And Yet, I'll Miss Them

Things have been better since Weirdly Hellacious Wednesday. Yesterday, in fact, I was able to have a long nap in the afternoon--I can't remember when I last did that on a weekday. I felt like I was playing hooky or something, and kept getting a weird panicked feeling that I'd forgotten to go teach a class. But no, I actually just had some time to relax.

Teaching has been good lately, too. Dante is kind of dragging down my upper-level course (myself included), but the end of the semester could also be blamed for the lethargy. On the whole, however, looking back over this semester, I feel good. And as it turns out, I actually enjoy teaching.

It might seem strange that this comes as a surprise, but the fact is that I'd had very little teaching experience before this year. Attentive readers may have detected a certain level of stress and anxiety at the start of the semester. "At the start?" you scoff. "And what was Wednesday, then, if not stress and anxiety writ large?" Fair enough, I reply--but the act of teaching itself is no longer terrifying and stressful. I have off days, of course, but most of my days are "on," and what with four courses this semester the memory of each off day rapidly gets absorbed into the general morass of what-the-hell-did-I-do-yesterday and loses its sting pretty quickly.

Right around the sixth week was when I quit being so nervous. And I've discovered a certain pleasure in performance; in my largest class, in particular, where I have a good group of funny and engaged students who can be counted on to find me entertaining, I really get into my role. (I also have a bigger audience; maybe I enjoy that? I wouldn't have guessed that I'd like my biggest class the best.) But beyond this ego-driven pleasure, I love it when I see a student's eyes light up with that sudden "getting it" look; it thrills me when one of them asks a good question that shows that she's really thinking about the text, especially when it's a question I hadn't thought of; and the individual conferences I've been having with them over the last couple of weeks have been truly pleasurable. Even the quiet and/or struggling students have something to say, for the most part, and I enjoy getting to know a little bit more about them as people.

That said, I do have some weird encounters with my students, and I'm quite sure that today's odd exchanges stem entirely from the fact that I am a youngish (and youngish-looking) female professor.

Both happened after one of my comp sections and involved the same students who inquired about my tattoo a few weeks ago. This time, the guy who had asked about my tattoo approached me after class to ask how many piercings I have. Luckily, all my piercings are in my ears, so I didn't have to navigate any problematic terrain (of course, I would have lied if things had been otherwise, but I don't like to lie, so whatever).

Not sure what he was hoping for, but there you go.

He and another (male) student then asked what sections of comp 2 I was teaching. I told them, and they asked if it was too late to switch into my class. This warmed my heart, of course, although a) I'm a little surprised that they liked comp 1 so much, since it has certainly not showcased my finest teaching, and 2) I already have 54 comp students lined up for next semester and am not exactly gunning for any more. Nonetheless I was pleased, and I told them that I still had a few openings and they should talk to their advisors.

So then the other student--not the piercing-question student, but the one who himself has a number of visible tattoos--said, "Actually, I shouldn't sign up for your class, 'cause then we could hang out next semester."

"Ah ha ha," I said. "Have a nice weekend."

I assume that he was kidding. To an 18-year-old, I am as ancient as the hills. But I'm still not sure how to read his comment, and grateful for the power dynamic that allows me to ignore it.

In No Mood

After a long but perfectly fine day of teaching and a faculty meeting, I came home to greet my computer-fixer. Short version: He can't fix my computer. I have a call in to another Fixer, one who sounds about 14 on his voice mail (and, since I've left messages with his mom and someone whom I assume to be his little brother, might BE 14), but I'm not confident. We might be taking a long, long drive to a Sony Factory this weekend. Sigh.

So then I open my email, and have the following messages.

1) Another email from a very hard-working but somewhat high-maintenance student asking for (yet) more help with citation formatting.
2) An email from a student who missed his scheduled meeting yesterday, asking me when he's supposed to meet with me. Um. Yesterday.
3) A pair of interconnected emails: the first from a student asking me to email another one of his professors to tell her that he's missing class tomorrow to work on a project for my class (I need to "confirm" it), and the second from the other professor to the student (I was CC'd), telling him to come in early to get the make-up work. I scrolled down and saw the message he'd written her; he told her that he'd have me write and explain why he isn't going to be in class. Here's the thing: This is a homework assignment that he's doing, essentially. I have no control over when it's done; I have nothing to do with it. So I wrote back to the professor, apologizing and telling her that she was under no obligation to excuse this absence, and then I explained the latter to the student, as well. SIGH. (The professor is, by the way, on the search committee for my job. Not that that changes my behavior, but seriously, impressions matter!)

None of this is exactly traumatic, but I'm aggravated about the computer situation, and here's the other thing: I am totally unprepared--as in, haven't read--for my classes for the rest of the week, and in half an hour I'm supposed to go to an informational session for students who are interested in grad school. And tomorrow morning, my usual prep time, will be totally consumed by student meetings. I could skip out on this session, but it's something that I'm really interested in doing and that I think there's a need for here, so I'd rather not.

The upshot of it all, I suppose, is that I NEED THE SEMESTER TO END. GAH.

On the other hand, my students were delightful in class today--more so than usual, in some cases. So I'll end this message--if not my day--on a positive note.

State of Affairs

So what, you ask, has been going on at the Age of Perfection? Let's see.

• The computer is still unfixed. I can't get a hold of this computer fixing guy, who evidently still lives with his family (I've left messages with his mom and a young-sounding fellow whom I took to be his little brother). He's the only computer fixer in Field Town, but I do have a tip about someone a town or two over who charges a delightful $70 an hour, so I might need to give him a call if I don't succeed in lassoing Field Town Computer Fixer. I am almost over berating myself for the stupidity of my computer damage (it was an accident, I know!), but not quite.
• I kind of wish that it were two weeks from now so that my anxious hoping for the phone to ring would at least be legitimate. I must constantly remind myself that search committees did not meet over Thanksgiving. Here's the thing: the week and a half before Thanksgiving were replete with good news, as I received numerous requests for additional materials (averaging like one a day! or almost!) and scheduled a phone interview for a tt job. And now...silence. Okay, so yeah, it's only Tuesday. Morning. Before 9. I must chill.
• Job apps are in, at least, other than a couple of recent postings that aren't due for a while.
• My semester is nearly over! Only six more teaching days! Why is it that my semester seems to have begun before almost anyone else's and is nonetheless ending after so many of y'all's? I have lost all teaching motivation. I can't even prep for today's class. Really. Why is it that I hate prepping so much? The teaching, I don't mind. But the prep? Not so good. Especially for this class, which is 75 minutes long instead of the usual 50, and that extra 25 really throws me. I just can't deal with it.
• Anyway, if I do the math, I only have 15 more classes to teach this semester. Hoo! And, of those, 6 require literally no prep, as they are given over to 1) an activity in which the students are entirely responsible for leading discussion (2 sections), 2) in-class preparation for a group project (2 sections), and 3) presentations (2 sections). Ha ha!
• On the other hand, I have required about 20 students to meet with me regarding final papers, and recommended that another 15 do so. While I have been available to meet with them for the last two weeks, almost every last one of them scheduled appointments for today, tomorrow, and Thursday. Therefore, I will be enthusiastically discussing paper topics for hours and hours and hours this week. I do like meeting with students to talk about their papers; it gives me a chance to interact with them a little more personally, which in pretty much every case just makes me like them even more, and most of them have interesting ideas. But that's a lot of meetings.
• I went swimming last night for the first time in more than a month. So that's something.
• In further exercise news, my new indoor soccer team is playing this Thursday night (a colleague convinced me to join--it's mostly made up of very young members of his church). I still kind of need to make a decision about this. I like soccer, and the exercise is great, but my knees are not what they once were. It is, however, possible that the exercise will strengthen the muscles around the knees and therefore decrease my total knee pain. I don't know. This is quite a boring topic.
• Why on earth did I make a response paper due in one of my classes this Friday? What on earth was I thinking? Do I not have enough grading stealing upon me with ever-less-stealthy tread?
• It snowed this weekend. I liked it.

And that is all. Exciting times, my friends.

ETA (10 minutes later): Moments after posting this, I got an MLA interview! Hooray! My hotel room is not in vain!

Review

That last post was hardly in the proper spirit of Thanksgiving, so here's a shot at being--belatedly--a little more cheery.

First off, I am deeply grateful that my computer catastrophe didn't result in graver damage, and I seem to have full functionality (other than the CD/DVD player, obviously). If I can ever get ahold of the local repair guy, I hope to have this thing fixed within a couple of days.

I had a good holiday weekend. Loads of traveling, including a four-hour delay on Wednesday (because it was raining, and evidently rain is very, very dangerous), but it was good to see everyone. Also, the delay actually let me get through my reading for tomorrow and Wednesday, which I probably wouldn't have finished otherwise. I didn't spend any two nights in the same place--Wednesday at Dad's, Thursday at Mom's, Friday at the Boyfriend's, Saturday at the home of some friends of ours who were having a party and happen to live near the airport; it was a bit of a proverbial whirlwind. My flight this morning was really early and I hardly got any sleep at all (we're talking an hour, maybe? I spent most of the night doing that thing where thinking about how early you have to get up keeps you awake), but that meant that I was back home before noon. I had lunch and a 2.5-hour nap and have been mostly enjoying my evening ever since, the only damper being the fact that I've been intermittently prepping for tomorrow. From the look of the blogs, I'm not the only one who's feeling decidedly sick of the semester. Only 8 more teaching days until the break....

As long as I'm rambling on about nothing in particular, I should mention that it snowed today. That made me happy.

The weekend was too short and I miss everyone but there's something nice about being settled into the hand-me-down La-Z-Boy in my old fleece sweatshirt, thinking about going to bed in a little while.

Stupid #&$*(@

The title to this post is a self-description: at the moment I am filled with self-recrimination, for I am a clumsy and careless person. As I was picking up my laptop last night to return it from its movie-playing location to my desk, the cord caught on something; I was holding it in only one hand, like a genius, and it slipped out of said hand and onto the floor. Not a disaster, as the floor was only about 12 inches away and heavily carpeted, but in breaking its fall I somehow grabbed the (open) DVD player drawer and tore that right out of the machine. Tears and wailing and an ill-advised attempt to fix it myself ensued. Then I got online (for the computer still works, evidently) and found a local repair place.

Yes, the computer still works, but I am very nervous about it. And since I leave town in less than two hours, I won't be able to get it repaired until next week. Poor computer. And stupid self: I'd had many near-disasters when lifting the laptop in that way, and always warned myself never to do it again, because Something Bad could happen. Lo and behold! It did.

On that note: Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! No blogging until next week.

More Stress than We Need

I need to get some work done tonight, so I can have a grading-free Thanksgiving, but I'd like to take a moment to register my protest of this new job-market wiki.

I mean really, what purpose does it serve? Is it helpful to know that someone else already has an MLA interview scheduled when you yourself might not? To calculate the application-to-interview ratio of a total stranger?

The job market is competitive and unpleasant enough without our encouraging one another to undergo this kind of comparison.

I had a brief--brief--moment in which I considered posting my current stats, because my current stats are actually making me really happy (I've been getting some responses). But then I looked at that impulse, and rejected it. I could post my stats, but why? So that someone else can feel sad at not having had as good a response at this point (which is totally meaningless, of course)? So that someone else can feel smug for having had a better response?

The purpose of this new wiki page eludes me. It's just another way for this process to be hateful and emotionally destructive.

My intention is to ignore it, but I'm pretty sure that I'll give in to curiosity now and again. Still, I protest this site, and will not post anything on it.

Or is there something I'm missing? Have others among you looked at this page and found it useful/interesting/not generative of self-loathing?

Two Brief Instances of Gender Prescriptivism

1. Scene: The dentist's office.

Receptionist. Where are the toothbrushes?

Hygienist. In the closet over there. The women's toothbrushes are on the bottom shelf; the men's are on the top.

Receptionist. Women's and men's?

Hygienist. I segregate 'em: the purple and pink on the bottom, the blue and green on top. Otherwise, everyone takes the blue and green--even the women--and the men are left with pink and purple. So I just separate them to make it easier.

(I, meanwhile, am being prodded and scraped by said hygienist, which makes it impossible for me to either laugh or twist my face in incredulity.)

2. Scene: The local cafe.

Woman: They have a great playground with lots of equipment, and a costume area--the boys can dress up like superheroes, and there's a princess area for the girls.

(I actually had to stifle the urge to join in the conversation at this point. How I hate, hate, hate the "princess culture" that little girls are forced into these days! And I can say with some certainty that I would have hated it as a little girl, too--I wanted to be Luke, not Leia. Or, better yet, Darth Vader. Or even a storm trooper. I was a militaristic child.)