- My Chair rocks. She had asked me the other day if I wanted a winter squash from her garden. Sure, I said, expecting a big ol' squash. But no; today she brought in a whole whack of pumpkin flesh - already peeled and sliced up for me. She also brought three pumpkin recipes from the Vegetarian Times. What a sweetheart! I made a pumpkin soup tonight - yummmmy.
- I handed in seven - count 'em, seven! - curriculum proposals today (two new courses, five tweaks of the program requirements, etc.) Not bad for my first few months of this job, I'd say. The admin person I handed them to looked through them, and all their attendant sheaves of "consultation forms" on which other departments had signed their approval. Her eyebrows rose into her hair, and she looked up and said to me, impressed, "You've been very busy." And then informed me that, due to a misunderstanding, I was a day late with the proposals and they wouldn't start their way through the rounds until January. (Hilaire laughs bitterly.)
- Had a meeting today with a couple of people about the possibility of putting a team-taught graduate course on the books for next year and beyond. Ahem - I must be careful, here...there is so much I could say... Let me just ask you, bloggers - and this is a real question: How much reading did you do in a graduate theory course, typically? A book a week or the equivalent, am I right? That's certainly been my experience, but it seems I will be seriously butting heads with one guy over this. I'd be curious to hear what kinds of reading loads others faced - I really don't think my graduate programs were unusually demanding.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Random bullets of Wednesday
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Some weirdness - or...interesting-ness
I am feeling more even-keeled by now. This has to do in part with the fact that I spent the day at the university today, and it was dead. Dead, I tell you. And I was not stressed! Ta-da. That is the way to go - spend holidays at work.
But anyway, here is what I've been thinking about lately:
Yesterday I was at the home of the colleague who, essentially, hired me. I just went by her place to talk through some stuff related to the six curriculum proposals I'm submitting tomorrow. We got to chatting - she's a chatter - and I said that I'd had a hard couple of days. She told me some veeeeeery interesting things. She said that when they hired me, they were aware that I was a risk. That I might be really unhappy here and might leave. But that I was still the best candidate, so they went for me. That I'd even cracked the Dean, who didn't really want to make a hire in this area. (Such a charming Dean.) She asked me if I'd looked at any job listings. I said I'd seen them. (Oh yes, I have seen the two freaking AWESOME jobs, one of which is in Home City, and one in Dad City, that I am a very good fit for.) I said I'd decided not to apply, though, feeling that woudn't be right. (Which is true - I just didn't feel right about going out on the market in the first year of a new job!) She said, "You should be doing what makes you happy, ultimately. I'm very lonely here...I've reconciled myself to spending most of the rest of my life here, but I'm lonely." She also said that she felt strange saying this to me, given how happy she is that I am here, but that she was just being honest.
Given all the asshole brouhaha recently over junior faculty changing jobs, I found this really interesting. It just goes to show how fundamentally the thinking around job-changing in mid-career has shifted, if I have senior faculty members telling me, in the first year of my job, that they know I might choose to leave - and giving me their blessing. (She is not the only person who has said as much to me, either - someone else has, as well.)
Anyway. I tried to swallow my despair at not having applied for those two PERFECT jobs - it is too late now. It is true that I just ethically wouldn't feel right leaving after a year; I'd feel like a complete ass. It would make it nearly impossible to get this long-straggling program off the ground; it would be the final nail in the coffin. Still, though - ouch. Home City, Dad City? Buh-bye.
But anyway, here is what I've been thinking about lately:
Yesterday I was at the home of the colleague who, essentially, hired me. I just went by her place to talk through some stuff related to the six curriculum proposals I'm submitting tomorrow. We got to chatting - she's a chatter - and I said that I'd had a hard couple of days. She told me some veeeeeery interesting things. She said that when they hired me, they were aware that I was a risk. That I might be really unhappy here and might leave. But that I was still the best candidate, so they went for me. That I'd even cracked the Dean, who didn't really want to make a hire in this area. (Such a charming Dean.) She asked me if I'd looked at any job listings. I said I'd seen them. (Oh yes, I have seen the two freaking AWESOME jobs, one of which is in Home City, and one in Dad City, that I am a very good fit for.) I said I'd decided not to apply, though, feeling that woudn't be right. (Which is true - I just didn't feel right about going out on the market in the first year of a new job!) She said, "You should be doing what makes you happy, ultimately. I'm very lonely here...I've reconciled myself to spending most of the rest of my life here, but I'm lonely." She also said that she felt strange saying this to me, given how happy she is that I am here, but that she was just being honest.
Given all the asshole brouhaha recently over junior faculty changing jobs, I found this really interesting. It just goes to show how fundamentally the thinking around job-changing in mid-career has shifted, if I have senior faculty members telling me, in the first year of my job, that they know I might choose to leave - and giving me their blessing. (She is not the only person who has said as much to me, either - someone else has, as well.)
Anyway. I tried to swallow my despair at not having applied for those two PERFECT jobs - it is too late now. It is true that I just ethically wouldn't feel right leaving after a year; I'd feel like a complete ass. It would make it nearly impossible to get this long-straggling program off the ground; it would be the final nail in the coffin. Still, though - ouch. Home City, Dad City? Buh-bye.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Worst mood ever
The singularly negative post below was the beginning of a plunge into the worst mood I've been in, in a long time. (In fact, I think the mood was seeded last night when I went to see the movie In the Wild, because I wanted to get out of the house and that was the only remotely watchable thing at the nearby theatre. It both pissed me off and produced pathos.) Not sad, or anything - everything is making me mad. Grrr. I have just spent the day cycling in my mind through things that bug me. Even my run didn't make it better...usually when I run, things feel better, but this time it was just a new forum in which to harp on my undirected rage, giving it provisional shape by resurrecting every possible axe I might have to grind with anyone. After I got back from the run and showered, I gave in and decided to ride my bike over to the video store, to declare this an unproductive day of escapism. As I rode over, I had an image of myself scratching someone in the face with my imaginary set of long talons. Well. Charming!
I picked up some episodes of Ugly Betty, and stopped at a corner store on the way home to buy myself a bag of chips and a bag of berry candies. Those were my dinner. Those who know me in real life will know how ridiculously NOT like my usual dinner that is. I watched my two episodes, then started reading a novel on the couch, but fell asleep by 10 after 6pm. I napped for almost two hours. Don't even remember the last time I napped - a year ago? More?
Whatever is going on with me, I sure hope it passes soon. I'm hoping writing about it here might begin to purge it.
Anyway, it's off to bed, even though I've been up for half an hour and it's 8:15pm.
I picked up some episodes of Ugly Betty, and stopped at a corner store on the way home to buy myself a bag of chips and a bag of berry candies. Those were my dinner. Those who know me in real life will know how ridiculously NOT like my usual dinner that is. I watched my two episodes, then started reading a novel on the couch, but fell asleep by 10 after 6pm. I napped for almost two hours. Don't even remember the last time I napped - a year ago? More?
Whatever is going on with me, I sure hope it passes soon. I'm hoping writing about it here might begin to purge it.
Anyway, it's off to bed, even though I've been up for half an hour and it's 8:15pm.
"Teaching and learning" rhetoric
This past week I went to a workshop put on by the teaching centre here at Uni. I'm signed up for another - long - one this week. I also go to monthly lunches because I'm part of a year-long program that the centre runs.
I don't know why I continue to invest energy into the formal discourse of teaching and learning at universities. Well, I do it because I really care about teaching, and I keep hoping there is going to be something meaningful to me in any of these workshops and events. But it really is becoming clear to me that ways I - and many of us in the humanities - are thinking about teaching, has very little to do with the approaches in this little "teaching and learning in higher education" world. You know, for starters it's the lingo - using the term "feed forward" instead of feedback is a prime example.
In fact, at this last workshop (attended by just four of us, plus the facilitator) it really seemed to me that a lot of what is being talked about is teaching as administering a kind of therapy. And it is not coincidental, I think, that the people at many of these workshops, who are engaging this rhetoric, were nursing and education faculty. (Not that these are lesser disciplines, of course, just that I think it makes sense that there would be different approaches in these fields from the ones we might use in the humanities.) And that these folks are also often talking about inculcating a kind of morality - my goodness, at this last workshop, one of them talked about how she assigns "making a shoebox of gifts for Xmas and giving it to a local charity" as a project!? Uh, how does that work??
I actually really felt like an outsider at this last workshop, and I think a couple of the things I said about my approaches to evaluation were really scandalous to the people there...I got that vibe. And I'm not saying this in any kind of "poor-me" way; I really don't care. Because frankly, it seems to me that any kind of intellectual rigor is being sacrificed in much of this discourse, and that it's just about feel-good...stuff. As well, I find that some of this talk shades uncomfortably into a kind of instrumentalization that dovetails with the commercialization of the university - terms like "value-added" and "leveraging" get tossed around a little too often for my liking.
So, yeah, not feeling satisfied with that world, not at all. Every time I go to a workshop, I come away feeling disappointed. But I still feel as if I need people to work through some teaching stuff with. People in my own kinds of fields, who are facing some of the same pedagogical issues that I am, who have similar kinds of visions of what a classroom can be. And who are not interested in infantilizing university students, nor in producing good little workers!
I don't know why I continue to invest energy into the formal discourse of teaching and learning at universities. Well, I do it because I really care about teaching, and I keep hoping there is going to be something meaningful to me in any of these workshops and events. But it really is becoming clear to me that ways I - and many of us in the humanities - are thinking about teaching, has very little to do with the approaches in this little "teaching and learning in higher education" world. You know, for starters it's the lingo - using the term "feed forward" instead of feedback is a prime example.
In fact, at this last workshop (attended by just four of us, plus the facilitator) it really seemed to me that a lot of what is being talked about is teaching as administering a kind of therapy. And it is not coincidental, I think, that the people at many of these workshops, who are engaging this rhetoric, were nursing and education faculty. (Not that these are lesser disciplines, of course, just that I think it makes sense that there would be different approaches in these fields from the ones we might use in the humanities.) And that these folks are also often talking about inculcating a kind of morality - my goodness, at this last workshop, one of them talked about how she assigns "making a shoebox of gifts for Xmas and giving it to a local charity" as a project!? Uh, how does that work??
I actually really felt like an outsider at this last workshop, and I think a couple of the things I said about my approaches to evaluation were really scandalous to the people there...I got that vibe. And I'm not saying this in any kind of "poor-me" way; I really don't care. Because frankly, it seems to me that any kind of intellectual rigor is being sacrificed in much of this discourse, and that it's just about feel-good...stuff. As well, I find that some of this talk shades uncomfortably into a kind of instrumentalization that dovetails with the commercialization of the university - terms like "value-added" and "leveraging" get tossed around a little too often for my liking.
So, yeah, not feeling satisfied with that world, not at all. Every time I go to a workshop, I come away feeling disappointed. But I still feel as if I need people to work through some teaching stuff with. People in my own kinds of fields, who are facing some of the same pedagogical issues that I am, who have similar kinds of visions of what a classroom can be. And who are not interested in infantilizing university students, nor in producing good little workers!
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Office vibe - vicious circle
I think I've mentioned before that my office at the university really freaks me out. This is a first; I've historically been someone who likes to work in the office. But I've never been able to relax in my office here. Most of the time I spend there is near-hysterical; the way my days up there go is so crazy-busy that the actual place becomes tinged with the always-running, heart-racing way I tend to feel there.
Today, because I happened to have my camera in my bag, I took a picture of the desk area of my office (quality not great because lighting so dim):
Today, because I happened to have my camera in my bag, I took a picture of the desk area of my office (quality not great because lighting so dim):
Strewn with papers, and they're not in any kind of orderly piles - somehow this picture makes them look much more orderly than they actually are. Other surfaces in the office are similar - the top of my file cabinet, the shelf of the bookcase where I store my materials for current classes (nuclear holocaust, that shelf is right now) and even this week one of the chairs in there are all home to disheveled sheaves of unrelated stuff. Now I am usually a messer when I work - my home desk looks like this - even messier - and I am used to it and don't usually mind:
But the university office feels unmanageable. And so I've realized something about what's going on for me on campus. Since my days up there are so crazy, I have no time to properly do anything about the papers that accumulate. I don't have time to organize, nor to file. But of course, this adds up to chaos - and very rapidly, too. And so when I walk into the office, the feeling of anxiety is increased. It's a vicious circle that just leads to the magnification of my discomfort in that space!
One of my goals for next week (when I have a special day off from teaching) is to sort this out so that my office doesn't feel like a black hole anymore. I so hope this works - right now it's no fun to go in there, that's for sure. How do you feel about working in your office?
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Hitting the end of term wall
Things are bugging me too much, which is a sure sign that I am feeling the need for the term to end. For example:
Bah - sorry. I'm whiny. But it's amazing, the wall you hit as the end of term nears. I always feel, when it ends, as if it ended just in time. Like I couldn't stand another moment - I need off. And it's not that I don't like my job; I love teaching. But still, this week is the beginning of the structures of feeling that lead to that just-in-time end, I think.
- If I have to read one more reference to "the male species" or "the female race," I shall cry.
- I am tired of the torrent of emails from students wanting to talk to ME about the mark they received from my TA. (This is the problem, in my experience, of having someone else do your grading, when the students don't have any interaction with that person except for the grading. They'd swallow the marks they're getting, if they came from me; they resist them, because they come from the TA, with whom they have no relationship.)
- On that note, go AWAY, dozen emails an hour that I get from people on my university email account. I wish I could say these were mostly informational, but they're not. They all require Action! Immediately!
- I am sick of working in my office at the school - it is so unnerving and the opposite of relaxing.
- I am tired of getting up at 6am all the time. I'm not a terrible morning person, but I don't love the pre-7am hours.
Bah - sorry. I'm whiny. But it's amazing, the wall you hit as the end of term nears. I always feel, when it ends, as if it ended just in time. Like I couldn't stand another moment - I need off. And it's not that I don't like my job; I love teaching. But still, this week is the beginning of the structures of feeling that lead to that just-in-time end, I think.
Good lord
My site visits have shot waaay up since posting that last post. It's a little alarming. And apparently it comes down to the mere mention of a certain currently hot TV actor with the initials H.L. It began to happen within 15 minutes of posting. I really don't fundamentally get fandom, I have to say.
Monday, November 05, 2007
My Hollywood adventure
So you know how yesterday I went into LA? Well, I saw celebs, people - many of them at once. 5-10 feet away from me.
That is right. After spending the day in the city - we ate yummy things, and went to the Gettty Center, and did some driving through Beverly Hills, etc., etc. - we stumbled, just after sunset, upon a scene. We were just driving along, coming down from Mulholland Drive, not sure what to do next, when we spotted...glitziness. It seemed to be a premiere at the El Capitan Theater, of the new Coen Brothers movie. Red carpet and all. We swiftly pulled over into a parkade and parked, and went and stood next to the barricades. We realized as we were walking to the barricades that we were walking on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, stepping on those stars. Oh! we said. And there was the Kodak Theater, right across the street. Oh! we said again.
So anyway, there we were, against the barricades with many dedicated celeb-hunters. Watching the paparazzi get into position for their many photos of the red carpet walkers. And who did we spot but two other conference-goers?? We waved them over and all laughed at ourselves, and chatted for the next hour while we waited for the show to happen. Yes, we academics, our guards down, gawking at the stars.
So anyway, we waited a long time, but finally, they came! Numerous tinted-window SUVs arrived and ejected their celebrity passengers a mere few feet away from us. Who did I see?
- Tommy Lee Jones
- Hugh Laurie (An unexpected, late arrival, prompting much swoony screaming all around me.)
- Thandie Newton
- Casey Affleck
- Joel and Ethan Coen
- Ed Begley Jr.
- Olivier Martinez
- Some actor named "Kelly" who was reportedly in Trainspotting and Gosford Park
- Some actor named Ronnie about whom people got all screamy - but I didn't recognize him (He was also, like, 70, and had an 18-year-old on his arm. Ew.)
- Some other people who had to stand on the red carpet for a long time with paparazzi shooting away - I don't know who they were. Apparently one was Julie Delpy, but we were far enough away from the photographing area that I didn't realize who she was. I certainly can figure it out in retrospect, though.
I didn't get many pictures - it was pretty much pandemonium. But here, taken holding the camera high above people's heads, is Tommy Lee Jones, signing autographs for the media geeks right in front of us. These media geek types - the types who collect movie memorabilia and then go to premieres and scream, "Tommy! Tommy!" so the celeb will come over and autograph, and then sell them on Ebay - were actually the most fascinating part of this whole deal. And there's one of him posing on the red carpet.
And that, my friends, was my LA experience!
That is right. After spending the day in the city - we ate yummy things, and went to the Gettty Center, and did some driving through Beverly Hills, etc., etc. - we stumbled, just after sunset, upon a scene. We were just driving along, coming down from Mulholland Drive, not sure what to do next, when we spotted...glitziness. It seemed to be a premiere at the El Capitan Theater, of the new Coen Brothers movie. Red carpet and all. We swiftly pulled over into a parkade and parked, and went and stood next to the barricades. We realized as we were walking to the barricades that we were walking on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, stepping on those stars. Oh! we said. And there was the Kodak Theater, right across the street. Oh! we said again.
So anyway, there we were, against the barricades with many dedicated celeb-hunters. Watching the paparazzi get into position for their many photos of the red carpet walkers. And who did we spot but two other conference-goers?? We waved them over and all laughed at ourselves, and chatted for the next hour while we waited for the show to happen. Yes, we academics, our guards down, gawking at the stars.
So anyway, we waited a long time, but finally, they came! Numerous tinted-window SUVs arrived and ejected their celebrity passengers a mere few feet away from us. Who did I see?
- Tommy Lee Jones
- Hugh Laurie (An unexpected, late arrival, prompting much swoony screaming all around me.)
- Thandie Newton
- Casey Affleck
- Joel and Ethan Coen
- Ed Begley Jr.
- Olivier Martinez
- Some actor named "Kelly" who was reportedly in Trainspotting and Gosford Park
- Some actor named Ronnie about whom people got all screamy - but I didn't recognize him (He was also, like, 70, and had an 18-year-old on his arm. Ew.)
- Some other people who had to stand on the red carpet for a long time with paparazzi shooting away - I don't know who they were. Apparently one was Julie Delpy, but we were far enough away from the photographing area that I didn't realize who she was. I certainly can figure it out in retrospect, though.
I didn't get many pictures - it was pretty much pandemonium. But here, taken holding the camera high above people's heads, is Tommy Lee Jones, signing autographs for the media geeks right in front of us. These media geek types - the types who collect movie memorabilia and then go to premieres and scream, "Tommy! Tommy!" so the celeb will come over and autograph, and then sell them on Ebay - were actually the most fascinating part of this whole deal. And there's one of him posing on the red carpet.
And that, my friends, was my LA experience!
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Conference check-in
I don't really know what to say here, but for: I heart bloggers. I have met some seriously fabulous bloggy folk on this trip (Margo, darling, I'm looking at you), and had an amazing night over much wine with Feral Mom of Gone Feral last night. Such good conversations about blogs/blogging with her. I feel content (also tired and a wee bit hung over and confused about what time it is because I forgot until just now that there was a time change last night, am I right? But no matter - content!).
The conference has been pretty great - I am always a fan of this event. And out of it has come a wonderful contact, who had actually read my dissertation! Good god. Who reads your dissertation?! (Her PhD advisor was the external examiner at my defense, and had passed on my diss, that's why.) Anyway, she has and she's great, and she and I have also had the co-editorship of a volume of essays fall into our laps! Which is pretty great...one of the things I included in my list of goals for this academic year was to decide whether to edit a volume. I'd been thinking not, regretfully, because I know it's a huge amount of work, and that I should be focusing on getting this monograph written. But for this, there's already a publisher and I can share the load with someone else, so it's fab. I am way into collaborative work. I'm pretty excited about this project. And we will meet up at this conference next fall, and I suggested that we might work there on starting to draft the introduction. That's a fun thing to look forward to. It is perhaps overly optimistic of me to be this excited about working with someone I just met and don't know at all well, but I have a gut feeling that it is going to work out very well.
And today my friend from Home City and I are going out with a rental car to explore this crazy city. I am looking so forward to that.
The conference has been pretty great - I am always a fan of this event. And out of it has come a wonderful contact, who had actually read my dissertation! Good god. Who reads your dissertation?! (Her PhD advisor was the external examiner at my defense, and had passed on my diss, that's why.) Anyway, she has and she's great, and she and I have also had the co-editorship of a volume of essays fall into our laps! Which is pretty great...one of the things I included in my list of goals for this academic year was to decide whether to edit a volume. I'd been thinking not, regretfully, because I know it's a huge amount of work, and that I should be focusing on getting this monograph written. But for this, there's already a publisher and I can share the load with someone else, so it's fab. I am way into collaborative work. I'm pretty excited about this project. And we will meet up at this conference next fall, and I suggested that we might work there on starting to draft the introduction. That's a fun thing to look forward to. It is perhaps overly optimistic of me to be this excited about working with someone I just met and don't know at all well, but I have a gut feeling that it is going to work out very well.
And today my friend from Home City and I are going out with a rental car to explore this crazy city. I am looking so forward to that.
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