A Day

So today:

In the office at 8:15 to start composition conferences. I only have two or three in the morning, but am also busy putting together the invitations for the big banquet I organize every fall, prepping for class (i.e. reading students' posts on the course website), and grading papers for upcoming conferences.

Class 11-12:15.

Home at 12:15 for a quick lunch with TM.

1:15-2:30: Ancient Greek class. We're moving sloooowly in there, which is a good thing, frankly. (And I have an A!)

2:30: Swing by the mailroom. Discover envelope from journal. Force myself to read it on the walk to my office. My article is rejected. It's a nice letter, but the criticisms are pretty strong, and I'm disappointed. Push disappointment aside as much as I can because I have appointments.

2:45-3:45: Four more conferences, one of which involves busting a plagiarist--one of my absolute least favorite things to do.

4:00-6:00: Run a board meeting for the charitable organization on whose board I serve as VP. The meetings usually go about an hour, but for unexpected reasons this one went two. It was a good meeting, but we have some issues to address, so sunshine and roses it was not.

6:15: Come home, finally, and check my email to find what should have been good news: A story I submitted this summer got accepted somewhere. However, it had recently been accepted somewhere else, first, and I had completely forgotten to notify the other journals to which I'd sent it (simultaneous submissions being perfectly okay in the fiction-writing world). So instead of rejoicing, I felt rotten for being discourteous and unprofessional, and wrote a deeply ashamed and apologetic email back to the journal.

In brief:
One rejection, one plagiarist, one embarrassment. These are small problems--not even problems, really, because I don't need to solve them; but they're blows, however small. I'm feeling, I confess, disheartened and uninspired.

Now it's 8:27 pm, and because of all the conferencing/administrating I haven't read for my 8:00 class or graded all the papers for the students coming to see me tomorrow. And tonight was the night I was supposed to get some work done for Another Damned Notorious Writing Group. (I suppose I could've skipped writing this post, but I sort of felt I had to.)

I want to crawl under the covers and either cry or sleep. Probably sleep. Alas.

This must be my fault

How many times this semester have I had this conversation?

Any student: "Can I come see you about [fillintheblank]?"

Me: "Of course. Why don't you stop by during my office hours?"

Student: "When are your office hours again?"

Me: "Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 9 to 10."

Student pauses, thinks, finally says: "Okay! I'll come by on Wednesday." Scribbles a note in his/her calendar.

Me: "Uh, actually--oh, all right. I'll see you then." (I'm in my office anyway, after all, and who needs the confusion....)

One of the ways in which I suck

I'm pretty bad at answering emails. I get better during the school year, but only with my Field College account; my regular gmail languishes pretty badly year-round. It's not that I don't enjoy hearing from people--I just always put off writing back, and then (alas) I'm afraid that I lose interest in talking about myself. And then I feel guilty, and Too Much Time Has Passed, etc. etc. same old story.

And then there's the email account associated with this blog.

Hoo, I'm sorry, anyone who tried to contact me via that address since, oh, mid-July! Because apparently that was the last time I checked it. And as it happens, in addition to the MoveOn.org exhortations and messages from Al Gore & Co, I had some actual, real-life messages in there! Including some actual, real-life work-related stuff!

I'm sorry. Apparently, what I really need is Another Damned Notorious Answer Your Goddamn Email Group.

****

In other news, here's a picture of the travel diary that I made for my trip to Ireland this summer. Isn't it nice?

(On location at a pub in Limerick.)

Fully Dawsed

I have a cold. And this afternoon I took non-drowsy cold medicine.

Guess what, non-drowsy cold medicine! Your non-drowsy wiles don't work on me! Hell no! My body will foil your every effort to keep me awake!

In brief, I find myself fully zombified this afternoon. Trying to read the General Prologue to the CT. I was out midway through the Prioress.

Got up a while later to get something from the bathroom. Knocked over everything on the shelf. Replaced item on the shelf a moment later, knocking everything over again.

The main benefit of cold medicine? Not, as far as I can tell, clearing my sinuses (though my throat feels slightly better). Essentially it forces me to rest. I predict that I'll be retiring the guest room (my preferred sickbed) for video-watching and napping soon, perhaps with some very, very simple knitting (which I'll probably have to redo next week).

Fie!

(The semester has evened itself out a bit, though, and I'm no longer overwhelmed in the way that I was that first week. My classes are fine. Everything is fine except my NOSE!)

Oh God!

I'm drowning in work, I tell you. Drowning! Yes, drowning.

Four distinct preps (I usually have 3) and a staggeringly record number of honors students--both first-years and seniors, the two groups that require the most attention--have me in the office from 7-4ish daily without a break. Lunch at the desk and shit like that. (And then the reading and prep in the evenings, of course.) Oh, and did I mention this? I don't think I did. I'm taking a class! Ancient Greek! It's fun--but we have actual homework.

And now, because I'm an idiot, I'm prepping a Derrida essay for my seminar tomorrow. The students will be baffled (understandably; this is a tough one, and I'm pretty well baffled myself). Once I'm done, I expect that my prep will have sucked about 4 hours out of the evening. I am tired, people. And I have three thesis meetings tomorrow (two of which I just remembered).... And I haven't memorized the declension of the definite article yet....

OK. Next week will be better. Next week will be better. Three-day weekend coming up.

"Low-Hanging Fruit": The Low-Hanging Fruit of Metaphors?

So TM and I were having a conversation the other night, and he used the phrase"low-hanging fruit." I smirked, as I ALWAYS do when I hear that phrase, and we got into a discussion of why I can't hear (let alone say) it with a straight face. I think that it has something to do with how the first time I heard it, it was in reference to someone who used the phrase a lot (are you following me?), and my friend, who was talking about him, said, "I'd like to kick him in his low-hanging fruit."

You get where I'm going with this.

Also, I have a tendency to "hear" it punctuated as "low, hanging fruit" and to imagine it said in a voice like that of the narrator in Rocky Horror Picture Show when he describes the clouds as "heavy, black, and pendulous." (And if you've ever seen or experienced the interactive version of RHPS, you know that the shout-out line only adds to the immodest association hinted at above.)

So yes, I do have a juvenile streak, much as I try to hide it. (See this post for additional evidence.)

SO ANYWAY, we then started talking about alternative metaphors/cliches, and we couldn't think of any good ones. I suggested "easy target," but that doesn't mean quite the same thing. As TM pointed out, "low-hanging fruit" clearly suggests the easily reachable targets that you accomplish first, with the expectation that you will then get into the higher branches with their less-reachable fruit; "easy target" doesn't imply any more difficult targets to come.

And then we were pretty much stumped.

Thus I give it to you, dear readers. What alternative metaphor(s) would you suggest? Are there other figures of speech that serve the same purpose? Or is there a new metaphor, possibly less testicular, just waiting to be coined?

My happiness does not depend on ----

Everything starts tomorrow (we have 3 days containing meetings, including one all-day retreat, then classes begin on the 24th, except for that one Extra Special Class that starts on Sunday).

My wish tonight:

May I please not begin the year with resentment.

I had a flash of it tonight, you see. Resentment. Feeling unappreciated (how childish that sounds!). Recalling a promise that may not be delivered.

I ended the year--an otherwise pretty great year--on a not-great note, feeling taken for granted and put-upon. That feeling vanished over the summer. Tonight it resurfaced.

It's bad news, people. My happiness does not depend on the promise that may or may not be fulfilled. It does not depend on a raise, or a course release, or a small token of favor. These things are nothing.

Remember that.