In which I seem to have wandered off

...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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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