Do As I Say, Not As I Do

So, before I can even get to something vaguely substantive, can I just say that it's mothercussing HOT up in here?! It's not even 8 a.m., and it's 84 degrees and humid. In the house. Yagh. And this is totally not helping the small but virulent case of poison ivy blisters that I managed to acquire sometime last weekend. Balls. The only thing stopping me from pouring concrete over the entire yard so as never to have to maintain it would be the fact that it would really increase the heat factor. And thus, we've come full circle.

But while I've self-pityingly, with morbid fascination, watching beads of sweat form and roll down my leg while I'm indoors, sitting perfectly still, exerting as little energy as possible, I've also been trying to revise and resubmit this co-authored article that I should have finished last summer. While I was selling our house. And buying a new one. And pissing and moaning about that.

There are several things that are not helping with the r&r (and may I just say, for the record, that there is a brutal irony in the fact that this kind of "r&r" is so antithetical to the other kind of "r&r" which is what I should be doing in the height of the summer?!! ).

• we waited, like assholes, to go back to this article, and thus have to account for all relevant research that's been published since the first time we sent it out, up to and including a major revision of a primary piece that we're critiquing. Crapballs.
• in the course of examining said new research, I've pulled a couple of pieces from the journal that we're revising for. And while the articles are interesting (I guess), they're not world-rocking. There's nothing that I've read thus far that makes me sit up and say: "gee, I never thought of that!! This is totally going to change the way I think about x!"
• the above lack-of-revelation makes me wonder why we're working so damn hard on this revision.
• and then I realize that it's because my writing partner is an evil demon-sprite of revision integrity, in which she believes that anything worth rewriting is worth rewriting right, and thus we've torn this sucker down to it's pegs and started over with the detritus.
• I know that this should make me feel all high and mighty, but instead I keep wondering if we couldn't just make exactly the changes suggested by the editors and be done with the whole thing. A month ago. When we go back in our DeLorean time machine.
• I'm mighty suspicious of journal articles and scholarly publishing in general right now, and that attitude is not making me want to toe the line about academic discourse and formatting, all of which is tedious and necessary for this revision.

Whew. The real biter, however, and the inspiration for the title of this post, is that it's only in these situations when I really realize what it is that I'm asking students to do when they write and revise. Last week, I sat down with a book and two articles that I knew needed to be integrated into the draft of the article. But where did they go? Did I need specific quotes, or did I need to gloss the argument of the pieces and use that to frame my points? In the article that is most closely related to my argument, do I need to dismantle the author's conclusions point by point, or is it enough to explain in a few lines the ways that our studies diverge?

This week, I ran through all of the dreck rough material we pounded out trying to integrate this stuff, and found myself thinking: "good Christ, is there any consistent idea that holds this paragraph together? What is it's relationship to the rest of the section? Why don't we analyze this quote here? This idea is good, but really tangential to the point we're trying to make..."

Sound familiar? So was the feeling of frustration/rage that built up. Only this time, it was aimed at me and my writing partner, not at a 20 year old budding novelist. Hi! My name is kettle---did you have something you wanted to call me?

God willin' and the crick don't rise, we'll send this sucker out by the end of the week, and then hopefully I'll never have to think about it again. But I hope that I'll have some sympathy for my students when I blithely collect the drafts of their papers in the fall.

I'm Number Two! I'm Number Two!

So, I took off to visit the in-laws (which is a story in and of itself, let me tell you). And on the one day that I managed to sneak off and get myself some internet access, I discovered that I was the runner-up for the unexpected job interview I had a few weeks ago. Oh mixed feelings, how I love you! It's been so long!

I didn't say much about that job, as it was both full of promise (involved lots of the kinds of work I love to do and don't get to do as much of as I'd like: brainstorming with faculty; implementing pilot programs; talking about pedagogy; using other people's money to try shit out) and, simultaneously, full of problems (an academic job of sorts, but not at a college; negotiating with the new people and my existing job to bounce between them; expectations that I'd spend a lot more time in the office and on the ground at the new place). It was weird---the details of the new position would have been hellish, and yet I was so absolutely drawn to the idea that I could do the other stuff that it almost seemed as if sorting through them would have been worth it. Finding out that I didn't get it was both a disappointment and a relief.

Disappointment=why don't you love me? and also, to be honest, a little bit of but I was hoping that you'd save me from going back to my real job and the wretched interactions with some of my colleagues!

Relief=I teach two days a week in the fall and I don't have to spend the summer prepping for another job

In addition to these two feelings (which were somewhat expected), I find myself awash in a couple of surprises. The first is an unexpected sense of "if you really wanted that, then I'm glad you didn't pick me." The chair of the committee wrote to let me know that everyone really liked me, but that they ended up going with someone who had a very different academic background than me. It was such a delightful experience to be able to think: "wow, it really has nothing to do with me. If you all wanted that, then I'm not your girl." As I mused on it later, I also found myself thinking that I think they've made a mistake---given the way that they described the position and its role, I think they've chosen someone who can propel the few far, but will leave the many behind----something that's pretty antithetical to the way that I think about my goals as a teacher and as an administrator. In comparison to my experiences on the academic job market, this is a pretty clean and heartening rejection. And it's weird--but hopefully not crazy--to think that I'm not a big loser because I didn't get the job.

The other big surprise, I have to say, is that I think the process may have led me to some thinking about a new project. I'm a bit nervous to say that out loud---I might kill it just by whispering it. But it may be the case that in the day-long, adrenaline-filled rat race of applying for a job, I began to articulate a position that has some potential in it. Maybe. Stay tuned.

While you're waiting, take a look at a golden oldie, and the one that inspired the title for this post (the scene starts around 2:35)

Fantasy Summer

After two years of teaching a summer class that began the week after spring classes finished, I finally declined do a frantic May term class. No May term class, no bizarre faculty workshop in the Midwest. None of it. And thus, my fantasy summer could commence.

The fantasy summer is not exactly the most exotic or radical of fantasies. I don't dream big here. I don't, for example, imagine running wild in a field of wheat in Italy, all Room with a View style. In fact, I said no when my mother suggested renting a villa in Italy this month. (I'm still debating the wisdom of this decision, but every time I consider the vision of being trapped with my parents in the countryside, the "no" seems smarter and smarter.) Nope, none of the big world-traveling fantasies for me. Rather, the fantasy summer has lots of things like: get up and drink coffee leisurely, and then watch Rachel Getting Married on the DVR before 11 a.m. Re-up my subscriptions to Elle, Vogue, and Bazaar and read them all at a local coffee shop every month. Go to weekly guitar lessons. Wander the farmer's market and experiment with complex and very tasty recipes.

As fantasies go, it's not a bad set.

Despite the fact that I'm not teaching during this month, however, there is no fantasy summer in sight. Since the completion of finals, a mere two weeks ago, I have done the following:

• spackled, primed, and painted the downstairs hallway and it's three doors
• spent 28 hours in the big city (including travel time), so that I could see this
• cleaned the house and cooked brunch for eight
• spent a quality 6 hours with the tub refinisher, his toxic chemicals and humming machinery
• clocked approx. 15 hours on the phone with my mother to work through 18 different plans for their last minute trip to visit
• written the first 8 pages of an essay due May 31
• began writing the syllabus for one of my fall classes
• began reading the textbook for another fall class
  

And lest I think that the fantasy summer awaits, the next 6 days require:

• calling and reserving hotel rooms for parents' still undecided travel plans
• grocery shopping and baking for friends
• 36 hours in Green State to cheer on marathoning friends (for the record, this isn't a burden)
• getting oil changed in car for said trip
• getting a hair cut and pants hemmed in preparation for parents' arrival
• changing dentist's appt. because of conflict with parents' arrival
• let's not forget that essay, shall we?

After all that, then the fantasy summer commences? Well, no, then the parents arrive. But after that? Hmm, but then we're into June, and I should really start researching for my fall conference paper, and revising and resubmitting an article. July, perhaps? Doubtful, as I signed on for a short pre-fall semester class, as well as prepping the fall classes.

So, to my non-academic friends on Facebook who say things like: "wow, get ME an academic job so I can have summer break," I say to you, fuck right off.

It is truly bliss to have three full months without being accountable to students--truly, it's the mechanism that allows me to like them come fall. But it suddenly occurs to me that the fantasy summer can only happen if I give up writing and researching, at which point I'd be unaccountable (and I mean that in many ways) to myself. There's a special kind of irony in the idea that, post-tenure, my fantasy summer is further away than ever.

I Be ILLin

To ILL or not to ILL? That is the question, my friends. Does anyone have a reliable litmus test that determines the books that they order from ILL and those that they order from Amazon?

I'm gearing up to write this article---which I think I finally have an angle on, for which I am eternally grateful---but I find, like many projects, that it involves a number of sources that I don't possess, and neither does our library. (To put in a different way: there is a vast and useful library that is made up of everything that our own library does not have.) And so I find myself in a quandary: which do I want to own, and which can I just borrow for two weeks? In the past, I've been pretty loose with this: I like to own my books, dammit. I like to write in them, to have them on hand, and I've never mastered the trick of copying just what I need from a book and then returning it. In fact, when I do that, I have a terrible tendency to return it and then figure out later that I need something else, only to borrow it again.

Thus, in the past, I become a glutton of Amazonia, ordering willy nilly. This has, of course, resulted in books that I use for a particular project and never turn to again. Given the economic downturn, and a concurrent (although seemingly not a cause and effect relation) desire to de-clutter and to use what I have, I'm wary of replicating this pattern. I've bought a few books used, and I've been trying to be good about using ILL for articles, and to try out books before I decide to order them.

But time is short, my friends. I don't have the weeks it takes for ILL to come in, and then to decide whether or not to order a book. Lay it on me: how do you know when a book wants to live with you, and when it wants to live in the library?