I'm blind...

I churned through a bunch of the organizational stuff I had to do for classes, such as coming up with revised assignment schedules for my 101 classes, updating essay assignments for them and for 229, making sure I have needed homework handouts for 101.... (Oh, yes, and I made my reservations to fly to Montana for Christmas. I started to do that a month ago--and wish I had done it then, as of course the options are limited and prices skyrocketing. That took a lot more time than I expected--of course--but it's done, the ticket is purchased, I'm going. Whew.)

I still have to create study questions for a critical reading in 229, but I don't need to give it to them until Wednesday--and if I don't get it done, I'll just cancel the assignment. They won't mind I'm sure. They were confused when I canceled the last one, but once they understood what I was doing, they seemed relieved. I still need to recheck everything to try to catch any howling blunders (like leaving off a required reading, which I already did with the original syllabus for my T/Th 101s). I'll try to do that tomorrow. If not, I'll get up super early Monday to get it done and get everything copied so I can distribute it all to the students in a timely fashion.

Since I got my feet clear of that stuff, I've been churning through the ass promo (as office mate William has decided to call it)--and as I've periodically gone online to track down something for myself, I keep finding e-mails from one of my mentees, asking very good questions that I'm not sure I can answer. My own folder is filled with questions like "Does this go here?" and "I have a letter for this but is it worth mentioning?" and "How can I use only one document, as required, when I am also required to document each individual year of X?" There is a place in the application that asks us to say something intelligent about our professional development as scholars, and how our work as scholars is beneficial to our teaching. Right at the moment, mine says, "Oh, God, I'll come up with something about this later." Part of why I can't write something at this juncture is simple brain fade: I don't think I could write anything very smart about anything at the moment (witness this blather). But also, there is a quotient of BS that goes into the attempt to connect scholarship with teaching when my work as a scholar is hardly about comma splices and thesis statements--and one needs to be in a certain frame of mind and state of alertness to BS effectively. There is a connection, of course: what I teach and what I study both arise from my interests, my personality, my particular bizarre brain. And the environmentalist motif runs all through all of that. But making the direct connection does require a bit of a stretch.

I will say, one nice thing about doing this idiotic exercise is it puts everything I've done since fall 2006 in one place--and makes it look relatively impressive. I don't want to look at the folder for anyone else who's going up for associate, as I'm sure I would then feel totally inadequate--but I think those of us on P&B who are going up for associate have to recuse ourselves from looking at other folders for the same rank. Conflict of interests and all that.

But I've been staring at the computer screen so long that I really do feel like I can't see very well. (When I get tired I have a harder time literally being able to focus: everything gets blurry.) On the other hand, it's pretty early, so I have a good long time to wind down tonight--and to rest my weary oculars. Not sure what I'm going to do as I collapse into sloth mode (watch something on DVD? Try to read--making sure to wear my glasses? Play mindless puzzle games on the computer? A combination thereof?) but I'm delighted I can collapse and still feel I've done something productive. Papers to grade, did you say? What? I can't hear you: la-la-la, fingers in my ears, la-la-la...

Ahhhh, bliss

I don't even remember falling asleep last night: I crashed without even turning off the light. I woke up at 3 something; the light was still on. I turned the light off, turned on my side, and was out again, boom, until 9-ish I think. It was heaven to sleep so hard and so long. Even sleeping a bit later than I'd optimally like, I still got some good work done before my ride. And my lesson was great. It wasn't wildly energetic, but I was more tuned in and effective than I've been in a long while. Lovely. I spent some time after the lesson just hanging out with the horses (giving treats to my favorites and, once the treats were gone, sharing love), then went to my favorite special grocery store, then a restaurant I really like, had a glass of wine and a nice, light dinner, reading utter popcorn (Robert B. Parker mystery; terrific fun, absolutely without profundity of any kind). Now I'm home and happy and relaxed and actually looking forward to getting a lot accomplished tomorrow and Sunday. Even with the work I did (on the promo folder), I feel like today was a genuine day off--no worries, no pressure, all good. Equilibrium restored. Amazing what a simple day can do to recharge the batteries. I'm beyond happy I got the horse time. I'm hard pressed to verbalize why, but even a bad day at the barn is wonderful: horses are simply utterly cool animals. And now, I'm going to noodle around a little before bed, enjoying this relaxation. Truly, bliss.

Another quickie

Most of the day got eaten up dealing with the insane woman downstairs. The whole thing left me feeling sick and shaky and emotionally shredded all day. I did manage to at least go through the files of document I've been collecting for the promotion folder, put them in some kind of order, put them in plastic sleeves and into the appropriate ring binder. I'm hoping I get a decent night's sleep tonight and can get some work in before I head off to ride. We'll see how Saturday and Sunday shape up. I think one of the most important things for me to do tomorrow is to look at all the most crucial tasks that are threatening to drown me and get them at least prioritized, as in "I can work on promo application until X time X day, then I need to do the revised 101 syllabi and paper assignments, then I need to work on marking papers...." See, it's already pretty clear in my head what has to come first; I just have a hard time putting something aside unfinished.

But for now, the only thing I need to finish is something for dinner and getting read for bed.

OK day, BAD night

I woke up without the aid of the alarm at 6:30 this morning (OK, technically yesterday morning now, but I consider it the 21st until I've gone to bed for the night). I slogged away at the promotion application--and I am very glad I decided to cancel classes, as it's going to take a huge amount of time. I have to dig back through minutes of committees since fall 2006 to remember what I did that is worth noting--and that's for five departmental committees (I don't think I'm forgetting any) and three college-wide committees. Then I have to write it up so it A) sounds impressive and B) is not repetitive. Of course the other problem is I wasn't always careful about where or whether I saved the minutes, so sometimes it takes me a while to find what I need--or to realize I truly don't have it and will have to rely on someone else's institutional memory for the information. I realize, too, I get compulsive about the process. I kept thinking, "Let me just do this one more thing..." until suddenly I realized it was 3:30 and I'd been working since about 9:30 and hadn't had lunch and had needed to be in the shower by 3 to get to campus when I had intended to.

I did get there on time for Sara's presentation, which was the key thing--and I even had enough time to take care of copying the rubric sheets I had the "Oh shit" moment about yesterday, as well as tying off a few other little loose ends. Sara's talk was fascinating. We didn't let her present as she will at the conference she's preparing for: we kept interrupting with comments and questions and responses to each other's comments and questions. But since hers is still a work in progress, I hope that was helpful to her rather than keeping her from being able to maintain a train of thought. I had one of those "I'm smart after all!" moments, when I made a connection and one of the other members of the audience said, "That's good, Tonia." It was like getting a gold star in kindergarten. I really was ridiculously gratified by just that little acknowledgment that I still can think.

So, as a reward to myself, I went to take a dance class (social dance) at a studio I stumbled across on Saturday. I took social dance classes two summers ago and adored them until the instructor left (and his replacement was an idiot). It's been one of those things in the back of my mind since that I'd like to do as a treat for myself, so tonight, I went. I thought class started at 8:15, but tonight's lesson started at 9, so I ate dinner (which I needed) at a little Chinese place nearby. When I got back to the studio, I was particularly glad to see that there were (miraculously) sufficient male partners for all the women in the class. Then the lesson began--and that's when things started to go bad.

The other students had been working on a particular combination of steps for the last three weeks, and there was very little acknowledgment of the fact that I was brand new to it all and even less in the way of specific help. I know the instructors had to teach to the majority of the class, not the one clue-free student, but it would have been nice if the woman had taken over partnering some of the male students and the man had given me a little one-on-one assistance to help me get caught up. Lacking that, I kept turning the wrong way and getting tangled up--couldn't keep things straight enough even just to follow my partners' lead. I've tried leading in classes where there weren't enough men, and it's hard, because the guy always has to be thinking about a half a beat ahead so he can give the woman the right signal at the right time. All the woman really needs to do is keep her feet going in the appropriate pattern and go wherever the guys says. But that is all based on the presumption that the woman has the appropriate pattern well enough in her feet not to lose it when suddenly she is being spun around and her hands are getting pulled over her head and crossed in various directions that lead to another spin.... Then the instructors kept pushing us about the elegant thing to do with one's arms and how to tilt one's head, while I didn't know where to put my feet. Screw elegance, I was just trying to end up in the right place standing on the right foot (and not on my partner's). I tried to laugh off the howling blunders I made as we continually exchanged dance partners (and I can tell you right now who the better leaders were among the men, because I got less lost with them), but eventually, the guys were getting frustrated that they couldn't learn their bits because I kept screwing up. And that increased my frustration--and activated some very insecure adolescent part of myself that ended up feeling utterly humiliated. I had to leave before the class was over or I'd have started to cry. I know that was largely an overreaction brought on by the fact that my emotional state is pretty precarious (a consequence of stress, grief, exhaustion), but I just felt miserable.

So I came home--to find an incredibly nasty, vituperous note from my downstairs neighbor, reactivating a feud I thought we'd laid to rest months ago. (This time she was enraged because I'd let the meter reader into her part of the house--I'm sorry, but that's where the meters are--and because I hadn't carried the garbage can back to the side of the house, even though I hadn't had any garbage in today's pick up--along with other accusations that I frankly didn't even understand.) That tore it. I called my friend Szilvia and promptly turned into a blubbering mess. After Szil talked me down off the metaphoric ledge, I composed a reply to the neighbor's message, employing my mother's wonderful tactic of being "relentlessly polite." (It's the word "relentless" that does it. If I continue to be polite and reasonable in the face of this woman's insane accusations, ultimately she will have to start feeling like a little bit of a jerk to continue raging at me.) Having written the reply, I think I'm starting to regain some sort of equilibrium.

And I'm now able to look at the dance class analytically, thinking about the teacher-student dynamic from the other side and how awful it is to feel left behind and unsupported--and stupid--like that. I hope I can turn my experience into some kind of pedagogical shift for myself. Plus, I need to take my own advice to students. I tell them to be proactive in their own education: I'm now working out how I can approach the instructors before my next lesson (whenever that is) to see if there is a way for them to accommodate my needs without dragging the rest of the class down. My first inclination was just to run away, but that's that insecure adolescent ... hmmmm, and exactly whom do I teach? It's good to be viscerally reminded what many of them must feel as they approach the intense demands of my classes.

Anyway, I think I may be starting to wind down and let go of all the emotional upheaval--now that it's way past "bedtime." I do have to be at that norming session tomorrow a.m., and I do have that appointment at 6, but now I think I will come home in between so if I need to nap, I can. And I've already confirmed that I will, by god, have my riding lesson on Friday. I'll work like a galley slave as much as is humanly possible over the next four days, but I also must allow myself some moments that get my head completely somewhere else. Horse time does that. I can hardly wait.

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" ....

The Wall, again

It's not a matter of not getting enough sleep. It's not that kind of tired. It's the fact that after the 63rd iteration of "the definition of quotation is..." or "an important idea in this essay is...," I just can't stand it. It's not even like hitting a wall (though I did, in the sense that I simply cannot look at another review sheet or reading journal tonight). It's more complicated than a dripping faucet, perhaps a little like an ear worm (a wonderful term for one of those horrible song fragments--usually a commercial jingle or some revolting bit of pop nonsense--that gets stuck in one's head and won't go away). Mental activity is involved (mine, attempting to evaluate theirs) but after a while I can't tell good from dreck. It all turns into an annoying loop of the same damned thing over and over and over.

And the brutal truth is, it's incredibly subjective anyway. What makes one reading journal better than another? Of course I tend to give higher marks when it's clear the student understands the reading (and the more insightful and intelligent the reading, the higher the mark), but it's also true that a student can read insightfully and intelligently and write a crappy journal by gesturing toward answers instead of engaging in them. And it's equally true that someone who doesn't get the reading can do a spectacular journal by digging into the questioning process.

I realize questioning one's way into something is a practice that, as an intellectual, I take so much for granted it's hard to teach. I do it automatically. "I didn't get that sentence: let me take it apart in smaller chunks. Let me see what is said before it, and after. Let me ask what the connections might be, what makes sense in the context of the piece as I understand it so far, what particular connotation of a word makes most sense here, could there be something figurative in the language..." I could go on. And if I had more time with students--and could see them in smaller groups--I could do that with them: take a reading, break it down, question our way into it. In their journals I ask them to come up with questions for class discussion, and I continually have to say, "But that's a question about us, not about the reading. Ask questions that help us understand the reading better." "...Huh?"

I don't know where the problem lies. I don't know if it's that they have never been introduced to that kind of thinking, or if it's a product of that resistance to anything that takes time. One of the authors they could have read for extra credit says, "Anything interesting is complicated." (Kathleen Dean Moore, "Winter Creek." I'll give the correct MLA format citation if anyone wants it.) (Oh, and yes, I'll have to blog some time about my general disdain for extra credit--and why I decided to assign it this semester. But back to my original thought:) Students struggle with the idea that in order for something to be interesting, it has to be complicated--or that something complicated can be interesting. Another essay that I originally assigned (and am going to scrap) argues with the pervasive notion in our society that easy is good. They wrestle with that one, too. They'll pay lip-service to the whole "we don't want to be lazy" idea--the very same students who say they don't like to read because it takes too long.

So maybe the problem is that, since they don't buy the premise that the complicated is interesting, when they encounter a complicated reading, it just seems hard, with no payoff. Maybe they haven't had the experience of finally mastering something one has struggled with, that moment of sudden clarity when all the lights come on and the pieces fall into place and the scales of ignorance drop from one's eyes and all is beauty and grace. OK, well, maybe it isn't that transcendent an experience most of the time, but still, it feels damned good to get there. I vividly remember reading the first pages of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom when I started grad school and thinking, "I'm not smart enough for this; they should never have accepted me into the program!" I literally had to use a pencil to connect the subordinate clauses in his incredibly prolix sentences in order to make sense of the first pages. But once I did, suddenly I could read the book--and felt not only triumph but an enormous relief ("I guess I might make it through this whole Ph.D. thing after all!"). I grant you, it is not one of my favorite books, nor would I recommend it to a living soul--but I had the experience of triumph after heavy intellectual sweat. I wish I could give it to my students.

And what makes me most sad is that they are struggling like that over readings that I find lucid, logical, and thought-provoking (or I wouldn't have assigned them). One poor idiot in conference last week said that he thought the authors' intention was to confuse us. Of course: that's what writing is for, to inhibit communication, not to facilitate it. And in my world (obviously a fantasy world), although I grant students might not find the readings as easy as I do, they shouldn't be at such an utter, total loss--not at the college level. They might have to work at it, but they really, truly ought to be able to read this stuff and get it. Really. Truly.

Heavy sigh.

So, I have to get away from the assignemtns and come at them fresh tomorrow. In the morning I'll finish up the last of the backlog of student assignments, and if I don't get to the sabbatical folders before P&B, well, they can drum me off the committee. I'll get to them. Promise, I really will. But not tonight. And not until the student stuff is done.

Weekend update

I am delighted to report that I had everything marked for my Monday classes by the middle of this afternoon. I know I would feel even better if I'd been able to push through about 10 more students' worth of assignments for the T/Th classes, but instead I decided to do laundry and then make soup. I'll finish it up tomorrow, but the time-consuming bit is done--and it felt lovely to do something literally and figuratively nourishing instead of engaging only in output. But I have to be very careful: I see the light at the end of the tunnel (and am sanguine it is not, in fact, the headlight of an oncoming train), and I'm very likely to let up the self-imposed pressure just a mite too early--and then find myself in a jam again. Of course the pressure won't really let up until I'm on my way to Montana for Christmas (and oh, hell, I need to book my flight soon or I'll have to put my life in hock to get there). But I can feel the time approaching when I can turn more and more over to the students: I've been cranking away at getting all the mechanisms in place and wound up, and pretty soon they'll just be able to toddle off on their own, putting it all to use.

My brain is in ten million places tonight, so I can't focus well enough to say much. This post breaks all records for brevity--let us all heave heavy sighs.