on group work

As I walked up to my office just now after class, I thought "well, I guess I can blog about how group work saved my sorry ass today." Because it did: I have been really busy with other work and so my class prep suffered this week. Then, when I arrived at my office this morning, I realised I'd left a lot of my notes on the book at home -- my notes about specific passages on certain pages. So I really had to pull something out of thin air in a hurry.

But to say that (and yes, we all do group work on the fly sometimes) implies that group work is a fallback, a slacker thing to do, a time-filler. And if it's poorly thought out or badly executed, it can be all of those things. But pedagogically I really believe in the value of group work, if it's handled well. I've learned a lot of things over the years about what works and what doesn't, and I've read some of the theoretical research, and so I'm fairly confident in my ability to design an activity that will take the students to a new level of learning and engagement with the material. But good group work isn't just about clear expectations, clear outcomes, and so forth. It also depends upon the foundation you've already laid down in the class. If students know you expect them to come to class prepared to discuss, they're not freaked out by a group activity. If your activity builds on concepts already discussed in previous sessions, then the students begin at a point of confidence, on their way to something new. I use brief regular group work sessions in all of my classes; and then sometimes, like today, I use groups for more extensive things.

Today's class worked out really well. The activity looked as though it was something I'd carefully planned to follow Tuesday's lecture on critical strategies. I discussed the critical framework we'd set up on Tuesday, assigned topics to the groups, had them discuss the topics in the novel (all related to a particular character), and present passages for discussion to the class. Then I extemporized some pretty good lecture material out of what they brought forward. They worked hard, I worked hard, and we all came to a better understanding of what's going on in this book.

Days like this are really some of my favorite teaching days -- days when I surprise myself. I usually teach in a fairly free-form manner, rarely from a scripted lecture. But it's extra nice to hear smart ideas coming out that I didn't quite realise I had. Days I wish I had a tape-recorder, since I won't remember this in two years when I teach this course again.

hierarchies

I've been thinking about academic hierarchies lately, and my deeply ambivalent relationship to them: not so much the hierarchy of rank within a particular institution, but the list of schools we all carry around in our heads, tailored to our specific discipline or field. We all know, or think we know, which are the best schools, which are the second best. When confronted with any school name, even the less-familiar ones, I generally have an intuitive sense of where it falls in that list. And mostly, it's an easy guessing game: there's lots of agreement about which are the top ten or fifteen schools in a given field. And after that, the second tier is easy to fill in. Past second tier, and nobody really cares, except for the people in those institutions. And the people who might be hiring them, or reviewing their tenure files, or selecting papers for a conference.

I've been selecting papers for a conference panel recently, and even though my conscious mind knows it's a very flawed way of making judgments, I still recognize that the internalized hierarchy plays a role in how I read a proposal. Even though I'm trying to only read for the content, I also know that a session with some well-published, if not well-known scholars will more likely be approved for the conference, and more likely to draw some attendees. And unfortunately, the degree to which you're published usually reflects either the length of time you've been in the profession (i.e., you don't expect the same from grad students as from assistant profs) or your institutional location. People who are teaching 4-4 or 5-5 don't have time to publish, nor are they usually required to.

There are several things I find so pernicious about all of this. First is that in today's market (which in English has been this way for at least 15 years), the 3rd- and 4th-tier places are frequently staffed by people from top-ranking PhD programs. Like my institution, for instance: we are a research U, and we offer PhD and MA degrees. But we are not nationally known, at least in my field. We serve a regional student population, and we do that quite well. But we are definitely down in the 3rd or 4th tier, depending how you're counting. My colleagues include people with degrees from Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, UCLA, etc etc. So judging someone by their letterhead doesn't necessarily tell you anything about their individual caliber. (of course, neither does their PhD-granting institution -- but it usually tells you something about their training, if not their brains).

Secondly, there's this weird inflation of institutional self-importance. For instance, for my tenure review, I was told to list external reviewers "who would have good letterhead" -- by which my chair meant Ivies. Because to the College-level committee (not even humanities faculty, mostly) the letterhead meant more than anything else. I didn't actually have any Ivy reviewers, but I had people at tier1 and tier 2 schools in my field. What this means, multiplied by all the other tens of people trying to get tenure, is that a very small percentage of the published scholars in a given field wind up acting as the gatekeepers for the profession as a whole. (Plus it overloads them with work: MS reviews, P&T reviews, etc.)

Thirdly: the ethics of this profession are crap. Realistically, half of the PhD programs ought to shut their doors -- there's no point in churning out so many PhDs (a particular problem in English) when there aren't enough jobs. If people like me are working at places like this, and feeling damn grateful to do so -- where are the people from 3rd, 4th, or 5th tier places going to go?

Fourth and Most Pernicious: the myth of meritocracy. The myth that it's really just about your ideas and your arguments. Because at the end of the day, academics are making judgments all the time not about content, but about status.

Who knew I was so bilious today? this post actually relates to a much larger post that's been brewing in the back of my mind for a while, but I haven't been ready to write it yet.

balance sheet

Bad Prof: hadn't finished the reading assignment this morning before class
Good Prof: figured (rightly) that the students hadn't read that far, either; rearranged the syllabus to extend the time we talk about this book.

Bad Prof: is counting the days til the semester ends
Good Prof: enjoyed class today once she was actually there

Bad Prof: is eating potato chips
Good Prof: is staying late at the office to order next term's books, grade rewrites, print articles, answer emails.

Bad Prof: decided to blog
Good Prof: is going back to work now

thoughts about summer

I have been thinking a lot about the upcoming summer. Yes, it's only 7 weeks away (not that I'm counting or anything.) (Or that April truly is the cruelest month for academics; can we just say committees?!)

I put my name into the lottery for teaching summer school during June. We haven't been informed yet who will be teaching -- so it's possible that I won't even get an assignment. (As a publicly funded institution, we are dependent on the legislature for funding for summer school. We don't get much.) But if I'm offered one, do I really want to take it?

I've never taught summer school before. So those of you who have, please tell me whether it's really worth it.

The only real reason, of course, is the money. I'd pull about $2500 after taxes etc, which would take care of a hefty chunk of debt. My 12-year-old car has a terminal illness of the engine which means that I will have to get a new car some time in the next 6-10 months. So clearing some debt would make that easier to manage.

Other factors to consider: I'm going to be moving offices this summer -- I'm taking on an administrative position this fall, so I have to move up to the big house the main office. I will get a window (2 of them, actually) and larger space, which will be grand. Downside is the expectation that I spend more time there and be generally available to deal with crap. So, I'll have to be in the office a fair amount this summer, first moving offices and then sorting through the files of my predecessor and trying to learn my new position. So maybe the structure of summer school wouldn't be so bad -- a couple of hours in class every day, a couple hours in the office, then go home to read for the next day's class.

And when I put it like that, I feel the dread. Because I also want to do some serious writing and research this summer. My spring break was so great -- both relaxing and productive -- I'd really like to try and pick that up again this summer. Realistically, it's hard for me to produce sustained writing during the academic year. And next year, when I'll be taking on this half-time admin post, I'll have that whole learning curve. Do I really want to give up a month of my summer to teaching?

Any advice from those of you who've taught summer school? (NB -- the course I'd be teaching would either be a modified version of a course I teach often, or a new sophomore-level course that I could put together using texts I'm pretty familiar with.)

free reading recs, anyone?

My gf and I are going to the downtown library later today -- I've been out of "free reading" (as my 1st grade teacher used to call what we could do when we finished our worksheets) for over a week -- I have books on hand, but none of them were very satisfying.

Allconsuming.net has been down whenever I tried to update my current reading -- honestly, I haven't been reading Jonathan Norrell for four months.

When we went out of town I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and really enjoyed it far more than I'd expected. I'd picked it up before from the new fiction shelf, and thought it wasn't my sort of thing. It was at the library in paperback, though, when we were about to leave for our trip, so I got it, and I'm really glad I did. I'm not autistic, because I'm actually pretty empathic and good at reading people's faces. But because of my migraine sensitivities, I have a hard time in certain kinds of environments -- too much noise, flashing lights, or strong odors can easily overload my brain's circuits and make me feel or act weird. So on that level I could really understand and sympathize with the novel's narrator. I can also understand the impulse to want to obsessively organize one's environment and activities (although I mostly don't actually follow through with this, because planning a system is way more fun than the tedious work of putting it together).

I've been working a lot lately -- writing, reading, and more reading for my classes. But I need some good fun reading --nothing too challenging for my brain, but not badly-written dreck, either.

I always knew she was smart...

Guess who else in our house has been reading the Chronicle?




(Seriously, that wasn't staged or anything. She collects things and takes them to her nest sometimes.)

my Luddite moment

Now, I am generally comfortable with new technology, and willing to adopt it readily if it improves the quality of my life in some way. My lifestyle doesn't require some kinds of technology currently available, and my budget can't support them without a real need, so I don't have internet access always on my body, I can't post to my blog from my phone, or some of the other things that I see people doing. They're cool, but just not really part of my life.

Then, there are the non-optional technologies -- those that are encouraged or even mandated by the various institutions I have to deal with occasionally. In 1989, I moved to a new city where the bank would charge you to make a deposit or withdrawal with a human teller, so I used my first ATM and adapted to it no problem. Electronic tickets for air travel, concerts, and so forth are an excellent development of the past few years. I've never had a problem, never had any doubts or irritations.

Well, one now non-optional technology that is really irritating: the automated check-out machine at The Home Depot. Today I had to go and pick up a few things, and none of the human-run checkout lanes were open -- only the 4-stall automated lane. There's a slack-jawed clerk supervising the auto lanes, because the badly designed machines don't work very well. I don't mind automated check out at the library (books easily lie flat on the machine and you can easily see where to place the bar code). Even at our grocery store (where it's still optional) the auto check out works decently, although weighing the produce can be a pain. But at Home Depot, the laser beam of the scanner is in the flatbed of the machine, not above the surface. So you can't see precisely where it's located, so you're forced to keep waving your item around, hoping it will scan. Inevitably, I'm buying small little parts in plastic bags, which are rumpled and the codes don't scan well. To reduce theft, these machines are weight sensitive -- if you scan a small item and put it in the shopping bag, it keeps telling you "place item in bag" because it can't sense it. Today, I was buying three identical furnace filters -- two scanned OK, but the third wouldn't. So I tried to rescan one of the first two -- and set off all kinds of warnings about "item removed from bag area." I had to get the clerk to help me, and she couldn't scan it either. Then typing in the code didn't work. This went on and on and on.

Now, I love technology when it works. But this was really frustrating -- not only because I wanted to pay for my three items and get out of there, but because there were people lined up behind me watching me. I don't want to be judged on my lousy scan technique. I'm just buying some filters. (It was, of course, gratifying when the clerk couldn't scan the code either, so that my incompetence was at least as bad as hers.) I nearly just ditched my things and walked out of there. And I rarely get that frustrated.

I'm young(ish, anway), I'm techno-friendly, & I speak English. Today I felt like a confused old fart visiting a foreign land. How do the real oldsters manage in HD?

true confession

I actually wrote something yesterday.

Something new, something not just cobbled together from work I've been doing for ages.

Something that isn't a memo, slide notes for class, a report for a committee.

And once I got started (it only took three days of thinking, outlining, and laundry, vaccuuming, etc) it actually felt amazing. How is it that writing feels so great when you're doing it, but getting started is so incredibly painful?

Why am I confessing this? Since this is what we are supposed to be doing all of the time anyway? it shouldn't be a big deal, right?

Well, it was and is. This was the first writing I've done in 18 months that has felt good. The first writing in 18 months that made me feel that my brain actually might work again. That reminded me why I actually got into this business in the first place. I like thinking, I really do. It's just hard to do when you're depressed. The further I come out from my depression, the more I realise just how hard it's been.

note to self

Assigning three long novels that you have never taught before in one semester is not a great idea. Sure, you learn a lot and stretch yourself and expand your teaching resources. But it's a heck of a lot of work. And you thought you'd read them all ahead of time over Winter Break, and you didn't. You did read the one you'd never even ever read before (well, 85% of it anyway) and that was something. But not quite enough. And then you thought you'd read the second new one over the Spring Break and get ahead. But you didn't. In fact, you didn't even read the first week's reading ahead of time. You were still finishing today's reading this morning before class. It would be nice to think that this was just a momentary aberration, but deep down you know you are always this way. Doomed to prepare things right before class. And doomed to only read & teach new things by forcing yourself to do it by assigning the books. So this afternoon, when you are putting in your book orders for next fall, how many new novels are you going to choose?

writing & games

So, one of the achievements of my spring break was moving forward on two separate writing projects. And the success of that kept my brain feeling sort of awake and ticklish today even though I was busy writing memos and dealing with bureaucracy and simpering secretaries for something like six hours at the office.

One of the ways I know that I'm really working, really writing, or at least getting awfully close to putting real draft words on the page (as opposed to all those pretend freewriting, notetaking, outlining words) is that I start playing computer games. (Not role-playing games or anything complicated. Just puzzle, arcade, or board games that you can stop & start easily.)

That might sound counterintuitive. But when I'm depressed or on vacation, I rarely play games. If I'm working, I use them as a way of taking little breaks that energize my logical circuits. At least that's my theory.

It's been different games at different times. Tetris, on my old DOS computer, got me through my first few years of graduate school. When I had to get a new machine, I wound up playing FreeCell. My writing buddy was addicted to it, and she got me doing it too. That was the main thing for my dissertation writing years. A few years ago I went through a Reversi phase on Yahoo games -- I still play sometimes, but it never really worked as a writing break, because of the distraction of having to wait for a person to play with in real time. Then I downloaded Clickomania, a completely addictive freeware game. (There are other variants of it -- JT's blocks, which is on Yahoo, is basically the same thing, with different scoring.) That's mostly what I've relied on for the past few years. Oh, and Snug, a great little puzzle game.

I'll write for 45 minutes or so, then play a game for a few minutes. If I get stuck on an idea or a paragraph that just isn't working out, I'll go play a game to distract my mind. When I come back, it's usually clear what I need to do.

I was thinking the other day about my game strategy for writing, and about how great Tetris was. There have been lots of experiments to discover how the brain processes Tetris, and why it's so addictive. I was relieved to learn that something like 60% of people who play regularly dream about it -- I used to, when I was writing & playing a lot. Tetris is apparently a real workout for your brain. (A good article with references to others is here.)

Since I have frequently lamented the fact that I think I used to be smarter than I am now, maybe it's all in the games I'm playing. So I downloaded a Tetris clone two days ago...we'll see what happens.

last day of spring break

This spring break has been great. Definitely better than 2004, when I had to travel to my home town to begin cleaning up and packing my mother's house in preparation for her selling it and moving. (That was not relaxing, it was more like a trip to a prison labor camp.) Definitely better than 2003, when I had my arm in a cast and yet was frantically trying to write in preparation for turning in my tenure file that August. Definitely better than 2002, when we were in couples therapy wrestling with some big issues. I can't remember further back than that in detail. But 2005 rocked, in comparison:

• I broke through my horrible terrible embarrassing psychological block on a particular writing project (with help from my friend)
• I began writing a short talk for a conference that needs to be done in two weeks
• I only went to the office one day and didn't let the administrivia take over any more of my break than that
  
• I cleaned up piles of stuff in my study at home
• I got to talk to a dear friend twice, after months of separation. I caught up with some other long-distance friends, too.
  
• I watched movies, did yoga, caught up on sleep, played with the dogs and generally lived a pleasant and sane existence.

I wonder if in part this year's break was so good because I'd taken that long weekend so soon beforehand -- started the relaxation response and just kept it going.

Even today, as I inevitably consider all the things that have to get done tomorrow, Tuesday, the rest of the week, I'm just not feeling too stressed. Yes, it would have been nice to been superhumanly productive. But I wasn't and I refuse to get all crazy about it. Tomorrow will be time enough.

My plan for the rest of the day: I'm going to meet a friend for a matinee, take the dogs to the park, make lasagne (which will take care of meals for a couple of days), and get ahead on the reading for my classes this week. I refuse to make this a grumpy last day.

happily dancing around the room

Woo-hoo!! I got accepted to a Super Big Deal conference!!

Or, more precisely, the potentially edgy paper proposal I wrote for this conference (which relates to what I think the topic of my next book will be, and therefore most of my research for the next two years) got accepted. Which is super exciting not only because I get to go and network with people who are really the tops in my field, but also because it means my ideas about this next project (still in very early stages) have received at least some validation. And this is good motivation for moving forward on that project. Plus, Super Big Deal conference is being held this year at an institution where I have several important connections and many fond memories.

But mostly right now I'm just grinning from ear to ear that I actually got accepted. I really didn't think I'd have much chance at this one.

blogs & nondiversity

Bitch has lots of good thoughts and links today about women and argument. More specifically, about (yet again) why the representation of women in political blogrolls and op-ed pieces is so skewed. I also just saw a good piece by Stephen Levy in Newsweek about the fame logorithms and striking nondiversity of "the blogosphere," which led me to Global Voices Online,one effort to try and make blogs by nonwhite and non N.Amer/Euro voices more visible. It's all interesting stuff worth looking at if you haven't already been reading it.

Of course, a lot of these concerns operate from a very narrow definition of what constitutes "the blogosphere": politics as only having to do with governments, laws, violence. It's basically a white male definition of the public sphere, and of public discourse (following from the 18th & 19th century newspaper model). In newspapers, ideas are generated by a small group of people and controlled by financial interests. Newspapers did provide many more people with information and entertainment, and the growth of newspapers in the 19th century accompanied the rise of both the middle class and a mass reading audience. Newspapers were also crucial, as Benedict Anderson suggests, in fostering a sense of community that helped solidify national interests in the modern period.

Yet historically speaking, even within that capitalist-modern period, other kinds of groups & communities have fostered other kinds of communication networks, other modes of discourse. I'm thinking about everything from quilting groups to Quaker Meetings. There are so many already-existing alternatives to the newspaper op-ed format (which has to be one antecedent to the Crossfire type TV shows), that I have to assume that there are other kinds of communication models similarly growing on the web. The really interesting question for me isn't "where are the women/people of color in mainstream technorati-top-100 blogs" but "what have the women & people of color already begun to create as an alternative to that hierarchy."

The great thing about blogs is that they have the power to overturn the newspaper model, by giving many people the power of framing their thoughts in language and publishing their ideas to an audience. Our very sense of what the public sphere might look like, of what community might look like, has already been expanded and altered by the rapid growth of the web and specifically of personal-publishing options like blogs. But we're in a transition stage right now -- as one media dinosaur species slowly dies off, it struggles and makes big splashes. And it tries to make the future awkwardly fit its own model (like Newsweek's little list of "blogs to watch"). Who knows what the future of information access and shared discourse is going to look like. But I would be willing to bet that it won't look much like the NYT or Newsweek.

change

We rent a little house in one of the oldest inner-city residential neighborhoods in our city. It's a mixed-race, mixed-income neighborhood and we've been really happy living there. We're on the shabby side of the main boulevard, where the houses are smaller, the yards are scruffier, and the dogs are bigger. Over the past two years or so, housing values in this area have been rising rapidly, and the developers have been moving in, buying up and tearing down older homes to put in townhomes and hugely bloated neo-Victorian houses.

Our block has been a townhouse-free zone, in large part because six of the houses on our street have been owned by two families who have been here for generations. There's three generations of each here on this one block. That kind of rootedness, that kind of local history, is increasingly rare in a large city these days - - and it's so completely different from my own family's trajectory. I've been sort of fascinated by our neighbors, who have this kind of local existence in the middle of what is a very urban setting.

We'd heard some disturbing rumors a week or two ago, and today our concerns were realized: the brightly-colored signs of one of the major developers dot two of the yards across the street from us: the parents and grandparents of the guy who lives two houses down from us. They've sold their adjoining lots and their two older houses will be torn down to make 5 or more yuppie homes.

It's a sad day. They won't be closing until June, but then we'll have a long summer of noisy construction going on all around us. We'll never have another Christmas with Sylvia's super-bright lights and crazy decorations in her yard. Rich people are going to come into our block with their fancy cars and their babies and their immaculate tiny lawns. The flavor is draining away.

good omen?

I don't often dream very much, or at least not so that I can remember my dreams when I wake up. Sometimes I'll get little fragments of nonsense, but rarely do I have the clear narrative and vivid detail that other people report.

But last night I did have a dream (actually two of them) that I remember, and one was the first flying dream I have ever had. I've known many people who report flying in their dreams and this seemed like one of those excellent fanciful experiences that just wouldn't ever happen to me. And now it has.

In the dream, I was running down a grassy slope and then my feet lifted off into the air. The first time I was kind of nervous, but then I tried it again and figured out how to navigate -- if I lifted and turned my hands I could steer, rise, and lower. It was amazing.

A brief online search suggests it's usually a good thing to dream about in most cultural traditions. And it certainly felt like a good sign. I'm going to try and hang onto that feeling for a while today and see how it affects my outlook.

pre-Monday

Plans/Goals/Wishes for Monday:

• I will wake up feeling refreshed and focused.
• I will work on my article.
• I will enjoy the sense of time expanding before me for the next few days rather than feeling anxious about the time that has already slipped away

It seems crazy to have time anxiety at the beginning of a break. But I do. I have a lot I want to accomplish over the next week. I had to spend Friday at the office, and I should go in tomorrow or Tuesday as well to make arrangements for two upcoming events. Maybe I'll put that off until Tues, and make sure I focus on my own work tomorrow. The weekend was good, but Saturday was all about yoga (there was a special workhop I attended plus my regular class), Saturday night we were out with a friend, and today I cleaned up the house and talked on the phone. Erf.

Things I'm feeling grateful for: my partner, our dogs, my friends. Being able to breathe, move, hear, see, and talk with ease. Having a life of relative comfort.

It doesn't take much to be able to step back and realize how small my issues really are. There's no real blood or suffering involved, for me or others.

questions to ponder

1. Is a Sunday at the beginning of Spring Break still a Sunday, complete with chores and grumpiness?
2. Am I ever going to get back into regular blogging?
   
3. Does listening to the Alt-80s shoutcast radio stream improve my chances of cleaning up my study, or will it make me feel more melancholy than the day really deserves?
4. Did my third eye really open up in the yoga workshop yesterday?
   
5. Should I teach summer school in June? (I put in for the lottery, but it's not a sure thing whether a course would even be available for me to teach.)
   

Spring Break Fever

Our Spring Break starts Saturday...which, if you're a student, means it starts tomorrow, or today, or whatever. I actually had more students in my class today than I had expected. But here are some of the day's communications, suggesting the scattered minds all around me.

(1) In a conference about a paper that I'm offering a chance to rewrite. Student: "well, I lost my paper. I think I must have left it in the room when you handed them back. But I printed another copy." Me: "What are your thoughts about rewriting it?" Student: "Well, I never read your comments. And I didn't read the paper today before coming here, either."

(2) Before class. Student:"I just wanted to apologize about missing class. My life has been really terrible lately. I just want you to know that of all my classes, yours is my favorite, so I'm the most sorry about missing it."

(3) In an email, from a student who missed her conference: "I am sorry that I am not in school today, and therefore will not be in attendance at our meeting. Of course I understand that this is to my disadvantage, but the truth is I have Spring Break fever. "

And me? I'm glad the teaching part of the day is over. I have to spend tomorrow at the office dealing with administrative crud and clearing off my desk. Then I will really and truly be free to focus on the article that I'm writing. I already had my vacation days last weekend, so Spring Break is going to be all about work, yoga, and cleaning up/organizing/purging the house.

selfish?

A few days ago (yes, I'm slowly catching up on all my blogreading) BitchPhd posted this call for papers for this year's MLA, on women writing about academe. The organizer of the proposed special session was requesting submissions from bloggers who might be interested.

I agree with her comment that some of the most interesting writing about academe is happening on blogs -- I read so many insightful pieces every week which are far more useful and interesting than most of the so-called advice manuals and Chronicle columns that get published.

So, on the one hand, I was immediately imagining how great it would be if BitchPhD did write a paper for that panel, and I would get to see the panel at next year's convention, etc. But part of me wants to keep the academic blogosphere small & cozy. It's already grown tremendously over the year or so that I've been blogging. Sure, there's room for more people to get on board, and smaller sub-groups to form, as they already inevitably do. But I sort of like feeling like I'm in on something that not everyone does. Not everyone reads blogs, and I like it that way. Is that wrong? I don't want to be like one of those pretentious kids in college who would always wind up arguing something like "well, REM (U2, the Cure, the Dead Kennedys, whoever) were so much better before they sold so many records." It's not that I think I'm cool for reading blogs. Certainly I wasn't in on this from the beginning, because it wasn't appealing to me until there were more of my sort of people on board (i.e., humanities-type academics) . It's more that I don't want it to get messed up, diluted. And it's felt really nice to have this quasi-academic space that is separate from my department. No one comes up to me in the hallway and says "did you see what New Kid wrote today?" And I like it like that. I don't really want to share this world with the whole frickin' MLA.

vacation bubble

My transition back into "regular life" has been sort of odd. I still feel like I'm enclosed by a protective bubble that keeps me from taking anything here at the office too seriously. I guess maybe that's relaxation? This is the last week before spring break, and the weather is getting nicer, so I'm not expecting great attendance in my classes tomorrow. But here in my department things are busy, busy, busy because we have three job candidates giving presentations. It's for a joint position with another program -- an awkward setup in which we would be the tenuring dept, but the person would be teaching mostly for this other group. I don't envy the person coming into that situation. It was supposed to be an open-rank search, but all of the candidates have wound up being new PhDs. Maybe the terms of the search changed somewhere along the way. I'm not on the search committee, or on either of the committees in my dept who will have voting power for the hire. But we are all encouraged to attend the events and make our opinions known. It's been nice for once not to be deeply involved in this hire -- I've served on several hiring committees over the past few years (two of which wound up in no hires at all due to an evil dean and political wrangling). It does matter to me, who we hire; but I'm also feeling kind of detached this time around. But I think that's a good thing.

I am really glad to be back with the dogs -- and they are really glad to be back with us. Several of you suggested that we get someone to stay with them in our house next time, and I think that would be a good idea. The problem is that most of our friends have pets, partners, or children, and wouldn't be able to stay at our place. But we'll have to work on this for the future.

Plus, I have an (irrational?) paranoia about someone staying in my house, potentially messing with my stuff, going through my personal things. Sure, I could hide anything really personal or incriminating. But it's just the feeling. My house is my personal zone. I don't even really like having friends over that much. (If we had a little more space it might be different -- in a larger house you could have a room that was more "public" space, like a living room, and other, "private" bedroom & studies. Our house is about as big as your elbow, so there's really not much distinction.)

Luckily, G. (aka Houndini, who escaped not once but twice from the groovy country boarding farm) has relaxed and settled back into her old routine just fine with us. I was worried that she would be trying to escape from our yard too. But she's been happy to patrol the yard for squirrels, sleep on the couch, and play with her toys. I feel so bad for her, how scared and nervous she must have been. W., our other dog, was there with her, but apparently that wasn't consoling enough.

Now if I can just get through the next 3 days, it'll be spring break! I am really looking forward to writing, reading, and cleaning up my house.

back

We had a great trip -- it was wonderful to spend time with our friends. And we saw some amazing art & ate great food. Thoroughly relaxing.

And now, it's back to the routine. Just for one week, and then it's spring break. But today's a teaching day for me and I'm just not really in the mood. We got back yesterday evening after a long day of airline delays etc. So I really didn't do anything besides answer urgent emails and fall into bed. So this morning I have to prepare the week's material. I feel like I really need one more day -- to unpack the suitcase, do the laundry, all that tedious transition stuff. A compression day -- since I'm already relaxed, I need to get stuff done, wake my brain up, maybe drive the freeways to charge up my adrenaline. But I don't have that luxury, so I'll just drink coffee and maybe come up with a group activity my classes.

And then later on I can finally catch up with blogworld. Oh internet, I've missed you so much.

what I have learned

What I have learned on my vacation:

• It is really hard to type on a laptop with a 70-lb dog trying to sit in your lap. The friend we are staying with has a sweet big dog who thinks she's toy-sized. I love cuddling with her, especially because I miss our dogs so much, but she just caused my brilliant, witty, almost-finished post to disappear into the ether. So I have no wits left: you'll just have to be satisfied with bullet points.
• When you are as old as we are, you spend the first day of vacation being really, really tired. Not just from travelling, but as a kind of reaction to the weeks and months leading up to the trip.
• It's great to have time to just hang out with old friends. And newer ones too.
• Even though I haven't been blogging much in the past 2 weeks, I still spend a lot of time daily on the internet. It's been tough not having that opportunity -- two whole days offline was weird. Corollary lesson: downshifting to dial-up makes me grateful for my setup at home.
• I didn't bring much work--just the books I'm teaching next week. (And I have started reading & taking notes from those.) Being away from my work, from my routine, from the daily distractions is really an unusual experience. I can go for several days at home without working, but that's procrastination or slackness, not relaxation. This really feels different. I can already tell I'll be really glad to get back to work when I return Monday night. How do people go on vacation for a week or more? The best part is that I'm actually having good feelings and thoughts about my writing projects -- the important work that too often gets shifted aside by the pressures of teaching & urgent crap.
  
• I wish we could do more of this sort of thing. It's a real luxury.
• Our dogs are not doing well at the groovy boarding place out in the country. I talked to the owner last night and they have turned into digging escape artists. Especially our nervous younger dog. I'm worried about her. They have taken extra precautions to keep her contained and safe, which is the important thing. But she isn't having the fun time running around and playing with other dogs that we'd had in mind. She's a nervous little girl anyway-- and this is only the third time that we've boarded her, so maybe she doesn't understand that we are coming back. I talked to her and sent her mental pictures, but she gets overwrought when she's really scared.
• So if you balance good vacation and expense plus dog anxiety, I don't think it comes out on the side of many more trips in the near future. But I'm trying to squeeze what I can out of it.
  

and we're off

going out of town....not sure what my internet access will be...

elevated spirits

Woo-hoo! I'm done teaching for today. I finished all the grading. And tore through the reading, and even taught pretty well, considering how underslept I was. I've been ready for spring break for a week and a half already. Ours isn't for another two weeks, but I've cancelled my classes for this Thursday, because I'm going out of town for the weekend. So it's like Spring Break Part I. Yay! (Spring Break Part II will involve staying here--writing an article and reading a frickin' long novel I'm teaching in the second half of term.)

Though now that I'm through that little teaching flurry, I have a zillion things I should/want to do before leaving town. Why is it that all of a sudden, if I'm going somewhere, I feel like I have to do the errands and chores that haven't been done for two weeks? Some errands, like cash machine and public library, are essential. But some of this stuff could probably slide. They probably sell my face lotion in the place I'm going to, if I don't get to the drugstore. Etc.

This is the first trip out of town longer than a 50-minute drive away that my partner and I have ever taken that doesn't involve either work or family. That seems kind of momentous.

I'm not really much of a traveller, though. I've never had the luxury of time and money coinciding to indulge in travel just for the heck of it. I've never even had the time or money to take some of the research trips I ought to. (That's one of many reasons I am an Imposter, if you listen to my inner critic.) Plus, having been emotionally and existentially rootless for many years, I've spent a lot of time creating my home base. I like hanging out at home. It's nice to have time off, but I don't feel the urge to flee this city.

My biggest concern in recent years has been about who will take care of the dogs if my gf and I are both out of town (which has only happened once or twice in the four years we've been together.) For this trip, we've found a woman who boards dogs at her place out in the country -- it's quite a drive, but I think it'll be worth it, to know my babies aren't in cages and are running around having fun. But I will still miss them, and worry. Just writing those sentences makes me feel anxious about leaving them.

The questions now filling my mind:

How much work should I take with me? It's not really spring break, after all. I definitely have to bring the books I'm teaching next week, so I can get that reading done. Is that enough on the work front? We're going to be busy with seeing friends and I don't want to schlep 20 pounds of books and never read them.

Can I get by with just taking running shoes and one pair of street shoes? or do I really need two different pairs of real shoes. (I don't really know all the activities that might be involved for the weekend.)

How long am I going to stay here in the office tidying things up? How much can I really accomplish workwise tomorrow, aside from the meetings I have to attend? Am I totally distracted and braindead?

grading day (with updates)

Somehow, despite my good intentions and good efforts, today is going to be Super Terrible Grading Day. I have to get through 23 more papers today in order to be able to hand them back tomorrow in class. If I can stick to my Power Grading* schedule, that's 4-5 hours. Which doesn't sound so bad. But I have a hard time focusing on grading for more than 90 minutes at a time. It makes me stupid and cranky. Plus, of course, I have other things to work on today.


*Mel's Power Grading Plan-- aim for only 10 minutes per short paper, exceeding that only for the really good and really terrible ones. Which usually works out to about 12 minutes per paper. Allow more time for the last 10 or so. Use a timer. Ingest caffeine at regular intervals. DO NOT decide you'll get up early in the morning to finish them. The sleep you enjoy having finished them is worth staying up late for.

Grading Log
First, I answered emails and planned some stuff for class. Then sat down to some grading.
10:30-10:55 Graded 3 essays.
Attitude: reasonably productive. But then the utility guy showed up, and I took a break for laundry, putting oil in my car, and time with the dogs.
11:35-12:10 3 more done. Encountered a new first: an essay with no capitalization at all. I'm cool with that in email, but in a paper? Geez.
Attitude: distracted. Time for a shower and lunch.
[typing this, I realise that I had better get a lot more done in my next session or I'll never make it. Especially now that blogworld is watching me. This is motivating.]
2:30-2:55 At the office, after handling some student problems -- graded 3 more essays. Then I had to switch gears and finish a report due in the Chair's office this afternoon.
Attitude: good. I feel like I'm making progress. But I have all this other stuff to do today as well as the grading.
6:00-6:55 4 more.
11:15-11:40 only 1, because I was falling asleep. I blame my evening yoga class for relaxing me. I decide to go to bed and do the remaining 8 papers in the morning.
So I didn't meet all of my goals, but it actually worked pretty well doing little speed bursts of grading throughout the day.
But now I'm up super early, to grade and then prep my classes. It'll be a long day.

edited post

[first part of this post now deleted for privacy reasons]

My regular readers know that I thoroughly enjoy certain kinds of genre films and comedies. Yes, I'm a super-smart literary critic -- but I see all of Snoop Dogg's films. (That's not an apology, but an explanation to those of you who are only invested in Serious Filmaking.) So we caught the cheap matinee of Man of the House today and laughed ourselves silly. I love any movie with a dance showdown (from Electric Boogaloo to Honey, there's a whole history of contemporary film to be written about the transformation from sheriffs with guns to girls with big booties). The dancing and cheering is only small part of this film, which makes loving nods to a whole range of popular genres. But what really tickled me? First off, a hot female English professor (Anne Archer) who doesn't sound like an idiot when she's talking to her class; and Tommy Lee Jones as a Texas Ranger who at one point gives a rousing anti-plagiarism speech to one of the cheerleaders in his charge. Say this in Jones's thick Texas accent for full effect: "Plagiarism? That's an academic criiiiiime. Punishable by academic deeaaath." Awesome. If it weren't copyright fraud, I'd love a clip of that to put on my course website.

1 down, 2 to go

It's feast or famine with us, as regards socializing. My partner and I can go for many weeks without social commitments with other people -- and then, all at once, we have many obligations. Like this weekend: last night, we had to go to a play directed by a friend's girlfriend. Tonight, we are having dinner with a colleague of mine and her husband -- we have cancelled or changed plans with them far too many times, so it's really important that we see them this week. And then tomorrow we are supposed to drive up to the far north suburbs to attend an Academy Awards party with a friend/colleague of my gf's. Whew. That's a lot, for two introverts who have a lot of work to do.

The play was ok -- though actually it was a musical, one of my least favorite cultural forms. I'd rather watch . . . wrestling? nose flautists? . . . almost anything but musicals. But some of the singers were talented, and they had a lot of energy and excitement about this show. And I understand why it appeals to the 20-something theater types. But it's not my scene.

Today seems to be slipping through my fingers awfully fast...I went to yoga, bought a new pair of running shoes, have done some laundry & chores. Need to do some writing and some grading before we meet them for dinner so that the day isn't a total wash.

gender balance

Today was the first meeting of the Educational Policy committee I'm sitting on. I am the only woman on the 12-person committee. Only 6 of us showed up today. Including one guy who looks like a garden gnome, moves at a slow crawl, and said in his introduction that he had served on the Senate for n years when n approaches infinity. He's easily 80 years old. Or more? I was also the only Humanities prof there. And I was probably younger than the others by at least 10 years.

What did all of this mean? It was a weird meeting. Not unpleasant, exactly. But it's really clear that everything I said got a lot of attention. And all these old guys kept looking to me for my response to their comments, trying to make eye contact with me, etc.

And then the next-youngest guy walked out of the building with me and asked how long I'd been at the University. Which is really code for "you look so young. Why are you on this committee?"

But it was actually one of the more productive meetings I've sat in this week, so I don't think I'm going to mind this piece of my service duty.

Scrivener's Meme

Scrivener's Meme: Ten Things I've Never Done That You Probably Have

1. Never gone skiing
2. Never eaten sushi
3. Never went backpacking in Europe
4. Never read any books by Ayn Rand
5. Never saw Ghostbusters
6. Never slept with a member of the opposite sex
7. Never ridden a bicycle without training wheels
8. Never worked as a waitress/waiter
9. Never visited any Disney park
10. Never cheated on an exam

Anybody out there my complete match?

This was hard to do, without copying items from Scrivener or profgrrrl. But fun in an inside-out-way-of-thinking kind of way.

Yeah, I should be prepping a lecture right about now. but noooooo....I'm playing around on the internet. Bad professor. Bad, bad, bad.

Forever Now

It was 1982, my freshman year in high school. I'd been a devoted fan of The Who for several years -- their music really initiated me into rock/pop music, and helped me define my musical tastes, which definitely weren't supported by the radio stations in my Midwestern home town. If you look to see what were the top 100 hits of 1982, there were some great 80s songs I liked -- Soft Cell's "Tainted Love," Human League's "Don't You Want Me" and the Cars'"Shake It Up." But what you could hear on the radio in my home town was mostly all the other stuff on that hit list: Toto, Air Supply, Chicago, Journey, and Asia. (Yes, I have been known in recent months to sing along with Journey on the car radio, but that's under the general guise of ironic nostalgia. When I was 14, I never would listen to them willingly.)

I think it was in a review in Rolling Stone that I first learned about the Psychedelic Furs. The reviewer said something about Richard Butler's raspy voice either really appealing to you or making you want to run out of the room. And I thought, I have got to hear that. Somehow I just knew. So I bought Forever Now, not having heard a single song.

This album really started the 80s for me. It showed me that there were artists doing something radically different (and to my ears, better) than what I could hear around me. Music that had the energy and anger of punk, but with more melody, and more poetry.

it's raining in my head
but no tears come down
and i'm dreaming of you
until sleep comes around

Eventually, I would discover Depeche Mode, the Cure, and New Order. But I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the Psychedelic Furs, and for this album in particular. I can remember just playing it over and over. Coming home on the school bus after another crappy boring day and feeling the relief of the music.

I first got to see the Furs in 1984. I remember that I wore a bunch of rhinestone pins all over my denim jacket that night, and some college kids admired it. Something happened near the front of the auditorium, and people rushed the stage. A guy I knew at school got to touch Richard Butler's hand. But the roar of the speakers, Butler's understated manner: this was something like magic. We knew that we understood something that other people couldn't see.

love is hiding in the city
here in all of you
put the place in cages
but don't label it a zoo
get a girl inside your head
get out of the way
write yourself a postcard
when there's nothing left to say

there's danger
i believe it
wake up
it's a fight
love me
now forever
war's on
it's now or never

I saw the Furs play again three or four years ago, on one of those 80s revival tours. The music was great, but the crowd was mostly there to see the GoGos, so it wasn't really my sort of scene. That's the sort of combination that would never have been believed in 1982. Or 1985. I prefer my memory of that earlier show.

I listened to Forever Now last night and it still has a powerful effect on me. This was my music, my 80s.

99.9% content free

I've been busy all day and yet have very few thoughts in my head worth blogging about. This does not seem like a good sign.

Dealt with a bunch of administrative things today: travel arrangements for a visiting speaker, honor society stuff, plans for an upcoming conference here. So I had the satisfaction of crossing things off my list, but not much in the way of intellectual stimulation.

I start teaching a novel this week that I've never taught before, and had never even read before the winter break. (That's why I put it on the syllabus, to force myself to actually read it, after years of only reading about it.) I now have to start re-reading it and marking passages for my lectures, which I should have done over the weekend, but I was busy grading. I'm looking forward to teaching the book, and just hope that some of my students have done the reading. We're heading into the struggling part of the term, when they realise that my warning at the semester's beginning that "This class requires a LOT of reading" really was serious. Victorian novels are long, there's no way around that. Especially for working students, it can be really hard to put in the hours. But how else can I teach the material? I already teach far fewer novels per semester than most similar courses at More Prestigious Universities cover.

Walking back from the library to my building today, I saw a student from last semester who set aside her cell phone conversation to shout at me "Dr LastName! I miss your class so much, it really sucks!" Awww.

Our older dog W, who is a dignified and often grouchy 11 years old, usually spends her time at the dog park chasing balls, playing with me, and admonishing our younger dog if she is roughousing with other dogs too much. W believes she ought to be the referee and boss of everyone else, but doesn't usually pay much attention to other dogs unless they approach her. But there's a young shepherd puppy named EZ who she's really taken a shine to -- she was play bowing, jumping on him, tumbling, and even let him roll her onto her back. Imagine a 70 year old woman flirting with a teenager. Something like that.

Here she is recuperating on her pink bed, feeling like a tired princess:

the Sunday effect

I have a long-standing dislike of Sundays, which I blog about at least every 3rd or 4th one. Which I know is tedious, dear readers, especially when I haven't been blogging about very much else recently. And yet I'm trapped in my own consciousness at the moment. I stayed up too late last night, so I've been sort of dragging around this morning. I've got lots to do, a fair amount of resistance to doing it, and only intermittent flashes of inspiration and energy.

My watch battery stopped on Thursday, and I haven't yet gotten around to replacing it. At home, I have enough clocks, and when I've been out, I have my cell phone. But I much prefer to have my watch. Unfortunately, it's one of those styles that requires the special tool to get the back open to replace the battery. At Target, the jewelry counter staff used to be able to take care of it (after all, I bought the watch there) -- but the last two times I needed a battery, the person who could do it wasn't available. So I've been going to the little specialty watch shop to get replacement batteries. It's pricey, but they can take care of it in about 5 minutes. But how long is a watch battery supposed to last? I feel like I've been burning through these batteries in an awfully short time. Less than a year, for sure. Is this part of the specialty watch shop's racket? Or could it be something about my now-aging watch?

I have to start grading my first set of long papers from my undergrad course today. They've done shorter assignments, but this is the real test of their writing and analysis. I'm procrastinating a bit on the grading, as I always do -- which breaks down into the following reasons: (a) resentment of the task itself; (b) fear of boredom during the task; (c) resentment of what feels like my students invading my weekend (grading is an oddly social experience for me, I usually feel drained afterwards as though I've been conversing with my students for hours -- which, in a sense, I have been); (d) fear of finding out just what my students don't know; (e) fear of not getting anything else done. (Obviously, I'm using "fear" in a very general sense -- Fiore says that most procrastination comes from fear or resentment. Mine surely does.) Actually, it's useful to spell it all out like that to see just how ridiculous my procrastination is. Especially (e) -- after all, if I just get the grading done, then I'll have time to do other things.

Necessary Tasks Today:

• grade papers (at least two-three hours' worth)
• read novel for this week's teaching (includes taking notes which slows me down)
• note-taking for current research project
  
• house cleaning & laundry
• bills, household paperwork, etc
• phone my mother (which I can hopefully multitask while cleaning)
  

Rewards:

• take dogs to park
• get some "free reading" at public library
• go to the gym
• blogs
• something with pasta for dinner?
  

Blech. Sunday.

10 years from now...

(this post prompted by the multiple kids in the cafe this morning)

Something I've begun to wonder about is the societal impact of fertility drugs -- not for the mothers, or the economic and health issues, etc etc, that get written about all the time -- but what it's going to be like for teachers, classmates, friends, romantic partners, and relatives of all these twins, triplets, and quads? When I was growing up we had one set of twins in my school, and boy did we think they were exotic. But maybe that won't be the case for the kids growing up now. Social scientists ought to be laying the groundwork for all kinds of studies right about now, I guess...

friday report

Errfff. What a week this was. Not bad, exactly, though it had its moments -- just long and filled with a lot of meetings and stuff that I don't usually have to deal with. If the last two Fridays are at all representative, though, I'm going to have to make Friday my day off from working out as well as my day off from work, because I'm just so damn tired. Today was the 2nd Friday in a row that I just about melted down around 4 o'clock because I needed a nap. From the beginning, today didn't quite go as planned.

• got up after only 6 hours of sleep (more than I've gotten the past couple of nights), leaving partner and both dogs fast asleep. Neither dog even wanted to get up. Of course they'd gotten me up earlier, around 5:00, to go do their business. But still, c'mon. Nothing harder to leave than a pile of sleeping family.
  
• breakfast, throwing stuff in bag for a day of productive relaxation, dealing with work emails
  
• take car in to shop for oil change and routine maintenance
• walk to yoga, conveniently located a few blocks away from my auto place. Get there and realise that although I have my mat, towels, shampoo, etc, I do not have my yoga clothes. AAGGH.
• now have to find some other way to fill 2 1/2 hours before I can pick up my car (because they were already doing me a favor to work me into the schedule, and I'd told them I wouldn't be back til noon, after class). Am really pissed off at my stupid tired brain. Luckily I have a book in my bag, so I walk to cafe, schlepping all my yoga stuff.
  
• sit at cafe and read, semi-distracted by (a) my irritation at not being at yoga; (b) people speaking French, which causes my brain to try to understand them but my spoken French isn't really good enough, so I just hear every 6th word, something like "well..always...never..of course..here..we...thank you"; (c) women with armloads of children.
  
• feeling really grungy, I walk over to the branch of my gym that is in the area and wash up, feeling like a cheater since I didn't actually work out. But hey, I had the towel and shampoo.
• walk to pick up my car. At my car place now when you pick it up, they give you a bottle of water. It's some new marketing thing, I guess -- they put their name on the label. And in my mind, it totally works. I love mymechanic anyway -- but when the receptionist hands me a bottle of water I just feel so touched and grateful. (Even more so when I've just worked out, but I was still happy to get the water today.) It seems really sweet and human, somehow. Caring. (I am one of those people who drinks 1-2 gallons a day, so water is really important.)
  
• go grab quick lunch at the natural foods store
• meet gf and friend at the early matinee of Constantine. I enjoyed it -- I know people love to slam Keanu but he's perfect for this role. Visually the film is wonderful -- esp Tilda Swinton as an androgynous angel Gabriel. The angels and demons are of course way more visually interesting than the humans. My gf and her friend complained that there wasn't enough action -- but I didn't see it that way. After all, spiritual conflict has to take a different form than plain ol' physical battles. And there are some spectacular special effects. I'm not Catholic, and you don't have to be to enjoy the film, but it probably heightens the flavor a bit. But I've been really interested in the popularity of exorcism/miracle/apocrypha movies over the past few years. This is a good one.
  
• went home, melted down, took a nap
• dogs to the park
• dinner with gf
• stopped by the video store, now we're home noodling on the computers. If I can stay awake we'll watch a movie.
  

A nice day off, but I was too tired to fully enjoy some of it. And I never made it to yoga.

On the list for tomorrow: grading, grading, grading. Ugh.

in my mailbox

I've been in many, many meetings yesterday and today -- to the point that my brain is feeling really tired even though it hasn't really done anything. . . and now, not only do I have a ton of work that I need to do, I'm way behind on reading blogs (amazing how much piles up in two days!) .

I didn't come into the office on Monday, since I knew the rest of the week would be full of office crap. So I read and wrote at home and enjoyed the nice weather. So yesterday (Tues) when I checked my mailbox at the office, I was surprised to find a card. I opened the envelope. It was a Valentine from an older female colleague. WTF??? Not since 3rd grade have I been in a situation where it was customary to exchange Valentines with people you were not currently romantically involved with.

Now, this colleague (I'll call her Older Princess) and I have a long and complex history. As one of the department's few female faculty for many years, OP was used to being the darling. OP is fairly glamourous (not hard in an English dept) and capitalizes on her style to win favor with male adminstrators etc. She plays by the rules of the old school, and she's succeeded. But she's threatened by younger female colleagues. Her status as the darling Princess has slipped, particularly as younger generations of female scholars have come in who vastly outpublish her (even though she has Full faculty rank). OP hated me for two years because she saw me as part of a conspiracy against her -- because I was on a search committee that recommended not to hire a candidate she wanted. (Who did get hired and has been a huge pain the in the collective ass of the department ever since.) When OP hates you, she makes it very clear, and organizes her clique to vote against you on any and all issues.

Then maybe two years ago we achieved some kind of truce after working together on another search committee (nothing like being stuck in a hotel room doing interviews at the convention to create an illusion of intimacy). So we've been cordial ever since. I think I'm on her good side, and I do what I can to maintain that, without compromising my values in any way.

But a valentine? I can only guess that she's (subconsciously?) wooing me for something, some kind of political agenda within the department. But I don't know what it is. And this seems like an odd way to go about it.

freedom to marry

It's National Freedom to Marry Week.

I didn't grow up with much idealizing of the ceremony of marriage. My parents were married overseas, in a civil ceremony, so we didn't have any photos of the event, no white gown packed in the attic, no talk of "when you get married you'll be a princess." Yet my parents stayed married until my father's death, and would no doubt still be married today if he had lived. They believed in marriage. They were too old to be baby-boomers, too old to be divorcing when younger friends were. So I grew up with a model of commitment and compromise that is pretty powerful. Even though my parents' marriage and the family they created was by no means free of dysfunctions, addictions, and issues.

In my own relationships I've been a serial monogamist. I stayed too long in one messed-up relationship, because I believed in commitment and because I couldn't see my way out of it. Got my heart broken the next time around, though the break was cleaner and happened much more quickly. Then I went through my dating phase, which I found awkward, since I'm really more of a commitment and fidelity type of gal.

And then eventually I met my partner. And we made our commitment to each other, to sharing our lives and our hearts. Relationships aren't easy -- we've been to therapy, we work on our communication skills, and we're always still learning new things about each other. But I've found someone who shares my values, who inspires me, who comforts me.

The society we live in won't allow us the same basic rights that so many heterosexuals take for granted. My gf can't be on my health insurance plan. We can't get a family rate at my gym, or on our car insurance. We have to create legal work-arounds that will hopefully hold strong in case of a medical emergency, since our relationship isn't recognized by any institution. Yet I know I'm fortunate to live in a time and place where I can live with my partner, where I can be out to my employer and my family and not suffer harrassment or persecution. Many people today don't have it so easy.

I've been thinking a lot about the language of marriage -- analysts think that much of the anti-gay feeling that comes through in polls on the marriage issue has to do with the actual word "marriage" and all its connotations. That's why the Right has been pushing definitional legislation.

For those of us excluded from legal marriage, the word is powerful too. No matter how creative you try to be with synonyms and euphemisms ("girlfriend" sounds so teenaged, and "partner" so lawyerly) , no matter how much you know yourselves to be in love, and living out a committed relationship -- it's still not the same as being able to say that you are married. Because of the culture we live in, when you use other words, it's sort of like you're hedging a bit. Or when you take over the dominant words, sometimes people are confused. In casual conversation, I tend to refer to my gf's father as my father-in-law -- it's just easier somehow. But a colleague of mine stopped me recently, when she heard me say this in a casual setting to people I didn't know very well, and questioned me about it. She thought I was being deceitful somehow. (I should point out that I think it's pretty obvious to most people I deal with that I'm a lesbian, so it's not at all like I'm trying to pass.)

Speech act theory reminds us that the language of the marriage ceremony is of a special class of language (illocutionary statements), language that acts rather than just representing something. Of course that power of action is granted in part by a large network of social/institutional authority and power -- it's not just anybody who can say "I now pronounce you..." and have it be "real" or meaningful. By the same token, you can't just say that you're married unless someone has performed that ceremony for you.

All over the United States, people were performing acts of civil disobedience and celebrating gay and lesbian unions this past weekend. My partner and I were among them. We got married, in a group ceremony with other same-sex couples. It doesn't give us the legal protections or the financial benefits. But it still means something to us. And until it does give us the same basic rights that most of you can easily obtain, we'll be talking and campaigning and voting and protesting.

some thoughts about money

Money, or the lack thereof, has been on my mind lately. Like almost everyone else I know, I'm paying off debts from years of education, several moves, car repairs, etc. I plan to be debt-free in three to four years, assuming that nothing catastrophic happens to me or my partner.

I'm employed by a state-funded institution, which means that we don't get cost of living raises. The only raises we get are distributed according to merit scores -- so if you happen to publish an article in a year that we have a raise pool from the state legislature, you get a small raise that year. But if you publish something in an off year, you get zilch. Salary compression is a significant problem in our department, as in most -- when my most junior colleague was hired two years ago, her salary was more than mine at the time, even though I had significantly more publications and experience. That differential will probably never be rectified.

Our rent is going up $200 March 1st. To be fair, they hadn't raised our rent since we moved in three years ago, so it's probably not out of line. But it's kind of a steep jump all at once. My tenure raise, which is the biggest raise I'll ever see unless I get promoted to full someday, doesn't cover this rise in our rent.

Yes, we rent our house. I can't afford to buy a house in a neighborhood we'd want to live in. The only things I would get approved for would either be in gang-run neighborhoods or the far suburbs, neither of which are really viable lifestyles for us. The neighborhood we currently live in is an older inner-city area that developers have been buying up recently. It's entirely possible that within three years we will no longer even be able to afford to rent here.

At the bookstore recently I skimmed through a couple of books on reducing debt load, managing your finances, etc etc -- most of which tell you the same things I already know and am doing. But it is really irritating to me, these recommendations for ways to cut expenses. I don't know anyone who drinks a latte every day and could thus save $15-20 a week by cutting that out. I don't know anyone who buys lunch every day. I don't know anyone who spends $200 on hair cuts. The people I know who are trying to manage their money and curb expenses are already living pretty carefully. I'm not saying that my partner and I can't tighten our belts somewhere -- in fact we've been working on that recently. You can always cut out something. But when you're already bringing a thermos of homemade coffee with you to the office and packing your lunch, it's really irritating to hear how you could shave off $100 a week for your debt if you were already spending your money that way.

How to Celebrate Mud Festival

(by G and W, guest bloggers)

This is the time of year when we celebrate Mud Festival. We are especially happy this year because our big golden retriever friend L is also staying with our pack for a week. Mud Festival is better with friends!

First, you have to check and make sure if your yard has enough good-quality mud. Our yard produces excellent mud, as you'll see in the picture.

Here are some tips on how to enjoy it:

• if you jump into a big puddle of water, it will make a great splash! Puddles dry up first, so get in there early!
  
• we like to play "chase the puppy" through the mud, because slipping and sliding is fun!
• if your toys are covered in mud, pick them up and shake them -- you'll get a nice spattering of mud everywhere!
• mud wrestling was invented by dogs before people went and commercialized it-- reclaim your heritage!
• if you can sneak back into the house without Mama hearing you, you can get mud on the floor and couch, too!
  

The only downside to mud festival is that Mama is always rubbing our feet with the towel and running the darn washing machine all the time. We think that maybe Mama doesn't love Mud Festival as much as we do, but we have caught her smiling sometimes.

168

I've been thinking a lot today about the little blog tempest stirred up over at Geeky Mom, Cul de Sac, and JMP. Various persons made comments that have been analysed, regretted, apologised for. I myself made a comment that a few hours later I wished I could edit.

All of this reminds me of a roundtable discussion at a conference that was supposed to be focusing on work/life issues for female academics. Very shortly it turned into a kind of perverse competition, pitting the mothers against the childfree and the singletons against the partnered in a race to prove that each had it the worst. Really, people, it's not a zero-sum game. My time can't become yours. Some relevant numbers: every one of us has 1440 minutes in the day. Every one of us has 168 hours in the week. And I don't know a single person who would say she or he has enough time to do everything that she or he would like to do/feels necessary to do/is required to do. And yet it's really hard not to feel those comparisons sneaking around the edges...is it silly of me to write about my own stuff when other people have it worse?

Most human beings need emotional connections, physical sources of well being (food, shelter, hygiene), intellectual satisfaction, relaxation, work/task satisfaction (sense of completion, accomplishment, etc), and monetary compensation. How you rank those different needs in your own hierarchy, and how you achieve those needs is going to be different according to your circumstances. When I lived alone, for instance, I had much more control over my physical well-being -- but I had to really work to get enough emotional connection in my life. Now that I'm partnered and live with the dogs, I have emotional connection but have to work to fit in some of the other things on the list. Your needs change over time, and according to context, too.

Now, there are societal expectations and institutional structures that support some of these needs for some kinds of people and not for others. In my own department, for instance, people with children have a free pass to get out of all meetings. I know that's not the case everywhere. Some days I read blogs by people with children and wonder how any of them are coherent enough to type anything at all. But the same is true of people everywhere: someone you know is struggling with kids, with illness, with insomnia, with a demanding and unrewarding job, with older parents, with anxiety, with loss, with uncertainty. And reading blogs offers little moments of possible connection and understanding, with even the most unlikely people.

So: it's my blog. And if you read it long enough you're likely to learn about my own struggles to get enough done, my own struggles with efficiency and depression. And I think I have as much a right to feel overwhelmed as anyone else does. At least here in my own blog. The same right I extend to everyone else.

honorary testosterone

I just got my committee assignment for faculty senate (each senator serves on one of the standing committees). I got my first choice (according to my interests): educational policy. So I glanced at the roster. Of 11 committee members, I am the only one without a Y chromosome. I can hardly wait to experience what those meetings will be like. Especially since at least one of these guys is older than dirt.

customer service

My gf's phone was stolen today, so I was on the phone with customer service for awhile because the automated tree for "report lost/stolen phone" glitched on me. The rep I was talking to was well-spoken, nice, and helpful. BUT...

• she said "I'm sorry" at least fifty times. I know this is how they train customer service folks, but it was really excessive. "I'm sorry, the system is slow, I'm sorry, just a minute, I'm sorry." I finally said "look, I know they teach you to say that, but really, it's OK."
• she kept calling me "Mrs." Which I am so not.
  

messages from the heart

(Make your own. Via Cheeky)

Sunday night

Well, in my mind it's still Sunday night, even if the clock did just squeeze past midnight into Monday morning if you want to be all technical and stuff.

As my long-time readers know, I dislike Sundays. Sunday is always a day of battles between my slacker self, who wants to play and have a day off, and my whip-cracking puritanical self, who is appalled at how little I've accomplished over the weekend.

So here's how the balance sheet stands.

negatives:

• I did not finish all the reading for my classes this week, as I had challenged myself to do. I have not even finished all the reading for Tuesday's classes. But there is still time left before I sleep. (and Monday, of course, but the whole idea was to leave Monday clear for other things)
• I did not work on my article, not even 30 minutes.
  
• My home office is still in a horrible state.
  

positives:

• I finally spent some time with my now-healthy gf -- we saw three movies this weekend to make up for the past couple weeks of no-movies.
  
• I talked on the phone to four long-distance friends, one of whom is dealing with a terrible family crisis. I was glad she felt she could call me. I'm glad I could help her, as much as anyone could under the circumstances.
  
• I cleaned up the common areas of the house.
• I started on the reading for my classes.
• I cooked a big pot of spaghetti sauce which will cover us for a couple of days.
  
• I did lots of laundry.
  
• I did some household errands.
  
• I reviewed a project for my gf which I'd been promising to help with.
  
• I consulted with a colleague via phone about some initiatives in the department.
• I did some planning for an upcoming project.
• I read some things for fun.
  
• I got some extra sleep.

So, in other words, I was a decent partner, a good friend, and a lousy scholar.

Although the positive list looks longer, I value some of its items a lot less than those that didn't get done.

Well, there's always Monday:

• finish the reading for Tuesday's classes
• WORK ON ARTICLE
• pay bills and deal with financial crap
• nurse my still-hurting ankle so I can get back to yoga on Tuesday.

I'd better get a jump on Monday now, before I sleep, I think...

Bad Education

run, don't walk, to the theatre for this one. One of PA's best I think. In my top 5 Almodovar list.

Smart, dark, beautiful. (The whole movie, not just Gabriel Garcia Bernal.)

more to say at some later moment.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

It was with great anticipation that I picked up this novel from the public library a few weeks ago (back when it was still my holiday break). I'd read so many good notices of it. And when I started reading it, I was really enjoying it.

But I'm now only about half way through and I've kind of lost steam. I've been reading other "fun" books along the way (JS & Mr N being far too weighty to take with me to the gym, for instance, or for other portable reading occasions). I dug into a few chapters the other night sort of out of a sense of duty.

Anyone out there who's read the whole thing: is it worth my continuing? (of course I may have to return it before I finish, since I've used up my renewals -- but I could try to check it out again.)

couchblogging

Somehow today I managed to injure my "good" (or at least non-"bad") ankle -- feels like a mild sprain, something I'm familiar with from the afore-mentioned "bad" one. So I'm on the couch trying to keep it elevated and iced so that I can return to normal routine in a day or so. But my blog addiction needed feeding, so I borrowed my gf's old laptop...despite the slow wireless connection and its weird Mac keyboard. I only have a desk machine right now. Ergonomically it just works better for me, and most of what I do works better on a large monitor anyway. But this lazy couch thing does have some appeal.

I have a longish thoughtful post in the works based on an article I read on Thursday. But for now there's just the slush in my head.

Last night we double-dipped at the multiplex: a "boy" movie (horror/thriller: Hide and Seek) and a "girl" movie (romantic comedy: Wedding Date). In that order, thankfully. I am not a big horror fan, though I'd agreed to see this one largely because of Dakota Fanning who is wonderfully creepy. And psychological thrillers appeal to me much more than, say, serial killer movies. This one was good up until the last 30 minutes or so. De Niro was sort of wasted on this role, I think. But it was OK for what it was. (though it gave me horrible dreams last night--this is why I don't see such movies very often)

Now, if you are an aficionado of romantic comedies (a genre I realise not everyone appreciates the way I do -- I've only ever had one friend who liked them as much as I did) Wedding Date is quite satisfying. It's sort of a reverse Pretty Woman: Dermott Mulroney as the male escort who turns out to be a good guy after all. Debra Messing looked way better on big screen (with film-quality lighting etc) than she does on the TV, and I actually didn't spend the movie thinking I was watching Grace, so that seemed successful. Anyway, it's sweet and fun if you like that sort of thing. The theatre was packed -- about one-third couples on dates, and the rest groups of women aged 13-80. My gf kept snorting, but it was fun to see it in a room full of women who sigh or laugh appropriately in the right places. (in case it wasn't obvious, I'm the "girl" in our household, at least as regards popular entertainment)

A couple of nights ago I watched a much more complicated movie on DVD that's probably shelved in the romantic comedy category, but it doesn't quite fit the usual mold: Seeing Other People. Which features one of my new favorite actresses, Julianne Nicholson. She's great in this. And as someone who's always been partial to freckles, it's a rare treat to see an actress who doesn't try to cover them up. Anyway, the movie follows a couple who are engaged to be married when the woman says she thinks they should have sex with other people before marrying each other. Although there are some things in the movie that are perhaps conventionally represented (i.e., she winds up in two quasi relationships, whereas her fiance "just" sleeps with a bunch of women), I thought it dealt much more frankly with questions about opening a relationship than most films do. The secondary characters are bittersweet, and the movie as a whole seemed like a thoughtful look at the difficult complexity of relationships in general, for men and women.

ergh, my wrists are already bothering me from just a few minutes on the laptop. Time to read blogs for a while.

little fluffy clouds

Whooooo! Just came out of class and am floating on a little teaching cloud. Made all the better by the fact that I was really underenthused this morning about having to get up early to finish the reading. There's really no reason on earth to procrastinate about doing the reading. I'm teaching NOVELS this term, after all. Hardly painful. (Though they are long.)

The challenge I'm setting myself for this weekend: to do all of the novel-reading for the week by Sunday night. That way my class prep during the week can be more creative lecture-planning, criticism-reading, idea-generating. No more of this get up at 7 a.m. to read the assigned chapters. I can do it, right? (I have never yet in all my years of teaching done the reading that much ahead of time, but I think it would make me happier the morning of class.)

But back to the fluffy mood I'm in. I'm pumped that class went well, that I'm done teaching for the week, that the sun is supposed to appear this weekend, that my gf is finally over her evil virus.

Plus, I've received 5 compliments in the last two days on my new haircut. Which is really my Old Hair -- it's basically how I used to cut it back in 1988 or so. I'm reclaiming my past. But for my colleagues (the source of 2 of the comments) to even notice my hair is kind of surprising. So maybe it's more of a change than I realised. In any case, I'm enough of a girl to like getting compliments. (Though I did have a slightly weird moment when Colleague H effused over my hair and I remembered another colleague, who is friends with him, telling me apropos of some other random hair conversation, "Colleague H likes girls with short hair." Why she knows this I don't know and didn't want to ask.)

A couple hours of setting up my gradebook spreadsheet & clearing junk off my desk, then I'm off to yoga and it's the weekend! During which I will read the novel I'm teaching next week and, more importantly, work on my article. All play and no work makes Mel a dull mind. Right?

how did I get here? (non-existential version)

Thanks to all for the supportive comments yesterday -- after writing out my negative thoughts about the conference proposal, I actually had a breakthrough to what I thought was a strong justification for my proposed paper. So I scribbled down some ideas and when I returned to them after teaching, lo and behold I still thought they were viable. So I wrote up a proposal and sent it off by the end of the day, in time for the deadline. And I feel better for having given it a try at least.

Guess what? if you google "tenure track depression" my blog comes up 3rd. Who knew? I discovered this because I got a lovely email from a new reader who'd stumbled upon the whole world of academic blogs via this search. It got me wondering about other people's stories about how you came to blogworld. I knew what blogs were several years ago, had looked at a couple randomly but was not particularly interested. Then last spring the Chronicle had an article which linked to Barely Tenured -- and once I was there and started following other links, one thing just led to another. Though I spent many hours trawling through Crooked Timber before eventually discovering more of the quirky, personal folks I like to read. And then about 2 weeks later I started my blog. I was amazed when I got my first comment. More amazed as the list of people I read and commented to grew. And I'm still amazed now ten months later.

so that's how I got here. you?

conference angst

I'm working on a conference proposal this week, and am being assailed by the demons of Doubt and Insecurity. Relevant thought attacks include the following:

• I used to get accepted to conferences fairly frequently while I was still a graduate student, but less often in recent years. There are at least two possible explanations for this: I used to be smarter and/or my work was more interesting; I used to have the letterhead of Prestigious Unversity and now I write from Large Urban which is about 122 places below PU in the imaginary rank ladder everyone carries around in their head.
• during the last year or two up to tenure I didn't really try to circulate much, since I was focusing on publishing. But now I am woefully out of practice.
• the less you circulate, the less people know your name, and then the fewer conferences you get accepted to.
• I am now firmly located on the margin of my field in terms of geography and prestige, and possibly also in terms of what I find interesting. The margin doesn't run conferences.
  
• this conference is run by muckity-mucks who mostly invite their friends and I have no earthly chance of getting in. (But I've looked at programs from years past and see people who I know aren't so Brilliant or Fascinating.)
• I should have written this proposal two months ago. Except I didn't have any brilliant ideas then, either.
• I'm sick of writing about old stuff, but my new projects aren't far enough long to do much with yet either.
• Getting into such a conference would be inspiring and energizing, but I feel like the gates are pretty much shut against me. Which is even more draining.
  

Blech.

life/work

Once upon a time I had a really productive semester. I made a schedule for myself and stuck to it, getting up at 8 a.m. every day and working on my writing in the mornings (or teaching prep on teaching days) and going into the office in the afternoons/evenings. I wrote a long article that had been commissioned for a book project and submitted it in late February. I made significant progress on another research project. I also taught my courses (which were all repeats, to be fair) and did a fair amount of departmental service. My apartment was neat. I went to the gym six days a week. My life was orderly.

Sometimes now I look back on that semester and wonder if I will ever reach that smooth level of productivity again. Now, another story of that time in my life would emphasize the fact that I had broken up with my then-girlfriend two months before and spent that semester depressed, lonely, and sad. I was in therapy. I was planning a life of celibacy.

A few months after that semester ended, I fell in love with my current partner. We moved in together a few months after that. I became a dog mom. And ever since, my life has been much richer emotionally and much less organized. I think that's a good trade-off -- I know I'm happier in deep ways that really matter to me. But there's also that little voice in my head that says I'm a bad academic, that I could be more productive if I just tried harder.

I'm not saying that there aren't things I can do to improve my workspace, my time management, and my attitude. I know a lot of strategies that work well for me. That's not really what I'm getting at.

One of the most important things I learned a few years ago was to stop saying or thinking "I have to do X" -- that acknowledging to yourself that everything you do is a choice reduces some of the resistance or ambivalence: "I choose to...grade, clean the bathroom, etc."

So: I choose to spend time with my partner. I choose to spend time with our dogs. I choose to make our home clean and comfortable. I choose to practice yoga. I choose to be a productive scholar. I choose to be a motivating and generous teacher. I choose to be a responsible member of my department and profession.

It's not a prioritized list. Even as I typed that paragraph, I had to resist the urge to put scholarship and teaching higher in the list, so as to persuade you of my seriousness. Quite frankly, I think my primary relationship and the family we've created comes way before my academic work. Probably keeping the house clean is further down the list. Where's yoga? where's service? I don't know. That's part of my job to figure out this semester, so I can make up some new sort of plan that will work for my new life. I can't go back, and don't want to go back, to my depressed & lonely but article-publishing schedule. Can I be happy and still publish? enough?

(In the interest of full disclosure, and to make it clear that I am in no way suggesting that relationships necessarily reduce one's output: I have published several articles and a book in the years since I've been with my GF. But I've been stalled out for the past year and so find myself looking back to past periods of productivity to see what I can learn.)

note

It has come to my attention that somehow a Time Vaccuum has been attached to my weekend. Apparently my minutes are continually being sucked away out from under me.

this.must.stop.

that is all. you can now return to your regular exciting blog programming somewhere else.

B-School intellectuals are everywhere

At a meeting today I met a faculty member from the Business School. I asked a couple polite questions about his background and the organization of the Business School and learned an awful lot. He hastened to assure me that most of the faculty in the B-School did not, in fact, have corporate backgrounds -- most of them were "just academics." He said, laughing, "what people in psychology or sociology don't often realize is that they could have done the same research in a Business School and wind up making a lot more money!" Ha ha. I'm really laughing with you there, buddy, since you probably pull in at least $60,000 more than I do. (We in the humanities are the least-paid faculty at our U). He also tried to impress me by telling me several times that he had been at a lecture earlier today where someone was talking about Wittgenstein and information management systems. Woo-hoo. You guys really are intellectuals.

Maybe he is. It doesn't really affect me one way or the other. But it was interesting to see how defensive he was, how hard he was trying to prove to me that he knew the word "postmodern."

Never once in our 20 minute conversation (we were seated next to each other during the lunch segment of the meeting) did he ask me what I research or teach. Because, of course, the professional school folks usually assume that they already know what "English" means.

Serving in the faculty senate will at the very least provide some anthropological entertainment as I meet people from around the university.