Academic Cog

Lessons for Girls: Don’t Just Ask, Insist on Help (even if it makes you feel weird)

2009-07-16T16:37:00.000-07:00

Historiann’s post on mentoring just brought up a wave of weirdly emotional memories. As I have said plenty often before, my department was largely a “raised by wolves” setup, which several grads in my cohort (myself included) really worked to change by instituting our own mentoring, convening our own workshops and training sessions, even giving each other our own mock exams and interviews to practice the skills that our profs told us we needed to have but never taught us.

While I certainly complained about this a lot, I also felt that it was an important facet of the grad school process: the path toward making decisions for yourself as a self-sufficient professional rather than a student. And I’m pretty sure that no one wants new tenure-track profs who are incapable of carrying out basic tasks without getting the approval and signing-off from their colleagues. It would be like our undergrads, who want to be spoon-fed everything.

On the other hand, self-sufficiency can actually be damaging and isolating in many subtle ways. And “self-sufficiency” can uneasily shade into certain assumptions about class and gender and entitlement.

Once, I happened to be walking down my department hallway to the grad lounge/lab when I saw the department IT guy, who I hadn’t seen in months. He stopped me and said hello with some comment on that fact. “Oh, I’ve been around, just workin’ away,” I replied. “You know, I was actually thinking about you the other day, how you don’t ever particularly seem to need anything,” he said as he knocked on the door of a particularly cantankerous, now-emeriti professor. “Well I know to try about 5 or 6 different things before I declare the computer broken and send for you. I wouldn’t want to be a bother.” We shared a rueful smile and he went in the Cantankerous Professor’s office, where he was probably going to show him for the 10 millionth time how to open his email.

I didn’t really think about how this attitude was not just shaped by my undergrad experience at Big Fat University, where nobody gave two shits about any particular cog in that machine, but was also a powerful part of my socialization into my gender and class, until I had a certain grad student as a housemate.

Brilliant Grad knows he is brilliant. People have told him so, and he has wildly succeeded in everything he has ever tried. And he works damn hard so that he can do what he wants to do. He’s a nice guy, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes I looked at him and would think, ok, this is why you don’t tell people they are smart like that is a compliment. It shapes them in very strange ways.

Brilliant Grad and I loved to talk and would constantly share stories. It was through him I realized that my parents’ working-class upbringings flavored a lot of my experience, and through me that he realized he was not middle class, but upper class. He went to an elite east coast prep school. I learned that there is an entire east coast class of people who think “everyone” goes to east coast prep schools. This isn’t necessarily the case in California, where so many of us go to public schools and the UC system and go on to do important, high-level stuff in the state that there isn’t this weird “cohort” of movers and shakers who all have the same exclusive schools by their names. CA has its own fucked-up class system, but it’s different. And I’m getting away from my point.

Brilliant Grad also went to a top-of-the-line liberal arts school, one you’ve all heard of I bet (I hadn’t, heh). I know he didn’t work through school; I don’t think he ever worried about how it would be paid for. He constantly told me stories of the cool things he and his friends did, created, wrote, filmed --- everything. And he seemed to have strong, even intimate relationships with all of his professors.

So when he would come home and tell me something that Professor Wonderful said to him in his office, or how he had had this idea and knocked on his door to run it by him, if not daily, then every few days, I was confused. “Wow, how often do you go see him? Aren’t you … bothering him?” I’d ask. “No --- isn’t that what he’s there for, to mentor us? What?” he asked as I continued to stare at him with an eyebrow raised, shocked. Profs are here to do shitloads of research, not shoot the breeze with their grad students. I know I don’t go to my advisor unless I have a specific problem that I need her help with and I have already tried three different ways of solving it on my own.

And yet, if you compare our trajectories, Brilliant Grad has done very well. In and out of a half dozen different profs’ offices every week being friendly and sociable, his name tended to come up when they had “special things,” or little bits of extra money, that he got without it ever being offered up to the department at large. He convinced profs to go to certain conferences where he wanted to go and had them introduce him to eminent scholars in the field. He worked with an up-and-coming prof in another department, then convinced him to share his Special Archive Grant money when he went down to write at the Monolith for a summer.

And most astounding, and completely secretly, after listening to all my complaints about money and lack of funding or support and our so-so job placement rate, he announced out of the blue that he had been accepted to transfer into a world-renowned private university, where he would be able to finish out his PhD without ever teaching again. I don’t know if I was more shocked that he could have spent the entire year I had known him applying out to other programs without ever mentioning it, or that he was much more unhappy than I was in our program when he was getting more support than I ever had.

After he was accepted and flew out for his prospective student visit, he came back and told me all about it. “I’m almost sad I was accepted there, because I would so love to work there some day and now I won’t. The projects! The teaching load! Sisyphus, I was in ______’s office talking to him about [Amazing Archive in Fabulous City] where he had just been a year writing his book, and ... jeezus Sisyphus, his office was the size of this living room! He could hold grad seminars over there on his map table!”

“Damn, I’m just looking forward to the day I get an office with walls that go all the way up to the ceiling,” I said.

“Is that really all the higher you can aspire to?” he shot back. I was cut to the quick.

Be a good girl. Don’t be a bother. Don’t worry anybody, now. Don’t take up anybody’s time. Are you sure you want to pester him with that? Be polite. Good girls raise their hands and wait their turn. Don’t be needy, bitchy, clingy, bossy. And Who are you that you could apply there? We don’t have any Stanfords or Rockefellers in our family that could help you get in. Why don’t you go to a state school, like your brother?

Brilliant Grad, he doesn’t even think about whether he deserves something or not. He just meets people and thinks about how they can help him, what they are both interested in, how to make connections. He befriends everyone and then they want to talk to him, support him, do things for him. I hardly know my advisor or any of the professors in my department because I wouldn’t want to be an imposition on their time. For all the countless little connections or bits of advice that never get formalized or written down, be a bother. Don’t just ask for help; insist on it.

There's always one more thing...

2009-07-14T18:53:00.000-07:00

Oooog, I am so ready to be done. Proofread? Check. Triple-proofread? Check. Gone over the journal's style guidelines? Check. Fixed all the damn footnotes? Check. Checked up on the bibliography? Check. Assembled the drawings and captions and gathered up all the permissions info? Sigh... check. Let's get it out already! My eyes will start to bleed if they have to look at this damn essay one more time!

Ok, write up the little cover letter.... no problem, it's basically a formality. (Hurry up!) Go to the website thingy ... log in ... no, create a log in ... find the right page ... (Arrrrgh hurry!) ... click on the right checkboxes... Ugh. Abstract. An abstract?

I want nothing more than to cut this albatross from my neck and now you want me to write a goddamn abstract for it?

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

Now you've done it, you made my eyes bleed. Somebody got a napkin they can hand me?

Death by Footnotes

2009-07-13T12:13:00.000-07:00

Excuse me:

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

I hate this! I am wrangling with footnotes right now --- for an essay that has been written as a dissertation chapter and then revised about 3 separate times. I need to go through and make sure that all the footnotes (and citations in general) I need are in this latest version, in the right place and the correct order. And I'm switching citation styles. Since I have expanded and contracted the piece, not to mention massively reorganized it each time, this is no easy undertaking!

Not to mention the fact that I hate waste and have the urge to include everything once I have found it, so I'm trying to figure out which things I need and which I just want to include because they finally got written down and made pretty.

And right now my nemesis can be summed up in a single word:

ibid.

I like a lot of things about research and writing, but this isn't one of 'em.

My Plate is Full

2009-07-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

(Picture taken from The Girl Who Ate Everything's blog. )

Yes, my plate is full --- I have been diligently working away at cleaning my plate and getting all the various projects off of it, and yet, there is much to do in the rest of the summer! I wanted to represent my to-do list with an enormous plate of different fried foods, but the pictures were a little too off-putting. This one looks both inspiringly tasty and sure to induce major indigestion afterwards, which sounds about right.

Just like a plate of 15 or so fried twinkies, my projects are very rich and overwhelming and I can only work at them for a short time before needing to take a breather. But! While recovering for a moment or two I will encourage myself with my progress to date:

- finished, one revise-and-resubmit.
- very close to done, one previously rejected article
- extensively brainstormed, one brand new article idea

Not bad. Not bad at all. I'm actually happy about my work, except for that first five minutes when I sit down at the computer and my brain automatically blurts out, "WTF? You can just climb back into bed, you know. No one is there to stop you."

I also have:

- several small article-idea sprouts,

which I have compiled some crap on and put into a folder on my desktop. I'm hoping that the ideas will germinate completely on their own in my subconscious while I work on the other projects and in a couple years I will just wake up and bust out the entire article in one sitting. I can hope, right?

So you can see, as long as you completely ignore that whole dissertation-into-book-manuscript business, I am working my way through that overloaded plate. I want to finish that damn article revision, proof it up, and send it out next week. That should give me some breathing time before I have to get back on the job-search treadmill.

Anybody wanna revise my dissertation for me? I have no clue how to start! Some people gave me advice (thank you! I owe you an email!) but that was mainly useful advice about some specific publishers who might like my stuff. And other people mentioned the Germano book, which I have. I'm just kinda feeling overwhelmed by ... starting. Like, literally: do I go reread my dissertation and make a list of all the stuff that needs to be changed? do I brainstorm an introduction? How do I even start to tackle this? I mean, I can't unhinge my jaw like a snake, so how do you bite into a humongous burger that is the size of my head like the picture up there?

As a caveat, I should note that none of these projects have anything to do with each other ... so while I have a "research agenda," it would seem, I do not have a coherent research agenda. I like to study everything. I'm just finding stuff that's interesting and working on it, regardless of topic or field. If that's really bad, you might want to let me know.

Oh, and I ordered the gold bottle.

I Want the Shiny!

2009-07-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

The shiny what? you may be asking. Anything, as long as it's shiny. I'm not picky; I'm in the mood for buying something shiny and pretty and fun --- something that I can dangle in front of myself when my brain is fried, saying "ooooh, sparkly!"

I missed my first-of-the-month academic deadline (oops). I have revised half of the article instead of the whole thing. On the other hand, I think I need this much time to get it all fixed, so I'm not too upset. Obviously having it done already would be ideal, but then again, so would having a team of handsome models to feed me chocolate truffles while I cogitate. As always, I'll just have to make do with the limitations of reality. Sigh.

Anyway, I was searching for something properly Shiny! and Fun! and decided that I need one of these:
Perty, huh? I like it. And I've been very good about going to my exercise class lately, and feeling grumpy about my workout clothes, which are boring and I'm tired of them, so maybe it is time to get something cute to look at while spinning! (I guess the team of models with chocolate would also work...)

I think I like this orange/gold color best:

But then again I like the red a lot too (I love the color red anyways):

Which do I choose? Help me!

Ok, also ---- I could just buy this now to celebrate the fact that I seem to have made exercise a new habit for myself, or I could not buy it until I send out the article and reward myself with it then. Only problem is if I had to order it and then wait, even longer, after all the waiting to get my article revised! Hmmm. Pondering. If you weigh in on this you also must pick a color! There was also a beautiful green-and-gold flowery type design on their site when I looked a few months ago, but it seems to be gone now. Sad. I guess it makes it a little easier to choose though.

In other silly news, my niece is such a total overprepared weirdo that she shops for Christmas presents early. She just emailed me to say that, at July, this is her latest and most behind she has ever been on her Christmas shopping, so I better get her some suggestions damn quick. I must be getting a garlic press in December. Heh.

I'm Oooooooold!

2009-07-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

I must be old because my brother has just turned 45. (hi bro) Eeeeek!
On the plus side, his favorite birthday food is angelfood cake ... which my mom hates because it is not chocolate. So for the past several years we have had a tradition of making a dark chocolate fondue and everybody dips the cake and strawberries and banana chunks and other fruit in the fondue. Yum! Sadly, while raspberries go so well with dark chocolate, they do not hold up well to being skewered and dipped in hot liquid. It was just a mess rather than making it to anybody's mouths.
One neice was talking about something --- music, I think --- and kept talking about "the 90s" in the same tone of voice that I talk about "the 60s." When I commented on how weird it was for me to hear talk about the 90s in this tone of them being totally distant and past and closed down and irrelevant, she goes, "well yeah. That's cause they are --- that was a totally long time ago!" Oh, I am cut to the quick! At least she was born in the 80s and thus can remember the 90s, unlike my other neice and nephews. "Yeah dude, they are starting to talk about "the millenium" in that same way already," another tells me. Sigh.
Likewise I rewatched 10 Things I Hate About You today while going through a pile of bills and stuff --- it's still a cute movie, one of my fave teen Shakespeare adaptations, although time has proven that Julia Stiles really is incapable of acting and I had been giving her too much benefit of the doubt in that film --- and since we were on the subject of the 90s I mentioned it. "Ohhh, god, that movie is sooooo mid-90s," said my niece with an eye-roll. "it's cute" I protest. "Soooo dated" was the reply. This whole exchange is funny because I was having warm fuzzies during that movie because the "shrew" character reminds me a lot of this neice, who is blond and sarcastic and individualistic and strong and I wish she read The Feminine Mystique and listened to Bikini Kill like that character. Still, she's good people.
Likewise my neices are both talking seriously about getting married and having babies because now that they have graduated, what the hell else do you do with your life? This makes me feel not only baffled by their logic but reeeeeeeeeally old at the thought of them with babies.
After dinner and the presents we're all still sitting around the table talking and my various nieces and nephews are telling stories about various cute and crazy squirrels they have seen at their schools and when visiting college campuses. One neice starts talking about a cute video someone shot at Santa Cruz of a big squirrel and a little squirrel and I break in: "Noo! That was UCLA because I have seen that one! Someone posted it on my facebook!" It's here. I explained the "plot" and how cute it was and they all laughed and my brother started talking about some photoshopped squirrel pictures his friend sent him, where the squirrels have been spliced into various Star Wars scenes. My dad shakes his head and drops his forehead into his palm. "My god." he says. "And this is why we're going to lose in productivity to the Japanese." "Yeah," I say, "but at least we'll be happy."

The Academic Life Cycle

2009-07-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a little blast from the past, to show you that I was weird and wacky and fond of bizarre metaphors (and apt to get myself in trouble in the department) long before I got myself a blog:

I had a quasi-admin gig at one point and made sure to abuse my powers (and my access to photoshop and dreamweaver). They let me run some workshops as long as I did all the stuff they wanted first, and --- surprise! --- I wanted workshops that would help me learn about the profession as a systematic structure, and how to survive in it.

Funny thing is, I got in major trouble for this poster --- one of the other grad students was very angry about it and gave me such shit. (I remember getting shouted at, or at least her getting way up in my face about it, in the hallway --- I don't do well with loud confrontations. We didn't mesh, personality-wise.) Anyway, she was incensed by the notion that we were spawns --- I am not just a number! I am not a frog! I remember her shouting. I didn't get it. Of course we are; recognizing this is the first step to changing it, or even surviving it. But then again, I'm perfectly ok with saying I'm a little cog in a big machine ---- rather than assert I am somehow special or unique, that I transcend or am separate from the machine, I'd rather take some steps to change the machine itself if it needs fixing. But I'm also very aware of the limits of my power to change things, even if I were to work collectively or collaboratively.

Anyway, like the teeny little mortarboard on the ABD frog? I feel like the tenured frog needs some sort of accessory too, but can't figure out what it would be.

I'm planning on working up some posts that link all my blatherings about certain topics, like grad school and the job search, in one central page list, but it's taking a lot longer than I had thought and so it will be a while before they go up. And someday, I may even write some new posts for the blog! Don't hold your collective amphibious breaths though --- I need to do my actual work too.

Coffeeshop Eavesdropping on Something Totally Different

2009-06-29T12:04:00.000-07:00

So this Latino guy diagonally across from me is talking. He's wearing dark blue jeans with a narrow cut, so saturated with color they almost seem black, and a similarly vivid striped button-down shirt in blues and purples. He's very dark skinned, middle-aged, starting a bit of a paunch, with a long face and the prominent arched nose I associate with Mayan paintings. The guy across from him, over my shoulder and mostly out of sight, keeps saying that he must be so proud.

When Not Visible Guy asks, "so what was her dissertation about?" I perk up my ears.

"It's Edu-edu-edu -CA-shun, something, they've got these learning communities, and they track them across schools, but she's pulling them out and tracking things by kids and not by school, hell, I don't know. I keep asking her why she doesn't have something lined up next yet."

Now they are off on a conversation about money. It seems like there are two ways to give money, one is all about the show, it's a way of demonstrating your pride and showing both of you off to everyone; that kind you don't expect the other person to take the help, in fact you make a big show of offering money and they make a big show of not taking it and demonstrating their independence and that's totally cool. But then there is the other kind, where you want to give money because you are genuinely worried and want to help out, and how do you actually get the money to the daughter in scenario two when she's already made a show of refusing it like in scenario one? They're brainstorming methods; it kinda reminds me of when my dad and my brother fight over who gets to pay the check. :-)

* * *

She may be the first person in the family to get a degree but she's not the only one; he got a BS last spring (Not Visible Guy is ribbing him that now he has to go back to school and get more degrees than his girl. The guy groans. "Education is important," says the dad with a wry smile, "but not that important.") I'm assuming he did some sort of engineering thing? He seems to be in construction. These guys are making me cry the happy tears.

* * *

Ok I had thought the other guy was white but he's telling a story about somebody --- a relative? a friend? I missed that --- who is Hopi and Navajo on his mother's side and Cherokee and something else on his father's side. "They were big in The Movement," he says. "The Long Walk, total activist stuff. Totally messed him up because he was pushing all that and overloaded and nearly flunked out."

This is fascinating; I'm having a hard time concentrating on my own work stuff. Ok I missed part of that story ---- did the other guy manage to go back to school and graduate? ---- but the moral is all about the Importance of an Education. I totally love these guys. They are warming the cockles of my heart. Heh.

Coffeeshop Eavesdropping

2009-06-28T11:08:00.000-07:00

There are these two weird old hippies sitting next to me on the patio. Either that, or medieval religious history/religious studies profs. At one point someone mentioned someone being kicked out of a class, and they keep namedropping medieval theologians. No, wait --- batshit crazy is what they are:

"And then I sent him to the place of eternal torment. I had him struck with the ninth curse, the [missed this phrase]. Which, on the mundane plane of reality, manifested as the development of [______] leukemia ---- which, on the earthly plane revels itself as a whitening of the skin, as pinpoints of whiteness," here he leans forward, jabbing his finger with incredible emphasis, as if he has just clinched his argument. "As a sign of the dematerialization of the skin, of the ... loosening, see, of carnality and a transcendence to a more spiritualized place." He nods.

Here the other fellow leans forward to speak. I notice he has some port wine stains scattered on his head and nose; his head is mostly shaved to hide the balding spots; what's left is gray.

He speaks as if replying to the first man's statement.

"But I, am afflicted right now with women who demand too little of me. And I am freighted with a consuming melancholy, not at the moment of initiating sex, but after..."

-------------

Ok, this conversation is wierding me out. I really have to work now. And I lost their conversation in the process of trying to transcribe what I first heard. Funny thing is, they don't look like homeless people --- they're dressed just like any other preppy software engineers in the area.

Be sure to use bullet points to highlight your absolute lack of marketable skills

2009-06-22T22:36:00.000-07:00

The problem with being in the same room as my dad is that the power of his nagging is amplified by his clever use of nonverbal body tics, sighs, and grunts. When dad gripes "ya still haven't got a goddamn job yet?" on the phone, I am relatively unaffected, and manage to roll my eyes and distract him by asking if any annoying kids have been on his lawn lately.

In person, however, I am witness to the pathos of his response, which involves him clutching at his heart and looking off into the distance, contemplating, surely, my impending death by starvation followed by being eaten by my cats, which he of course is going to have to clean up dammit why does he have to do all the work around here? He sighs. Then his face sags a little bit and the lines around his mouth come out in greater depth and he looks really old. The piteousness of that last bit is only slightly diminished when he darts an eye over in my direction to see whether I am being affected.

Nothing I say or do serves to dissuade him ---- not assurances that I am teaching/have a fellowship/have money to cover the summer/just won the lottery, all of which, except the last, have been true at various times ---- and indeed I know this is a game I cannot win, for even if I were to get a job he would immediately move down the list for the next point of nagging: filling my retirement accounts, presumably, or getting the next job, raise, or additional job (you can never be too careful!).

But this time, or maybe it is that a lifetime of nagging has worn down my defenses and made me susceptible, this time the constant complaints have raised some worry and I have been looking for "something to pick up" over the summer, even though I could just spend the entire summer writing away at my publishing stuff due to my cushion. (Dad's pay-cash-for-everything, buy- nothing, re-use-tinfoil, you-can-never-have-enough-money-for-emergencies, don't-you-know-I -was-born-in-the-Depression-and-had-to-walk-uphill-both-ways-in-the-snow philosophy of miserliness is another trait of his I've unwillingly picked up.)

But this town is not an easy place to "pick something up in." Or I have become spoiled and formed ridiculously high standards of compensation and effort. Or I should have moved into the entry-level grunt jobs back when I was 22 and it hardly would have bothered me and then I would have moved up to actual money and interestingness by now. You know, there really is something to that, so please tell your students. Anyway, reading local job listings has been an exercise in depressingness. I can see now why so many people on that "applying to grad school" livejournal site talk about their jobs as soul-sucking.

However! Something popped out at me on the list one day as something that might be sorta fun. I might like to try that! And if I test it out I will be checking out a possible plan B if the job market this fall does not work. All to the good.

You need a resume and cover letter to apply, though. Turns out I write those much the same way as I write academic paragraphs: slowly and with lots of breaks. And by stealing about a dozen models off the web and reverse-engineering them. Whoo boy --- have you looked at sample letters over on Monster? They read exactly like the spam that gets left on blog comments. I hadn't realized that spam is actually a paragon of good business writing. This depresses me even further. The one upside is that business cover letters and resumes are, probably because the prose is so soul-suckingly godawful, mercifully brief. And bulleted. Even the letter is bulleted, although ---- and I'm giving you a solid-gold job tip here by telling you this ---- you do not actually use bullet points in your address, greeting, or signature.

The bright side of spending time looking at sample resumes and job ads and advice columns and salary scales is that I get to realize: holy shit, I am smarter and more qualified than most of the job seekers out there, if all these articles about applicants not being able to follow the format of a business letter by cutting and pasting sample key phrases and relevant information into a formatted template are to be believed. Or that being able to use Word and Outlook actually moves me up the pay scale. And that the academic job search is way fuckin' harder than any of the application processes out on the job boards. Truth be told, I've never said that getting a nonacademic job seemed impossible, just that, like Bartleby, I prefer not to.

Ok, I was going to do some funny riffs here on a bulleted list of marketable cog skills, as opposed to marketable grad student skills, as well as some sample cover letter poetry, but I just hit tiredness and promise to have part 2 of this post tomorrow. Except: and this is very important! You need to make me promise that the "side job search," spoofs of the side job search, and the side job itself cannot get in the way of the really important activity of this summer, which is to get out my damn publications and prep for the real job search this fall. I do not need to get some job and then be trapped someplace where "a strong ability to alphabetize and file neatly" is a cutting-edge skill.

Cartesian Dualism, Coffeehouse Edition

2009-06-16T12:52:00.000-07:00

I'm at a coffeeshop, working on revising my rejected article. Today I decided to get a medium coffee instead of my usual latte or mocha, for a variety of monetary, caffeination, and caloric reasons. And behold! I am wired! jittery!, so physically loaded with caffeine that you can see me shaking when I hold out my hand. And yet, my brain is mush. Not alert at all. Like oatmeal.

Spirit is willing, flesh, etc. etc. Just goes to show you how well one can separate off the body from the mind --- or perhaps how well the mind can barricade itself away from the threat of having to do actual work. I am feeling a little overwhelmed, though. There's something wrong with this artcle but I can't quite figure out how to fix it, or where to begin. It looks a lot like this:

(look ma, I made it all by myself!)

I'm starting to think this whole "interdisciplinary" thing is a crock. A crock of stinking fish heads, no?

I suppose I must go hide out in my attic again and try to work. I hope to either reconnect brain to body or first part of argument to second part of argument. It looked fine to me the last time I sent it out --- I wonder what exactly is wrong here?

Congratulations to all the graduates! May you lead peaceful lives

2009-06-14T23:20:00.000-07:00

Hooray for all of you, each and every one who finished, whether you are going on to a fabulous job, a not-so-fabulous job, or don't know what you're doing yet.

I just helped Cool Scientist Friend celebrate her graduation by being at her dinner party, and I am very tired. Really, I could not do it justice --- it had all the intrigue of a Hollywood melodrama, and I'm tired.

First of all, I got to meet her dad ---- who she hasn't seen since she was twelve and who has mostly cut off contact since the divorce. Having only seen him through stories clouded by years of adolescent anger, and one picture of him from the late 70s with a toddler Cool Scientist Friend ---- with the dark brooding good looks and ferocious stare of a young Ted Hughes ---- I was completely thrown for a loop upon meeting him to find him, instead of that old photograph come to life, to be old, decrepit and nearly deaf. (I still haven't met her adopted sister, who was adopted when they thought her mom couldn't have kids, before CSF, and then her mom refused to have anything to do with the sister after the divorce because she wasn't "really" hers, except she still had full custody of her.) I got shuttled back and forth from one end of the table to the other, babysitting, basically, either one parent or the other. I got to explain to both of them (and her mom should know better) that I had been looking for a job all year and was still unemployed, and then got sanctimonious lectures about how I should have been a scientist instead.

Second, The Political Animal, who broke things off with CSF shortly before her graduation ---- this was a multi-year relationship ---- she had just proposed to him ---- and they haven't told this to either set of parents because they didn't want this drama to overshadow CSF on her big graduation day ---- he got up and toasted CSF with a long speech about how wonderful she was and how she was his best friend and he loved her very deeply. And I sat across from her and her face just broke. It was awful. And probably everybody at the table thought she was teary-eyed out of happiness, touched by this gesture of affection from her boyfriend.

Third, a couple who are CSF's friends showed up very late and clearly had had a fight, and the woman, who I know has just been in rehab and AA, drank very large quantities of alcohol, and at a certain point in the dinner it became known that she had brought her pet rat into the restaurant with her. This couple wasn't at the table much; they kept getting up and going outside, presumably to continue their argument and at some point they must have left the rat back in the car. I must admit that no actual scenes ocurred with them, it is merely the principle of the thing I am complaining about.

And then, as is to be expected, we couldn't get people to put enough money in to cover the check.

I certainly hope that CSF had a good time, or, if not that, she at least has relief that's all over. Looking at what I wrote makes me sad that I haven't done more for her, helped her out more, because it's never fun to grow up as the heroine of a Dickens novel or whatever. I'm going to help her with packing and moving and stuff this week, and anything else I can think of. And at least she had a lovely day of beautiful weather and pomp and circumstance that, theoretically, at least, was all about celebrating her. That and she gets to put everybody on planes and send them away tomorrow.

How do you cover your assets if you're hiding your detriments?

2009-06-08T20:44:00.000-07:00

Hee! Go over to Acadamnit's place ---- mofo's got a hilarious metaphor for how starting and senior academics have very different perceptions of what's the right amount to cite prior scholarship (and see how I skirted the delicate question of pronouns and gender identity by using a term that theoretically could be applied to anyone in how it is the ultimate insult to everyone? Good times!)

As Acadamnit helpfully points out:

I know you are new to the research publication party, but don’t you want to show up dressed appropriately? It’s like a pool party and bathing suits are required. You simply cannot arrive in Arctic expedition attire. It’s uncomfortable I know. And no, an 1800s style “bathing suit” doesn’t work either. You just have to put yourself out there. You are obligated to cover the most sensitive parts, the delicate parts of your argument that would hurt most to get burned, but the rest is just going to have to be left exposed and open to scrutiny. It’s OK, it just takes some getting used to.

Wonderful! Except.

I'm standing here in the dressing room as a scholar just starting out, wanting to ask for help but also not wanting to come across like a complete dork or idiot from outer space --- what if I don't know which parts to cover and which to let hang out? Which are the naughty parts that you just don't expose and which are the merely risque? If you don't know that by now, I hear academics in my head saying, you don't deserve to be here...

What if I --- ulp --- leave the wrong thing exposed? Or end up looking ridiculous?

And after that long winter of ice cream and self-doubt, I don't think I can handle having my argument hanging by a thread out in public.

(She's saying: You'd have a constipated expression too if you were dealing with floss up your butt, asshole!)

If it's okay with you-all, you go on ahead to the pool ... I think I'll just stay here in the dressing room and contemplate that dead fly stuck in the fluorescent light...

What the kids are listening to these days

2009-06-07T21:15:00.000-07:00

I've been hearing the new single, "I love college," by Asher Roth all over my local radio stations these days. I'm kinda likin' it, in spite of myself, as it's simple and catchy in a mellow, funkified beat kind of way. Youtube won't let me embed it here (probably to get accurate playcounts for marketing purposes) but you can go here to watch it. If you're like me and don't want to bother with clicking away to watch something in the middle of reading an article, I've stuck some random screenshots in my post for you. Or you could push play and have it on in the background while reading.

So with this album are we seeing the complete death of hip-hop? Certainly we're seeing an unprecedented whitening of it. Roth's promoters, or the music-mag journalists, evidently are pushing the white rapper=Eminen connection for all it's worth, trying to foment a rivalry between the two, and Roth even has a song taking issue --- cautiously --- with the comparisons and saying he's his own guy. (Side note: Roth --- is that a Jewish name? I haven't seen anybody bring that up in their discussions of "whiteness," which is interesting in itself. I haven't listened to his album to see if that's important to his rapping persona.)

It's not much of a comparison. If Eminem can spit more lines per second than Rush Limbaugh can snort off a hooker's ass, sounding like he mixed meth with his ritalin and about a half dozen other uppers (which, hell, he probably did), Roth ambles through his lyrics with the beatific bliss of the West Coast pothead. Probably why the song's so popular on my campus.

Furthermore, Eminem may be white, but his hardscrabble childhood in a predominantly-black neighborhood gave him the "cred" --- the trappings of "blackness" --- that allowed him to be taken seriously in hip-hop. In contrast, Asher Roth comes from a wealthy suburb and graduated from West Chester University, and his lyrics deal exclusively in the minutiae and privilege of bored college kids. As Zach Baron, reviewing the album over at the Village Voice puts it: "Roth's boy-from-the-'burbs shtick came with a mouthy, complete-sentence cadence and an outsize fascination with upper-middle-class liberals, with whom he self-identified." Completely eschewing the traditional rags-to-riches, clawing-to-the-top narrative of hip-hop, Asher tells Baron "I just want to tour. I want to be able to live comfortably." You can't get much more middle-class mindset than that.

But if he sidesteps the hustle and bling-bling of so much materialistic hip-hop, along with any overt references to ghetto or black-specific culture, Roth also strips it of any anger or politics that has been so central to the genre, and the part I always liked best. No native tongues, no civil rights, no CNN of the streets, this is postracial hip-hop --- if by postracial you mean everyone is assumed to be white and upper-middle-class and mellow about it all. Blackness, black people, the whole history of black and hip-hop (hello?) has been sanitized out and made safe for guilt-free white consumption. It reminds me of that website Stuff White People Like.

Baron writes that Roth's skill is at "describing a whole milieu—white Wu-Tang–loving kids at leisure, we'll call it" that hasn't been seen in hip-hop lyrics before. I might say that Roth has produced some great party music that the white Wu-Tang-loving kids can blare out their speakers without worrying that they'll be called "wiggers" or get the crap beaten out of them on the street. And that's fine, whatever. Eminem himself would tell you Elvis did it to rock-n-roll long before anybody "whitened" hip-hop. I look forward to whatever edgy new musical style will emerge from the street to replace hip-hop now that it's become completely mainstreamed.

What bothers me is that interviewers and journalists are taking the prefab "triumph over adversity" and "breaking historic barriers" and stenciling it over Roth's experience without thinking much about it. To say that a wealthy white guy, through some hard work and lots of connections, became an overnight rap headliner in a largely non-white milieu and to present that as some sort of historic integration or move toward equality? That's just bullshit. Hooray for the overdog, who has returned a piece of black power and prominence to its rightful spot in white hegemony. Baron makes a sly dig at this theme, pointing out that the whole point of his songs is that he's had no adversity, and noting that the song "Bad Day" "is about a particularly rough, iPodless airline trip." Ouch.

But I still haven't even gotten to what really bothers me about this song and the video!

(Hellooo Animal House. The letters on that frat house are his initials, if you were wondering.)

The song is the story of what he's learned at college, why he loves it so much he never wants to leave. What bugs me is that college --- as in classes, learning things, planning what you're going to do with your life, mental work --- is never mentioned! While I guess it's progress that "don't have sex if she's too gone / when it comes to condoms, put two on" is given as obvious advice (though I'm a little worried about how literally we're supposed to take that putting two condoms on bit), this song is selling a generalized vision of college as an endless utopian binge. (The bridge on the video repeats the call-and-response of "do something crazy," whereas on my radio it goes "chug! chug! chug! chug!")

I know that this completely generic image of "COLLEGE" has been marketed to kids for a long time now, but the video really clarifies some nagging doubts I've had. It's like how the marketers couldn't sell the Beach Boys as the beach lifestyle nationwide, so they substituted cars in the lyrics and car culture as something all American teenagers would have access to and understand.

This video is the complete stereotype of wealthy college party life (funny how people only complain about negative stereotypes) and it brought home for me how homogenous "COLLEGE" life is across the country --- how my friends who graduated from UDel and UMich and UConn and WSU and the California colleges can all tell the exact same stories of "COLLEGE" culture and parties, from quarters and beer pong to kegstands and the red plastic cups.

Popular culture has been marketing "COLLEGE" to future students far more constantly and effectively than any specific university ever could. How many of your students do you think wanted to come to a college in particular rather than just "get the COLLEGE" experience? How many of them think of "COLLEGE" with the same expectations and goals that you, the professor, do? This troubles me and even now I can't fully explain the problem. Asher Roth would probably tell me to mellow out, dude, but nope, I am still troubled.

Who had the brilliant idea to only stock healthy food in the house, I ask you?

2009-06-04T17:57:00.001-07:00

I get home and am tired and grumpy and in need of a nap and hungry and want nothing more than some sort of overprocessed, high-fructose-corn-syrup laden, fiber-free, oversalted carbs. And what is there to eat in the house? Cherries. And almonds. And stuff like beans and brown rice that will need hours of soaking and cooking before it is ingestible.

Bleah! I can't unwind from a stressful day using healthy food! Ick!

Grumble grumble.

And yes, I know why I put it there --- the laws of physics do not suspend themselves in regards to calories just because I am grumpy and don't want them to exist --- and I have been in a real rut lately with "treating" myself for one reason or another to lots of fancy coffees and desserts and the whole "hell, why not grab one of those insanely rich and sugary pastries while I am in this coffee shop working." --- but that is no reason to actually have to eat healthy food when one is hungry!

Grumble. If you don't wanna hear more of this ranting, ranting that will be even more explexetive-laden in the near future, go away. I'm planning on giving up caffeine for a while to bring my tolerance back down once I've gotten through all my grading. Meh! You have been warned.

Dear Academia: Plz Stop Publishing Things. Kthnxbai.

2009-06-02T19:36:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to keep up the momentum and move right back into my next item on the to-do list, which is to pick yet another journal for the article I am now calling the Abandoned Foundling:

I made the mistake of deciding I should actually read some of the articles in my next selected journal so I can tailor the Foundling to the fashions of this latest charity hospital ---

Arrrrrgh! Don't make me poke out my eyes! Seriously, how much crap has been published since I last did a casting about for a suitable journal??? Eeeeee! People, stop this, this ... publishing of things. I need to catch up, and there are the huge backlogs of the two journals I actually subscribe to on my table over there, and this means I should be following along in a whole bunch of other journals that are directly or tangentially related to my fields, and interdisciplinary related fields, and arrrrrgh! (pant, pant, pant.)

I feel so overwhelmed now. I think I'm going to go eat ice cream, since you could say that by picking a journal and downloading the last two year's worth of articles for me to look at and "match" my stuff to, I have done enough work for today. And I need some restorative consumables to help me recover from this horrible shock ---- I think I am having the palpitations! Or maybe those are the procrastinations. Eh.

And by the way --- does anybody else think Alice there looks like an anime character?

Ahhhhhhh.

2009-06-01T18:59:00.001-07:00

Last night I hit my self-imposed writing deadline, and proceeded to reward myself with the first of my chosen little prizes. Awww yeah!

The wine was not actually part of the prize, but it is tasty and I figured that I might as well have some. In fact, I may have some more of it tonight if I get my reading and class prep done in time.

I thought I was going to post a picture of me and the wine in the tub, but this bath fizzie doesn't actually make bubbles, and even as an anonymous cog blogger I'm not stupid enough to provoke scandal. So I'll re-post:

I like the idea of rewarding myself with indulgences I'd never usually spend money on. This one? Eh. It was nice, and relaxing, but I have a tub that is so small I can't straighten my legs out in it (and I'm quite short) and it's one of those old ones that even after you clean it never really looks clean. This prevents me from enjoying a soak. Plus, I've lived in California so long and internalized the drought warnings so well that I feel terrible letting the water run more than an inch in the tub, I'm still holding to my original assertion: these would be awesome to bring on a conference where you're staying in the swanky hotel that it's being held at, not least because you can leave and not worry about having to scrub the ring out of the tub.

So, I'll need a different little indulgent reward for the next milestone, but I'm still up for trying beauty stuff --- maybe a pedicure, maybe a massage. What do you think? Next goal I'm getting the new Beck CD. And there's a cute gaudy little costume jewelry necklace that caught my eye; it could go on the reward list. I already have oodles of shiny colored pens. But there must be more stuff that would work. Suggestions?

On Dress, and Men

2009-05-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

I recently watched the lovely little film Beau Brummel: This Charming Man, which came out on BBC tv back in 2006. It was cute, very nicely done, especially if you loved the various Jane Austen adaptations and want to see Regency-style costumes. I found it a little bit slow and lacking in plot events, but I must admit that I am not a fan of biographies or biopics for just this reason, so don't take this as a reason not to see it.

It stars James Purefoy, the lead from Rome, so if you want to admire him as he smirks handsomely at the camera and ogle his frequent dressing scenes --- and dressing is almost as erotic an act as undressing, so who wouldn't? --- then this little film is perfect for you. There is some great humor with the narcissism of the dandy, as several scenes make comedy out of the fact that all the members of this love triangle are named "George," as well as a weirdly literal interpretation of Sedgewick's "between men" theory ---- I don't know if this was from the biography they adapted, or how the director wanted to set it up, or if they thought this was the only way they could represent queerness on mainstream tv, or what. If you have more info, let me know!

I love costume and questions of dress, and found their portrayal of the dandy figure to be fascinating --- entertaining, yet explanatory enough to use in the classroom. Plus, there is this bizarrely funny scene where fops meet dandies and battle on the streets as if they were mods vs. rockers, or perhaps Sharks vs. Jets:

Seriously, watch and laugh. I was so struck by it I decided to finally get off my ass and learn how to cut video clips and upload them to Youtube --- something I have said I wanted to do for years now for my classes, and now I know how. Feel free to play it for your classes, or perhaps this other fan video (not created by me) on the rules of dandy dress:

What I found fascinating, when I went to find the "rumble in the streets" scene (and was forced to cut and upload it myself), was that there were so many fan clips of the film, cut as music videos --- they're easy to find if you click through and see the recommended videos attached to these two. Set, of course, to The Kinks' "Dandy," Morrisey's "This Charming Man," even songs by the Dandy Warhols, the surprise for me was that they had all been re-cut to excise the homoeroticism and revert to the film grammar of heterosexual romance, to the extent that pretty random women (it's a man's world in this film, baby) who happen to be looking at the camera get spliced in to sub for the the Prince Regent or Lord Byron as the recipient of Brummell's steamy looks. I guess I shouldn't be too startled though, considering how much the Regency period has been colonized by the bodice-ripper romance genre.

Ok, I would say even more but I have to run off and meet some friends, so I leave you with a screenshot of one of the many dressing scenes of the movie:

"I would go out to night, but I haven't got a stitch to wear..."

A stupid question

2009-05-27T17:15:00.000-07:00

If I make passing reference to a work in my article, do I include it in the Works Cited? For example,

But Gustavius Hornswoggler's grand opus Of Noseology was not the only work of his to connect illegitimate nosepicking with sodomy ---- besides his final book On the Corruption of Children, examples from his juvenalia abound, particularly his mock-epic Severus Swickenbaum, in which the eponymous hero's improper use of a handkerchief marks his first step on the road to ruin.

So if I'm really doing a reading of Noseology here and mainly want to prove that I know there are connections to his other works, do I cite these at the end of the article or no? I can't find a clear answer in the MLA guide. And what about those "for more information see..." footnotes? Do I cite the books I list in them? (I know, you're only supposed to do those in the dissertation, but really, there are some texts that aren't getting read across certain disciplinary circles and I really do want people to go off and read them.)

I guess my question is how widely or narrowly do we draw the definition of "citing"?

OK, back to the proofing and editing. PS how are you?

Where IS Sisyphus?

2009-05-26T20:30:00.000-07:00

To quote someone who said it much better than me, "Aigh! Aigh, Ahhhh, Aigh! Aigh, Aigh, Aigh! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

It's too bad I can't find the shot where Homer is running around with his pants on fire, cause that just seems a fitting indicator of my internal state --- that and when he grabs his head and cries out that "Aigh!" in startled terms. I could gawk in amazement, though:

In other news, graduation was fine, the drive was long, there was family drama at home, the drive back was also long, holy shit where did my weekend of highly necessary prep time go, and now all sorts of deadlines have hit and shit hit the fan and fires need to be put out --- thank god I don't have to teach my fill-in course this week like I thought --- and they never actually gave me a copy of the book I need to teach next, which is causing all sorts of logistical problems and necessitating me driving all over town trying to locate a copy ---- and I'll just close by saying: "Aigh, Ahhhh, Aigh! Ooogh!"

Sisyphus grows up. Or regresses. Your call.

2009-05-21T17:37:00.000-07:00

I had an odd moment today, odd but pleasant.

I was sitting there this afternoon, pretending to read, and I was steadily growing hungry.

I swatted away the feeling like you might bat away a fly, but this niggling little feeling kept returning. And it was not a generalized feeling of hunger but a specific craving.

Waffles. I want waffles. With syrup.

Dude, I told myself, you can't have waffles, it's the middle of the afternoon! You need to have a snack, and then eat dinner.

But I don't want the leftovers right now. And I want waffles, insisted my gut.

Hmm. I have waffles. And I have syrup. I bought it on Saturday as a whim, since I never eat waffles usually.

But, dude! You can't just eat waffles! At 4 pm!

Why not? responded my gut. It's my fucking house. I am a grownup and get to do whatever I want. Who's going to stop me?

And here's the moment: suddenly, like a cloud breaking open and shining a heavenly sunbeam on me with choirs of angels singing, I was filled with the most incredible glee. Yes! Freedom! I can eat motherfucking waffles! At 4 pm! It was this sudden, extremely sharp emotional flashback to that moment when I had first moved out and had my own place and it hit me that nobody was going to care if I didn't come home! I could stay out all night and no one could stop me! I felt so exhilarated, so grown up, having this intense feeling that I had back when I was, what, 20? 21? And that sensation of being young and bright eyed and full of possibilities and the world is all your oyster and the angels are singing Gloria Deum Gloria Domine eat the waffles eat the waffles but I'm not actually listening because I'm turning to someone twelve years ago and saying, whoah, we don't have to go home just because the bar closed --- let's go watch the sun come up over the ocean and Proust may have had his madeleines but I have a little frozen disk of pastry embedded with blueberries and I am right there in that moment.

And I eat the motherfucking waffles.

(You know that if I didn't have teaching and driving around tomorrow (not to mention all my writing I need to get done) I'd be out at the bars tonight, even though I know I can't make it out on the town for an entire night. I have other stuff to blog, too. I'll be back. Maybe I'll post something before I go the the graduation thingy.)

Dammit! I mean, uh, congratulations!

2009-05-18T23:04:00.001-07:00

Arrgh! The best laid plans of mice and men slip betwixt cup and lip, and all that.

So, I have relatives. Yes, I know; I'm sorry too. And not only do I have relatives, but I have not one, but two of them graduating in the near future ---- unfortunately not in the same place and not on the same weekend/consecutive days. I'd have to cancel at least one class and make a big arc across California to deal with these on a single trip, so I'm going to make two separate weekend trips in the near future.

This is putting a kink in my fabulous multicolored publishing schedule (Joseph's Amazing Technicolor DreamSchedule? hmm.) since I didn't plan to spend 5 hours of driving here and 8 hours of driving there and doing a lot of sitting around being official and all that. Humph. Maybe I should bring my regalia and try to sneak into officiating at the ceremonies? It would at least keep me entertained. Hmm, I like the sound of that.

To make matters worse, I do not love all my nieces and nephews equally. I have been specifically requested to come to the juries/recital of one niece, who I want to make happy and show I am proud of her, so I will go up to those which will allow me to not go to her graduation and make it to those of my friends here who are walking. My other niece technically does not know whether she is eligible to graduate yet (who fails high school, I ask you?) but I really want to make a point of driving down and attending because I've been trying to give positive reinforcement to academic success and all that and quietly ignore (it's called extinguishing behavior) any of her silliness events or parties or socializing that she values so much more than studying. Not that this has had any effect on her so far, but I don't know what else I could do. It also means not being around when she is doing the various activites that she has been working on instead of school --- like the senior ball fundraisers and Promenade and her senior skit night or the play she is in --- and making it come across like I am doing something equal and fair and equivalent and all that. We'll see how it goes.

If I hadn't gotten in papers and assigned a novel for next week and still have to clean up the shit that hit the fan with my messups from that time I subbed for someone else, I would say I could tie the article up and have it all edited and proofed and ready to go before leaving this weekend, but in reality that seems unlikely. And I'm all excited to use my fancy bath thingy! And have decided on something even better for my next reward so I'm raring to go on that! Arg!

And furthermore, while I am complaining, I am very annoyed at my cats. On Saturday, when I went for groceries, I was tempted into getting a big thing of strawberries. Yum! I rinsed them off and left them in the colander to air dry.

The next thing I notice is that I hear this very strange, very quiet "plomp, plomp" sound and the cats are nowhere to be seen. When I go in the kitchen, I find that they are pulling out the strawberries with their teeth (and batting them out with their paws too) and scattering them all over the not-yet-cleaned floor. (I swear, I finally got to it Sunday --- but not before the cats dirtied the strawberries.)

My only guess is that they did this because the strawberries are about the size of mice --- for, despite not tasting, looking, smelling, or being furred like mice, not to mention being completely immobile and not making even the slightest of enticing crackling sounds --- my cats felt the need to be absolutely sure that these innocent strawberries were not in fact prey who were deviously hiding from them by being out in the open. Cats --- gah! And did they help clean the kitchen floor? No, they did not!

Nothing much to report

2009-05-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

I'm still toiling away at my various projects and things. Today I made some good progress, unimpeded by illness or injury (and let me say that 2009 has been The Year of The Injured Sisyphus, for some reason. Lame! (heh heh)) and I hope to also get a lot of work done tomorrow. I should go check my listy lists, made with many different colored pens, and remind myself of my next deadline.

What do you think of my plan to celebrate with a little of this as soon as I send off my article?

Isn't it cute? It's got a vanilla pod sticking out like a little candle wick. Hee.

And also for some reason a whole bunch of people just befriended me as Sisyphus T. Cog on facebook. I basically never go on that one, honestly, and had planned to pretty much shelve it. But then some people who were bloggers and aren't now sent friend requests and it is a handy way of keeping track of people. (plus, I get to find out who people are! I love snooping.)

This whole multiple identities on facebook is difficult, though ---- I keep getting confused, and paranoid about whether I'm outing myself (maybe that's less important on fb?) My alter-ego being friends with all of your pseudonymous alter-egos and possibly with your real selves as well is all very bewildering and exhausting. But, a cog's gotta do what a cog's gotta do? Whatever that means. I think it means pulling out an old movie tonight and seeing if there's any ice cream.

This one is not a reward for any of my to-do list tasks. Rather, he is a source of constant torment and annoyingness. But, even so, he's still cute!

Don't make me break out the colored pens!

2009-05-12T23:27:00.001-07:00

Ah, procrastination. My greatest skill and most dangerous vice all in one. Tonight I am avoiding class prep, and many other things, by planning out the rest of the entire year, with color coding and bullet points. Ahhhhh. Yes, I am quite the obsessive-compulsive. Now give me back my multicolored pens!

Here's hoping that planning out the major writing projects I have to tackle this summer and fall (including another stab at the job market) will help me stay organized and keep focused on productivity. I love organizing, not staying organized. It's like how cleaning a really filthy kitchen floor can provide more satisfaction, because it is more visually apparent, than merely keeping on top of the task with regular touch-ups. Not that I know anything about that, ahem. The problem is that before you have the makeover, whether fashion-wise, organizationally, or academically, you have to be in the crapper first. Otherwise it's not a makeover.

Anyway, I periodically have to rededicate myself to whatever project I'm working on, usually with shiny new pens or notebooks or other organizing utensils, but sometimes with the purchase of "writing music" specifically for that project. I find that I am very easily distracted and flighty as an academic, with little patience or perseverance for long projects. On the other hand, I did finish a dissertation, which various studies show only about 50% of all grad students do, so I must have some sort of adaptive mechanisms.

I think that a major strategy I have used is that I am very easily amused and can live in a delusional fantasy world quite easily, which means as long as I treat my projects as a game of some sort, and change up the games frequently, I can chug along, like the little engine that could, alternating between progress and boredom. (Hence the implementation of MMAP 2009.)

I'm currently toying with ways of amusing myself/competing with myself/fooling myself to keep me engaged and writing on my stuff throughout the last of spring and into summer. (If you have any suggestions, please add them here) and may test-drive them on the blog in the future. Or I may just give up on academia and get a job at an Officemax store. Here, have another look at those colored pens!

Mmm, colors! I don't waste the good shit on my student papers, either ---- they can suffer comments in the color of the lead pencils I stole from the library. I save the quality material for myself.

Ugh.

2009-05-11T22:01:00.000-07:00

Ugh. Just ---- ugh. Things have not been good here and I'm afraid I cannot tell you about them. I'm sorry to say that the Magical Month of Academic Publishing Challenge had to go by the wayside at the end, as I had to deal with some major catastrophes that were entirely out of my hands. I still have the article to finish, of course, and the other article to revamp and send out, and my whole huge list of other publishing-type things to do, and classes to prep and papers which I was unable to pick up to get and grade and things to unpack and repack and move around and lots of cleaning to do before I can get to any of that and just ugh, you know? It can't be described any more completely than that, and yet, if you groan with exactly the right intonation, you won't need anything else to get across exactly what's going on right now.

At least the good part of being at the bottom is that it has to get better from here --- I'm on my way back up. Up, up, up. Not Ugh. Up.