Today I did nothing. I did not read books for the MA exam, not even the lovely Norton anthology of theory and criticism that arrived in the mail. I did not lesson plan for my students. I did not print my course documents, or even take the five minutes of time to put them online.

There's no excuse for this kind of behaviour. In less than a week I will be molding young minds. Well, perhaps trying to surprise young minds. I'm more of a disturber than a molder. And how can I properly disturb them if I'm spending my time relaxing?

Sadly, I can't muster up any credible level of shame tonight. It must be one of those emotions that requires effort. And, as already stated, I am doing nothing today. Except the dishes. I did those, because the line must be drawn somewhere.

Tomorrow I will rise early, go to the mandatory faculty meeting, and look professional. At some point I hope to finish reading Robinson Crusoe. How is it that a book can contain so many shipwrecks and so much dullness simultaneously. Along those lines, I want to put Defoe and Burroughs in a room and have them talk about racism - both for amusement and edification.

Next week I will be busy. Tonight . . . I'm going to bed early.

It's Almost Time

In a week I will have forty new students staring at me with their (around) eighty eyes as they (ostensibly) prepare to use their (hopefully) forty brains. In other news, people use parentheses relatively infrequently and I'm worried they feel shunned.

I've adjusted back to life in Milwaukee. My course documents are nearly completed and I've begun lesson planning for the first unit. Having taught the course before is proving very helpful. I know what I've done before, what I liked about it, and what I want to change. Right now, the major challenge is switching from teaching MWF to a longer TTh class period. Next week I'm sure there will be a different challenge.

TAO is in full swing. As an experienced TA, I have a small group to whom I am responsible for explaining a unit of RC1 - otherwise known as the class I taught only once and which I do not plan to teach again. It's an amusing situation, but I am being paid so I went back through my records, reviewed  what I did with the unit, and talked about it with my small group.

Studying for the MA exam has gone well during the week I haven't been in school. I need to remember to study for it during the semester as well. Focus.

End of year reflection

Buckle up, peeps, this is one of those looking back posts. It's been a year since I moved to Milwaukee to start grad school and a lot has happened.

Grad school is a very different type of lizard than undergrad. Now's when everyone is nodding, rolling their eyes, and generally being unimpressed by that observation. It's not an especially deep one, but it is deeply true. And it's true in ways that make it difficult to explain the differences. The atmosphere is different. People are here because they want to be, not because college is the socially expected next step in their life. The work is different. The expectations are different. The interactions are different. It's competitive. At Marquette, the competition is not vindictive or unpleasant, but it is there. A challenge a day keeps ennui away. 

Professionally, it's been a fairly decent year. I was accepted to three conferences, one of which I attended, one of which I declined, and one of which is coming up in November. It's a real, adult conference where people with actual academic careers will be presenting. And me. Exciting and scary.

Friendship. It's not one of the things I have a talent for. It's never been clear to me how one goes about becoming friends with strangers. Somewhere during this last year, I lost one of my best friends. I don't know what happened. There are people in Milwaukee who I consider to be acquaintances. We hang out. For some of them, I know we're halfway through our time together. I can't see us talking once there is geographic distance. Right now, we're brought together by locale and grad program, but that will change. And once that changes, there will be little we're left with. You can't be close friends with people who believe that your beliefs are only held by idiots. You both walk away with bruises.

Dear readers, don't think my friendships this year have been all doom and gloom. I've met a couple of new people with whom I think I will be friends. My wonderful old friends have stuck by me, even in my times of poor communication.

Moving to a new city in a new state was a big deal for me. I love my family and being near them. Geographically, Milwaukee is not that far away. But it was all brand new and stuffed with strangers. In the past year, I've found some good points - the lake, frozen custard, the grid layout (helpfully keeping me from getting terribly lost). It's been good for me to be here even though I know I don't want to stay forever.

Teaching has become more than just an idea. I have a teaching philosophy - something I could only imagine before. I've had students cry in my office, be angry with me, submit terrible reviews of my teaching. I've also had students drop by randomly just to say hello, thank me for working with them on their papers, and tell me that mine was their favourite class. I've learned that students' feelings are not what I need to use to evaluate my teaching.

This semester, I'll have forty new students. I'll also be a mentor to a new TA to whom I have not yet been introduced. How well that goes will depend a lot on her and what she wants, but also on how me and what I can tell her. Embarking on a new year of teaching, a year with experience, fills me with trepidatious delight.

There are a lot of terrible moments from the last year that I don't want to dwell on and that I'm sure you don't really want to either. It's important to learn from the bad but I don't want to live there. Learn; move on.

I have one more year to finish my MA. There are seven months before the exam to determine if I will receive the degree. Studying is a thing. Last night I finished Middlemarch. I think I will eventually like it better than I do right now. Currently my impressions of the book are far too coloured by the lengthy process of trying to read it alongside my summer semester coursework for me to evaluate it fairly. That being said, George Eliot could have told that story in significantly fewer pages. I'm off to read Tess of the D'Urbervilles now.

“Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”

Summer Finals

 The summer semester ended with two consecutive exams, both of which I proctored. It's odd to proctor an exam that you are taking. My attention became divided between the process of taking the exams and the responsibilities of proctoring. I needed to track the time, answer questions, and make sure the atmosphere remained test-appropriate (this is otherwise known as poking my head out the door and shushing people in the hallway). It was a weird experience. Also, I'm pretty sure now that the undergrad class figured out that I was a grad student hiding in their midst.

The most interesting thing was that, once I was placed in a position of even slight authority (proctors don't have much), they immediately assumed that I knew far more than I did. They wanted to know if their papers were graded yet and when they would get them back. Obviously not something I know about. I know you need to use the chart on page two to answer the question on page seven. What the professor has done with OUR papers is beyond my scope. 

I survived the summer semester. This weekend is the one during which I hoped to be back at Barakel. No car put a definite crimp in that plan. I am spending the weekend alone in Milwaukee. I will finally finish reading Middlemarch (otherwise known as "why is this book so long?")

On being an English Major

I'm know I've mentioned before on this blog the inevitability of having one's life as an English major continually called into question.

Relatives look worried, refuse to believe that it's a thing, and continue to talk about what you'll actually do when you grow up.  Everyone, even complete strangers, immediately senses that it must never have occurred to you that majoring in English (despite the many studies demonstrating otherwise) is a poor career decision that dooms you to a lifetime of living in a garret eating porridge. It is now their right to inform you of the errors of your choice and persuade you to follow a path more conducive to the earning of wealth and privilege and a life like theirs. It's a constant sussuration of doubt that builds in steady intervals into an inner crescendo of disquiet.

I am not doubt-free. But my doubts are never doubts about being an English major in the same way that others doubt the decision to be an English major. Mostly my doubts are about not being good enough. I've written before on why it isn't the "easy" major that everyone assumes it is. If it is for you, then you're doing it wrong.
Or I'm an idiot. 
See, that's a doubt.

It's all a question of what's important. I am never going to be rich. I may never own a house, or anything more care-intensive than a garden gnome. Although, they can be surprisingly fragile.

I'm not saying you're wrong to choose not to be an English major. Part of becoming an adult is deciding what's important to you and what you are willing to sacrifice for.

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”   -- C. S. Lewis

 

This post brought to you by an article that caused me to think: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Ideal-English-Major/140553/