Sisyphus VS The World

The other night I finally got around to watching the Scott Pilgrim movie — way cute! Now I’m wishing I still rocked the purple and green hair, despite the hassle of keeping the color up — though I never actually combined my wild hair with actual snazzy haircuts or my wild clothing phases; I’m not that brave or coordinated in my weirdness.

Anyway, I am way behind on everything — mainly because these damn cc applications take way longer and more energy than I anticipate, always — you think I would actually start anticipating longer times then, and I do! but it's never enough.

By the end of spring break I may have written more supplemental essays than what I received as comp assignments from my students last Friday. They include, in no particular order, what to do with an ELL student failing a developmental comp class, the best book I have used for a transfer-level comp class (and how I made it accessible to diverse populations), what I "carry with me, metaphorically" given the experience of teaching at a cc, a description of the mission and populations served by the cc system, a justification of one freshman-comp syllabus and one freshman introduction to lit syllabus (no more than 500 words each), what branch of composition/rhetoric theory best explains my teaching philosophy.

This does not include, because I already have written and saved these on the hard drive from previous rounds of application: my community-college teaching philosophy, cover letter, and statement of experience working with diverse populations, my description of an assignment that worked particularly well and why, the major differences between basic (or developmental) and transfer-level writing classes, and a reverse chronological list of all the grad classes taken with full titles and competency areas. Those are ready to go.

What I am saying here is: I really wish I could just fight my way to the top of the applicant list, Mortal Kombat-style, and with the cute visual effects and 8-bit soundtrack from Scott Pilgrim. It would be way more fun, and coins would shower to the ground every time I bashed someone in the head and they disappeared! It would also mean at some point I would get to level-up in experience, or that if I got sick of doing the same damn thing I could push up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A and get to skip to the final boss level. Hmm. Or, alternately, it could mean that if I actually finish this whole tenure-track/permanent job search I just have to go back and do the entire process over again, but this time all the HR people are replaced by hard-shelled black beetles.

Well, I'm not sure I'd like that alternative. But it would at least be something different.