Bullets of Pre-escape

• It's Halloween. Scariest thing of the day: Tenure/Promotion workshop for junior faculty. Brrr...horrifying. The air was positively think with anxiety, hysteria. People lost their minds. (This is due in part to circumstances that are specific to this institution.) I witnessed outrageous slick-dick behaviour on the part of a familiar figure from earlier this week. I admit that several times, I thought, "Forget it. Let me out of this profession."
• But do you want to know how fabulous R is? She is the most loyal and supportive person I know. She gets so pissed off on my behalf (and your behalf, fellow bloggers), it's adorable. Case in point: I read her some bits of the vitriol lately spewed at poor Dr. Crazy/all junior faculty who deign to consider changing jobs. If we were mad, folks, well, we had nothing on her. So enraged about this - and she's not even an academic. Last week, too, when I relayed to her my awful exchange with condescending colleague, she was so livid she wouldn't even let me finish before she began ranting. I know it sounds ridiculous, but damn, it's nice to have that kind of strong and emotionally engaged support. Too bad it's from afar! (And don't worry - she can also criticize me when need be.)
• I leave for California tomorrow. Hurrah! It shall be warm. I shall see the sun (a very rare occurrence, these days). I shall hang out with my good friend from Home City, who's on my panel. Perhaps most excitingly, I have two blogger meetups scheduled, with two damn fine women. What a treat. And, oh yeah - I shall present some muddled new thoughts. And listen to some good talks. But, more importantly: friends! blogfriends!
• And, as I discovered at the conference I went to a couple of weeks ago, I feel free when I leave here. I must say, that's a nice feeling. Bring it on.

Those high-falutin' academics

So I have the radio on in the background while I'm working here. A v. fancy professor, a scientist, is being interviewed about jellyfish (as harbingers of ecological disaster). And he says: "...you go a Chinese restaurant, you can order jellyfish thingies..."

Hee. Somehow I find this heartening, knowing that a fancy academic is on national radio talking about the things he researches as "thingies."

Breakfast with bigwig

[Description of awful meeting redacted.]

The important point is:
This whole meeting, it made me feel even less hopeful than I already did about this place and my future here.

I have failed

Well, obviously I'm too stupid to propagate. I did the evolutionary meme below totally wrong, I realize. I'd take it down out of grave embarrassment, but I need to keep it up to trace the evolution, right? To trace the way that it stops. At me! Yeah, as I was lying in bed last night it struck me out of the blue that I had mutated the questions wayyyy out of the desired format. See me hiding my face in shame. What does this say about me?

Evolutionary meme

So Squadratomagico tagged me for this meme, which I believe is designed to highlight evolution in cyberspace. (I have essentially copied Sq. for the format of this, I must acknowledge...)

Here are the rules:

There is a set of questions below, all of which are in this format:"The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is . . . ."
*Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations: [fn1]
*You can leave them exactly as is.
*You can delete any one question.
*You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change"The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is . . . " to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is . . ." or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is . . ." or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is . . . .
"In addition, you can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...."
*You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.
*Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions.
*Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.
*Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers.
*Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

Here is my genealogy:
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Pharyngula.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Primate Diaries.
My great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Thus Spake Zuska.
My great-great-great-great-great grandparent is k8, a cat, a mission.
My great-great-great-great grandparent is Monkeygirl.
My great-great-great-grandparent is DancingFish.
My great-great-grandparent is Brazen Hussy.
My great-grandparent is Bad Ass Turtle.
My grandparent is Belle.
My parent is Squadratomagico.

And here are my mutated statements, plus one newly-added statement at the end.

The best classic movie is: The Women
The best novel in classic fiction is: Frankenstein
The best high-fat food in Indian cooking is: Pakora
The most eyebrow-raising conference-paper-related words I ever received from a scholar are: “Great outfit.” (Conference presentation two weeks ago.)
The best everyday lie in academic life is: “I'm really into radical pedagogy" (as an excuse for putting absolutely no effort into teaching)
The best red wine grape is: Pinot Noir

I tag: Psychgrad, What Now?, Marcelle Proust

Looking forward

I just feel full of things to look forward to. While this is theoretically problematic - shouldn't I be living in/for the now? Isn't that supposed to be the definition of happiness? - it is actually quite wonderful, considering the crankmeister I've been for the last two months.

• I am looking forward to finishing this conference paper. Not that it's been a terrible experience. In fact, it's been a rather illuminating one, but I'm ready for it to end. That should happen tomorrow, or even later today. Short-order happiness.
• On that note, I am sooooo looking forward to being away at the conference next weekend. (Hey, are any of my blogfriends going to be at a fairly large annual conference in southern California next weekend? If you are, and you'd be into meeting up, email me to see if we'll be in the same place. Perhaps some long, irony-soaked chats over wine could ensue!) I have long been envisioning this conference as a kind of release - it signals the end of the insanity for this term for me. Presenting this paper is the last piece of major, deadline-oriented work on my plate after these two months of crazy workaholic behaviour! And the panel I put together for the conference includes my good friend from Home City, so we shall have a chance to reconnect and cavort for four whole days. Hurrah!
• I am having a cheese party in a couple of weeks!
• I am visiting Nearest Metropolis in mid-November to see my great friend C .(She's there for the year on a Visiting position, after living in European City for many years - it is officially a scandal that we haven't managed to see each other yet.) While there, I also get the chance to dance!
• I leave for Home City on December 8. This is, of course, exciting in itself. But also: I was expressing to R my hunger for queer events, queer communities. She has arranged for us to go a spectacularly fun and debauched queer event the very night I arrive - after a delicious dinner of Indian take-out!
• While I'm in Home Area, I am going to Fun City to spend a couple of days with M. We are so in need of this reconnection. He and I once together dreamed of a perfect, decadent day: sleeping in, going out for brunch, coming home and spending the rest of the day and evening watching videos and napping. If this kind of day is foreign to me, it is even more so for him, overburdened, workaholic star that he is. I plan to make this happen on this visit!
• So many exclamation marks! Such hyperbole! What can one do in the face of so much upcoming goodness?

Owning knowledge

I just cannot get over how people think they own knowledge. It is completely mystifying.

After approving them at the level of my program's advisory committee, I sent my two new courses out to my department for approval before they go on to the next stages. I have received nothing but accolades and support for them. Except from one colleague, who is sending me - and the whole department - absolutely horribly condescending emails in which they are essentially asking, "Why aren't you teaching things the way I would teach them?" Well, my friend, that is because we have different kinds of training, and I am not an expert in what you do. You want courses that do that? You teach them in your program; the courses you're proposing don't actually fit with my training or my "inter-"discipline. This colleague is also sending me emails in which they try to "teach me" very basic things I already know. I don't know where this person is getting the idea that I need to be taught these things - it is a mystery to me. In fact, in an email I had just sent them, I had explicitly said these things! It is like my words are not being heard, and what the courses actually do is not being engaged with on any level. How frustrating!

I'm not sure how to respond. I feel as if I can't just let it go, this latest condescending email that purports to "teach me" things. It's a matter of pride. But I don't know - maybe I shoul just ignore. Ugh. Why, why, why do people want to make academe into a monoculture? And how do people have the chutzpah to talk to colleagues - people with PhD's, for goodness sake - in that way? (Part of the answer is gender, in this case.)

Update: I responded quite collegially but quite forcefully, and seem to have gotten the colleague to back off: I received a "Peace" response.

Friend wanted

I've been thinking a lot lately about what my best friendships are, and what they give me. This is because I don't have anything like that, here in this city.

A few incidents/people lately have underscored all of this for me.

First, there is D. D is my best friend here - he's a great guy. He's my go-to person; we have lunch together at the uni often, live within a ten-minute walk of each other, and see each other for an hour here or there, all the time. As I say, great guy. But, what's not entirely satisfying: D has very little sense of irony. I need irony, I realize. (Not that there's much irony on this blog, I know. But trust me - I'm all about the irony.) As well, all we ever talk about when we're together is work; I am all talked out about work. I am all worked out; when I am not at work, I need to be talking about other things. Especially because with D, it's all negative. D also doesn't drink much, which means I do things like go over to his house to watch a film, the night after my uncle dies, and sit there and drink 3/4 of a bottle of wine by myself.

This leads me to my next point: I really like drinks with my friends. I like drinking wine and having long, intense chats about our whole lives. So, when I went to that conference ten days ago and had drinks with Mentor and a PhD student of hers? I felt like something clicked back into place for me; it was the kind of languorous, indulgent evening I hadn't had in soooo long. It was a way of being I'd almost forgotten, but that is so foundational to who I am.

Now, this doesn't all have to come in the same package - for instance, my good friend A, who I was living with over the winter, remember? A doesn't drink. I don't drink with her. But she's probably the most ironic, funniest person I know. We can talk deeply-yet-ironically for hours.

Then there is my friend K, who visited me a couple of weeks ago over Thanksgiving weekend. Why do I not feel as close to K as I should, given how much time we spend together and how much we talk about? I've thought a lot about this - about how I like her a lot, and know her very well, but how she'll never be an A, or an M, so so close for me. Even though she's a wine drinker and a major chatter. It is, I think, that she is highly, highly in control. A very successful lawyer at 35, she is the most efficient and, I guess, masterful person I know. She has the crazy schedule of any high-powered lawyer, but she doesn't ever, ever let the craziness of her life phase her - at least on the outside. She has a kind of clinical approach to analyzing her own life and those of the people around her that I find, frankly, alien. And it's not that she's unfeeling - not at all. And she is damn smart about people. But I have heard her make judgements - of people's incapacity to "control themselves", like in making perhaps unwise romantic choices, for instance - that I just find to be intolerant of the confusion and humanity of people. I think what I need to feel truly, deeply intimate with someone is a sense that they can admit to, give in to, chaos. That we begin from a point of admitting our own fallbility.

So, yeah. That's what I need, what I'm really, really missing. That is the ad I should put out for a Scary City with Potential Friend. Wanted: ironic, chaos-embracing wine drinker.

By the way? All you folks out in the blogworld? It seems to me you are like all the people I would hope to have answer my friend-wanted ad. And certainly, those of you I've met have been ironic, chaos-embracing wine drinkers. Perhaps this is why I feel so at home in this little slice of the blogosphere.

Writing/thinking breakthrough!

I'm two thirds of the way through the writing of this conference paper, which means I've already exceeded my goal for the weekend - hurrah!

But, more importantly, I've had a breakthrough! A breakthrough in my thinking. Because my writing process is quite open, I never know quite what's going to come of it. Sometimes that's a bad thing - ideas that come to me have a contingency to them that means they won't easily be made into a foundation for...anything. But yesterday and now, this morning, I've had a breakthrough that shows me my entire larger project in a new way. That has foundations, that connects to and intervenes in very important, I think, ways in the field (whatever the field is!). What a great feeling that is. Back I go!

On being spineless

So, get this. I designed the assessment in my first-year course in a very particular way, because it is so large. Following the advice of Mentor, who has used such a device for years, and Dr. Crazy, who shared her assignment with me, I instituted a random-grading dealio for weekly critical responses. That is, they have to hand in a critical reading response every week (I am the Queen of Critical Responses, across all classes), but they only have 4 of the 12 graded. They seemed taken aback by this at first, but now are entirely accustomed to it. Good in theory, yes? Yes.

Well, what do I do?? I duly separate the pile into two every week, "to be graded" and "not to be graded"...AND THEN READ EVERY SINGLE RESPONSE, AND EVEN MAKE COMMENTS ON THE "NOT-GRADED" PILE. In short, I treat every single one the same - just don't attach a grade to most. But of course this defeats the whole purpose of the thing - the random grading thing is so that I don't have to read 70+ things every week. And yet here I am, reading 70+ things every week.

It's just that I feel bad! I don't think I can stomach having them do work and getting no feedback, no engagement from me. Especially because they're having epiphanies all over the place - these critical responses are full of them. It feels terrible to not engage with them. I'd never expected to feel like this, and I certainly don't for a moment think everyone should feel like this. I think the random grading structure is a good one. But I am too much of a softy, it appears, to do it.

More evidence of my weakness in the face of students: A student had talked at me for way too long about a novel she had read that related in some way to the course. She was really excited about the novel, and was suggesting that she would bring it in to "tell my classmates about it." (With me thinking, "oh dear god, no - what is this, show and tell?") Anyway, last week she brought it in and came up to me to tell me excitedly that she'd remembered it - and then she insisted I take it. So I took it, and now I am reading it. It is a really badly written (and problematic, I might add) young adult novel, for chrissake. But I don't have the heart to give it back to her without reading it. So, though I don't really have much time for fiction-reading these days, and I sure as hell don't want to be reading bad young adult fiction in the little time I do have, I have been reading it these last couple of nights before bed.

Sigh - where can I buy a spine?