Not Only Don’t I Have Reproductive Amnesia, But Also I Don’t Have Reproductive Low Self-Esteem

The title of this post is much snarkier than I really mean for it to be.  And really I’m writing this post because I’ve been such a slacker about keeping up with the incredibly vibrant and thoughtful comment thread that my last post generated.  I don’t want any of the people who have commented so far on the last post to feel as if I’m not appreciative of the discussion to which they contributed with their comments.  All in all, I’m really and truly grateful for what that comment thread has become – in that it hasn’t become some war between the child-having and the child-free, and it hasn’t become some debate about what “counts” in terms of reproductive choice or rights or something.

That said, there are some things in that comment thread to which I want to respond initially, and they relate to this idea of “reproductive self-esteem.”

But before I get to that, let me just preface my comments in this post with this: I think that every person who commented on the last post commented in good faith and wasn’t trying to perpetuate any sort of “mothers” vs. “child-free women” divide.  And I don’t believe that any person who commented in that thread believes that women should be defined through their reproductive capacities, desires, or realities.

But with that being said, I notice the ways in which certain kinds of discourses around motherhood influenced that comment thread, and I do want to respond directly to some of those comments and to extend some of my thoughts… not to call people out in an unfair way, but rather to take this conversation further.

First, a person whom I don’t think I’ve ever seen comment here before, Tem (and then later, Temara), wrote about the ways in which motherhood can be productive for work and possible even if one feels like they are impossible, in spite of one’s anxieties.  And my initial response was (I freely acknowledge) defensive.  I trace my defensive response to this passage in Tem’s original comment:

“It would be misguided, though, to wait until all your worries and anxieties abated to have a baby. You sell yourself quite short if you think all the things that make you good at your job detract from your ability to parent – your commitment, integrity, strength, kindness, and your voice are all things that would make you a great parent.”

Let’s note that I responded (albeit defensively), and then Tem(ara) clarified her intent.  It’s all good.  I don’t draw attention to this comment because I think it was heinous, or because I feel like Tem doesn’t understand me or because I feel like I don’t understand Tem.

I think that the word “misguided” was my trigger, and then I was further triggered by the fact that Tem wrote that I was “selling myself short” if I felt that the work that I do detracts from my ability to be a parent. I want to acknowledge right here and now that it was unfair of me to judge that comment on the basis of those triggers.  But I also want to note that my tendency toward defensiveness is all about how this discourse on the “motherhood imperative” works.  And it has everything to do with what I objected to in my initial post, about reducing women to their reproductive refusal or potential.  But more on this once I note a couple of other comments.

Later, nicoleandmaggie (Nicole?  Maggie?  because n&m wrote something disparate earlier) objected to the turn the comment thread had taken to specific personal rationales, saying:

“But those issues are a very different point than the original post, and somehow seem to sully it for me. In fact, they almost seem to be in opposition to the main point of the post. I’d rather see the details arguments elsewhere rather than this post devolving into the same-old same-old arguments about motherhood and work that assume the same basic assumptions that the original post argues against. The details are individual to people and should not be general statements. All the “here are my excuses for not having kids” are not excuses for many other people who chose to have kids anyway, despite X, Y, and Z. The problem is talking about them as if they’re excuses.

People’s reasons are individual and their own and even if they’re not other people’s reasons, they’re valid. And more importantly, we shouldn’t have to justify what our fertility choices are in the first place, perhaps even to ourselves. There are factors governing why people have children now or later or don’t have children now or later. They’re multi-dimensional, should not apply to everybody, and shouldn’t be such a big deal, especially when they’re not that big a deal for people with Y chromosomes.”

I don’t object to the argument that what we’re talking about is individual reasons, individual situations.  But what I do object to here is that somehow reproductive “choice” means we can’t talk about individual rationales for those choices, and I object to framing rationales for not having children as “excuses” whereas nobody (not even N&M in this comment) ever frames having children as needing an “excuse.”

And then finally, cbjones1943 asserts that I am “brave” for writing the previous post, while at the same time this person talks about deciding not to comment on the comments because “girls don’t get (or, want to get) what being an autonomous adult is all about.”  Um, I would not characterize a single person in that comment thread as a “girl.”  Indeed, the people commenting here (with I think the exception of Comrade Physioprof), are women.  And yes, there is a difference.  Also, I’m not sure how brave anybody writing a pseudonymous blog really is, but that is neither here nor there.

But so here’s the thing.  I’m ok with us (me, my commenters) talking about our personal experiences in relation to the question of or the fact of child-bearing.  I don’t think that talking about our personal experiences means that we are somehow getting in the way of thinking about women as people – as not defined by their reproductive capacity.  Here’s where I’m coming from: men can talk about their sexual lives, their reproductive lives, and yet, they are men regardless of that, outside of those conversations.  If we say that women shouldn’t talk about their personal experiences in relation to sexuality and reproduction, in the service of some kind of “equality,” we’re ultimately defining femaleness (sexuality, embodiment) as negation.  I’m not ok with that.

And I’m ok with women providing rationales for not having children, not because I think women shouldn’t have children or because I think such rationales mean that they “can’t” have children, given the constraints of their lives, but rather because there are legitimate rationales for not having children, regardless of sex, and when we take the ability to voice those reservations away from women, and not from men, we do women a disservice.  Just because a woman talks about the negatives of having a child in her own life doesn’t mean that she doesn’t believe that she can have a child or mother a child.

Finally, just because women have or voice anxieties about their relationships to motherhood doesn’t mean that they don’t understand themselves, or function as, autonomous adults.

Just as much as women don’t “forget” to have children, they also don’t “choose” not to have children, at least in most cases, as a result of ignorance or low self-esteem.  It’s not that women don’t “know” what they choose when they make choices that don’t end up with a baby.  And it’s not that they don’t “believe” they can parent a child and that’s why they don’t end up with a baby.

In fact, some people (women and men) just don’t have a baby at the end of the line.  Not because they forget about it, and not because they are ignorant of biological realities, and not because they are “afraid” of something that they don’t understand the joy that would result if only they took a leap of faith.

In fact, lots of people don’t become parents because they just don’t.

And if they don’t, they might have reasons, even if those reasons weren’t directly related to the kid thing.  Those might not be reasons that you would have or did have, but they aren’t excuses, and they aren’t misguided anxiety.  And yet, thinking about reasons doesn’t make a person a coward, nor does it make one a “girl” who doesn’t know what it means to be an autonomous adult.

The fact that I’m not having a baby right now doesn’t mean that I have some kind of low self-esteem, that I’m afraid to have a baby or that I’m afraid that I can’t handle one.  It doesn’t mean that I’m making excuses, nor does it mean that I don’t realize that all! things! are! possible!  It only means that I’m not having a baby.  That parenthood is not in my immediate future.

I almost ended my last post with this, but then I decided not to.  Here’s the thing.  If I had the identity of “bachelor” open to me, none of this would be an issue.  One can be a bachelor, one can be George Clooney, and nobody asks twice why you don’t have a kid.  But it’s not normal for a 37-yr-old lady to declare herself a bachelor, much less a confirmed one.

Again, I don’t write this post to disparage those who commented on it – I think it’s been a really good conversation.  But at the end of the day? I will say this.  I really resent feeling like I have to explain not pursuing motherhood.  Because I’m just not so sure what is so virtuous about that.  And I’m not so sure why people feel like they need to convince me to do it, when I tell them, that at least right now, that I want my current book more. That’s not because I feel badly about myself or my potential.

 

On “Forgetting” to Have Babies

Historiann has a post up that dovetails with some stuff I’ve been thinking about lately, and I figured I should post over here rather than muddy her comments up with my lengthy personal reflections.

I have always thought that I would be a mother, since I was a little kid.  When I was seven years old, and I briefly considered a vocation as a nun, which I think a lot of seven-year-old Catholic girls do with all of the First Holy Communion hullabaloo, I ultimately decided against it when I realized that it would mean forgoing having a baby.  Note: the problem was not that I wanted to get married – I was totally cool with being a “bride of Christ” – the baby was the thing.  (I think my flirtation with becoming a nun probably lasted for about two weeks, during which I said the rosary every night and imagined myself especially holy.  It seemed like a really long time.)

And yet, here I am at 37 years old, totally single, never having experienced a pregnancy, and with no committed relationship in sight and no real… motivation… to get going on the baby thing.  Did I forget to have a baby?

I don’t think so.  And in fact, this has been on my mind a lot this year, because in the way of many people who spent their 20s in graduate school, as did most of my friends, the “baby boom” in my circle is happening now – not ten years ago.  And, given my super-duper love of the babies (and their love of me) and my love of kids and young people in general, I’ve been thinking: um, should I be getting on that?  I mean, I’m already at Advanced Maternal Age, and have been for some time.  So what gives?

Whatever it is, it’s not that I’m colossally forgetful.  It’s not like I have reproductive amnesia or something.  I mean, my clock, it’s ticking.  I hear it.  Tick-tock-tick-tock.  But am I “exercising my reproductive choice” by pursuing egg-freezing or sperm donation or even dating like it’s the end of the world in the hope of finding the father of my babies?  Um, not so much.

Did I decide I didn’t want kids unconsciously?  Is it that I “really” don’t want a kid?

I’ve thought long and hard about this.  Especially over the past couple of weeks.  Why so much thought about this recently?  Three reasons.  One, High School BFF is moving in with her boyfriend, and they likely will get married, and all of this is in part related to her desire ultimately to have kids with him.  A. is likely going to start trying to have a baby with her partner in the next year (with no plans on the horizon to marry).  And finally, I just learned that another friend from high school decided to get pregnant on her own via sperm donation.  It’s enough to make a 37-year-old woman wonder: am I supposed to be putting having a baby as my top priority right now?  And if I’m not, why am I not?  I have a house, and I make a reasonable amount of money: do I want to have a kid on my own?  And if I don’t want to have a kid on my own, why am I not more activist in my approach to dating right now, in the service of getting partnered up, if I want to have a biological child?  What do I “really” want?  Or am I just “forgetful”?

I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything, and that’s probably part of my problem, when it comes to babies.  I can’t forget the sacrifices that babies entail, and I can’t forget the fact that doing it by oneself is really motherfucking hard.  And I can’t forget that if one isn’t really more committed to parenting than to any and all other things that one isn’t going to do a proper job of it.  (This isn’t to say that people who choose to parent can’t have other commitments in addition, but rather that other commitments always have to come second to the demands of keeping a tiny human alive and helping the tiny human thrive.  It’s one thing to knit a blanket for a tiny baby or to talk to a little kid in line at the grocery store or on a plane or even to love a friend’s kid and to be a great auntie-figure  – another thing entirely to take responsibility for another human being.)

So I asked myself just this past week, “Self, what if you were to have a kid on your own?  Do you want to do that?”  And do you know what my response to myself was, without any hesitation?  “If I did that right now then I wouldn’t be able to write my book.  And I have to write this book.  The thing I want most right now is to write this book.”

Apparently, right at this moment, I want to have a second book more than I want to have a baby.  I want to have a book more than I want to date like it’s a second job, and I want to have a book more than I want to have a “good enough” relationship that might produce a baby.  (Note: I’m just talking about myself here – my own desire to have that second book written and published.)

The thing is, even having said all of that, I really do want to have a kid.  The problem is that right at this moment, I want other stuff, other stuff that would be a hell of a lot harder if I had a kid in tow.  And I’m no dummy – I do realize that I might miss my chance at a theoretical (since I’ve got no plan and no partner) biological baby by being so all-consumed with this book project right now.  I haven’t “forgotten” that there’s an expiration date on my ovaries.  It’s just… I’m a person, in addition to being a potential mother.  And as a person, I want some things for myself, still.  I’m not (yet?) in a place where a baby is the only thing I have left to do.  I’m not sure that I’ll ever be in that place. A baby is not the only thing that I have left to want.  Even if I “really” want one.

At a certain point, a woman has to acknowledge that if she’s gotten to her late 30s without having had a kid that this was a decision, or a set of decisions, that she made.  It’s a hell of a lot easier to get knocked up (assuming no medical complications) than it is to get a Ph.D., to get a tenure-track job, to publish a book with a 4/4 load, even to buy a house as a single woman.  I really do believe that if motherhood were a priority for me, that this would have happened by now.

And will I have regrets if I don’t have a kid?  Yeah, I probably will.  Just like I regret not going to law school, or not being in a rock band, or not taking art in high school (which yes, I actually do regret that).  I regret not learning French for real as opposed to pretending to have learned French on the basis of my Latin, and I regret some of the people that I’ve dated, and I regret not having worked harder to make certain romantic relationships work out. Like I regret not having had a stronger relationship with my father in the years before he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

But whatever happens in my life in between now and the end of the reproductive line, I am actually confident that I’d rather never have a baby than resent a baby for getting in the way of this book.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t “really” want to have a baby.  It just means that I’m realistic about the fact that now is not the right time, even if that means the right time never comes.  I’m a person, and I have love in my life.  That’s true, and that will be true, regardless of what happens on the baby front.

It’s not about “forgetting” to have a baby, and it’s not about not “really” wanting one.  It’s about the fact that I want many things, that I am many things.  And maybe a kid will happen and maybe it won’t.  But if it doesn’t, my life will still be really great.  I will still be a woman. I’ll still be a person.  Reproductive choice for women isn’t only about  freedom from having a kid (the right to legal, safe abortion) nor is it only or also about the freedom to have a kid with the aid of technology (egg-freezing, sperm donation, other reproductive technologies).  If we see it that way, women are still defined through and by reproduction.  Reproductive choice, for me, should result in a world in which women are people outside of their reproductive refusal or potential.  Reproductive choice should mean that I don’t have to be either a “mother” or “child-free.”  Setting it up that way means that I’m still only the sum total of my uterus – whether I’ve “chosen” to use my uterus to house a human or whether I’ve “chosen” (or by virtue of health issues had to) to keep my uterus empty.

No woman should need to announce her womanhood, her personhood, either by having a kid or by asserting her “choice” in not having a kid.  At the end of the day, a woman’s personhood shouldn’t have a thing in the world to do with her reproductive organs. That, for me, should be the point of reproductive choice.  Not that I have the freedom to have an abortion or I have the freedom to freeze my eggs.  Seriously, are those the only options for a person who is also a woman?  I’m sorry, but I want more than that.

 

 

 

What a Difference a Weekend Makes

So this is my first actual weekend since before Christmas.  I mean, I suppose I sort of had the New Year’s weekend free – i.e., I didn’t have plans or anything – but since I was scrambling to get ready for MLA and since I was scrambling to get all my start of the semester shit done and since I was recovering from Christmas… yeah, it wasn’t really a full-on weekend.  And then there was MLA with no recovery time before the semester’s start, and then last weekend I had two social things which basically ruined any sort of time for relaxing (because while socializing is great, it means there isn’t really time for resting or laying around when one has four different preps and when all the most new-ish stuff is front-loaded – wisely, but still – at the beginning of the semester).  So this weekend, though I did hang out with CC on Thursday, I have had absolutely nothing Friday through Monday.  This is a Good Thing.  Friday, I won’t lie, I did nothing but rest.  Yesterday, I spent the day reading for my grad class, and then I spent the night watching crap movies and finishing a baby blanket I’ve been knitting for a friend.  (It came out great, except for a wonky bit in one spot that I couldn’t be bothered to fix, but I figure that is not that big of a deal.)  Today, I got up, talked to J., talked to my parents, and now I’ve embarked on cleaning my house from top to bottom.  On the one hand, I feel sort of guilty that I’m not doing stuff related to work.  On the other, it’s really hard to work productively when your pigsty of a house is stressing you out.  And I figure I can get stuff done for my classes while watching tv once darkness falls.

But so anyway, that’s what’s going on with me.  I’m just trying to be a human being and get my shit together.  Ok, off to return to the cleaning.

Because the Tragedy of the 12-Hour Tuesday Is That One Is Both Fried and Too Keyed Up to Sleep or Relax

Oh, my darling readers.  I apologize.  Right now.  For the fact that I will probably post every Tuesday night while I try to unwind from my truly and objectively insane Tuesday schedule.  See, it turns out that as much as I’m yawning and exhausted, I can’t just collapse into bed.  For my head is too filled with all the things.

And yet, because my head is too filled with all the things, I can’t really get it up to do any sort of actual post with a topic or anything.  I’m just going to have to tell you about the day.  So let me give you permission now to skip these posts if you don’t want to hear the ramblings of an exhausted lady who is sipping on some wine.

Today was, in my humble estimation, an excellent teaching day.  In part, this is because I’m so terrified of my Tuesdays that I am doing a rockstar job with prepping.  (I make no promises about what will happen when it comes time to grade student work.)  In an equal part, this is because I am so excited about everything that I’m teaching.  It turns out that when I’m really excited about the classes, I can suck up the schedule.  Not that I intend to do this particular schedule ever again, but for what it’s worth, the classes do at least to some extent make it worthwhile.  And the students definitely do.

So my day began at about quarter after five because I had some reading to finish this morning before I went in.  And I was rewarded!  See, The Today Show, which seems to have as its raison d’etre to proffer offensive and stupid segments, had an interview with Paula Deen about the SHOCKING! fact that she has Type-2 Diabetes.  WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN???  Well, on the surface what it means is that she has made this part of her brand, that she’ll now be shilling for a pharmaceutical company and that her sons will be doing a show on the Food Network that is all about doing “lighter” and “healthy” versions of Paula’s famous recipes, and that she and her sons are now doing a Type-2 Diabetes “support” website, so that she has “something to put on the table” for her “friends” in the audience, “hope,” the thing that she’s always offered.  Suffering from agoraphobia, now the Type-2, blah.  Um.  Whatever, that’s fine.  But what was totally mesmerizing was the fact that they had Gastric-Bypass Al Roker do the interview with her, and she kept talking about how she’s “always” eaten in moderation and that people have to be “responsible” about the food that they consume and how as she said those things the images on the screen were of her gleefully frying things, dumping pounds of butter into pans, and frosting a gigantic cake.  Visual rhetoric anyone?!?!  And also, the awesome way in which she created a binary between “healthy eating” and “wonderful, yummy, Southern food”!  It was like I was visited by a composition angel, a composition angel that gave me a big fat fried doughnut sandwich with a fried egg, some sausage, and some bacon as the filling.  I couldn’t have invented this as an exercise for talking about denotative and connotative meanings if I’d tried!  And also the shaming!  And the equation of things that are “bad” with pleasure and “good” with abstinence!  All.  The. Things!!!!!  And then we began talking about the novel that we’re doing.  Truly, it was an inspired comp class.  And also, my students: only day two and they’re talking!  And interested!  And animated!  In a class that they don’t want to take!  HUZZAH!!!!!

Fast forward 10 minutes and I began teaching Infamous 18th Century Pornographic Novel in my next class.  Again with the smart and interested and invested students!  Animated discussion!  Awesome insights!  And I even lectured a bit in ways that were productive!  What is literature?  What is high culture vs. low culture?  What is the history of the novel?  Why does it all matter?  Are we offended?  Why/why not?  Why are we reading this smut in the first place?  Let me expertly put your comments together, for I am an expert!  At the end of the class, Delightful Quiet Student (for yes, she shall be known as DQS from this point forward, as I’ve had her before and I feel like there will be more about her and she is so smart but so shy, only now that she’s had me before she talked on the second day instead of waiting until like week 9 – and said such great things!) came up after class to tell me something entirely unrelated, and that was great because last year at this time, she would never have trusted me enough to say something that was off-topic – or even something that was on-topic – after class.  All in all, I have such high hopes for this class!

Fast forward another 10 minutes and I’m in the undergrad required theory course.  And they were a little quiet at first.  Huh.  That was weird, after my morning of animation and whatever, but not surprising, really, as the reading today was the first “real” reading of theory.  So I began to walk them through it, and everybody except for that kid with those funky earrings that make giant holes in your ears in the back was animated!  excited!  intrigued!  Even the girl who was texting at first stopped and started taking notes!

And so then I had my 5-hour-ish “break” in which time I had to prep for the grad class.  Which involved writing a presentation and handout so that I could demonstrate for them what they should do.  And then I went into class, and to my surprise – AMAZING!  Great discussion!  At a couple of points it went a little… passionate… but now I know who will do that.  And I reined it in, and I did that connecting the dots thing again!  Because I’m a professor!  Who knows her shit!  Even with really fucking complicated theory that she had to reread like a maniac in order to give a presentation on it because she’d not read it since graduate school when she slammed it on that syllabus!

So the long and the short of it is this: it really matters to teach stuff that you’re passionate about to students who are engaged.  But also: I think that I’m being a better teacher this semester precisely because I’ve made a conscious decision that this matters more than the university politics crap.  If I’m going to phone it in, it shouldn’t be on teaching, even though I have more control over teaching than over any other thing that I do.  And further, I think that my commitment to not phoning it in on research matters as well, as the research totally makes the good teaching possible.  I need to phone it in on service.  Because, in all reality, nobody fucking gives a shit if I’m an exemplary servant.

At the end of the day, it’s the students who matter.  And I can’t do my best job for them if I don’t do my best teaching, or if I don’t do the research that qualifies me to be their best teacher.  It’s really quite simple.  Funny how I didn’t realize that until I got smacked in the face with how much I wasn’t valued for the service that I was doing.

On Tracking (or Failing to Track)

I tried to start getting in the swing of tracking workload this past week, as well as back in the swing of WW.  Now, this was sort of stupid, as my week was all nutso because it was the first week back, I was trying to get back in the right timezone, I had stupid work-related social events that involved food and drink…. So anyway, I’m going to try to get back in the swing of things this week for real.

Some observations from my less-than-successful tracking week last week: 1) At least for the first month of the semester, I’m going to be spending at least 40 hours a week on teaching.  The problem is reading.  Reading takes time.  And while it might seem like reading isn’t “work,” the kind of reading you have to do to prepare to teach a bunch of people who may or may not have done the reading is, in fact work – i.e., not terribly fun or relaxing or restful.  2) The major problem with food tracking is having food in single-serving sizes that I’ve already calculated the points for, i.e., cooking at least one major meal ahead to get me through those days of the week when I’m a nutso.  Given the fact that I didn’t return from MLA until like 11 PM on the eve of the semester, that just didn’t happen last week.  3) I did get some research reading done last week in spite of the challenges, but no writing.  This week I’ve got to do better.  4) I’ve also got to get better about remembering to track the work.  Food is easier as I’m eating much less of the time, and I don’t do as much multitasking while eating.  With work, I’m doing it more often and I’m doing other crap while I’m also working more often.  Maybe the trick to workload management is not to multitask quite so much?  Something to ponder.

On that note, let’s begin the second of 15 brutal Tuesdays.  And yes, I plan to count down like this all semester, because it does help to see that I’m getting closer to being finished with this terrible schedule.

This Deserves Its Own Post : Literature vs. Theory

In response to my last post, CPP left a comment asking: “Can you explain what the difference is between “literature” and “theory”?”

Aw, CPP.  You have no idea what a can of worms you’ve just opened.  Where to begin?

Ok, let me start with the most basic, and practical, distinction.*  Basically, I think that most people would regard “literature” as an imaginative, creative work, often narrative in nature (tells a story), or lyric in nature (imagistic, evokes a particular feeling, with an aesthetic attention to language).  In contrast,people tend to regard theory as philosophical, argumentative.

Now, there are huge problems with the above.  Some theory is literary in its orientation – i.e., who could say that Cixous is not literary? – or that literature is theoretical in its orientation – i.e., Ulysses theorizes itself.  And further: one might argue that all language is discursive, that it might have theoretical and/or literary implications based on its situation (or situatedness, for look at me, I can rock the jargon).

Basically, these questions – What is theory?  What is literature? – I would argue are the questions of the discipline of English throughout the 20th century.  And I’m not sure that there is, actually, a simple answer, or even any one answer at all.

I can talk to you about the differences in teaching the two, though.  When I teach literature, I attend to the story above all else.  (This, in part, has to do that I am primarily a specialist in fiction and narrative/narratology).  It’s all about the text, and the story that the text tells.)  In contrast, when I teach theory, it’s all about how to read – how to decipher the code, how to find a map for understanding in the text.  In other words, theory for me is a gateway drug – it’s a way into the literature.  In contrast, literature is the heroin.  I think that this might be the difference between philosophers and literary critics, between people who “do” philosophy and people who “do” theory: a theory is always in reference to something else – it’s always about trying to figure something else – the “real” thing – out, whereas philosophy stands alone in a more pure way.

But having said all of that, people in my field in literature (especially) often argue that there is no “literature of my period” without theory, and vice versa.  Basically, if you work on what I work on, there is this sense (partly because my field emerges simultaneously with the emergence of theory) that theory is literature, and vice versa.  That the two are inextricable.

So that brings me back to my own plain language.  When I read literature – say, Virginia Woolf – on a dreary January day, I lose myself in the story, and I am transported, and I forget myself.  Regardless of the deep business that is going on, the deep truth.  When I read theory – say, Maurice Blanchot – on a dreary January day, I want to kill myself, because I understand that there is no truth, there is no reality, and any gesture toward believing in truth that I might feel is always already a mystification.

The theory might help me to find a new way into the literary text, and it might give me a new map for understanding.  But at the end of the day, theory, for me isn’t truth, and it isn’t the heart of the matter.  It’s a tool.  In contrast, literature might give me a new way of seeing the world, and it might change my entire perspective on what it means to understand, but it doesn’t give me a pattern or a map.  It just “is.”  (And yes, I have been reading Blanchot.  What.)

 

 

 

*Note, I’m being basic and practical.  Not precise or sophisticated or deliberate.  This matters.

One Down, Fourteen More to Go

My Tuesdays are motherfucking murder this semester.

My schedule is this: Arrive at campus at 9 AM.  Teach three classes back to back to back with no break.  Half hour for lunch.  Three hours of office hours.  One hour for dinner and prep.  Teach for three more hours.

On the plus side, I’m stoked about my classes, and I think that the order of them is good.  I begin the day with comp, which is a good way to start the day because it’s so student-centered and so not me-centered.  And I like the theme of my comp class this time (food – who doesn’t have something to say about food-related topics?) and I’ve got a student who followed me to this class from another gen ed who is just… a character.  In a good way.  And I’m happy to teach this student again.  I might need to convince this student to minor in English, actually.  And after some negotiating, I’m happy with the classroom situation for that class.  (But actually, more on the classroom situation after I talk a bit about the classes.)

After comp, I teach my one lit class of the semester, which is really the lit course I’m most proud of developing since I started working here.  It’s not that I don’t love the other lit courses I teach – I do – but this one is my baby.  And it’s filled with smut!  Huzzah!  And I’ve got a few “frequent flyers” in that class, too – one who followed me from gen ed, two who followed me from the intro to the major, and one who followed me from another upper-level class.  On the one hand these students are excited about the topic of the course – which is awesome – but also, they’re excited about me as a teacher.  Nothing makes a classroom dynamic better right off the bat than having a few students who already trust you and who already know that they can expect to learn something from you and have a good time doing it.  That sort of enthusiasm is contagious – just as it’s opposite is contagious in a class that gets off on the wrong foot.

Then I teach the theory survey for the undergrad majors.  It’s going to kick their ass, and they will likely hate me for about the first six weeks, but I’m good at teaching theory.  I’m good at making it accessible.  And I’m good at kicking ass.  And it’s not like I didn’t warn them.  I told them about the student who wrote me that letter last spring who said she thought I was the biggest bitch for making her do the theory – really do it.  And then who thanked me for it.  So they can’t say they don’t know what they are getting into.

This then leads into the night class, a grad theory class.  See above about my talent for teaching theory.  I hope I don’t sound like an asshole for tooting my own horn about this, but I’m actually really proud of myself that I’ve learned how to do this.  Teaching theory requires a whole other set of skills from the other teaching that I do, and I’ve put a lot of work into thinking through my theory courses and figuring out how hard I can push my students without pushing them over the edge.  And I’m really proud of the fact that I trust my students to do the work that I set for them, as I think (not to be unkind, but this is a sort of bitchy thing to say) that historically in my department instructors in theory courses have aimed low, assuming that students can’t or won’t do the work.

So I’m stoked about my courses, even though I’m going to be a zombie by semester’s end with this grueling schedule.  (Thursday is nearly as bad – only difference is that in exchange for the night class I have committee work in the afternoon.)  Now, the good news is that I don’t teach on Wednesday.  And I’ve set up my schedule (like, my posted schedule on my office door) to note that I will be doing “off-campus research” on Wednesdays and so I won’t be in.  (Welcome to Workwatchers, motherfuckers).  I’ve also set it up so that I have stated “research time” on my door on Monday and Friday afternoons.  Mondays and Fridays I’ll be flexible if necessary, but it would take an apocalypse for me to go to campus on Wednesdays after the 12-hour Tuesdays.  I think that’s entirely reasonable.

Now, the one thing that was a pain in the ass related to teaching was my classroom assignment for my three back-to-back day classes.  Originally, I’d been scheduled to be in the same room for all three of my day classes.  The same stupid room.  Why stupid, you ask?  Well, because it was too small for any of those three courses, all of which are maxed out in terms of enrollment.  I discovered there was a problem with the middle course at the end of last semester, when I realized that I couldn’t admit a student to the course, even though there was ostensibly a free space, because the fire marshal wouldn’t allow the room to have that one more student.  So I got that room changed at the end of fall semester, which screwed up the “three classes back to back in the same room” thing.  And then, my comp class didn’t make its enrollment (total fluke) so I was switched into another full section that was supposed to be for a part-timer, in another building.  That wasn’t that big of a deal, except the room was a computer room, and the layout was such that it would be impossible for me to have my students interact in the way that I need them to interact.  (Look, I know that some comp instructors like to have a computer classroom, would kill for it.  But I don’t like for technology to mediate the way that I teach writing.  I think writing is about conversation – not about staring at a screen.  I think technology gets in the way of good and easy writing.  I know that this makes me an old-fashioned ninny.  Whatever.  It’s my way.)  So I asked for a change from that room.  And then I first saw that original room, the one in which I was supposed to be teaching all of my maxed out classes, this afternoon, for my last class.  Did I note that this class was maxed out (at 25)?  And there were only 18 chairs.  And only desks for 18 students.  Um.  So, happily, by the end of the day, all of my classrooms were switched to adequate space, and while in different rooms, all in the same building.  I am pleased.

Now, what annoys me though is the fact that I attract motherfucking students.  My courses fill up.  When they don’t, it is either a fluke (that comp class was a bizarre thing), or it’s because I’m teaching a brand new course without any word-of-mouth (like what happened to me last spring with an upper-level course).  WHY would they put me in a room for three freaking classes that only sits 18 students?  Especially when we are now in a world of SCH/FTE targets so that we are penalized if we don’t have butts in seats?  Give me a room to seat the students who enroll, dammit!

And yet, I refuse to enroll students in my courses over the stated cap (except for when I don’t).  I felt like a bit of a jerk today when I told some students that I wouldn’t sign them in to my lit course, but then I thought, um, you don’t need this particular course!  There are many, many lit courses that have seats (even if they are adequately enrolled, and some are under-enrolled).  You know what?  No, I’m not willing to increase my workload when colleagues of mine are barely pulling their weight.  Not with the way that I push my students (and myself).  Fuck that.

Now, that said, I did do some things with my syllabi to be kinder to myself, given the workload issues that I face.  I have eliminated small graded assignments from my comp courses, which I know is shortchanging my students, as I really do believe that those small graded assignments that lead up to major papers are important to teaching the writing process.  But the reality is that I can’t be a superlative teacher of comp, and a superlative teacher of literature, and a superlative teacher of undergraduate-level theory, and a superlative teacher of graduate-level theory.  And I organized the assignments in my lit course and my comp course so that I don’t have anything major coming in after week 13.  (They have some small things at the end, but I’ve switched both so that I’m not slammed come finals time.)  I’ve eliminated a journal assignment from the undergrad theory course (though this will probably hurt them).  Basically, I cut some corners, as an experiment, because I know now that my workload is my responsibility (according to my administrators) and they would rather I shut up and cut some corners than go at full speed and be filled with rage and complaints.  I think I’ve accepted that I teach a 4/4 load and not a 2/2 load.  But it makes me sad, because my students really deserve better than that and need better than that, even if they are at – and maybe especially because they are at – a regional university.

The only other bullshit thing with teaching is that apparently the university bookstore has yet to procure the books for one of my courses – even though I placed the order in November.  This is only a problem for a small handful of students who must get their books from them because of financial aid.  But it is totally, and completely, unacceptable.  Fuck corporate fucking university bookstores with crappy fucking records.  Fuck them.

Ok, on that note, I need to end this post and collapse into a pile of goo onto my couch.  Tuesdays are motherfucking murder.

In Which I Have Survived the MLA Convention for Yet Another Year

Ok, so now I’m on a computer and not on my phone, and I can actually write a real post.  I’ve got 2/4 syllabi totally done, and I have a third in a good place for tomorrow, and the final one I can get totally finalized before the course meets tomorrow night.  (Yes, it’s true: my schedule for the spring has me doing a 12-hour day on Tuesdays, and an 8-hour day on Thursdays.  In other words, I’ll teach four classes every Tuesday, plus hold office hours, and teach three classes every Thursday, plus doing a major service commitment on Thursdays as well.  Oh yes, I am sucking off the public teat.  Especially what with the fact that I’ll have research and meetings on the off days as well.  AWESOME!  But this is not a complaining or rage-filled post, so enough of that.)

So MLA.  I had a good MLA.  The highlights involved catching up with friends (and other friends who are non-bloggy), going to great panels (I wish we could link to precise panels, but this is apparently not something that the MLA has worked out yet, at least not as easily google-able), throwing off the chains of being president of an allied organization (and I will be the first to say that I wasn’t a very good president, but I did the best I could, and I think my successor will be awesome, and I have every intention of being a really supportive former president, and this is just yet one more piece of evidence in my arsenal to prove that I’m really great as a leader if I’m not freaking in charge, because I really suck at being in charge in spite of the fact that I seem like I’d be good at it, in that I have no abilities as an administrator of anything).

So, there were two highlights for me at this MLA.  One professional, and one ridiculous.

Let’s start with the ridiculous one first.  So my stupid favorite thing that happened to me at this MLA was that at a party I always go to, but at which my usual suspects weren’t in attendance, I ended up in a little group of grad student peeps.  And they were all exchanging their vitals – where do you go, when will you be done with your diss – and then they turned to me.  And I had to confess that I am an old lady.  An old lady who has published her book, who got a tenure-track job, who earned tenure.  But they thought that I was one of them!  I don’t look like an old lady!  Huzzah!  And on top of that, I’m evidence that the things that they most want are possible!  I know it’s stupid that this felt good – both because I was like “I don’t look old enough not to be a grad student!” (which how lame is that?!) but also because, well, I’m not a grad student (which is mean for me to feel that, but that is honest).  Whatever the case, that’s my ridiculous highlight.

My professional highlight is that there is interest in my book.  In the most abstract way, there is interest in my book from my friends, my colleagues – my people are interested in the work that I’m doing.  Regardless of the fact that I’m not working at some elite institution.  I’m doing interesting work.  I have interesting ideas.  But in a less abstract way, I’ve got interest from a good press.  Interest enough that they don’t want sample chapters – they’ve seen the proposal and they’ve met with me, and they want the manuscript to review when I’m ready to submit it.  No contract – they are good enough that they just don’t hand out contracts with a proposal – but that interest… that interest is such a big deal.  That editor might have just said he wasn’t interested in the proposal at all.  But the editor was really and truly interested, and really and truly invested in the project enough to read the whole thing, even though the whole thing isn’t there yet, you know?

So Contingent Cassandra asked in her last comment about the chatting up the editor business in her comment to my last post.  I’m  no expert on this.  At all.  With my first book, I ended up with a publisher pretty much by accident.  I’d organized and chaired an MLA panel, and the editor contacted me to ask whether I had an essay collection in mind (I didn’t) and I said, “oh, but I am working on my monograph” and it all just happened from there.  With this second book, I felt like I should be more deliberate, but even still I don’t know that I hawked my wares in the most effective way.  I knew that this editor knew my work (from an edited collection in which I’d had an essay), and when I felt it was time to start thinking about finding a home for the project, I wrote him an email somewhere around the end of November, the beginning of December.  I reminded the editor of the thing the editor knew of mine, and I talked about the book.  But I didn’t actually expect anything to come of that email.  Honestly, I sent it because of institutional politics in which I felt like I wasn’t valued, and I was sort of like, “well, why NOT put the message in the bottle?  Why NOT try for something that might matter, even though everybody thinks that nothing I do is worth anything?”  I sent that email to the editor because I was pissed off and because I had nothing to lose.  I’m not sure that’s a map for how anybody else should proceed.

So?  The protocol for meeting with editors, as far as I know, is that you contact them 4-6 weeks prior to MLA and you set up an appointment.  When they agree to the appointment, you send them the proposal.  I’ve heard you can just wander around with your book proposal at the exhibit, and confront editors with it.  I have  never done that.

At the end of the day, I don’t know that there is a particular “way” in which to make a book happen.  And further, I don’t even know that if a book happens that it is one’s own book or a good book.  I’m not even sure, even though I’ve published one, what a “book” actually is.  What I know is this: the ideas that I’m having right now are interesting and important to other people.  I need to write those out in order for them to make a difference, or, even if they don’t make a difference, in order for me to have a conversation about things I care about.

Oof.

My head hurts and I might still be drunk. But it was a good mla. And apparently I really need to finish my book because people are interested in it. Like people who would publish it. More when I am back in the proper time zone and the semester is underway

MLA, Here I Come!

Well, I’m feeling a lot more positive than I was this morning, although I do still have miles to go before I sleep and then leave for the airport at 6:15 tomorrow morning.  It turns out that deciding that I’m just not going to worry about having my syllabi/assignments all done and ready to go prior to leaving has taken the weight of the world off my shoulders.  Yes, this might mean that my students don’t get a syllabus until the second or third class of the semester.  (This will happen if something goes wrong with my flight back… Otherwise I think I’ll have them all ready to go by Tuesday.)  I hate the idea of this.  And yes, I think it’s bad teaching.  But you know what?  Let the chips fall where they may!  The MLA doesn’t care about this problem, and nor do I!

(Except I really do care and I have every intention of at the very least getting the syllabi finalized on Monday and up on Blackboard, even if not copied.  I’d estimate that I’m 90% of the way done with two of them, about 65% done with the third, and totally screwed on the fourth – though partly for reasons having nothing to do with the MLA convention.  The one with which I’m in the worst shape is for my comp class, though, and that’s actually ok because I do know what I’m doing with them in the first week, and I am confident that I can have a syllabus for them by a week from tomorrow, which is still before the drop/add period is over.)

That said, I did get all of the other things I really super needed to get done that were work-related done this afternoon, including the hilarious thing of confirming my schedule for Fall as well as having a conversation that might change that schedule – though that won’t happen unless and until I have an in-person conversation with my chair, assistant chair, and dgs.

So now I need to get my remaining pre-travel tasks done, including casting on some plane-appropriate knitting.  Perhaps I shall post during MLA, though I suspect not.  Until next week!