Teaching, Course Load, and Energy/Exhaustion

Every now and again, I'll be in a conversation with a person who teaches at an institution other than my own, and who teaches like 2 or 4 classes a year or something outlandish like that compared with the 8 a year (give or take) that I teach, and the conversation will turn to teaching. Inevitably, this person will say some version of the following:

"I can't believe that you teach that much! I don't think I could teach more than I do and survive it! Woe is me, with the 2-2 load! But moreso, WOE IS YOU! How do you stay in this profession?!?!"

Well, friends, I do manage somehow. Can I just note for the record, though, how freaking annoying it is when somebody says some version of the above to me? I often feel weirdly like they are congratulating me and pitying me at the same time, with a dash of assuming I must be a crappy teacher thrown in. It's an odd mix.

Now, I've gotten the above sort of commentary from a lot of corners. From grad school friends who've ended up in research-intensive jobs, from grad school mentors, from colleagues I meet hither and thither. When the comment first started cropping up, when I first began this job, I took it really personally, and it made me think that I should certainly be aiming for a lower teaching load because obviously to teach this much was white slavery or something. Then, later, I thought that while the people meant well that they were just weirdly out of touch with reality, as most people who work in this profession teach a load closer to mine than to theirs. Now, I feel like I've been doing this for long enough that I actually have a real response related to this matter. So here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

Number of students matters.
It's true that I teach four courses a semester. However, once the movement in the numbers is done (drops, withdrawals), I typically teach somewhere around 80 students in a semester (classes are capped around 25, and the web course I'm teaching is capped at 16). That's right: 80 students or so divided across four courses. Now, each individual student requires a certain amount of energy for the professor, even if one has TAs, even if that's just administrative energy. And in fact, one might argue, teaching that number of students in one course but with TAs can take as much if not more energy, because if one is a good instructor of TAs, one is actually teaching them while at the same time they're helping with grading and such. So the point here is that yes, I do teach more classes than some of my colleagues at research institutions, but I don't necessarily teach more students than they do.

Personality matters.
Some people aren't happy unless they're teaching in their area of specialization, or very close to it, most of the time. Other people do better when they've got a bit more variety. Some people aren't happy teaching non-majors/non-minors. Other people thrive when they teach a variety of kinds of students. Now, it's hard to know what kind of person one is until one is thrown into a particular job. Lots of people who end up at research universities have never had the opportunity to teach the range of students and classes that I regularly teach, so they don't really get how these things factor into what one does as a teacher. If I'm teaching a class that fulfills a general education requirement, for example, the kinds of things that I'm teaching will differ greatly from when I'm teaching a course with primarily majors. This still requires energy, but it requires a different kind of energy than teaching in my specialization. And this different kind of energy renews more quickly, at least in my experience, than does the other kind that I need to engage when I teach stuff that's more explicitly linked to my research. My aims are different, and the prep involved is different. For some people, this would be brutal. For me, variety is the spice of life.

Let's talk about # of preps and frequency of teaching certain preps
Now, I've got colleagues in my institution who have done everything in their power to limit the number of preps that they teach in a semester. It is entirely possible to teach a 4/4 with around 80 students/semester but to teach only two preps a semester, preps that repeat annually. While one is in the classroom for more hours per week than our friends at research universities, we nevertheless can be teaching just two courses and with a similar or lower number of students than people at research universities. Some people think that this is the way to go, as teaching the same courses with that frequency, while at the same time teaching sections, pretty much eliminates prep and the main outside-the-classroom work one does is grading. Such a schedule does, however, require that one be the sort of person who can stay on the same track in multiple classes when teaching sections (not my strong suit) and that one doesn't get bored by teaching the same stuff over and over again (also not my strong suit).

In contrast, I typically teach 4 preps a semester. Now, you might say, "This is madness, Crazy! What are you thinking! Why wouldn't you try to minimize the number of preps that you teach?!?!" Ah, good question. Well, as I noted, I get bored easily, and I suck with keeping multiple sections at exactly the same place in a syllabus. It's not an impossible thing for me to do, but it annoys me to have to do it. But let's delve more deeply into what that "4 different preps/semester" means in my practical day-to-day existence. Here's a version of my two-year schedule:

Fall: Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D
Spring: Class E, Class F, Class G, Class D
Fall: Class A, Class B, Class H, Class D
Spring: Class E, Class B, Class I, Class D

So no, I don't teach sections typically, but the repeating of preps means that I'm not teaching each course from scratch, typically, ever. I've been teaching A and E in the fall and spring since I started this job. B and D are more recent additions, but doing them semester after semester means that I'm about as solid with them as I am with A and E. C, F, H, and I are all courses in my specialization, and none is a brand new prep. I might change a text in or out, but the courses are "in the can" so to speak. The only new course I'll teach in the next two years is G, and that is in my wheelhouse of material and I've taught a very similar course in structure very recently. So, yes, I teach a lot of classes over a two year period. Nine, in fact. But seriously, I feel like that number is about right. It means that in a teaching-intensive job I can use my teaching to support my research - i.e., the stuff I teach is the stuff that I'm thinking about writing-wise, too. I do not do one set of work for teaching and then another set of work for scholarship. It's all the same. In other words, while this looks like a ton of teaching on paper, if one is thinking that the scholarly side of things is completely distinct from the teaching side, I'm probably doing about the same amount of reading/research as a person at a research university with a much lighter teaching load - just it counts for two parts of the job. Couple that with the fact that I teach about the same number of students in a semester (or perhaps even fewer) and I don't have to direct dissertations or serve as a reader for them, and ultimately, and we see that this teaching load really isn't so onerous. It's just one has to figure out how to negotiate the demands of teaching and the demands of research in a more conscious way. (Note, however, that in years 1-3 my life was a world of pain in getting all of this up and running. I shouldn't minimize that.) But this then leads to the next point.

Teaching can expand to fill the time available if you let it.
That's true if you've got a 2-2 load; that's true if you've got a 5-5 load. And the more time you spend doesn't necessarily mean that you are a better teacher or a more devoted teacher. It just means you're spending more time. If I've learned any lesson over the past five years, that is it. And having learned that lesson, I've realized that it's really not on me to set the world on fire in every class period. In fact, what happens in the classroom shouldn't be about me setting the world on fire. Now, that's not to say that I don't like to be a dynamic and engaging teacher. BUT - and this is an important but - my classroom isn't, most days, the Dr. Crazy Show. First, I want students to have ownership over what they get out of in my classes. It shouldn't (I don't think) be about what I bestow upon them but rather about what they themeselves can do. Second, if that is the case, I'm not being a good teacher if I'm hogging the spotlight and devoting every ounce of my time to "making" the classroom experience. I see my role, particularly in the service courses that I teach (A, B, E, and D) as one of facilitator less than as one of pontificator. Being the teacher doesn't, for me, mean being the center of the classroom enterprise. And once one believes that, it becomes clear that one shouldn't allow the work that one does as a teacher to suck all of the energy and time that one has away. In fact, I'm a better teacher if I have something left over at the end of the day.

But knowing that and doing what it takes to make that happen can be different things. Because when one is working on teaching, one feels like one is accomplishing something (a), one has the illusion that everything one does is super-duper important (b). And that is like a drug. Who doesn't want to feel all virtuous and important and productive all the time? So one has to be very vigilant about scheduling and about limiting the amount of time that one spends on teaching. Typically, I'm very good at this when it comes to grading and to prepping. If I fail, it's only in the area of the amount of time that I devote to individual students, and really, I don't see that as a failure. If I'm going to fuck up on the limiting my teaching time, I'd rather do it in the service of actual people than of "Teaching" as some grand good I do in the world.

I actually like interacting with most of my students, and doing so actually gives me energy.
This is a really, really important component of thriving with this kind of a teaching load. See, I don't see students (most of the time) as a time-suck or as an energy-suck. They don't take away from the non-teaching work that I want to do. Actually, I see them as motivation, and really without them, I'm not certain I'd be as productive as I am in the scholarship side of things. Actually, I'm almost sure I wouldn't be.

Practice makes perfect.
At least in my experience, teaching more made teaching easier. I became a lot more comfortable running my classes, a lot more willing to forgive myself when an individual class meeting didn't go so wonderfully (which is much easier to do when one has so many class meetings in the course of the semester), and a lot more confident that I knew what the fuck I was doing. I think the learning curve on all of that would have been steeper had I taught less over the past five years, if how I felt about teaching in grad school, when I never taught more than 1 or 2 classes in a semester, is any indication. Things like generating discussion no longer require real thought for me - they're just ingrained things that I know how to do. Similarly, I have a much better sense of how I work best in the classroom, how to put together a lecture, whatever. I don't labor over what I do in the classroom so much because, paradoxically, I've already done so much time laboring in and for the classroom.

So, now for the practical. How does one "survive" a heavy teaching load?

1. Understand that different classes call for different levels of engagement on your part. If you're teaching classes to a wide range of non-majors, understand that you do not need to give lengthy lectures about the minutiae of scholarship about every single thing that you're covering (they won't be into that anyway) and that really your role is to get them excited about the study of literature and to give them the tools to engage with literature in a critical, analytical way.
2. Teach what relates to your own scholarship, as much as is possible. I can't emphasize this enough. The whole "two birds with one stone" thing really makes a huge difference, and it makes one much less resentful of one's students, if one is inclined to resent them. (Note: the relationship can be somewhat tangential. This isn't just about teaching one's dissertation or book or whatever, although it can be.)
3. Think about assignments not only in terms of what students "should" do but also in terms of your own energy investment in terms of grading, and once you've done that, be creative in terms of how you design assignments and respond to them. The point here isn't to dumb down one's courses or to eliminate grading, but rather to be realistic about what you want students to achieve (and about what they can achieve reasonably in the course of a semester) and to be realistic about your ability to give them useful feedback. (In other words, it does nobody any good to assign a weekly response paper if you won't have time to read/comment on them weekly. Better to assign four and to give really substantial feedback. This is just one example.)
4. Teach repeat preps as much as possible, whether across semesters or in sections. I know not everybody has the luxury of being able to negotiate this, but if you can work it, do. (And this is good advice for job-seekers, too, actually, in terms of things to look at when they see a heavy teaching load job. A 4/4 load at one institution may be infinitely more manageable than a 3/3 elsewhere, depending on how teaching assignments work.)
5. Bitterness about teaching typically makes people a) hate their jobs and b) do less well at teaching. With this kind of a load, you've got to find a way to make the teaching work for you, and you've got to get over resenting it. If you can't, then you'll be miserable. And if you're miserable, it's really hard to feign excitment in order to engage your students. And they do seem to respond better if they don't think you're miserable teaching them or teaching that particular class or whatever.

Now, I'm not saying that these are the only ways in the whole world to make teaching a heavier load work. I'm just saying that these are the things that I've found teaching such a load over the past five years. YMMV, and all that. But if you're one of those people who teaches a lesser load, and you like to pity/congratulate your pals who teach more, consider all of the above. It may not be so horrifying and tragic as you think. (Or maybe I'm just delusional, or maybe I'm really quite a phenomenal person, though I'm inclined to say that I'm probably not either, at least on most days :) )

Wednesday Already?

I think I'm seeing a pattern to how the blogging is likely to go this semester. Saturday-Monday will be heavy, for I shall have the energy of the weekend to spur me on to ever greater blogging heights, while Tuesday-Friday will be lighter, as I will be freaking exhausted and boring :)

One of the reasons I've not had a huge amount to say during the week though is because most of what's been taking my time has been unbloggable. Not because it's bad or anything, but rather because it's about stupid bureaucratic crap and committee work and departmental goings on and college-wide goings on and I don't like to blog at length or in detail about any of that because the point of this here blog is not to talk about my institution behind its back. I'd much rather talk about my institution to its face and think about lofty things like the state of the humanities when I blog.

Of course, things like thinking about the state of the humanities take a great deal of energy, so there we are.

But so I actually do have a real post I'd like to do, though, so I think I'm going to end this update-y one and make an actual real post. I will note that I have the energy for this because I have officially become my mother and I was fast asleep by 10 PM last night. According to the caller ID, I took no calls during my slumber, I am happy to report.

Dude, With the Phone Conversations While Asleep

For the second time (as far as I'm aware) I had a complete phone conversation (although he says brief) with FB while totally unconscious. I don't like the fact that I do this at all. That said, I suppose we can say it demonstrates a certain comfort level? Or something? Still, horrifying to be a sleep-talking 34-yr-old who has begun answering the phone in her sleep and having conversations and not remembering it. Much better to be a sleep-talking 20-year-old asleep at a fraternity house and to wake up random people in the room one fell asleep in because one is sitting straight up in bed and saying, "No, I am not being uncooperative!" in a very loud voice. And yes, that really happened.

Liz Phair, Latoya, and a Break from Righteous Indignation and Rambling about Chores

If you haven't been reading Latoya's recent posts over at Feministe, get your asses over there. Latoya normally blogs at Racialicious, too, so you can find more of her stuff there. I read Feministe all the time, and I always am happy when I do, but every post Latoya has done has rocked my world. So consider this one of the few shout-outs I've ever given, and take that in the spirit that it's intended, i.e., this is really somebody that you'll want to read if you enjoy reading what I write here. Or at the very least if you'd like to know what I think kicks ass. Anyway.

I've been wanting since last week, though, to write in reaction to her post about Liz Phair's rerelease of Exile in Guyville. Latoya does all of the great linking to other posts about this re-release, so check out the link if you want to read more. And Latoya's post talks about feminist "click" moments, and how those are different depending on one's community and cultural references. Check out the comments to the post as well.

The reason that I want to respond to Latoya's post, though, is because 1) I got on the Liz Phair bandwagon right at that zeitgeist grrrrl-power moment and 2) I think that the whole "rerelease" thing, much like Alanis Morisette's re-release of Jagged Little Pill, is totally wack.

So here's the thing. I don't think that Exile in Guyville is, in itself, a feminist record. I think it's a record that honestly spoke to how I felt at 18-19 years old. It was a record that didn't pretend to that all that happened in a girl's life was fucking love (some hits from that year: "I Will Always Love You" (1), "Can't Help Falling in Love" (3), "That's the Way Love goes" (4), Dreamlover (8), and I'm not even going to talk about the fact that "Rumpshaker" was also a hit that year). The point is, while it's true that I had The Sugarcubes (and Bjork's Debut which was also released in 1993) and Kim Deal in The Pixies (and then in The Breeders, with 1993's Last Splash), I didn't have, even with my vaguely alterna-girl leanings, a chick who sang about what I was fucking going through. Liz Phair didn't sing like a pop-tart - on that album her voice is gravelly and she doesn't even try for the pop-friendliness of "Why Can't I?" - and in fact she sang in such a low register that first-soprano-from-high-school-choir-me found that one of the benefits of dabbling in smoking during college was getting my voice lower so as to sing along. I know, faulty logic, but you see what I'm saying. She wasn't, on the record (for I never saw a video from it), trying to be some chippy. She was just talking about what it was actually like to deal with assholes and with life and with everything.

And one of my favorite songs, "Canary" is rarely one that people talk about from the record. It's not one of the grrrl-power faves, and it's not about fucking and blowjobs and whatever. No, it's about the following:

I learn my name
I write with a number two pencil
I work up to my potential
I earn my name
I come when called
I jump when you circle the cherry
I sing like a good canary
I come when called
I come, that's all

This album, because of this song and other songs that never get talked about much, spoke to all of my anxieties about being ambitious and feeling like I couldn't do enough to please people, while at the same time it spoke to all of the developing sexuality crap that happens when a girl is in her late teens. It spoke to feeling like I wasn't enough and yet like so much was expected of me. It spoke to me feeling like I wanted to be so much and yet I didn't know how to get there.

And, for me, that's not about feminism. That's about adolescence. And sure, this album was, for me, about a girl version of adolescence, but it wasn't about feminism, not really.

So here's the thing: the rerelease thing? It felt like it was an attempt to capitalize on my adolescent angst. Or on some feminist zeitgeist that got imposed on an album that wasn't, actually, about making a feminist statement.

I can't claim the same identity category as Latoya, or as some of her commenters, but Queen Latifa's U-N-I-T-Y was a more pivotal feminist text for me than any song off of Guyville. Or Salt-N-Pepa, too. Or, let's kick it old school - Aretha Fucking Franklin. Or even Janet Jackson's "Control" or Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach." Liz Phair was awesome to me, but her record didn't make me a feminist, or even speak to me as a feminist. It just spoke to me. To the fucked up girl that I was just before I was 20. And I still love that record. But dude, the rerelease? Lame. And I'm saying that as a fan.

Why Are the Humanities Oversupplied?

So I found my way to a thread over at the Chronicle of Higher Education forums in which the above title is the starting point for what is an ok discussion I suppose. Reading through it, though, I don't know. I suppose I feel compelled to weigh in, since so many readers here are from the Oversupplied Humanities, as am I.

I suppose the question is a fair enough one - if one is thinking only in terms of market forces and supply and demand and all that - except that there are two things that bother me:

1. The question assumes that people make all decisions a) with all possible information and b) rationally. (Here's a tip: getting a PhD in any field isn't a highly rational decision.)
2. The subtext of the question, I think, is that if there aren't jobs in a field that advanced study in that field - or even the field itself - is without value.

Now, I'm going to leave a discussion of other humanities disciplines by the wayside here and instead just focus on English as a discipline, as it's the one I know best. So. Why the oversupply in English?

First, "oversupply" is in fact just a "supply," i.e., universities (particularly large ones with intensifying demands to increase enrollment/retention to graduation) cannot run mandatory freshmen composition or a general studies curriculum with English requirements without a large pool of people to teach those courses. This is why to compare the state of English with, say, accounting (or nursing, or other similarly "undersupplied" fields), doesn't make much sense. Let's put to the side for the moment that there are more real-world opportunities with a BA in accounting, and just focus on how accounting fits into the broader curriculum. As things are set up at most universities, "accounting" doesn't play a role in the broader curriculum. It serves its majors and minors, and perhaps students may take a course or two as electives, but the bottom line is that accounting as a field does not play a role that serves the entire university in the way that a field like English does.

Now, you might say, but we don't need everybody who teaches gen. ed. courses to have an advanced degree! This is crazy! Ah, but. According to the accreditation standards of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (to give an example of just one accrediting body in higher ed), in order for a university to keep its accreditation, it cannot run courses with faculty who do not demonstrate their qualifications by having a certain number of graduate courses (or the equivalent) under their belts. In other words, if a school said, "We don't believe it's right to have all of these underemployed PhDs and MAs teaching comp, so we're just going to run a one-semester course about how to teach comp for anybody who's interested and that's how we'll staff those courses," they would lose their accreditation. In other words, the accreditation system pretty much demands that universities hire people with advanced degrees run all of its English courses. With that being the case, universities need a supply of labor that can fulfill that need, and it's just impossible in terms of cost to fulfill that massive general education need with only full-time and/or tenure-track faculty.

So, what is the solution to this? Either the lowering of accreditation standards (a) or the entire revamping of American education, which would also involve changing accreditation standards (b). Probably neither are likely.

With all of this being the case, the discussion over at the Chronicle turns, as you might expect, to a question that is actually not identical to "Why are the humanities oversupplied?" The question becomes, instead, "Why do people choose to enter fields that are oversupplied? What's wrong with these fools?" So let's think about this. Why would someone, an otherwise bright and normal person, choose to pursue years of advanced study in a humanities field, or more specifically, English? First, let's remember that there isn't an oversupply. There's just a supply, with some people compensated adequately and other people who are exploited. In other words, when a student looks at his university, what he will often see is that the English department is one of the biggest on campus, that they offer more courses more frequently than other departments, and that they "do what they love." This student, based on practical experience, sees only "supply."

Now, good mentors should tell the student about the realities of how this supply of labor is organized, but let's think about who is most likely mentoring students toward grad school: it's typically going to be tenured or tenure-track professors doing that work. So are students who don't internalize that advice just filled with delusions of their own grandeur? I'd say no. I'd say part of the problem is where their advice is coming from. If I tell a student the facts of the market, what they see is a person who in spite of those odds ended up with a "dream job." (Note: even if you teach at a place that doesn't count as a "dream job" to academics, your students think that your life is the most awesome ever, or, as a clueless student put it to BFF last year, that "the life of a professor is lucrative and rewarding.") In other words, again based on what they see, it's not so wrong for them to assume that with hard work and perseverence that they, too, will beat the odds and end up just fine.

Another factor in choosing to go on to advanced study in English (and I'm talking about literature specifically here) is that students who are attracted to doing so typically a) really like reading literature, b) really like writing research papers, and c) really excel at both of those things. It is not true that you can't get a real-world job with a BA in English - the skills are translatable to the real world - but it is true that whatever job you might get with that BA probably won't allow you to write research papers or to read and study literature. In other words, students who get BAs in English and who don't go on to grad school don't just end up homeless and unemployed - they do get jobs, and they are comfortable with having a job to pay the bills while they read in their spare time. But what if you really want to do something with your degree that allows you to develop those skills that you've excelled at even further? What if you are passionate about the subject and you want to think about it more deeply? Dude, that's kind of the point of grad school in non-applied disciplines. (It can be the point in applied disciplines as well, but I would argue that in applied fields the point may also be a lifestyle point, one in which they weigh the benefits of a more flexible schedule, of the rewards of teaching, etc. But at least as far as I know, most people who choose advanced studies in English don't begin with those concerns. Or those who do typically don't finish.)

So the question is, is this a foolish reason to go on to graduate school? I'd say it's only a foolish reason if one believes that the deeper study of material in this field and through this disciplinary perspective is valueless.

And the idea that the discipline is valueless does come through in the discussion as well, as posters posit that people choose grad school in the humanities, with English as a prime example, because it's "easier" than other fields. Oh, they go on, too. They also say that the grade inflation in "text-based" fields makes them more attractive majors for students, which then leads them down the slippery slope to grad school. You know, I don't know how it's possible to refute this point, because clearly anybody who would claim that getting a freaking PhD is "easier" in one field than another can't be reasoned with, as far as I'm concerned. Dude, getting a PhD is hard no matter what the discipline. And people don't choose PhD fields based on the "ease" of the field, as far as I'm aware. Who would devote that much time to doing something based on its relative easiness? We're talking 8-10 years in grad school minimum for most humanities PhDs. Seriously? People would choose to put their lives on hold that long because it seemed easier? Come on. You know what, just because English is most people in this country's first language does not mean that the disciplinary study of English literature - or of composition and rhetoric - is something that people are born knowing how to do. Just because a person is literate it doesn't mean that they know how to critically engage with and analyze a work of literature, nor does it mean that they know how to structure and compose a stylistically nuanced piece of prose. I mean, I can balance my checkbook and do my own taxes - does that mean I know everything my colleagues in accounting know? That it's "easy"? I've got some Band-Aids and Neosporin in the house, so does that mean nursing would be a breeze? Heck, I'm even familiar with chemistry - I cook, you know - so that must mean that I could just run off and get a Ph.D. in chemistry.

As you see, this "easiness" argument really irritates me. I suspect it would also irritate my students, because if this is supposed to be easy, they sure should get higher grades than they do from me.

So maybe let's stop thinking about the humanities as oversupplied. Maybe that's just a distraction from the real issues in play here. Maybe what we need to think about is the inequalities in how labor in the humanities is organized, and maybe we need to think about why we as a culture are so comfortable in dismissing the significance of these disciplines that are - paradoxically - central to most universities' core curriculums. If the humanities are easy and valueless, perhaps they shouldn't be part of the general education curriculum. Perhaps all of the required classes should be in business, math, and science. And then I could teach classes that self-select based on interest level, I wouldn't be required to teach everybody across the university how to write, and that would be that. Now, I don't believe that is how it should go, but you know what? Instead of talking about how people who choose to do this are stupid, or talking about how easy the fields are, or talking even about how faculty in grad programs are unethical for supporting large graduate programs in these fields, we should talk about why the humanities are central to what it means to be an educated person, and we should talk about why we insist on devaluing them.

Ok, I'm done now :) I've wasted like an hour writing this, and I really have crap I should be accomplishing.

Scattered Thoughts for a Monday

I feel like I want to post, but I don't really have some burning thing I'd like to discuss, so I'm going to ramble here for a bit, and then I will go about the business of getting going with the things on my to-do list.

First of all, an update on the web-based course.

You will note that I'm not using the word 0nl*n& anymore, as apparently that invites the spam comments that direct people to Educational Institutions of Ill-Repute, and I don't want to be a part of that whole thing, nor do I relish the task of having to delete such crap. But so anyway, Week 3 of the semester is now underway, and I think I have a sense of how things are going and will go.

First, I am so glad that I took the advice of a colleague, who discouraged me from including any actual content material during the first week. Most of the students enrolled in the course are not familiar (or are only barely familiar) with web-based courses or with the technology that they require - even technology as simple as sending an email attachment that is readable by MS Word. Having that first week to get people up to speed was essential in terms of making sure that I didn't end up beginning already behind. I should note, my course is pretty low-tech, all things considered, in part because I ended up not having support I was supposed to have in terms of making it fancier, and in part because I suspected that the tech-savvy-ness of the students would be questionable.

Second, because I did so much ahead of time and because I thought very carefully about making the course as student-centered (and as manageable for me) as possible on the front end, it really is feeling not terribly burdensome. I'd estimate that I'm spending somewhere around 1/2 hour-1 hour per day dealing with the course, and then I spend maybe 3-4 hours one day a week really updating the course site, doing online office hours, etc. And that's it. There isn't prep in the same way as with a traditional class (as I had to read and watch everything on the syllabus ahead of time and all of the assignments are done), so truly, this is turning out to be less of a time investment thus far than "normal" teaching. The grading will begin this week (for the course blog), so we'll see how I feel once that gets underway, but for now, I'm really feeling pleased that I took on the challenge of teaching this course. I'll talk more about how I structured it and how it works as the semester goes on, if people are interested. I will say this: it helps SO MUCH that I've been blogging all of this time in terms of managing the blog as the central community space in the course. That part of things feels very familiar, and that is going a long way toward making this a positive experience for me and for my students, I think. Also, can I just say: the students in the class seem (for the most part) really great! They all seem excited by the theme of the course, and they seem to be enjoying the material and finding the prospect of what the course aims to do useful and interesting. I was in no way certain that this would be the case, so hurray that it is!

My three traditional classes.

Are all going fine. I've taught versions of them all before, and the start of the semester at least is pretty much a well-oiled machine. Things will get more interesting as I move forward (some changes after midterm) but basically for now it's smooth sailing and I don't have anything of note to report.

Research.

Well, to be honest, I'm in a lull. I've done with the final tweaking of the book proofs, and in theory the thing will be out next month. I'm waiting to hear back about that journal article I submitted in June, and it certainly would be nice if it were to be accepted, though if not I'll send it off someplace else. Still, it would be awfully nice if it were accepted, and very soon, too, as then I could include it in my tenure crap. It also wouldn't hurt in terms of beefing up my application for JWIBSNA.

JWIBSNA.

Can I just say how annoyed I am that I'm applying for anything? But, one thing that is nice is that I'm pretty chill this year about the prospect of it going nowhere. This is different from previous attempts on the market in the past couple of years. I do want to do well this go-around, but I also feel like the chances of that are so small that I can maybe, I hope, not be an obsessive freak over the whole thing. Note: in writing about this now, I'm already probably being an obsessive freak. Whatever. The point is, after this year I know I'm pretty much locked in where I am (if I'm not already locked in given how far along I am on the t-t), so I might as well make one last pass through the assistant professor market, even if it's not a full or even small search but only one job. A variety of people have asked whether I'll apply for more, given that I'll already have to put shit together for this one application. Truth: maybe. I can tell you what I won't do: I won't talk myself into applying for random jobs that look great on paper just because I'm applying for this one. The appeal of this one job, aside from the good-on-paper-ness of it, is that it would be very easy for me to fall into a life in that location. I have no interest in packing my bags and hustling off to an unfamiliar location or to a location that takes me farther from family. I have no interest in starting completely over, in terms of my personal life. So. I'll see what's there when the list comes out this week, and then I'll make my requests for recommendations, and that will be that. I don't want to apply anywhere half-heartedly ever again. I've worked too hard for too long for that to be something I do. And I'm not applying for "dream jobs" just because they're there without taking the personal part of the equation into account. Let other people have those "dream jobs," I say. It's just not worth it. So probably JWIBSNA (a dream job in its own right) will come to nothing, but at least I know it would be a job that I'd really want and like a shot at. This is so different from how it felt applying last year and the year before. And maybe the reason I feel this way is because I've finally come to terms with my current location.

Tenure.

Dude, the going up for tenure thing is so weird! I need to get on the actual polishing of the binder, so it's not the act of putting the stuff together that's weird. What's weird is that there has been a total shift with many of my colleagues now that I'm in the final year, in which all of a sudden I'm getting all of this behind-the-scenes information to which I never before was privy. It is truly astonishing how clueless I've been over the past five years about the goings on with my colleagues. Astonishing.

Yep, so I think that's everything that's going on.

And now I need to do house-cleaning, shower, and go get my hair cut this afternoon. The hair, in case you were wondering, continues to grow, and I'm not yet feeling the urge to lop it off. I think that my ultimate aim is to have it exactly like this. Well, not exactly. Bangs that long would be impossible. But yes, that's what's happening hair-wise. And once I achieve that? I suspect I'll enter the phase of Growing out the Bangs, and then I'll do the Great Hair Transformation of 2009/2010, which will include cutting it all off.

I know, you have been dying to know my Hair Agenda. It's really something most people are feverish to get the inside scoop about.

But really, now. It's time for me to get to work. I'm ridiculously lazy, and this cannot continue.

Sunday Kitten Porn

Ok, so my lovelies have been so darling today that I could not stop myself from taking some pictures.

First, here is (less and less wee by the day) Mr. Stripey by the d-o-g bowl with the water. And yes, each cat has two bowls, because my stupid vet was all "they should eat both wet and dry food" and so, yes. Anyway, now you see the (messy, for Mr. Stripey does do the playing by the food thing) set-up.
And then, just at the moment that my mom called this morning, the two frisky felines decided it was time for some pre-nap grooming...

and then a snooze....

You can't stand it, can you? It's just too much cuteness for mere mortals. Other than being the Official Kitten Photographer, I have spent the day cheffing up meals for the week. I might be the most boring person in the world.

In Which I've Already Been Up and Working for Two Hours

Awakened by the early riser that is Man-Kitty, and unable to return to sleep, I have done the following:

1. Devised a tip sheet for my web-based course about how to use the chat function in Blackboard.
2. Reviewed FB's job letter, offering "suggestions" about how to shape the thing. I feel like Hermione Granger "editing" Ron's or Harry's essay for potions.
3. Worked on my own job letter, which is far too long and yet which, tragically, does not say all of what it needs to say.

And now I'm a) tired, b) without much time for a return to bed because my mom will call very soon, and c) hungry, even though I hate all food options.

I believe that I shall return to bed with the phone, so that I shall be able to answer the phone when my mom calls without having actually to move. I think it's really the only thing to do.

Laundry and Other Items

Today I have done laundry. A month's worth of laundry. It is still not folded. I must fold it (as well as put sheets on the bed) before bedtime or all will be lost.

Yep, that's pretty much it for today's household activities, much to the dismay of all of the beings that live here. The "to-do" list for around-the-house chores is really much larger.

In other news, I need to:

1. Catch up with more people via phone (I'm tragically behind in my phone-talking, even after spending hours on the phone today while performing laundry duties.)
   
2. Work on my job letter for The Job for Which I'd Be Stupid Not to Apply (henceforth known as JWIBSNA), even though doing so is the last thing I really feel like doing.
3. Update my CV (for JWIBSNA, though as well as for my tenure binder).
4. Work on tenure statements (though these are mostly done, and I won't be doing these this weekend even though it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to be doing that this weekend).
5. Work on "suggestions" for FB's job letter for the Job at Crazy's Institution (JCI), for which he keeps hounding me. As I indicated to him, I am not his slave, and he will have to wait while I take my own sweet time with this project. There was then a discussion of "the muse" needing to visit me, and then I rejected the premise that I need the muse for such mundane bureaucratic tasks.... Yeah. Anyway.
6. Teaching Crap.
   
7. Did I mention I need to fold laundry?

As you can see, it's a wild and wacky Saturday at the House of Crazy.

Seriously? Seriously.

I just got my proposed schedule for Spring. Apparently I have been assigned a new prep, which I had not at all anticipated. On the one hand, this is a good course to have in my repertoire. And it's one I have previously expressed interest in teaching. On the other, a new prep? Really?

And since when did one of my specializations become theory? Because apparently, this is one of my specializations now. And can I just say: I'm not so fancy with the theory at all, and I kind of feel like it's weird that I'm now this "theory person" when in truth I see myself as more of a sort of traditional, practical literary critic than a "theoretical thinker" or some such. I suppose in these cases context is all.

Perhaps I will stay home on this gloomy Friday, forgo that reception, and begin designing a course that I will not teach for months. That's always an effective use of time.

In Which I'm a Spaz, and Other Non-Exhausted Ramblings

Ah, how good it feels not to have to go into the office today. Now, I am very likely to go into campus this afternoon for a reception thingie (I think it would look good for me to be there, and really, why not go in for something social though work-related as opposed just to go in for work? Though I may possibly bail depending on my mood), but still: the benefit of the intense 3-day schedule is the break at the end of it. This morning I took the wee Mr. Stripey (who grows less wee by the minute - he's 6 lbs. now! Which means he's tripled in size since I got him!) to get his last round of shots this morning. You know, I really hate my vet. He's such a dick. And I feel like he likes Mr. Stripey better than he likes the Man-Kitty, which is totally uncool. And we had to wait in the exam room for a half hour before he sauntered in. But I do trust the asshole, so I won't change to a new vet. It's all very annoying. At any rate, you don't believe me about Mr. Stripey's increased size? Just take a gander at this picture of him and his partner in crime.
Not the best picture, but it does give a sense of the fact that Mr. Stripey is no longer a wee baby. Apparently, according to the vet's lame non-estimate, he'll end up being about the same size as Man-Kitty, though I still feel like he could grow to be the size of a small jungle cat. In other cat news, I finally bit the bullet and purchased a (sh! don't tell the kitties) dog bowl for them for their water. See, Mr. Stripey is a big fan of bringing his toys over to the food area to play, and the bowl I had used for their water - just a regular metal bowl - kept getting knocked over. Also, the bowl wasn't really big enough for them to drink from at the same time. A d-o-g bowl was truly the only option because the Man-Kitty prefers to drink from metal bowls (a) and because we needed something that foolish animals wouldn't topple over, and they really only cater to dogs when it comes to that. At any rate, the new bowl has been a raging success. (The kitties don't share their food bowls because I fear if they did the Man-Kitty might starve to death. So we're a cat family that has a communal water dish but then tiny bowls for food, with the Man-Kitty's being metal (for he is finicky like that and will not eat out of plastic or ceramic dishes) and ceramic for Mr. Stripey. While sometimes they switch spots if they're just grazing (well, Mr. Stripey will eat from the Man-Kitty's bowls), both have learned that they have their own spots at breakfast and dinner - Mr. Stripey on the right of the water bowl and Man-Kitty on the left. Indeed, the House of Crazy is a House of Routines.

Ok, enough of the cat-blogging. And funnily enough, that above nonsense wasn't the whole "in which I'm a spaz" thing that drove the title of the post. No, that spazziness was in relation to the whole "FB is to apply for a job at Crazy's University" situation. See, I had gotten it into my head that he'd never be happy working here, and this would then lead him to resent and hate me and blame me for doing something that would ruin his life. This is spazzy for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that the whole application thing could maybe not even result in an interview. Cart before the horse much? And then it's spazzy because in expressing my angst over this to him, he thought I was trying to say that I wouldn't want him to apply, which wasn't true at all. And then it's spazzy because, as FB rightly noted, one can't know whether one will be happy someplace until one is there, and basically by worrying over this I'm being a total tool. He also comforted me by saying that I don't need to worry about him resenting me because obviously he already does :) This totally made me laugh. Because, you know, I'm a spaz. What's most spazzy about this whole thing - and this is equal opportunity spazziness on both of our parts and not just on mine - is it's not like we're actually in a "real" relationship and dealing with a two-body problem. So why be angsty, seriously? You know what's funny? I feel like even if we ended up in the same place, I think I like thinking of FB as "fake" as opposed to real. It just takes so much pressure off. Because you know, when you're in a "fake" relationship, you really can do whatever the hell you want without feeling like you're not doing things the "right" way. I mean, nothing about this is "right" so we might as well just do whatever, you know? The only benefit I can think of related to transitioning into the "real" with him would be that my mother would stop referring to him as "your friend" which is just... eeewww. I think she feels like she can't use his name because she's not entirely sure he exists, or if he does exist, in what universe. But the "your friend" thing - eeewww.

Let's see.... what else? Nothing really. I have work to do (obviously) but I feel as if the working can wait. I should also do laundry, but well, I'm not feeling terribly motivated. Nah, I think I will relax for a bit with the kitties and then decide whether to go to campus for that reception. Yep, that sounds like the best possible plan.

Week 2 = Done

That's just crazy-talk I realize, but yes, it's true, I am 1/8 of the way through my semester. Am so tired I could collapse on the spot. I certainly hope that I get into the groove sooner rather than later, because I can't keep feeling so wiped out. Totally not possible. So I must go lie down with some certain felines who would like attention. They feel that my exhaustion is actually positive, as it means they get more cuddly nap-time with me. It also makes them more confident that I am in fact just a very large cat without very much fur, when I sleep as much as they do. When I don't, they begin to have suspicions about me. How do I know? Well, because they look at me suspiciously, obviously.

God, I'm too tired to be blogging. More tomorrow, or some other time when I feel like a person again.

Too Tired to Think in Bullets (Yes, That IS Possible)

I think it's because I tend to think in bullets for teaching purposes. Five things that characterize the Romantic period. Three things going on in this poem. Whatever. (My apologies to google searchers who want to know five things about the Romantic period. You will have to consult your notes and/or your book. I'm mean like that.) But so anyway, I've been doing a lot of thinking in bullets, and so I want to write, but I can't organize these thoughts into bullets. Consider this my apology for rambling.

I had a great meeting with BES, my thesis student, today. She's so smart! And she takes direction so well! She is so trusting that when I tell her to do something that it will bear fruit! And she's so diligent! However, I had one of those awful moments today during our meeting when I realized the undue influence that I can tend to have over certain ones of my students. We were talking about some theory she was looking at to figure out again why she was writing her thesis, and she brought up a passage and offered up her answer to the question that the theorist was asking. Let's just say that her answer is my answer. And so I chuckled, and I said "well of course!" but then I went on to explain that this is evidence of my undue influence, and so she should be careful to resist anything that I am in total agreement with :) We both laughed, and she totally got my anxiety about it, and she promised she would try really hard not to think like me, even though she thinks we're both totally right. Ah, BES. She is fab. So we had a good meeting today, and I offered up some possibilities for ways she can go as she continues drafting (she did not do any writing for this meeting - she needed to figure some shit out before she continued), and we set up our schedule for the semester. I then picked her brain about how she thought Class with Very Difficult Novel was going, and she thinks that it's really going well and that people are into it.

This is surprising, as this is a class where I typically expect a mass exodus upon beginning Very Difficult Novel. Well, they're 6 chapters in, and I've lost just four. It's kind of astonishing to me, but looking at their reactions over the past couple of class periods (I make them turn in index cards with insights and questions each class), they're, with the exception of one or two, getting it and doing well. Sure, some are stronger than others, but as a group they're where I'd want them to be with this material. And, like BES, they all are so trusting about doing what I suggest with the book! They're so... open. I hope that I'm getting this response from students now - in pretty much all of my classes - because I'm doing something right. I'm hoping that it's not just a fluke of this semester, but that I've really worked on my teaching to the point that not only do I inspire trust but that I prove myself trustworthy by having them approach things in ways that work.

But so I'm excited about CwVDN, as I am about my other classes. I'm also convinced that with a 4/4 load, teaching one class online really makes it like a 3-and-a-half/3-and-a-half load. Yes, that class was a ton of up front work, but I'm not feeling terribly taxed by the four courses now that the semester is underway, and this is a new feeling. Yes, it helps that the other three courses I'm teaching are "in the can" so to speak, but even still: I'm not feeling like I'm burdened - as I even did when I taught four classes "in the can" in a traditional setting. So if you've got the opportunity to teach online, and you're not horrified by the thought of doing so and you're fairly tech-friendly and you've got some support for things that you aren't sure of how to do, I strongly recommend trying it out. At least for me, I think it makes a positive dent in an otherwise really heavy teaching load.

Which brings me to a conversation that I had with a colleague today. This colleague is thoroughly disheartened by the teaching load and by how things work at our university in general. You know, I get the complaints. I mean, I understand them. But I also feel like being miserable is no viable option for dealing with those complaints. This colleague basically plans to check out (and has already done in many ways). But as I talk to this colleague, I feel like she only becomes more unhappy with the job as a result of this choice. It's one thing if one can check out and really not be unhappy as a result. It's entirely another if one continues to feel disgruntled. You know, I think that's the reason why I don't check out. I think it's because I'd just be more pissed off if I did. Also, I suppose, it's because I'm seeing positive results from not checking out. Sure, during the school year, my job is "hard" in ways that other jobs are not. (Not to say that other academic jobs aren't hard: just that they're differently hard.) But I kind of think that accepting the job as it is in the ways that it's hard and actively working to change things to make it easier is a better response than passively lamenting the job as it is and the ways that it's hard, only to feel victimized and oppressed by it. Dude, nobody said that life would be easy, and nobody said that one is entitled to a perfect, happy life, even if one works for years to get a Ph.D. Life's too short to be pissed off all the time, though, so I think a lot of what I do - and a lot of my workaholism - actually is because I don't want to be constantly pissed off. This may seem counterintuitive, but that's how it is for me.

In a piece of bizarre and unexpected news, you know how I'd decided not to apply for anything this year? I think I have to do so. There's a job - what would be a great job, though I'm not hopeful they'd be into me - only an hour (driving slow) from Hometown. Note: I don't want to apply for any jobs this year. The thought is awful. I'm sick of going on the market. More than that, I'm sick of not being settled where I am, and applying for jobs unsettles me. But I think I can't not do it. Whatever the case, I'm not going to MLA to interview, and if that's a deal-breaker for them, they can suck it. Obviously, I'll offer to do a version of an MLA interview either in person (at my expense) or by phone, but who even knows if things would get to the point where that will be an issue. So I'll apply. It doesn't hurt to apply, right? There is also a job at a university in Lebanon for an English professor. I considered applying for a minute-and-a-half, until I realized I don't want to emigrate to Lebanon. If any of you would like to, though (the job doesn't specify a field in literary studies), you should totally do it because it's at a job in the North in an off-the-beaten-path place (i.e., not a hotbed of violence) no more than a 30-minute drive from where my family is (on the sea, in a city), and it would be fantastic if one is less of a dumb American than me. So if you're interested in knowing more about the country and that area in particular, dude, let me know. The job's listed in the Chronicle. Seriously: if I weren't in a tenure-track job and I didn't want to settle down where I am or near to here, I totally might consider it.

I'm exhausted by the whole Sarah Palin thing. Just exhausted. I mean, the day that the VP makes it to this website is the day that I think we all should be exhausted by it. Oh, and also the day that CNN interviews Rachel from the Real World San Francisco (which was today - I saw it.) I'm sick of hearing Republicans act as if the Republican party is the party that fights sexism (um, equal pay act anyone?), and I'm sick of the hullabaloo about poor Bristol Palin and her baby daddy (and poor the both of them for having to make an appearance at Sarah Palin's VP acceptance speech to prove they're together and that it's all about family values rather than allowing those two crazy kids just to get out of dodge and figure their own shit out), and I'm sick of the totally inadequate response by the Dems to the fact that we've all, as a nation, been distracted from things like universal health care, the economy, and energy. I don't even care whether Sarah Palin has experience or not at this point: I just care that she's become this shiny, sparkly thing that catches our eye and stops us from talking about things that actually matter to Americans in their daily lives. Incidentally, I felt the exact same way about the whole Clinton fiasco that started with Whitewater and ended with Monica Lewinsky, which ultimately resulted in the piece of legalistic porn that was the Starr Report. I'm an equal opportunity hater when it comes to distractions from, I don't know, things that actually matter, at least when it comes to politics. So fuck off, Sarah Palin. Fuck off, politicians. Fuck off, pundits and parties and whatnot. Until you start talking to me again, I shun you.

I think those are all of my rambling thoughts on this Wednesday. Indeed, I think I'm done. Let's hope that I can make it through tomorrow, because dude, I am tired.

The Semesters May Change, But Some Things Stay the Same

So I had all of these awesome plans for the weekend. Like to get a lot done and stuff. And then I thought, oh, I don't need to work on Friday. Saturday's the day. So then Saturday I did some stuff for my web-based course, and then it was like 1 PM and well, clearly that was enough for Saturday. And then it was Sunday, and though I finished that reader's report, a hurricane was coming, and I do love me some hurricane coverage with that Anderson Cooper. And I thought: Monday. Monday will definitely be the day.

I did go and get kitty food and litter, and I did go to the grocery store. And I did send a stern email to the web-based course, for a number of them are already behind. Indeed, for those who might consider taking a web-based course sometime, there are deadlines, and you can be behind after the first week. The deal is not that you just work independently at your leisure and then turn some shit in at the end for a grade. At least not when Dr. Crazy is at the helm.

All of that was exhausting. And I really needed to take a nap. And then I had to spend a HUGE amount of time comparing water bottles on Amazon (I've got an Amazon visa and so had 25 bucks to spend), for I don't want to rape the earth with buying disposable bottles of water at the store. Also, in addition to raping the earth, doing so is much more expensive than buying a nice water bottle. But the Sigg bottles seemed less handy in terms of their shape, and the whole lid thing because I want to take the bottle for working out, too, but the colors were pretty, and I needed something dishwasher safe because lord knows I'm not going to wash things by hand (you should see my sink currently - for the dishwasher is filled with clean dishes that I've yet to put away, because I am a filthy, filthy girl) - and then I needed to read some reviews....

But now, here we are, at nearly 8 PM, and I did not clean my house, and I did not prep for my one class tomorrow, and did I mention that my house is a pigsty?

And isn't this something I do typically during the academic year, where I just check out on the weekend and don't do the things on my list of things to do? Indeed, it is a thing that I typically do.

I am choosing to forgive myself, as it seems I always end up just fine at the end of the day, even with my slatternly ways. Of course they do.

Poor Bristol Palin

Not because she's pregnant. She seems to have the support of her family and the father of the baby, and that's great, and I believe in supporting a woman's right to choose in all cases, whether that's to choose not to become pregnant, to choose abortion, to choose adoption, or to choose to bring a pregnancy to term and keep the baby, so I'm going to assume that this was her choice and celebrate it.

But I cannot imagine how much it would suck to be 17, in her position, and to have first rumors that my little bro was in fact my kid and then to have those rumors squashed by the nationwide announcement that I was a prospective unwed teen mother. Holy hell. I think I might change my name* and move to Alaska.**


*Though I'm going to go out on a limb and say I'd probably want to change my name whatever was going on with my mother's political career or my personal life if my name were Bristol, for any number of reasons. But perhaps this is just me. At least I have fond (though blurry) memories associated with Harvey's Bristol Irish Creme, which is more than I can say for the associations that I have with trig.

**Wait. Alaska wouldn't work in this situation. Perhaps New York City or something.

Peer Review, or Who the Hell Do I Think I Am?

So I just finished reading, writing the reader's report for, and submitting the reader's report for a manuscript that I agreed to evaluate for Very Good Journal, and I'm left feeling... Oh, I'm left with a lot of feelings.

First, can I just say that this is service I really, really like. In theory. Even though it's basically invisible. I like reading stuff that may be the Newest Thing in my field, I like feeling like an expert who has something to contribute to scholarship seeing the light of day, and I like feeling like I can offer feedback that writers can actually use.

But. I've done this now exactly two times (for I'm not all that much of an expert), and in both instances I recommended that the articles be rejected. And that kind of nullifies most of what I listed above about liking this kind of service. Because it sucks to know that I may be responsible for somebody not getting a publication. I don't like that at all. And it also sucks to wonder whether my thoughts about the relative publishability of something are fucked up, and to wonder whether I'm being an asshole, and if I am, whether that actually makes editors think that I'm an asshole and so they won't ever ask me to review again. And in the case of the report that I just finished, the journal does double-blind review, and so what if I was an asshole to somebody fancy? (Though I really don't think somebody fancy would have submitted something that cited - or, rather, failed properly to cite - Wikepedia, so that's some small consolation.) To make a long story short, this whole reviewing manuscripts thing for me is bound up with a lot of my own insecurities and problems with dealing with criticism.

See, I hate nothing like a reader's report. Even the good ones make me shudder upon first looking at them. I hate the impersonal tone - "the author offers insightful analysis of x"; "Crazy fails to address y." I hate that feeling of dealing with the suggestions for revision, like I'm attempting to read a map in the dark or like I'm trying to use telepathy to figure out what some ethereal entity wants from me. I hate that feeling that sometimes happens where one wonders whether the person actually read the essay that I wrote (though admittedly, I've only really felt that one time). My problem is not with complying with the comments so much - for I am typically fully willing to change anything I've written in the service of it being published and have no love affair with my sentences or any such thing - but with the fact that the comments exist at all. I hate reading what strangers think about what I've written. Absolutely hate it.

So when I read a manuscript at the request of an editor, I bring all of that baggage with me. And in some ways, that's probably good, because I really am committed to trying to offer practical advice, even if my recommendation is to reject. I care a lot about being a useful reviewer, and I care a lot about offering suggestions that somebody can use going forward.

But so what? Somewhere, some academic, who really did have an interesting idea even if the execution wasn't so grand, is ultimately going to read comments from a hostile reviewer, and that hostile reviewer will be me. Even though I wasn't really hostile: I was disappointed. I so wanted to be able to say, "this is the most fantastic essay in the land! publish away!" But instead, well, I couldn't in good conscience even offer a revise and resubmit. It just wasn't good enough, or so I thought.

But who the hell am I to make that kind of decision? When I look at myself, at my CV, whatever - I still don't feel qualified. I feel like a total fraud. Because sure, I've had some modest success with publication or whatever, but who the hell do I think I am?

I think what makes me feel even more... insecure... about this most recent report is that I've currently got an essay out for review with this journal. And so I imagine getting back reader's reports about my own essay that are as harshly critical of my work as I was of the manuscript that I read. And I imagine the editor reading my report and then getting reports back that my own essay is a piece of garbage and deciding that I'm a bullshit scholar who doesn't know anything. And yes, all of this has nothing to do with the manuscript that I reviewed, but I sure would feel better if I'd already heard back about my own essay. (Apparently one report is already back and the other is overdue; the overdue thing worries me, because I feel like it means that the person hasn't had time to articulate all of the ways in which I suck but with substantial revision could maybe be acceptable, but of course what it probably means is that the person just hasn't bothered to look at it yet and the overdueness means nothing about my work, positive or negative.)

But so the point of all of this is that it is totally weird to be in a position where one is called upon to review the work of others when one is subject to the same review of one's own work. If you let yourself think too much about it - which I don't recommend people do, so you may actually want to skip this part - probably the same 20 people are all reviewing each other's work at the same time, passing judgment on one another simultaneously. How horrifying is that?

And yet, the report is done. That is one thing I can check off of my list of things to do, and ultimately, I do think that my response to the manuscript was fair and that I offered some suggestions that would make the essay hang together better, make the argument tighter, and make the thing really a super-interesting piece of scholarship. And maybe my lack of confidence when it comes to thinking about my authority in this area will not last forever. Maybe at some point I'll actually feel qualified to do this work. Maybe it's like teaching - that the more you do it the more authority one feels. One can only hope.

But it still sucks to know that I'm a person who could be responsible for somebody else's professional disappointment. The idea was really a good one. I hope the person realizes that I thought so.

Blogger as Online Teacher

So as you all know, I am, for the first time ever, teaching online this semester. And now that the semester is actually getting underway, I've got some thoughts (scattered though they may be) about how I feel about teaching in an online - rather than in a traditional classroom - environment. This post will probably be boring for those of you who've already done online teaching or who already do it, but since it's new to me, well, I'll be writing about it.

I suppose I'll begin by talking about why I've not taught online before now, especially given the fact that I'm pretty comfortable with technology and universities so love people who are willing to teach online. (Remember the space constraints of my uni? You can imagine how jazzed they are to have us do web-based courses.) I guess there are a few things that stopped me to this point. First and foremost, I was worried about the time-sucking potential of online teaching. I was both right and wrong about that, I think, but more on that later. The second is that there are very real issues about teaching online and intellectual property at my university. See, when you teach online here, the university "owns" the course. So if ever I stop teaching this course, they can take my shell and just hand it over to somebody else to teach. Nobody's entirely sure about what counts as part of the "shell" and so this has made many people in my department reluctant to teach online here, particularly when it comes to entirely original courses that they've developed that relate to their research areas. So, for example, I'd probably never teach any of my upper-level courses online, or my intro-to-lit course online, because everything I do in those courses is so intrinsically related to my research area and to the stuff on which I publish or may publish in the future. Third, the pedagogy that drives my teaching (god, how pompous does that sound?) depends a lot on interaction between me and my students. I'm not big on lecturing, and I'm not big on a model for instruction that is about me giving students material and them spitting it back at me. For a long time, I didn't really see how I could emphasize a student-centered instructional model in an online environment.

With all of this in mind, I sort of said, screw online teaching. I don't need to do it, so I won't. But then last semester, the opportunity to teach an upper-level course for a program outside of my department came along, and I thought, you know, this would be the perfect chance for me to try this whole online instruction thing out. I don't care that the university will "own" this course, and this will give me the chance to experiment with my teaching and to think about my pedagogy in ways that my typical teaching assignments don't allow. And so here I am.

The course is basically an advanced composition course. The point is to get student thinking about how to bring the methods and approaches of multiple disciplines together in their writing, and while I have chosen a content-based theme for the course, really that's just to give us stuff about which to write. So, with this in mind, the challenges before me were (and are) the following:

• How do I get students writing regularly enough for them to see real improvement in their writing over the course of the semester?
• How do I choose primary text material that inspires an interdisciplinary approach as well as models such approaches for students?
• How do I encourage conversation in a course in which students never lay eyes on one another, which I think is an essential first step in getting students to think about writing as an entryway into certain kinds of conversations?
• How do I keep the course "student-centered" when I am the "administrator" of all of the technology? How do I stop the course from becoming one in which I pontificate and students regurgitate?
• How do I make the course user-friendly enough that students with varying levels of comfort with technology can easily access the materials and engage with the assignments of the course? (This is actually a huge problem: a lot of students sign up for these courses just because they don't want to spend time in class because they have other commitments, and they don't necessarily feel comfortable with an online environment at all.)
• How do I make the course appropriately challenging without making too much grading work for myself? (This is another huge issue: many students enroll in these courses thinking that they will be less work than traditional courses or that they will be easier than traditional courses.)
• How do I design a course that students find rewarding and that uses my expertise without giving up ownership of that expertise by putting it all online, and thus giving the university ownership over it? (In other words, how do I make the shell of this course completely inhospitable to the course being taken over by easily exploitable adjunct labor, who would potentially be required to teach the course with a higher enrollment cap, etc.?)

So where even to begin with all of those challenges?

Well, where would any blogger begin? With a class blog. The blog is really at the center of the course, and I've set it up so that students are doing most of the blogging. The idea is that the blog is taking the place of what I'd normally do in the traditional classroom: presentations and response-type writing assignments. Each blogging assignment is very clearly structured, and the idea is that students will do writing of medium-formality in this space.

The second thing is that commenting on blog posts is worth a good chunk of the final grade. In an online environment, I don't know how else to make sure discussion is central, really, and with the commenting requirement, I'm hoping that students really engage with one another's ideas - if not exactly as they would in a traditional classroom setting than at least similarly.

Now, this is a lot of student-generated writing. How to evaluate it? Well, as for the comments, if they are commenting substantively a certain number of times per week, that's how their grade is determined. Basically, I'll just quantify their participation, and that's where the grade comes from. As for the blog posts themselves, I'll respond to each with a rubric, a brief comment, and a grade. If they want more feedback than that, they'll have to come to online office hours.

The rest of the grade comes from their final project, which is a typical research paper assignment sequence. That will be the biggest chunk of the grading work, but should look like the typical grading work that I do in my traditionally-housed comp courses.

I'm not sure how the whole thing will turn out, but so far, I think, so good.

As for the time-sucking properties of the course, well, it's both more and less time-sucking than I'd imagined. More in the sense that it gives me license to waste time by sticking stuff up on the course blog and Blackboard site, checking email, fielding questions about the technology, etc. Things that usually don't take up so much time with my traditional courses. On the other hand, the bulk of the prep for the course is done, and because the class is really designed to put students at the center of producing the "knowledge" of the course, it takes less time than my traditional classes, or seems as if it will. There is less improvisation on my part in terms of delivery, if that makes sense. The "discussion leading" stuff that normally takes lots of my time to design for my traditional classes is already taken care of by the assignments, and I've already prepped all of the readings, so it's just a matter of showing up and guiding them along when they encounter all of that.

I have planned to include some brief "mini-lectures" about aspects of the writing process, and I'll be doing those as the semester goes along. That said, these things kind of take half the time, because normally I'd need to write this sort of thing up and then present it in class. The whole "presenting" thing is built into the writing in the online environment.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with what I've put together. I think the class is challenging, and I think that it does keep students and active learning at the center. Let's hope that these are not famous last words :)

Into the Groove, Apparently

You will notice that it's before 8 AM on Saturday morning. You will also notice that I'm writing on my blog, which must mean that I am awake. Ah, the joys of being back on my school sleeping schedule. I've been wondering why I've been so exhausted and zonking out around 11. I suspect it has something to do with the whole wake-up time thing, no? Ah yes, it all makes sense.

My mom is actually visiting my cousin this weekend in Florida, so I can't call her to bother her (for normally we do talk on Saturday and Sunday mornings, although usually not quite this early, but sometimes I make her talk to me this early because I figure she's my mom and she has to put up with things like early phone calls from me), and so here I am, bothering you. I don't really have anything to write about. I'm kind of boring, really.

Well, I suppose I could write about Sarah Palin, but I've yet to decide what I actually want to say about her. I suppose I'll leave it at this for now: the thing that's brilliant about Palin as a choice is that because she's such a dark horse for McCain to have chosen - such a brief time in public life, such a short resume, etc. - she can, to some extent, be whomever McCain wants her to be. As opposed to a Biden, with a 30-year record of decisions and public activity and votes, Palin has something like 3 things that you can go after her on: the whole internal investigation in her state thing, her policies on drilling/energy, and ... yeah, I'm sure there must be something else. You can't really go after her on the pro-life thing because the obvious response would be that you're a baby-murderer who thinks she should have aborted her youngest son. It's a personal attack rather than a political - or even an ethical and moral - disagreement. And so, McCain gets to shape her as a "reformer," even as she's somebody that the base of the Republican party loves for all the social conservatism stuff she believes in. We don't have much of a real record on her to attack, but at the same time, she's the one candidate in this race with executive governing experience. Do I think she's legitimately qualified to be Vice President? No. But I can't actually make a case for why not precisely because of the ways in which she's almost qualified, if that makes sense. In other words, I think the choice of Palin was ultimately diabolical and brilliant. And it will be interesting to see how the Obama-Biden ticket handles it.

In other news, I am positively sick of 90-degree weather with the ragweed raging so out of control that I cannot be outside for 30 seconds without sneezing, in spite of allergy meds. Where in the heck is fall? Because I'm done with the late-summer allergies and the late-summer heat. Done, I say.

Don't Try This at Home... Except Woohoo!!!!!

So I know you're all dying for an update about the Impossible Classroom Fiasco of Fall 2008. Or even if you're not, I'm going to give it to you, because it has turned out to be a bizarre tale of hope and job happiness.

So as I wrote Tuesday, things did not look at all good. This was not because anybody didn't acknowledge my problem or because anybody was uncooperative. My Fabulously Wonderful Administrative Person's lack of enthusiasm when I first presented her with the difficulty had nothing to do with lameness on her part: it was that she had a list of about 20 faculty members who had similar problems (probably about 5 of them with the very same room I was complaining about). The issue is, space on our campus just doesn't exist. We would need something like three brand new academic buildings just to have the same space ratio of other universities in our state, and given the budget situation... yeah, that's not happening. We are also the lowest funded university in our state compared with the others even aside from the problem with buildings, so yes, we run a very tight ship here. Anyway. So FWAP's lack of enthusiasm has to do with the fact that she's a realist. I knew when I brought the problem to her that I was asking for the impossible. She often accomplishes the impossible. Her realism combined with the whole accomplishing of the impossible thing is why she's wicked awesome. She is also wicked awesome because she used to watch All My Children daily in our student center with a person who is currently an A-list celebrity, before he dropped out of college here. But I digress.

But so anyway, throughout the next day, FWAP exhausted all the possibilities she knew of, and then my chair, who'd gone to look at the room for himself, started making calls trying to get something done - at least for one of the two classes. Nada. When I talked to my chair at the end of the day, he endorsed the idea that students should contact upper administration, because all conventional approaches to the problem had been exhausted, though he also promised he'd keep trying. We also discussed Plan B options for the course where the room really was totally unacceptable, and there I was.

That night, I started thinking that I didn't necessarily want a bunch of random emails from my students to litter the inbox of upper admin with no explanation, but I also didn't want to sit there and monitor what my students might write (free expression and all that). And then I thought to myself that maybe it would make sense for me to advocate on my own and on my students' behalf, not demanding a solution, but offering the higher ups warning that they might be hearing from students while at the same time outlining the nature of the problem, both in terms of my practical concerns (safety, being in such an enclosed space) with the room assignment, as well as how the room would affect the pedagogy of the two courses. I thought, why expect students to fight this battle if I'm not willing to put my neck out for them?

Note: I do not have tenure. Note: I've barely met the people whom I was emailing, with the exception of my dean, whom I know enough to greet if I pass him on campus. But again, I felt like it made sense that if I was going to tell students to send emails that I should put my neck out first. This could have been highly stupid.

It could have been, at a university other than mine. I work at a great fucking university, and I have such great respect for the upper administration. Let me tell you what happened after I sent the email.

• First thing Thursday morning, I received a wonderful reply from my university's president.
• By Thursday afternoon, my provost was personally making calls and having her staff make calls all over campus in efforts to resolve the problem.
• Also Thursday afternoon, FWAP and my chair were congratulating me for alerting the administration to this problem, which affects so many faculty in our department, and that as a result of my efforts that there was movement in resolving not only my problem but in resolving other people's problems of a similar nature. Crazy is an activist! Crazy is a hero!
  
• By today's end, I've got a new classroom assignment, a room normally not used as a classroom but that has all of the technology I could dream of having and enough space for all of my students, and apparently other people have gotten new classroom assignments as well.

Within 36 hours, the impossible has happened. And my president and provost thanked me for bringing the problem to their attention (I'm hoping that they can use what I wrote to them as ammunition when the state tries to cut our funding further), and expressed excitement about the work that I'm doing in the courses that I teach. And more than that, they fixed the problem. They responded with action, not just with congratulations on my efforts and hand-wringing. And that is because, whether I disagree with some of their decisions or not (and I do, as any faculty member would), what they care most deeply is our students and the education that we offer here. And it's not just talk. That's really the truth. And I believe that more now than ever, because I've seen the direct effect of that caring on me and my students.

I'll admit, though, I was embarrassed that I sent that email after I sent it. I felt like a whiner, and I felt like I was stepping out of turn. I felt like I was stupid, and that as an untenured person I should be keeping my head down. And even still I'm embarrassed because of the fact that I caused all of this commotion. I'll be honest: I would have just put up with the room, no matter how sucky it was, if I had been able to accomplish the stuff on my syllabus in the second class (showing films) in the room. I've done that before. I've made due with limited or ridiculously small resources, carting technology across campus in rainstorms in order to do what I need to do in the classroom. I didn't want to cause problems for people, and I didn't want to make a stink on a campus where the resources are so limited, and where I understand that those limitations aren't really the fault of anybody here.

But you know what? Certain disciplines often bear the brunt of limited resources, and English is one of those disciplines. Why? Well, because how many resources do you need if you just "read books and talk about them"? And so as much as I do feel embarrassed to have raised such a ruckus in this instance, I'm also glad that I did, because it highlights that people - even in my throwback discipline - are doing things in the classroom that require resources.

Even people like me, who don't do a ton of techie things, because they know that they can't count on having those resources in their classrooms. Seriously: the biggest roadblock to that room for me was that there wasn't space to break students into groups for small group discussion and activities (both classes) and that there wouldn't be room to bring in a DVD player to show the films on the syllabus in the one class. And the class where I didn't have to show films, I didn't have the technology to bring in recordings of the text we're reading over the first half of the semester, but I figured out how to deal with that (I loaded the recordings onto my iPod and brought in the teeny speakers that I own). Sure, when I've got a smart room I do more. I put sample outlines up on screen to show students how to organize papers; I show youtube videos that connect the material of the course to students' actual lives; I will put a poem up on screen so that we can look at it and analyze it together; I'll put outlines of notes on screen or plans for activities on screen so that I'm not spending so much time writing on the board. But I'm, even in the smartest of classrooms, fairly low-tech because what matters to me more than technology is getting students engaged, and in my discipline, there are lots of great low-tech ways to do that.

But even "low-tech" in a discipline like mine requires some tech. It requires more than a tiny blackboard, and it requires enough space to move students around. It requires a room where you don't have constant hallway noise, and where students don't feel suffocated.

The point is, I am so... just ecstatic, really... that my administration read the letter that I sent to them and that they responded with enthusiastic support for what I do in my classroom, and that they demonstrated that support with action, not just consolation and excuses. And so as embarrassed as I am about having complained about my problem, I'm also kind of proud that I did, and proud of the response that my complaint generated.

Of course, this makes me wonder whether I should do more letter-writing when I'm disgruntled. When I last did this, in irritation at some reportage on CNN, I got a series of replies from John Roberts, an anchor on CNN's morning show. Now with this, I've apparently alerted my upper administration to a horrible problem on campus, I've fixed a horrible problem for my students, and everybody thinks I'm great. Perhaps my tendencies to avoid the earnest activism are misguided. Perhaps if I wrote letters more frequently, the world would be a different place. On the other hand, perhaps my successes have to do with the fact that I only take such action when I'm truly impassioned about something. And slightly premenstrual. 'Tis hard to know.

The point here is, the whole Impossible Classroom Fiasco of Fall 2008 has come to a totally positive resolution, and it's left me feeling positively warm and fuzzy about my administration, my institution, and really, about my life as a faculty member at my institution. Who knew something as insignificant as a crappy classroom assignment could inspire all of that?

New Year's Resolution Check-In

So, since last I whined here, I paid bills (ah, the joys of the once monthly paycheck!) and looked over the Great Credit Card Project of 2008. While the paying down of the debt is slow (and slower still because I will need to send a check re: permissions next month, and I'm not sure if I'll get money for it from my university), I have done some calculations, and indeed, I shall (knocking wood), barring a disaster of some variety, be out of credit card debt by June 2008. Now, of course the initial goal was to be credit-card-debt-free by January '09, but I realized in May or so that this would not happen. This is ok. As it is, once the credit card debt is gone, I will be in a position to save to buy some sort of house or condo or something, and by June/July '10 I will be able to have approximately (again, barring disaster or some unforeseen circumstance like not being able to do summer teaching as planned) have a down payment of near 20K saved. Note: this is not taking into account the salary bump (meager though it will be) that comes with tenure (insert finger-crossing tenure superstitions here). Obviously I'll still have student loan debt, and car payment debt, but still, according to my calculations, I will be in a position to buy something in 2010/2011. And this without some sort of windfall or parental influx of cash. Let's not think about the position I'd be in if I'd been more financially responsible in the past five years.

Now, the other major resolution of the year was fitness. Sigh. This resolution has not worked out so grand. I, however, am now resolving for the year not to be a total wash, and I will embark afresh on this goal Sept. 1. Rome was not built in a day and all that.

So, now with the bills taken care of and with me feeling all proud of myself for making significant headway since January, I'm now considering what else I should do with this day. I think I should:

1. Shower.
2. Go to the bank.
3. Go to the office.
4. Go pay rent, figure out annoying situation with laundry card (note: this is something I've needed to do since BEFORE my travels this summer).
5. Review Manuscript for Very Good Journal (where incidentally my essay is still under review with one reviewer, though one review is, apparently, back. I have fantasies that I'll hear back before I submit my tenure binder that the essay is accepted, but I am preparing myself for a) rejection or b) revise and resubmit news, both after I submit the tenure binder).

Or I could just laze about and do none of the above, though that does not seem wise.