You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October, 2008.
It’s 5 pm. I’ve been grading non-stop since 9:30 am. And, I’ve come to the conclusion that my students are complete morons. I don’t know what happened. This class has been a delight all semester but suddenly it’s like they all checked out. I really cannot remember the last time I have seen so many papers with so many egregious errors.
A few choice selections:
“Its so depth in its content that would not be confined to just one area but would allow us to explore many other topic to be discuss in class.”
“There were many different points of view and opinions written at the time and many essays, novels, and articles written to show opinions, how they thought things should be different, how to better handle situations, or what they thought should be happening.”
“XXX first makes an unrelistic lanundy list of all the carteristics a women must posess in order to be his wife.” [Yes, that would be six misspellings in one sentence -- surely a record!]
“Once women had obtained the right to vote, they resumed their fight against slavery.” [Referring to the United States.]
Oh my God, they are so dumb.
Thanks to Dr. Brazen Hussy, I now understand that what I thought was International Dissertation Writing Month is actually International AcaDemic Writing Month, an umbrella community for all of us doing various kinds of academic writing, including the revisions I am threatening to undertake. So, I don’t have to start my own NaRevWriMo group, after all — as much fun as that would have been. I refer you to What the Hell is Wrong With You? if you are interested in signing up for the challenge. Brazen Hussy is also promising PRIZES!!
If anyone can recommend a widget that would count hours of labor rather than words produced — since that count just doesn’t work for the revision process — please let me know.
In the meanwhile, I’ll just state for the record that my goal is a mere 48 hours of concentrated labor on my book revisions in the month of November. An easily accomplished goal, right?
UPDATE: I’m not able to register officially with Brazen Hussy ‘cuz you have to have a Google/Blogger account to do so and I refuse to sign up for ANOTHER account that I don’t need for any other reason. But, I’m participating in spirit and will track my progress here.
Hooray! The lines were long. There were more blacks than whites (although I do live in a black neighborhood). There were lots of folks with their kids — and I just can’t believe anyone brought their kids along to say, “Okay, little Suzy, now we push the button for that nice old man, McCain.”
Feeling hopeful, when I’m not feeling absolutely terrified.
Oh yeah. He’s the man.
It’s five days until National Novel Writing Month begins. Most of you know about the phenomenon that is NaNoWriMo. Many of you have participated. And, most of you know that the NaNoWriMo model has been adopted and adapted by academics who were trying to get a big piece of writing done — not a novel but a dissertation or academic book. (What the Hell is Wrong with You? is promising a revival of the InaDWriMo: International Dissertation Writing Month.)
I’m launching my own version of NaNoWriMo: National [Book] Revisions Writing Month. My loyal readers will recall that at the end of the summer I was asked by the university press editor to make revisions based on readers’ reports and resubmit the manuscript. (The whole mess is recounted here.) Well, several months have passed during which I’ve done next to nothing. I have had, admittedly, a few other responsibilities to attend to, what with the teaching and the service and all. But, I also admit that there has been some serious procrastination and avoidance at work. I have a deeply antagonistic relationship with my book; it has been the source of a great deal of suffering over many years. I really, really, really want it to be done and over, and for the fabulous Post Book part of my life to start. Is it any wonder, then, that I can barely bring myself to think about the manuscript one more time?
So, in an effort to jump start my revision process, I am setting writing goals for the month of November, hoping that the sense of camraderie elicited by the NaNoWriMo community will help me get some substantial work done.
Conventionally, one evaluates one’s NaNoWriMo accomplishments through number of words written. But, because I am revising rather than composing, that measure isn’t going to work for me. Instead, I am going to set some time goals — hours spent working on the book per week — and see if that is an adequate encouragement.
My goal is, starting Nov. 1: 12 hours a week. That works out to approximately 2 hours a day with one day off. It seems like such a small amount! I feel almost chagrined, like I’m not setting ambitious enough goals. But, I also know my own insane schedule and realize that 12 hours a week is 12 hours more than I’ve done in three months. So, onward with the NaRevWriMo!
Please feel free to join me if you too have a major academic project that you’ve been avoiding!
I’ve been hearing a lot lately about people dreaming about Obama or the election more generally. Golden Boy, my partner, has had several Obama dreams. I was kidding him about how strange it was that anyone would dream about a presidential candidate — even one that he feels so passionately about. Then, I had my own Obama dream.
I dreamt that Golden Boy and I were good friends with Barack and Michelle, and we saw them again after a long time; I walked up to give my good friend Barack a hug but when I wrapped my arms around him, I realized I only came up to about his waist. I looked up at his towering torso and head far above my own and I said, “Barack, you’ve gotten so tall!”
I love how my none-too-subtle subconscious is trying to capture my feelings about Obama through the imagery of a massive Obama, with me as a child-like figure next to him, looking up admiringly — feeling simultaneously a close kinship with him and an acute sense of awe.
I’ve got my fingers very tightly crossed for the next ten days
I’ve been in something of a blogging slump lately. I’ve been feeling disillusioned about blogging when the whole world seems to be falling apart — it just seems so self-indulgent to write about my petty concerns at this moment in time. And, for some reason, my intense book avoidance (which is to say, my absolute inability to work on the necessary book revisions while my tenure clock ticks loudly in my ear) got transferred to this blog, as well. I felt that if I had time for blogging, I should be using it to work on the book and since I couldn’t work on the book, I wouldn’t blog. Or some equally tangled logic.
But, yesterday I was reminded of one of the reasons I started blogging in the first place.
Yesterday I watched Jill Bolte Taylor on Oprah. (No, I do not usually watch Oprah but I tuned in for Dr. Taylor.)
If you have been living under a rock and don’t know who Jill Bolte Taylor is, watch this before proceeding.
Like many of you, I received this clip in my email inbox a few months ago and was really blown away. Her story, which is so inspiring and beautiful, also got me thinking about right/left brain issues. I am definitely a left brain kind of a person. I prefer order, organization, structure, and logic. But, in my youth I was also a pretty creative person. I wrote a lot, daydreamed a lot, dabbled in various arts, played a musical instrument, and generally considered myself an artistic individual. Lately, I’ve felt that my right brain impulses have been squelched by the necessarily left brain aspects of my life and job. I think the sheer effort to publish in the quantity necessary to get tenure at my institution, the constant working schedule with few breaks to indulge the imagination, the stress and anxiety … have eroded something of my creativity.
One of the reasons I started blogging was to have a space in which to explore my creativity once again. Now, you could certainly argue that blogging is not terribly right brain, what with it involving language and technology. But, for me, just to write in a quasi-fictional, quasi-autobiographical format and to play around with the various memes and themes of the blogosphere, was a kind of liberating experience.
So, watching Dr. Taylor yesterday and reflecting upon how much I want — and need — to reawaken that part of me that isn’t bound down to deadlines and isn’t subject to a tenure review … well, maybe the Bittersweet Girl part of myself should try blogging again.
Coming out of my self-imposed hiatus long enough to say: this is best damn idea I’ve heard in a long time!
From Dr. Curmudgeon:
“One of the things I’m going to start asking about in interviews – just so someone starts thinking about it as a possibility since I’ve not encountered it anywhere else – is whether the university in question offers any sort of student loan assistance. I continue to think that schools are going to have to figure out ways to support junior faculty with mounting loan debts, and maybe if enough people ask, it’ll become an option. I actually floated a proposal to our union rep here (as I was trying to guard him in ultimate frisbee), and he seemed to think my idea was both and good and doable: that universities could offer a percent of salary each year to faculty towards their student loan debts the same way they towards 401k’s.” [Read the whole post.]
(Dr. C, if I could leave comments on your blog I would have said, “Right on!”)
Of course, considering the crumbling economy, I fear that we will see more cutbacks on faculty pay and “perks” (what are those?) rather than an increase … but a cranky, disillusioned academic can dream, can’t she?
I got ‘em.
I got ‘em bad.
If you don’t hear from me for a while, look for me down at the crossroads … I’ll be the one making a deal with the devil.
It is so hard to blog these days because:
• The economy is collapsing. Shouldn’t we all be hiding under the covers?
• The presidential election hangs in the balance, and a lot of people seem to actually be considering voting for the wrong guy.
• We’re still at war.
• Sarah Palin is the butt of endless jokes over her dismal, embarrassing performance on the news, and yet could still end up the Vice President of the United States.
• Paul Newman died.
• Administrative work just gets stupider and more arcane with ever iteration.
• No matter how hard you work to develop new and innovative pedagogies, it doesn’t matter if the students think reading is for losers and original ideas are for liberal elitists.
• The weather has turned lovely but you can’t shake the feeling that this may be the last beautiful autumn ever in the history of the planet, that we may all be wearing sunblock and breathing through gas masks this time next year.
• The polar bears are still endangered.
• Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse out there, you wake up in the morning and it is much, much worse, and no amount of snarky, insightful, angry, or sarcastic blogging is going to make any difference.
