For the Sake of Accuracy

I should rename this blog "The Grading Mill."

But I won't.

Filler Post

All right, I need to knock that self-indulgent moping down a little further on the blog. So, uh...hm...what else can I write about?

Well, my friend/colleague's wife (also a friend, or friend-ish; we're still getting to know each other, but I like her a lot) gave me a lift to the big discount grocery store in nearby mid-sized city this afternoon. I'd been there once before, and it's amazing--I buy preposterous and unlikely (for me) things, like cake mix, because my god the cake mix is FORTY-NINE CENTS! I mean, how could I not. I also purchased a jar of baby corn, like eight pounds of nuts, two big boxes of Texas Toast (an embarrassing addiction), and more other stuff than I could possibly eat in a semester.

As always, though, grocery shopping has put me out of the mood for cooking, so I might just have spaghetti for dinner. With Texas Toast, natch.

What else? OH! Here's a question for the academic blogosphere, particularly those more experienced teachers out there. What do you do when you overhear, during a group activity, a student say something that is patently offensive (although s/he probably doesn't realize it)? I shall give you the scenario.

Student 1: Hey, did you hear what [Friend of Student] said? He hopes that Obama gets elected so he can get capped.

Student 2: Ha ha, yeah, in, like, a drive-by.

I think it's safe to say that I was appalled. But I'm pretty sure that these students didn't see or at least understand the racist implications of their statements, and I couldn't think of how I could possibly broach the subject. I'm pretty sure that they didn't think I'd overheard, for one thing, so it would have been a little weird for me to swoop in there and call them out. (The group was mostly on-topic, so I couldn't legitimately bust them for a moment's deviation.)

This is, of course, offensive for a lot of reasons, racist overtones being just the top of the list. How would you, o teachers more experienced than I, respond to this? Would you respond at all?

But, okay, not going to make this a downer-post--no, it's Friday night, and despite the HORRIFYING stack of grading that's been building up over the last few days, I will not go down that path. No. So here are a couple of good things.

• My friend/colleague--the one whose wife drove me to the grocery store--just got a great job offer this evening. I'm really happy for him (envy notwithstanding! go altruism!) because he absolutely deserves it, and it'll be a terrific opportunity for both him and his wife. Yay!
  
• I'm having a drink with a different friend/colleague later on tonight.
• I had an odd moment with a student after class this morning that makes me think that some of his/her behaviors that I'd interpreted as aggressive actually might come out of a much more vulnerable place, and that s/he might actually think of me...how do I put this...not as an adversary, but as a positive presence in his/her life. It was startling and strangely touching.
  
• I love my survey class. LOVE it. Even though it's out of my field. I'm loving the readings (which I hadn't read in years, and in some case had never read before); the class itself is full of hilarious and lively characters; and its being my last class of the day means that, by the time it rolls around every MWF, I'm punchy and entertaining.

Well, I had a lot more senseless rambling in me than I thought. Now, about that spaghetti....

Not Looking Good

I'm getting used to the idea of becoming resigned. No Dream U for me. There hasn't been word either way, so "who knows what might happen," but realistically? It's getting to be a little late in the week.

All is not lost. Other possibilities in the works.
But none are quite so exciting.
And..........it was such a good year for medievalists.
And yet I didn't....................

Like a man

Well then! I don't know about the rest of you, but nothing cheers me up like a vaguely offensive form letter from my alma mater.

It starts out well enough, addressing me by my full-on pedigreed title. Of course, they're the ones who awarded me said title, so they should know. "Dear Dr. Mihi," it begins. Blah blah--offering services--blah blah. Sentence 2 is where it gets interesting:

"We recognize that--like a man--a woman needs life insurance."

Oh! Like a man, you say? Why, that makes it all the clearer! Thank you for recognizing that! Hey! You recognize that women, too, might have people to support? People like--as you make clear in the next sentence--a husband, parents, or kids. Maybe even other relatives. And that life insurance is one way for a woman to "keep the home that she's made" with these family members? Huzzah! How enlightened!

I realize that this letter might be seeking to address real issues; it wouldn't surprise me if women were statistically less likely to get life insurance, or whatever. But know your audience, people. This is from a seriously liberal doctoral-granting institution; feminism is hardly dead on this campus. Certainly not among its doctoral students. And even when addressing less-feminist women, do you need that "like a man" in there? Can't you just say that women need life insurance? Or something?

I may be overquick to judge. But really. This letter cracked me up. Like a man! I'm going to be using that all week. But that's enough blogging for today. For--like a man--I need to eat my dinner.

Ah, there you are, old friend!

And the old friend--let's be clear--is that omnipresent job-search sidekick, Self-Pity.

Yep, I've started skulking on down that thoroughly unpleasant path. I got a post-campus-visit rejection today. Not from the Dream Uni, but from the other one (visit no. 2), which I liked and thought seemed like a great job but where I didn't get that real sense of fit--so no, this isn't a devastating rejection, but it's still disheartening. It's disheartening because it reminded me of what it feels like: that sudden drop in the stomach, the evaporation of a particular set of daydreams, the clipping-off of one possible path that the future could take. Nope. I'm not moving there. Those will not be my colleagues. That isn't my office.

It also signaled the dramatic reduction of my chances of getting an offer from either place. Weirdly enough, if the selection process were totally random, my odds of getting one or both of these two jobs would be 5/9. Two jobs, three candidates--5 to 9 odds that I'd get something out of that. No, it doesn't seem like that should be right, but there it is; probability makes absolutely no sense. So now that I don't have one of the jobs, my chances have slipped back to 1/3. Right? Or is it still 5/9, only...no, wait, that can't be right. And of course this is pretending that the selection process is totally random, which it isn't. I could be a secretly toxic candidate. I could be juvenile and naive and admit way too much about myself too soon. Was I too forward? Am I too comfortable with my own shortcomings? Was that comment that I made about my hair taken as a sign of frivolity? Did anyone notice when I dropped that glob of hummus at the dinner? Oh dear God. Oh God. I want to crawl up under an afghan and weep. I want to crack into that bottle of bourbon over there. I don't want to grade, I don't want to prep two classes and a teaching demo, and what's this about a mandatory campus event tomorrow afternoon? I need to hide. I'm inept, I'm absurd, every hope has been dashed--dashed, I tell you.

See? This is what happens. This is what that damned rejection has done to me.

And oh yes, I remember it well. I remember last year, when I actively avoided junior faculty at my grad uni because of course they got fabulous jobs at GradU when they were ABD, and while I'm sure that their queries into my job search situation were wholly sympathetic, I was too bitter and wrecked by my failure to even get myself a campus visit to even look at such people. Oh yes. I remember all of this--the anger I felt at ABDs who got tenure-track jobs, the startling depths of my jealousy. It all passed, of course. It usually passed pretty quickly, like within 24 hours of each major disappointment, but when it was there, it was there. And I don't want to swim in those waters again.

But. It did pass, every time. And I know that disappointment is only disappointment, and I can handle it. It's just that awful feeling--that wrench, that deep desire to withdraw and hide and close oneself off from everything else until one has adjusted to the new bad news and everything is okay again--that's not something that I want. And I'm afraid that, by the end of the week, I'll have to absorb the fact that Heavenly U doesn't want me, and all that background hoping and wanting and imagining what I could do there will have to be abandoned, forever, and I'll fall back down to the dusty reality of not having found my job just yet.

Or, if not forever, at least until next year's JIL comes out.

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This post nominated for age of perfection self-indulgent post of the year. Thanks for reading, guys.

Suspense

I just got an email from a search committee. Yeep. No--don't get excited; there's no news yet. It was strictly of the "we'll be meeting soon and let you know what's going on" variety. But my God--it's been several minutes, and I'm actually kind of shaking. I feel woozy. Wow. This is nuts. And here I thought the weekend was safe from drama?

Speaking of drama, we just had a big flash snowstorm (is that a term?) accompanied by thunder and lightning. It was thrilling. And I thought: Snow day, take 2! But no, that likely won't happen, and really it would be kind of a pain if it did because we're already behind--but who doesn't love a snow day? And it would give me a further 24 hours to come down off of that adrenaline hit.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must commence living in fear of my email.

Good fucking god.

Might I regale y'all with a paragraph from one of my college papers? I believe that I wrote this when I was a senior (20 years old). I can only hope. Actually, the word "hodiernal" clued me in, since I learned it at about that age.

To identify the preconceptions under which one lives, to recognize the possibly arbitrary assignment of signs and signifieds which dictate our perceptions of what we term reality: these are daunting and improbable tasks. It is difficult, if not impossible, to observe ourselves from the inside, to say “This is truth” and “That is what I only think to be truth.” But when two conflicting paradigms meet, the precariousness of the “false” is made all too evident. Of course, in our hodiernal lives, such an occurrence is rare. By and large, we must trust to literature and allegory to witness the effects of such a meeting.

What, pray tell, am I talking about? Well, let me tell ya.

In “The Masque of the Red Death” and “MS. Found in a Bottle,” Poe describes the disconcerting effects of the intrusion of one “reality,” or sign-system, upon another. These two stories do not function identically, however; indeed, they can be seen as showing different sides of this crisis. The narrator of “MS.” is, though frightened, at least somewhat eager to discover the “secret” towards which he is racing; moreover, he is moving from a scientific, orderly world into a highly disorderly one. The characters in “Masque,” on the other hand, have constructed a carefully-guarded dream-world which is threatened—and destroyed—by the encroachment of the external, “real” one. Thus they both illustrate the precariousness of what we take to be our system of signs and signifieds, but from vastly differing perspectives.

See, occasionally I like to look back over my undergraduate papers to get a sense of what I could/should expect from my own students. It's not that I, in my infinite modesty, think that my students should be as obviously brilliant as I was at that age, but rather to remind myself that I shouldn't feel bad about the B's and C's. Or something. But, good Lord, do I want students to produce this kind of prose? Wowza. What's especially disturbing is that I was totally sincere.

It's a far cry from my nine-year-old poetic self: "Weird things live in my cupboard," indeed.