Long weekend, hooray!

It's Homecoming here at Field College, which means that we get Friday off. Huzzah! This is the only, yes only acknowledgment that I will make of Homecoming. I will not attend the parade. Or the game. Nor did I volunteer to serve on one of the many "faculty teams" that will be competing with students in some games of some sort, or something. I did not donate candy to be thrown at the parade (what the hell? There's not enough litter in the world? Or crap in people's stomachs?). Nor did I volunteer to throw said candy. Tomorrow's "tailgate" will proceed without me.

I confess that I'm somewhat mystified by this whole homecoming phenomenon. Yeah, we did homecoming stuff in high school, but my college didn't have a homecoming. Neither did my grad school (unless I somehow managed to miss it for 7 years, but I don't think so) (did I?) (in which case, it must have been very low-key). But it is evidently a very big deal here. There was even some kind of convocation ceremony today--it might be going on right now, in fact. Giant placards with fraternity and sorority logos have been erected all over campus, most of them decorated with American flags. It all seems a little excessive, and weirdly nationalistic.

But hey! I get a day off. A Friday, at that. So you won't be hearing any complaints from this mihi.

And what, you ask, will I be doing with my long weekend? Well,

• First, I will be finishing the final revisions of an article. With luck, it will attain Fully Accepted status within the next week or two.
• I am also doing my laundry.
• Next week I'm teaching (parts of) two pretty big texts--Virgil and Milton, yes indeedy--so there must needs be some reading that gets itself done, and soon.
• However! In comp we're doing peer workshopping and individual conferences next week: no prep! Lots and lots of student-paper-commenting-on coming up, but no prep!
• Batch of one-page papers to grade; shouldn't take too long if I can actually focus.
  
• And--the boyfriend is coming to visit, today! He'll be here in a few hours. I must therefore get started on the work, as I plan on doing some not-working while he's here.

I know I've been a little bit lame with the posting lately, but really, there isn't all that much going on. I've done some on-line shopping and now have a new coat and some pants and sweaters. The leaves are finally changing. My classes are going fine. I still need to order books--nay, figure out what we'll be doing--in my *three* sections of comp 2 next semester. I am determined to make this class fun for me; if I have to have 60 comp students, we'd damn well better be reading some good books. Right? At least I have a great lit class to round out my courseload.

And, of course, job applications. Wow. I really forgot all about them for a minute there--that's a major thing on my weekend to-do list. Yikes. Okay, I'll be busier than I thought.

(Oh! Sisyphus! You must email me your address so you can receive a present. heumihi at yahoo dot com. And if anyone else wants presents, I've got two more to give away!)

Spoke too soon?

Remember yesterday's post? Which ended on an optimistic, I-like-my-job note? Well, of course this morning I was SO not.feeling.it.

Perhaps because my downstairs neighbors awoke me at 6:15 with a dual tantrum:

Little girl (age 7 or so): AAAAAHHHH!

Mother (age, oh, 30ish): GET DRESSSSSED!

Little girl: AAAHHHHH!

Mother: AAAAAHHHH!

Unbelievable. The parenting that goes on here. I tell you. And this went on for, oh, 15 minutes?

So yeah, I wasn't in the cheeriest of humors when I got to the office. The day was fine, though.

There are moments when I really can't bear it

Yeah, okay, that sounds a little dramatic. When really all I'm talking about is the tedium of job letters.

For yes, today has been a day of the job letter. Having conveniently forgotten just how much I hate writing these things, I came up with quite a long list of jobs to apply for. Yay, right? Yeah, yay, I guess, except when you're spending hours upon hours going through universities' websites trying to figure out the precise teaching-to-research ratio that should be communicated in the cover letters, exactly what courses they need that you can teach, whether they'll care about your subfields or just want a pure Englishy type, etc etc etc. And then realizing that the minute adjustments made to each letter probably won't make that much of a difference--but finding yourself incapable of not making them, because after all you've come so far, and what's a little more?

Gripe, gripe, grouse. I'm not actually that unhappy about it (see "long list of jobs," above)--just a little squirmy from sitting at my desk all afternoon. And I'm not exactly overprepared for tomorrow's classes, you see.

But hey. Classes have been proceeding apace. It's kind of nice, isn't it, how the days pass and the classes get done even if you aren't knocking yourself out to get ready for them? Besides, they're going pretty well. Round about 3 weeks ago, I think, I suddenly quit being so nervous. It's funny. I think that I was pretty scared of my students for the first six weeks or so of the semester, and now--well, I'm not. And I feel much better about my classes as a result, and much less terrified of running out of material (seeing as that hasn't happened, once, in the 9 weeks of teaching--that's, hm, close to a hundred class sessions!--that I've had this semester).

And on some of those perfectly acceptable days? I had not spent three hours writing up detailed lecture notes and mentally rehearsing the transitions between each of the points I wanted to cover. Virtually no difference in my performance--if anything, I think that I was more relaxed and less "performed." Apparently I'm getting the hang of things.

So, to end this post on a note opposite that with which I titled it: Hey! Sometimes I kind of like my job.

A freshly minted plum

I hereby declare myself officially tired of the following words and phrases:

• freshly minted, esp. in reference to Ph.D.s*
• plum (adj.)*
• outside the box (yes, I know, everybody's been sick of this one for years, and yet apparently some people didn't get the memo)
• didn't get the memo
  
• create a buzz, buzzing
• student learning
• learning environment
• student-centered (thank goodness my teaching philosophy is already written, eh?)
  

(*Can you tell that I've been spending too much time on the Chronicle's website?)

Und so weiter. There are others. Perhaps I'll add them later. But right now I really need to be prepping for the class that starts in 36 minutes, not thinking of words I hate. Do you have anything to add?

Also, please see my preceding post and sign up for presents, please.

I need to post this before I forget!

Because Hilaire will be sending ME a present, I extend the memely offer to the generalized blog-o-sphere (forgive me; I've been grading). The deal is this:

If you'd like to receive a gift from me before the end of the calendar year, be one of the first five people to leave a comment, and ye shall receive! Just email with your RL address [heumihi at yahoo]. You just have to put out the same call on your own blog, and send out five gifts yourself.

I promise to send fabulous yet absurdly inexpensive gifts, possibly ordered from one of the retailers who advertise in the back pages of Bust magazine, and therefore supporting some independent female crafty person. (Possibly. Can't be sure. Some of that stuff is expensive.)

And I assume that it's okay to receive presents from more than one person? Cause the internet circles in which I move are rather small...so maybe you can sign up with me even if you've already signed up with someone else? I'd hate to only send out FOUR presents!

One-Minute Dance Party

If you need a break from grading or job apps or whatever, go rock out with a dancing cockatoo.

You'll enjoy it. I did.

Oy. Just...oy.

I have done very little writing today (relatively speaking), and yet my hand is all cramped up and achy. This is making it even more difficult than it would normally be to muster the strength to grade any of the 24 remaining papers from last Wednesday (I got through 6 this evening; the target is 8. Modest, yet undoable).

I also just had one of those moments where you start to read the next paper on your pile, decide that you're in no way strong enough to make it through that particular paper, and shift it to lower in the stack. Once I start down that path, the productivity outlook is bleak indeed.

I spent most of the evening feeling gloriously on top of things. But that's only because I'm stubbornly refusing to think about the things that I have to have done for Wednesday and beyond. Readings for the two different preps on Wednesday? Not done. Reading for Thursday? Not done. Don't even ask me about Friday. Oh, and right, I'm supposed to have a prompt for a major paper ready by class tomorrow! And I have meetings for most of tomorrow morning! But this is work that can be postponed; they don't have to be done by dawn tomorrow, after all. Hours and hours of potential work-time remain. So long as I get up at 4 am, that is. (Or, realistically, 6.)

Also, I discovered today that it'll cost me more than $500 to fly home for Thanksgiving. Which means that I might not be flying home for Thanksgiving. This pains me greatly, although I have to admit that the prospect of two fewer days in airports this semester is not terribly upsetting. A whine: How come I'm always the one--the only one--in my family who has to travel for the holidays? Obviously because I'm the only one who lives far away from the rest of my family. Nonetheless, it sucks mightily.

Ugh ugh ugh. Maybe I'll call it a night. I haven't really had dinner; does ice cream count? How about if I eat it with TV?