Purring Prophecy

Happy Fourth of July!

2008-07-04T11:38:00.004-05:00

Today promises to be a RED LETTER day. Woke up to the smell of TD making waffles and sausage for breakfast. Later, we'll go downtown to the parade and then over to some friends' house for an early potluck. Then, fireworks at the highschool!

I love the 4th - I always wear some form of red, white and blue - TD is wearing blue shorts and a red shirt with white lettering that reads: "Trust me, I'm a Doctor". (The Dutch flag also happens to be red, white, and blue). We'll be putting our "Obama '08" sticker on the car today as well. Things are looking up.

Perhaps even better than the fireworks (at least it'll linger much longer), I just received a $2100 tax return from Dutchmanlandia (i.e., where I lived last year)!!

Independence from debt - Fucking righteous, dudes.

Still Here...

2008-07-02T14:02:00.003-05:00

What's going on?

Nuttin'. Nada. Niente. Zilch.

Went to a family reunion this last weekend and had A FABULOUS TIME. Much more fun than I've ever had with my crazy extended family. There were around 40 of us and 6-7 of us ended up staying up WAY too late drinking and playing Shanghai Rummy. TD is now officially part of the family - he clicked very well with my multiple funny, redneck uncles.

There was kayaking, boiled crabs, margaritas, and 50s dancing. Medieval Family can party.

I will be traveling most of July, so blogging will be perhaps lighter than the average summertime blogging.

Shopping while hungry...

2008-06-24T13:33:00.004-05:00

I went into Dillards to get a single make-up compact. I left with a bunch more face stuff, a pre-ordered gift with purchase (which TD will have to go pick up for me while I'm away - I'm sure he'll love that), a new pair of shoes (see below - who doesn't always need a black flat?), and a mauve sweater shell with kicky pleats at the bottom for $27 ON SALE FROM $109!!!!!

(*fizzle*)

thud.

these are Jessica Simpson - I feel like I should be slightly embarrassed about this...

P.S. But on another note, TD and I got our tickets out to California for Xmas, MLA, New Year's, etc. for only $430 each!! And that's all the way across the country, folkses...

Frickin' Russians....

2008-06-21T16:13:00.002-05:00

Our beloved boys in orange have just lost the quarter finals of the Eurocup...van Nistelrooij scored our only goal.

TD mourns in front of the television and I couldn't even watch the last minute or so. Where was our defense????? Offence?????

Final Score: 3-1 Russia

Jobs I've Had

2008-06-18T11:26:00.003-05:00

Okay - this is just for fun - as begun by Belle (although this list isn't near as long or varied as Belle's!):

I am 33 and I'm not counting the teaching jobs I've had throughout and post grad school (which equal 6 different institutions).

- Waitress at a retirement center restaurant (became an ace at avoiding "handsy" old guys)
- Worked at a local video store
- Adult literacy tutor
- Bartender at a sport's bar (I am still a licensed bartender - I hold a degree in "Mixology")
- Bartender at an upscale strip club (I was fully clothed - tuxedo shirt, bow tie, cummerbund, and bright red nails!)
- Waitress/Bartender at an off-track betting place (got a $300 tip once)
- Bartender at a Harley bar
- Receptionist at a real estate office (a.k.a. the 7th circle of Hell)

GRAD SCHOOL!

Tag everyone - you're it!

Random Bits of Out of Shape Fluff

2008-06-17T10:50:00.003-05:00

At 8:45 this morning TD and I got up, ate a granola bar, and went to the gym. This is the first time I've gone to the gym in...(*cough!*) 2yrs (*cough!*). Yes, it's true. I am officially a couch/desk chair potato.

I did about 45 minutes of different kinds of cardio - a little Precor, a little treadmill, a little recumbent bike. I stayed on two of them for over 20 minutes so I did get the old heartrate going. And boy, was it going. I am SO TOTALLY out of shape that I thought at one point I was going to hurl.

And there was an over-baked, stick figure next to me that seriously looked like she was going to break the elliptical machine she was moving so hard. And she wasn't dropping even a bead of sweat. I silently hexed her and kept my eyes on the clock in front of me and listened to my Tears for Fears in an effort to achieve a zen-like state.

But, overall it was a good beginning. I'm going to take little steps. Smaller even than baby steps. Zygote steps. And I hope that in a week or two I'll see improvement!

Grad School Parties...

2008-06-08T13:46:00.002-05:00

A (potentially sappy) Retrospective.

Actually, it's just one memory that hit me really powerfully as I was reading Sisyphus' thoughts on graduate school parties (as opposed to faculty parties) just now. I'm not sure why this in particular came to me, but it's kinda funny and totally says volumes about...well, me in grad school and the early days if TD's and my relationship.

Picture a snowy night in late March of 2001. TD and I had been hanging out a lot since Feb 9th, when we met. Initially, we had Fraught Issues (i.e., he had a girlfriend back in Holland who he'd just started dating before he left to come to the States for a year exchange), so we were just friends. And, apparently, were secretly falling into deep luuuuuuv. Alcohol was a big part of grad school parties, of course, so at this point, there was a bunch of us in the kitchen of JG's apartment doing lemon drop shots and listening to Thriller. TD and I were talking and laughing as just friends and he made a joke and then turned to get more lemons and I began to laugh so hard that I ended up falling on the floor and rolling (yes, rolling. Like a billiard ball) under the kitchen table. He pulled me out by my foot and asked if I'd hit my head. I wasn't feeling much of anything at that point, so I somehow (in between giggles and snorts) indicated that I hadn't. Then he said, "I think I'm in love with you."

Boing! Beginnings of sobriety...

What followed was an Intense and Emotional discussion about What To Do! It was epic in the way that only *schooltime* love can be - I remember saying that even though I was an "American harpy stealing him away from the bosom of his homeland" (I told you: epic), I was morally certain that he shouldn't go back at the end of the year, but should stay here for grad school where we could feather our love nest (to be honest, he had already begun to think about staying for the full Ph.D. even in the fall semester before we met).

So, the rest is history. But I will share one more tidbit from the very first night we met at a grad student social hour. We said "hi" and I asked him where he was from (he hadn't been in the country that long - I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd still been wearing wooden shoes). Then he asked me where I was from and when I told him, he got a look of rapture on his pure little un-American face and cried out,

"Oh! Are you a redneck??"

Apparently, he'd been watching King of the Hill and really, really wanted to meet one.

How can you not love that?

A different kind of grading jail...

2008-06-05T11:09:00.002-05:00

It's June and I'm not on the quarter system (that's a shout-out to you, Sisyphus!) - so, why am I still grading? Graduate papers. It's not grading per se - all the grades are in. However, I'm now commenting on their papers so that I can return them. I put this off until the end of May because of the article revisions I was working on, but now I need to get these done so I can begin my Summer Of Work and Toil and Productivity!

The great thing about undergraduate papers? They never want them back.

So, that's pretty much what's going on in this neck of the woods. My friend had her baby this last Sunday and I went to see her yesterday and brought Thai food take-out to the weary parents. The little sprog was all red, but very beautiful.

Ooo! Ooo! And I've found the pendant light fixture that will one day hang above TD's and my dining room table! Voila:

Our dining room set is basic dark wood table with matching chairs that have a chocolate colored upholstery.

Thoughts?

End of the First Year on the Tenure Track: Part Two - Teaching

2008-05-29T21:31:00.002-05:00

This should be an easy one, yes? I have some experience setting up new classes and I taught almost exclusively things that I'd taught a few hundred times (it seemed) or things I'd read closely as a grad student TA. While I was trying to crank an article out by the end of the first semester, everyone was saying, "Don't worry about it - no one expects you to get any real research done your first year! Just get used to teaching your classes!"

Ha! I would smirk at them and think, "get used to teaching? Dude, puh-lease. I could do this in my sleep..."

(*picture of cocky jr faculty member getting ready to be smacked down*)

Now, teaching did go....fine. I wasn't a sensation. And I'm sorta used to being a sensation (and I don't mean this to be a shithead, although you're all thinking that right now). What I realized is that, yeah - if you have NO OTHER JOB OBLIGATIONS AT ALL, you can be a crackerjack teacher - everybody's fave. But I was always used to teaching in a vacuum - I was used to teaching like none of it mattered past this semester. Like I didn't have to think about getting tenure or (dare I say it?) a reputation.

And that last word brings me to another point. I've always been a fair grader, but that wasn't foremost on my mind (although a lot of people thought I was psychotically hard, apparently). I was, however, thinking about what kind of rep (English Department "street cred", if you will) I was carving out for myself. Was I going to be the one you hoped to take the Med-Ren survey with? Did you desperately want to take my Chaucer class if you could? The answer is, most students couldn't give a rat's butt. The more germane question for students is, "is the class being taught at 9:30 am? Is there room left in the 2:30 section?"

The thing I realized is that it doesn't really matter that much. I'm a good teacher and I'll always get good/decent evaluations. Some semesters I'll be able to dedicate more energy to teaching - the semester when I'm working up my tenure dossier? Probably not so much.

Two cool things happened this year regarding teaching:

1) After my grad class, several students said they were taking my next one, which gave me a warm fuzzy. BUT, a couple of days later I received an email from one of my students - he was one of the "cool" kids who I knew was only in there because of the requirement. He is very smart, but seemed disengaged throughout some of the class. The email was a more personalized addendum to the course evaluation they'd done at the end of the semester. "Oh, god," I thought. However, it was the most conscientious, thorough, most totally constructive evaluation I've ever received, bar none. He talked about how he'd inititally just wanted to get through my course, hadn't been interested at all. But, then he'd become very invested in the things we discussed and in his final project (for which he was able to incorporate some of his own interests - it was a great paper). His suggestions were spot on and I'll be incorporating almost all of them. So, all the angst I felt this semester was worth it, I think.

2) When I went to our departmental graduation ceremony, our chair also takes a minute to point out any special awards or grants that the faculty have won. Everyone claps for everyone and the parents get a glow knowing that their kids were taught by people who can, actually, read and write. I received a grant this year and when the chair read my name, about 8 of my former students who were graduating all whooped really loud. It made me happy.

Funny Addendum:
Some of you may remember my stupid existential crisis about getting a blue frowny face on RMP (I gave the little shit the stink eye at graduation, too. Because I'm petty and childish...). I looked again recently and saw something that I will actually wear as a badge of honor (and this is the gist of the rating, although I've corrected the spelling mistakes, which is why the student probably got a C):

Green "So-So" Face:

Prof. MW is a very nice person and very funny. However, her class is *insanely* hard! She takes attendance EVERY DAY and she expects us to have read this HUGE book BEFORE class! (I.e, the 5 poems we'll be discussing out of the Norton Anthology, kids). She gives three REALLY HARD tests and we have to take tons of notes in her lectures. I thought this would be an easy class, but I'm struggling to get a C! It's SO unfair!!

MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Can't we all just switch to the metric system or whatever?

2008-05-23T15:46:00.001-05:00

I *hate* formatting stupid, f**cking articles to different formats....MHRA style my foot. Single quotations, blah, blah.....(*grumble, grumble*).....tedious.....

End of the First Year on the Tenure Track: Part One - the Faculty Meeting

2008-05-22T12:18:00.006-05:00

I thought I might post some reflections on what has been a BIG HONKIN' YEAR OF MILESTONES:

Part the First - The Faculty Meeting:

Learning how to speak up in meetings was a semi-fraught situation this year. What's interesting is that it's not because I felt uncomfortable about speaking up as a junior faculty member in a room full of senior colleagues. I know that some of the other jr-faculty in my department had that reaction; they have said in various contexts that they felt like they didn't want to antagonize the very people who would eventually be deciding their tenure cases. I haven't felt that way this year (not that feeling that way is in any way wrong or, in some cases, on the money). Rather, I was trying to establish what my voice in these meetings was going to be - passionate regarding issues about which I felt strongly, but also measured and as even-keel as possible. What I've loved about our regular department meetings this year (and I know I won't feel like this about dept. meetings in 10 years, but for now the novelty hasn't quite worn off) is the different voices that come out. For some reason, I imagine this must be like a huge heard of sheep; each one has its own distinct voice and the little lost lamb can hear its own mother among all the others that basically seem to bleat in the same way. Now, I'm not a lost lamb (although at times I've felt that way this year), but I quickly became accustomed to reading these meetings on a different level - abstracted from the actual situation at hand, I could tell why my colleagues were really saying what they were saying. If John Doe says this completely cazy, off the wall thing, it's to provoke a reaction, not because he actually thinks this. If Jane Doe starts going off into conspiracy theories about X, then Jane Doe 2 will intervene in a non-threatening way to neutralize the acid spewing forth. It's like reading a Spenserian allegory - there's so much more going on underneath the surface if you just look close enough.

Speaking up in meetings became important this year in particular because I was thrown into the semi-deep end of the pool early on. I was on a search committee and, thus, had to make my voice heard in many ways. The committee and I agreed to a spectacular degree on the status of all the candidates, so there wasn't strife per se, but there was the need to make our case persuasively to the rest of the dept. There was also another hiring issue that I was extremely personally invested in as well as some discussed curricular revisions that would impact me and my cohort tremendously. These issues became the basis on which I began to create my voice in the department. I should say that 99.9% of the senior faculty here really value the junior faculty and encourage us to speak up and become invested in the department goings-on. Fortunately, there's not the pat on the head and the "this is how we do things around here, kiddo" condescension I've heard about so often with some of my friends. They were pleased that I spoke up in meetings and staked my claim. But it felt that there were also times when certain well-meaning colleagues were attempting to appropriate my voice and my situation. It was well-intentioned and it was ultimately in the service of what we all wanted to happen, but it impressed upon me even more that I needed to be responsible for voicing my opinions; I needed to decide what aspects of my individual situation (both personal and professional) should be brought to bear on this issue. Ultimately, it worked wonders - we got what we wanted voted on and passed by the department and I received many emails from my senior colleagues saying how happy they'd been that I was so proactive and invested in our department's inner workings. It was a kind of validation I'd never experienced because my voice had never been valued in departments where I was an adjunct or visiting professor. This aspect, more than the knowledge that I will have steady teaching and a relatively stable identity as professor for the foreseeable future, has made me feel "all growed up" this year...

Is it summer yet?

2008-05-17T21:18:00.002-05:00

Well, I made a big pitcher of sangria today, so it feels like summer! If anyone's interested, I'll post my recipe - no apples, all citrus juices and wine and a little brandy (if one wants).

My lovely friend who got the job at the Dream Academy is coming into town with her partner on Monday to look for a place, etc. I'm so happy they're coming! I'm still not really believing that she'll actually be here next year. I've set up a big new and junior faculty get together (two of our new hires will be in town next week), so that will be fun.

I'm trying to finish up the "Article That I Never Thought Would Die But Then It Did." I got a few things to revise (look at this, format that, push the conclusion a bit further, etc.), but nothing terribly substantive. It needs to be done by the end of May, however, to get the collection to the publishers. So, that's been on my plate for the last few days.

Grades are in (although grad papers haven't been commented on - they'll have to wait!) and graduation is over!

Life is status quo, five-by-five, copacetic, but good...

But can I still write about Women, though?

2008-05-11T22:28:00.003-05:00

I was talking with Adjacent Field Friend the other day (who recently got a book contract - way to go!) and we were talking about studying women in the early periods. We both work in this subfield and we both do work that, at one point or another in our graduate work and/or our fledgling careers, has been considered to be "non-literary" - not so hot when you're an English Ph.D. Without giving anything away about either of us, let's say that she works on both canonical and noncanonical authors and genres. I work in more than one medium (but don't we all, really?). Anyway, we were discussing how our work has been dismissed by using evidence from the "historical record" (with all the attendant caveats that term requires).

For example, many people think I work on women's literacy - I don't, not really anyway. My work is predicated on early women's literacy in the same way that some conclusions about medieval population studies might be predicated on the fact that there was, actually, a series of plagues in the Middle Ages. But many, many wonderful scholars before me have already established that women were literate to varying degrees and in many different ways in the Middle Ages. I refer to their work and build on it to go in my own, slightly tangential, direction.

I remember giving a paper on one of my dissertation chapters once about a series of manuscripts that showed an interesting kind of women's readership. I was looking at a series of very cool and, theretofore, little studied marginal notations to make arguments about how these women were reading these texts, what purposes those texts seemed to serve in their lives (again, with all attendant caveats), etc. One of the questions I got asked was from a professor at the university hosting the conference. He said, "what you've outlined here is really interesting - I really want to believe that she was writing all these things...do you think she really was?" I blinked and said, "yes...as certain as I would be if a hand calling itself 'Henry Smith' was writing so thoroughly and aggressively in the margins of the text." Just because there were far more men than women involved in literate practices in the Middle Ages, doesn't mean that every hand signing the name "Jane Doe" automatically has to really be John Doe. Or even John Doe who's in love with a girl named Jane and decides to write her name 60 times in a book margin! (that possibility was also suggested to me)

But basically, the guy was missing the point. As I've said before, I'm aware of all the caveats needed to make a responsible argument about medieval women's literate practice - I know that the historical record is even more patchy than usual. And I'm a responsible scholar, so I take these things into account before I make my assertions. But we still come back to this whole question: could women really read in the Middle Ages?? It seems like that's the point at which a lot of people stop and then decide on the basis of that question whether or not to pursue certain arguments with me (and also my colleague). Funnily, I published a portion of that chapter in an essay collection - it was reviewed by someone and the only thing they really said about my piece was that "Medieval Woman discusses how women read these texts; but surely we've already concluded that women were reading these texts by now..." Again, they went along for the ride only so far. Was I clear about what my argument was really about? Yep. Women's reading was only step one - I lost the reviewer and the commenter after that.

What's interesting is that they both left the party at the same point, but for different reasons. Commenter couldn't get past the notion that the historical record doesn't provide (in his opinion) enough evidence to help overcome his skepticism, no matter how much he wanted to believe it. Reviewer left the party once they thought that I was merely stating that, yes, in fact, women were reading these texts. In their opinion, this was old hat; it had already been established.

My colleague has encountered the same thing in the work she does in the field chronologically adjacent to my own. She will combine texts written by and about women with the work of canonical male authors and look at the way certain vocations traditionally done by women are represented in both (for anonymity's sake, I can't give her project even a tiny measure of its true coolness). She once got a snide, dismissive report (written, as it turned out, by a man) that said: "Why are you looking at these women's texts when X phenomenon is clearly going on in Y Male Author's texts and a bunch of other Male Authors' texts?" Because that's not the point of her work. Yes, she could have written that book/article/conference paper. But that's not her work. You have her work in front of you and she's done a damn good job justifying why she's doing it this way and not that way.

We've all encountered in one form or another the reviewer who says, "Why didn't you write the article/book the way I would have?" But what my friend and I were discussing is how the presence of early women in the historical record - either their seemingly too overt or too clandestine presence - is used as a reason to a) dismiss certain kinds of scholarship once you've (mis)read it or, b) not engage with it at all.

Basically, I'm not sure if this is just something that plagues gender and early literature and/or history. Feminism and the Middle Ages had its beginning relatively late - late 80s, early 90s with folks like Dinshaw, Ferrante, etc. And that's not to say that people aren't still working on medieval women - jeez, I know one medieval woman who's working on medieval women! But it just seems like many people think it's been done to death. But I would love it if (after hearing that I work on medieval women's textual practices) if that medievalist or other scholar/colleague asked me, "Oh really? How does your work differ from the early work done on feminism and medieval literature? How do your methodologies differ from X and Y critics'? How do your questions build on rather than replicate this previous work?" Because I can speak to that - I can engage with that because I have to engage with that. But I can't bear another bored response from a fellow medievalist: "Oh. Could women even really read back then? I mean, do you have any evidence for that?"

Argh! Either we have to educate our audience beyond the point of ridiculousness or we have to deal with an already educated audience saying, "Oh please. Haven't we already established that women could read??"

Dudes. Please just finish the article or conference paper before you dismiss it? There's a step 2 and 3 and 4, etc. after step 1.

P.S. My colleague's and my conversation was brought on my some comments I recently got on a grant application that I didn't get (and, really, no sour grapes because I ended up getting the other one!). The reviewer said, simply: "the applicant hasn't even said why female literacy in the Middle Ages was important."

(*hits head repeatedly against desk*)

Because it's not about female literacy....

Tidbits of Happy

2008-05-06T22:25:00.003-05:00

Medieval Woman still lives. She has yet to figure out an appropriate balance between blogging, cohabitating with husband, and grading. But she will perservere.

Thus ends the part of the post where I speak in the third person.

On the cohabitating front - this is damn cool, I'll tell ya. We do not stare solefully into each other's eyes and feed each other peeled grapes or anything (why peeled, btw?) We have set up a little desk in the office for TD and he works happily away with his back to me as I work happily away.

He just brought me a piece of cherry strudel.

In other news, he is complaining about the location of the litter box. I have just had a girls' night out (wine and filet mignon) and apparently the litter box, which is located in the office (b/c there's no place else for it) was quite....busy....this evening. The Furballs have always been a bit shy about using it if I'm in here working - they're weird that way - they also don't like it if I watch them drinking water. But TD just laid out this entire scenario for me which included what can only be called a "line" at the kitty commode. Picture really annoyed passangers on a plane lining up outside the lavatory, tapping their feet, checking watches, eye-rolling, etc.

Furball #1 lost patience with Furball #2 and basically gave her the evil eye, sighed audibly and then started meow-growling under his breath until she vacated the premises. This happened several times and TD now wants to relocate the fur-facilities.

I realize that most of this post will be totally gross to anyone who isn't a freaky cat person. But for those of you who are, I hope you've had a giggle.

Problems at U of Toledo - Fear the Ripple Effect!

2008-05-01T21:39:00.003-05:00

I am late in coming to this, but I want to point you all to an extremely important and well-written post over at NK's about some very scary changes taking place at the University of Toledo. This is the most aggressive form I've heard of a tendency that's been creeping about the edges of academia for a while now (and sometimes at more than the edges). Here at the Dream Academy, we're seeing a bit of this move towards "market driven" curriculum, there are "buzz words" flying around about making our education marketable and more conducive to making certain kinds of fundable bridges (i.e., not the Humanities). I can't say more and it's nothing like what's going on at U of Toledo. But please do take a look at this and, if you feel as worried as I do, lend a voice of protest in whatever way is most comfortable to you!

A Grading Haiku 4 U

2008-04-29T07:54:00.001-05:00

deep in grading gulag
water, sunlight, and green grass
have forsaken me

Moths, the Home Stretch, and Domestic Bliss

2008-04-27T11:54:00.004-05:00

Okay - I've been off-blog for a week now and I'm feeling a tad disconnected from the blogosphere. But my life can be measured out in coffee spoons at the moment, so it will be a random bullet posting at the moment.

1) We have moths. Mutant moths who have attacked my beautiful new shawl (3 small-ish holes). I now have to take it and a few other pieces to Mr. Locke, my alterations whiz, and he will try to repair them. I basically just want the holes kept from unraveling. Because the pattern is so complex, it's virtually impossible to see the holes. I just want them not to get bigger. So, I have gone on a moth-hunting binge and I've taken every wool and cashmere garment I own and put them in air-tight plastic bags, each with their own block of cedar. With the shawl and my cashmere scarf (also a victim), I've put them in the freezer first to kill any of the little f*ckers that might still be on them. This is what Mr. Locke says I should do. The sad thing is that 3 of my wool sweaters that I wore on the job market (they're fine merino wool shells) are now ruined because moths have been nibbling for several years it appears. Blech!

2) I did something highly drastic to my hair, but I love it! I have gone from my old blonde highlights (which I've had since 1992) and I'm now the color "chocolate truffle" with "caramel" highlights. TD had never seen me before as a brunette (which is the hand Mother Nature actually dealt me), but he's very pleased, which is an added bonus.

3) Last class is this Tuesday, then I give an exam. I've got to grade 37 papers by Thursday. Joy.

4) TD is here for the duration and we're DEEP into nesting mode. He's currently making a pasta salad for a BBQ we're attending today. I forgot how awesome it is to see him without getting depressed on Sunday right before he leaves.

5) I got back some suggested revisions to The Article That Would Not Die But Finally Did Die the other day. They were very minor - MHRA format needs to be adhered to a bit more and I use too many passives. Also, I need to push the conclusion a bit further and maybe look at another couple of articles, but that's all she wrote!

6) In anticipation of another year out on the market (TD and I will both go out this year, but we're really hoping something works out here for him!), I've decided to peel off one more article from the Dissertation that Preceded the Egg. So, I'm calling this article, Spawn of Egg. It's not a part of the Egg anymore, but it's still interesting. I'm going to spend a couple of weeks buffing up Spawn of Egg and get that in the pipeline for this year's market. Then I'll spend the rest of the summer and the next year on the Egg proper.

7) Sadly I won't be at K'zoo this year, but I hope all my fellow medievalists have a good time! However, I'll make a pre-emptive call to anyone who's going to the NCS conference in July! I know Dr. V will be there - anyone else??

The Purring of the Prophecy...Random Hairballs of Procrastination

2008-04-20T15:12:00.003-05:00

Hello.

THE CONCERT WAS POSTPONED UNTIL AUGUST WHEN I CAN'T GO, GODDAM THEM TO HELL!!!!!!!!

Okay. I'm done with that.

All that's left is for me to read and grade my grad student precis/biblios. Blech. How much to comment? How to grade? It feels like this will be a kind of "do it" grade. I will evaluate how far they are in their research at this point, but I will save the majority of my evaluation for the final paper. It's just a matter of sitting down and actually reading them, ya know?

TD is going through a rough time. He's trying to get ready to come to be with me for a long, lovely time, but he's also stressing a bit. And he's having 2 family crises at once, which is no fun. I wish I could do something to help him, but all I can do is be there for him, so here I am. One fabulous thing is that we seem to have made it through our first long-distance year going strong and I'm insanely grateful for that.

I have a weird rash underneath my wedding band. Seriously, it's red and dry and itchy and when I take the ring off, there's something that looks like a burn in the place where the ring was. Has anyone ever had this from a ring that they wear and never take off? I've cleaned the ring and I've put lotion on the area, but it doesn't seem to be going away. Now I'm not wearing the ring and it's still puffy and red. The ring's gold and I've had it for 3 years, so it's not an allergic reaction to the metal...

Any advice, jewelry hounds?

To Propose or Not To Propose...

2008-04-18T17:06:00.003-05:00

And when to do it?

Notorious posted something on this recently and Heu Mihi has also been posting about it. It's got me thinking (or, rather, stressing) about my book proposal and when to write and when to send it out. I know that I should read Germano's book (and it's on my early summer list of things to do), but for me I'm thinking about the timing.

A little background: my book project is significantly different from my dissertation - I do have the 3 core chapters but I'm changing the focus of those (with little revision, fortunately). I'm writing a completely new chapter and an intro/methodology chapter. Then there will be an epilogue and a baby intro to the book. At least this is what I foresee at the moment. The project has also changed focus even more recently. I've jettisoned a larger issue that I will be dealing with in the epilogue rather than trying to suture it into each of my chapters. I feel like this will make a cleaner and more tightly argued book.

Okay. I've been having this conversation with a colleague of mine recently who is very close to getting a contract with a good press (she's in her 4th year on the t-t). I was saying that I think I need to have a proposal ready to circulate *NOW* and I've had some anxiety about this. She noted the differences between a book prospectus that you write, revise, and tweak for the job market, fellowship applications, etc. AND the actual book proposal (with its attendant Table of Contents, representative chapters, section on competition, etc.) One of the things she suggested is that I send out my proposal to presses when I'm only about 1-2 months away from being able to circulate the manuscript as a whole (or damn close to it). She said, if it's going to take you a year to get them the whole thing, things could change, editors sometimes leave, other similar books get published in the intervening time, etc. This makes sense to me - it's not like I will not write up and revise a prospectus in order to have a sense of the larger project as it morphs, but I feel like sending out an official proposal now would mean that if I got any nibbles, I'd have to wait a fairly long time before I could send them the whole thing to review. My goal is to have this ready by next summer (this might change once I see how much work I get done *this* summer). That would mean that the proposal would be ready to circulate in a year with the full manuscript not far behind. It would be at the first semester of my 3rd yr on the t-t.

So, I ask, what do you all think? I know that (just as there are many roads to Rome) there are many roads to monograph publication, but I'm interested in hearing about other experiences and other rationales. I feel like this one is good for me considering how much the project has changed from the dissertation, but I would really love as much feedback as I can get!

Busy, busy, busy...

2008-04-14T16:45:00.002-05:00

Okay, so it's Papa John's for dinner *again* tonight. I know, I'm killing myself slooooowly.

But I gots a lot on my plate.

Met with the thesis plagiarist today who 1) cried, 2) had a bogus excuse, and 3) finally signed the papers so I could report it to the Dean. I was a cream puff with the sanction and didn't fail the student for the whole paper, but I've made them write the thesis again and given a grade-based sanction.

The next 3 days are crazy busy: faculty meetings, strategy lunches, two talks to attend, classes to teach, grad student precis and biblios to read and grade. Blech.

And, I leave at 6!A!M! on Friday to fly to Dutchmanlandia for the weekend. It's still pissy cold there, joy. But then the very next weekend he will be here for the rest of 2008!!!!!!! JOY!

Best of all, next weekend, we will attend the Def Leppard, Styx, REO Speedwagon concert in Detroit (neither of us live there, so it's safe to say where it is). Oh yeah, I haven't looked forward to a concert this much since New Kids on the Block came to my hometown in '88. I envision myself with teased bangs and my leather jacket screaming "pour some sugar on me...." at the top of my lungs.

TD will be very nonplussed at this tidbit of Americana, but he bought the tickets for us, so he's committed.

Random Bits of Goddamit: Teaching Edition

2008-04-11T11:42:00.005-05:00

1) I have never been on Rate My Professors before - at all the schools I've taught at over the years. I just saw that I've finally popped up at the Dream Academy....and I have a single blue frowny face!! What the f**k??? It's from last December and for some reason it says that the comment is still under review. Why so long? Did they say horrible things that need to be censored? Now I feel like I have to justify the fact that I am a good teacher to everyone. I *know* this is just a stupid website, but none of my other junior colleagues has a frowny face. I feel annoyed and slightly hurt. On my evals from last semester I got only Very Goods and Excellents. This must have been some spiteful little insect who got a bad grade. In fact, I'm morally certain I know who it was. This self-indulgent little boy who threw a temper tantrum in the final exam because I wouldn't tell him how to answer one of the essay questions. After I'd already turned the grade in and (barely) passed him for the class, he started writing these nasty emails about how frustrated he was during the final exam, how I was unfair and awful, etc. The comment on RMP was entered in the day of the final exam for that class. That little punk. Actually, I feel better knowing that it was almost certainly him. But why is the comment still "under review" almost 5 months later? EEK.

2) I am reading thesis statements for my undergrad class and I've already found plagiarism. In their thesis statements!!! I'm a big fan of the several sentence thesis mini-paragraph and so I've given the class instructions on how to construct a thesis. Most of them aren't bad, I must say. But then I saw the tell-tale "cut-and-pasted-from-the-internet-quotation-marks" and I knew I'd caught one. She had taken swathes of her mini-paragraph from some free term paper website; and the rest she'd cut and pasted from a 1991 published journal article that the author had put online! I'm going to report her and fail her for the assignment. I'm debating whether or not to fail her for the entire paper. If I hadn't caught the plagiarism, I have no doubt she would have turned in an entire plagiarized paper - my Chair agrees.

3) I've also recently failed 2 students for my course because they didn't bother to show up for the last exam. Now, I know I'm sounding like a total hardass lately and I really am usually not that bad. But, here's the situation. I have 39 students. On the syllabus, it says that all coursework (excluding quizzes) must be completed in order for the student to pass the class. That means 3 exams and a paper. Okay. I also have a policy that if you have to miss an exam or something after your first 3 free absences, that you have to bring a doctor's note with the date of the exam or missed class on it that says that the student was too sick to come to the exam or class that day. Seems reasonable, no? Okay. I give an exam and 2 students don't show up. Back to the office and no emails explaining why, nothing. So, I email them (this is a Thursday) and ask if everything's all right because they didn't show up for the test. Nothing. No response. Finally, SUNDAY, one of the kids decides to email me a one line email - no greeting, no "I'm really sorry", no signature: "I didn't know we had an exam and I overslept. How can I make this up?"

!?!?!?!

So, I emailed back and said, "Sorry, I don't give make-up exams for students who oversleep. We talked about the exam in the previous class, which you attended, and the exam is listed on the syllabus. Therefore, you will get a zero. And this brings us to another problem. The course policy is that all work must be completed in order to pass. So, you'll be failing the class." Now, I personally don't think my policies are that frickin' strict or unreasonable. If this kid had gotten up at 2pm or whatever time he'd rolled out of bed, gone to the doctor with a trumped up illness and gotten a note, I WOULD HAVE ACCEPTED IT AND GIVEN HIM A MAKE-UP!! He didn't even bother to email me back for 4 days and then dropped this condescending, totally above it all email into my lap, expecting me to accommodate him. F**K THAT!

(for those of you who can't tell, I'm working myself into a frothing-frenzy of annoyance and righteous indignation).

Then I get a final snide response from him saying: "Well, that was a total waste of 20 hours of my life."

(Breathe, MW, breathe.....*seething*....*seething*.....)

The girl who didn't show up never emailed me back and came to class the next week and said that she'd been "really out of it". I asked if she'd been sick and if she went to see the doctor? "No," she says, "but my roommate gave me strep throat." I said, "Did you go get antibiotics for it?" "No." "Then you didn't have strep throat. You'd be running a horrible fever right now, not be able to swallow, and wouldn't be standing here telling me you were 'out of it'." So, I told her the bad news and she just hasn't showed up since.

If I'm going to have class policies, I have to enforce them, yes? Also, my policies are CARBON COPIES of at least 10 of my other colleagues! These students all just think the rules do not apply to them and they're dumbfounded when they realize that, yes, indeed, they do.

ARGH! I feel lately like I'm having to justify my teaching constantly.

And all I have is a single blue frowny face.

For giving an exam that "upset and demoralized" the student (and that's a direct quote).

*Sigh*

In Grading Jail

2008-04-04T19:29:00.002-05:00

Do not pass "go"; do not collect $200...

By the way, when do we get those checks from Bushy? I could use an extra $600 right now...

I am under a mountain of present and impending grading: undergrad exams, undergrad thesis statements, gradute student precis and annotated biblios.

Oh my.

I should just bite the bullet and have a standing order at Papa John's. There's nothing for grading except pizza and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

What a Friday night, huh??

I am this many!

2008-03-26T21:26:00.006-05:00

Actually, I began my bloggy life 2 years and 6 days ago! (But who's counting?) Good lord, how the time passes...

As I've mentioned before, I've been thinking a lot about what this blog is, should be, was, etc. At first, it was a way for me to create some kind of community when TD and I were isolated at my first VAP and dealing with the thought of living apart (something that didn't happen, as it turns out, until a year later). Then I started to realize how many lovely people are out there - the blogosphere is big and I've only carved out the tiniest of niches in it, but I'm happy in my niche.

I've also begun to think about the purpose of my blog. Is Medieval Woman using this forum to air deep thoughts on things medieval? Rarely, as it turns out. Is Medieval Woman a new professor airing funny (and not so funny) antics about her students (with the requisite anonymity of course) - often, as it turns out. Is Medieval Woman looking to blog about anything floating around in the ether and that happens to wander into her mind? Almost always.

Medieval Woman would now like to stop referring to herself in the third person.

Sometimes I have bouts of guilt, and slight envy, when I see the wonderful scholarly blogging that goes on (whether it's medieval or some other field). I'll tell TD that I need to be more overtly medieval on my blog. But I'm pretty happy with the blog-friendships I've made and I've realized that that's what I'm invested in. I like having blogger meet-ups whenever possible, but I also just like our happy correspondence. I like the fact that, when something goes really right or really wrong in almost all of our lives, there is an instant mobilization of good feeling, wagons circled, backs patted.

All this musing is to say that I've thought a lot about my blog...and I've decided not to change a thing. I can't promise to blog consistently all the time, but there's at least consistency in that!

So, to all of you who have come by from the very beginning (Flavia, T.E., Morgan, Hilaire, New Kid, What Now, Dr. Virago, Pilgrim/Heretic, etc.) and who have just started coming by over the intervening time (Heu Mihi, Notorious, Belle, Sisyphus, Absurdist, Squadratomagico, etc.*) - thank you for keeping me going!

Now for cake....and booze...

*I apologize if I missed anyone!!

I think I'm on to sumthin'...

2008-03-26T15:53:00.004-05:00

Can't stop my blogging magic! 2 in 1 day!!!

I had lunch with my colleague today to discuss my book project and she was so enthusiastic about the (slightly) new direction I want to take. (Actually, I'm already well on my way in this direction...) After I asked all of you what you thought in this post, I was not sure about whether to jettison LCPY or not. I'm now certain that my book on gender and CPX is a solid, compelling project - it's also (as I've realized over the past couple of days) the book I really want to write. However, I am still going to address the implications that my project has for LCPY in a kick-booty epilogue! Best of both worlds.

This means I have a little bit more research and new writing to do - I've already identified texts that I'm going to move into to bloster my core chapters even more. I also have to peel off one of my diss chapters that I thought could be included, but it's really more about LCPY and so I will pursue this as an article (or incorporate parts into the epilogue?).

But I'm so charged and excited - everything's blooming around here (it's in the low 70s) and so is my inspiration about my book.

By the way, I call this "my book" or "my project" so much in professional circles that it's getting tedious. Therefore, for blog purposes, I've decided to call it something else: The Egg.

Six-Word Memoir

2008-03-26T09:41:00.003-05:00

Absurdist Paradise tagged me for this a while back - and I'm always the last one to do the meme! This is me right now - it doesn't encapsulate my whole life, just my life right now. There are two options...

I think I should work out

Visualize turn signals, ya dumb jerk!

Them's the rules:

1. Write your own six word memoir

2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like

3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere

4. Tag five more blogs with links - I tag everyone!