"Following Your Bliss"

It's that time of year. The time of year that students - some promising, some less so - start wanting to talk in earnest about going to graduate school. Now, I'd never suggest that a student should make this decision based on the "bliss" that he or she feels in the study of literature. Others would disagree with me on this. But once again I find myself thinking about how I do approach this issue - in part because I did the radical thing of actually suggesting the idea of grad school to a student (something that I normally would never do) and in part because I've heard from a student of mine who began grad school in English this fall. Also, I attended an event that a colleague puts together every fall to talk about going to grad school with majors in our department. So once again I'm thinking about the ethics of encouraging students to pursue graduate degrees in English (given the glutted market, the years lost to graduate education, the havoc that grad school can wreak on one's personal life), and I'm thinking about my own position on such things, and whether I'm really doing it any better than those that I would criticize.

Now, my general position includes the following tenets:

1) I think that professors need to be very careful about suggesting to any student that he or she should consider graduate school. We have a lot of influence, and to make that suggestion to a student who isn't otherwise thinking about it is a very big deal. We've got to take that seriously.
2) If a student is considering graduate school, it is our responsibility to try to educate them about the realities of the profession and graduate education generally - including the negative aspects.
3) If after getting all of the information a student remains interested in pursuing the grad school path, and if we feel that this student has promise, I do think that it is important that we give the student strong support and good advice toward making the best decisions in this process possible.

As a professor at my current institution, I believe that these things take on even greater significance because of the student population that I teach. Many of my students are in the first generation of their families to go to college. If they choose graduate school they will not necessarily have the understanding and support of their families, and they will face a significant learning curve when it comes to being acculturated into academic discourse and culture. My students tend to think that going to grad school is a "safe" choice - one that will guarantee them stable employment. They also tend to think that the higher the degree that one attains the more money that one will make. They also tend to think that grad school will just be an extension of undergrad, and this is somewhat problematic, especially given their undergraduate experience at my current institution.* Part of the reason that I am sensitive to these issues is because when I started on the path toward this profession as an undergraduate, I suffered similar delusions.

I'd also say, though, that I think that it's important that students from this kind of background do have support in entering the academy if they have the ability and want to do so. One reason that I think that this is important is because students need mentors who understand where they're coming from - if all professors come from professor-families, moneyed backgrounds, etc., then undergraduates can have difficulty finding role models for exceeding the expectations of their families and social circles. I also think that it's important to bringing new perspectives to the research that is produced in various fields.**

But. The important thing here is that the student can't come second to a desire to bring a certain kind of diversity to the profession. And it's important that we don't do a bait-and-switch with students - emphasizing all of the positive aspects of the profession and/or graduate study for them to get a rude awakening when it's too late. Now, students are still going to delude themselves, no matter how much information we give them, otherwise nobody would ever go to graduate school. And yet I do think that being honest about the realities of the choices that they are making will help them once the scales fall from their eyes a few years down the road. At least that's what I hope.

So. As I mentioned, I made the radical decision (not without some angst) to present a current student with the idea that he could consider graduate school. This student is currently an English Ed student, but he's not the typical English Ed student. He is the one student in my survey who chose to write on the "literary criticism" topic for the first paper. In class, he's fairly quiet, but every time he comments, he produces insightful and incisive analyses of the texts under discussion. His first paper demonstrated a considerable aptitude for beautiful academic prose (though he's clearly dazzled his professors before me without really revising, and so he does have some work to do with his writing if he does choose to go on). He earned the highest grade I've ever given on a midterm. In fact, it was the midterm that sealed it for me. This is not a student who is just going through the motions. Nor is this a student who appears to be the typical over-achiever who gives the "right" answers but doesn't really care about what answers he's giving and only cares about the grade. No, this is a student who has a spark of something that tells me he'd really shine if he were able to study literature at a more advanced level.

But. I was worried. If I suggest this to this student, who clearly has a plan to teach high school, am I doing harm? What I decided was that I would give it to him straight. I'd tell him that I do think it's an option for him, but also I'd tell him that it's a risk. I'd give it to him straight, and I'd tell him to come and talk to me about his options. Part of the reason that I felt comfortable doing this, honestly, is because he's an English Ed major. I figured that he does have a back-up plan, which is one of the things that I encourage ALL of my students who talk to me about grad school to have. But I still might have done the wrong thing. I don't know.

Anyway, he (shyly) came to talk to me about it yesterday. It's the first real conversation I'd had with him. He's in the first generation of his family to go to college. He's very concerned that his family will not have the resources to help him, and he was most interested at first in just finding out whether it could really be possible for him to even think about doing this thing. He then expressed concern about how his family would take the decision. (I remember this was something that plagued me, too. I was really concerned that my family not think I had "wasted" my education and think of me as a "lifetime student." They thought those things anyway, but I had to come to terms with it before I changed my major to English. I remember a particularly emotional conversation with my mom, and I remember worrying that she'd be disappointed that I wanted to keep going to school.) I talked to him about my own background, and I talked to him about the fact that I did not think anyone should pursue grad school unfunded. I talked to him about the length of time that it would take, and I talked to him about the horrible job market. I directed him to my website, where I have links to things about making the decision to go to grad school. And that's where the conversation ended. So for now, it's up in the air. I wonder what he will do. But I think all in all I'm glad I put the idea in his head. Even if he chooses not to pursue it, I think that it was a nice compliment to pay him, to give him the option. I think that if it were me, I would like that someone had expressed that kind of confidence in me, even if I chose not to pursue the option.

Now today I heard from my Favorite Student Ever, who began a very good MA program this fall. This student has kept in touch since graduating in the Spring, and I have really high hopes for her. That said, it's been interesting seeing her transition into grad school. I don't know a whole lot about what's happening with her, but I do sense that she's going through a bit of culture shock. First, she's young. And she's been thrown right into teaching. (Again, not unlike my own experience.) I heard from her at the beginning of the semester, and she emailed to ask me why people in her teacher-training program "couldn't just spit it out" when they had questions or comments, but rather went on and on using a bunch of jargon. This is something I'd forgotten about: learning the language of performing one's intelligence; demonstrating that one "belongs in the club" by refusing to speak plain English. At other kinds of institutions, students begin to learn this as undergraduates. Not so here. So this has been a challenge for methodical, straight-forward FSE. (Aside: FSE refuses to call me by my first name, even though I tried to explain to her that she's my colleague now :) I wonder if she'll ever do it, though I did tell her that when she gets her Ph.D. if she still persists in calling me Dr. Crazy that I will insist on calling her Dr. FSE.) In her email today, she expressed concern about her comp. class. First of all, she's really been thrown to the dogs. She's got a 7:30 AM class, at least 75% of the students are male, and those students are primarily engineering majors. Oof. They're not coming to class; they're pissed off that she's not using rubrics for papers; basically (though she didn't say this) I sense that they are totally challenging her authority. Nothing prepares you for that. And in some ways it's just something you have to get through. I tried to give her some advice that I thought might help. (Actually, I wondered whether I should reveal my blog to her, as I think she might find it helpful, but I ended up not doing it. Maybe I'll tell her someday? Or just direct her to some other blogs in our little circle?) So it sounds like she's having a bit of a rough entry, but it also sounds like she's doing well. I'm trying to encourage her to go to her first conference this summer. We'll see if she's up for it.

So I don't know. Am I doing the right thing by these students? Should I be more discouraging? More encouraging? It's easy to figure out what to do with students who don't seem like they could make it. What's hardest for me is figuring out what to do with those students who seem like they maybe could.

But in any case, choosing this path is not, as far as I'm concerned, about "following your bliss." It's work. It's hard. It separates you from your origins, and it really can fuck with your sense of yourself. If things go well, yes, you get to pursue ideas that are interesting to you; you get to spend your life doing something that is meaningful to you. That's a pretty big pay-off. But that's if things go well, and we all know that things don't always go well for people who take this path. And so it's hard, as a professor for whom things have gone well, to know how best to help one's students navigate these dangerous waters.






*I do believe that students get a decent education here, but it isn't as rigorous as the education they might receive at other institutions. They don't tend to read as much as students at other institutions; they don't tend to have the experience with research writing or with critical theory. This doesn't mean it's impossible for them to do well in graduate school, but it does mean that it will challenge them in a way that students in other departments may not be as challenged.

** But part of these views may be my own narcissism. I feel like I add something to this profession because of my decidedly outside-the-intelligentsia upbringing, so I'm not sure how much validity my claims here have.

Fun Meme - Guess the Text

As seen over at Anastasia's:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

"Death, a cause of terror to the sinner, is a blessed moment for him who has walked in the right path, fulfilling the duties of his station in life, attending to his morning and evening prayers, approaching the holy sacrament frequently and performing good and merciful works. For the pious and believing catholic, for the just man, death is no cause of terror. Was it not Addison, the great English writer, who, when on his deathbed, sent for the wicked young earl of Warwick to let him see how a christian can meet his end. He it is and he alone, the pious and believing christian, who can say in his heart:
O grave, where is thy victory?
O death, where is thy sting?"

A kind of strange thing for me to post but I did pick the book nearest me. And it is a "cool" and "intellectual" book - but this isn't what I'd have chosen as four sentences to post from it. Hmmm. Shall anyone guess it?

O, For a Schedule Free of Meetings

Today is one of those days when the idea of cancelling my classes and returning to bed sounds like the best possible way to spend my day. In days of yore, I might have done such a thing. But you know what? As much as I want to do that today, I won't. This is not because I have some sort of heightened sense of responsibility but because it would be too much of a pain in the ass to reschedule the meetings with students that will fill my afternoon.

I hate meetings. And the longer I'm in this job, the number of meetings doubles - quadruples. It's like the meetings are breeding.

Maybe it won't be as long a day as it seems like it will be?

(What makes it worse is that I've got another afternoon of meetings on tap for tomorrow. Such a time suck, meetings are.)

The Grand Confession That Wasn't

I just had lunch with my chair, who is awesome. Yeah, so VSC had mentioned the whole "going on the market" thing to him, but that was ok. I still felt good telling him, and I think he was happy that I did.

I am very, very lucky to have this kind of support from people in positions of power in my department. I am very, very lucky to have the kinds of relationships with them that made me feel ok being open about my decision to look. I also feel like even if I do change jobs I will be able to maintain friendships with some of the people here and that they will wish me well, and that makes me happy, too.

I know they don't want me to go. Sometimes I think I don't want to go. It may be that I don't have to decide to go because nobody else will want me. But going through this process has made me see some really good things about this place, and even if nothing comes of going on the market, the fact that I can see the good in this place a bit more clearly is a really good thing.

What is not a good thing is the huge lunch I consumed and the fact that I did not remember to throw my gym bag in the car. Oh, and the fact that I saw what I think were snowflakes outside.

Rereading

As I think I've posted here before, in my reading-for-pleasure life I'm a compulsive rereader - and generally what I reread is not particularly amazing writing. I reread for pleasure precisely because if I'm reading something new - whatever its quality or lack thereof - I find it very difficult to close up shop for the night and to go to sleep at a sensible bedtime. I read in great big gulps - hours at a stretch, through meals, through whatever. I find it difficult, when reading something new, to put a book down.

That said, when it comes to work reading, I don't tend to reread very much. I'm not sure if this makes me unique among people who work on literature or not, nor am I sure if this is an entirely positive thing. I suspect that more of my colleagues in my discipline probably do reread more than I do for work. Part of the reason that I don't tend to reread is because of the compulsive fashion in which I take notes on things that I use for teaching or research. While of course I could reread things in their entirety anyway, I generally don't, as with all of the notes it's just not necessary. In some respects, this habit has served me particularly well, especially given my teaching load. It's an efficient way to work - to spend a bunch of time in the first and maybe second go-arounds annotating, and then to just do a quick skim when one picks up a book to teach it again or just to read relevent sections closely for one's research. If I had to read every single thing that I teach in its entirety every time that I teach it - or to read every single thing that I write about in its entirety every time that I do research on it - I probably would have died of exhaustion long ago. (Though, of course, perhaps that has to do with the compulsive note-taking, too, so maybe this doesn't kill other people.)

But so I've been rereading To the Lighthouse, because my original copy is hiding from me or lost forever (hard to know which), and this has been a revelation. It is very strange to read something with which one is very familiar and which at one point had compulsively annotated and yet to read it clean, as if it had never been touched by me or read by me before. (This is not the same thing as buying a new copy of a book when one has the old copy as well, for even if one does reread, one can turn back to the "original" and either copy in notes from it or enter into conversation with those notes.)

The experience is bizarre for so many reasons. It's bizarre when I hit upon a passage that stood out to me in the past and I can remember what I thought about it (and wrote about it) but where now my interpretation is slightly different, and so I find myself transcribing notes from memory and then adding nuances to those semi-remembered ideas. It's bizarre when I hit upon a passage or image that is so clearly crucial to me now but to which I didn't give a second thought on previous readings - as if I'm reading a different book, at some points. It's also bizarre to read this in preparation to teach it - this is a book that I read as a student, and on which I wrote as a student, and coming to it from this vantage point seems foreign. I find myself anticipating student responses - trying to connect the text to other texts we're covering this semester - and so I can't get lost in the book in the way that I remember getting lost in it as a student. Finally, it's bizarre that I don't find the book at all difficult, which was one of the key attractions of it for me when I first read it. I wanted to figure out the puzzle with which I felt it presented me. Now, I no longer feel like it's a puzzle. Now, it just makes sense.

I don't know. It's odd, because one might trace my path to becoming an academic directly back to my experience with this book as an 18-year-old college freshman. And after I wrote on it as a graduate student, I pretty consciously chose to abandon it because I loved it too much and I didn't want to spoil it for myself with working on it more. (This, at least in my experience, has been a key consideration in choosing what to teach and what to do research on. I find that if I love something too much, I feel like the experience of taking it apart does a violence not to the book but to my love for it. I also have a hard time getting outside of my own perspective enough to do any truly good critical work on those books that I love wholeheartedly. This is not to say that I've not written on or taught books that I love wholeheartedly, but doing so changes them for me in ways that I sometimes resist and resent.) But so on this reading, I am in love with this book again, but I'm in love with a different book from the one that I first fell in love with, if that makes any sense.

I remember, on first reading To the Lighthouse, being very preoccupied with the parent-characters - Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. I remember also being very preoccupied with Charles Tansley, whom I despised. I was intrigued by Lily Briscoe, and I tried very hard to figure her out, but I didn't really "get" what Woolf was doing with her.

On this reading, though, at 32 years old to the single Lily Briscoe's 33, this novel is making much more sense to me. I'm noticing the children more, noticing William Bankes more. I'm seeing why it matters that Lily sees Mrs. Ramsay as a dark violet wedge of paint. I'm seeing why it matters that Lily is trying to paint but can't allow herself to think of herself as a "painter" or an "artist" (and I'm seeing that this is not only because she is an oppressed woman). I'm seeing this novel and its characters more fully in part because of my own life experiences but perhaps more importantly because I don't have all of the marginal voices - of my younger self, of my teachers, of my classmates - shouting in the background. I can still hear those voices in whispers, but I don't feel like I have to answer them unless I want to. And this time around, this novel is not so dark or so dense to me. It is not nearly so earnest.

So perhaps the novel that I loved so much that I put it to the side was not, in fact, the novel that I'm reading now or even the novel that it is. Maybe I should do a bit more rereading that has nothing to do with wanting to be able to go to sleep at a reasonable time. Who knows what I might find?

My Parents are Getting Married!

Ok, so my biological parents were married in 1974. March of 1974. As I arrived in summer 1974, you can see that time was of the essence in getting them hitched, yes? Well, they then divorced in 1986. (I've got a post brewing about my relationship with my dad, but this is not the post for that. My dad got remarried about five seconds after the divorce was finalized and I was not told until after the fact and I was not invited. Classy guy, my father. But I digress, and again, this is not the post to deal with him.)

Now my mom and my stepdad met around the time that the divorce was finalized. They met because she parked in the parking lot where he worked. He would see her every day, and I guess he liked what he saw, and so he checked around to see what her status was with her friends from her job. (Remember: my stepdad is an immigrant. And people can be mean to immigrants, so it made sense he'd do some legwork on the front end of things. Oh, and he totally wasn't into the idea of getting involved with some woman who had baby-daddy-drama or rotten kids. He had never been married, and as far as I can tell, he had decided that he wouldn't marry at some point in his 20s.) But so, to make a long story short, my mom said she'd go out with him.

[Aside: if you wonder from whence Dr. Crazy gets some of her craziness, Dr. Crazy's mom asked the following oh-so-attractive-to-one's-date questions on her first date with him: 1) are you a United States citizen? 2) are you a Christian? It's a wonder they've been together 20 years with that kind of beginning, I think.]

But so anyway, to make a long story short, something with the two of them clicked, and they've been together ever since. Well, there was a breakup scare when I was 14 (my mom and I moved, and a stressed out Crazy's Mom is kind of a shrew, and my stepdad isn't going to be walked over by a bitchy woman, and so he almost ended it. But he missed me (or so he says - I think he missed her, too, but I was a good excuse). But that's ok, I'll take the credit. And so I am responsible for their relationship! I am awesome!

At any rate, the thing that is so great about him is that when he first started dating my mom and then when he moved in with us (just sort of by osmosis - there was no grand moving in day - just he sort of slowly imbedded himself in our lives) he didn't try to boss me around or to bribe me or to whatever. He never tried to take the place of my father, but at the same time he's been more of a father to me for the past 20 years than my biological father has. All through high school, we would fight about politics and stuff going on in the news, and I rebelled against him. (It turns out, he's probably the most well informed person I've ever seen about such things, but when you're 15 and a passionate girl, political fights with any authority figure devolve into screaming matches and tears - yes, I cried all the time when I talked to him about the politics. Now it turns out we agree on a bunch of things, though whether that was me changing him or him changing me I'm not sure.) He knows what's going on in my life; he yells at me if I don't "do my duty" and call once a week (at minimum). He's the one who moved me to grad school; he's the one who told my mom that they could manage to help me financially during grad school. He's been at all of my graduations; he's in the acknowledgments of my dissertation. He's the one who was there in October 2003 for both my mom and for me when my grandmother died. I guess what I'm saying is that my stepdad has been my father for a really long time.

So it's exciting that he's finally going to be my mother's husband - even if it's taken them 20 years to get there.

(Incidentally, they are both totally freaked out and they claim they're doing it so that my mom can put him on her health insurance. My mom keeps worrying that he doesn't really want to do it, but then she keeps saying that she doesn't believe it's going to happen and she had never really thought about doing it... They're both pretty funny, I've got to say. I wish I could be there, but I think they'd both be embarassed - I'm the only person they've told, and they're just going to quietly go to the Justice of the Peace. It'll be interesting to see how they tell The Family. Oh, and I've not been calling back my one Real Life Non-Academic Friend who reads this blog because I'm afraid I'll tell her about it and I know there's no way that she could keep it inside and not spill the beans to her sisters if she knew - just as I couldn't not tell her if I talked to her now that I know - so A., if you're reading this (on Monday, as she does not do internet at home, which is why this post is safe), I'm sorry I've not called but the deed will be done by tomorrow afternoon, so I can call you after it's official!)

Poetry Friday - T. S. Eliot

I know, the Eliot again. Today, some lines from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Reading for Pleasure Wednesday - When Pleasure Becomes Work

Ok, so when I invented this thing - Reading for Pleasure Wednesday - one of the stipulations was that we couldn't write about things that were work-related. This was a very nice summertime idea, but today I've been thinking a bit about how things that I think are pleasure-reading at the time have a way of seeping into my work (unless of course they are total crap). This is one of the potential pitfalls of specializing in English Literature as an academic: one decides to read something - at an airport bookstore, even - and the next thing one knows, one realizes that it would be the perfect thing to teach. Or one reads something - on the recommendation of a professor when one is an undergraduate, not for a class but just "for fun" - and then the next thing one knows that thing one read for pleasure 13 years ago is now a central focus of her research.

In some ways, I suppose this is a good thing. It means I'm working on stuff that I enjoy - truly enjoy. It starts off as pleasure and then I turn it into work because it seems fun to work on. But at the same time, this makes it difficult to distinguish what "counts" as pleasure-reading. Part of the difficulty is that my field encompasses literature that one might reasonably expect to read for "fun." (That said, I also work on things that are decidedly "work" and not fun and that I'd never have considered fun, as I'm a frivolous person.) But it's weird, especially when I talk to people outside of my discipline because it's not unusual for them to mention things that I have transformed into "work" as pleasure-reading, and I don't quite know what to do with that. Have I made these things un-fun by teaching them or by writing about them? Or are they still fun, only work, too? I don't think I'd have this problem if I worked on, say, George Herbert. He's just not a "popular" writer. But the writers whom I tend to teach and whom I tend to do scholarly work on? Well, lots of people choose to read them, for pleasure. Except it seems that I choose not to read these things for pleasure - as soon as I start feeling pleasure in them I transform them into something I have to figure out. Perhaps this is a bad quality in me.

But so I'm going to try really hard to read something that is definitively pleasure-reading in the coming week or two. Even though I'm trying to get the book manuscript together, and even though I've got a bit of non-pleasure reading that I've got to accomplish in that time as well. I'm sorry for falling down on the job here (look - I've even made talking about books that I read for pleasure a job), but it's really hard to figure out what "counts" as pleasure when, really, my entire job is based on reading books I like.

Break-time's Over

So far today I have:

1. Taught a class.
2. Printed out stuff related to the book proposal, ordered stuff via interlibrary loan for the polishing of the sample chapter, printed out a couple of journal articles related to the sample chapter.
3. Forgot to "apply" for my reassigned time for spring. Must put that on my to-do list for tomorrow.
4. Scheduled two advising appointments with students; rescheduled a meeting related to my quasi-admin. position.
5. Worked out.
6. Officially scheduled lunch with my department chair.

#6 is the thing I really want to talk about in this post. I have yet to tell my chair that I'm going on the market, and that's the main reason why I asked him to meet. I had intended to tell him at the end of the summer - after I told Very Supportive Colleague, who is writing me a letter. The problem was, the end of the summer kind of ended before I got around to making my Grand Confession. A lot was going on. My department chair was dealing with some health stuff, the university appropriated some money that the department had been depending on, the university approved two t-t searches, I was getting acclimated to the quasi-admin position, there have been some new administrative things that I along with the entire department have had to deal with.... So yes, rather than force the issue about going on the market when all of that was happening, I allowed myself to put it off. Now, this isn't a big deal in some respects, in that I've got a letter from a VIP in the department. And it's entirely possible that the VIP told my chair about my intentions. But as I got stuff ready to send out, I realized that it was really important for me to tell my chair about what I'm up to.

My relationship with my chair is a really good one. He has been nothing but supportive of me, and I really do trust him to understand my situation when I explain it to him. The reason I'm a little anxious is because I don't want him to be upset by what I'm doing. I don't want him to fear that I "hate" my job or something. Because I don't. But so yes. I'm going to be having lunch with my chair. And while I'm sure it will be fine, I'm also kind of nervous.

[Aside: we're going to the same place for lunch that I went to with my other colleague in the summer, and this gives me a weird sense of deja vu like when I was in grad school and went on two consecutive first dates at the same restaurant. Maybe some locations just inspire certain kinds of meetings. Jae's in Boston? Apparently the place to go on a first date. Restaurant Here? Apparently the place to tell senior colleagues that you're looking for another job. Who knew?]

But so now, I need to turn off the computer and work for two hours on stuff for my book proposal. My aim is to send the thing out by Oct. 31, so I've got some pretty substantial work to accomplish between now and then. In other news, a panel that I proposed for a conference in the summer was officially accepted, so now I need to begin doing some things related to the paper that I will present in earnest (like actually reading one of the novels I claim that I will discuss) as well as to ask a few different sources for some money to go. And then I've got to come up with an abstract for another conference, but that will be related to something I'm teaching in the next couple of weeks, so that's kind of on the back-burner at the moment.

So that's the research stuff going on.

And then with teaching, we're moving into the modernist period in the Survey and we're finishing up with a Novel Many of My Students Do Not Like in my upper division class tomorrow. In my writing class, we're edging ever closer to their second formal paper.

In other words, I'm wicked-busy. But I'm feeling pretty energized about it all after the four days off, so maybe fall break has done its job?

Productivity Resumes - While Slackerdom Continues... As Impossible As It May Seem

Well, today is my last day of freedom, and then it's back to the grind. For most of the day, I allowed myself to continue in relaxation mode. I slept in, I read some Potter, I took a nap with my kitty-cat. Yet, I also did some things that needed doing.

1. I went to the grocery store to buy milk. I cannot drink coffee black, so this was imperative. I also bought a few odds and ends so that I could chef up some healthy meals that will get me through the next week or so of lunches and dinners. Since being back on the healthy eating bandwagon, I've found that it's KEY to make some things in large portions that I can then put into individual serving-size containers so that I don't fall into the "I don't want to cook/pack my lunch" trap and eat garbage. So I've started making things - big pots of chili, casseroles with whole wheat pasta, etc. - that would feed a large family, and then I freeze most of it, so I can have variety throughout a given week, eat things that taste delicious, and yet also don't have to cook. Which leads to #2
2. I cooked myself up two casseroles - one tuna-fish, and one a sort of modified cheeseburger casserole. Now, I know what you're saying: How can these seeming comfort foods be healthy? Well, first, there's the whole wheat pasta. Let's say that you have a package of whole wheat macaroni, and it's supposed to be the equivalent of eight servings. Well, instead you make that pasta stretch to be like 12 servings, and you supplement it instead with a TON of vegetables. You use lean meats. You use lowfat cheese (not nonfat, because the texture is like plastic). And yes, I do use the condensed "cream of" soup, which isn't ideal, but it's easy, and for the little of it that one eats per portion, I feel like it's ok. At any rate, I suppose I'm eating like people who don't have a lot of money but who try to make pasta/meat (the expensive stuff) "stretch" by using lots of veggies, but it gets the job done. Not as delicious as a full-fat casserole, but delicious nonetheless. I do miss butter, though. I love butter.
3. I ordered 2/3 of the books I need to order for fall, as the book order deadline just passed. I can't order the books for one class yet as I'm still deciding whether it would be wise to do a custom text-book thing. On the one hand I like the idea (will make things cheaper for my students, the one I'm considering has 99% of what I'd want it to have for the class, excepting the novels) but on the other I feel like it's risky - what if somebody buys the book, drops the class, and then doesn't return the book? They only will order as many as needed for the class. Hmm. Must consider what to do.
4. I dealt with some email stuff, and thought a bit about the class that I will teach tomorrow.
5. I'm continuing to reread To the Lighthouse, which is just lovely. I ended up buying a new copy because it seems that I lost my old one somewhere along the way (or it's hiding behind a bookshelf or something). In some ways this is good, as I really did need to reread, and to make teaching-style notes. On the other hand, I'm kind of wistful about the seeming loss of the old copy, as it was the copy I used for my first research paper in college, the copy I used for the paper that I wrote and used as my PhD application writing sample, the copy that I used for my very first ever publication. I do hope it's not lost and gone forever.

So yes, I am both productive and lazy. I wish I could have this balance all the time. Sadly, this is not to be. Things will continue to be crazy over the next couple of weeks with meetings, and things promise to be pretty intense in each of my classes in terms of the material that I'm teaching. Then, when that couple of weeks is over, more grading. Sigh.

But for now - the riveting conclusion of Flavor of Love. That New York, she doesn't know what time it is.

Have Many of the Men with Whom I've Had Sex Been Using Aliases?

Because according to this website, a number of them do not exist in the United States. Either I have an incredibly active imagination, or that website is wack.

(Also, they say there are two people in the U.S. with my name, which I actually find hard to believe. I truly think I'm the only person in the whole world with my name.)

Edited to add: I also have a number of family members who do not exist, as well as some friends from graduate school. Common denominator in all of these cases? The names tend to be more "ethnic" than not. Perhaps people of various ethnicities just don't exist?

Crazy Cat Lady Enters Man-Kitty in Beauty Contest

Ok, so I caved. After spending some quality time voting on kittens in the Kitten War, I decided that the Man-Kitty really should have his shot at Kitten War Glory. So far, he's one 5 battles, lost 4, and tied with one. I've got to say, it's really not his best picture, but still - it's early.

Taking a Break

At my university, we have a 16-week semester (not including finals week). This is a long haul. It is an especially long haul when one considers that the institution at which I received my PhD had a semester that was about 12 weeks long with a huge number of holidays. But so yes, this semester length has taken some getting used to. It is a marathon, for sure.

The fall semester seems especially long compared with the spring - maybe because there is no spring break? Maybe because the weather is getting crappier rather than getting nicer? Who knows.

But one thing that makes it possible to make the long march from beginning to end is that we have a fall break. Now, the fall break is just two days long - two days that are acquired by having the university stay open on Columbus Day and Veterans Day. Two days, back-to-back, right around midterm. The equivalent of having two weekends in a row.

I never have gone away for my fall break. I suppose I could plan some sort of weekend trip or something, but the fact of the matter is that I'm too exhausted at this point to imagine doing so, so I never end up making such plans. Instead, I always plan to "catch up" over the fall break - whether on research, or housework, or reading for my courses, or whatever. But you know what I end up doing every year?

I end up lying around. Sleeping. Thinking about making to-do lists and yet not making them, for if there is no list then there is nothing to do, right?

I spend quality time with the Man-Kitty, who misses me during the semester when I'm away from home far too much. (That said, the Man-Kitty gets annoyed with me in the summers because I'm home far too much. You can't win with that cat.)

I'd feel guilty, but I'm far too relaxed right now for guilt. I've accomplished four things this weekend: I finished grading a stack of midterms, I mailed off my job applications, I went to dinner and the movies with my BFF here, and I posted midterm grades for my freshmen. Other than that, I've taken naps, slept for more than 5 hours in a row, which means that I've actually had dreams, watched TV, talked on the phone, eaten non-diet food, and avoided working out. Tomorrow I'll get back on the wagon. I'll get back into the groove of things. But for now? I'm just reveling in having gotten a break from the grind.

Go See The Departed

It is awesome.

That is all.

A Number of Things

Item One
I haven't written much about the diet/exercise since the beginning of the year, when I joined a gym and began paying attention to those things as part of a whole resolution-related thing. I want to write about this because I haven't abandoned the project. Now, I'm hovering around the weight I achieved at the beginning of the spring (though am losing again! as I'm back on the wagon! and packing one's lunch seems to be the main key in doing this!), but I have succeeded in that I DO continue to go to the gym and I AM in better shape and I AM one size smaller than I was when I began 2006. My aim is to lose one more size by the end of the year. We shall see. (As you see, I'm not a very hard-core diet/exercise person - for me it's all about being able to live with myself as I try to do this, which means that a) I eat real food and b) I have one total cheating day a week.)

Item Two
So speaking of real food, on today, what I like to call "Cheating Friday," I made an awesome dinner (after indulging on potato chips and bacon and onion dip). The first part of it actually is in line with phase two of the South Beach Diet (I was being good given the whole "chips and dip" fiasco), and I want to post the recipe, as I totally enjoyed it.

The dish: stuffed (that's right, stuffed) pork chops.

Ingredients:

• Boneless center-cut pork chops, with fat trimmed. The ones I used were about 3/4 of an inch in thickness, maybe a little less. As I'm a single person, I only made two, though the ingredients I will list for the stuffing would definitely make enough for four, if not six. I chose just to make what was left of the stuffing separately to use as a side for some other meal I will make this week.
• Pam cooking spray. (Original recipe called for two full tablespoons of oil.)
• 1 medium onion, chopped.
• 1 cup of chopped mushrooms. I just bought one of the pre-sliced/cleaned packages of mushrooms that measures to a cup, and gave them a rough chop.
• 1 cup of bread cubes. (I used whole wheat bread, and it was yummy. I just cubed three slices. Incidentally, this is a great use for the heels of loaves of bread. Also, I like the Brownberry Double Fiber 100% Whole Wheat Bread, so that's what I used.)
• (The recipe called for 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley, but I didn't have any, so I just eliminated it from the recipe. I didn't miss it. Does parsely have any taste in any dish except tabbouli?)
• Salt, pepper, sage to taste
• Two tablespoons of reduced fat-sour cream (I suppose you could use non-fat, but I find that reduced-fat has a texture that's preferable.)
  
• 1/4 cup of water.

1. Cut side pockets in chops and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Sautee onion (spray a nonstick sautee pan with some Pam) until transparent. Add mushrooms, stirring often, and cook for about two minutes. Add the bread crumbs, parsley, sage, ground black pepper, and salt. Mix well.
3. Add the sour cream, again, mixing well. ( I turned off the heat when I added the sour cream.)
4. Stuff the pork chops, using toothpick(s) to keep the stuffing in. (I've got to admit, I used like one toothpick. I'm just not anal about such things.)
5. Arrange the pork chops in a baking dish, and cover with 1/4 cup of water. Bake covered for 30 minutes, and then bake uncovered another 30 minutes until the pork chops are all delicious and browned.

The prep time is only like 20 minutes total (if that). Yes, it takes a while for it to cook, but virtually unattended. If I make this again, I suspect I'll add some celery to the stuffing, but even as it was it was really yummy.

If this weren't Cheating Friday, I think this would be lovely with either broccoli or asparagus. As it was Cheating Friday, it was AWESOME with mashed potatoes made with asiago cheese :)

Item Three
I finished grading my exams from the lower-division class that I received yesterday. Can I just say I love grading exams? Compared to grading papers? Because I do not comment on them? At any rate, I have to say, I think I write a really good exam. I did curve it up three points (I tend to do this with the midterm, showing them what they would have received, but then bumping them up in part to account for my tendency to be pretty hard on them - the highest grade but one who would have blown any curving were I a meaner person was a 93 - and in part to avoid any haggling over points - I've already given you three, so don't come to me wanting an extra one) but here was the range of grades: 5 A's, 7 B's, 5 C's, 4 D's, and an F. How much better of a curve could there be for a take-home? I mean, it takes some effort on the part of a student to actually fail a take-home exam.

Item Four
Ok, so for the past couple of days I've been kind of super-stressed and freaked out and a little bit nuts. I suppose it had to happen, what with going on the market and all. All I have to say about it, now that I've chilled a bit, is this: 1) thank God that Job Search Mentor is very mellow and is able to talk me off of ledges, 2) love the lovely Man-Kitty who is a total alleviator of stress with his awesomeness, 3) love my funny mom, who doesn't really get it but who listens, 4) (though this is actually kind of mean) thank god for my high-school/college ex-boyfriend, because things are so screwed up with him right now that it was able to take me out of my own head when I finally talked to him at length last night, 5) am very happy that IB (a person with whom I kind of correspond via email) didn't think I was a weirdo last night (a) and also that we didn't talk so that he would have seen first-hand what a weirdo I am (b).

Item Five
I'm sending off the remaining application packets tomorrow. I'm kind of psyched, kind of freaked out still, but also kind of relieved that this initial phase of things is over.

Poetry Friday - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Ok, so she's kind of old fashioned. And ok, so Robert Browning is more "interesting." But my grandmother bought me Sonnets from the Portuguese and Other Love Poems when I was in high school, and I really do love that book. So here's some EBB for your reading pleasure.

Sonnet XXXV

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange
And be all to me? Shall I never miss
Home-talk and blessing and the common kiss
That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,
When I look up to drop on a new range
Of walls and floors, another home than this?
Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is
Filled by dead eyes too tender to know change?
That's hardest. If to conquer love, has tried,
To conquer grief, tries more, as all things prove;
For grief indeed is love and grief beside.
Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.
Yet love me - wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,
And fold within the wet wings of thy dove.

Nevermind How Do You Get a D on a Take-Home Exam

How do you get a 34? A 34 out of 100%?

I'll tell you how. You don't do an essay worth 25%, you don't answer all of the non-essay questions, and even those questions you do answer you don't answer them completely.

They had a week with this thing. WTF?

In other news, I continue to be a stress-monkey, and this has resulted in me sending random emails to people, calling my high-school/college ex-boyfriend, who was too busy watching football and drinking beer to talk for more than five minutes, but in that five minutes did manage to re-propose marriage (as in, a pact that we will marry if we're still ALONE in 6 years- because in a previous conversation I'd bargained up to 38, as I couldn't imagine agreeing to anything such as this at a younger age but really, I'm not marrying anybody because of a pact).

At any rate, I am sick of this stupid job search. I am sick of the stresses of my current job. I'm sick of being the sort of person who's big excitement is finding out a new food that my cat enjoys (for it has become apparent that the Man-Kitty enjoys the fish-flavored wet food, even though he's the One Cat in the World who turns his nose up at the tuna).

Gaaaahhhhh!

Random Crap

1. I'm always surprised when I give a take-home exam that every single student doesn't get an A. I suppose that means that I write a good take-home exam, but I don't get how, when you've got all the time in the world, all of your notes, and all of the books in front of you, how you can get a D-. I just don't get it.

2. Yes, students everywhere, there are stupid questions. For example, it is stupid to ask your professor whether she can "point you in the right direction" on one of the questions on the take-home exam.

3. I've got a student who is basically homeless and carless. (This is the problem with students commuting from home - sometimes parents decide that it's not the kid's home anymore.) I wish there were more I could do for the student, but it's almost too late for me to do much. Damn.

4. I sent off my first couple of applications!

5. I've got a meeting in a half hour. I don't want to go, partly because I'm very intimidated as I'm standing in for somebody much more senior than myself (in life, and at the university). Also, I should remain silent throughout as I'm not really a delegate to this group, and I hate remaining silent for any length of time, especially in late-afternoon. This meeting is scheduled to last 1 1/2 hours. Sigh.

That's all for now. I'm sleepy. Maybe some more caffeine would be a good idea? Perhaps I have time to get a latte....

Dr. Crazy as Stress-Monkey

I don't really even know how to write this post. All I know is that I want to write, in an effort to expel some of the half-thoughts that are swirling around, to ease some of the tension. So what's the dealio with Dr. Crazy?

The Job Search

It's about time to start sending things off. Job Search Mentor has reviewed my main materials - twice - and once I make the last set of changes, they'll be ready to go. On the one hand, this is good. As soon as they're sent, then I can stop worrying about it. The weird thing is I haven't really been worrying about it on the surface. Unlike my initial time on the market, this time around the prospect of the whole thing hasn't been all-consuming. It's not the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, nor is it the last thing I think of before I go to sleep. But at the same time, it's been hovering in the background for months now, so while I'm not overtly stressed I've been feeling a kind of low-level stress ever since I decided to do this thing. Now, the thing that is leading me to make this run at the market is still true: I do still think it's the right time to do it, and I do think that I am as strong a candidate as I can possibly be right now. But that somehow doesn't make it easier or better. In some ways it almost makes it worse: if it is true that I am as strong a contender as I can be at the moment, and if nothing comes of this effort, then it's going to be really hard for me not to feel like shit about it. When I went on the market the first time, I went in expecting to fail - I was ABD, and while I was an ok candidate, I really thought that it would take a couple of years to land the elusive t-t job. The problem, to some extent, is that I succeeded. I don't know whether my sense of it now - that I thought I would fail - is really true. That is the story that I tell myself, and it's to some extent the story that I'm trying to tell myself now - that I won't be surprised if I don't get any interviews, that I won't be surprised if all of this is an exercise in futility. Except this time, I don't actually think I believe that. I think that I will be surprised if nobody is interested. And I think that's dangerous. But as much as I tell myself the story that I don't expect anything, I can't seem to make myself believe it, not as I think I did succeed in making myself believe it four years ago. So there's that.

Then there's this thing I'm doing, where in order to repress potential hopes about success on the market I'm telling myself another story, the story of how I really have the Greatest Job in the World at the Greatest University. Part of that comes from guilt - I don't want to want to leave. This place has meant a lot to me, and the people here have been fantastic colleagues to me. But the problem is, clearly, that this isn't enough for me. If it were, I wouldn't have considered doing this for real. I would have maybe sent a few things out without thinking about it, thinking that it was a good time to do so, half-way to tenure, etc., but it would have been half-hearted. The problem is that I don't feel half-hearted about this. I feel like I'm in it, and like I really want for it to happen, to get interviews, to get an offer. That kind of wanting, given the state of things in my field, is dangerous.

And if things don't go my way, I don't want for that to make me feel like I suck or like I'm stuck with what I've got. I don't want for this to make me the sort of person who doesn't try for things. I'm afraid that could happen.

Maybe that's what this whole thing about: fear. I'm afraid of not knowing what's going to happen, and I'm afraid of not having control over it. I'm afraid of screwing up, but I'm also afraid of doing well. I'm afraid of being out of my comfort zone. I'm afraid of disappointing people (my dissertation adviser, for example, if I get nothing; my colleagues in my current department, if I do, and if I take whatever it is I get; my family, if I end up moving significantly father away; my family, if I end up here and unhappy and ALONE and I never have a kid and whatever).

But all of this is dumb. All I'm doing is writing some letters, printing out some cv's, and sticking some stuff in the mail. This is not that big of a deal. Except, of course, it feels like a big deal.

Once again, I wish that I could see the future, just so that I could be more prepared for it, you know?

And I haven't felt all of this particular stuff since grad school, and I hate feeling it. I hate that it all comes back the minute that you put yourself out there. I think it's the feeling that I'm going to be judged, scrutinized, and that's horrible, and yet I'm asking for it. (You might think I should feel that at my current job, what with being evaluated for tenure, etc., but I don't. I feel entirely comfortable about how I'm doing at this job and with how I'm regarded in my institution. I never feel judged or scrutinized. I never feel so fucking potentially inadequate.)

And you know a weird thing that has been stressing me out? I'm kind of freaked that I'll interview someplace where somebody on a search committee or in a hiring department reads this blog. I've been thinking about this, and considering different scenarios for how to deal with it if it should come up, more than I'd like to admit.

So I'm applying for eight jobs, at least 3 of which are probably total long-shots that will realistically result in nothing (and I'm not being modest in saying that). So that's five maybe-chances. I just hope I get at least one interview. Otherwise, well, I'm going to be disappointed. But whatever. Whatever will be will be. I'm going to send all of my stuff out this weekend. Maybe once that's done I'll have the sense of "it's out of my hands" complacency that would be a welcome relief after all of this worrying.

The Actual Job

I'm also feeling a lot of stress (less under-the-surface than the job market stress) related to my actual job. More and more responsibility keeps landing on my shoulders, and while I'm handling it with ease, it means meeting after meeting (and I hate meetings), and more and more smiling and making nice with people, and more and more productivity on all fronts. What all of this reminds me of is not graduate school but of what it was like in my junior and senior years of undergrad - when I was working like 20 hours a week, in the honors program, editor of the literary magazine, double-minoring, taking credit-hour overloads so as to finish in four years, etc. One of the things about me is that I'm really good at handling a lot of different tasks simultaneously. I'm really good at being involved in projects and in having a vision for things and having my hand in a lot of different activities. This is a strength. But it also leads to stress, as much as I'm good at doing it. Because part of me doesn't like that I'm this way - I wish that I could not want to do as much as I do want to do, and I wish that I could say no to things that I want to do more easily instead of just adding another thing onto the already full plate.

So it's weird, because all of this makes me feel competent and confident and proud of myself, and I like that others then view me as being confident and competent, but then I also feel like I lose myself in all of the to-do lists that I make and all of the moving and shaking that I do. I feel like I lose myself, and yet then I think that maybe this is really who I am. Maybe I want to be a "scholar" but what I really am is a worker-bee. (And yes, I realize that those things need not be mutually exclusive, but whatever.) I don't want to be a worker-bee. I don't want for people to respond to me based on my personality and my Grand Ideas for Improvement and not for the more... backstage stuff that I think about. I guess that's the thing: because this stuff comes easy for me, I don't really value it. And yet, because it makes me feel good to get acknowledged for things and to see myself taking care of business, I do it, and it feels like a cop-out in a way. It feels like I allow this shit to take over, not because I really care about it but because it gives me a kind of superficial high. If I believed in the outcomes of all my projects, I think it would be one thing, but sometimes I think I just do it all for praise or attention. And that's not the same thing as believing in something.

But then I don't know why I run myself down because of it. These things that come so naturally to me are necessary to making institutions of higher education run, and the particular quirks of my personality that allow me to have strong opinions without alienating people are very useful tools in negotiating the politics of higher education and actually making things happen. But I don't want to be this person. I don't want to be a born administrator. I fear that I am. (It all goes back to the fact that I like to be in charge - and that's also a thing that works for me in the classroom. The problem is that this liking to be in charge does not serve me in other areas, and those are the areas that I care more about, maybe because they don't come naturally? Who knows.)

And the Area in Which There Is No Stress, As It Barely Exists

So I've got no personal life, unless you count talking on the phone, writing emails, and hanging out with my cat. All of these things are pleasant, but a personal life they do not make. But do I really have the emotional energy for more than that right now? No I don't. So thank god I don't have personal life drama to add to the mix. That is, actually, a bright spot, as when I went on the market 4 years ago, I had TONS of personal life drama, and it all ended in tears. Much better to subject no one to the me that I am right now.

In Conclusion

(I had to include this last subheading in honor of my students - hee!) But so yeah, that's what's going on with me right now. I apologize for the long, self-indulgent, whiny nature of this post. But I actually do feel better for writing it, so I suppose that is good. I think this also means that I need to make a commitment to write in my diary more regularly, because it is wrong to subject an audience to much of this stuff. That said, I wanted to post this because it's been a long while since I've written anything that's really about me on this blog. And I wanted to post this because I think there's some value in having an account of how it feels to be mid-tenure-track and in this particular position.

Reading for Pleasure Wednesday - The Dumbest Book in the Whole World

Ok, so I know I invented RfP Wednesday and everything, and I also know that I've totally dropped the ball on it for the past few weeks. Things have been crazy. Not a lot of time for reading for pleasure when one is doing all of the crap I've been doing. That said, this past weekend I made some time for what might be The Dumbest Book in the World - if Not of All Time. In Twenty Times a Lady, the idea is basically that the protagonist (named Delilah, of all things) realizes that she's slept with 20 men in her life (and while the book states repeatedly she's about to turn 30, the years of graduation from college, the references, etc. actually put her at 32, my age, but whatever), realizes that she's a Big Whore, and so decides that she must track down every man that she's ever had sex with to see if she can make it work with one of them, and if not that she will have to be celibate so as not to be a Bigger Whore. There are so many things wrong with this, just from the get-go. But I will continue, for nobody should have to read this entire book. Enter an Irish neighbor named Colin who is h-o-t hot and who is a bartender/actor and on the side helps his father with his private investigation business. Oh, and he also drives a beat-up vespa. And did I mention that the neighbor and Delilah live in the East Village? Of course they do. Anyway, the point here is that only when Colin comes in as the Voice of Reason to tell Delilah that she's an ass for thinking that 20 makes a Big Whore does she start to come around. Of course, predictably, Delilah and Colin fall in love, and then there are Obstacles, and then they live Happily Ever After. The end.

Now, I read the chick lit fairly regularly, and I'm no book snob. But this book was both offensive AND silly at the same time. Sad. Just a sad excuse for a book. I recommend that every person alive try to write a book and to get it published, for clearly good ideas, a compelling plot, and/or interesting characters are not necessary in this day and age. Oh, and add in a female protagonist who entirely internalizes misogyny, and you can't go amiss.

That said, I read the whole thing, so what kind of chump am I?

Another Reason My Department Rocks

People all over the place are talking about student writing. (Or I might have said, people all over the place are procrastinating about grading the papers that they've assigned to their students - hee!) What has been so interesting about this conversation that's developing is that it's happening across disciplines and that people in different disciplines are thinking about how to address writing in their classrooms, even if they don't technically teach a "writing class." Actually, of all the people to whom I link, I don't think we've got a single composition specialist in the bunch. That, my friends, is exciting to me, not because the composition and rhetoric crowd doesn't have a lot of great things to say about the subject (they do) but because I think it sucks when the discussion only happens in that crowd.

But anyway, you may be wondering what all of this has to do with my department rocking. Well, I just got an email from Fantastic Colleague, the director of our writing program, asking me to take part in a coffee hour where people from across the university from different departments will come together to talk about how most effectively to address writing in their classes. Isn't that cool?

Grading Essays - The Checklist

New Kid asked in comments to my last post to explain what I do with the checklist for grading and how it's not a rubric, and I thought it might be worth doing an actual post about it if others might find it useful.

First, the reason I resist rubric-method of grading student writing is that it invites complaint. "My friend got four points on this section and I got five, and I think that we both did the same on that section." I hate dealing with that kind of crap. Also, I find that it can be difficult to justify why one person gets one "number" on a given section and another gets another. Grading writing IS subjective - not entirely quantifiable. Yes, I look for certain things, but there is no one recipe for an A paper, and I think a rubric can inspire students to look for that recipe rather than focusing on the quality of their ideas and claims.

That said, I do think that the valuable thing about a rubric is that students know that you were looking for certain things on the assignment, and that you were looking for all of those things on all students' papers. I also think that the rubric can eliminate the need to compose lengthy end-comments that repeat the same things from paper to paper, which when you teach a large number of students, can become INCREDIBLY time-consuming, even if you're copying and pasting in typed comments.

So, over the past couple of years, I developed a "checklist" method that is looser than a traditional rubric (doesn't assign point values to different things) but that has some of the benefits of a rubric model. Oh, and in my lit classes, I design the checklist so that it works for each of the two papers (which are basically the same assignment - two, 3-5 page topic-driven literary analysis, for example) and can work for a range of topics - it's not intended to deal with the specifics of the paper (which I do in the marginal comments) but to deal with my overall expectations for the assignment. Also since they've got two of these papers (with different topics assigned, of course), and since the first one is weighted less than the second, the checklist on the first works as a guide for them for the second paper.

Here's how I do it. I create two columns. On the left-hand side, I list between 10 and 15 things that I was looking for in the paper. This column is labeled "Aspects of the essay that worked particularly well" or something like that. Generally, for lit classes, the top 2/3 relate to issues surrounding what I wanted them to do with the literature. Things like, "Paper responds to the assignment" or "Paper offers insights into the texts under discussion in a critical and analytical way." You get the idea. The bottom 1/3 (or so) of the list has to do with mechanical sorts of things with their writing, and their conformity to MLA style, etc. I don't tell the students how these things are weighted, but they intuitively understand that the stuff at the top is more important than the stuff at the bottom. Then, on the right hand side of the page, I have another column that is labeled, "Aspects of the paper that could have been stronger." Basically, this checklist is the inversion of the checklist on the left. So if on the left it says, "Paper offers adequate context (historical, theoretical, and/or critical) for the claims that it makes about the text(s) under discussion," on the right it says, "Paper does not offer adequate context (etc.)."

You will notice that all of these comments emphasize what the PAPER does or does not do - not what the WRITER has chosen to do. In part I do this because I think it softens my more direct marginal comments. In the margins, I tend to address the writer as "you" and to respond to the ideas that are there as the writer's ideas - not as some abstract thing inside the paper. On the checklist, I like to take some of the personal quality out in order to show them that I wasn't only responding to "them" but to what I saw in the paper as distinct from them. Also, the checklist gives me the freedom not to comment on more global issues in the margins, so in the margins I can actually respond to more specific points in the essay.

Now, what I do when I grade is this. I'll use my current batch of papers as an example. They had five topics from which to choose. First, I organize them by topic. Once I have them organized in that way, I put them in reverse order (worst to best) based on the opening few sentences of the paper. (In my experience, the opening few sentences really tell me all I need to know to assign a grade. Sometimes there are exceptions, but those are rare.) The advantage of this method is that I don't read all of the "good" papers at once, but rather I get little rewards at different points in the grading. Then, I grade the each paper, writing marginal comments as I go. When I grade for lit classes, I will note grammatical/punctuation/etc. errors the first or second time I see them - if I see more, I write in the margin something like "transitions could be stronger throughout" and leave it at that. This allows the bulk of the marginal comments to respond to the content of the paper and not to overwhelm them with copy-editing type comments. Because, as I've indicated in a few different comments I've left on other blogs lately, teaching writing is NOT the primary aim of essays assigned in literature courses, nor is it my primary aim in teaching literature. IF I leave a summation comment at the end (which I don't always do as it isn't always necessary), it's in response to how they dealt with the topic that they chose, or in response to a particular point that they made. It is NOT an overarching comment that deals with all of the stuff on the checklist. That's what the checklist is for.

Once I've done all of the marginal commenting, I then turn to the checklist, and I check off what they've done well and what could have been stronger. Visually, this shows me pretty much what grade they should get. If the checks are about 50/50 on each side, that's usually about a C - average. If it's 70-80/30-20, then the paper's in the B-range. If it's 80-90/20-10, then it's in the A-range. Invert that, and then you get a sense of the D and F range. I think this helps to keep me honest with the grading, and to detach a bit from students whom I personally like but who may not have done very well on the paper, or students whom I don't personally like who really did a good job. Again, though, this is not outlined on a point system, which I would fudge anyway in order to give the grade that I thought the paper earned. It's just a rough guide for how grades in certain ranges look on the checklist, and so if students who got grades in the same range were to compare their checklists, the checklists look very similar. Once I've done all of the checking off, I attach the checklist page to the top of the document. The checklist page does not include the grade. One reason I do this is because I do comment a lot in the margins, and it can freak students out, even though I give as many or more positive and/or just-engaging-with-the-ideas comments as I do negative ones. Having every paper look the same when they get it back I think makes it easier for them to deal. I also don't put the grade on the checklist 1) because that keeps students' grades more private and 2) if they saw the grade on the top, they would probably just ignore the actual comments on the checklist. (I put the grade either on the first or last page of their actual paper.)

Another reason that I like this method is that it means I tend to comment as much on the great papers as I do on the less great ones. One thing that often happens to students who are strong writers is that they get almost no actual feedback on their writing. (This is what happened to me throughout my undergraduate education.) A "Great!" on top of a paper does not feedback make. That said, it can be really time-consuming to write an end comment with all of the ways in which the essay was successful. The checklist means that I'm not tempted to ignore those things that students did succeed at in the interest of time. Also, because the checklist handles all of the main things that I'm looking for in the essay, it means that I can respond to whatever interests me in the margins without feeling like I'm not "justifying the grade." I never think of grading in those terms anymore - I really think of it as something that allows me to interact with my students one-on-one, and that is actually something I like (even if grading still blows).

And you may be wondering, how does this all work out time-wise for the grading? Well, in the past, when I did the extended final commenting and didn't use checklists, it could take an hour per paper, which is outrageous for 3-5 page papers. I'd estimate that my current method means I come in at around 15-20 mins. a paper tops (and again, I comment EXTENSIVELY on ALL of them), which means for this batch of around 20 papers, I'll spend no more than 6 hours or so on grading. To give you a sense, last night I graded from around 11 PM to around 1:30 AM with frequent (and sometimes lengthy- like when I composed that blog post, or another few times when I commented on blogs or composed emails- breaks). In that time, I graded 7 papers. I really don't think it's possible to grade any more quickly than that.

A Hot Date with Student Essays

Oh yes, I am the most exciting person ever. It's just after midnight and I'm spending some quality time grading. (I didn't grade anything the other night.... I had to come to terms with the task in front of me, and also realized that I hadn't printed out my grading checklists that I attach to each paper.)

Some thoughts:

1) The papers aren't as bad as they could be, but they are no picnic to read, at least so far.
2) One reason that they're not a picnic is that too many students chose one of the more difficult topics. It was listed on the assignment sheet as "topic #1" and I can only think that they chose it because they didn't bother to read the others.
3) Another reason that they're not a picnic is because more students chose this paper option (I give two) than probably should have. Option 1 is intended for non-majors/non-minors, and while it still asks them to analyze literature, the assignment is somewhat more approachable and less abstract. It involves them writing four 2-page papers. Option 2 (what I'm grading now) only requires two papers, but each is to be a fully developed, traditional 3-5 page literary analysis essay from an assigned topic. This is a more difficult enterprise for many students, but I think that a fair number this semester chose this option because they thought "two papers will be easier than four." This is not true. (Note: it's not that Option 1 is actually easier - I really don't think it is in a lot of ways - but it does allow for them only to consider one text at a time, where these papers do ask for them to write comparatively in Option 2).
4) MLA style. Why do they ignore it?
5) Titles. All papers need them. Really.
6) Thank god for checklists. No need to write repetitive final comments, and the checklist is far less scary as the top page than the first page of their papers, which now bleed ink. Incidentally, these are not a conventional "rubric" that gives them "points" for each thing. That way madness lies.
7) Tea is lovely. Especially Twinings Decaf Earl Grey.
8) I have so much shit to do that does not involve this grading, but the thought of facing it makes me very unhappy indeed.
9) I wish that I felt sleepy. I did feel sleepy earlier, but now I don't. This has been a bit of a recurring problem lately. I think I'm more stressed out than I'm letting myself admit. Similar thing happened with the sleeping my junior year of college.
10) Time to stop with this break and to return to the scintillating prose of student papers. (Some of which actually does have moments of insight, though, so I should be nicer.)

Poetry Friday - Sharon Olds

I remember reading this poem in college - maybe in my first year of college? Anyway, as I've been thinking about my syllabus for a class I teach in the spring, I've been thinking that I might like to teach it.

"Sex without Love"

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
Gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth, whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

How Many Glasses of Wine Does It Take....

To be able to face a two-sentence paragraph that uses the word "frill" as a verb?

Dr. Crazy doesn't know, but she aims to find out.

Not a Long Blog Post - Or An Academic One

I know. I've been really long-winded lately. You, my readers, have been bearing the brunt of my need to procrastinate, which often is accompanied by a need to pontificate. So what else has been going on with me?

• I have been engaging in much correspondence and conversation with people of the Blogging World. I know that this isn't foreign territory for most of you, and it's not entirely foreign to me, but the sheer volume and intensity of late is quite interesting. This may mean that I am a person who doesn't have a life outside of the computer.
• I actually blushed while on the elliptical at the gym today because there was a guy aimed right at me (and I do mean aimed right at me) on an ab-related machine, and he was wearing those silky sort of work-out shorts (not short ones, so I didn't actually SEE anything in its naked glory) but he clearly was not wearing appropriate athletic undergarments (I'm not entirely sure what those would be for a gym workout, but whatever) because there was his, well, penis, poking right up at me, and once I saw it I couldn't stop looking at it. And that made me very uncomfortable because I didn't want people to see me looking at a guy's penis outline in his shorts. So please, guys who go to the gym, make sure the business down there isn't hanging out for Crazy to see. It's just not right.
• Weird stuff related to my dad, which I'll write about in more detail at some point maybe. The main thing is that he's been in touch after not contacting me in more than 2 years. I have no idea what this is about or how I even feel about it really.
• I had a great conversation with a couple of my favorite colleagues yesterday over lunch. Also had a great conversation with my work BFF today. Can I just say that I really like my colleagues?
• That said, I'm also freaking out re: the Market and the Book and Teaching and things. I've been having trouble falling asleep (which hasn't happened since the diss, to be honest, as I'm a good sleeper) and I can't even focus enough to read the Potter. Not sure if this is good or bad. Think it's probably bad.

So that's the non-pontificating update. Aren't you glad I got it together to write a post that a) wasn't about The Profession and b) includes me lecherously staring at a strange man at the gym? and c) isn't a mile long? I knew you would be.

Mentoring II - Finding Mentors

I decided to write this post after a comment to my first post on mentoring. After reading that comment, I noticed that one of the things I mentioned in an off-hand way is that I got good mentoring on how to get good mentorship, and that I didn't really address what that was. So here it goes. Dr. Crazy's guide to finding/getting mentors. (Obviously this is not in any way exhaustive, but this is where I'm coming from when I talk about this. Others, feel free to chime in with your own experiences.)

1. The first and most important thing is having the confidence to seek out mentorship.

Easier said than done, right? It is very difficult to have confidence when you're the low person on the totem pole and you feel like you're clueless, which is why you need a mentor in the first place. But I learned, pretty early on in undergrad, that what it takes to give you that confidence is preparation. See, I was a first generation college student, so I didn't have ANY clue as to how to negotiate academic hierarchies. I've always been a pretty confident person, but at the same time, natural confidence isn't enough in these situations. Because I was lucky enough to be in a really good honors program, I got some guidance as to how to approach people for what I needed. For example, they gave us a 5 or 6 page form to fill out and to distribute to any person from whom we wanted a letter of recommendation. They didn't expect that we'd know on our own what recommenders needed, or that all recommenders would be specific about what would be helpful to them. So the first time I needed a rec. letter, I used that form. And you know what? It worked! The person knew what I wanted, the form reminded them of who I was so that they could write an effective letter, and it was a totally positive and judgment-free transaction. For me, that was a formative experience, and one that I applied in other areas. I learned that if I went into situations where I needed something from somebody, and I felt like it was weird, that it would totally go better and I would feel more at ease if I went in with something to hand them, something to show them. Also, I found that they then saw me as responsible and dependable, which ultimately increases confidence, right? So having the confidence to seek out mentorship involves, primarily, doing homework beforehand. Something we all know how to do, right?

2. Don't think that all mentors come in a particular kind of package.

This comes to mind because sometimes we're not sure what homework we need to do to approach certain kinds of potential mentors. For example: let's say that you want to ask a certain faculty member to direct your dissertation. You've never done this before, you've never written a dissertation before, and you're not really sure what you'd need to gather in order to approach the person in a way that will dazzle and confuse them into accepting the position of director. In this case, you actually need ANOTHER mentor in order to show you the ropes of how to get the dissertation director. And that director need not be a faculty member at your current institution. It can be a more advanced student in your program. It can be a professor from when you were an undergraduate with whom you are more comfortable. It can be someone whom you met at a conference. In other words, yes, you need somebody with special knowledge about this particular situation, but the person need not be Professor Fancypants himself, or the equivalent.

3. Choose mentors whom you genuinely respect and with whom you genuinely have a rapport.

Sometimes, it is better to go in search of a person with a personality to which you feel attracted than to the person with the biggest name on the block. Example: I wasn't entirely sure on my field of specialty when I entered my PhD program. Finally, I narrowed it down to the field that I currently call my own. Now, in doing so, I took a bit of a risk. My diss adviser doesn't actually work on any of the things that I work on. (His first book was related to the period of my specialization, but it was not on the actual authors that I chose to examine.) I could have chosen to work with a named chair who has done work more closely related to mine (who was inches from retirement) or I could have chosen another field altogether with Fancier Advisor Possibilities. I didn't go that route. Rather, I chose the person with whom I thought I could work most effectively and for whom I thought I would do the best work. Now, I realize the diss adviser example doesn't work perfectly in other disciplines, but what I'd say to that is this: your diss adviser need not be your mentor. You can have other mentors, and you can have more of a teacher-student relationship with your diss adviser. My point here is not to propose a one-size-fits-all model for this stuff. Rather, I've just found that my true mentors have come in all shapes and sizes and that they do not necessarily have identical interests to my own.

4. The worst answer you can get if you ask for mentorship is no, and even if the person says no, you're no worse off than before you asked.

This kind of goes back to the confidence thing. Of course, it's embarassing to ask people for stuff. One is afraid that one will look like a dummy or that one will be judged. That said, let's face it, in this profession, we're judged all the time, and people will decide you're a dummy as often if you don't speak up as if you do. The trick is to have a plan when you ask and to leave the person a gracious way to say no. Now, it doesn't feel good if somebody says no (obviously) but more often than not, if you go in with a solid plan for what you need from them that makes sense, they will say yes. So you may as well try. And if they say no, then they may direct you to somebody else, which is great, or you may need to go back to the drawing board and come up with another plan or another person. Still, you lose nothing. Or, in a weird tangential quote from a Seamus Heaney poem that comes to mind, " Your lose more of yourself than you redeem/Doing the decent thing. " You've got to turn off the internal critic and put yourself out there. Sometimes, the results will suck. But many times, they will be great.

5. Don't be afraid to follow-up on suggestions to contact people. Don't be afraid to follow-up with people whom you meet in non-everyday contexts.

Now, this is one that I try really hard to follow but sometimes drop the ball on. If you meet somebody fantastic at a conference, don't be afraid to send an email reminding them of your meeting and talking about their work. If another mentor suggests that you contact somebody you don't know, don't be afraid to follow that advice. You never know when a person who seems out of your league or too busy for you or too important for you or even just too much of a stranger to you will be your next mentor. (This is one I've learned more and more about since finishing the PhD.)

6. We all need many mentors, not just one.

No one person can be all things to all people. Cultivate different mentoring relationships for the different things that you need. In my department, we choose a senior faculty mentor within our first year on the t-t. I did that, but he's not the only person to whom I turn for advice or, well, mentorship. Similarly, when I was on the market for the first time, I turned not only to my diss advisor but to other people in the department.

I'm sure I could come up with more, but this is getting long. Feel free to comment and add things, readers.

Teaching Carnival #13 Is Up...

Over at A Blog Around the Clock. I haven't checked it out yet, but I'm sure there's some good stuff, as always.

Mentoring

I've been thinking a lot about mentoring lately, in no small part because so many people have been posting about it lately. (I'm sure there are links I'm missing, too, but those are the ones that immediately jump to mind. Edited to add: Here's another link that I think participates in this conversation that seems to be cropping up all around.) Oh, and I also read something about mentoring on the CHE forums in the context of junior faculty needing mentors. (My long-dormant obsession with the forums has been rekindled by the job search. And it's not even that they're that interesting, but still I can't stop myself from reading them. In some cases I'll read the same threads over and over again. It's a sickness.)

But so I want to write about mentoring because I've been thinking so much about it lately.

First, I should say that I have since college most often been in situations where I've had to seek out mentors as opposed to having people volunteer mentorship. Luckily, I did have the good fortune to get unasked for mentorship in how to seek out mentors (if that makes any sense), and so I wasn't just left to flounder not knowing how to go about doing so. But still, my undergraduate and graduate experiences generally included a great deal of benign neglect. I was never really "the chosen student" whom a teacher took under his/her wing without me asking to be taken under. I think that this has a great deal to do with how I view mentorship now that I'm actually in a position to do some mentoring myself.

So what do I think makes a good mentor?

1. Good mentors push you to do things that you believe you're not capable of doing.

My best example of this relates to the encouragement that I got from my undergrad thesis advisor to submit an abstract for a conference - a "real" conference, not a student one. Yes, it was a small conference, but at the same time, it wasn't just "practice" for when I became a scholar if I got accepted. And I did get accepted. And my thesis advisor also attended the conference, and she introduced me to people, and she made my first conference experience one that was about interacting with professionals as a professional. It was not filled with intense anxiety. This experience was terribly important in my development as a scholar and as a professional, in no small part because it gave me the confidence to put myself out there even if I was afraid of rejection. What I learned from that experience was that even if you think you might not be accepted or that you might not be good enough, there is no way to know that unless you try. And often when you try you will be successful.

2. Good mentors guide you, and while they may critique your work, they do not impose certain kinds of authority over you.

The truth is, my greatest mentors have not been my teachers. As a teacher, one must exert certain kinds of authority. A power differential is built into the teacher-student relationship, which in no small part has to do with grading. I'm not saying that teachers can't be good mentors, but I do think that the mentoring relationship can only happen when your mentor relates to you as a kind of "junior peer," if that makes any sense. My undergrad thesis advisor whom I mentioned above? She never taught me in a traditional course setting. I was directed to her when my undergrad advisor (who would have been the logical choice for a faculty member to direct my thesis) denied my request that she be my director. She just handed me the name and contact info, and sent me on my way. And so I was directed to my thesis advisor, who was not a t-t or tenured faculty member in my department but rather in an admin. position, but I think that perhaps she ended up being able to be such a great mentor in part because I went to her as an adult with a request, and she was interested in what I wanted to do, and so she said yes. From the beginning, the power differential that was omnipresent in my relationship with my faculty advisor had nothing to do with my relationship with my thesis advisor. Similarly, the mentors I've acquired since starting on the t-t are my peers. Yes, they have wisdom to offer me, and yes, they have more experience than I have, but when they help me, it's help freely given and has nothing to do with a service obligation or whatever. I think that's key.

3. Good mentors really respond to your ideas and to your work.

This goes for teaching or service or anything in the profession, really, but I'm going to focus on research here. A good mentoring relationship seems to depend on the ability of the mentee to trust the advice of the mentor, and that can only happen if the mentor offers you real critique while at the same time offering positive feedback to your work. Now, my diss advisor wasn't a particularly... attentive kind of guy in many ways. But you know what? I have never had anyone read my work with the kind of focus with which he read it. And he never sugar-coated his criticisms, and that only made me value his praise more. (And the praise was not frequent - he often began our meetings about chapters with the statement, "I'm not going to tell you what's good about this because that won't help you and that will just waste our time." But even with that statement, there was an indication that anything we didn't discuss was pretty fucking good. And when he offered real praise? It was always very specific. I never doubted that he read every word that I submitted to him. Even all of the crappy words in those two chapters that are not in my dissertation.)

4. Good mentors honor their commitments to you.

They meet when they say that they will meet. If they agree to read something for you, they actually read it by an agreed upon date. If they can't do something that they've said that they'll do, they let you know, and they help you to get what you need, either from them at a later time or from someone else. This is another instance where I think mentoring is to some extent distinct from teaching. I know, I know, good teachers should do these things, too. And I think that for the most part, they (we) try. But how many of you have ever taken more than a week to get a set of papers back? Maybe even lied and said you left them at home but that they wer already graded and you're just scatterbrained? How many of you have had to reschedule a meeting with a student at the last minute because something else came up? How many of you have been unable to help a student and didn't direct them to somebody else who could? I think as teachers that we've all done at least one of these things, and while it's not good to make such actions a habit, when you're dealing with 70 or 80 students in a semester, sometimes these things are going to happen. And the bottom line is that because the teacher has the power of the grade, the teacher has the power to do those sorts of things. If that kind of thing comes into a mentoring relationship, however, it entirely undermines it. The mentee can no longer count on the mentor, trust the mentor, and since the mentoring relationship is informal, why should it even continue at that point?

5. Good mentors are genuinely excited when good things happen for you, and they support your endeavors and positively reinforce those endeavors.

This last one may seem obvious, but from what I've heard from so many people, this is something that many people don't experience from senior people involved in their work. Rather, I've heard a lot of stories about how supposed mentors respond to good news with derision or to a new project with disdain. This is so fucked up. I can't think of anything more to say about this one than that.

***

Looking at that list, it becomes clear to me that I've been very lucky to find mentors who embody most, if not all, of these qualities. Looking at myself, I think that I have been a good mentor to some students, though I am not always as good a mentor as I could be to others (but who is?). I suppose my point in writing this post, though, is that I really don't think that those who need mentorship are passive in the mentor-mentee relationship. Yes, good mentoring has certain characteristics. But I also think that it is up to those who need mentorship to seek out the kind of mentoring that they need. The characteristics of what you need in a mentor for the relationship to work may change over time, and those characteristics are not the same for all people. Or we may need different kinds of mentors in different contexts. For example, in terms of my research, I tend to work best with people whom others might find a bit harsh in the way that they respond to my work, but when it comes to mentoring at my job, I would rather have more smiley, positive, happy mentors. And maybe that will change if I get a new job, or as I am in the profession longer. But the point here is that whatever the differences are, all of the people whom I count as mentors respect me and I respect them.

I think that when we try to impose certain edicts about how faculty are supposed to mentor students or how senior faculty are supposed to mentor junior faculty or whatever, that we're kind of missing the point. The thing that has been so valuable to me about the mentoring relationships that I've had is that there weren't any rules. Those who've agreed to mentor me do it because they want to, because they think that I'm worth mentoring. And I have chosen them because I want their input, because I think they have things to say that are worth listening to. I play a role in defining the relationship. I'm not saying that we shouldn't talk about mentoring, or that it's not important to shine a light on bad mentoring practices. But I also think that if we try to regulate it too much, it ultimately infantilizes the mentee and takes away the mentee's power.