On Writing a Par-Boiled Blog

So I realized today that it is somewhere near my TENTH blogiversary. That’s right, readers, Dr. Crazy has been at this whole blogging thing for ten years just about now. I don’t recall the actual date (for I’ve changed locations 2 times since the first version, and I can’t be bothered to figure out the actual date), just that I started at some point in July (during the Republican Convention I think?  I know there was convention blogging, in part about a bizarre fixation I had on Tucker Carlson at that time, and I surely was seeing a fellow whom I named “Stupid Freud”) of 2004, assuming that I would quit almost immediately.  But I didn’t quit.  I still haven’t quit.  Weird, huh?

Lots of people from when I started are now gone, or mostly gone.  Indeed, a lot of those people from the very early days are now my facebook friends and that is how I keep in touch with them. But along the way new people have found their way here, too.  I don’t look at stats at all anymore, because I guess I don’t need to know that people are reading?  And/or I’m not paranoid about who is reading? And I am totally open now about claiming the blog as something that I write, in a way that I surely wasn’t in early days.  How I figure it now is that most everybody in the world knows who I “really” am, and that is really ok.

Although, to be fair, I did learn from BFF that she met a person at a conference who was talking about my blog and who didn’t know who I was, so I suppose there are still some people out there for whom Dr. Crazy is a mystery.  Why have I never gone public for real?  Well, a couple of things.  First, I think people like a Dr. Crazy being out there, and I think it would change things for them if I explicitly outed myself.  As Dr. Crazy, I can be an “everywoman” of sorts. Second, I do think that it would change the way that I write and the kinds of things that I write about if this site were the first thing that came up with googling my real-life name. I’m not saying I’ll never reveal my real-life identity in an explicit way, but I suppose I’m not sure what the value of that would be for this space, at least not right now. I have never seen my blogging as a professional vehicle – in fact, what I loved about it was that it WASN’T a line on the cv – and I really am not interested in seeing it as that. So who knows what the future holds, but this is it, for the time being.  If you’re dying to know who I am in real life I’ll tell you, and if you find out who I am I don’t actually care.  But I think there is value in the “character” of Dr. Crazy, as it were.

But so once upon a time, Michael Berube (and I can’t be bothered to do the accent marks properly, because I am lazy, but he is delightful and generous so I know he won’t judge me) wrote a blog post about my very first Dr. Crazy incarnation, in which he described my blog as “raw.”  And, well, looking back, that blog WAS raw.  I was a newly minted Ph.D. and I was only a year into a tenure-track gig (and I only defended my dissertation a week before my contract started for that job).  And blogging was this new and uncharted territory way back in 2004, and lotsa people were writing “raw” blogs, and I ended up blogging on a whim and the whole point, or so I saw it at the time, was to confess the TRUTHS of what it was to be an assistant professor, and the TRUTHS of feeling alienated and at sea in a new place, and oh, who the fuck knows, but that was what I was doing.  And then somebody threatened to out me, and I decided that I should acknowledge that threat and yet not acquiesce to it but yet move to a different space to signal that I would be slightly less raw.  And then I earned tenure and was on sabbatical and thought that I needed to move to yet another space to acknowledge that transition.  And so here I am now.

And what I realize is this: I no longer write a “raw” blog.  That said, I don’t think it’s fully cooked either.  I think that I give a par-boiled representation of things these days.  I still care about personal writing, about authentic and not-for-publication, not-for-reputation writing, but the reality is that since I’ve earned tenure I know a lot more, and I have a lot more to say, but I also feel much more limited in what I can say authentically on a blog.  Tenure does not give you license to say anything anywhere anytime. It gives you the privilege to fight certain battles, and it gives you the authority to do certain things at your institution.  But, frankly, it also gave me a lot more information than I had before, and a lot of that information is stuff I can’t just bitch about on a blog.  In some ways, I am much more careful about what I say on-blog post-tenure.  And in some ways, I actually think that this is the right thing.  I’m not sure that I believe anymore in the whole CONFESSING THE TRUTHS thing.  I realize now that what I think is true is a fuck of a lot more contingent and that there are things I certainly don’t know.

That said, I still try, in this space, to TELL the truth, if not to confess it or to preach it.  If that makes sense.

So yeah, I am considering this my blogiversary post, even though it might be early or late from the actual date. And I hope that this blog is still entertaining for people, or helpful to people, or whatever, even though I recognize that I am kind of a shitty blogger these days, in terms of frequency and even in terms of the interest-level of my posts.  And also that I recognize that only Comrade Physioproffe is interested in my golf-blogging 🙂 (By the way: we finally used the drivers today, and while it is not my best skill, as long as I manage not to have anybody watching me and I don’t actually allow myself to think I do ok.)

Ten fucking years, people.  How is that even possible?!?!

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Oh, and Zizek the Plagiarist

Did he plagiarize? YES.

Should he be called out for plagiarizing? YES. (And all of us teachers can use this as a great example when we talk about plagiarism with our students, which for me is the only productive takeaway from this.)

Am I going to be a Zizek apologist on this one? NO.

But I will admit that what is most interesting to me about this whole “scandal” is that I suspect that a lot of this sort of thing goes on in academic journals, particularly when we’re talking about reviews, which don’t really “count” as publications.  If we went through every review in every academic journal, and if we scrutinized each and every one, I feel like (and no, I don’t have evidence, for this is a feeling) we would find a lot of language that is repeated without attribution, not because that is ok (for it is NOT) but rather because of sloppy scholarship and, frankly, sloppy work on the part of editors.  Honestly, in this case I wondered whether the blog that originally published the language that Zizek used actually got that language from a third source, The Source of It All.

 

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What’s Great about Golf

So I am taking some golf lessons, with my pal T who is awesome. So part of what’s great is that she’s great, and we are great and fun, and whatever.  BUT, my initial thoughts:

1. Everybody always talks about how they suck at golf, so it’s totally ok to suck at golf.
2. It is one of the few sports that encourages driving around (a) and drinking alcohol while playing (b)
3. OUTFITS!  SKORTS! HUZZAH!

Thoughts after my first of 5 lessons about why it’s great:

1. It’s like knitting.  It’s all about teaching your body to have sense memories of things that don’t come naturally.  I just need to mentally convince my body to do the things, and then to do them without thinking about them in my head, and it will HAPPEN.
2. I am far ahead of the game of the D00dz in the class, who have to unlearn all of their bad habits.  I may suck, but I am not doing it wrong.  I have nothing to unlearn because I don’t know anything!
3. I am really good at following directions that have no reasonable rationale, and I have exceptional persistence.
4. I don’t care at all if I look dumb if it gets the desired results.

So our teacher, Miles, tells us that people care most about hitting the ball farther and about being consistent in the way that they hit the ball. I don’t care about these things.  What I care about is having fun with my lady friends and about outmatching The Dude when we go golfing (which we shall, for he loves golf, and we pretend to be friends).  All I want is to have fun with my laydeez and to beat The Dude’s ass into the ground.  These are not lofty goals.

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Home, and Wondering Why I Am Not Independently Wealthy and Living in Italy

My trip was really and truly wonderful.  As a trip.  Best flying experiences I’ve ever had (on “full flights” I sat with no one both to and from Milan!) and, just, Italy!  So good.

Things I discovered on my travels:

1) I know how to cook pasta and risotto perfectly.  I thought this was true, but it’s nice to have it confirmed.

2) Gay Pride celebrations all over the world include the celebration of Lady Gaga.

3) I am never more American or more Catholic than when I am outside of the United States.  Mass at the Duomo in Milan was one of my favorite parts of my trip.

4) In spite of the fact that my hotel was halfway up a mountain, I did love the family that owns and runs it.  (Really, it was more like a B&B than a hotel.)  And the fact that it was halfway up a mountain meant that eating gelato at minimum daily, if not twice daily, was totally something I felt no guilt about.

5) I apparently look far younger than my nearly 40 years!  And it is so nice to be told that! Over and over again!

Other than that, the trip was very productive for work and ideas, even if it wasn’t as super-fun as I might have wished it would be.  This is not a conference I will attend again, unless I have a Very Good Reason.  Just not fun enough.  Which might be why people don’t work as much on the author that this conference celebrated, frankly.  Stuffy sticks in the mud don’t necessarily attract scholarly interest in the things that they like.  Indeed. (Though I did meet some people I really liked a ton… just this is not the “vibe” of the group as a whole.)  Lest you think I am being unfairly judgmental, I will cite as evidence the fact that in nearly every panel and keynote I attended somebody cited F.R. LEAVIS without irony or any sort of qualification.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-f_JFuutmh2ub/bridget_joness_diary_2001_a_regular_day_at_work_part_2/

And so now I am home, and the kitties are grand.  There was a lot of meowing initially, which I believe could be translated along the lines of, “WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN FOR TEN DAYS WE ARE LONELY AND WE DON’T EVEN KNOW THAT YOU ARE COMMITTED TO BEING OUR CARETAKER AND THIS IS TERRIBLE AND LET US TELL YOU ALL OF THE THINGS!!!!!”  Now, they sleep peacefully.

So I’ll write more in the coming days – lots to do between now and mid-August! – but I shall leave you with this gorgeous picture, perhaps the favorite one I took throughout my travels.  Truly, I think that this was the most gorgeous place I’ve ever visited.

 

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An Unprecedented Link to My Bloggy Past

I’ve been Dr. Crazy here on teh internets (how’s that for a throwback?) since 2004.  I’ve inhabited three locations, and I don’t make a habit of linking back to previous virtual incarnations of myself, mainly because my first incarnation was a pretty brutal voice that wasn’t really “me” and my first “Reassigned Time” didn’t really fit my post-tenure self.  But in the wake of the shooting spree on the UCSB campus, I feel a need to take a trip in the way-back machine to 2005.  Apparently I didn’t feel the need to link, as the discussion was so ubiquitous at the time, but in reading the stuff realated to these murders, I immediately called up the memory of the bloggy shitstorm amongst I don’t know, 35 early-career academics, that played out the same arguments.  Here’s what I said then.  I’m sure google can provide you with the rest of the discussion from 2005, if you are so inclined.  And you know what?  Probably that narrative and analysis is as useful as being glued to twitter and comment threads about the current horrifying murders.

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Not My Story to Tell, Really

But I want to post about this because there is a part of it that is mine, and I can’t tell it without giving a summary of the one that isn’t mine, if that makes sense.

Summary: BES is leaving her PhD program in order to pursue a life outside of academe.

She’s not leaving because she wasn’t excelling (she was).  She’s leaving because she has other things she wants to do. And because it made her miserable.

***

 

So here is where it becomes my story.  She told me about this decision a couple of weeks ago, and the deed was already done before she told me about it.  I think that she was freaked out about telling me – more freaked out, obviously, than she was about telling her mentors in her grad program.

How did I initially react?  Well, initially I just reacted as a friend, I think.  I wanted to know if she felt good about the decision, and I wanted to know that she felt happy.  After the fact, I admit that I did wonder at what motivated her to do it, and I had some uncharitable thoughts related to her being afraid to write her dissertation.  But those were brief.  Don’t take this the wrong way when I say it: I didn’t and don’t actually  care that she decided the profession wasn’t for her.

At no point in relation to this news have I felt like this is some sort of tragedy.  I don’t feel like the profession is in dire straits because she decided it wasn’t for her, nor do I feel like I have in some way failed, nor do I feel that she betrayed me or or that I have something to be angry or sad about about it or something.  I hate the thing that I feel is pervasive in academia where mentors feel like they are in some way the architect of their students’ lives, whether the students “succeed” or “fail” at academia, or just decide neutrally to opt out.  I feel like that is narcissistic bullshit, at the end of the day.  And I hate the idea that my value as a person or an intellectual or a professional should be measured by whether I make copies of myself and send them off into the (academic) world. I won’t lie: I’m a little wistful because the future of MLA conventions together that I’d envisioned won’t happen now, but I’m not disappointed in her, nor do I feel like her decision has a thing in the world, really, to do with me.

What was kind of funny about our follow-up convo last night was that she noted that her emotions about her decision were most dramatic about her undergrad profs (including but not limited to me) but that she was fine about telling her grad faculty, since they’d always been at such a distance from her.  I noted a couple of things in response: 1) I wondered if she’d had more of a connection with her grad profs if she would have made the same decision and 2) probably one shouldn’t feel that connection with profs in grad school, and that it was probably good that she was making HER decision rather than emulating people that she admired.

So why am I writing this post?  Mainly because I want some grad student out there who really doesn’t want this life, but who feels obligated for whatever reason, to know not only that it’s totally ok not to want it but also that acting on that feeling won’t make everybody in the world, plus the mentors that you most value, hate you.  At the end of the day, the point is living the life you want.  And better not to waste years pursuing that degree plus hours in therapy to get a PhD you don’t want.

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I Know: I’m a Lame Blogger These Days

So the thing of it is, this semester has been… intense.  For lots of reasons.  As my last post indicated, there’s been a fair amount of department drama, which has the appearance of having calmed down but which has totally not calmed down, but that isn’t the only thing.  We are also in the midst of some massive administrative turnover, arriving at and working out the implementation of a new strategic plan, I’m responsible for getting us to a program assessment plan for the major designed and implemented (which I took on willingly because I’m a masochist and because with my curriculum experience I am very qualified for such a task), I’m teaching four courses (four different preps: a general education literature course, a sophomore-level survey, a junior-level theory course in the core of the major which is effectively half a new prep because the book I used to use went out of print, and an advanced undergrad course that I’ve never taught before), and I’m now on a five-day-a-week schedule for the first time in years (which is wonderful, ultimately, but it also means that I have a lot more consistent face-time with people and so I’m less inclined to write here when I’m done with that).  And also, my personal life has been very… full.  There has been a lot of socializing, with friends, and a lot of dating and its concomitant drama.  It’s not that my life is terrible or anything, but it has been very chaotic.  Lots of dreams about crumbling houses and floods and such other obvious symbolic dream things about being out of control and flailing.

But so I won’t lie: I have wondered over the past months about whether I should just close the blog down. I’ve thought about this for a couple of reasons.  First is the fact that I am not writing here consistently.  I post on Facebook, I actually now have a real-life twitter account, which, sure, I don’t really use consistently, but I could and might, and I’ve returned to actually writing in a journal consistently, which I basically do instead of writing here.  Second, I wonder sometimes about whether I really have anything new to write in this space, what with being a mid-career-style academic these days.  Sometimes it feels like I’m just writing the same damned thing over and over again. (Being in this mid-career space often feels to me like being in the movie Groundhog Day.)

I know that one option to alleviate the above concerns, if I want to continue blogging, would be to transform this blog into a more “public” blog, as opposed to its current incarnation, which is a more “private” one.  I could be more journalistic, comment on “issues of the day.”  I’ve never been attracted to writing that sort of a blog -for even when I write on issues of the day I tend to write about them in a very “private” or personal way.  Part of why I’ve felt this way is because so many of “public” sorts of blogs already exist and do it so well, and partly because that sort of “public” writing doesn’t really interest me very much, as a writer.  So converting to that sort of a public voice really isn’t going to happen with me.  That much I know.

So I want to continue the blog (that much I know, too) even if I’m a shitty blogger who hasn’t been posting much lately.  This July will be my 10-year blogiversary, which is like 50 years in blog terms – and the fact that I’ve maintained the blogging over that long of a stretch makes me feel like I shouldn’t just pack my bags and high-tail it out of here.  I think that I actually do say stuff that people find worth reading, when I do write, whether because they identify with it or because they think I’m a jerk or whatever.And I can imagine that maybe I’ll be energized about this space again sooner or later, even if I’m not energized about it right now.  So no, I don’t think the solution is to relocate or to change the sort of blog I write or even to quit, but I do think that I need to have something happen that energizes me to write more in this space, and I think that something like that must happen sooner or later.

On the horizon, there are some potentially inspiring things.  I am going to Italy for a conference where I don’t really know anybody in June.  And the conference relates to an author that I’ve worked on, but I’ve always been fearful of joining the community related to this author (for a variety of reasons, mainly related to the author himself, who is dead).  CF and I might be writing a textbook together (we have interest from a press) for an “Introduction to English Studies” book, and I am finishing up with my current book project and potentially know what my third book might end up being.

In other news, my students are totally inspiring this semester, and a bunch of them are following me to a course in the fall that I’ve totally revamped, and the course promises to be AWESOME, in no small part because of this core group of students who are already enrolled.

So perhaps once this cruelest month of April is done, I’ll be back here more regularly.  Things look good: one of my two 30-year-old suitors just texted me to inform me that he is leaving town for a job in TX on Saturday, so that will give me a little more free time 🙂

 

 

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It’s Been Forever

Why?

• New strategic plan
• A search for a new dean
• Life (which involves some poor choices, some fun dates, etc.)

So I’m not dead (a) and I shall return in a real way soon (b).

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No, This Isn’t a Stupid Dating Blog

I haven’t been writing about work because things with work are, aside from non-important irritating things, really, really good.  Moving back to the 5-day-a-week schedule has been a revelation.  Turns out, being on a consistent schedule in terms of work and sleep really makes a difference in one’s quality of life.  I’m not saying I’d have this schedule if I taught a 2/2 load, or even a 3/3.  But with a 4/4?  WOW it is good.  CF and I were talking about it today, and even she says she notices the difference in me.  “You don’t look tired anymore,” she said.  No, I don’t.  Why?  Because I’m not!  And also: I am on top of grading and also caught up or ahead with course prep.  And I actually know most of my students’ names. And I don’t wake up in the morning with my first thought being, “God, I wish I didn’t have to teach.”

And I’ve actually returned to my book manuscript, and I have time for that plus time to juggle the dating and to have quality friend time. Sure, the weekends are short.  But as I am caught up, I really get to do no work on the weekends.

So it isn’t that I don’t have anything to say about professing – it’s just that there isn’t drama with work at all right now, and that is pretty fucking great, and I don’t want to just talk about how great my life is here, because seriously.

But so let me briefly report on the professing stuff:

• I have the greatest students this semester, in all of my classes.  They are motivated and smart and engaged.  Yes, it’s true: in my one gen ed class, this is not the case for all of them.  But most of them are into it.  And attendance is really good, and even the least engaged amongst them are learning.
• My theory students are terrified and overworked and feeling like they might die, but I feel like that is just about right for this point in the semester.  They just had their first test, and 2/3 did just fine.  The one third that didn’t?  Well, they either will step it up, withdraw, or fail.  And I’m ok with that.  My favorite moment so far this semester from them was that they took their first test, and I posted the results on blackboard before I handed it back.  I’ve got this one STELLAR student, and he totally came to my office to ask if his grade (he missed only one point – including extra credit) was a typo.  Like he couldn’t believe he’d done so well.  When was the last time you had a student challenge a grade that was over 100%?  It was awesome!
• My new prep is going very well and I’m very pleased with their engagement.  I wonder if they realize the work I do in order to prep for our small class – I read my course evals from last semester and students negatively commented on the fact that I was using a discussion-based model, for they thought that I didn’t have to prepare to make that happen.  Because, you know, it’s so easy to get a good conversation about difficult material going and to make it feel natural.
• And I am loving my survey course partly because I’m teaching it 3 days a week (for like the second time ever) and partly because FUCKING KEATS!  FUCKING MATTHEW ARNOLD! FUCKING ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING!  And Wednesday is FUCKING GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS!  I bitch about the survey a lot, but it gives me the opportunity to teach a lot that I love that I don’t have room for otherwise.
• In non-teaching news, my agenda for program-level assessment for the department progresses apace, and it is going to be great when it all comes together.  Assessment is often a thing that faculty hate to hear mentioned, but I think I’ve made it palatable if not enticing, and people are on board.  And I’m excited that I have the skill to do that, and I’m excited about the potential for the work that I’m doing to positively impact our major and minor.  Because, frankly, I don’t give a shit about the external reasons for us doing this, even though the fact that we are doing it will put us in a good position in relation to those.
• In other non-teaching news, my institution is working out the kinks in our new strategic plan.  All in all, I think that the new strategic plan is good.  But I would adore it if I never had to hear the word “transdisciplinary” again.  Especially because most of the people involved don’t know what the fuck it means.

See what I mean?  I don’t really have anything of note to report.  Which is why I’m busy being boy-crazy on this here blog.  But really the most exciting thing for me upcoming is that I will be going with my friends T and S to see Lydia Loveless, whom you must check out, for she is awesome.

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RBOC: Things

I cannot help myself from listening to Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse” every time I hear it on the radio, and since they play it on every station at approximately 22 minute intervals this is a lot, and I mainly can’t stop myself from listening because it makes no sense.  I am especially perplexed by the chorus.  The whole “play with magic” thing sounds just slightly too close to “play with matches,” which would make more sense in terms of what the song actually (appears) to be about.  And then the boy should know what he’s “falling for,” which doesn’t sound like somebody who is playing with anything but rather like somebody who is accidentally doing something. And then she is “coming at you like a dark horse” which also makes no sense, because the whole point of somebody being a dark horse is that they aren’t “coming at you” but rather they are mysterious and take you by surprise, although she is directly saying, “watch out, motherfucker.”  And then, finally, “are you ready for a perfect storm” seems to have nothing to do with dark horses or the dude who is playing with magic. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?  And yet the song is so catchy!  I also can be counted on to turn the song off the minute it gets to the rap interlude, which is awful, and incorporates both “Jeffrey Dahmer” and the rapper saying “she can be my Sleeping Beauty/ I’m gonna put her in a coma,” which, WTF?
I am utterly and totally exhausted.  It was a crazy weekend, which involved lots of wine on Friday night that then turned into unexpected drama in which one of my friends (we were having the wine and eating junk food and watching chick flicks) decided to snatch my phone from me and to freak out on The Dude – with whom, incidentally, things have been fine and friendly and I’ve been dating other people and so has he, so this really was quite surprising to us both; a long conversation with The Dude on Saturday which was necessitated in part by Friday’s drama but also just we had a lot of topics we wanted to cover, none of which had to do with “us” (such as we are) in any direct way, and then hanging out with The Dude and The Dude’s friends yesterday, which was fun and drama-free.  No, we’re not back together.  No, we are not even in talks about being back together. We are trying to be friends, and we’re trying to be in the moment and not to put any pressure on the situation.  It’s kind of like Fight Club: the first rule of our whatever-it-is is that you don’t talk about it.  It is not totally like Fight Club, though, in that there is no beating the shit out of each other (not physically, obvi, but not emotionally either).
The Blacksmith…. well, some of his more irritating qualities are emerging – mainly that he is a person who complains – a LOT – about all of his PROBLEMS.  I am fairly certain that he is just one of Those People.  Oh, and we did finally get together, which was fun and fine, but not like the most fun I ever had in my life.  Eh, we shall see.
Things proceed apace with my Major Service Project, also known as leading our department toward a program-level assessment plan, and at least so far not only are things going smoothly but also it’s kind of enjoyable, actually, to facilitate conversations about Student Learning Outcomes and to see us making consistent progress toward aligning those with the program goals that the department unanimously passed this past fall.  I really like doing this sort of work, actually, because it moves us away from just bitching and toward actual meaningful conversations about teaching and what we want students to learn.
I wish I could talk to you about scholarship, but frankly, between the weather and job candidates and teaching and all of the other things…. well, I have high hopes for March.
I’m also exceptionally excited because a former student of mine – one whom I hadn’t necessarily thought had found my courses all that important to her – has asked me to direct her honors thesis.  She is brilliant and super-cool, so this is a very nice surprise.
I’m also directing a critical theory independent study for a grad student this semester, and it is going so, so well.  She is a very hard worker, and I’m excited to be doing these readings and having bi-weekly conversations with her.
Oh, and I’m teaching a new course this semester all about the history of the novel as a genre, and I am finding it ridiculously stimulating and interesting to teach.  One reason for that is that it is a very small, seminar-style class.  With great students.  And also I’m loving the novels that I’m teaching, and the ways that I’ve integrated theory and criticism into the course.  This is the reason to develop new courses – the excitement that one feels in teaching new, cool shit.
I got my annual activity report done in time, which involved having to review my course evaluations by students from the past year.  I hate looking at course evaluations.  The casual sexism is the main thing that bugs me (this year I am “immature” and “vulgar”, but also: wtf with grad students in English who complain about the amount of reading that they are assigned?  I mean, why are they getting an M.A. in English if they don’t expect to read?  And wtf about students who enroll in a course, and who get the syllabus which clearly explains what the course will involve, and wherein the instructor on the very first day is very explicit about what the course will entail, both in terms of assignments and in terms of the content of the readings, and they choose to remain in the course rather than to switch into another course that might suit their interests or needs better that would also fulfill a requirement, and then 15 weeks in they fill out an evaluation in which they indicate they were sold a false bill of goods?  The silver lining this year is that my evaluations totally confirmed what I knew about my terrible schedule over the past couple of years: I am a shittier teacher when I teach a night course on Monday that doesn’t get out until 9pm and when I have to be back on campus to teach just 12 hours later.  This, at least, will give me evidence that I should never have that fucked up schedule again.  But all in all?  Course evaluations give little to no meaningful feedback about teaching.  It kills me that I am at a supposedly “teaching-centered” institution where that is the only evaluation of my teaching that exists.
Today all of my teaching involved explaining The Sonnet, and talking about a lover separated from the beloved, and “Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments” and “Say over again, and yet once over again,/ that thou dost love me.” On the one hand, teaching score that I basically had to give the same background lecture in two courses.  On the other, sonnets are a motherfucker when you’re trying not to be detached from love feelings.  I mean, seriously.
My hair has officially grown out to the point (from a pixie) that I can now put it in a sad ponytail that I would never wear outside of my house.  This is excessively, if stupidly, satisfying.

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