And Then There Was One

I just finished teaching Troilus and Cressida today.  That leaves me with one Shakespeare play still to teach to reach my goal of having taught all of Shakespeare's plays during my career.  That one play?  Timon of Athens.  It's been ages and ages since I've even read Timon, but I may just put it on the syllabus for next year, and then I can retire!  Well, not really, but still, that goal will be done.  (I've even taught the maybe but probably not by Shakespeare Edward III.)

I'm not especially happy with how I taught Troilus this year, but then, when I think about it, I usually take at least two goes teaching a play before I feel like I've really done a good job with it, and the plays that I've never seen someone else teach seem harder that way.

I feel like I couldn't really make it cohere, either for myself or my students, so it was sort of jumpy, between camps, between thematic issues, between plot lines.

Any thoughts on teaching Timon to help me brave that?  It's sort of hard to imagine teaching Timon in a Shakespeare surveyish course, since there are so many very fine tragedies to choose from. 

It might be fun to teach a Shakespeare representing war sort of class; I think I could make Troilus fit well in there.

Spring break is almost here!  The professional bike racing season is well on, with two fun stage races this week!  And everything in the upper Midwest is melting!  (Which may bring floods, alas, but it's so good to feel that spring may someday come!)

Check This Out!

Jonathan from the Shakespeare Prison Project commented on the last post, and as usual, I glanced over to see his blog, and it's really, well, interesting and great stuff!

You should all go visit:  The Shakespeare Prison Project.

Watching the Old Doctor

Since I subscribed to streaming tv, I've been watching different programs folks have recommended, or that I'd gotten interested in.

I've watched all of the Portlandia episodes, and really enjoyed them.

And yesterday, I finished all the rebooted Dr. Who episodes.  So I started on the classic episodes.

There are maybe four or five episodes on the service with the first doctor, and boy is he creepy; but he really doesn't seem to dominate the screen the ways the rebooted doctors do.  I started into the second doctor; I'm afraid he reminds me of Moe in the Three Stooges, so I keep expecting him to smack one of the sidekicks.

Color and better special effects in the rebooted version make a big difference.  I wonder what the heck people thought of the originals right off.  But then, I also wonder that about The Prisoner, which confused the heck out of me as much as it fascinated me when I accidentally found it on tv as a teenager.


Meanwhile, watching one of the last of the #11 episodes, which was sad ("The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe"), I went to wipe my eye (which, you know, had gotten a speck of dust in it!), and popped out my contact by mistake.  And lost it.  Doh.  Fortunately, I have an old set, so I put the contact from the old set to soak over night, and used my glasses.

But it did get me to thinking.  I think in 33 years (about) of wearing contacts, I've lost maybe two lenses.

One I lost at home, and then (after I got a replacement) it was in the dryer, sparkling in the lint.

One I lost in a swimming pool (because I thought I'd been told that they'd stay on.  They didn't.  Don't try that at home).

If I've lost others, I don't remember doing so.


Meanwhile, what tv series should I think about watching (that's available streaming), or even relatively recent films?

Disappointed

You know how when you discover something about yourself, maybe something you should have discovered a long time ago, but didn't,you may be really disappointed?  That's me.

I like to think of myself as reasonably able to cope with things not going to plan, but I'm beginning to think I've been deluding myself.

It wasn't like there was horrible stuff, but little things just disrupted me yesterday way more than they should have.

The copier for the departments (we share) wasn't working.  So I had to put off trying to prepare my exam.

A colleague who was supposed to have completed something by Monday hadn't, so I sent a reminder, and finally, zie did the thing, but with a bit of condescension thrown in for my benefit.

And then the printer wasn't working, and the other printer wasn't either.

And then the copier was, but someone was copying a ton from a book.

And then a notebook I need for a committee job was missing, and no one seemed to know why or where.  (It still hadn't turned up this morning.)

And then the copier was free and working, so I made my copies. 

And I contacted someone and got the most vital stuff that had gone into the notebook emailed to me, and made that available to the committee in another notebook.

But seriously, I shouldn't have been so disconcerted by a few little things, and I was.  Maybe I'm more a person who's disconcerted by little things than I like to think?  (Maybe my friends could have told me that 20 years ago or more.)

Winter Art!

Grumpy Eleanor of Aquitaine (look her up on effbee) has posted some art; I looked it up, and found a new favorite procrastination tool!

Look:

You can play, too, at the Bayeu.datensalat.net.

I want to see some grading ones!

Perquisite

One of my Spanish professor colleagues was passing in the hall a few minutes ago; we're friendly, though we don't know each other well.

I took the opportunity to ask him for some help understanding what's happening in Venezuela, and he explained a bit, which really helped me.  (My Spanish isn't good enough to follow a political discussion in print, even.)

I think that's one of the best things about being at a university: there are lots of smart people who know stuff around, and they're often very willing to answer questions, and they're often very good at explaining things.

THAT Student

I got an email from one of my advisees today, one who's pretty much that student.  By "that student," I mean the sort of student who isn't horrible, but who's an energy sap, who always wants some special thing done, but who, at the same time, does minimal work with minimal (apparent) effort, and doesn't seem to care much, that is, until zie needs that some special thing, and then it's all about hir.

We have this requirement, a sort of outcome based requirement where students are supposed to figure out the outcome they want, and then do something, and then demonstrate that they've achieved the outcome.  Most of our students just do it.  Some do it in extraordinary ways.  Most do it, and they learn something, and it's done.  But not my special student.  Zie wants to designate something zie did a while back for the requirement, and then do the paperwork backwards, I think.  I don't know if the office of the special requirement will allow that.

And then zie has another graduation requirement problem.  That's mostly what zie emailed me about today.  So I looked in hir folder, and lo and behold, in my advising notes, I have that specific issue at the top of the page as one of three things zie needed to take care of.  But I think zie is going to try to blame me, or some other advising person, or graduation requirement person.

And yet, if zie weren't the sort of person who does the minimal for everything, there'd be no problem.  This just isn't the sort of graduation requirement that most students ever even notice because they fill it without thinking about it, just by doing more than the minimum.

Sunday

Sunday, the day to prepare for Monday.

There's steel cut oatmeal to premake.

And a roast to roast so that I have lunch stuffs ready to go.

Cleanup.

And grading.

And class prep.  We're starting Troilus and Cressida tomorrow, and I've never taught it before, though I reread it over break to be ready!

So much for a day of rest, eh?

I have another ten papers in this pile to grade, and if I finish, I will nearly set a record (since I collected them on Friday), and make my week so very much better than it would have been.

I really, really need to finish this pile.

At the same time, I'm tired of grading this pile.  At least the talking to on Wednesday seemed to have made them aware that they did need to dig in on this paper.  Only one has been really poor, but that's poor because it doesn't really address the assignment.

Avoiding Despair

I'm teaching an intro to the major course this semester, and one of the small assignments I've given involves asking individual students to each do some minimal research and write a short (like a page) paper explaining a particular period or literary/intellectual movement.  And then they do a short presentation in class, so that everyone gets the idea.

I made up a timeline that we're filling in, and gave each student a copy to fill in as we go.

The idea is to give them the beginnings of a framework about literary movements and such.  So, for example, they should know that the Romantics didn't just pop up out of nowhere, but responded to industrialization, the Englightenment, and so forth.  If they have a basic, rough, narrative, they can learn more start to understand more subtle ways of seeing things in other classes.

So, they handed the printed versions in, and I started grading them on Tuesday, thinking I could get through the pile in a day, since they're fairly short.

I got through about a third of the pile before I was driven to despair.  Some were confused a bit, but mostly my despair was driven by the almost complete lack of acknowledgment or connection between what they'd gotten from their sources and what they'd written.  So, for example, there'd be a paragraph about Romanticism (I don't think I actually read the Romanticism one, so I'm making this up), with now acknowledgment of sources, and then at the end, a numbered list of sources.  Or maybe a "Works Cited" section with two URLs.

I couldn't even bear to read further.  That doesn't often happen to me with grading, but this just really bothered me.  I think of the third of the pieces I read, one earned a passing grade.  (Because I can't in good conscience pass a written piece of college work that uses sources without acknowledging those sources.)

This wasn't plagiarism in the sense of stealing ideas, but, I think, plain confusion about how to acknowledge sources for this sort of assignment, or laziness, or something.  That didn't make it acceptable, though.

I spent a lot of time Tuesday afternoon pondering, and being frustrated, and by Tuesday evening, I came up with an idea.

On Wednesday, I started our two hour class session by asking them to freewrite about why we cite sources, about what the point is.  And then I had them take their freewriting to groups, and they made a list, which we compiled onto the board at the front of the class.

So, I did my best to make sure that they had good reasons why we might want to cite sources, and that they knew they knew the reasons (at least collectively).

Then I talked about my despair at reading their papers.  And then I asked them to help me avoid further despair by revising their work and turning it in again, with full and appropriate citation, which I would then grade for real.  And I wouldn't look at what had been turned in, or count it, unless they felt they'd already done so well on the assignment that they didn't need to revise, in which case they could let me know.

We spent the next chunk of time working out how to resolve specific citation questions or problems using OWL at Purdue and examples.

They agreed.  Next Monday I'll get the results, and I sure as heck hope they're much better.

More Tales from Ski Lessons

The same kid was there from last week, and even though it was colder, she was relatively uncomplaining, and skied happily along.  I think because it was colder a lot of kids' parents had put the little hand warmer packets in their gloves, and those help TONS.

(Yes, I had them in my gloves and the toe ones in my shoes.)

I feel sort of useless at ski lessons this year.  I think the teacher leader (I'm a helper) of my group last year got the helpers more involved, maybe?

Or maybe it's because I'm with a younger group this year?

One good thing is that I'm such a poor skier that any time spent on skis, even if it's doing warm ups (stretch, crouch, touch toes, twist, hop, and so on) helps me feel better on skis.  I think it's partly just feeling like I can balance and trust my legs, or something.

The other good thing is that seeing little kids waving their arms around makes me think about how I'm learning to keep my hands closer to my body.  Seeing little kids try to double pole by putting the sharp part of the pole in front of them helps me realize why that's counterproductive.  And trying to do both things right is good practice!

Now, if I can make myself grade a bunch today, I will be caught up, and life will get better!  (I hate having grading hanging over my head.)

Trying Something New

The local curling club had an open "try out curling" day today, so I went.

It's WAY harder than it looks!

I guess that's another Olympic team I won't be on!

It has the disadvantage of being on ice, so it hurts when you fall (often snow doesn't hurt to much, at least at the speeds I go cross country at), and being indoors so you aren't getting sunshine.  (At least this club is indoors.  I guess you can curl outdoors, too.)  And yes, I fell.  A lot. 

I fell face forward (more than once) when I was trying to throw the stone (which is pretty heavy, by the way).  And I fell on my bum when I was doing the brushing bit.

The teachers had groups of beginners, and then had us do a game of sorts.  The highlight of my four throws was that three of my stones went into the area that's "in play" at least.

Remind me that spring will come eventually, please.

Snow!

No, of course we didn't have a snow day at school.

Committe(e)d

I'm chairing this one committee this year.  It's a big job, but someone has to do it.  I've been on the committee before, but when you're chairing, it's different, I think.  Or maybe before, I didn't quite get it?

It takes me 3-4 hours to prep for a meeting, sometimes more (this is outside of some bigger prep issues earlier in the year, which took a whole lot longer).  When I do that, though, I feel like I really have a handle on things, and can make it work really well.  I tend to send out some notes ahead of the meeting.  My hope is that these save the rest of the committee some time, highlight things that we need to pay close attention to, and offer potential solutions if need be.  And it's better to have one potential solution, I think, and work with that (even rejecting it outright) than to have everyone on the committee try to make a solution and then cobble them together.

But when we have a good meeting, we do good work, and it gets done, and I feel really good about it.

Working through a Question

The other day I helped teach little kids cross country skiing.  I'm the third adult, a helper, with a group of about 11 kids, all about 5-6 years old or so, I guess.   (There are four little kid groups, and I don't know how many older kids speeding around in groups learning higher level skills.)

Mostly, the kids have fun.

There's this one little girl, though, who just couldn't stop saying how cold she was.  And I believed her.

Now, the first thing we do is try to get the kids moving, because that gets them warm.  And we figure that sometimes a kid starts out whiny, and then forgets about being whiny because they're having fun skiing.

But this little girl just kept saying how cold she was.

I asked the other teachers if I couldn't take her back to the warming hut, because I thought she was just being miserable, and that being miserable would make her hate skiing.  She was so upset she was holding up the group, not learning, and so on. 

One of us (me) would have had to stay with her at the warming hut, of course, but that still would leave two adults with ten kids, and that seems pretty reasonable, doesn't it?

Anyway, the teacher and the other helper overruled me.

And I really think I should have just taken her back anyway, and apologized later to the main teacher.  I'm ashamed that I didn't, in fact, because I could have helped her be a lot less miserable, and being miserably cold is horrible.  Why didn't I stand up for her better?

Just Me?

Do you ever, when you sign into Blogger, which makes you (or me, at least) use a Google password thing, see the "One Account" thing and think, "one ring to rule them all" or maybe more, "one account to rule them all," which I'm sure is more what Google is hoping for.

Snowy Owl!

 

 

I finally got a good long look at the snowy owl that's been hanging out around here.

 

 

I know the last one doesn't show its face, but I really like the way you can see feathers on it.

 

 

It hung out on the pole a good long while, and I was able to get fairly close, cross the street, pass to the far side, and recross the street.  I tried to walk a bit towards the other side, to see how it was facing, but it was a field and the snow was too deep for me to get far.  (I didn't have snow shoes on, but even with snow shoes, it would have been difficult.)

 

 

It was getting dark really fast, so I was really happy that I got a few good shots.  (I took about 50 shots.)  Winter isn't so bad today!

Hope for Spring: the Artichoke Saga

Back in October, I posted a couple pictures of artichoke plants I'd brought in, hoping to keep them alive for the winter.

Poor artichoke plants!

In November, suddenly a bunch of the outer leaves died off.  I was sad, but hopeful that the rest would survive. 

And then in late December, the rest of the leaves started to die off.  Happily, in early January, the friend whose expertise with plants made growing artichokes in this climate possible was by, looked at the plants, and diagnosed them with spider mites!  SPIDER MITES!  Ugh.

So, in desperation, I went to the local little hardware place and the hardware person helped me get a dormant plant spider mite insecticide, which I sprayed.  And then I waited.  And things seemed a bit better, so I waited.  After a couple of weeks, there were little leaves starting from the center again, so I cut away the deadest of the old leaves and sprayed again.  And then I waited some more.

Today, I cut away the last of the dead leaves and took a couple of pictures.

Now if you compare them to the October pictures, they look awfully pathetic and sad.  But if you compare them to how things looked in early January, then they look pretty hopeful.

As my friend pointed out, it's a good sign that they're putting on new growth.

She also pointed out that since the other artichoke plants we've grown have been first year plants tricked into thinking they're second year plants, if these plants make it into the spring looking this good, then I'm way, way ahead of the game.

Looking at the October pictures, I realize that I didn't take a picture of the light set up.  In those, there's one bulb.  But early on, my friend suggested that one wouldn't provide enough light, so I moved a different lamp there, one of those lamps with five bulbs on sort of moveable stem things, all of which are now lined up and pointing down at the plants.  They're also right in front of a big window which does afford some natural light, though it being winter, not much.

Back a couple of months ago, my neighbors were going to drop off their dog for the weekend; usually, in winter, the dog's crate goes right in front of the picture window where she can see out at the birds and the neighbors.  But because the plants are there, I asked them to put the crate in the summer spot (which is fine, but doesn't have birdTV and isn't in direct, hot sun to keep her from overheating in summer) because of the artichoke plants.  And she was so funny about asking if that was the light that's always on in that window. 

Yep, I'm growing artichokes, but I think my neighbors thought I was much more interesting agriculturally.

As you can see in the background of the first picture, I've also forced a couple of bulbs.  The hyacinth did great, one is pretty much done flowering, and the other is in full bloom.

The crocus seem to have died, but the daffodils seem to be starting.  Here's the currently blooming hyacinth.

I'm at that point of winter where I can't quite believe that it will ever be warm again.  But yesterday, I went out in the afternoon (about 4pm) to try to see the local snowy owl (no luck), and realized that it was light until WAY later than it had been in January when I went out to try to see it and it was getting dark by 4:30 or so.  So there is hope, right?

Juggling

I feel like I'm always dropping one ball, you know?

And the ball I drop too often is the one that matters to me, but isn't teaching or service related.  So I get the service done, I prep and teach classes, grade, I advise, and then, yeah, that other ball gets dropped.

I need to stop dropping that ball.

That Jerk?

I just did etymology on effbee at someone.  I hope I wasn't too jerky about it.

A friend who speaks English as a second language asked about a word, someone answered, and I responded too, and then this other person "corrected" me with a sort of pedantic tone saying that we should look at the root, and then I pulled the OED. 

The PBS Article on Faculty Non-Retirement

I did that web thing where you read effbee, and follow a link, and then follow a link, and found myself reading a PBS article "Colleges and Universities See Graying Workforce Holding onto Coveted Positions."

In the article, a small number of faculty members from pretty elite schools on the east coast are interviewed, including Claire Potter of Tenured Radical, about faculty members working into their 70s and problems with that for younger scholars and scholarly work.

In my small experience here, things look very different.  I see most of my colleagues balance the financial realities of starting late after years of grad school, low pay, but a (so far) decent retirement with the difficulties of the teaching load, constant demands for more administrivia, health problems, and rough weather; most that I know seem to retire in their mid-60s, which, for this generation means they can get Social Security and Medicare to cover health insurance.

And then, in the press, on one side we have young folks saying that we're staying too long, and on the other side, the government saying we won't have access to Social Security until later, so we need to work longer.  The Affordable Care Act MAY make earlier retirement plausible for some folks.


I'm reminded of Hal wanting that crown, being impatient for it, though I don't think of my job as a crown, exactly.  When haven't younger folks wanted to shove out the older generation for being old and greedy, and take over themselves?  I'm pretty sure my generation was plenty impatient. 

The difference, I think, is that for people in the US, since, say, the 40s, we've had this idea that there should be a retirement, a period of relative leisure to grow old, even for people who aren't among the very wealthy.  But I think historically that's a pretty rare thing.  Most people through history have struggled to eat and keep reasonably sheltered until they died.  They didn't retire and leave the land lease to their kids because they needed to keep working as long as they could, and when they couldn't, well, that was pretty soon going to be it.

I wonder if my impression that faculty at schools with higher teaching loads tend to retire a bit earlier is accurate? 

I wonder if there's also a regional aspect to that?  Are there incentives to work longer if you're in a big city?  (I know that's a whole complex can of worms; most faculty members here come from at least moderately privileged backgrounds, and a fair percentage from larger cities, and many of those folks move away when they retire.)


One of my department colleagues and I, trying to figure out if we're likely to ask for another TT search in the near future, and knowing that out budget makes it unlikely that we'll get a new line or get to search for one of the lines we had that was put on hold, ran down roughly our TT faculty ages a bit back.  I'm probably not 100% accurate in my count (or in estimating some peoples' ages), but here goes.

60s - 3 all men
50s - 9, 8 women, 1 man
40s - 10, 5 women, 5 men
30s - 6, 3 women, 3 men
20s - 2, 1 woman, 1 man

Of the 40s and 50s groups, a fair number were hired during their 40s, a couple quite recently.  (That is, we've hired people who were in their 40s.  They're new TT faculty at 40+)

So, at least in my small department, we have a reasonable balance, I think.

Time Time Ticking...

I'm about to head off to a meeting which, based on the agenda distributed, looks like it will be a bit of talking, more talking, and no decisions needing to be made.  I hate these sorts of meetings generally, but I will go to this one because it's in the job description.

We've been working on assessment stuffs, mostly on doing stuff that says we'll assess our courses in this given way for these given assessment points, which all include at least three subpoints.

I've spent probably a couple hours on this for the class I was supposed to do (and did).  If everyone in my department spent just about two hours on theirs (we pretty much all had a class to do), then we've wasted two weeks of work.

Wasted?  I'm sure the latest assessment guru would tell us that this is vital work, and that it's all important for making sure that we teach what we've decided is worth teaching, and that our students learn what we've decided is worth learning.  And by the way, there's that ever present threat that if we don't do it to ourselves, "they" will do it to us.

And in three years more, having done these and many more, having filled out assessment bubble things, and written reports, all of which will show that our students aren't learning as much as we think they should, but some of them are, and some not at all, the assessment guru will tell us that no, we've been doing it wrong, and now there's some cool new way to do assessment, so we should start over again.  And it will be treated as practically an emergency situation, so we all need to do that new thing lickety split.

And then we'll need a new assistant to the recently hired assessment guru, because there will be ever more work to do in assessment.

One of my colleagues and I were chatting today, and she expressed her frustration at the constant near-emergency attitude from the administration, and at the ways that this assessment work takes time away from other work we need/want to do, work such as, you know, teaching, prepping classes, designing courses, and so forth.

Cold

I taught cross-country skiing last night.  Those of you who've seen me ski are either laughing or bewildered at this point.  I'm not the most graceful or easy or even half-way decent skier you've seen.  Put it this way: whenever the woman in charge of the lessons sees me, she can't help herself but try to give me some helpful pointers.

But I'm still better than most of the four or five year olds I was helping teach.

The kids were really all over the place yesterday.  We were trying to teach them basic double-poling, and it was tough.  They couldn't seem to pay attention, and some didn't have poles, and so forth.  Chaos!

And it was cold.  I resorted to the chemical toe and hand warmers, but I gave away my hand warmers when one of the kids said she was super cold.  Still, my hands were warm enough by then and didn't get cold again.

The great thing about trying to teach the kids is that I also get in little bits of practice, and for me, just being on skis and sliding around, trying to do stuff (stop, turn and help a little kid, pull up some kids' britches), all that helps me be a bit better on skis.  (And reminds me to be grateful that I don't have to pull up my students' britches!)

The ski club also has lessons for older kids, mostly kids learning to skate ski, and it's surprisingly helpful to me to see them start off on the trails (they quickly surpass me), and think about what I'm doing.

I think I'm BEGINNING to get the hang of pushing off with my feet.  I can do it sometimes, on level areas, when the snow is just so.  And then, of course, I also lose it and fumble around.  Still, it's way cool when I can get it.

After the ski lessons, I called a local Thai place for take out, and went and picked it up on my way home, changing my ski boots for regular boots while parked outside the restaurant (because ski boots are more slippery).

And then I went home!

At which point, I'd inexplicably gotten cold to the bone.  I ate hot food, in front of a little space heater, with bean bag buckwheat heater bags on my shoulders (you microwave them for 3 minutes, and they're nice and warm), and I was shivering.  I hadn't been that cold while I was skiing, but holy cow, I was cold.

So, by 8pm, I took my bean bags and went to bed, wearing my bright orange "I'm not a deer, please don't shoot me" knit hat.  (I don't think I've ever been so cold that I needed to wear a hat to bed here.)

Sometime in the early hours, I woke up again, warm and cozy, took off the hat, and fell back to sleep.

And woke up early, feeling GREAT!  There's nothing like going to bed, well-fed and getting warm, at 8pm to make the morning feel GREAT!

It's pretty bright out, and I have work to do at the office (which I've already started on), and then this afternoon, I may go out skiing some more or go look for the snowy owl(s) that's hanging out locally.

Things are busy here, mostly in good ways, but busy!  Soon, more posting.

Enthusiasm

I have one of those really enthusiastic students this semester.  On the one hand (and this is most important), student enthusiasm is wonderful.  It makes me happy.

On the other hand, sometimes, this student needs to share something, and it's way out from left field.

I think one of the signs of a great teacher is that s/he can take student comments from left field and 1)  make them useful to the class, 2) make the student feel that s/he contributed well, and 3) help educate the student to make more useful comments.

I'm just not there yet.  I try, but I don't seem to pull that off well.

Speaking of enthusiasm, I'm losing count of the number of people who've told me about the Star Wars/Shakespeare mashup, and told me that I really need to read it because I'll love it.

I haven't looked, but I admit I have some doubts.  First, the power of Shakespeare isn't just that he wrote early modern English.  That doesn't make verse automatically amazing and wonderful.  Trust me on this; there's a whole lot of not so amazing early modern verse.

And fake early modern English (which is what I imagine this is) probably isn't automatically amazing verse, either.  I'm totally willing to bet someone with good linguistic skills could write early modern English that I'd be completely fooled by, but that doesn't make it great verse.


So, I have my doubts that the fake Shakespearean verse is worth reading as verse, if that makes sense.  I mean, it's worth reading a retelling of an old story if it's written really well.  It's worth reading, say, Hero and Leander because Marlowe's a great poet and does something amazing with the old story.  But reading someone's new version, unless written with great skill, probably isn't worth it to me.

There are people who are writing powerful and amazing verse right now, and their work is thought-provoking, stunning, amazing, and sometimes beautiful, all things that great verse can be.  They are working hard on their verse, and crafting it, drafting and redrafting it. I'm willing to bet that if the author of the mashup were capable of writing verse with that power, that beauty, that depth (etc), s/he would already be a well-respected poet.  I'd rather spend the time I give to new writing to those poets' works.

(It's worth noting that I love and adore Chaucer Doth Tweet, but part of the fun is that the bits are very short, and don't take the attention that retelling a movie would.)

In Praise of Triple A

I've gone several years without needing to call Triple A, but I've called twice this month.  Once when my car died on the freeway earlier this month (I was able to get well off to the side, and the wrecker came and towed it to the dealership, which was able to fix it in a day), and yesterday, when I went out owling (we DID see a snowy owl, too!).  The owl flew as soon as we saw it, and I thought I'd do a U-turn (on a quiet road, with good visibility), but what I thought was an okay drive turned out to be not so okay, so I ended up stuck.

I have this to say: the sheriff officer was pleasant about it, and helpfully hung out with his flashing showing (helpful especially as it was getting to be late afternoon), the Triple A wrecker was pleasant and pulled us right out.  And best of all, the friend I'd gone birding with was, as usual, just wonderful company, and kind about my mistake. 

If you're going to drive off the road, do it as I did: at a very slow speed, not too far off, with soft stuff around, in cell phone reception, and with a good friend around.

More than one person stopped to check that we were okay and offer help, too, which I greatly appreciate.  It's really helpful to feel like people have your back even if they don't know you and you're a crazy birder.

New Start

The semester began here yesterday, but since I don't have Tuesday classes this semester, today is my first day of classes.  Yesterday I finished off the syllabi and calendars, had copies made (have I said lately how much I love our office staff?  They're so good at taking care of us and making things run smoothly.  We instructors get credit, but they make things much better.)

My office is a mess.  I'm slowly bringing things in, and putting things in place, but since I hardly got to campus last week (my guest has a reputation for chewing things, and I didn't want to leave him too long alone).  Starting with a new office at the new semester is a double whammy.

And now, more prep work!

The E Text Question

As most semesters approach, I get several emailed questions asking (politely) if I'm okay with students using e texts in my classes.  This is especially common with Shakespeare.

I hate them using etexts for Shakespeare.

First, they want to use the totally free etexts, which seem based on 19th century editions (they're free because they're long out of copyright).  But they don't really get any information about the 19th century editions, which often come with no glossing, no line numbers, and editing choices that made sense in the 19th century, but which are very different from the choices editors make now.

So there's always that delay of a few seconds while the etext folks try to figure out where we are based on asking someone to read them a line.  (Thus, everyone with regular texts looks, finds the line, and then the etext people start doing their search thing.  And we hope that the line is the same.)

Second, I think they should write in their Shakespeare texts so that when they study, they see the notes they've written, and it reminds them how to read those lines or that scene.   Within their lifetimes, that same Shakespeare text should be pretty good, so if they choose to keep it, they may glance at it again, and the marginalia they've put in will help them remember stuff.  (I know not all students keep the texts, but I know some do.  English majors tend to like books.)  That makes Shakespeare (and other lit, for example) very different from, say, Genetics textbooks.   But notetaking in e readers looks clumsy, and the likelihood is that they won't have easy access to that text/reader in ten years.   They won't, I don't think, pick up the play and reread it the way folks pick up books on their shelves.  (And worse, their future dates won't be able to tell what they read by a glance at their shelves from the couch.)


How do you folks feel about e texts? 

Do non-English fields, say Chemistry, or Econ, need students to bring the text to class meetings?  (I honestly don't remember taking my texts to most classes, though I was a pretty obedient student.)

Observation?

Like, I'm willing to guess, most people on effbee, I'm "friends" with a variety of family members, both pretty darned liberal and pretty darned conservative.  And I think I've observed a difference in the sorts of items and links they share.

My more liberal family are more likely to share links to more liberal news sites such as the H*Post, and so forth, especially posts about income inequity, racism problems, bank fraud.  My more conservative family members are more likely to share links that are cautionary in nature, the sorts of ones that warn women not to get into their car if a van is parked next to it (that one was part of a list my cousin shared this morning), and so forth.

In both cases, a lot of the shared stuff says that the world is a very dangerous place.  But the source of the danger is different: in the liberal sites, the source of the danger is usually corporations, and sometimes policing agencies.  The danger's there, but hard to defend oneself against as an individual, and the danger isn't as overtly violent, but more systemic.  In the conservative sites, the source of the danger is a bad person who's aiming to violently attack, and especially to violently attack women.  The danger can be avoided or prevented, if just the woman (almost always) is careful and alert.  She can keep herself safe.

Have other people noticed something similar?

(And both sides share lots of cute animal pictures and rescue animal stuff.)

Guest Pup

My guest is quite photogenic!

An Analogy

Let's imagine I have responsibility for taking care of a cycling team's bikes and kits.

And I have a staff of, say, ten people who work on various aspects, mechanical stuff, driving, laundry, and so on.

Of these ten, a couple talk a lot about how much they love the work, and how important it is that the bikes they take care of get the best care and treatment so that they're perfect for their riders.  And there's one person who theorizes about the relationship between bikes and riders and says that's central to hir existence.

Why is it that these are the people I have to constantly remind to check tire inflation?

Why is it that these are the people who forget to lube the chain after they wash the bike?  Or maybe they didn't bother to wash the bike yet, because they figured it could wait until the next race was about to start.

The people who don't wring their hands about riders training in wet ruining the carbon, who don't wring their hands about having the new brake pads and the best paint scheme, those are the people who show up on time with the bikes in perfect working order, tires properly inflated, chains beautiful, brakes cleaned and checked, shifting smooth and light.

Makes Me Wonder

All during my college and grad school years, I can't remember a single instructor leaving the room to go to the restroom.

I can't remember ever doing it myself.  (Not as a student nor as an instructor at whatever level.)

That's not to say it couldn't happen, or that there's anything wrong if it does, because sometimes you gotta go.

But it seems that we instructors plan ahead when we can.

So why is it that so many students seem to need to go?  I mean, I probably average 1-2 students a week who leave class to use the restroom.  Is it just the odds?  Or the occasional poor planning?

Distracted

I'm dog sitting again, a different dog, for a different friend.

The dog's very sweet, and very needy. 

And I'm too willing to be distracted from the 30 or more things I really need to get done.  As in now.

Doh!


Here's how much of a dog person I am.  I made a play date and brought my neighbor's dog (my guest, often) over, and the two played hard for about an hour.  They'd slowed down considerably after about 40 minutes; I'd brought them inside and they'd wrestled, and then they'd slowed down.  So I took them back outside and that reenergized them both.

They're both biggish and active dogs, with good outdoor coats, so they were doing that submarine in the snow thing, rolling around.  It must feel good on their coats.

And now my current guest dog is having a nap beside me, and I'm goofing off, but I need to stop and accomplish some real work today.  Now.

New Digs, Moved In

I spent a large part of the day unpacking books and files, and I'm pretty much moved into the new office.

Here's what it looked like this morning, full of boxes.

Naturally, the boxes of books are pretty much in front of the bookcases.  (There's not much space anywhere else for them, though.)

 I went from having no office chair chosen a few weeks ago to having two in my office.  I have to try them both out for a bit and see which one I prefer.

I checked and there's no way to change the positions of the desks.  They're not really modular.

I got a filing cabinet!  YAY!

There are also chairs for office visitors, too.

And now, with books!  Mostly organized, too!  These shelves are taller, so my books have lots of space.  I only had to move shelves for the Hinman (it's the brick colored book that's really tall, a facsimile edition of Shakespeare's First Folio, prepared by Charleton Hinman).

While I was unpacking my books, a guy came in who said he's a photographer for the school, and that the deanling in charge of such things (whose name he used) wanted him to take pictures to document the moving in process.  So he asked if I would mind, and I let him take pictures.

So now there will probably be a publicity sort of picture of my office in the unpacking stages on our webpage or something.  My moment of fame.

Look ma, only one box left (with files).  The new file cabinets all require hanging files, and I didn't have hanging files, so I got some from the department, and then still had files left over when the department stock ran out.  I think we need more file hangers.

 There are no nametags yet, so I put a rainbow in mine.  At least I'll be able to find my door now.  (The numbering makes no sense at all in this building.  It's not just me being an idiot, either.  Everyone's confused.  Trust me, it's big, but we don't have 500 offices on my floor.)

The computer works, and there's already stuff piled on the filing cabinet, naturally.  I've asked for one of those computer keyboard drawer things.  Otherwise, I'm going to get wrist problems fast, I fear.

The hallways feel sort of endless.   This is looking left from my doorway.

When I was a kid, I had a nightmare that I was walking in a long hallway like this, and a man was at the other end, and shot me through the head, face on.  In my dream, I somehow was also watching a little hole appear in my head, and then watched me drop to the ground.  It was a strong enough image that I've never forgotten it.

I hope it wasn't some weird premonition.

And this is looking right from my doorway.  The double doors on the left are an electrical closet thing.

Not only are the halls endless, it's a rectangle and there's really no way to tell easily which hall you're in.

North seems to be odd numbers, and south even numbers, but I'm not sure about east and west.


This ends the tour of our new building, which probably needs a nickname.  Thoughts?

Making Snow

If you grew up in the upper Midwest, as a child you undoubtedly threw a pot of boiling water into the very cold air to see it turn to insta-vapor-snow.

If, like me, you grew up elsewhere, you might have to do that as an adult.  As I did this morning.

It worked!  Very cool. 

I thought about doing it yesterday, after talking with a friend about her kids doing it, and wanted to try it before it gets warm.  Apparently, we're due for some warming now.  Thank dog.

I've never built a snow man, nor have I done the frozen bubbles thing.  It's too cold for a snow man (supposedly, it works best with fresh, slightly damp snow), but I'm going to go buy bubble stuff today to try the bubbles before it gets too warm!

And Now, the New Digs

I thought I'd share a few pictures of the new office.

 

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That area on the lower right is the extent of file and drawers to the desk.  They plan these for people who don't keep nearly the stuff I do in desk drawer and file cabinets, don't they?

Still, look at how high the ceiling is!  And how bright the light through the window!

I have a bad clutter habit with horizontal surfaces.  Danger, danger!

Carpet.  And a big window above the door!  Light!  And bookshelves!

At almost every college/university I can think of, faculty office doors have windows, and faculty block them off so that people don't stare in while we're working.  (The exception was when I had an office in a defunct frat house; the offices were in old bedrooms, and the doors were solid.)

Here's the coat hanger.  Not wide enough to fit the regalia, which lives on a hanger.  Too bad they never thought to ask faculty folks about what we need, isn't it?
















I went to the bathroom in the new building today, and weirdly, the way the toilet paper is set up, you have to reach down to about six inches off the ground to get at the paper.  All wrapped up for super cold weather (think of the stay pufft image), I could barely get at it.  Doh!

Shrike!

I was sitting in my sun room, looking at something on the laptop, when I heard a thunk outside.  I looked, and there was a shrike (a northern shrike, almost certainly) on top of a bit of awkwardly waggling feather.  And then a moment later, the shrike picked up the junco (which was identifiable at that point) in its beak and flew off.

My first ever shrike, and holy cow, what a sighting!

I'm amazed at how apparently easily that shrike took off with the junco in its beak, since the junco is pretty big looking.  (That is, the junco looked almost half the size of the shrike.)  (Also, most raptors seem to carry prey in their talons, so the beak thing was interesting.)

And, of course, it adds meaning to my "bird feeding."

Refrain

"But he works/ed hard" (emphasis in text).

Said several times over the last week.

Chores

I have a few days to myself, and I've been getting stuff done in a relaxed way.  And somehow, more gets done when I feel a bit relaxed.

I've done banking sorts of chores, and tax prep sorts of chores, cleaned my home office, started one of my course calendars for spring semester, replied books in better ways, and so forth.  I've done some reading, too.

I'm about ready to do more work on the course calendar I've started, and probably soon ready to start the next one.

In the coming week, I start a four week series of sessions at the local library on early modern lyric poetry.  I've selected the poems, but have work to do prepping for the first week.

On Monday, I'll start an 8 week commitment to teaching little kids cross-country skiing.

And later in the week, a friend's dog will come to stay with me for a couple of weeks while my friend is away.

Meanwhile, I saw my first snowy owl on the 1st, which seems like a good way to start the year.  Just before dusk, I was driving along a backroad slowly, looking, and it flew across and landed in a field far away.  The light was dim, and it was FAR away, and it was cold, but I took a picture anyway.  And the picture is predictably blurry, but I think good enough to be pretty sure it's a snowy owl, anyway.

The owl is just to the left of the irrigator tire, which at least gives you an idea that it's a darned big bird.  And it's the right coloration.

Happy New Year

Because I seem to do this, here's the bike run down:  9734.7 on the odometer, which means I rode just over 700 miles this past year, a miserable number.  (726.9 to be more exact.)  I fell totally short of my goal for the biking year.

This year was a fairly reactive year, rather than a proactive year in many ways.  I hope to make 2014 more proactive.

More biking.

More skiing.

More good times.

Less crankiness.

Within a few days, I should be able to get they keys to the new building, and get started getting my office ready sometime after the 10th or so.

This past year, I spent pretty much all my time out of town visiting my Mom.  That's good, and all, but also not good.  I need to get away and do other things, too.

Being the Enemy?

Reading the intertubes lately, and talking to some job seekers, I have a sense of alienation, my own, more than theirs.  (They have plenty of their own.)

The thing is, it sometimes feels like those of us with tenure are being figured as a sort of enemy to job seekers, and I don't recognize myself as the enemy.

The problem with the interpellation is that even if I try to refuse it, I've recognized the call to myself as the enemy, no?  And so my alienation.

Uphill Through the Snow Both Ways

I had dinner with some folks on the job market the other day, and naturally, talk got around to the job market.  In the course of our conversation, I got to wondering just how much worse the market is now than it was say in 2005, or in 2000, or in 1995.  I know I think it's worse, but I wonder if there's a way of thinking about how much worse?  Maybe comparisons of numbers of PhDs produced in a field vs number of jobs in the field?  That wouldn't be perfect, but it might be at least something?

I wonder if the ADE Bulletin would have that information, and might be visible over a the years to give a longer perspective?


You know how when you're young, and you look at some older person and think they're completely out of touch?  And maybe they are, and maybe they aren't.  But some are.  And some are very out of touch.

I don't want to feel like that older person and not even be aware of it.


In line with the feeling out of touch, I was thinking about how we handle our department rejections.  I know I've asked, and our chair calls the people we had visit campus personally.  Or she says she does, and I have reason to believe she's honest about that.  But I don't know how we handle the other folks.  Do we send them a note?

I know we tend to have to wait until we've successfully made a hire to notify anyone, and that takes a long time.  The thing is, on occasion, we've had to do a second round of interviews to find someone willing to take the job we have to offer (at least in some fields), so we don't tell people we've rejected them if the job is still open.

Edited to Add:

Undine at Not of General Interest posted a link to the MLA statistics (2011-2012).
I found this graph particularly interesting:
I first went on the market in 1993, and got my first TT job in '96.  I went on the market again in fall 1998 (and started a new job in '99).  I guess my timing sucked, big time.  (There may well be more PhDs in English graduating now, or not.  I don't know.  So maybe it's harder now.)

(I have to admit, I kept my mouth shut when the job seekers at dinner the other night talked about how people with tenure couldn't get jobs now, and so on.  I was right to keep my mouth shut, but I feel a little less crappy about myself now.)

Stir Crazy

I hope everyone's having good holidays.

I had a few colleagues over for dinner last night.  I'm not a very confident cook, and was worried about the food.  It tasted like cardboard to me, a bit, but I think that was more my anxiety.  I had a ham sandwich for breakfast, and it was good, so the ham at least must have been okay.

Irony:  My mom complaining about someone talking about hirself too much.  (And yes, I recognize the additional irony of a blogger who writes mostly personal stuff saying that about anyone else.)

I need to get out and be by myself, but I don't think it's going to happen any time soon.

Empty Office

I finished packing up everything in my office, brought the last few things home, and took some goodbye pictures.

 There is the green I so enjoyed!  (Here's where I tell about the mysterious painting of the green.)

And here's a link to a post with some pictures of the office full of stuff.

Only a few of my boxes are in the room.  Most are stored in our central meeting room, along with most of the other boxes from our department offices.  We had to keep the last few in our offices when that got full up.

This is a view of my computer desk, which looks out into the hallway, not yet cleared (at least, not by me, since I didn't put them up).

And there's my green chair from the past.  It's surprisingly comfortable, but the wheels have been tending to come off, and each time, I practically fall.  So I'm getting a new chair with the move.

Remember the move?  Here's the layout of the new office.  And more on the new office.

 I closed the door and turned off the lights.  My door used to be covered with printed out comics, lots of them from XKCD.  Now it looks forlorn, along with the empty bulletin board next to it.

It's not alone.  Pretty much everything looks forlorn down the hallways now.

At the end of this hallway, you can see the big recycling bin they put out for our paper, which has been filled several times over.  And beyond that is a free book shelf, which has also been filled and then gleaned a couple times over.

And that's it for my time in the great Green Office.  Good times, and not so good times.  But now it's on to a new office.

When we're allowed to go, I'll try to remember to take some pictures.  At least it has wallboard and not concrete block walls!  And the halls are wide enough to pass current legal standards, so a bit wider.  They're also WAY longer, long enough to be something from a nightmare about bureaucracy in the 60s.

Anatomy of a Grading Session

First, you gather your materials.  I use pencil for grading (except for very short journal sorts of stuff, for which I use different colored pens), but I also often need coffee or tea, some music (I prefer classical or jazz without words), and a fairly solid notepad.

While gathering your materials, you may become distracted.  Perhaps there are dishes in the sink.  Or maybe there's effbee.  Or snow to push around on the driveway.  There's probably something.  Fight the urge.

You sit down, pick up the first paper, and start to read.  Congratulations, you've just done the hardest part, the getting started part.  If you're lucky, the first paper you've read is good, and you can power through several more.  If you're not lucky, and the first paper sucks, then the dishes become so much more important.

No matter how brilliant the assignment, how good the papers, you power through a few, and then you want a distraction, something else to do.  So you count the papers.  You've done six, and there are 30 more to go.  This is the vital moment, almost as difficult as sitting down to the first paper.  If you can power through just a few more, then you can get to being a third done.   And a third done is close to half done, right?

If you can't, then may I suggest writing a blog post about how difficult it is to power through?

The Heater Diaries

I've mentioned that my car heater's out, and that this means that I sometimes have to drive around (in seriously cold weather) with my front window down a bit to keep the windshield from totally fogging up.

Last Thursday, I went by the shop, and they were packed with lots of cars, many of which also have/had heater problems.  It's a very casual shop, which doesn't take appointments, and they suggested that they'd need the car overnight (as I mentioned before), so we chatted, and we agreed that I should being it back on Monday.  So I did. 

On Monday morning, I took it in at the buttcrack of dawn (well, not quite, but close) and Gary, the garage owner/mechanic gave me a ride home.  I spent most of Monday at home, and then Gary called in the early afternoon to tell me that they couldn't fix it.  They thought it was an expensive part, but they weren't sure, and they didn't want to order the expensive part without being sure, and so on.

So I got a ride, and picked up my car.  And then Tuesday (it was too late by the time I got home on Monday), I called to make an appointment at the dealer. 

The dealer gave me an appointment at 7:15, and I took my car in and they gave me a ride to work.  So I've been at work all day, giving finals (my last final is from 5-7pm tonight).  And then I got a call a bit ago, and they've figured out that they need an expensive part, and it won't be in until tomorrow.  Meanwhile, my car is in pieces, because that's easier than putting it all back together and taking it all apart again.

So I guess I'll call a taxi to go home tonight after my final.  (I live quite a walk off a bus line, especially on a cold night with finals to carry, so I'm going to spend the big bucks on a taxi for a 3 mile ride.)  (I could call a friend, but it seems like it would be a pain for someone to have to go out and drive around in the evening for me to avoid a taxi ride.)

But tomorrow, I should have a working heater in my car!

Grading Jail

I feel like Mephistopheles, where I am is grading jail, nor am I out of it, even when I'm not actually grading at that moment.

I have an assignment that seems to me really good in some ways.  And when students actually follow the directions, it works GREAT.  When they don't, they really bomb horribly.

But it takes for bleeping every to grade, and that's not good.

You'll Know it's Me...

... when you see someone driving in mid-winter with their front driver's side window down.

Yeah.  It's minus hella cold here, but as soon as my breathing makes the windshield start fogging up, my side window has to come down.

BRRR!

(I took the car into the shop yesterday, but I'll need to leave it over night, and that's best done on Monday.  Apparently it's so cold that before they work on certain sorts of stuff they need to have the car warm or things are brittle and break.  Who knew?)

Making less Misery?

One of my facebook friends commented about some job market stuff, and it got me thinking about what we can do to make the job search a better experience for everyone, or perhaps a less miserable experience.  And what we can't do.

Let's face it, short of all quitting our jobs, faculty folks can't make the job market suddenly and magically open up.  Nor can we move our midwestern schools to places with less brutal winters, or move them closer to places with good jobs for spouses in specific industries.

What we can do?  Here's what I'm thinking about the early stages of the search:

Think really carefully about asking for materials up front, and where possible, ask for electronic submissions to ease mailing costs.

On the search committee side of the market, I think it makes a lot of sense to ask for letters of reference up front, though I recognize that getting people to write letters of recommendation can be hell, and getting people to write them in time is sometimes a worse hell.  (Those problems are with letter writers, and not with search committees or the market, though.)  I've looked at interfolio, but I'd be interested in hearing more about it.  It gives one price for a year (and other prices for 3 or 5 years), but it's not clear to me if there are also additional charges for sending out portfolios or letters of recommendation.

I'm less convinced either way about asking for writing samples up front.  I don't tend to use them for the "first read through" of a set of applications, but I do by the second, and if there's not much time between, I might want them up front.  Having them up front means that the committee can work from one cut to the next a bit more quickly.  Whether they actually do or not, that's a different question.

I've been on several searches that have used phone interviews for the first round, and I've found it at least as good as conference interviews.  For one thing, I had pretty horrible experiences at MLA, so I have no urge to ever go back.  And for those who say that grad students should go to conferences, that's great, but let's be realistic about which conferences are likely to be useful, and which not.  For me, MLA was useful when I was on the market because I was on the market.  It was useful at other times because I was giving a paper and able to go see and hear papers.  But those two never happened at the same time.  Market years were simply to miserable to go see and hear papers meaningfully.  More local or area-focused conferences probably make more sense in terms of budget and networking for most grad students.  Talking to friends, my sense is that some smaller or poorer schools really prefer phone interviews, and have for some time.

I don't have a lot of experience with Skype, but I prefer phone, I think.  That preference is based on watching students Skype when I was overseas, and on an old photography article I read once about taking baby pictures.  Here's the baby picture article in short:  if you're taking pictures for the parents of a baby, then you get really close to the baby's face, so that it's like a parent being right up close to the baby.  If you're taking pictures for non-parents, then you take the picture a bit further off, because non-parents aren't usually as comfortable with the extreme closeness that parents are used to.  People may not articulate their discomfort, but they'll choose photos that way.  The connection to Skype is that most people do it sitting pretty darned close to their computer, and the social distance feels awkward to me, like we're too close.  Just me?  Maybe.  How about you?

Timing.  It takes a huge lot of time to read job applications.  Even if you read fast for the first cut and spend ten minutes per, if you've got a hundred to get through, you're looking at a lot of time.  And if you've got 200, a lot more time.  Then there are all the discussions, rereading, preparing for the next step.  All this is done, in my experience, as an add on to the rest of the job.  I know it's hard to wait for an interview call, of course.  My suggestion is that when the department sends an acknowledgement, it should include a realistic timeline for hearing about interviews.  And at each step thereafter, candidates should get realistic information about the timeline.  At the same time, we all know searches where the first two or three campus visits didn't pan out well, and the third or fourth person was asked late, but turned out to be just the right hire.  So for those on the receiving end, try not to take late calls as bad news or as personal issues.

What else should we on the search committee side to to make our searches as humane as possible?

Chatting

I had a long phone chat with a friend and former roommate from grad school this morning, and it was just great to talk.  We haven't much talked for years, not because we had a falling out or anything, but because other things happen, and we're both busy, and so on, but talking was great, and I hope we talk more sooner rather than later.

This roommate was one of the sanest, most common sense, down to earth people I knew in grad school.  She was really smart in all sorts of ways, but also really decent and thoughtful.

Of course, chatting with my former roommate also got me thinking about some other grad school folks, many of whom were (and are) wonderful in their own ways, but few of whom I have much contact with these days.

Free Advice

If you're interviewing for an English department type job, don't call Shakespeare "the Bard" even once, and certainly not repeatedly.

You sound like an fool.  And not a good kind of fool.

Cold

So, yes, here in the upper Midwest, it's unseasonably cold right now.  If the past is any hint, it's unlikely to stay this cold for long.  But yes, it's cold.  (Though not as cold as some places!)

We have a number of new colleagues in various roles and departments around, and I'm rather amused at the facebook posts I'm seeing and our encounters in the hallways.  Early on, several of them were sort of laughing when we asked if they had winter clothes, assuring us that they were from really cold areas, so no worries.  And now, they're facebooking (look, I made a verb!  Surely I'm not the first.) about needing boots rated for arctic expeditions and such.

Somehow, I've found myself in the rather odd position of comforting them about the relative pleasantness of winter in the teens.

For those who know me in meat-space, you're probably laughing at that one, because I'm notorious for putting on long johns sometime in September, and wearing them through nearly to June.

Then there's the shock of ice on the sidewalks.  With a wet, heavy snow, followed quickly by a cold snap, we've got hellacious ice on the sidewalks and such.  But again, experience tells me that people will scrape, and salt, and ice will sublimate, and before long, the sidewalks will be clearer.  (To be honest, yaktrax are my friends all winter long.  But for now, it's too cold for road salt to work, even.  Brrr!)

One of my students was in shorts and flip flops yesterday.  I still can't quite believe that most people in the upper Midwest somehow grow up with all their fingers and toes intact.  But he seemed sanguine.

The Professor's Dilemma

Let's imagine, say, a professor is teaching an advanced underwater basketweaving class.  And let's imagine, too, that the class grades are based primarily on a presentation, a portfolio of several baskets, and a self-evaluation of the basket portfolio.  Just imagine.

Now imagine that there's a student enrolled in the class who appeared for a couple of weeks, and did the group presentation, and did a fine job at that.  And then the student pretty much disappeared.  But the student emailed occasionally saying that zie was coming to class the next week.  And then that zie had had to miss class, but couldn't drop because [fill in excuse], and zie would do the work for the class and turn it in on the last day, because that's what the grade depends on.

How should the professor handle this?

Not that I'd be asking for a specific reason, because, of course, I don't even teach underwater basketweaving.

New Digs, Part the Second

As I posted previously, we're moving to new digs.  They've promised to get me another file cabinet, and they've revealed that there actually IS a coat hook on the wall behind the door (I'd looked at the door, only), so things are looking up.

It's a massive logistical undertaking, really.  Two big departments from our building, plus a whole school from another building, plus some resource type offices (tutoring centers and so forth) will all be moving to the new building.  And it all has to happen in mid-winter, when we're not in full on teaching mode (though there is a winter session).  As with any big logistical undertaking, they've made rules to govern us.

First, except for books and "official" files, they won't move any personal belongings.  So if you've brought an office lamp to campus, you have to move it yourself.

Second, none of us is supposed to be in the way on moving days (ie, in either building).

Third, none of us is supposed to have more than one set of keys.


So, it looks like we have to get all the personal belongings out ahead of time, and then wait and move them into our office some days later.  We'll be able to use our offices (well, more or less) until the day to move offices, and then we'll have to lock up, turn in our keys, and wait.  Then on moving day two, we'll be given keys to the new building and our offices, and be allowed in.

And as they move people out of the old offices, they'll take the locks off the doors so that nothing can be locked while the rooms are empty.


Our department office has one moving day, our individual offices a later moving day, and I guess that's also different for each of the other units moving.


We're all supposed to have our stuff (well, the stuff they'll move) boxed up in boxes with labels, which we're storing in our department's conference room by the department moving day.

Fortunately, we have student workers to help with packing books and moving boxes of books from our offices to the conference room for storage.

Today, I packed some files and old student work.  I think (when I came here) I was told that we were supposed to keep student work for two years so that they could pick it up later.  But I've recycled all but the last semester's work now, and packed that, along with files from classes and committee work  (fortunately, I'd gone through my files and weeded some last winter) this morning.  I've also had student workers pack up six and a half of my 20 shelves of books (just the ones in my campus office, of course).  Packed are Shakespeare (because I'm not teaching Shakespeare this semester), though a couple went home because I want to read them over break, and contemporary drama, and most early modern texts, and contemporary lit (admittedly, that shelf is pretty small).  (You can see a picture of my old office, with art and books, here.)  (And here's the tale of how my office got its glorious green walls!)  (There will, alas, be no gloriously green walls in the new building.  I've been warned.)

I'm hesitant to pack up my lit crit, because I feel like those are handy for students, and since I keep them in alphabetical order (of course), I don't want to pack them randomly if I can help it.  I think I'm about ready to pack up the anthologies and such, because I think I won't need them much.  (I rarely need them, but when you need them, they're super handy to have just there.

I've been taking personal stuff home bit by bit: all the art is home, and most of the toys (especially the Einstein Action Figure, with Power Chalk!  Raised Fist!), and my regalia.  I still have some things to take home, though, and printed out comics to take off the door.  But that can wait until the last, since the office will seem much less friendly that way.

It's strange walking through the department and seeing some folks shelves barren of books.  We do love our books around here.

Not Your Mommy

I'm chairing this committee and there's this work we have to do.  It has to get done, or bad things will happen to other people.

We set a due date of today for 11 of the things to be done (by 11 people).  How many are done?  3.

(These aren't things that can be done in just a couple of minutes at the last moment, but take a fair bit of time.)

Sometimes, my colleagues are worse than my students about lateness.  (But, fortunately, I know that, so we set the date a bit earlier than absolutely necessary, and I sent out a reminder today.  Yeah.  The thing is, if the task isn't done by the real deadline, there's no way to do it late and push the deadline back.)

When a Thesis Doesn't Have a Thesis

Back at the beginning of the semester, I wrote about a problem I've had in the past with MA students who disappear for a couple of months and then send a chunk of work and hope for a quick response.  And despite my request that it not happen, it's happened.  I sent the student an email last week, asking about hir disappearance, and zie sent me a short apology and a revised chapter and a new chapter.

I'm so frustrated.  I've been slowly reading, stopping when what I really want to write on the paper or in my response how frustrated I am to be reading a thesisless, argumentless hunk of writing.  I don't know what to call it, but it's irritating.

And then, of course, I wonder about the quality of my own dissertation draft chapters.  I don't think I was so aimless in my writing, but it's hard to tell retrospectively.  I hope they were better.

I resent the amount of energy I put in to responding and then get a new chapter (or revision) that doesn't seem to have taken anything away from the previous responses.