After a night of disturbing dreams, jb awoke to find herself transformed into Henry VIII.
This morning is convocation, and I have to wear my regalia for the first time. How does that hood thing work, anyway?
My dreams were, in fact, disturbing, by the way. One convoluted weirdo dream after another. I can't remember much in the way of details (lucky readers!), but some of the highlights included a deranged old woman who killed her caretakers with a paring knife and the discovery of a dungeon in my parents' basement.
The best part, however, I do remember. Voldemort called me up and commanded me to cook a pound of spaghetti. I did so, despite my mother's protests, although I was so nervous that I couldn't decide whether to drain the pasta or just give it to him with the cooking water. Finally I did drain it and put it into a glass jar for transport. When the Dark Lord showed up to collect it, he was hungry, and commanded me to cook him some spiral pasta for supper (the spaghetti had another destiny, more sinister I'm sure). But, when it was still in the colander, I accidentally poured lobster sauce on it instead of olive oil. Voldemort was in a towering rage! I was afraid. But luckily I was able to remove the offending pieces of pasta, and recalled that I had some homemade pesto in the freezer. The Dark Lord was satisfied. So satisfied, in fact, that he condescended to make out with me a little bit. (Just a little bit. The dream was mercifully hazy on this point.)
I am amused. Which is a good way to start off the semester.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Gearing Up
Well, the easy Sunday is over. I have
- read Beowulf
- caught up on my Netflix
- consumed milk and cookies.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Odd Hours
I never know what to do with this time of day--when it's late enough that I feel done with working, thanks, but too early to actually switch into evening mode. You know, the 5-to-6 slot. After 6 I can reasonably start cooking dinner; if I had a TV I'd turn on the Simpsons or something at 6:30; then there's dinner, and post-dinner work or movies or whatever. That's fine. It's just this little window in between the productive part of the day and the unwinding bit.
I'm sure that once my courses start I'll be too pressed for time to dawdle around over the luxury of an empty hour, but at the moment I'm antsy. It doesn't help that I'm not reading a fun book at the moment--there are other demands on my reading time, and the Potter is behind me--so I can't just switch over to that. I'm also lacking a knitting project or anything else of that sort. Yoga is an option, but I practiced yesterday and frankly I don't feel like it. Every other day is enough for now.
It's good blog-reading weather, methinks. Anyone have a better suggestion on getting through the work-to-lazing transition? And yes, the transition itself can be lazy: work is done for now!
I'm sure that once my courses start I'll be too pressed for time to dawdle around over the luxury of an empty hour, but at the moment I'm antsy. It doesn't help that I'm not reading a fun book at the moment--there are other demands on my reading time, and the Potter is behind me--so I can't just switch over to that. I'm also lacking a knitting project or anything else of that sort. Yoga is an option, but I practiced yesterday and frankly I don't feel like it. Every other day is enough for now.
It's good blog-reading weather, methinks. Anyone have a better suggestion on getting through the work-to-lazing transition? And yes, the transition itself can be lazy: work is done for now!
Friday, August 17, 2007
Faculty Retreat
In response to Undine's request in the comments, I will blog a little bit about the faculty retreat I attended yesterday. But first, here's my request to the whole world:
Please. Can we stop saying, "Think outside the box"? Please?
After 2.5 days of meeting-type activities, I think that I will throw something if those words are uttered in my presence again. My god. This has been the cliche-of-choice for years now; may it die? Please?
All right. PSA over.
The retreat, which took all day yesterday, was useful in two ways. First, it let me get to know a few more faculty members, which was nice. Second, it gave me more of a sense of how Field College* works and how it thinks about itself. Now, I know that a day of activities and exhortations probably doesn't constitute the "real" behind-the-scenes Field, but you can still learn a lot from the kind of rhetoric that an institution employs. (*This is not, of course, its real name. I call it that because we are in the middle of the fields out here. Just to be absolutely clear.)
So I won't say that it was a complete waste of time, by any means. But if I'd been teaching here for ten or five or even two years, I might have found it kind of pointless. It's just that, as a new person, I'm still gathering information, and even the boring and otherwise pointless activities serve a purpose.
That said, it was a pretty weird day. We met at a sort of nature park/preserve, and after some introductory presentations, we had an Activity. The Activity involved, fortunately, about 90 minutes of solitary walking around the park, which was quite enjoyable. We were also supposed to engage in some independent creative stuff while we were wandering, so I did some drawings; I'm not a great artist by any means, but I enjoy drawing, and I usually forget that it's something I enjoy, so it was a nice meditative kind of thing to do a few sketches.
After Activity Part One, we reconvened for a half-hour of talk about how to best actualize (a word I loathe) the religious mission of the college. This was fairly brutal, because the person running the conversation seemed a little uncertain of how to lead the discussion. In fact, it reminded me of the less good discussion sections I've run as a TA: lots of difficult and poorly explained questions, which the leader started answering almost immediately after asking them, and no one else saying anything (because we didn't really understand what was going on).
We then broke up for an overly-air-conditioned lunch. The theme for the week could be "freezing your ass off in the middle of summer." Digression: What's up with that? I worked in an office once, in a VERY hot part of the country, where I had to bring sweaters and a space-heater to work in July. I weep for the planet.
Anyway. Lunch over, we were split up into pairs to talk about what we did on our walks. Then we were divided up into different, larger groups, again to share what we did on our walks. Then we all came together as a group, and each small group reported on what we'd "learned." Um. I didn't find this so useful. I mean, it was nice to talk to a couple of other people in a structured yet informal way, but the activity as a whole was supposed to teach us something about collaborative learning, and I'm not sure that it was successful. But it was a good effort, and relatively painless, so okay. Better than just listening to talks about budgeting or whatever.
Then there was a little talk about, I dunno, something to do with student learning, but I was tired and bored at that point and didn't pay much attention.
So that was the day in outline. Here are some of my thoughts.
One of the things that was talked about in the first session was the utility of a liberal arts education. Nationally, as we all know, there is a certain amount of skepticism about how useful or important a liberal arts education might be. So this one person gave a couple of examples of how Field College students used what they'd learned in school out in the world: a student who had studied psychology volunteered in a counseling center, and a sports team captain used what she had learned in a management course.
Fine and good. But. Doesn't this exactly not answer the question of how/why a liberal arts education is important? By hearkening to professional applicability, you're essentially arguing for a more vocational-style approach to education: Take this course because it will serve you in a directly applicable practical context outside of college. But when people argue that humanities courses are irrelevant, it's precisely because they don't have that kind of obvious, direct applicability. You can't easily measure the positive outcomes of these courses--that they help to develop a more complete human being, or influence the culture in which we live.
A liberal arts education is important because human beings are more than economic or professional animals. Our world is not simply our jobs. We live in a culture and a society, and developing our knowledge of and connection to that culture, as well as the skills to critique and try to shape it, is essential. It's interesting to me that complaints about the pointlessness of most college courses circulate at the same time as so many people seem to deplore the supposed degradation of our culture, when a solid liberal arts (and especially humanities, to let my allegiances show) education seems to be one of the most reliable ways of learning to observe our culture critically and actively decide what kind of participation one wants to have in it.
So that rankled, a bit. I feel that I should note that the person making these arguments was not a faculty member, but someone from career services, so she was probably approaching the question from a different angle. But still, as a literature person, I felt a little put off by what she was saying, because I can't think of such transparent applications of my own courses to the world at large (other than comp, of course).
Well, regardless, it's over, and now there are just a few more meetings and that kind of thing before the real fun begins!
Please. Can we stop saying, "Think outside the box"? Please?
After 2.5 days of meeting-type activities, I think that I will throw something if those words are uttered in my presence again. My god. This has been the cliche-of-choice for years now; may it die? Please?
All right. PSA over.
The retreat, which took all day yesterday, was useful in two ways. First, it let me get to know a few more faculty members, which was nice. Second, it gave me more of a sense of how Field College* works and how it thinks about itself. Now, I know that a day of activities and exhortations probably doesn't constitute the "real" behind-the-scenes Field, but you can still learn a lot from the kind of rhetoric that an institution employs. (*This is not, of course, its real name. I call it that because we are in the middle of the fields out here. Just to be absolutely clear.)
So I won't say that it was a complete waste of time, by any means. But if I'd been teaching here for ten or five or even two years, I might have found it kind of pointless. It's just that, as a new person, I'm still gathering information, and even the boring and otherwise pointless activities serve a purpose.
That said, it was a pretty weird day. We met at a sort of nature park/preserve, and after some introductory presentations, we had an Activity. The Activity involved, fortunately, about 90 minutes of solitary walking around the park, which was quite enjoyable. We were also supposed to engage in some independent creative stuff while we were wandering, so I did some drawings; I'm not a great artist by any means, but I enjoy drawing, and I usually forget that it's something I enjoy, so it was a nice meditative kind of thing to do a few sketches.
After Activity Part One, we reconvened for a half-hour of talk about how to best actualize (a word I loathe) the religious mission of the college. This was fairly brutal, because the person running the conversation seemed a little uncertain of how to lead the discussion. In fact, it reminded me of the less good discussion sections I've run as a TA: lots of difficult and poorly explained questions, which the leader started answering almost immediately after asking them, and no one else saying anything (because we didn't really understand what was going on).
We then broke up for an overly-air-conditioned lunch. The theme for the week could be "freezing your ass off in the middle of summer." Digression: What's up with that? I worked in an office once, in a VERY hot part of the country, where I had to bring sweaters and a space-heater to work in July. I weep for the planet.
Anyway. Lunch over, we were split up into pairs to talk about what we did on our walks. Then we were divided up into different, larger groups, again to share what we did on our walks. Then we all came together as a group, and each small group reported on what we'd "learned." Um. I didn't find this so useful. I mean, it was nice to talk to a couple of other people in a structured yet informal way, but the activity as a whole was supposed to teach us something about collaborative learning, and I'm not sure that it was successful. But it was a good effort, and relatively painless, so okay. Better than just listening to talks about budgeting or whatever.
Then there was a little talk about, I dunno, something to do with student learning, but I was tired and bored at that point and didn't pay much attention.
So that was the day in outline. Here are some of my thoughts.
One of the things that was talked about in the first session was the utility of a liberal arts education. Nationally, as we all know, there is a certain amount of skepticism about how useful or important a liberal arts education might be. So this one person gave a couple of examples of how Field College students used what they'd learned in school out in the world: a student who had studied psychology volunteered in a counseling center, and a sports team captain used what she had learned in a management course.
Fine and good. But. Doesn't this exactly not answer the question of how/why a liberal arts education is important? By hearkening to professional applicability, you're essentially arguing for a more vocational-style approach to education: Take this course because it will serve you in a directly applicable practical context outside of college. But when people argue that humanities courses are irrelevant, it's precisely because they don't have that kind of obvious, direct applicability. You can't easily measure the positive outcomes of these courses--that they help to develop a more complete human being, or influence the culture in which we live.
A liberal arts education is important because human beings are more than economic or professional animals. Our world is not simply our jobs. We live in a culture and a society, and developing our knowledge of and connection to that culture, as well as the skills to critique and try to shape it, is essential. It's interesting to me that complaints about the pointlessness of most college courses circulate at the same time as so many people seem to deplore the supposed degradation of our culture, when a solid liberal arts (and especially humanities, to let my allegiances show) education seems to be one of the most reliable ways of learning to observe our culture critically and actively decide what kind of participation one wants to have in it.
So that rankled, a bit. I feel that I should note that the person making these arguments was not a faculty member, but someone from career services, so she was probably approaching the question from a different angle. But still, as a literature person, I felt a little put off by what she was saying, because I can't think of such transparent applications of my own courses to the world at large (other than comp, of course).
Well, regardless, it's over, and now there are just a few more meetings and that kind of thing before the real fun begins!
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Plinka plinka clank clank
Am currently on hold with my internet provider listening to the worst hold music EVER: artless, clanky piano playing. Yuck yuck yuck. Yuck!
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Hunger is the Best Sauce
I have to leave for the new faculty orientation in 15 minutes. And I have 50 pages left of the last Potter book.
In a way, this is working with my plan of not rushing through the novel (which I'm enjoying a lot, and which is a nice break from reading for my classes). But something REALLY BIG just happened and I want very badly to know what happens next! Oh well. Perhaps the suspense will keep me going through the approximately 8 hours of meetings I have to attend today--I kid you not.
And then there's an 8-hour "faculty retreat" tomorrow.
And another faculty meeting on Friday morning.
Where did this aspect of the professorial life come from?
In a way, this is working with my plan of not rushing through the novel (which I'm enjoying a lot, and which is a nice break from reading for my classes). But something REALLY BIG just happened and I want very badly to know what happens next! Oh well. Perhaps the suspense will keep me going through the approximately 8 hours of meetings I have to attend today--I kid you not.
And then there's an 8-hour "faculty retreat" tomorrow.
And another faculty meeting on Friday morning.
Where did this aspect of the professorial life come from?
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
DSL!
So I got my DSL up and running this morning! It only took me two hours, because apparently I am a complete idiot who is incapable of following simple instructions (of the "Don't do B until you've done A" variety. After twenty minutes of panicking over my mystification with B, I finally went back and realized that I was supposed to do A first). I also had to swear roundly at the voice-recognition helpline menu, which I'm sure sent it into a tailspin, but REALLY, if it's going to hear "installation" as "billing" TWICE, what can I be expected to do?
I've noticed that computerized stuff makes me rather foul-mouthed. I don't swear much in the ordinary course of things (although I'm not an especially clean talker, either), but yesterday, when I was having some trouble doing something on my new office computer, I caught myself hissing "motherfucker" and "fuck off" more than once. Which wouldn't be that bad, but a sweet old emeritus was right across the hall, only two open doors away, and, while I'm pretty sure he didn't hear me, I might want to tone it down a little.
Anyway. I'm very happy to be back. I'm almost caught up reading most of my blogs (could you people write any more???? But never fear; once I get back into full-on procrastination--I mean, work--mode, my appetite for your doings will be insatiable). And I started working on my conference paper again today. Not that I needed the internet for that--if anything, it's slowing me down (see the preceding parenthetical)--but somehow the events coincided. Perhaps I need the possibility of distraction in order to start in on more difficult work? A disturbing thought, but oh well. Can't fight city hall.
I'm pleased to report that the paper's not that bad, although neither is it especially exciting at this stage. I have a hard time adding the thrilling finish to papers that make people, well, want to hear/read them. I'm good at finding an interesting little phenomenon and talking about it, and I usually start out with some grand "Here's how the field will be changed by my paper" type of statement, but then I just peter out at the end with a "and, yeah, look, that was interesting" conclusion. Implications, that's what I need. Go back to that grand introduction. What have I shown? What can the reader/auditor who doesn't work on this particular text take away from my argument?
But that's haaaard. It means I have to think about things. And take risks.
And here's where the internet comes in handy. Nothing to say? Write a blog post! Ta da!
On the upside, I think I've just shamed myself in getting back to my paper. Or...hey, there are still a few blogs I'm not quite up-to-date on yet....
I've noticed that computerized stuff makes me rather foul-mouthed. I don't swear much in the ordinary course of things (although I'm not an especially clean talker, either), but yesterday, when I was having some trouble doing something on my new office computer, I caught myself hissing "motherfucker" and "fuck off" more than once. Which wouldn't be that bad, but a sweet old emeritus was right across the hall, only two open doors away, and, while I'm pretty sure he didn't hear me, I might want to tone it down a little.
Anyway. I'm very happy to be back. I'm almost caught up reading most of my blogs (could you people write any more???? But never fear; once I get back into full-on procrastination--I mean, work--mode, my appetite for your doings will be insatiable). And I started working on my conference paper again today. Not that I needed the internet for that--if anything, it's slowing me down (see the preceding parenthetical)--but somehow the events coincided. Perhaps I need the possibility of distraction in order to start in on more difficult work? A disturbing thought, but oh well. Can't fight city hall.
I'm pleased to report that the paper's not that bad, although neither is it especially exciting at this stage. I have a hard time adding the thrilling finish to papers that make people, well, want to hear/read them. I'm good at finding an interesting little phenomenon and talking about it, and I usually start out with some grand "Here's how the field will be changed by my paper" type of statement, but then I just peter out at the end with a "and, yeah, look, that was interesting" conclusion. Implications, that's what I need. Go back to that grand introduction. What have I shown? What can the reader/auditor who doesn't work on this particular text take away from my argument?
But that's haaaard. It means I have to think about things. And take risks.
And here's where the internet comes in handy. Nothing to say? Write a blog post! Ta da!
On the upside, I think I've just shamed myself in getting back to my paper. Or...hey, there are still a few blogs I'm not quite up-to-date on yet....
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