Another Day, Another Dollar

Well, another week of teaching is done, and tomorrow I will do some stuff around the house and then spend the afternoon on writing.  I’m feeling good.

I feel like this semester and last I’ve hit a kind of stride with the parts of my job that I really like, which let’s note are also the parts that are actually in my job description and that matter for promotion.  Ignoring the fact that it took me 8-9 years to get here, this is a Very Good Thing.  Especially since I got rid of the Major Thankless Service Thing in May, I am feeling amazing.  I hope this is coming through in what I write here, even if every now and again I still offer up my classic “righteous indignation” style posts.  I’m a person who will always have passionate complaints to make, and I’m a person who is going to rant and rave.  But the things that I rant and rave about lately are actually things that aren’t making me miserable.  Indeed, I’ve enjoyed my recent rants, and once I rant I feel better.  That was not true for me for years, especially immediately after going up for tenure, but also pre-tenure.

So today was a really good day.  A few things:

• We are entering the home stretch with Ulysses in my seminar, and my students are stoked – not only just to be done with the damned thing, but to have DONE the DAMNED THING!  They actually have enthusiastically requested that we have a “party” in class the final day, to celebrate what we’ve done together.  Now, part of this is because about half of them have had me in class before and they want the food that they know I’ll likely make – as much as my reputation as a tough professor gets around, so too have I developed my reputation as a cook who makes totally delicious food.  I’ve asked them to email me about food issues, but I’m hoping nobody crosses cabbage off the list because I really feel like Colcannon would be the perfect thing.  (Yes, I know that really Guinness or (motherfucking) Jameson or even Joyce’s drink of choice, gallons of wine, would be most appropriate, but we meet mid-day, and really, they should do that with one another without my knowledge or participation.  I do have some professional standards, even if I did give a lengthy description of fisting and figging – totally related to the text – last week.  Thank you, James Joyce, for the ‘Circe’ episode.)
• I had a good meeting with an excellent senior who is intent on applying to grad school (even after my lengthy speech on the doom and the gloom) and we’ve come up with a good schedule for her plans.
• I have given feedback to an MA student, and she seems undaunted, which is a very good sign indeed: I just hope that she takes the feedback to heart.
• I screened Bride and Prejudice for my Gen Ed students, and they were IN LOVE!
• My little Honors comp students are so fucking good.  I need to ramp up the rigor next semester, because clearly these students are too much for my regular comp rigamarole!
• I got a few more ILL books for my article project/also book.  Now I just need to read them and to incorporate what they say into my scholarship.

Finally, after last night’s debate, I’m going to go into the vault and resurrect a video from 4 years ago.  The PEEB don’t need no Big Bird. “I’m going to be a crypto-zoologist, dad!  AND YOU WON’T THWART ME!”