to class on Monday, maybe?)

In which I have an embarrassment of riches

2006-09-19T13:51:00.000-05:00
What happens when the same proposal is accepted by two different conferences? Can I tweak the paper to make them different? Should I mention that things might be slightly different from the proposal? Shouldn't the internets have this kind of information available somewhere?

Eta: Ok, having done some research, I think I'll have sufficient new stuff in the second iteration of the paper, since the chapter it's based on will be done by then. Now I just have to figure out how to tell the panel organizer that the title and/or content may be different than the proposal. But since the panel is Shx and contemporaries, he should be happy that I'll be including a contemporary, right?

In which my home is full of nerds

2006-09-16T22:32:00.000-05:00
I'm wasting my Saturday night watching videos of my youth on YouTube, and I have discovered two things:

1) Carl is a gay nerd. He not only owns and knows all of Erasure's 12" remix singles, he has a favorite (the Big Train remix of "A Little Respect," apparently).
2) I spent my high-school years as a proto-emo nerd. Case in point.

In which I am delighted

2006-09-15T18:15:00.000-05:00
Check it: I had two conference submissions accepted today, within hours of submission. Which means either they're desperate or I'm awesome. I'm going with the latter for the moment. As this is my first serious foray into the conference world, I'm quite pleased with the quick and happy results.

Special thanks to Flavia for her helpful advice on the proposal format--it worked!

In which there is one more thing

2006-09-14T17:33:00.000-05:00
Late addition to the complaint list: I'm torturing myself reading over the MLA job list, where I'm not even halfway through and have found 29 postings for my field (also noted here and here). And that's just the ones that name-drop Big Willie. And many of them are in not-bad places! Why now? Why not save some of this bumper crop for next year when I'll be able to throw my hat in the ring? Let's just hope that this clears out a number of my job-seeking compatriots, leaving room next year for me. Good luck to those lucky enough to be out there this year.

Stupid dissertation that is still not writing itself. I kind of hate myself right now.

Eta: Final tally--52. Wow.

In which I register some complaints

2006-09-14T13:03:00.000-05:00

I have no idea why Blogger's being stupid with comments. Apparently, it doesn't like to acknowledge people who have Blogger accounts, so comments have to be posted under the "other" option. I ran into this on KT's blog as well, so I'm thinking it might be a problem larger than li'l ol' me.
Why is it no longer possible to buy a six-pack of diet Coke at the grocery store? Why must I buy my six-pack from our local (very nice but) overpriced bodgea? If I'm at home, I'm enjoying my diet Coke in two-liter form, but since St. Happy became a Pepsiopoly, I'm taking a can of my choice to class with me. A six-pack will last me two weeks; I neither need nor have room for yet another twelve-pack of soda in my fridge (which already houses one of Coke and one of black cherry Fresca). Vive la six-pack!
I am seriously going to start running down people on the sidewalk. Fully loaded, my bookbag weighs probably 15 pounds, and I am willing and able to sling it at those who will not cede me the 18 inches of space I need to pass. If you're walking two or three abreast toward me, something's gotta give, and it's not gonna be me, because I'm wearing pretty shoes and the grass is muddy.
I'm shopping for a dress for the end-of-the-month multi-wedding extravaganza, and I hatehatehate being exactly at the tipping point between "regular" and "plus" sizes. A size 12 in a plus store is, like, two inches bigger than the same size at a regular store, leaving a two-inch gap where I live and where there are no dresses. There are, of course, two solutions to this: lose weight and go down to the land of 10, where things make sense again; or, gain weight and move toward the land of 16, where things also make sense. Or I can just wear one of the fourteentrillion black dresses I already own (proving that this size discrepancy exists in time rather than as an absolute, since I had to have bought these dresses sometime).
My left knee is evil and has decided to protest stairs. Which is a problem, as I live on the third floor and must navigate stairs both at home and at the El station. Also, dear Aleve, you do not work on joint pain, so shut up about it already.
Laundry is calling out, pleading with me to just do it. But, see above, re: stairs and evil knee.
P.S. to Al: I've left a couple of comments for you recently, but you have comment approval turned on! Approve me! Validate me! Tell me I'm loved!

In which I have a dilemma

2006-09-12T12:33:00.000-05:00
One of my students from my spring course at UChaos has asked me for a law-school recommendation. I warned her off that she didn't want one from me because, um, I'm not a faculty member? Like, at all? But then I get a response that she's "talked to some people" and is comfortable using me as a recommender. I'm happy to write for her, because she was good in class and all, but I'm still concerned that I'll be her death knell. She's applying to big-city schools, so I know they'll be expecting high-caliber letters. Should I even agree to this, and figure out a way to address the weirdness of me in my letter? Or should I beg off, somehow?

In which there is a kind of memorial and a kind of management

2006-09-11T22:18:00.000-05:00
We did Titus today, and I normally don't try to link course material to "real life" because I think (hope) that my students are bright enough to see why classic literature is important in their everyday lives. But today, as we were talking about the absurd jumps in magnitude and response in the play, it struck me that at the heart of this overwrought, gory, slightly campy play is an extended meditation on how an individual responds to unspeakable grief. In the face of literal horror--his mutilated and raped daughter--Titus runs out of methods of performing grief and starts to laugh. It's not madness, yet, but it's a recognition of how impossible responding rationally to the impossible really is.

The other attempts to respond are equally untenable, but recognizable. Titus is willing to exchange his own bodily pain for the hope of... well, hope itself. He cuts off his hand in exchange for the life of his sons and recieves, in return, their heads. It looks like a sacrifice, but really, isn't it just a desperate grab (pardon the pun) for anything that looks like not-grief? And then the immediate shift to the language of revenge, which obscures but doesn't mitigate grief, at least offers a version of the future in a moment that looks like the end of the world.

Which is to say... I don't know what. Titus is not a hopeful play, but it's true in as much as there are times when we have nothing left to say.

So here's my memorial: Five years ago, I slept in, because classes wouldn't start for two weeks yet. Carl got up early to do some writing. It was a beautiful day, clear and crisp and not yet fall but no longer summer, exactly. Around nine, Carl came in to tell me that I might want to wake up, since the end of the world might be happening. And that's all. No one we know was hurt or killed. Our lives didn't change. But I still couldn't watch the footage again this morning, and I still don't know what words work to make this better.

In which things improve

2006-09-10T21:57:00.000-05:00
The second day was better. I have a handful of students who, when I start to get exasperated with the lack of response to my questions, will speak up. I do love the overachievers when they make my life easier (plus, that was me as an undergrad, because I just could not shut up). And I got to play with my wired classroom, leading a close reading on the computer display, highlighting linked images in a Word document. Super-geeky, but fun.

This hour-long format, though, is going to be a struggle (see above, re: not shutting up). I had to hold them at the end to take the roll I forgot at the beginning of class (I'm switching to a sign-in scheme this week, once enrollment settles). I ran out of time for my intro to Titus, so I sent them off with "Between 1590 and 1594! Tragedy! Bloody! Look for striking imagery! Make a note of what's funny!" So, yeah, that'll make for a productive Monday class.

But then I got a real weekend, after my summer of all one long weekend. Not that I did anything, but it did feel different. I did procrastinate terribly (and am still doing so, obviously). And my friend Nicole sent me some cute slipper-socks, just in time for the autumn weather that's descended on our fair city.

And, um. That's all. Back to Titus for me.

In which I dye and then I die

2006-09-06T12:03:00.000-05:00
Dying first: First class this morning. Woke up bright and early, did some warrior poses (for "confidence" and "energy"), ate some cereal, drank some coffee, put on my cute new outfit, and headed out to the train with half an hour or so to go the eight stops to campus (estimated trip time: 15 minutes).

You know what happened. So I got to class late, flustered, not having drunk my diet coke yet. Talked too fast, talked too much, didn't even get to play with the fancy-schmancy a/v hookup in the classroom. Did the "Why Shx is important" song and dance (Hint: It's not just because it's a requirement). Ran off at least one student (she quietly set her syllabus back on the stack and slipped out). Felt very overheated and shiny. Skipped office hours to come home to sulk.

Eh. This just means that Friday has to be better, right?

Dyeing: Yesterday, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror at L&T. While I was expecting to hate what my hair was doing (stupid growing-out phase), I was horrified to discover that I had a blonde streak happening in my bangs. The placement of which I clearly did not authorize. Suddenly, I was 13 again, freaking out over how blonde my hair gets in the sun. Because it's a weird, bad-highlight-job kind of blonde, not a lovely sun-kissed kind. Just, no. So I had to come home and dye. I'm back to dark brown now (espresso, allegedly) and feel much more like myself. Plus, I look meaner. Which helps when one is flustered and overheated and shiny in front of 25 students first thing in the morning.

In which we toast

2006-09-04T20:18:00.000-05:00
Please welcome the newest member of our household, the Toastation:

So pretty, no? And heats to searing in seconds. I forsee a lot of french-bread pizza in my future.

And, yes, this is prime procrastination fodder during this, my second-to-last day of summer vacation. What I should be doing is double-checking my syllabus, organizing notes, charging up the Shuffle, whatnot. What I'm actually doing is lazing in my pajamas, trying to finish up my first RPM sock (why am I so bad at elastic bind-offs?), and toasting things.

Somehow, we tried to pack a full summer's worth of going out into the last four days, and I am far too old for this kind of schedule. One lively bar night and two barbecues later, I'm tired. But I needed the practice at being social, I guess.

What I'm mostly dreading is all the beginning-of-the-year small-talk schmoozing. Mostly because I the contents of my "What I did on my summer vacation" essay is: video games, baseball, napping. I'm mad at myself for not finishing the chapter, but I know that self-recrimination isn't especially productive. At least I have three weeks to practice on the St. Happy folk before I have to face my department.

I which I am a victim of scheduling

2006-09-01T18:08:00.000-05:00
Well, hell. I just discovered that my class at UofChaos has been switched from TTh to MW. Thanks so much for letting me know, guys, rather than letting me find out by looking at the timeschedule. Oh, wait, you totally didn't let me know. Bah.

So this means that I'll be teaching mornings at St. Happy, holding my office hours until noon, trekking down to Chaos, and teaching until 4:30. Not the worst schedule, since it frees up two days a week, but still, those are going to be long days.

What really sucks about this is that it's going to make it very difficult to sit in on the class offered by the Grand Ol' Gal of our department, which I was really hoping to do. She's been one of my greatest advocates in the past, and I could really use that kind of cheerleading now. I'll have to think hard about whether I can swing this.

I which I offer presents

2006-08-29T13:22:00.000-05:00
For you! Here are the songs that won't leave my head lately:

~~My Morning Jacket, "Off the Record"~~

~~Kelly Hogan, "No, Bobby, Don't"~~

Gone!

Enjoy! I'm off to eat cake and buy crap. Because it's my biiiiiiirthdaaaaaay!

In which I consider the past

2006-08-28T17:17:00.001-05:00

You've Changed 60% in 10 Years

You've done a good job changing with the times, but deep down, you're still the same person.
You're clothes, job, and friends may have changed some - but it hasn't changed you.
How Much Have You Changed in 10 Years?

A timely quiz-thing, as I'm feeling a little past-sick. Ten years ago, I would have given anything to have the summer off from everything. I had to take a quick peek at my old resume, but in the summer of '96, I was moving from my job at a tiny media-production company (where I made my on-camera debut [and finale] as a presenter on a sad little show called Internet! [which my insane boss insisted on calling "Internet quotation mark!"] that was shown on, like, four PBS stations) to a job as a tech writer, kinda, at a credit-card processing place, where I learned to do all manner of desktop-publishing madness in Word, of all things. But at least I was out of retail hell, so I was happy with my employment situation.

I'm pretty sure that I had also just started back at Big State U. (I had dropped out after two disastrous years as a theater major. No, really.), this time as an English major. I didn't know what I was going to do with that degree (I think I had some kind of delusion of being a magazine writer), but I knew from my time at community college that school was at least something I was good at. Plus, I was turning 24, which meant that I no longer had to list parental income on my FAFSA, so I was living large on my Pell grants.

That summer, Carl and I had been living together for two years, and had just moved into our last and best place in Tucson. We were three blocks from campus, in a fairly large duplex with off-street parking, the very height of undergraduate living. It seems like from the time we moved in, there was always someone dropping by. It was fun, being the place everyone hangs out, and I wonder if that kind of place is even possible after college. I miss that incarnation of the Kitten Lounge.

As for me, I think I actually haven't changed that much. If anything, I've become more stuck in my ways and crotchety. I recall being much more anxious ten years ago, but also more impulsive. At the time, I had very little compunction about staying out to all hours at Club Congress, drinking vodka tonics like water, and making Carl call me in sick the next morning. But I also concocted an elaborate cover story when I went in to work again. I'd skip class if the weather was bad, but finally started writing my class papers well in advance of the due date.

The one way I think I've clearly changed in the past decade is that I've discovered my own ambition. One of my dad's big pieces of advice is "Don't float," but that's exactly what I was doing back then. I was happy being presently successful; I had a job, I was in school, I had a good boyfriend and a nice apartment, and that was enough. But I didn't have any plans beyond the next weekend, and it really wasn't until Carl started working on his M.F.A. that I realized that I needed to need something beyond. The plans I made at the time didn't exactly work like I thought they would, and my route to this point has been circuitous, to say the least, but at least I wanted> what I've wound up with.

My friend Andy and I used to have a half-serious joke that we firmly believed that, at some point in the near future, we would be famous. We weren't sure how this would happen, but someone, somewhere, would realize that we were awesome and make the world know about us. And I think this idea of serendipitous success* was what held me back from actually making my own luck. I finally let go of that idea a few years back (though someone should totally discover me and how awesome I am), and that's when I turned the corner on ambition.

And that's how I got here, looking down the barrel of 34. Which looks better when it sounds. I've seen on a couple of academic blogs a call for New School-Year Resolutions, and between that and my birthday (tomorrow! What did you get me?), I'm thinking along those lines. So, next up, resolutions.

*Remind me to tell you sometime about the whole theory I have about The Problem With Kids These Days and the idea of "accidental" celebrity.

In which I nerd out

2006-08-25T23:52:00.000-05:00
Shopping today: school supplies.

Clockwise from left: paper cutter, fancy new pen, other new pen, stack of Levenger note cards, chrome binder clips, candy, mailing labels, super-shiny Swingline stapler, tiny folders for note cards, flag-and-post-it combo.

The fancy new pen is an early birthday present. It's actually a really fancy pen, but it was on sale for a regular-fancy price.

And, just for good measure, a glamour shot of the Swingline:

I still don't feel like I'm quite ready to head back to school, but having stuff makes it seem a little less daunting. Tomorrow I'll rewrite my Titus lecture notes (since I've done it three times in the past year and a half, my current notes are getting a little unwieldy) on my new cards, with my new pen, and file them in my new tiny folder.

In which I make socks and consider writing

2006-08-24T14:55:00.000-05:00
Firstly, I'm so bored with my Broadripple socks that I can't even look at them anymore. And the Fixation yarn feels nasty in humid weather. So I started a pair of RPMs, toe-up. Behold*:This poor yarn. It's been knit and ript so very many times, through at least three different patterns. But now that I've made it through the short-row heel (which took four tries, three of which I did with the wrong number of stitches in the short row, because try as I might, I can't read a pattern right the first time round, let alone do math properly), I'm liking it. The pattern is a bit hard to see in these photos, but it's nice and subtle. And since I have li'l feets, I should be able to eke out a knee sock from each hank of yarn.

Secondly, I came across two calls for papers today for conferences that are directly up my dissertation alley**. I have about three weeks to slap together proposals, but one I can totally crib from my first chapter and the other is not a far reach from the chapter I should be working on this fall. But you know what would make this a hell of a lot easier? If ever in my academic career I had been taught how to compose a paper proposal. Or even what a successful one looks like. For all the interminable talk about "professionalization" that goes on 'round these parts, we're sorely lacking in the nuts and bolts of How to Do Things.

*Isn't it just charming how my skin glows? Like a pale, ghostly spectre of indolence and shut-in-ed-ness?
**Dissertation Alley is totally my new band name.

In which I find my people

2006-08-22T14:08:00.001-05:00
I am not alone. Y'all are the freaks.