Question du jour

I'm here in the office, looking over at my desk (my computer is on a table on the other side of the room), and what I see is lots of exploding file-folders and leaning stacks of god-knows-what, and I know that sooner or later I am going to have to dig through it all--and, in fact, dig through the file drawers that I have claimed as my own in the office's shared file cabinets, clean out all kinds of stuff in order to make room for more stuff. (I'm reminded of the George Carlin riff on stuff, which was forwarded to me in an e-mail not too long ago.) I suppose, now that I'm full professor, I could simply have a bonfire on the quad and start all over from scratch--but I grow very attached to handouts and photocopies of essays, stories, poems, which (you never know) I may someday maybe consider possibly using again, so at some point the purge truly does have to take place.

So, the question du jour is: sooner or later?

It's a lead-pipe cinch that I'm not going to tackle it with what's left of today. So the question begins to multiply: I've finished as much of the summer scheduling as I can do; that's now over to Bruce at least until next week. But I'd planned to be on campus this whole week, so do I come in tomorrow? Thursday? I will be on campus next week for more scheduling shenanigans, but I also have a cluster of doctors' appointments in the afternoons (don't remember exactly when, just the image of things written on my calendar): how likely is it that I'll get any organizational work done around all that? (I can answer that question, as it happens: not very.) So, if I shouldn't count on getting any of that done next week, does that put more weight into the idea that coming in this week makes sense? Or do I continue to kick the can down the road a bit further, knowing that there are two days in early June when I'll be here to once again go through training for our online course platform: should I assume that I'll do those workshops and then come back to this roost and try to clean it out a bit?

As for the retraining on Blackboard, I don't intend to teach anything fully online--at least not any time soon. But I would like to be able to use Blackboard for my regular classes--especially the comp classes. It's odd what students can and cannot do using electronic technology: they know about all kinds of apps and social platforms that are utterly opaque to me, but they can't use a word-processing program to properly format a paper, which I could probably do upside down and under water. Still, "technological literacy" is one of the skill sets we're supposed to help them acquire (which, of course, means we need to acquire some skill in that area our own damned selves), and there are some things that they're more comfortable doing online than they are in person. (Like, say, talking.) So I'd like to have a lot of that set up: discussion boards, perhaps, and things available for download so I don't have to carry around as much paper.

But I need to be retrained because the training is not designed to stick with the way my brain works. "Information Technology" people have brains that work in ways that are utterly foreign to me, so they assume things are absolutely intuitive that in fact seem either unduly complex or bizarre in organization or in any other conceivable way incomprehensible to me. What I know, however, from having been to this particular fire before, is that I need to immediately put what I learn in each workshop into practice with real classes and real material: no bullshit "pretend this is your course" stuff, especially as they always want me to pretend I'll be doing things I absolutely will not do and don't spend enough time on the things I really want to do.

As I'm writing all of this, I'm thinking that yes, it does make sense to come to the office after the workshops--but not to clean out and organize files and so on, rather to start getting the "web enhanced" portions of my classes ready, so--as I said--I can practice doing what I want to do with the information I've just gotten from the training session.

If I get comfortable enough with the online stuff, I may get around to applying for a stipend to create an online version of Nature in Lit. I suspect it would run better as an online course than it does now--and even if not, hey: it's a stipend. Not a bad thing.

Which, in my mind, dovetails into the "I like the money I get for being the evening supervisor but gee, some more reassigned time would have been nice" thing. I did ask Bruce whether he'd thought about the next daytime assistant chair. Yep--and no, it wasn't me. No surprise: Cathy. Again, as with the "secretary of P&B" thing, I feel a little pissy about it: not that Cathy isn't deserving and not that she won't do an excellent job, but I do feel very much like "first runner up"--which is another way of saying "not the winner." Ego, Baby, pure ego. "What about me? Am I not good enough?"

Well, not pure ego: more objectively I can say that the two of them working together does put a good amount of weight into any argument, as both of them have that kind of powerful presence and combined, they're mighty--but there are times when they think too much alike and I honestly feel that our students could be better served if beside Bruce was someone with a slightly different agenda and take on things. Not even necessarily me, but someone who can provide a little more balance to the scale instead of all the weight going to one side. But it's his decision, and as I said, I know Cathy will do a grand job. Also, if I subtract my beauty-queen aspirations from the equation, I can see that although the reassigned time would have been lovely, I may be a lot better off in terms of protecting my time and energy to have things as they are. Please heaven we'll continue to get the reassigned time to work in Advisement; given the requirements of seminar hours, I will teach my comp classes--maybe the lit electives too--rather differently than I have, but I hope what I do will be more effective for the students and the demands more diffused for me, so I don't feel quite so hammered when it comes time to grade papers.

The other little bit of whining that I have to get out of my system has to do with schedules for Spring--and I'm on the fence about whether to talk to Bruce about my personal desire here. Normally, the problem I'd have in putting together my spring schedule would be that I have to choose whether I want to request Nature in Lit or whether I'd prefer Native American Lit (when in actual fact, I want them both). However, for reasons beyond Bruce's control, P&B now meets when those courses are scheduled, so I won't be able to request either one. It's not as if there aren't other options that I'd be happy enough to teach, even without juggling the schedule--but I may want to make a pitch for spring 2017, that one or both of my favorite courses run in a different time slot.

Oh hell, we'll see.

I'm also wavering about whether to ditch the departmental assessment committee, as I've been swearing I would do. I'm not sure why I suddenly feel maybe I should stay on it instead of making good on my promise to myself to get the hell out of it, now that I've got the promotion.

Hey! I got the promotion! Every now and then, it hits me: Jesus Christ, I actually did it: I made it. Astonishing.

And ye gods I had no idea I was so wound up and chatty today: the length of this post surprises me. Apparently, it's one of those "oh, yeah, and another thing..." sort of days. (Oh, yeah, and another thing: I don't know how long ago I stopped proofreading and editing my posts but it's been several millennia now. I used to make note of the fact that I was just writing and then flinging the post up onto the blog without combing through; now that's just what I do. Blather blather blather post.)

So, enough of the blather for today. Heaven knows when I'll check in again: next time I do any work of any kind, I reckon. I'll decide about tomorrow when I wake up in the morning: go back to sabbatical work or come to the office? Right at the moment, I'd put my money on the former--but there's also always the "option C" possibility, though I'd be hard pressed to think what a third option might look like. I'm outta here.

Weird that it isn't weird

I've been on campus all day today, as I expected. Summer scheduling was only difficult in that there were way  more people looking for classes than classes being run--and because Bruce was there dealing with his own enormous stack of problems (the political state on campus continuing to deteriorate), so every now and then I'd have a hard time concentrating on what I was doing and would have to back-track to try to figure out whether I'd left out steps in the process. I had, in fact, left out steps just frequently enough that I need to go back through the whole thing, start to finish, and check each bit. There are four different stacks of paper on which I have to record information--and sometimes it's hard to figure out what the information actually is (the most frequent problem is trying to determine whether the person wants two courses in each summer term or whether the person wants two courses and doesn't care which term they're in). Sometimes people leave very helpful notes about what they're actually looking for; sometimes people leave long notes that are just annoying as hell--or incomprehensible (as in the case of the person who insists that the courses he wants to teach aren't on Banner--but if they're not on Banner, they don't exist and I can't assign them).

So, I took a break from all that in the early afternoon, then returned to it and really got as far as I possibly could get without a more significant brain break. Since setting that aside, I've spent a little time working to help ASLE find a replacement Professional Liaison Coordinator. Yes: I was a total whore. I used the position as PLC to help get me over the promotion hurdle, and now that I've got the promotion, I'm ditching it. I actually haven't done much of anything in some time about it all: when minor problems have arisen, they've been handled by the managing director, and I've just chimed in with "sounds good to me: thanks" sort of messages. Not that there aren't things I could have been doing, things it would be good for the PLC to do, but, well, the next person can take what I've done and move forward from there.

I may end up having to contact a bunch of people, extending the offer: "Hey, wanna be the PLC? No pay, you never know when you'll be busy, attendance at EC meetings highly recommended even though you don't have a vote, makes a great line on the CV...." The folks in charge are in the throes (and throws) of getting the conference pulled together, so I don't want to pile more on them at this juncture and have told them so. The first reaction I got was "yes, it would be great to have the list of people you've contacted about other liaison-type things in the past, and if you have a particular relationship with any of them, go ahead and contact them." My response was, "Here's the list and what I know about these people--but I know none of them personally, so wouldn't have any more persuasive abilities than anyone else. Still, if you want me to contact them because you're too busy..." So, I'll see what the bounce back is from that, take it from there.

The only other productive thing I did today was to change my mind about the style manual I'm requiring for my 101 students. We get desk copies of books all the damned time, and usually I don't look at them--especially readers, which I just don't use (I make my own)--but right on top of the stack of I-don't-know-what on my desk was a review copy of a new handbook, so I took a look at it and to my surprise discovered that I like it better than what I've been using. It starts with sentence-level stuff, and what it says about research and the writing process is more streamlined--and I think clear--than what I've been using. So, we'll give it a whirl, see how it goes. I do need to get a second copy, however, so I can do the usual one at home, one in the office thing, so wherever I'm working, I have one ready to hand.

I'm now trying to decide whether to do some more noodle work (check the academic calendar for fall, see if there are any of those "Tuesday is a Friday" days; print out old syllabi and start to adjust them, that sort of thing) or whether to head for the hills. Not feeling entirely groovy physically, but I'm finding this brief dip into the old familiar routines rather refreshing--and part of the old routine is that I don't leave until something drives me out the door. So, at least a little noodling, is what I'm thinking, and then out. No evenings out with Paul this week: this is the one way in which I'm still very detached from what's going on here on campus; I rather forget that it's the last week of classes and everyone is just a bit wild-eyed and staggering--and Paul in particular, because of the Academic Senate Executive Committee stuff (which is enough to make anyone go screaming around the bend). But he and I will both be around next week, what with one thing and another, so perhaps we'll make up for it then.

And in any event, I'll be here tomorrow, so, until then....

Whoof

I'm not quite sure how to categorize today. I got a relatively early start, which was nice, but after a few hours of work realized I'd left the computer charger at home--and the battery was running dry, so I had to pack up and come home. I almost took a nap instead of getting back to work, but I did manage to make myself finish combing through the glossary--and am glad I did, as I found one howling error that would have been embarrassing as hell. I sent the corrected thing to Ursula--and I contacted my former wonder-student (he of the NCC-Columbia-Oxford trajectory) to ask if he'd be willing to take a look at the materials I've put together. He was in my 102 whenever it was that he was my student (I lose track of years), so he read the novel--and he was certainly much better prepared (and is much more intelligent) than the average, run-of-the-mill NCC student, so he's the kind of student I fear might be put off by the material as too simplistic. I don't know if he'll have time or inclination to look at what I've got, but if he does, his feedback will be very helpful. I've considered whether to also ask the student who contacted me a while back for some advice about her next steps, academically: she also was in my 102 (and Nature in Lit, and Fiction Writing), smart, hard working, so potentially also a good barometer for the effectiveness of my approach. I hesitate only because I know she has a lot on her plate--and because she's quiet and shy enough that she might be reticent about giving me the kind of in-depth critique I'm looking for.

So, well, I'm still thinking about that part.

And I am aware that, after today, it will be a lot harder to find big chunks of time and mental space in which to do the last bits of this project--but, even though it's early, I somehow don't think I'll get anything useful accomplished with what's left of the day. Too bad, but there it is.

I expect I will post to the blog next week, when I'm on campus: as I've mentioned in previous posts, I'll take advantage of the time I have after Bruce has packed it in for the day to go up to my office, clear out files, start getting things organized for fall. Still no students in the MDC class--but my guess is that they'll register late: I'll probably end up with a bunch of students who are taking anything they can that bears credit because their choices are limited by their placement in remedial courses. Imagine my delight: working with students who can't read or write. Ah well. But that certainly means I'm not beating myself up to come up with a syllabus. If I end up having to toss something together in August, good enough.

I did place my book orders for 101 and Mystery and Detective--even though I'm not sure what I'll end up teaching, given possible developments on the reassigned time front. However, we got a little "ahem" sort of e-mail from the campus bookstore, saying they can't buy books back from students if they don't know what books professors are going to be using. OK: books ordered. I can always let the bookstore know later that X-and-such section is no longer being taught by yours truly.

I think that's about it for today. Yet another wildly scintillating post. But I leave you with the quotation of the day:

"...he had also been grimly working his way through the world's classics. Fiction had never been Jackson's thing. Facts seemed challenging enough without making stuff up. What he discovered was that the great novels of the world were about three things--death, money and sex. Occasionally a whale."
--Started Early, Took My Dog, by Kate Atkinson

P.S.--oh, poop

I was looking through various folders the other day and found a critical essay that I copied at some point, and apparently even read (or started to read anyway) but that I did not include in any of the stuff about critical material. I'm not fussing with it now: as I said, I'm taking each piece in order, so I'm combing through the glossary etc right now. If memory serves, the critical stuff comes next. When I get there, that's when I'll add the one I just unburied. But, well, poop.

I also find that I'm champing at the bit to hear back from the wonderful colleague who was willing to read through the whole mess and give me feedback about whether it would work for the kind of undergrads he teaches. I understand it's end of semester and all that good stuff, but I wanna know. Now.

Patience has never been one of my best things.

Getting ready for tea with the goddess of wisdom

I just sent another of my no doubt importunate e-mails to Le Guin: I have at least managed a draft of the themes chapter, and as I'm now working through each section in order, I started to look again at the glossary and pronunciation guide. It occurred to me that, when I see Le Guin in July, I don't want our brief meeting to be filled entirely with corrections of the pronunciations, so I'd like for her to have a look at it and maybe respond before we meet. Then, when we meet, I can ask her some of my other questions, and talk to her about more large-scale parts of the project, especially illustrations (androgynous non-Caucasian faces, arctic landscapes and illustrations of terms such as "nunataks" and "sastrugi," maps...).

But we have a specific day and time scheduled for our meeting, good Lord willin' and the crick don't rise: July 11 at 10:00 a.m. Or at least I think that's what we have: she's not gotten back to me with specific confirmation of the exact time, but that weekend, yes.

I also don't yet know if she'll allow me to bring another guest with me: I don't want to impose any more than I'm already imposing. Talk about trying to find a balance: working to be respectful without being obsequious is a challenge. I recognize and appreciate, however, that she's had a lot of years to learn where her boundaries are and how to make them clear, so I rely on her wisdom in terms of setting the parameters for this forthcoming meeting.

And what, I wonder, does one bring as an offering to the goddess when one goes to her house for an intense conversation? (That's her term, by the way, not mine, and reveals her expectation that we won't just be shooting the breeze, chatting about our cats.)

Shifting gears here, it does feel good, I confess, to have at least finished a draft of the themes chapter and to be working on the comb through of the rest. I realize I'm seriously running out of metaphoric daylight here: because I'm doing other things with my life besides working on the sabbatical project, I pretty much have one more day--Friday--before my attention starts getting devoured by my return to campus and those duties. Since I'll be on campus working with Bruce next week, I'll also no doubt spend time in my office, clearing out files, beginning the fall planning.... I've realized that until I know whether I have a shot at also being Bruce's daytime assistant, I won't know how many classes I'll be teaching in the fall. We also haven't gotten official word about reassigned time for fall yet, though I assume I'll get the time to work in Advisement as usual.

In fact, across the board, planning for the fall semester is going to include a lot of "if-then" scenarios, depending on seminar hours, reassigned time, and enrollment (especially in the MDC class--which, at the moment, has zero students signed up; Mystery and Detective has 16--no surprise there). All the unknowns and unknowables simply give me practice in being flexible: prepared for various contingencies but not locked into any specific expectations.

I'm sure there's more I could natter about today, but I've been sitting for a long while (working at the library), and I have to be able to stand erect enough to walk home, which means I probably should try to pry my fanny out of this chair, load up my pack, and trot off like a burro back to the barn. Oof-dah.

kinda sorta

I got myself seated and working a little earlier than I have been of late, but I'm working at home and after sitting for, oh, a long time, realized that I hadn't been setting the timer to get me up and moving every now and then. "That's OK," I thought, "I'll just take a longer walk than usual to make up for it and then get back to work."

Well, I did the walk part.

It's another utterly, spectacularly gorgeous day, so the walk went on even longer than I intended, but once I sat down, all my energy deflated with a sad, whimpering squeak, so no more work is going to take place today.

In checking through my campus e-mail today, I got the information about when adjuncts need to submit their preference forms for fall--and it's in early June. So when I see Bruce next week, I'll ask him if he wants me to do a first pass through at least most of it before I head off to Idaho and other points west. Some time back I also got a link to evaluate adjunct applications. I looked at one, but then I realized that looking at them all would be quite a time-consuming enterprise, and I didn't want to take the time out of the sabbatical project for that, or not just yet anyway. So, that's another question for when I see Bruce.

I'm starting to think that perhaps I need to make a list of the questions I want to ask him: they seem to be piling up. Then again, I'll be working with him for most of the week, I imagine, so if I forget a question on any one occasion, there will certainly be other chances for me to ask.

I have to say, almost every time I check my campus e-mail--which I have to do more often than I'd like, just to keep things manageable--I encounter something that either makes me angry or fills me with discouragement. Education is under attack all over the country--often even by the best intentioned "champions" of education--and NCC is no exception. But one of my former student stars, who went from NCC to Columbia and now is off to Oxford, just posted a photo of Columbia at night, a photo in which it looks every bit a temple of higher education, and I thought, "Thank God there are still a few places like that around." Of course, I have no idea what kinds of battles are being fought behind the scenes at Columbia, how the standards of education are being eroded (or what struggle is going on so they're not to eroded), but there certainly is a benefit to being an enormous, private institution in the Ivy League instead of being a community college in a state system.

Still, as I think with despair about what we're facing, how hard we're having to fight just to keep what little we've got, I know that I've made a difference in a few lives. My Oxford-bound former student is only one shining example. And I tell myself that they're why I keep fighting--and why having this sabbatical as a time to rest and recover is part of the sabbatical project. I may or may not finish all the pieces, even in rough-draft form, before I have to fling myself back into the teaching trenches, but the time I spend resting is going to benefit my students in the long run. Certainly it will benefit me.

And on that note, I'm going to hang up my spurs for the day and loaf around until it's time to meet Paul for dinner. He's in deep water right now, because he agreed to be on the Executive Council of the Academic Senate, so he's not in the trenches: he's out there running across mine fields and barbed wire, surrounded by cannon fire. I am glad to be able to support and encourage him--and the entire academic community is lucky as hell to have him on the front lines for us--but the contrast between what he's going through and my reasons for wining and complaining make it very clear how completely spoiled I am.

So I'm going to spoil myself some more. Because, for a while longer, I can.

a little dip in the deep end

I sorta-kinda finished the "Science and Science Fiction" chapter, so I also sorta-kinda worked on the themes chapter. And I've figured out part of why I'm resisting: it's that balance I can never quite find between giving too much and not giving enough. I think part of what I need to do--for the whole thing but especially for this chapter--is figure out exactly how I think it will help students. What do I want them to get out of it? I'm not entirely sure I know: I'm assuming they'll have to write papers, and I'm assuming they'll need to write about something thematic (that's a pretty standard approach to analysis, after all), and I'm assuming they don't quite know what a theme is or, once one is located, how to write about it. I'm also assuming that I have to be at least a little careful to avoid "spoilers": I can't be sure that students will have read the entire novel before they read any particular section of my apparatus. Other than that, my brains seem to be gummed up in some way: it's a form of writer's block, apparently, but it's hard to muscle past/through.

On a more positive note, I heard today from one of the colleagues at a 4-year school whom I contacted about providing some feedback. The first one I heard from generally approved of the project as a whole but didn't evidence any interest in looking at it in detail (but then he has a lot on his plate at the moment, so hardly surprising, and no indication of any rejection). The guy I heard from today is highly enthusiastic, which is great. I think I'll send him what I have finished at this point and let him know that the themes stuff is in progress; certainly just sending what I have now will give both him and me a great sense of whether I'm on the right track (and let's hope like hell that I am). I can send him more later, if he's interested and if it seems useful.

And of course I'll post the results here, once he's had a chance to get back to me.

Now, however, I'm not entirely sure what I want to do or how to go about doing it. I'm in one of those states when I'm both lazy and restless--and not quite sure how to make best use of the time between now and when I have to get on a train in to the City to try out that tango class. (If I hadn't already paid for it, I'd bail--but I don't see how to cancel the class on their website, so I guess that's my indication that I should go.) I had a great class last night: those experiences in dance class are deeply beneficial to me as a teacher. I need to remember what it is to feel very frustrated--and what it is to get help to pull out of frustration. The main instructor last night is great: I've worked with him before, and he can break things down, understand, explain, clarify, demonstrate--and have a sense of humor the whole time. Last night, he wore a clown nose all through class. (Tango is, after all, such a serious dance.) I'm not sure I'd be able to carry off the clown nose thing, but it's good to remember to keep things light and loose.

Nothing more to report at this juncture. I don't know what tomorrow will be like. I have a lot of life-maintenance stuff to do, but it's hard to tell whether tonight's City jaunt will make me want to stay home and metaphorically hide under the sofa or if it will make me want to get out. The weather certainly will be an inducement to get out, so ... well, we'll see.