Can't get away

With guilt and conflict, I have determined that I will indeed cancel my classes tomorrow and Thursday--but I just can't seem to stay away from this place. Tomorrow evening the Methods and Materials committee (another M&M) will meet, and friend and colleague Sara will be presenting a paper that she's working on for a forthcoming conference. I want to be there to support her--and to hear what she's working on intellectually, and to feel like I have a brain that works on the scholarly level. Also, very selfishly, I want to be more of a presence at M&M so I can, at some point, ask to present something of my own (what, I don't know, but this is one of the ways I'm trying to take advantage of the avenues for engaging in genuine academic discourse that are open to me here). So I really can't miss that. And Thursday morning, I have to attend a norming session so I can be assigned placement readings (for which I get paid, and god knows I could use the money--plus I actually enjoy doing the readings; they help me keep in mind the huge range of abilities and skills we deal with--and give me added insight into the concerns I encounter in my classes). Since I have an appointment in the neighborhood at 6 Thursday evening, it seems silly to drive here, go home, and come back again. I'm still going to cancel classes--I really do need the time (I've been having a hard time breathing today, and I mean that literally; I've been tending to feel I can't catch my breath, and I know it's "just" stress). But weird as it seems, I think on Thursday I'm going to bring my laptop with me and sit here in the office to work on my promo folder while I wait for my evening appointment.

Part of my inability to breathe is the guilt factor over canceling the classes. I know, truly, that the revised syllabus for my 101 classes will probably work better, as it gives us more time to go over the next reading and gives the students a little more time before their next paper is due. But I feel I'm abandoning my babies. I do get attached my students (even when I want to slap them silly with a mackerel), and I take my responsibilities to them seriously--perhaps too seriously. Intellectually I know they will be fine; they won't fall apart or suddenly be unable to succeed because I cancel a class. (And quite honestly, as gorgeous as the weather is supposed to be, I expect they will do a happy dance and run away to frolic--or just to sit somewhere outdoors and stare blissfully off into space.) But my puritanical work ethic tells me I'm a bad, bad girl for making this decision.

I got some P&B stuff out from under my feet this evening (reported feedback from today's meeting to my mentees, for instance). I'm still behind on that work, but I can get caught up once my own stuff as a mentee gets done. I really have no sense how long it will take to put together the application, but I do know what I turn in on the 26th will contain many pages that say "documentation to come"--because honestly, the level of proof we are required to produce is idiotic. It's quite clear that we are not trusted to be professional adults. For instance, we have to provide receipts or canceled checks to prove that we belong to the professional organizations we say we belong to. I ask you: would anyone lie about being a member of MLA? And even if one did lie, it's not like falsely saying one is president of the organization. One is just claiming membership (which for me, in the case of MLA, pretty much means I get their scholarly publication and put it, unopened, on a shelf here in the office. And I have to produce a receipt that says I do that. Madness, seriously, it's just nuts). But as I learned in grad school, with this kind of thing, one just jumps through the hoops. It does no good to question the value of the hoop, or where it is placed, or why it has to be lit on fire: one just jumps through--in whatever position and from whatever direction and wearing whatever circus costume is required.

So I'm lugging home all the revised student papers I have to mark (and just had an "Oh, shit" moment: I forgot to photocopy the rubric I use for marking revisions, and I need that. I guess it's a good thing I'm coming in tomorrow after all.) I'm going to take a moment when I'm done with this post to sit at my desk and look around to see what other pearls might have fallen through the floor boards. And then I'm going to go home and try not to think about a damned thing until tomorrow morning. I'm on the fence about whether to set the alarm (probably not), and am worried about how to tackle the particular monster that is this application. I compared writing my dissertation to wrestling an anaconda in a phone booth. The promo application isn't anywhere near that bad, but it does have Gordion Knot qualities: I'm not sure what to pull on first to try to sort it into something manageable. But I think the advice given to Alice in one of the Lewis Carroll books is probably good to follow: "Start at the beginning, go on to the ending, then stop."

Speaking of "then stop" ....