Let me first say how wonderful it is to be teaching back in my home department after quarters or years spent scrounging in other departments or underemployed (and some fellowship time is in there too). I hadn't realized how much the isolation and lack of appreciation I was feeling was due to wandering from the library to a building far from my department and sitting alone in a TA cubicle, without ever seeing anyone. How different it is right now! On the first day I taught section I must have chatted and caught up with about 20 different people --- so many people said nice things to me! So many people wondered where I've been and how I was doing! They made plans to do social events with me! Yay!
However nice that may all be, I am now remembering the down side of departmental connectedness, and don't really want to count up how many hours I spent last week on chatting, talking, lunching, griping, reminiscing, advising, and pontificating. And that's not counting the time I was spending on dealing with teaching administrative details. This week, so far, has been more of the same ---- Hey, I don't feel depressed, who cares about that little ol' dissertation thing anyway? In fact, after lecture, I felt weirdly "off" and unwilling to turn towards my diss work --- as if I wanted to teach and was riding the high of giving a good lecture (I'm the TA, not the one actually giving said lecture, I should add. I guess I can wax enthusiastic just by association). I found myself hunting for talking/teaching related things to do, and as I didn't have any on my list, I did pretty much nothing for the rest of the morning. (Oh, afternoon wasn't a waste ---- but needing a cooling-off period just from listening to lecture? Meh.)
I need to do about a bazillion things this quarter for my own work (see to the right; I have more stuff to update for that list). And I still remain fixed in my lumpish, unathletic ways (a social lump, but a lump nonetheless). When last I swam regularly, I went in to campus super early and just got it all out of the way. I just wore a hat in on the bus and packed in my makeup and nice clothes if need be, and did one set of shower/dress up for the day. I can't deal with multiple sets of showerings and dressings and all that crap. However, the times I have worked best and hardest at my diss were the times I made sure to get a couple hours of writing done right away and then read or did piddly little organization stuff in the afternoon. And however however (or however one is doubly digressive, or contrary, or whatnot), my lecture and sections are smack in the early morning this quarter, making it good to get over with but also taking up my most alert and perfectly caffeinated time of the day, before I finish the second big cup and get so jittery I have to take a walk.
So I need to do everything first thing in the morning, or it doesn't get done. Right now, the only thing I can and will be able to put later is hanging out with other grad students. How should I set this up? What can I put later in the day, and how should I actually get myself to do that later thing?
(You know, I have the same problems with writing essays: "But all four of my major points need to come first! They are each predicated on the other, like an M.C. Escher painting! Can I write the paper in parallel rather than linearly?)
If only someone could invent a time machine, or perhaps clone myself and have the other Me do some of the work? (Although if Other Me got to be all buff and social while I graded things and wrote pages of diss crap, I would be pissed.)
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Oof
I'm not used to this. I have been out not once, but twice this week to socialize and imbibe beverages, and today I think I need to just lounge quietly on the couch over here. Please stop the internets from being so loud!
That said, it was quite fun and I'm storing up the sociability like a camel preparing for a drought. On the other hand, I need to get out of here; I know everyone and all their stories, and there's no new gossip going around except us bitter old fogies being catty about the newbies. I've been here too long and am tired of the small department and small town, where everybody knows each others' business and you can't get your coffee or your groceries without running into three professors, an old roommate, and an ex.
In other New-Quarter-Resolution news, it's too cold to wear skirts, which may torpedo my plan. I "dressed up" this week but I have 8am sections and 9 am lectures, which means it is gray and chilly and dark when I get dressed mornings. My poor purchases, lost and abandoned in my closet! I also have not yet started exercising, which I blame on the hours of drop-add bureaucracy I've had to deal with this week, but I have worn my sunscreen zealously.
Dissertation-wise, I am working but ... have you ever been engrossed in a scholarly book and turned back to read the bibliography? And then had it go something like this: I've read that, read that, heard of that, library copy of that is missing ... what's that? And that? Who's that guy? And oh my god there are entire academic subfields to my specialty I've never even heard of before this moment, with lists and lists of books and people completely new to me! And then you start hyperventilating and wake up the cats. That's kinda been my week.
That said, it was quite fun and I'm storing up the sociability like a camel preparing for a drought. On the other hand, I need to get out of here; I know everyone and all their stories, and there's no new gossip going around except us bitter old fogies being catty about the newbies. I've been here too long and am tired of the small department and small town, where everybody knows each others' business and you can't get your coffee or your groceries without running into three professors, an old roommate, and an ex.
In other New-Quarter-Resolution news, it's too cold to wear skirts, which may torpedo my plan. I "dressed up" this week but I have 8am sections and 9 am lectures, which means it is gray and chilly and dark when I get dressed mornings. My poor purchases, lost and abandoned in my closet! I also have not yet started exercising, which I blame on the hours of drop-add bureaucracy I've had to deal with this week, but I have worn my sunscreen zealously.
Dissertation-wise, I am working but ... have you ever been engrossed in a scholarly book and turned back to read the bibliography? And then had it go something like this: I've read that, read that, heard of that, library copy of that is missing ... what's that? And that? Who's that guy? And oh my god there are entire academic subfields to my specialty I've never even heard of before this moment, with lists and lists of books and people completely new to me! And then you start hyperventilating and wake up the cats. That's kinda been my week.
Friday, April 6, 2007
Shopping
This week was the first week of the new quarter, which means the chief task of any TA is dealing with the time-sucking and bureaucratic details of enrollment. No matter what class, it seems, students mob the instructors before, during, and after lecture, by email, in person, and by carrier pigeon, with sob stories about how this class and only this class will allow the student to graduate (why fifth-year seniors with one class left couldn’t add the class during their senior level priority enrollment pass last quarter and be assured of a spot, I don’t know). Meanwhile, the professors either put on a grand show the first few weeks or appear as mean and evil as possible, trying to convince students to stay or to leave, depending on enrollment. The first two weeks at this school are known as the “shopping period” ---- and considering that’s two weeks out of only 10 it is disproportionately disruptive ---- and perhaps the most frustrating thing is when you turn away legions of crashers from sections you have already overenrolled to the gills, only to have your “shoppers,” signed up for 24 units and “test-driving” them to find 16, drop the class just before the deadline and leave the sections underenrolled, freeing up spaces at the last minute that you could have given to some of those seemingly desperate students. Is shopping common at other institutions or especially bad at this one?
All this means that my time this week was spent dealing with forms and ID numbers and frantic emails, not on actual teaching or my dissertation, and on top of that I was grumpy and annoyed. Some fellow grads who went to my undergrad institution note how our computer enrollment system actually worked; although it didn’t prevent people without the prerequisites from enrolling anyway, it prevented you from signing up for a double load or enrolling in conflicting classes, and it had a built-in wait list system. As people dropped (or were accidentally dropped by financial aid, one of the few problems actually worse there than here) students on the wait list were moved up a slot and eventually into the class automatically, allowing TAs and profs to actually make a thundering takeoff into the course and tear through material at a blistering speed. Here, even if you keep the sign up sheets and counting people and interruptions to a minimum, instructors often feel as if they need to “hold back” or have to reteach large portions of those first two weeks because the class population drastically changes over that time.
I know that I am just a cog, and that this campus’s computer enrollment system, if it is designed for anyone’s convenience and flexibility, is not designed with me in mind (or the students either, perhaps). But, if I could ask for one thing for Christmas, it would be for a better computer system that “held the line” on such things as students adding a class they are not eligible for, double loads of units, conflicting lecture times, and provided a wait list rather than force me and the other instructors to deal with it. Oh, wait, no ---- I wish for a tenure-track job. Can I ask for two things? No? Then forget it. See what I mean? This isn’t my “real job” so I have no investment in fighting the kind of fight this would take to fix, and so no one pushes to fix the problems in this system. Revamping the system or creating a new one would involve too much disruption for the enrollment admin people, as it would probably require being taken down and reinstalled, and only problems that affect or annoy that staff level would get fixed.
The problem is, although I’m pretty blasé with the fact that I am a cog, and after teaching so many students and hearing so many stupid excuses or sob stories, I can definitely see the students as cogs, the students themselves don’t necessarily get it. Of course a lot of them do know they are cogs in a system and that what they need to do is work that system in order to get it to work for them, which is why we encounter so many tricks and evasions and outright lies, students saying whatever they think will push the magic button and except them from the rules (any dead grandmother stories recently, anyone?) but a lot of them have a rather rude shock when they discover they are screwed just because of an accident or their own stupidity. You can hear the tone of real panic and realization sometimes. The student whose financial aid did not arrive in time, the one who accidentally pushed the drop button on his/her online schedule, the one who enrolled but did not realize that both lectures were at the same time, the one who couldn’t find the classroom and thus was not there to hold his/her spot ---- these people think of themselves as unique and worthy individuals, people who should be given a break or help just because of who they are, the heroes of their own personal stories, but I have heard it all before. Not heroes but spear-carriers, they are just ingots being pushed through the machine, a series of interchangeable ID numbers and a range of familiar predictable behaviors. I’m not sure how much this process of discovering their cog-ness is a valuable lesson for their future lives and how much it is a sign that this system is a fucked-up one.
All this means that my time this week was spent dealing with forms and ID numbers and frantic emails, not on actual teaching or my dissertation, and on top of that I was grumpy and annoyed. Some fellow grads who went to my undergrad institution note how our computer enrollment system actually worked; although it didn’t prevent people without the prerequisites from enrolling anyway, it prevented you from signing up for a double load or enrolling in conflicting classes, and it had a built-in wait list system. As people dropped (or were accidentally dropped by financial aid, one of the few problems actually worse there than here) students on the wait list were moved up a slot and eventually into the class automatically, allowing TAs and profs to actually make a thundering takeoff into the course and tear through material at a blistering speed. Here, even if you keep the sign up sheets and counting people and interruptions to a minimum, instructors often feel as if they need to “hold back” or have to reteach large portions of those first two weeks because the class population drastically changes over that time.
I know that I am just a cog, and that this campus’s computer enrollment system, if it is designed for anyone’s convenience and flexibility, is not designed with me in mind (or the students either, perhaps). But, if I could ask for one thing for Christmas, it would be for a better computer system that “held the line” on such things as students adding a class they are not eligible for, double loads of units, conflicting lecture times, and provided a wait list rather than force me and the other instructors to deal with it. Oh, wait, no ---- I wish for a tenure-track job. Can I ask for two things? No? Then forget it. See what I mean? This isn’t my “real job” so I have no investment in fighting the kind of fight this would take to fix, and so no one pushes to fix the problems in this system. Revamping the system or creating a new one would involve too much disruption for the enrollment admin people, as it would probably require being taken down and reinstalled, and only problems that affect or annoy that staff level would get fixed.
The problem is, although I’m pretty blasé with the fact that I am a cog, and after teaching so many students and hearing so many stupid excuses or sob stories, I can definitely see the students as cogs, the students themselves don’t necessarily get it. Of course a lot of them do know they are cogs in a system and that what they need to do is work that system in order to get it to work for them, which is why we encounter so many tricks and evasions and outright lies, students saying whatever they think will push the magic button and except them from the rules (any dead grandmother stories recently, anyone?) but a lot of them have a rather rude shock when they discover they are screwed just because of an accident or their own stupidity. You can hear the tone of real panic and realization sometimes. The student whose financial aid did not arrive in time, the one who accidentally pushed the drop button on his/her online schedule, the one who enrolled but did not realize that both lectures were at the same time, the one who couldn’t find the classroom and thus was not there to hold his/her spot ---- these people think of themselves as unique and worthy individuals, people who should be given a break or help just because of who they are, the heroes of their own personal stories, but I have heard it all before. Not heroes but spear-carriers, they are just ingots being pushed through the machine, a series of interchangeable ID numbers and a range of familiar predictable behaviors. I’m not sure how much this process of discovering their cog-ness is a valuable lesson for their future lives and how much it is a sign that this system is a fucked-up one.
Monday, April 2, 2007
The Humiliation Game:
On Reading, Not Reading, and Halfassery.
Chaser is mulling over Lennard Davis’s article, "Huckleberry Who?" published in the Chronicle. And Undine is trying to make it a meme: what are five big books you haven’t read? Admit it! (I don’t think I’ve read any of the Continental great novels Davis mentions, not any Proust, nor Hesse, not War and Peace nor The Man Without Qualities. Though I did do well on his list of stuff in English.)
Davis, combining How to Talk About Books That You Haven't Read, by Pierre Bayard, and the game Humiliation from David Lodge’s Changing Places (wherein a professor is eventually fired for admitting he had never read Hamlet), has some very vague statements about the myriad ways one can read books besides scrutinizing every word, straight through to the end, and urges us to be "more open and honest about what we haven’t read" as well as less "sanctimonious" and judgmental towards our colleagues who haven’t read everything, which will result in …? Here’s where he gets a bit vague: how exactly will we benefit from being more honest about what we haven’t read? Well, he says, we might be more likely to read more or read important books that everyone else was talking about and we didn’t get around to in the moment (for me, this was Rushdie during the whole fatwa controversy). Hmm --- so not pressuring people to read will make them read more? And we might also discover new ways of reading. Hmm. I’m not entirely impressed by these conclusions.
For one thing, I agree with Chaser that the people I know are far more likely to be geekily excited and enthusiastic about reading, or about describing a book you’ve missed out on, than snootily condemning you for your ignorance. Second, my profs are much more likely to dismiss the books themselves out of hand than admit they should be read: What? By who? (cutting-off gesture of finality here) I don’t read that; I’m a ______ scholar. For at the R1s, fields are highly specialized things and the mark of pride and one-upmanship comes in ruthlessly excluding anything that falls outside of one’s sphere of expertise.
Besides, the problem isn’t fear, it’s time. (Hey, if I can admit to blogging, and to watching What Not to Wear when I have access to a TV, I would have no problem admitting attempting Midnight’s Children or Vanity Fair for belated pleasure reading.)
And if Davis had ventured more explicitly into “required field lists” rather than “what every educated person should know,” he would have exposed his arguments as silliness: a Shakespearean never having read Hamlet? A postcolonialist specializing in the Subcontinent who had never read any Rushdie? If either of these examples were confessed they would be met with bafflement, laughter, and derision: I know because of what grad students tell me.
And I would here like to put on my curmudgeon hat (the one with the tassels and all the sparkles) to declare that I am against this practice of grad students openly admitting what they did not read on their exam lists. The eighteenth-centuryist who cavalierly cops to only having read a quarter of the 18th C list stuff because s/he specializes in a single author? The person studying the Romantic/Victorian list who only read one side of the slash mark? The Americanist who skipped all the male authors? The person who intentionally misread all of the “and”s as “or”s whenever multiple plays or poems were listed for an author? This all shall stop right now! I am putting my fingers in my ears and singing lah lah lah whenever you-all admit this from now on.
Of course time runs out as one prepares for the exams! Of course there is "reading" vs. "reading" a text ---- or what a friend of mine referred to as "gutting" a text, where one skimmed through, taking some notes as fast as possible and then read a critical article or two on it. Of course, when scanning the puritan sermons or Dickinson poems some individual texts might get a bit short shrift while plowing through the whole ---- but this pragmatic decision-making, while the centerpiece of being a grad student, is nothing to proudly pronounce about. It should be saved for tipsy giggling confessions of commiseration with fellow grads at someone’s party, or consoling words to the student hyperventilating, two weeks before exam time: keep calm; keep working; most people don’t completely finish their lists. Know what I ran out of time for and didn't read …? It should not be admitted in the TA mailroom, the department hallways, or god help me, blithely to any professor’s faces. What are you thinking??
In short, while I always talk about halfassery as the central method of surviving grad school, you should not take it as a half-assed effort but more in the spirit of "gutting": make smart decisions about what is really important for you to know in the profession and what is a hoop put up for you by the program. Halfassery (gutting) is not laziness but the recognition of limitations on our time. Halfassery (gutting) is not cockily thinking that whatever you write about author X will be so brilliant you don’t have to know your century inside and out, but knowing your field well enough you can prioritize who on your list is indispensable and who is marginal --- and that this prioritization will vary depending on the professor who examines you and what his/her pet hobbyhorses might be. Halfassery (gutting) is not skipping half the poems of author B because they are boring, but trading reading time for some of those poems for a read-through of a book that will allow you to place those poems in the appropriate stylistic or literary-historical context. I should really stop even using the word halfassery in case it is misleading impressionable grad students at my institution, but it is such a funny-sounding neologism I can't resist.
I am saying, then, that "Humiliation" is not the point of exams or the game of grad school --- or rather, it is, but to play it is to lose it. To win at halfassery one must keep one's mouth shut while still acknowledging, in a general way, one's human limits. I am completely in favor of the humiliation of any grad student stupid enough to admit or get caught out in not reading something. Halfassery, to be done properly, must be successfully gotten away with. Sigh ----- Could I be any more of a cranky little old man? Ah well.
And those high-handed grad who took the lists as suggestions rather than rules have all come, if not to a bad end, then to bad middles. If they didn’t have to retake the exam they were studying for, they got found out by the time the next set of quals rolled around. The profs here might have specialized views, but they don’t allow that behavior from their students. Cruel hypocrisy or necessary hierarchy? You decide.
Chaser is mulling over Lennard Davis’s article, "Huckleberry Who?" published in the Chronicle. And Undine is trying to make it a meme: what are five big books you haven’t read? Admit it! (I don’t think I’ve read any of the Continental great novels Davis mentions, not any Proust, nor Hesse, not War and Peace nor The Man Without Qualities. Though I did do well on his list of stuff in English.)
Davis, combining How to Talk About Books That You Haven't Read, by Pierre Bayard, and the game Humiliation from David Lodge’s Changing Places (wherein a professor is eventually fired for admitting he had never read Hamlet), has some very vague statements about the myriad ways one can read books besides scrutinizing every word, straight through to the end, and urges us to be "more open and honest about what we haven’t read" as well as less "sanctimonious" and judgmental towards our colleagues who haven’t read everything, which will result in …? Here’s where he gets a bit vague: how exactly will we benefit from being more honest about what we haven’t read? Well, he says, we might be more likely to read more or read important books that everyone else was talking about and we didn’t get around to in the moment (for me, this was Rushdie during the whole fatwa controversy). Hmm --- so not pressuring people to read will make them read more? And we might also discover new ways of reading. Hmm. I’m not entirely impressed by these conclusions.
For one thing, I agree with Chaser that the people I know are far more likely to be geekily excited and enthusiastic about reading, or about describing a book you’ve missed out on, than snootily condemning you for your ignorance. Second, my profs are much more likely to dismiss the books themselves out of hand than admit they should be read: What? By who? (cutting-off gesture of finality here) I don’t read that; I’m a ______ scholar. For at the R1s, fields are highly specialized things and the mark of pride and one-upmanship comes in ruthlessly excluding anything that falls outside of one’s sphere of expertise.
Besides, the problem isn’t fear, it’s time. (Hey, if I can admit to blogging, and to watching What Not to Wear when I have access to a TV, I would have no problem admitting attempting Midnight’s Children or Vanity Fair for belated pleasure reading.)
And if Davis had ventured more explicitly into “required field lists” rather than “what every educated person should know,” he would have exposed his arguments as silliness: a Shakespearean never having read Hamlet? A postcolonialist specializing in the Subcontinent who had never read any Rushdie? If either of these examples were confessed they would be met with bafflement, laughter, and derision: I know because of what grad students tell me.
And I would here like to put on my curmudgeon hat (the one with the tassels and all the sparkles) to declare that I am against this practice of grad students openly admitting what they did not read on their exam lists. The eighteenth-centuryist who cavalierly cops to only having read a quarter of the 18th C list stuff because s/he specializes in a single author? The person studying the Romantic/Victorian list who only read one side of the slash mark? The Americanist who skipped all the male authors? The person who intentionally misread all of the “and”s as “or”s whenever multiple plays or poems were listed for an author? This all shall stop right now! I am putting my fingers in my ears and singing lah lah lah whenever you-all admit this from now on.
Of course time runs out as one prepares for the exams! Of course there is "reading" vs. "reading" a text ---- or what a friend of mine referred to as "gutting" a text, where one skimmed through, taking some notes as fast as possible and then read a critical article or two on it. Of course, when scanning the puritan sermons or Dickinson poems some individual texts might get a bit short shrift while plowing through the whole ---- but this pragmatic decision-making, while the centerpiece of being a grad student, is nothing to proudly pronounce about. It should be saved for tipsy giggling confessions of commiseration with fellow grads at someone’s party, or consoling words to the student hyperventilating, two weeks before exam time: keep calm; keep working; most people don’t completely finish their lists. Know what I ran out of time for and didn't read …? It should not be admitted in the TA mailroom, the department hallways, or god help me, blithely to any professor’s faces. What are you thinking??
In short, while I always talk about halfassery as the central method of surviving grad school, you should not take it as a half-assed effort but more in the spirit of "gutting": make smart decisions about what is really important for you to know in the profession and what is a hoop put up for you by the program. Halfassery (gutting) is not laziness but the recognition of limitations on our time. Halfassery (gutting) is not cockily thinking that whatever you write about author X will be so brilliant you don’t have to know your century inside and out, but knowing your field well enough you can prioritize who on your list is indispensable and who is marginal --- and that this prioritization will vary depending on the professor who examines you and what his/her pet hobbyhorses might be. Halfassery (gutting) is not skipping half the poems of author B because they are boring, but trading reading time for some of those poems for a read-through of a book that will allow you to place those poems in the appropriate stylistic or literary-historical context. I should really stop even using the word halfassery in case it is misleading impressionable grad students at my institution, but it is such a funny-sounding neologism I can't resist.
I am saying, then, that "Humiliation" is not the point of exams or the game of grad school --- or rather, it is, but to play it is to lose it. To win at halfassery one must keep one's mouth shut while still acknowledging, in a general way, one's human limits. I am completely in favor of the humiliation of any grad student stupid enough to admit or get caught out in not reading something. Halfassery, to be done properly, must be successfully gotten away with. Sigh ----- Could I be any more of a cranky little old man? Ah well.
And those high-handed grad who took the lists as suggestions rather than rules have all come, if not to a bad end, then to bad middles. If they didn’t have to retake the exam they were studying for, they got found out by the time the next set of quals rolled around. The profs here might have specialized views, but they don’t allow that behavior from their students. Cruel hypocrisy or necessary hierarchy? You decide.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
New Year's Resolutions
I’m back! I have returned, picked up my cats, and gotten to the down-and-dirty of preparing for a new quarter. Today was give everything the last really good cleaning it will have for 10 weeks, including chipping out the ice from my freezer before the last tiny hole closed entirely day ---- Hello frozen chicken! Look, peas and green beans! Dr. Livingstone, I presume? No, call me Shackleton. Tomorrow is for cleaning up me and my new spring wardrobe ---- thank you Tar-jay. I may have gone overboard with the cheap new fabulousness and spent my TAship already, but I have been holding out for a long time on shopping, thinking that I would be getting a job and/or moving somewhere different that had weather, but since I did not get any job offers and so will not be needing professor-ly clothing, I finally came to grips with that fact and got new grad-student-ly clothes to replace the stuff which is looking, frankly, rather ratty.
The downside to the quarter system is immediately evident to anyone who wants to do research or survive grad classes (on either side of the table). The upside is that you feel you are starting anew every few months, a plus for the socially ADD. That new-eraser smell of a new start all around! Fresh new student faces and new class topics! (I had the quarter system as an undergrad and it was fine ---- sometimes I felt I was just getting over my shyness to really talk to my classmates after class when --- whhsssst! --- a new quarter whirled up and I never saw those classmates again ---- but for the most part it was just about right. You didn’t get bored, and if the class or teacher sucked, you just leaned back and waited it out for a bit.) I tend to think of these new starts as like new years, and since I never keep my New Year’s Resolutions for more than a few weeks anyway, I try to take the time to rededicate myself to them and rejuvenate myself. So, with that, I will brainstorm a few areas to work on during the upcoming spring whirl.
1. Write on the diss. every day. This is obvious, as not being finished is my biggest barrier to any sort of progress on my life. I’m usually pretty good at plugging away steadily, but I’m researching and planning a new chapter right now, so I need to make sure I don’t procrastinate endlessly by reading books and also that I don’t make impossible daily goals that interfere with my survival (see below). I’m not going to make any page/hour goals here, just promise that teaching won’t prevent me from putting in regular daily work.
2. Wear skirts. I love clothes and makeup but hate the daily effort. I may be modest and reserved, but if nudism were at all an option I’m sure I’d overcome any lingering embarrassment for the ease of just get-up-and-go without dealing with matching things and prepping and making an effort to look professional, or at least cute. I’ve made the case before that, if we in the academy really profess to be living the life of the mind, we should all wear monk’s robes ---- preferably something softer and fuzzier than hair shirts. See? Loose, comfortable, just add sandals and a rope belt and you’re good to go!
Anyway, when I work at it I can be not just decently dressed, but fresh and sparkling or even, dare I say, snazzy, all the way until 8th week, when the shit hits the fan (you can see the sartorial standards slide for everyone starting then, not just me). When I don’t consciously make an effort, I start out at week-8 quality and degenerate into borderline homeless-looking.
3. Keep up the sunscreen. Ever since finding a Disturbing Splotch and being told to keep an eye on it by a dermatologist, I have actually been quite good at wearing sunscreen and varioussnake oil youth preserving ointments every day, even on overcast days. Sad to say, it was the vanity and not the possible impending mortality that got me to get religion on the sunscreen. What can I say ---- I’m in California, where shallowness and an emphasis on surfaces are virtues. I may be vain, but I am pale now, which is a slight rebellion against the California-ness.
4. Exercise. Sadly, I have kept this resolution successfully in the distant past, but did not work out once all of the past quarter. (I’m not counting taking nice little walks.) I need to get back in the swing of things and force myself not only to work out, but to do it regularly. My schedule is conducive to workouts this time so there is some hope. The exercise would also help drop the weight I think I put on over break --- my dad’s scale seems untrustworthy. It didn’t change all week, but considering my dad is the king of middlebrow food and insisted we go out to: Applebee’s, a Chili’s, two different ok deep-dish pizza chains, and Best Mexican Restaurant in the world, a hole in the wall place near my parents’ house that we have loved since coming to California --- I am dubious that I have maintained my weight.
5. Social life --- what’s that? This may surprise you, but this one is the most important and most difficult for me of all. It really should be number 1, but I didn’t want to confuse you. I hereby resolve to go out and socialize, in a social setting, not at my house and not on the phone, with people, at least once a week. Ideally this will be with new and different people than just my dissertation buddy, who is wonderful in every way but we already spend a lot of time together. My Achilles heel --- besides being a bit shy and also cantankerous, which keeps people at their distance --- is that I tend to “punish” myself for a seeming lack of dissertation progress by cutting off the social world. Strange but true, and I wonder if this is at all common. Not only do I not allow myself contact with the outside world on days when I get nothing done, but I ratchet up my goals if the diss work is going well ---- Two paragraphs written! Whoo-hoo! …Two? Only two? You suck, you work so slow! You should have written 10 pages today! Get back to work! And forget about seeing anybody tomorrow --- no talking to a living soul unless you get 20 pages done the next day! … Then I get depressed and isolated, not talking to anyone or going out of the house because I have been “bad.” I start procrastinating more and more and getting less and less done, finally just shutting down and curling up into a ball under the covers. I need to avoid this, and need to remind myself that some socializing will keep me happy and going along as I work. Granted, I can use chatting with people to suck up my available work time like nobody’s business. But I know I need the rejuvenation ---- and chatting with grad students for 20 minutes in the mailroom doesn’t really work to rejuvenate me. So, fun and excitement, here I come!
6. Use a cup, stupid! This last little one is easy. I’ve lived in CA long enough to be a recycling little tree-hugger, and I try to not get bags for purchases or other wasteful things. And further, I’ve brought coffee or tea to school in a thermos or mug for years! But, insidiously, I have fallen into a bad habit of buying coffee at school or the coffee shop right near school. (Latte and a bagel …. mmmm!) I don’t know where my travel mug went, and my beautiful thermos leaks if you put it on its side and try to smuggle it into the library. I’ve been putting off hunting down a travel mug that will hold up to my James Bond-esque smuggler lifestyle, and in the process wasted paper like crazy. But I have new mugs from my budget-breaking Target trip and it should be an easy thing to start carting them around again.
So, ta-da! A shiny new me! With clothes, even! Whaddaya think? Too many resolutions, not enough? Anybody else do this, or have I definitively proven how strange I am?
The downside to the quarter system is immediately evident to anyone who wants to do research or survive grad classes (on either side of the table). The upside is that you feel you are starting anew every few months, a plus for the socially ADD. That new-eraser smell of a new start all around! Fresh new student faces and new class topics! (I had the quarter system as an undergrad and it was fine ---- sometimes I felt I was just getting over my shyness to really talk to my classmates after class when --- whhsssst! --- a new quarter whirled up and I never saw those classmates again ---- but for the most part it was just about right. You didn’t get bored, and if the class or teacher sucked, you just leaned back and waited it out for a bit.) I tend to think of these new starts as like new years, and since I never keep my New Year’s Resolutions for more than a few weeks anyway, I try to take the time to rededicate myself to them and rejuvenate myself. So, with that, I will brainstorm a few areas to work on during the upcoming spring whirl.
1. Write on the diss. every day. This is obvious, as not being finished is my biggest barrier to any sort of progress on my life. I’m usually pretty good at plugging away steadily, but I’m researching and planning a new chapter right now, so I need to make sure I don’t procrastinate endlessly by reading books and also that I don’t make impossible daily goals that interfere with my survival (see below). I’m not going to make any page/hour goals here, just promise that teaching won’t prevent me from putting in regular daily work.
2. Wear skirts. I love clothes and makeup but hate the daily effort. I may be modest and reserved, but if nudism were at all an option I’m sure I’d overcome any lingering embarrassment for the ease of just get-up-and-go without dealing with matching things and prepping and making an effort to look professional, or at least cute. I’ve made the case before that, if we in the academy really profess to be living the life of the mind, we should all wear monk’s robes ---- preferably something softer and fuzzier than hair shirts. See? Loose, comfortable, just add sandals and a rope belt and you’re good to go!
Anyway, when I work at it I can be not just decently dressed, but fresh and sparkling or even, dare I say, snazzy, all the way until 8th week, when the shit hits the fan (you can see the sartorial standards slide for everyone starting then, not just me). When I don’t consciously make an effort, I start out at week-8 quality and degenerate into borderline homeless-looking.
3. Keep up the sunscreen. Ever since finding a Disturbing Splotch and being told to keep an eye on it by a dermatologist, I have actually been quite good at wearing sunscreen and various
4. Exercise. Sadly, I have kept this resolution successfully in the distant past, but did not work out once all of the past quarter. (I’m not counting taking nice little walks.) I need to get back in the swing of things and force myself not only to work out, but to do it regularly. My schedule is conducive to workouts this time so there is some hope. The exercise would also help drop the weight I think I put on over break --- my dad’s scale seems untrustworthy. It didn’t change all week, but considering my dad is the king of middlebrow food and insisted we go out to: Applebee’s, a Chili’s, two different ok deep-dish pizza chains, and Best Mexican Restaurant in the world, a hole in the wall place near my parents’ house that we have loved since coming to California --- I am dubious that I have maintained my weight.
5. Social life --- what’s that? This may surprise you, but this one is the most important and most difficult for me of all. It really should be number 1, but I didn’t want to confuse you. I hereby resolve to go out and socialize, in a social setting, not at my house and not on the phone, with people, at least once a week. Ideally this will be with new and different people than just my dissertation buddy, who is wonderful in every way but we already spend a lot of time together. My Achilles heel --- besides being a bit shy and also cantankerous, which keeps people at their distance --- is that I tend to “punish” myself for a seeming lack of dissertation progress by cutting off the social world. Strange but true, and I wonder if this is at all common. Not only do I not allow myself contact with the outside world on days when I get nothing done, but I ratchet up my goals if the diss work is going well ---- Two paragraphs written! Whoo-hoo! …Two? Only two? You suck, you work so slow! You should have written 10 pages today! Get back to work! And forget about seeing anybody tomorrow --- no talking to a living soul unless you get 20 pages done the next day! … Then I get depressed and isolated, not talking to anyone or going out of the house because I have been “bad.” I start procrastinating more and more and getting less and less done, finally just shutting down and curling up into a ball under the covers. I need to avoid this, and need to remind myself that some socializing will keep me happy and going along as I work. Granted, I can use chatting with people to suck up my available work time like nobody’s business. But I know I need the rejuvenation ---- and chatting with grad students for 20 minutes in the mailroom doesn’t really work to rejuvenate me. So, fun and excitement, here I come!
6. Use a cup, stupid! This last little one is easy. I’ve lived in CA long enough to be a recycling little tree-hugger, and I try to not get bags for purchases or other wasteful things. And further, I’ve brought coffee or tea to school in a thermos or mug for years! But, insidiously, I have fallen into a bad habit of buying coffee at school or the coffee shop right near school. (Latte and a bagel …. mmmm!) I don’t know where my travel mug went, and my beautiful thermos leaks if you put it on its side and try to smuggle it into the library. I’ve been putting off hunting down a travel mug that will hold up to my James Bond-esque smuggler lifestyle, and in the process wasted paper like crazy. But I have new mugs from my budget-breaking Target trip and it should be an easy thing to start carting them around again.
So, ta-da! A shiny new me! With clothes, even! Whaddaya think? Too many resolutions, not enough? Anybody else do this, or have I definitively proven how strange I am?
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Off to see the fam
I'll be off visiting family for a bit now that I am done grading things, which could mean that I will not be posting much, or that I will be posting and reading you-all's blogs constantly, depending on the overall levels of boredom and internet access. My whole family lives in a town that is in proximity to cool things but itself is the epitome of bland suburbia. There's nothing there except houses and apartments, chain restaurants and Asian grocery markets. And everything is new and built on the 1-mile grid, so it is dull and impossible to walk anywhere or have any sense of local community even if you wanted to (yes, except for freeway entrances, I think you could walk a mile in every direction from my parents' house without seeing anything except more houses). One of my favorite (because free) sleeping shirts is a t-shirt given to me by my mom that says "There's More to _______!" Fittingly, it doesn't list anything else; I can't think of anything either.
However, my parents do have tv. Anything good on I could catch?
However, my parents do have tv. Anything good on I could catch?
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Spontaneity
I am not a spontaneous person. I’m quite comfortable hibernating at home like a bear (I’m a bit more like a sloth, actually) reading, procrastinating, occasionally working, and complaining about how boring my life is. Naturally when my dissertation-writing buddy called at 8 in the morning on Monday to say she was upset and really wanted to get out of town, would I like to go camping with her, I promptly said no, that was impossible. Knowing me well, she promised she would call back when she was ready to leave and see if I had changed my mind. That left me there on the couch, sipping my tea and watching the cats rumpusing, in an intense mental struggle against my own inertia.
You might think that I would be overjoyed to have voices in my head promise to leave me, but that is not the type of person I am. I soon jumped off the couch and began to throw clothing in a backpack, rummaging through the closet for my sleeping bag and cat food while frantically dialing DB’s number: “Wait, wait for me! Do you need food? I’m coming! Don’t leave without me!”
“You have 10 minutes. We need to leave right now to make it to Big Sur in time.” And with that I really had to hurry. No time to plan, no time to wash the mountain of dirty dishes or agonize over every little thing to pack. I put out extra bowls of water and heaped up the dry food and hoped that my finicky cats would not, on filling the catbox, start to leave me presents elsewhere in the apartment. And the dishes? I locked them in the bathroom where the cats couldn’t get to them and just left them ‘till I got back.
Big Sur is on the coast of California and reachable by the twisty, windy road of the 1. I’m not too adventurous when it comes to heights and curvy roads, so let us just say it was a good thing DB was driving. It is nowhere near us and probably not a logical choice for us to take a two-day trip to, but that just adds to the spontaneity, no? The landscape is very beautiful and I’m sorry to say that I did not remember in all that chaos to pack a camera. Imagine, then, to one side steep scrub-covered hills and slabs of striated rocks pushing upward with slow massive power, to the other, gray sky and a guardrail. Except for those times when the guardrail is missing or fallen and you glance over to see almost the whole way down the cliff ---- Ohgod! Don’t go over! I can see the waves crashing at the bottom it’s so sheer! Hug the cliff side, stupid! (I was probably less than fun and spontaneous on the drive.)
The 1 is where they film all of those pretentious car commercials that show off how well the expensive sportscar “handles,” and as such the area is a mecca of sorts for the obnoxiously wealthy who want spa trips and pricey wine tastings, which makes for an odd mix with the hippie spiritual adventurers and local farmer-rancher types who are also in the area. This means that the local gas was almost 5 a gallon (and you’re not allowed to pump your own) and every gas station has its own gourmet blend of coffee beans you can get by the pound near the cashier. (I would need a pound of Ragged Hill beans why? There are 5 espresso bars on this rural turn-off.) I also re-learned that DB has a different definition of what is “camping” than I do, which I thought was a fluke on our last outing about a year ago: if you are not staying at a bed and breakfast, tent camping must be supplemented by gourmet meals and/or wine drinking at fancy restaurants. So we ate out at several Big Sur places, including a microbrewery (!) ---- the Big Sur blonde, I believe it was, is very smooth and tasty ---- and ate expensive appetizers at some fancy cliffside restaurant and drank wine as the sun set. It was beautiful, and it’s true that we would not be able to see the sea (or the sun, either) at our campsite. I was mollified by the fact that it rained on us (lightly) one day and on the second we made a fire and made s’mores, which fulfilled my camping requirements. Our camp was lovely too, surrounded by small redwoods and few campers, and about 50 yards away was a little river, cold and icy, that you could sit and contemplate. (Do not go in. Didn’t I say icy?) We also had embarrassing hiking adventures which I shall relate at another time, and tried to go to the Henry Miller Library, being literature grad students and all, but the proprietors apparently didn’t feel like being there that day, as they had closed the place and left a note on the gate.
The highlight of the little trip was actually not the views or the clean crisp woody air or trying to get the campfire to burn on a cold and drippy night, but the unexpected rainbow that stretched across two hills, a perfect bow, with the colors distinct and clear and exactly where they should be, like a present that someone had accidentally left out for us. It made it all worth it, losing momentum on the dissertation and the lack of sleep on the lumpy ground and the gas money and driving back like a bat out of hell in order to make it to proctor the final in time and even the following four days of harried, eye-gouging grading. It wasn’t extreme-adventure or rivetingly exciting or daring, true. But it was completely spontaneous.
Me: I’d love to go, but this is so last minute. What about the cats? Wouldn’t I have to pack and wash all those dishes and do, uh, something or other that I can’t think of right now but must be highly important?
Other Me: You can call the cat kennel, or even leave them at home with the dry food for 48 hours. That’s not too bad. You always complain about how bored you are by sitting around with nothing to do but work. You call your family and tell them what you did for the week and they are completely unimpressed by the lack of events in your life.
Me: But shouldn’t I be working on the dissertation in a highly productive fashion?
Other Me: You’d procrastinate for half of that time anyway! And you’d feel bad about it and half-ass the procrastination, rather than really throwing yourself into enjoying something like camping. And you’d also sit around thinking about all the fun Dissertation Buddy was having without you.
Me: But I can’t handle the thought of just picking up and hauling off somewhere when I haven’t been planning everything for weeks.
Other me: Oh, you nit! You are such a stick in the mud. You are dull. You are the most unspontaneous person ever! Get off your ass and find your sleeping bag or I’ll never speak to you again.
You might think that I would be overjoyed to have voices in my head promise to leave me, but that is not the type of person I am. I soon jumped off the couch and began to throw clothing in a backpack, rummaging through the closet for my sleeping bag and cat food while frantically dialing DB’s number: “Wait, wait for me! Do you need food? I’m coming! Don’t leave without me!”
“You have 10 minutes. We need to leave right now to make it to Big Sur in time.” And with that I really had to hurry. No time to plan, no time to wash the mountain of dirty dishes or agonize over every little thing to pack. I put out extra bowls of water and heaped up the dry food and hoped that my finicky cats would not, on filling the catbox, start to leave me presents elsewhere in the apartment. And the dishes? I locked them in the bathroom where the cats couldn’t get to them and just left them ‘till I got back.
Big Sur is on the coast of California and reachable by the twisty, windy road of the 1. I’m not too adventurous when it comes to heights and curvy roads, so let us just say it was a good thing DB was driving. It is nowhere near us and probably not a logical choice for us to take a two-day trip to, but that just adds to the spontaneity, no? The landscape is very beautiful and I’m sorry to say that I did not remember in all that chaos to pack a camera. Imagine, then, to one side steep scrub-covered hills and slabs of striated rocks pushing upward with slow massive power, to the other, gray sky and a guardrail. Except for those times when the guardrail is missing or fallen and you glance over to see almost the whole way down the cliff ---- Ohgod! Don’t go over! I can see the waves crashing at the bottom it’s so sheer! Hug the cliff side, stupid! (I was probably less than fun and spontaneous on the drive.)
The 1 is where they film all of those pretentious car commercials that show off how well the expensive sportscar “handles,” and as such the area is a mecca of sorts for the obnoxiously wealthy who want spa trips and pricey wine tastings, which makes for an odd mix with the hippie spiritual adventurers and local farmer-rancher types who are also in the area. This means that the local gas was almost 5 a gallon (and you’re not allowed to pump your own) and every gas station has its own gourmet blend of coffee beans you can get by the pound near the cashier. (I would need a pound of Ragged Hill beans why? There are 5 espresso bars on this rural turn-off.) I also re-learned that DB has a different definition of what is “camping” than I do, which I thought was a fluke on our last outing about a year ago: if you are not staying at a bed and breakfast, tent camping must be supplemented by gourmet meals and/or wine drinking at fancy restaurants. So we ate out at several Big Sur places, including a microbrewery (!) ---- the Big Sur blonde, I believe it was, is very smooth and tasty ---- and ate expensive appetizers at some fancy cliffside restaurant and drank wine as the sun set. It was beautiful, and it’s true that we would not be able to see the sea (or the sun, either) at our campsite. I was mollified by the fact that it rained on us (lightly) one day and on the second we made a fire and made s’mores, which fulfilled my camping requirements. Our camp was lovely too, surrounded by small redwoods and few campers, and about 50 yards away was a little river, cold and icy, that you could sit and contemplate. (Do not go in. Didn’t I say icy?) We also had embarrassing hiking adventures which I shall relate at another time, and tried to go to the Henry Miller Library, being literature grad students and all, but the proprietors apparently didn’t feel like being there that day, as they had closed the place and left a note on the gate.
The highlight of the little trip was actually not the views or the clean crisp woody air or trying to get the campfire to burn on a cold and drippy night, but the unexpected rainbow that stretched across two hills, a perfect bow, with the colors distinct and clear and exactly where they should be, like a present that someone had accidentally left out for us. It made it all worth it, losing momentum on the dissertation and the lack of sleep on the lumpy ground and the gas money and driving back like a bat out of hell in order to make it to proctor the final in time and even the following four days of harried, eye-gouging grading. It wasn’t extreme-adventure or rivetingly exciting or daring, true. But it was completely spontaneous.
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