And what did I do today, you ask?

Well! Since you asked.

Because it was a beautiful day, and I had dutifully spent the morning practicing my defense (I'm down to 24 minutes of fast-talking--got to cut that down) and cleaning my apartment (boyfriend is coming to visit this weekend), I decided to dust off the old bicycle--literally; the basement's pretty filthy--and go for a ride.

My poor bicycle. I still think of it as new, but I realized that it's coming up on 9 years old. The front derailleur doesn't work, but otherwise it's still in pretty good form. I lubed the chain, filled the tires, adjusted the seat, and went on my merry way.

There's a fantastic bike path really near me, and I almost never use it, because it's scary to get on it: you have to pass a highway exit, go up a long ramp with a lot of 180-degree turns, and then make your way down a narrow, terrifying concrete corridor. But all of this only takes about 5 minutes, and then there's the path proper. It's beautiful: it runs through a lot of foresty areas, alongside the water, and there are plenty of lighthouses and quaint little towns along the way. I did the whole circuit--30 miles roundtrip--in about 2 hours. I am horrifically sore, by the way.

I used to be a pretty serious biker, for about 10 months back in 1999. Now, however, my bike gathers dust. So I'm frankly pleased that I managed to sustain a 15 mph average for the whole trip.

This excursion has convinced me that I need to bike more. My life is better when I bike. And the feeling that bicycling gives me is incomparable. Maybe it's all the spandex (I still have my "serious biker clothes" from '99), but I always feel like a superhero when I'm biking. And then when I get back, it's like I've been on this crazy adventure, and it's hard for me to fit the bike trip, conceptually, into the rest of my life. For two hours I was out there with the wind and my breath and my muscles, with the bare trees and the birds and everything whipping past, and then all of a sudden I'm back home. It's a strange, sudden transition.

There's a great description in Proust of Albertine, the bicycling fanatic, "bent and bowed over the mystic wheel of her bicycle." I love that line. The mystic wheel. I don't know what he means and yet I do, which is the secret of a great image, isn't it?

Deadly Boring

Yes, that's what I'm thinking about my dissertation right now.

(I know that I shouldn't complain: it's almost over. But indulge me for a moment, if you will.)

In a mere 92 hours, I will present a tedious and yet whirlwind 20-minute summary of my dissertation to my committee, my significant other, and whatever grad students/faculty from my department bother to show up. I'm trying to prepare for this event by working up a coherent outline from which to speak, but I am so tired of talking about my argument. And how am I supposed to sum up 8 chapters in 20 minutes? I ask you.

I guess I'm kind of anxious, too. It's a little nerve-wracking to think of my committee--who have been my allies through this whole process; really, they're a spectacularly kind and supportive committee--turning on me on Monday. They're going to ask me all these questions. In front of people. And they won't tell me the answers if I falter.

(Well, actually, given my committee, they might.)

I know it'll be fine, and I'm almost done preparing, and I'm kind of excited to be finishing up. But it's weird to be, at age 30, on the brink of what feels like some kind of pubescent rite of passage: time to have the final showdown with the parents, and then start fending for myself. It'll be good to be on my own, intellectually speaking. But you know, it'll be kind of sad, too. I like my committee. Grad school, for all of its irritations, has been an incredibly cushy gig (for these last two years, at any rate; fellowships have blotted out all memory of adjuncting, seminars, office hours, and so forth). I anticipate being very slightly depressed next week.

Mitigating the depression, however, will be the realization that I won't have to summarize my dissertation anymore (especially if I manage to get myself a job). And that, my friends, means one thing: elation.

Sadness at Staying

The title of this post references a book that my friend Restless Architect gave me a few years ago, when I was on my way to Paris: Sadness at Leaving, it's called, by Erje Ayden. It's a strange little book. Anyway, I think of the title a lot, since it's obviously a pretty easily invoked sentiment, but somehow oddly phrased. And then I think of Restless Arch, and what a cool person he is.

But anyway. The reason for the sadness is actually rather banal, and my "sadness" is proportionately minor. All this recent talk of Kalamazoo meet-ups makes me wish that I was going to K'z this year! I had to skip it in favor of another conference (coming up in just a couple of weeks, and, frankly, in a much more exciting place), but I skipped it last year, too, and I miss it! I wish that I were going to be there to meet some of you in person.

--Which has got me thinking about this funny little blog-world. I basically started up my blog because I had the idea for a name for a blog and I wanted to use it. But what's so nice about the endeavor is the community of people who are interested in hearing about each other's teaching/writing/researching lives (as well as their non-scholarly lives, which for some reason I always think of as their "secular" lives; not sure why I've given it this particular label in my head, but it seems oddly appropriate). And it's nice to hear that other people get totally stuck, slack off, and dread (some of) their classes, sometimes, too. Not that I didn't imagine that to be the case. But it's good to have it in writing.

Anyway, the point is, although I'm pretty new to the blog thing and very little-known here, I'm glad that I started up my blog and I look forward to bitching to you people for years to come.

On a related note, I'm considering changing my blogging ID. I chose this one before I ever thought I'd have a blog, actually, and it's a little too thin a veil. Besides, it annoys me that, given the opportunity to choose an ID, I chose something so mundane. Watch This Space for more developments.

Not Working

Since my interview is over, and I've relapsed into my policy of slack, I decided to take the day off.

(Never mind that I worked for approximately 25 minutes yesterday. See, the problem is, I'm trying to prepare my dissertation defense [8 days until it's over!], and I just don't really know what to do. I have made up a Handout, and prepared an Elaborate Outline, but basically I could run through my argument in my sleep. And I fear that, frankly, it's just going to be boring. I know that that shouldn't be a worry [and it obviously isn't much of one, since I'm taking no steps whatsoever to prevent it], but I've given versions of this spiel SO MANY TIMES that I can HARDLY BEAR to go over it anymore.)

So, today, I went to a museum and saw a neat exhibit of fiber arts (e.g. unwearable knit and crocheted things). One artist had knit dozens of biologically correct snake skins (out of yarn); they were beautiful and surprisingly lifelike. Then I got a falafel and went to the park, where I saw daffodils, crocuses, ducks, swans, a heron (or a crane? I don't know), a guy playing a flute, and a turtle.

A Google image search reveals that what I probably saw was a heron. It looked like this:


In a little while, I'll go to yoga. And then I'll likely be exhausted and lounge around for a bit.

I used to be so industrious.... I do not, however, feel particularly bad about this prolonged slump. I mean, who cares, really.

Well, That's Over

Just had my interview. I think it went...okay. I'm not sure. I was able to answer all of their questions (even though they weren't exactly the questions that I had anticipated, in some cases). I felt like I was babbling sometimes and being vague, and then I would try to be concrete, and just repeat myself.

(See? Vague.)

Whatever. It's done. What's kind of funny is how I felt a little smidgen of betrayal when they mentioned that they were interviewing Other People. Other people? You mean I'm not self-evidently the best? I want to be the only one!!!!

Has it occurred to anyone else that the job search is in every way exactly like trying to date when you're 13 years old? You know, the wracking anxiety, the simultaneous desire for and terror of the phone's ringing, the conviction that you're just ugly and awkward and no one will ever want you, ever. When the fact of the matter is that you're just too young.

Of couse, this analogy only works in one direction; presumably the search committees are a little more with-it than the 13-year-old objects of my totally ambivalent desire.

(And yes, the ambivalence is part of the parallel, too. Because sometimes I'm not sure that I want a job. Of course I do, in the larger sense, but the fact of being A Real Live Professor is actually kind of terrifying, at this point.)

The more I think about it, the more I am absolutely convinced that this is the perfect analogy for the job search. Yep.

The worst interview ever

When I was in high school, I once had a (live) interview for an honors program at one of the colleges that had accepted me. And I had a terrible combination of interviewers:

1) a man with laryngitis who did a lot of talking;
2) a woman with an impenetrable Germanic accent; and
3) a perfectly silent man.

The only question that I remember them asking me is the following:

"Why are you interested in the story of Rapunzel, and what do you think the major themes of the story are?"

My mind went blank. What on earth were they talking about? Rapunzel? When in my life had I expressed any interest in Rapunzel? What kind of idiotic essay had I written for this school? Good lord. Rapunzel??

I managed to come up with some kind of answer about confinement and femininity or something. God knows. Later I realized that I had mentioned, somewhere in my application, having to perform a monologue about Rapunzel in an English class in the tenth grade, but their question reflected such a profound misunderstanding of that incident that I didn't even recognize it in their query.

I got into the program, though. (And I turned it down. It had nothing to do with the interview, of course; there was just another school that I liked a lot better.)

All Is Not Lost

So I have an interview for a one-year tomorrow morning--a phone interview, which makes me nervous. I don't think that I do very well on the phone. Incapable of deploying those indispensible visual clues like nodding, smiling, looking interested, etc., I'm kind of at a loss. I end up saying "uh-huh" and "oh" and laughing inappropriately instead. The good thing, I guess, is that I'm going to be the one doing most of the talking (presumably, right?).

Maybe it's just my neediness talking, but the more I think about this job, the more I want it. It's in a part of the country that I've never felt any desire to visit, but now that there's a remote possibility of going there, I'm excited--it'd just be one year! it'd be like visiting a foreign country! it's far enough away that I could throw all my stuff into storage and just rent a furnished room! etc. And the courses that I would be teaching would be really good for me--the kind of stuff that I'd probably have to teach early in my career anyway, and so getting a little practice in a non-tenure-track situation would be a great help.

I've noticed, though, that anytime I receive the slightest expression of interest from an employer, I get all googly and carried away and convinced that whatever job they've got WOULD BE THE BEST THING EVER. I'm like one of those pathetic people who fall madly in love with any wo/man who flirts briefly with them at a bar. The upside of this kind of totally shallow emotional investment is that the let-down, when the jobs fall through, isn't all that bad.

Anyway. Wish me luck!