Dude, Where's My Car?

I just realized that my car is still at work and I took the bus home yesterday. This fact was impressed upon me when I went outside to try and drive to my pilates class.

*smacks forehead* Doi!!!!!


You yutz.

I should be grading. Thphphphphphpht!

I just got off work and wolfed down some leftovers. I should return to my grading and finish it off and start tallying up all the numbers and things. Pffffft! My brain is melted. All I want to do is look at shiny things.Therefore, since I'm admiring various shoes on zappos (no money to buy them though), I should post some of the pics I like. Shoeblogging! Mmm.This is cute.
This is interesting. I like the side stuff but not the bar across the top.Ohhhh why do I not own bright carrot orange patent heels??? Fabulous. I hope it's metallic like the glossy paint on lowriders with the little flecks of gold in it. While I'm at it, I want a carrot orange lowrider with bright gold flames, too. (What? I never said I was subtle in my style!)

Hmm ordinarily I would have said these were cute shoes but coming directly after the neon orange marvelousness I find myself saying, "Woman, what foolishness is this? Your lower extremities exist for displaying bling! The clothing part of your wardrobe is always very safe and boring --- don't consign your feet to the same forgetableness!" Evidently I now talk to myself about my fantasy shoe purchases.
Ummm no.
I like this, even though with my short feet peep-toes don't really work on me. I usually look toeless, and the effect is kinda creepy, like an amputee.

Also interesting.These are also suitably different and weird.
Squiggly things!


Do I like these? Please advise.
As long as I'm looking at shoes but not having to figure out how to stand and walk for long periods in them, I may as well check out these.

Well, thoughts?

Grading Frenzy!

I was mostly good yesterday, and have been quite good in tackling my grading today. This morning I walked down through the fog (haze, really) to a coffeeshop and graded a bunch of essays while slurping coffee after coffee, until, too jittery to hold still, I walked all the way back to my apartment.

This is my ideal work structure --- the fresh morning air wakes me up, the coffee is tasty and pleasant, and when I've had so much caffeine that I can't hold still to pay attention, I give my self a break by walking home, and maybe doing some cleaning or dishes. Then I'm nice and tired out and ready to hold still and (hopefully) focus on papers yet again.

I'm having troubles this time around because I decided to let my students email their research papers to me, which means I am grading on the computer. That wouldn't be so bad in and of itself --- I need to take sanity breaks anyway so the fact that I'm reading a lot on screen isn't annoying me too much --- but I'm finding it difficult because I grade so relationally.

How can I be sure I am grading fairly without referring back and forth amongst my papers? I usually make a running commentary down the margins of a paper and then write maybe a sentence or so as an end comment, and the types of comments I make help me arrive at the grade. But I also only mark the letter grade in pencil the first time around, and pile all the papers in separate stacks based on what is wrong with them. If all of the "half-digested, unexplained quotes" papers are about the same quality, they should get the same grade. Likewise the ramblers who are repeating rather than deepening their argument. And what do you do with the ones who just go off and pontificate about life for a few paragraphs with nothing related to the course in sight? (Surprisingly, I already have two of those today.)

After I have worked my way through them all I re-skim the piles and my comments, just checking to make sure papers with similar comments and similar qualities have the same letter. Usually they match up pretty well, but I like to check and be sure. And while I'm at it I tally up the grades on a graph to see if I have a rough bell curve and consider pushing things around a bit to make it more of a bell --- depending on the group of students I have, this either means I am merciful and lenient to a bunch of Cs or go back and re-evaluate more stringently when it appears I have lots of As.

But I find that when I am opening files on a computer --- even though I am taking a single line of notes on a sheet of paper for all the papers --- I'm really having trouble remembering one paper to the next or how they stack up against each other. It may seem unfair to grade students against each other but really it is because I know myself. My first couple papers tend to get higher grades than the rest, and the last couple graded on any given day tend to get slammed because I am cranky. When I first start out on a pile, I always react like "OMG you had an idea brilliant!!!!!" but by halfway through the stack I discover that most of the papers have about four ideas that I like and really that first grade needs to be re-evaluated.

(you know, I feel like I wrote exactly this same post about a year ago? Maybe I did. Whatever.)

So, in sum, I don't like the onscreen grading. The one benefit is that I won't have to store and then shred a big stack of essays, because students never come get their final papers in my experience. But I like my little habits and the system I have developed, so if I were ever to teach anything again I'd want hard copies of essays.

Now, everybody go post something interesting or update your blogs so I have something entertaining to look at when I take my next break! "Good in tackling my grading" does not mean I'm anywhere near done with today's quota.

Liberty Fabric comes to Target

Completely completely random post: some web site I read announced that Liberty of London, a famous fabric print company, is partnering with Target to bring some of their fabrics into Target's wares. They have such cool, loud, bright colored patterns and I quite love them even though most of them are florals and I don't do florals.


See, aren't they cute? I even love that bright magenta pattern, although it is amazingly loud in the actual product pictures.

Unfortunately, although they have several bedspread prints, I don't like any of them. Hey Target, are you listening? Either that blue print or the middle, peacock-esque print would look really cool as a bedding set instead of putting it on cheap melamine mugs.



I have enough mugs, thank you. Many cute ones. What I am lacking, I have just discovered, is a teal-and-metallic gold peacock feather print bedspread. Please remedy this immediately.

Ooh, I'd do up all sorts of gold accessories with a bedspread like that, and some (as long as we're fantasizing) dark honey-gold or brown furniture!

Weak Connections, Strong Networking

They say, in all those job-getting advice books, that networking is the key, and that most people find jobs through their "weak connections." I've been telling everyone for about a month now that a) I am in need of some sort of work and b) I am trying to move out of academia, and I'm actually seeing results of this tactic, with one major drawback.

First off, I will point out how extremely difficult it is for me to admit to having troubles or tell people I need help. So I am doing surprisingly well in telling people that I am in job difficulties and admitting that I am leaving academia. And friends and work colleagues are now talking to me about it and passing along little leads or articles and helping me out in all sorts of wonderful ways. But.

While I'm actually getting a lot of leads and offers, they are strictly of the temp/part time/an hour here an hour there variety. Like, go research this and do a lot of photocopying for a professor for two days, or here's someone who wants private tutoring once a week, or here's my contacts for doing editorial work for that journal when I move. And I am highly appreciative of all this help, but it is not going to get me into a full-time job.

Part of that is because my "weak network" consists of grad students and retired people who are working part time. And if I was still a grad student needing just to eke out my ta stipend, this would be just fine. But none of these things are permanent or offering very much in the way of hours, and I wonder if I take them all on I won't have time or energy to do an actual job search.

Of course, on the other hand, I'm not really getting interest in my permanent-position apps, so soon I really will be needing these types of jobs to make rent and whatnot. Well, right now I'm about to have some spare time, so I should just suck it up and try to translate as many of these into actual paying gigs as I can right now, and I can cut back later.

Another suggestion someone made to me was to try the temp agencies, so that I would have more recent administrative/clerical experience on my resume and could that might make it look more impressive when I send it out to admin/staff type jobs. And they also might be able to give useful advice about my resume and cover letter. While that may be good advice, a) I loathe the idea of meeting new people and interviewing with them and working new jobs every few days and b) I work every weekday, but part time, at my biggest part time job. So I don't know if I have the flexibility to go for that right now ---- I don't think they'd be interested in someone who could only work mornings. But they might.

Would having some more recent secretarial-type work make my resume look better? I don't know.

And another thing: I hate salary qualifications. I won't apply to anything that demands to know what my current salary is --- why should I have to embarrass myself putting down my minimum-wage jobs on your application? Why should I admit to my hourly rates and thus have you take that as the basis for this new job's wages? I don't want to lowball myself like that. And I also hate positions that don't at least give a salary range in their ad. The same ad usually does both, too. Bleah. Some of the positions are scandalously low-paid, too, like a couple for a private school in SF that were paying barely 19k for full-time work. That's not really livable in downtown SF, people. And I wouldn't have known that from the ad --- I had to poke around on other web sites first.

Let's see, what are some of the interesting postings I've found so far? Besides a call for someone to catalog and manage the Greatful Dead papers at SC, UCLA had a posting for costume shop manager for their theater and film department. How fun would that be! Of course, I have none of the proper degrees or qualifications or abilities (like being able to operate an industrial sewing machine), but it just sounds cool. I don't even picture it in terms of work, just someone standing in a costume-filled room, wearing a tiara, maybe, and saying, "dude, I'm surrounded by all these cool clothes!" Probably it's not that easy of a job, heh.

There are lots of science and medical-school type administration jobs open right now, almost all of which require a BS or medical billing experience I don' t have. And the listings are surprisingly sparse in the entry-level arena ---- The Elf Queen kinda snorted when I mentioned this and said, "yeah, they downsized all the lower-level positions in order to save their own hides during the budget cuts!" which kinda sucks for me. Now all those downsizers appear to have decamped for greener pastures, and their positions are being advertised not the opening ones, which makes it extra hard for me to break in to another field, as the Elf Queen admitted.

She agreed with me that I'm not really competitive for any positions where I'd be managing a team, as I don't have that kind of management experience, and she helped me decode the I, II, III type classifications for postings --- I was right in guessing, by salary range, where I might be able to break in or not. Likewise, all those "five years demonstrated experience" lines that want grant or fundraising or management experience kinda cut me out, so we had trouble finding jobs on the lists that I could realistically apply to, as opposed to just apply to. And she had much more advice, although some of it I had already heard.

Sigh. I don't want the old advice or info I can glean for myself off the web. I don't want to go through the work of actually applying for a job; I just want someone to hand it to me --- that's why I've been telling people everywhere, so that I can get some sort of connection or deal that will just magically land me in a job without all the tedium and hard work and scary talking to strangers stuff. I just want to magically be employed.

Preferably somewhere I can wear a tiara.

And when they're only halfway up, they're neither up nor down

Why did the grand old Duke of York march his men up and down the hill in that song, anyway? I forget; I'm sure I was told at one point. I keep thinking about this and leaving academia --- not that I'm up or down, but that I'm kinda stuck, neither in or out of it. And it's so easy to get sucked right back in.

Today I ran into a grad student who I haven't seen in quite a while. He --- let's call him Grizzly Adams, as he's got that hipster aesthetic that seems part 19th century mountain man and part crazy homeless dude --- updated me with some details on his life and asked what I had been up to since the beginning of job season. Since I was getting out some library books for editing my accepted article (learn from me, children! Double, nay, triple-check all of your references before mailing off an article and returning all the books! Especially if you haven't referenced something that may potentially need to be referenced!), I told him about that and he was suitably praise-filled and impressed.

That felt good. I'm always willing to revel in my accomplishments. And it has been long enough that I can talk about a sucky job market run without being upset about it, so I didn't need his condolences. And, really, if you're a youngster grad student and haven't become jaded by all the financial difficulties and soul-crushing job market attempts, what I've accomplished last year is pretty impressive.

So, of course Grizzly said something along the lines of "ooh, I bet you'll be positioned to look really good on the next year's job market," and instantly I was back in it --- oh yeah, next year will be my year! I will accomplish Great and Wonderful Things and truly dazzle the search committees and they will be fighting over my greatness! Truly I only need some sort of part time, stop-gap job to pay rent until I ascend into the heavens of tenure-track employment!

Yeah. Hmm. Then I remembered that Grizzly hasn't been through any job market stuff (just like he hasn't been through publishing stuff, which is why my feats sound so impressive) and he has no clue what it feels like to go through this crap for multiple years on end, barely scraping enough by to break even, and sometimes not even that (when it comes to paying for the actual job search stuff). And of course he's not graduated and facing down loan repayment.

So I said something noncommittal and asked about how his writing was coming along, and we had a very lovely "inside baseball" talk about the authors we love and the scuttlebutt about the scholars publishing on them (Grizzly Adams has always had a keen eye for who is the steward of who's papers, who edits the review and who is the big name in the field and all that --- and he keeps a running list in the back of his mind of who's screwing who and who has other types of scandalous pasts; it's quite entertaining, really). And I love that and I'm going to miss it, but I'm going to continue applying out for my new career, whatever that is.

(Note to the last few search committees: if you want to hire me, I won't complain! I'm just not waiting around for it.)

So, in sum, I'm actually in a pretty good mood. Of course, the beautiful weather and the lunch at in-n-out may be part of the reason for that, but, if a chocolate shake and burger with grilled onions is a workable alternative to therapy and medication, then so be it.

I am Beige

Got a lot of different types of emails in my in-box today: a rejection from one of the fall tt jobs (not news to me: delete), a rejection from one of the admin jobs I've applied to, a month or so ago (hmm, sigh), an email from a friend who does admin type stuff with some advice (more on that later) and potential times it would be good to confab with her (yay!), and a rejection email from one of the private-high-school recruiters, telling me that while my cv was lovely, no one was going to be hiring along my specialties this spring. Hmm.

And then I walked over to get coffee, and ran into the financial administrator for the dept, who buttonholed me on my way.

"Hey, let us know if you are interested in teaching [current course] next year, same quarter, same time!"

"Uhh, ok," I said. "I don't really know what I'm doing next year; I'm trying to get that all settled out."

"Well just send me an email and let me know if you're interested. ... Oh, and also check with [name]; there's a new regulation that the department needs to schedule 50% of its classes during "prime time" and 50% on "off hours." But lots of the profs like the early morning classes, so they may not want your slot. Just let [name] know and she will slot you in wherever works best."

"Uhh, ok," I said again.


Hmm. If I thought I could scrape up a full load of adjuncting here, this would be great. Clearly, I am beige. Or, more positively, I have my foot in the door, and they'd like to just continue with the status quo because it all runs smoothly and I do fine in my job.

I just wish I could get my foot in some other doors. Either in addition to this or instead of it. Or if I had a more solid, better-paying job to be a supplement to this one. Right now, I'm back where I was last year, with one class for the middle of the year and a gaping hole and lots of expenses on either side.

I'd move away if I had my foot in some doors somewhere else. But right now all my part time jobs are here, and I don't want to move away from those little dribbles of money for the great unknown of trying to break in somewhere else. So, I don't know.

This post is also coming from the email from an admin friend, and my preliminary research on the chronicle admin boards. I may have to start out by volunteering somewhere, which means no money, in order to get my foot in that door. Either that or take courses on the topic, which I am not interested in paying for or living through at the moment.

Gah --- it's like my academic research interests all over again: I am all over the place and not focused. I have all these tentative possibilities in all sorts of different job fields, and it looks like it will take a long time and opportunity cost to transition over into any of them. So what do I do? I have no idea. I keep knocking on random doors and other ones open, just a crack, and then I worry that this door will slam shut and prevent me from doing something else.

Edited to add: When I reread this I thought I wasn't quite clear; not everything in my head is on here. I've heard from people that "recalibrating" one's resume to fit various other jobs takes about a year of little to no income, whether it be adjuncting a lot at different levels of community college classes, to volunteering at a high school while getting some classes in to look good for the private places, to "interning" in some admin department to prove that you really want to be there and don't just need a job somewhere. I can't even pick what direction I want/need to be going in, so how can I recalibrate in multiple directions in a year?

I wish I had understood this more clearly a year ago, when I planned to do a final year on the academic market. I wish this last run on the market had gone even worse, ironically, so that I had put more time and energy into recalibrating back when I had my multiple part time jobs. I wish I had grabbed these or other part-time jobs in addition to TAing much earlier than I did. I wish my rent wasn't so damn high. Oh I wish a whole damn lot of things.