the age of perfection: What Am I Doing?

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

What Am I Doing?

I've been meaning to throw in a few words about the conference from which I returned on Sunday, but it's been a crazy scene around here, what with all the work and all. So I will just say that I had a pretty good time in general--saw some interesting panels, one not-so interesting panel (still, it was an impressive interesting-to-not ratio)--and my hotel room was fairly fabulous. Hello, first experience with room service! I made a short film about my hotel room, in fact. (By "short film," I mean that I set my digital camera to "video" and panned around the room so that I can impress TB when next I see him.) Even more splendid was the now-famous Blogger Meet-Up: I spent a good bit of time with Medieval Woman and a grad school friend, and then had a terrific dinner with the two of them and TE, What Now?, and Flavia. All good people. Flavia and I also had a drink at the hotel bar afterwards--very "Lost in Translation," indeed--and it was a pleasure to get to know her in person.

Right now, though, I'm sort of trying to write a cover letter for the tenure-track version of the job that I currently have--if writing half a sentence and then clicking over to the internet could be said to constitute "trying." I honestly don't know how to write this thing. Even addressing it to "Professor Chair" seems awkward, since I certainly don't call the chair "Professor" in real life. I have plenty of positive things to say about the job, I just don't...want to. And yes, therein lies the problem: writing this letter will involve work, whereas writing other job letters involves somewhat less work. And I don't want to work. Or, if I am going to work, I could:

grade 23 papers
read my advisee's prospectus
prep for one of tomorrow's classes
prep for the other of tomorrow's classes
read for Thursday (lots of Dante! Yeagh!) (Pronounce that interjection as you will: glee or disgust, it's all valid)
write some other cover letters
read and check off the final paper proposals for comp (oh yeah I have to do this tonight; can't forget)
finish reading the thing I'm supposed to have read for this meeting on Thursday morning
wash a dish
go to bed, for Pete's sake.

Perhaps blogging isn't the best use of my time.

5 comments:

Fretful Porpentine said...: Oh yeah, I wrote my letter for the t-t version of my job a few weeks back, and it was the Hardest Letter Ever. And I get distinctly twitchy and paranoid every time members of the search committee talk to each other behind closed office doors.

I'm so jealous of the blogger meetup! That sounds awesome!; November 13, 2007 at 10:58 PM
heu mihi said...: Well hey, you'll be at m-la, right? Another meet-up should be in the works!; November 13, 2007 at 11:04 PM
Flavia said...: Yes! It was all such fun, wasn't it?

I think I'm now officially Not Posting Specifically about many of my blogger meet-ups--MLA may be an exception--so's to avoid awkward situations like the one I narrated on Saturday. But that shouldn't be taken as a sign that I didn't have an awesome time--

(Incidentally, this seems to be the bloggger meetup in which I'm fixated on voices, but yours is lovely, and somehow not what I expected.); November 13, 2007 at 11:15 PM
Hilaire said...: This sounds like classic mid-November burnout.

But I'm glad such fun was had, and that your hotel room was great. I loooove hotels. Room service!!; November 14, 2007 at 12:09 AM
Notorious Ph.D. said...: Dang. That's a helluva to-do list. And here I have been, doing very little all morning. You make me feel guilty. And motivated.

Right. To work.; November 15, 2007 at 1:19 PM