Intermission

Well I'm back, and in 10 minutes I leave for the train station. When will this mad jet-setter lifestyle come to an end????

I received an email today about a local adjunct opportunity, actually within my field. So if this campus visit went worse than I think that it did, or the other candidate's visit went better, or if I decide not to move halfway across the country to teach a 4-4 load, there are Alternatives.

At some point, perhaps tomorrow, I may write a bit about the visit itself. It was actually a pretty pleasant interview, and the faculty were all extremely warm and welcoming. For now, however, I would rather discuss something altogether unrelated. In brief:

Now that I'm not, you know, twelve, you'd think I'd be able to paint my frikkin toenails, right? Evidently, no. I almost never perform this bizarre and profane act, I confess, because when my toenails are painted my feet look like they belong to someone else, and I get kind of disoriented. Besides, feet are functional, not pretty, and gussying them up just strikes me as...bizarre and profane, I guess.* (I'm using "profane" in the sense of "vulgar, coarse," not in opposition to "sacred." Although, given how much walking I do--and how highly, therefore, I must value my feet--there is something kind of nice about the implied other meaning, here.) However I'm going to a shower in a few days and I have shoes that I think would just look better with some kind of decorated feet, so I bit the bullet and Performed the Act. I truly do suck at it, though. Perhaps my sucking has something to do with the fact that I fundamentally rebel against this particular act of adornment.

Whatever. No one at said shower will be close enough to my toes to notice, I hope.

Okay now I have 5 minutes until I leave for the train. I'd best pack up my computer!

And to all of you who are en route to The Conference, have fun and learn something!

*(I should mention that I don't usually think that other people look weird with painted toenails. It just feels to me like wearing an inappropriate and somewhat uncomfortable disguise. You know?)

Last Words

All right, off I go! I'll report back in full on Tuesday...or, failing that, Wednesday at the latest....

Wish me luck!

Minor Crises

As I prepare for my campus visit, I can't quite assimilate the fact that I'm leaving TOMORROW MORNING. And that I therefore need to get everything done TODAY. In connection with these little surges of stress, I've identified several small crises, or if not crises then problems, which I don't know how to deal with/don't want to deal with. (Yes, of course there's a distinction, but at this point I'm not quite making it.)

Minor Crisis no. 1: Clothing.
I'm fine for the interview proper. I have a suit which is season-appropriate and comfortable, and a little blue shirt that I wear under it which is actually kind of a flattering color. I'm experiencing a bit of anxiety over necklaces--my mock-interviewers told me that I should wear a necklace in order to appear less severe--because the only quasi-grown-up necklaces I own are, themselves, severe: picture a silver rectangle on a silver chain. (I have two that fit that description, in fact.) I have less severe necklaces, but they're little beaded things that might not be nice enough. But. The point is that I'm pretty much fine for the interview.

But I'm also having dinner with the search committee chair tomorrow night, and am really not sure what to wear. I don't want to wear a suit; it would be uncomfortable, for one (my second suit is not as nice as my main one), and besides there's not a chance that it would be appropriate for whatever restaurant we go to. This is a small midwestern town we're talking about, here. And I don't want to look all intense and hyper-professional. I'm probably going to wear pinstripe pants, a plain shirt, and a nice-ish cardigan/sweater; I could wish for a better sweater, but this might be the best I can do.

And then they've actually built in time in my Monday schedule for me to "change for dinner." What does this mean? Change into what? Can't I just wear my suit? I strongly suspect that this time is in there simply because they don't know what else to do with me for the hour and a half between my last meeting and dinner, but it makes me feel like I have a responsibility to change clothing. I have a skirt/sweater ensemble I could wear, but it kind of makes me feel young and vulnerable. It's funny how clothes affect you psychologically--I feel vastly more myself in jeans than I do in anything else, and most of my clothes are kind of...childish. At least, they feel childish to me. Oh well. There is no time to shop.

Minor Crisis no. 2: Laundry.
I don't have enough quarters. I thought I did, but I don't.

Minor Crisis no. 3: The Job Market Is Not Over.
There are applications that I'll need to mail out during the 3-hour window in which I'm back in Homecity on Tuesday, and I need to write these up today.

And I, like, really really don't want to.

Minor Crisis no. 4: Surely there's something else?
Because I won't be back in town for, effectively, 12 days, I can't help but feel that I'm forgetting...something...many things, most likely? Ohhhh I don't want to pack and get my house ready for vacancy! Not again!

Somebody make me stop this infernal whining. Everything I have to do in the next couple of weeks (short of the campus visit, which I'm really really happy to be going on, even if it'll be stressful) will be highly enjoyable. I think I'm just having a bit of a paralyzing freak-out, for lack of a better term. Because, um, I didn't know until yesterday that I'd be leaving tomorrow? And I've kind of been letting things slide this week due to my post-vacation readjustment? And stuff?

Oh, but it does make me look forward to getting to my mom's house and being Taken Care Of for a couple of days. And needless to say I'm very excited to be seeing my partner again, after nearly a month apart!

Why do I do this to myself?

Okay, because I like visual aids, here are my travel plans for the next few weeks:

Sunday, 5/6 (pm): fly out for campus visit
Tuesday, 5/8 (am--very EARLY am): fly back to homecity
Tuesday, 5/8 (pm): 4-hour train ride to partner's city (I'm giving myself this one treat: train, NOT bus!)
Thursday, 5/10 (am): 2-hour bus ride north to Momville, for my sister-in-law-to-be's bridal shower
Saturday, 5/12 (pm): 2-hour bus ride back to partner's city
...several days of not going anywhere...
Thursday, 5/17 (am): 4-hour bus ride back to homecity
Saturday, 5/19 (am): 1.5-hour train ride to friend's wedding; home that day, presumably
Thursday, 5/24 (pm): 4-hour bus ride back to partner's city
Friday, 5/25 (am): fly out to college reunion
Monday, 5/27 (TOO damn early am): fly back to partner's city...
...where I will stay, for some indefinite time, until I miss my house too vividly and have to go home.

Bear in mind, if you will, that I just got back from Europe on Monday.

Can't I just, like, not move for a few weeks?

Please to advise me, please

So for this campus visit I need to give a 30-minute-ish teaching demo, described as "a lecture with some interaction." I won't be presenting it to actual students, as the students have all gone home, but instead to some faculty pretending to be students. (I actually find this slightly less intimidating than real students, oddly enough.) I think I have an idea for what kind of content to cover--I've decided to pretend that it's the first day of a course, or a segment of a course, and give a kind of overview of a subject that (I think) is really interesting, tying in some relevant literary materials which we'll look at in class. But I've never done anything like this before, and I've never talked to anyone who's had to do something like this before, so my question is:

Have any of you done this kind of thing? Or talked to someone who has? Or seen a job candidate do a teaching demo? And do you have any recommendations, advice, warnings, whathaveyou?

Oh, and I should mention: The material that I'm thinking of using for the demo would be something that I'd probably not actually get to teach, at least not in the first year. There's a reasonable chance that I could get it into the early Brit Lit course I'd teach in the fall, but it's not guaranteed; however, my feeling is that I should do something that I'm comfortable with, rather than choose something just because it's what I think they'd want me to do. Agree? or suicide?

And so it continues

Today I got an email from a very good friend of mine--in fact we're metting for pizza, beer, and ANTM this evening--saying that she'd got a multi-year postdoc. I'm really happy for her, of course; this is great news, and (although I haven't talked to her live yet) I'm sure she's delighted. It's a terrific position and she totally deserves it.

But, naturally--because the job search brings out the absolute worst in me--the news raised a little shudder of the god-I'm-such-a-loser feelings that I've become pretty good at suppressing (most of the time, anyway). The feelings were compounded by the fact that I hadn't heard back from Recent Interview School, which was supposed to make campus-visit decisions by Sunday. I've had six interviews this year, and no call-backs. And so I started the predictable moan: "What's wrong with me?" I wondered, my body creeping closer and closer to a fetal position. "My interview skills suck. I'll never get a job. Everyone got a job but me..." (which I know isn't true, but such laments care little for the truth).

At the nadir of my pityfest, the phone rang. It was the committee chair from Recent Interview, apologizing for the delay in getting back to me and asking whether I'd be available for a campus visit next week.

So now, of course, I have a whole new wealth of superstition to exploit: the conviction that I'm unemployable is what causes the phone to ring! Ah ha! I've figured it out: the magic spell!

Oh, and god: this means I need to do work, right? I need to actually...prepare a presentation! Dear lord. I've lost all habit of industry. I'd better get on this.

Home home home

Ah, jet lag. Yes, it's 6 am; and no, I didn't go to bed early, like a smart jet-lagged person; although I got back to my apartment at 10:00 I stayed up for two more hours, fixing a pot of spaghetti and watching "Sex and the City." And unpacking, albeit in a rather haphazard fashion.

Today's just going to be kind of a grind, is all. I have three things to do:

• file my dissertation (10:30 am)
• have my picture taken for the brochure pertaining to my fellowship (11:30 am)
• stay awake in seminar (12-2)
• come home and expire from fatigue.

Okay, that's four things, but the fourth clearly doesn't count.

(Upon rereading this list, I fail to feel any self-pity. My schedule is so absurdly light. Where do I get off complaining?)

So where am I back from, you ask? Iceland! I can tell you that, because of course my conference wasn't actually in Iceland; I simply stopped over there on my way home. It's a weird and interesting place--I kind of feel like the entire time I spent there (about 48 hours) was a dream. There are so few people and so much wind. Yes, the wind is terrific. And everywhere there are flag poles with no flags on them, banging away in the wind. I don't think I ever actually saw it get fully dark, either, since I went to bed at around 10 on both nights and the sun seemed to be all the way up by about 4:30. The light is also remarkable, being always on the slant, and so the colorful houses on the hills of Reykjavic look terribly picturesque. Reykjavic itself, however, was not as picturesque as I'd imagined. In fact, it's somewhat stark, being neither particularly quaint nor particularly modern. The houses are mostly covered in corrugated metal which is then painted; the paint was usually chipped and peeling, owing, I imagine, to the harsh climate. This picture will give you an idea of a typical street:


It's also extremely expensive. Here's the cafe where I ordered The World's Smallest $12 Sandwich:


Seriously, it was about the size of a cracker. It was good, though. I ate only one actual "meal" per day while I was over there; it was all I could afford.

I started to write a more detailed post about where I've been, what I did, etc., but I'm not sure that such a thing would be all that interesting. I'm not particularly interested in writing it, at any rate. So here are just some thoughts and observations, in no particular order:

• Whiskey is a good thing. I knew this before, but my love for it has been renewed.
• It's okay for me, a WOMAN, to go to a bar by myself. Always before when I've traveled alone, or been alone on an overseas trip--at 25, 27--I've been somewhat apprehensive about Going Out by myself. Which is a shame, because on those trips I often found myself somewhat restless and lonely, and kind of bored in the evenings. But I thought that going to a bar alone would make me too much of a target, or something. And so it might. Within reason, however, it can certainly be done, and on the second major leg of my trip (I was in Scotland; the odds of anyone using that information to track me down just seem too remote), I went out a couple of times and had a beer by myself. And it was fine. Oh, my stupid social anxiety. Most nights I went pretty early--like dinner-time--but for some reason even that used to scare me. And the one night when I actually went to a bar at night, because I wanted to hear some live folk music, I sat at the bar with my book and had a lovely time. It's true that men talked to me, sometimes, and in fact at this particular bar I ended up having a rather long conversation with a 28-year-old guy with OCD who has recently become interested in Wicca. But that was fine, too, and frankly it's nice to talk to someone now and again. I wasn't taking any weird risks, and I wasn't drinking very much, and so there wasn't much more to be afraid of than there is in the normal course of affairs. (There was one guy who was less fine, and hit on me rather too freely, on a different night; but that was at 7 pm, whilst I was writing some postcards, of all provacative behaviors, and he was clearly very drunk, and the bartenders sort of hovered around keeping an eye on things until the besotted fellow took his leave. That was annoying, and unpleasant. One should never declare that one is in love with a person that one has met less than five minutes previously, by the way; it doesn't quite ring true.) Anyway the point is that I realized I'm capable of handling myself, of making it clear that I'm not interested in anything flirtatious, and of not denying myself a small pleasure that I desire. It was actually kind of exciting.
• I don't think that I want to spend my whole life in a city. Every time I came into a new city, I was vastly more interested in whether I could get into the surrounding countryside--of course, it helped that I was in some places with exceptionally beautiful countryside. But this is a tendency that I've noticed in myself before; when I had to go to Denver for a conference a few years back, for instance, I managed to get out to Boulder within 48 hours of my arrival.
• Youth hostels aren't all that bad, if you can ignore all the other people. Especially the deranged 37-year-old gamblers who are on an overt husband hunt (and who think that the 14th century refers to the 1400s. Gah!). Remind me to tell you that story some day.
  
• I've spent a weirdly long time crafting this post.

And on that note, I think I'll finish up. More later.

Oh hey! I got some good news at the very end of my trip. An extremely obscure, tiny literary journal would like to publish one of my stories. That makes two extremely obscure, tiny literary journals in which I will have published!