Lounging on my Laurels

Apparently, along with tenure comes lots and lots of requests to observe other people's courses. This completely makes sense to me; the number of senior faculty members that I trusted to write observations for me---which go in the big binder from hell---were few and far between. So this is not the kind of request where I even think about saying no.

Observing other good teachers is, on the one hand, a delightful experience. It gives you something of a student's eye view to the classroom. It can show you how your own content and pedagogy connect with your colleagues. It can make you privy to a whole different side of your colleagues--even the ones you thought you knew pretty well. And, for me, it can make me realize how lazy I've become as a teacher.

There are certain things, I think, that have prevented me from getting hit in the face with the consequences of my own laziness. For the most part, students tend to not hate my classes. I suppose I'm relatively entertaining, and the classes are pretty interactive. And I'll stand by this til I die: letting students know that you actually give a crap about what they think goes a long, long way.

So, without any mutinies or absolutely horrendous classroom experiences, I haven't really been all that attuned to how totally boring I've become. But going to other people's classes sure have. One of my colleagues has convinced students to do some marvelous multi-media projects. In spite of the griping and moaning that they did while they were working, the final projects were great fun, and they were all aglow about everything that they had learned. In another colleague's class, the students had developed these terrific patterns of interaction with each other; it was just a great conversation to watch.

Visiting other classes reminded me going to class with a list of passages and depending on my conversational skilz to tie everything together is just not really enough. In general, "enough" isn't really enough. What am I doing to get excited about the text? What am I doing to get them excited about it? What should I be doing to engage those who aren't already hooked, and what am I doing to push those who are? I fear that this is the kind of habit that creeps up on you, particularly when there are no checks in place (hello, no post-tenure review!!). And I wish, in some ways, that my students were harder to please (not in the Marcia sense, but in the "we're not willing to settle for "you're not sadistic or insulting so we love you!"). But in the absence of these external motivations, I'm going to have to muster up my own.

Registration is upon us, and I'm watching my courses fill pretty quickly, but this is a reminder to myself to do better by those students. Let's see what I can do to be a more engaged, and engaging teacher.

[And a quick note to myself? The theme for the post-tenure year is clearly "self-motivation."]

Project Panic

This morning I got one of those charming, emails from Amazon.com, in which they show me books that I never knew existed but that I of course want to buy. I want to buy them and all of their little friends that everyone else who bought the book bought. I am a capitalist pig of the first order, and I buy to live.

It didn't help me to notice, however, that said book treads dangerously close to matter that I worked on in the diss, as does one of the other recommended books. In fact, both are put out by the same publisher that reviewed my manuscript. [At some point, I need to write up that delightful little experience, wherein the reviewers couldn't agree, and the editor asked what kind of revisions I'd be willing to do. I was so befuddled and frazzled by my job that I didn't respond for 7 months. The moral of this story? Don't send shit out until you're ready...]

Last spring, I started to panic about publications, as the loud ticking of the tenure clock finally registered in my ears. It's not that we need a tremendous amount of publications here, but there's enough agita involved with the entire process that I wanted to have my bases covered. Unconsciously, I think my strategy was this: it doesn't matter what you publish, as long as you do it.

At that point, I had failed to follow up on the manuscript review for the diss, and I had also turned down the offer for a monograph on a particular writer on whom I had once been very keen, but had not worked on in years. In retrospect, I don't know if all of this sounds like career suicide, but it seemed right at the time. Devoting myself to writing a book that I wasn't really invested in, when I already have to nail my feet to the floor to get writing done, seemed like an exercise in despair.

So, I've been concentrating over the past year to get stuff done and out, in whatever way I can. This has meant working on some insane projects---a collaborative piece with a group of people from a previous institition on a book that makes me batty; a collaborative piece with my colleague in a field that's not really mine, although it touches it; and upcoming---a piece that moves in a direction I'd like to shift my research, but one that's new to me, and with a press that I'm not particularly sure about.

Somehow, all of this has worked in my favor. Wonder of wonders, it looks like a respectable press is going to put out that first piece (I think there was bribery or blackmail involved. Seriously, it's the weirdest shit ever.); Gawd willing and the creek don't rise, the second piece has been accepted by a decent journal, pending peer review; and the third, assuming I can finish it, has been accepted and should wend its way through the publishing machine next year.

While I'm now sufficiently set for the local requirements, it does leave me with a bizarre CV. There's no central theme, no particular evidence of a consistent line of research or thought, except that "gee, she knows a bunch of people." It's no wonder that the diss has lost its place in line, and its not something I'm willing to go back to at this point, as it feels so removed from me and my current thinking. But what exactly IS my current thinking?

I think it's time for me to find a new project---one that's indicative of the kind of work that I've been doing, and that I'd like to build the next stage of my career on. I'd like it to take into account the kinds of interpretative work that I most enjoy and do best, I'd like it to have stakes that I think are relevant, and I'd like it to reference and resonate with the stuff that I've been reading and I think matters in the field.

Having said all that...I have no idea what that project is. I've spent so much time making sure that I have publications on the docket in time for tenure application that I haven't cared so much about what I actually want to do. In ways that I had never intended, I've pushed my deep-seated intellectual singularity to the background in order to foreground the immediate, the marketable, the do-able in a short amount of time. If this year's theme is completion, then it might be time to complete that cycle and move on to remembering how to find what it is that most excites me, even if it's slow in coming.

Girl in the Bubble

So, I did it. Finally finally. Two hours ago, I sent off the draft of my article, complete with a short abstract and a bio. We won't mention the morning of trolling the web, looking at the other way of citing secondary sources. What's up with those people, by the way? Why on earth is it so important to put the year?

Anyway. The point of this is that I feel like the dirty, stinking, rotting carcass of an albatross has finally fallen off. After worrying about this article since the New Year, spending two days a week working on it for the last three months, having sweaty, panicked dreams about not finishing it, the mofo has been submitted. Praise Jeebus, hallelujah.

It's not that I don't have another deadline looming (hello, unwritten conference paper to be delivered in 3 days). It's not that I don't owe my students papers that have gone weeks ungraded, or tips about how to take an upcoming exam, or comments on their journals. No, all of that is still there. But the overwhelming relief of having this thing off and gone has overwhelmed my finely-tuned, over-active freak out complex. That's how strong it is! If I knew it felt this good, I would have written articles years ago!!

In my conscious mind, I know that the bubble is paper thin, but I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. Completion, she is an cruel taskmistress. Cruel, but fair.

Post-Parental Visit Post

My mother, who arrived at 1 a.m. on Jan 2, just got on a plane in Urbania to return to the city of neon. I think I can say that this is the first time that I've hosted my mother in my own house. What a way to start the year!

I believe that I've blogged about Mom before, but I'm too lazy to go and find it. The skinny is that my parents divorced when I was 7 or so, and Mom and I spent my formative years together as a unit. Because of that, we've developed a (probably unhealthy) attachment to one another; only her retirement job and my increased work load have interrupted our usual two phone call a week habits. Because this is the first time Senor F. and I haven't gone home for the holidays, she graciously (with much cajoling and trepidation on her part) agreed to come east for the New Year. It's been bitterly cold here for the first week of the year, and my poor mother--born in a tropical state--survived it with hardly a whimper. It surprises me not at all that she is a great guest, willing to do whatever kind of crap has to be done (case in point: the first day she was here, I had to go and fix the iced lock on Senor's car---he couldn't get the door to close and had to go to a meeting). She somehow managed to do all of this with much better humor than I, and then took me to lunch and the mall. (If you ever wondered where my eating/shopping habits come from, look no further).

This was a great way to begin the year, because it serves as an object lesson about the delights of generosity. My mother is really ridiculous in what she wants to give. You know the old "fighting over the bill" routine? She's got it down to a science. I've begun to think of it as a shtick that we perform for waiters, grocery store check out people, sales people at the Sephora. In the height of the "no, I'll get it!" lunacy, she raced to the door of the gas station, trying to pay the attendant before I could swipe my car. While I have to fight her tooth and nail to pay for things, it's also useful for me to remember that she wants to give us stuff (whether it be food or experiences or durable goods); it's an act that she associates with my grandparents when they came to visit her. I think she sees it as one of the acts that will solidify her role as elder, which she's all too willing to take on.

Since she's both speedy and has a grip much akin to the Kung-Fu G.I Joe one of old (play the game here!), my job is to find things she'd enjoy and doesn't get to do at home, e.g., locate new restaurants at which my step-father would never eat; take her to museums, figure out when her television shows are on, schedule a hair cut, etc. I know it doesn't sound like much, but my mother lives for other people. A lot. And so to give her the chance to do something she normally wouldn't allow herself the time to do is not a small act, I think. So while it's not monetary, this is my form of reciprocal generosity.

So in addition to the as yet unnamed year ahead [FrenchieFoo suggests "moderation" crossed with "fulfillment." Modfillment? Fulleration? Oooh, I like the second one!!], I think I'll try to focus on how to be creatively generous. And not just to my mother. Although she's not to be excluded!!

Hello, 2008.

Holy crap, 2008. When I was a kid, we took a class field trip to the airport in hometown of neon, because it was about to be renovated. The final finishing date? 2000. I remember thinking "whoa. 2000. It will never be the year 2000!" And yet here we are, 8 years past. With that in mind, I suppose it's time for me to think about resolutions, no?

I don't have to read back over every blog post to know that the past year has been crazy. Too many projects, responsibilities, altercations; too much whinging and panic and rage and resentment. Looking at my bank account, there was also too much impulse buying. Gauging from my firmly ensconced spare tire, I'd say there was too much eating of crap, as well. Do we sense a theme here? Ah yes: apparently 2007 was the year of excess.

So, I'd like 2008 to be the year of restraint. That's not quite the word I'm looking for, as it implies holding back. What's the word that means existing in the middle---neither deprived nor glutted? Is it "measured"? [I just couldn't go with 2008 being "the year of being measured." shudder.] I'll come up with a vocabulary term for it. But here's what I'm thinking: I have a tendency to swing toward extremes and at the drop of a hat. It's part of my magpie syndrome, I think, which generally consists of this mindset: "Oooh! Look over there! Sparkly! fly great distance to see said thing, find out that it is indeed lovely, but then... "oooh! Look over THERE! Shiny!" lather, rinse, repeat. This might explain how I've managed to teach something like 24 new courses in 5 years, and how I've managed to do far less writing than I ever imagined I would. It's hard to get articles written when you keep changing your field.

Magpie syndrome is also abetted by a deep and abiding love for self-punishment, which I began trying to manage at the end of the year (see here). As in: you're not allowed to leave the house until you grade papers. 48 hours later, I'm still in my pajamas, have graded 0 papers, and have not left the house all weekend. [One of the things that happens in that 48 hours? Internet shopping. Five hours, for example, spent trying to find the perfect sweater online to match a skirt that I never wear.]

The element that holds magpie syndrome, self-punishment and online shopping together, it seems to me, is excess. (Let's not call it obsessive compulsive behavior, shall we? It's so pathological. But I do need to wash my hands.) So my theme for the year is to try to temper the excess. Does that make my theme for the year "temperance"? Like some sort of early suffragist? It's so terribly unappealing, that word. And it's not what I mean at all. What do I mean, exactly?

I want the year in which I learn to enjoy the feeling of delving deeply into things (hear that, inner magpie? Peck past the shiny!); to wring out the joy before moving on to something else. To choose projects and commitments wisely, so as to be able to engage in them fully. To do more with less. To create an economy/perpetual motion machine of energy and good will and good work. All of this, I think, is generated out of fullness, not out of a need to conserve.

Bust open those vocabularies, dear readers, and give me a theme for 2008!