presentations

yeah, they didn't happen today.

instead, the professor got around to me and told me to go next time.

that's fine, really. the only thing i was majorly concerned about was losing my voice before it was over, and my voice was really starting to go about halfway through class. i likely wouldn't have made it through ten minutes of talking anyway.

makes me wonder what my class will be like tomorrow.

i'm still sitting at a feverish 102.2, which is enough below 103 that i'm satisfied. and it's still godawful cold everywhere.

i think i'll be able to teach tomorrow, though. i'm going to print out lecture points and have volunteers write on the board. i'll clarify points mostly. i'm pretty sure they'll be good for me. last time, when i was coughing a lot and very quiet when i spoke, they were quiet to match. i'll just not have a quiz tomorrow, because the far reaches might not hear the questions.

ugh.

sadly, my soreness has gathered itself into only a small area, and now my lower back, hips, and pelvis is hurting me. but the rest of me, not counting the head, is feeling much better. stairs up are fine. stairs down hurt the right hip like hell earlier. makes no sense.

well, on to finish the lesson for tomorrow and sleep.

love and peace.

bubble, bubble

seemed like a good title. who knows. it's halloween and all that, after all.

anyway, you know when you take a pot and fill it with water and put it on the stove and then you put, say, some large veggetable in there, or a whole chicken or something. it's a big pot. then you cover it with a tight-fitting lid and turn the heat on beneath.

well the thing will boil eventually, and there will be these moments when the steam is too much and lid sort of pops up to gasp a bit. you know?

my brain is boiling on the stove at the moment. still. and every time i cough the lid pops up and steam shoots out my ears. that kid's song about teapots is deceivingly mild. hear me shout? not so much. feel the throb, maybe.

and i'd like to know why when i'm cold and put on a sweater i immediately get hot and have to take the sweater off. that's not cool. you'd think i was middle-aged or older with behavior like that. i've got a full set of viable eggs in here, and the hot flashes aren't for another couple of decades.

good news:

-i'm almost ready to present tonight, despite the heavy drop in productivity.

-the spaghetti squash still tastes good because my nose is fine. i'm just not particularly hungry. you'd think i could handle a cup or so of squash/ground beef mixture, right? apparently not. maybe a third of it sits forlorn and cooling to the right of me.

-i did finish the banana this morning.

-my voice is still with me, and i have high hopes for tonight's class.

-since i'm so cold, my hands make a nice press for my forehead and neck, without having to keep a damp rag nearby while i work... so no damp papers etc. now that's economical, right?

-i think i slept something like 11 hours last night, and that's *always* good.

keep the good news coming!

love and peace

adventures with spaghetti squash

okay. i'm not a terribly weak person. i can lift more than most girls, and aside from the wrist, can get along pretty well when it comes to sawing motions with knives. the spaghetti squash near killed me. after slicing that sucker open i had to wait a while before scooping out the guts.

but then, that makes a certain amount of sense, really, all things considered. all of today, from waking to napping to now, i've been sore all over and achy-tired like i haven't felt since mono. it actually hurt so much to take a shower with my rag that i ended up running the bar of soap all over because that at least didn't cause any pain.

i wish i could say i expected that. i didn't. given all the coughing on monday, i assumed i'd have a little frog voice today, a runny nose, and probably a bit of a sinus problem. no, no. it's a headache that ibuprofin won't touch, more coughing, and this silly soreness/exhaustion even though i haven't done anything. oh, and a fever that joined me today in the middle of teaching my class. at the moment, the thing's up 102.1, according to my little thermometer. it's still damn cold in here (it's been freezing all day, 70 degree weather be damned) but i can't tell if that is the truth or if it's lying chills.

and of course, all this has had a negative impact on my productivity, which i really can't afford at the moment. but let's look on the bright side:

- no sore throat means i'll probably have my voice tomorrow night for that presentation. 'scues me. those presentations.

- coughing of any kind, but especially of the achy-tired-pounding head variety get me sent from work with fingers crossed before the boss's face. man's a germaphobe like you've never seen.

- i had a good excuse to take a 3 hour nap this afternoon, and am still tired enough to sleep well tonight.

- after all that work, the spaghetti squash is very tasty. i've never had one before, but after a coworker was eating it and didn't wrinkler her nose, i figured it couldn't be all that bad. never mind the strings and all. treat it like its namesake. you know? and i don't have sauce or anything on this mass of crunchy strings. and it's tasty. it had me worried there for a moment when the pumpkin smell was strong, but it pulled through into a delightful meal.

- since this isn't a cold and my nose is working just fine, i can actually taste the squash i labored to prepare.

see? life's just full of good things, even with this silly blip on the health radar. ... now, i don't know how cheerful-despite-illness i'll be feeling if this lasts as long as it's supposed to, or if it gets worse. but for now, there's good healthy food, a couple of really warm fuzzy bedwarmers named festus and charlotte, a freezing cold apt with the thermostat at 72, a bottle of tylenol that doesn't seem to touch my muscles, and what feels like maybe a dozen bruises from sitting on hard surfaces or bumping into jutting corners of wall. which is to say, i'll live.

love and peace.

sadness

my syllabus states that i don't accept late work. papers are turned in at 5 on mondays. the program that receives submitted papers has software that will not permit assignments to be turned in at 5:01.

yet i have three students who have not turned their papers in. it's clearly after the deadline, but i haven't even heard a set of desperate pleas via email.

part of me is very sad that these three students will get zero points for the paper. the rest of me wants to make sure there's nothing absolutely horrific going on in their lives that would prevent their turning in the assignment, like apts on fire, dead family members, car crashes, etc.

i suppose i'll wait and see if they are in class tomorrow. and then kindly remind them of the drop date, should they wish to withdraw. yikes.

actually, i'm a bit upset with my students in general about right now. see, last time we all met for class, the whole class was on giant cough. yawns are contagious, but so is coughing. apparently. it was like they were coughing the wave all around the classroom/stadium. i've had this sore throat i was fighting for about two weeks now, and i've been through two cartons of orange juice and so much vitamin c i'm surprised i'm not orange myself. yet last night the coughing began, and all of today i've been hacking and wheezing. to the point where i'm out of breath after a fit.

those little coughing bastards. how dare they infect their teacher?

ah well. the 30 to 1 ratio of germs doesn't change as the students get older.

love and coughing peace

i'm sporting a large, foot-shaped bruise from where this class continually kicks my ass.

no really. things are supposed to slow down now that we're about half way through, because the class was purposely front-loaded. and yet, here i am, still waiting for sources for an annotative bib due tomorrow at noon.

i'd understand if i'd delayed in requesting these articles and books. i did not delay. it's just that about five libraries have now turned me down. while i obtained about half of my requests, the others are looking distinctly unlikely in the next 15 hours or so.

to top that, the sources i was able to find that did the job for this assignment don't add up to 30. so nearly a third of my sources are fluff and i know them to be fluff. i hate fluff. i'm pretty sure the prof will hate fluff too.

it's just that we don't know much of anything about this book, and therefore, there isn't so much one can write about it. there is only space for so many articles out in publishing land that say 'gosh, we really don't know, but maybe it could have been x?'

so i'll end up turning this in late, i think. it's really the only way i can get a chance at things going well here. and this will be the second time. so that's automatically 10% off the grade. which bites, of course.

but i've resigned myself to a b in this class long since, and i've done fairly well on everything else... except that one where half the class failed and had to redo the assignment. this isn't to say i'm not going to try. i'm working my boot-dented ass off on this class, so it isn't slacking. in fact, this class is the one in my whole schooling where there's been the least procrastination. i get on things right away because everything takes something akin to 3 times longer than i think it will. there's really no time to put stuff off.

which is why it's a tad annoying that things still end up getting finished as the clock ticks nearer and nearer to the deadlines. i mean, doesn't it seem fair that there should be some form of positive reinforcement here? you know, i get on things right away, good things happen, and therefore i'm more likely to repeat that prompt behavior. here, i get on things right away, there's still barely enough time, and once the stress of finishing it is off my shoulders it's time to get on the next thing right away. there's no letup. and no carrot. this class seems to be all stick, and i don't know about other folks, but i need a bit of carrot somewhere.

this week, there's the presentation to give that i had ready last week, and a mini presentation on an article that isn't online yet (so is it really my fault there that it's not done yet?), and a big old lesson on some completely new and utterly challenging learning task.

to be honest, if i'd taken three classes this semester, i'd be a grad school dropout at this point. the beowulf is completely doable. hard, fun, incredibly challenging. i could handle two courses like that, or three. this other one, though... it alone would have been plenty challenge for the semester. one of my classmates is done with coursework save this class. it's kicking his ass too, and it's his only class. so i'm not completely off my rocker here.

in happy news, i've finally managed to get things set up such that i can take a class i've been trying to take for three years. i'm quite thrilled. one really can't graduate without taking a class from one's dissertation director. it's just not right.

and now i'm off to complete entry number 20 on the bib. yikes. i'm down to fluff. maybe those other books and articles will come in. keep fingers crossed.

love and peace.

about sleep schedules

i find myself in an odd situation. somewhat the opposite situation than usual when it comes to sleep.

for this evening's class, we were presenting our editions. for me, this meant impecable screen captures of each and every feature on a loaded dvd-rom, along with notes summarizing all the theory and practice behind Muir's work. i'll admit to having slept monday night instead of working on this thing. i thought it well worth it.

however, in order to get all this done, i did some planning. on a normal week, i'd have slept again tuesday night and spent my wednesday working steadily on this project, only coming up to campus at 4.30. this week, i had a meeting. not a morning meeting, where i could come early, go to the meeting, and go home to do stuff for a significant portion of the day. not a late afternoon meeting, where i could do stuff, come to campuse a bit early and go the meeting before class. right smack in the middle, where it was worthwhile to come early enough to park well, but too late to have a productive time at home.

i did a lot of thinking. so far, i've been giving this strategy a try: when i'm tired and it's after 10.30, i go to bed. i get up early, and i get it done then. when i go to bed at a reasonable hour, the mornings are productive. when i go to bed late, my mornings might as well not exist.

so. i was tired. it had been a long day. more crisis stuff in the IT portion of my job. imagine this. there's a projector high up in the ceiling. it weighs roughly 40 pounds and is screwed into the ceiling by six thumb screws, and locked by a little device i can't put a name to. underneath this projector, there is a table. it could fit probably two and half people before someone (probably that last half of the third person) got crowded off onto the floor. on top of this table is my tall coworker. also on top of this table is a large, chunky, but incredibly unstable mini-podium. on top of the podium, is me. in a long, slim, a-line skirt. with heels.

we spent a long time (a little over an hour and a half) precariously balanced up there, humming that circus ditty as we unscrewed things, balanced heavy equipment, opened equipment, replaced parts, etc. my coworker was tall enough to unscrew the projector. i was just tall enough to hold it up so it didn't fall when the last screw came loose. so imagine me up there on a podium on a table in a narrow skirt and heels holding above my head a 40 pound object which is probably worth more than i am, monetarily speaking.

it was a fun afternoon.

after this afternoon, i went home, showered to get the ceiling tile out of my hair and pores, and ate oatmeal for dinner. then i started working on my project for tonight, and ran out of steam at around 8.

so i went to bed. at 8. i set my alarm for 2 in the morning, and the others for three. this would (and did) ensure that i got up in time to do some damage on this project. i slept well, got up refreshed not as zombified as i'd expected, and worked hard until about 7 when the library opened. went to school. worked in the library (my office, even though i'm all kinds of technological, doesn't play dvdrom, so it was the library, home, or distraction central). had my meeting. worked some more.

got an email. class is cancelled. in all the wee-hour stumbling, i'd forgotten my cell phone at home. when i arrived home at about 5.30, i had a message from the prof wondering if i could salvage class by taping all our presentations. now you see, all that work, and i have something worth presenting. and i could easily have arranged to tape stuff. i can get into every single room in that building, and enough folks were around that i could have made arrangements and not had to sneak. but i only got the message long after class had been cancelled. i felt awful about not being able to help out.

long, long entry cut short: i had every intention of working on beowulf tonight after i did the prep work for my teaching tomorrow. but here it is maybe 8 or so, and i've eaten, prepped for class, called the prof to apologize for not having my phone with me (at some point, i'll be questioning myself on that one, because why should i feel the need to apologize for being unreachable for a single day... that says something about something, probably about our constantly-connected society, but i can't quite get my brain there at the moment)...

point is, i'm just plain exhausted. i only started this post to keep myself awake a few more minutes. if i had given in and gone to bed then, i'd have woken up again at 2. maybe three at the latest. it's the opposite of the sort of problems i normally have with sleep schedules. truly bizarre.

but since it's now closer to 9, i don't feel so bad crawling into bed. i did try the beowulf. the words swam together on the page and it wasn't my glasses perscription. honestly, i've done about all i can today. 2 to 9 isn't a bad day's work at all.

love and peace.

relax and be me time

so far, during my 'break' this weekend, i've gotten the living room back where i like it. there were some boxes that needed moving, and the coffee table was piled high with textbooks and note pads and sticky notes and pens... it's pretty obvious where the majority of my homework gets done.

the bathroom's had a once-over now, too. all the clothes are now in the bedroom, the towels etc got changed out again, various fixtures are clean, etc. and the counter is clear again. i don't know why i had the hair dryer out. i think i experimented with it a month or so ago, decided i still hate the process, and just left it there. i'm honestly not 100% sure why i even own it. in the last 3 years, it's been used fewer than five times. there's no telling, though, when you'll spill wax on the carpet and need the hair dryer for the paper towel trick, or when you'll spill water on your shirt and need to dry it before heading out, or etc.

i've also done a significant load of dishes. my infrequently used dishwasher made the dishes worse, see, and that is why it is used so infrequently. the long period of time between uses enables me to forget why i never really use it. this time, i put a big pink sticky note on the front saying "for drying dishes only." maybe that will help. there is one more significant load left to do, and then the cleaning of countertops, etc. on the other hand, there is only so much dish-washing i can do in a single go-round without inspiring an attitude of "i've done with dishes already, just let them sit until i'm no longer dish-weary." i'll do more later this evening, and then my countertops and stove on monday. spread it out, see?

at some point today, likely around eight at night when it's cool and dark, i'll do two loads of laundry and no more. i have 5.25 in quarters. to wash two loads is now 2.50. to dry them in one big load (which is the way things are intended to be done, not the lazy/cheap way) is 1.00. while i could wash three loads and then try to hang dry most everything afterward due to poor clothing circulation in the dryer, that *is* the lazy/cheap way. so two loads. no more. they can be large if need be (and need will be), but only two nonetheless.

i've seriously considered at several points buying those hooks that screw into the wall or ceiling and a length of thick cotton or twine. maybe screw the hooks into the walls at odd intervals and then loop the rope zigzag fashion... dry clothes in my living room. i've got enough clothespins for it, since i use those instead of twisty-ties for bread and whatnot. at the very least, my sheets and towels could dry that way instead of taking up a dollar that could be drying shirts. jeans and shirts, you see, get all stiff and wrinkly when laid out to dry. with towels and sheets, that wouldn't matter. after a night or bath, it's all the same with those.

it strikes me as odd that when i allow myself the better part of an afternoon to just relax and recover from the prior week, i spend it cleaning. but that's been one of those things i've been meaning to do but can't find more than a small handful of minutes for of late. and the place really needs it.

ah well. i'm off to sort clothes and cook up some fajitas.

love and peace.

survival of the sanest

not sure what that title is doing up there. ignore it or something. poke it with a stick if it gets too close.

obviously, since i'm blogging, i survived my week. let me tell you, that was no mean feat. that crisis is still being brought up in accusatory ways by people not myself. me? i'd rather just forget about it until next time. next time i'm counting it as triple-time, and just smiling my way through it.

this is midterms weekend around here. my students are not going to be happy. we're really laid back and discussion-based in the class, but there's a deceptive amount of work involved. many of them have been deceived. and so next week will not be fun in that arena.

and i'll be doing lots of work in my own classes, again/still, so while part of this weekend (i'm thinking sunday afternoon) will be relax and be me time, i've been working steadily to try to prevent another week like this last one.

ah well. i'm off to walk.

love and peace

hmm

i'm not sure why, but somehow i'm more and more stressed about everything of late. not just class, though that's getting into rough areas. not just silly crises at work. not just the woeful lack of nutritous and tasty food in my fridge. not just any of a number of things.

for some reason, everything seems to be boiling over at once. we had this new school holiday called fall break last friday. what a joke. i had two major assignments due that day, and a meeting to attend. with the assignments turned in, i should be able to breathe for a while, buy more fruit-that-is-not-of-the-apple-species, maybe even get ahead in my courses. again, joke.

instead, everything is just as it was before, only there are new looming assignments. how in the world is this grad school thing a healthy endeavor? i just don't understand. these days, i'm doing all kinds of things to get the stress out of my life. or at least held at bay while i climb the bedsheet-ladder out the back window of graduation.

i have switched my bible-reading to more ... upbeat areas, instead of my favorite woe-ridden prophets. i meditate when i get home to dispell what bad vibes follow me from campus. i don't even turn on this stress-birthed computer except to write assignments and check mail in the morning, which i only do to avoid a nasty surprise emergency on entering the building. i don't even keep chocolate and sweet breads in the apt, so there isn't any curling up with a bag of twix on a bad day. though, let me tell you, twix solves a lot of problems in the short term.

in fact, when i'm particularly upset, i shower, and imagine all that upset getting sucked down the drain with the grime of our dusty environment. i found that cd that made things a wee bit better back when i was taking a full load of summer courses and dealing with mono at the same time. i play it all the time. i walk probably 5 days a week, and more of course from car to building etc. i take stairs. i limit the time i spend working on the class i teach so that it doesn't suck up all my time, though i've got two or three students with grade/attendance/attitude issues that are getting stickier every week. i even picked up a book for fun reading once, though after the second chapter i had to abandon it in favor or all my coursework. i knit still, and only really simple stuff that doesn't involve purls, which hurt my wrist in large numbers.

what am i doing wrong here? i'm more stressed than ever, it seems, and i'm doing all the right things. i cut my blog reading down to a bare minimum, and even still only check them rarely. i ditched several webcomics from my lineup, and no longer read consumerist, because while good info, the constant complaining about the world and economy was getting me down.

maybe i should start going to early services instead of late ones. i don't sleep in anymore these days, so if i shifted that up, it would free another hour or so on my sundays.... hm.

well, i suppose i'll figure it out. in the meantime, i have only just finished assignment one for tomorrow, and it is now time for assignment two. given the amount of time the translations take me, i'll be up all night. these days, after the midnight mark, it's not a decision of how much longer i'll work; it's a decision of whether i'll go to bed immediately or stay awake until the following evening. i can't seem to do small/late nights. i'll be pushing it at midnight.

love, peace, and stress it seems.

PS: the kids love the princess bride. that's the current ray of hope there. all is not lost if there is still that much taste left in the world.

blah

today started on a 'meh' sort of note, and moved on in a 'meh' sort of fashion. it spiked into an appreciative 'ah' when km strolled in the door, and then turned around and plummeted toward the earth trailing billowing clouds of horror and despair.

well, sort of. in any case, no fewer than 3 crises arose, and because the boss man is out of town for the week, we got to field the crisis time. we handled it exactly as we've seen boss man handle it, and got royally chewed out by very high ranking folks. told to stay after five and/or come in on our off days to fix it, etc.

personally, i've got stuff already scheduled for tomorrow, and none of those things on my schedule can/will move over for a dead lamp in a projector. not unless they're willing to pay me overtime. i stayed over an hour late today and that's all they're getting. i'll be in again when i'm scheduled, and at that time, i will deal with whatever still needs doing.

until then, i'm still a full-time student and a part time teacher. there's only so many hours in my day, and i have to allot them wisely or important things don't get done. wise allotting doesn't include tossing time at other people's crises. it also doesn't include worrying over those crises.

and let's be honest here. a piece of equipment in an english building dies. end of the world? no. now if it were a hospital or a nuclear power plant.... yeah. i'd be putting in some serious hours to get that fixed. as it stands, no big deal. teaching with technology is cool. being unable to teach without it... way not cool. it's a tool, not a crutch. come on, guys.

anyway, i was incredibly irritable earlier, and decided not to do anything people-related this evening. cost of cancelling plans: zip. cost of upsetting friends by being a bitch: friends.

and now i'm fine. i'll be upset if i get a morning phone call about a projector, but that'll be it. ah, the little dramas of life.

love and peace.

enough to make me dread halloween

last night was blog-worthy.

apparently, our football team was tremendously successful against its opponents on saturday, and instead of holing up inside the bars until 2 am, people decided to congregate at their homes and booze themselves silly until 2 am.

and for some reason, they all seemed to think my apt was the place to be.

first, there was the woman who knocked on my door at 9:10 pm.

onna: is my cousin here?
mira: i have no company at the moment, and don't even know who you are.
onna: well, he was giving me directions, but as i pulled off of 50th, my phone went dead. he lives here, though.
mira: by 'here' you must mean the apt complex. no one lives here [insert gesture toward my apt] but me.
onna: he drives a white truck, do you know him?
mira: it's late. i don't know you or your cousin, and there are about 7 white trucks in this parking lot. try another door. i'm sorry.

then, there was the misdelivered pizza.

p.boy: uh, you ordered a pizza?
mira: ... no...
p.boy: this is ###, right?
mira: yes, and no pizza was ordered. i'm sorry.
p.boy: must have been your neighbors. [looks to me for confirmation]
mira: look. all i know is that i didn't order a pizza. from the sounds of it, somewhere in this apt complex there are three or four parties going on. try the loudest one first and work your way down.

of course, this wasn't the end of it. another well-meaning person came by to present me with my escaped cat.

catgirl: i think i found your cat. [holds up white cat]
mira: [looks back at living room, where charlotte is on the futon and festus is cowering behind a chair posed to bolt for the safety of the bedroom should the stranger enter the room.] both of my cats are right here. what does the tag say?
catgirl: just ###, and a cell number.
mira: hmm. well, this area has several different apt complexes, so it must be some other ###. did you try the number?
catgirl: uh-uh. i'll go do that. thanks!
mira: good night.

the fourth knocker isn't someone i can blog about much, because it was 11:15 by this time, and i decided not to open the door. s/he was persistant, but gave up when i yelled 'go away, you've got the wrong apt' through the door.

after this one, i gave up on getting any work done at all and just turned the lights out to go to sleep. amazingly, no one bothered me at all after the lights went off. perhaps the lights sent a signal that i was receptive to people coming by to knock on the door late on a saturday night.

all i know is that on halloween, it will be interesting. that's a wendesday, and i'll have class until 9. but also, when i get home, there will be work to do. last halloween, i had the evening free and just kept the lights off while i watched movies. no one came up looking for candy. this time may be different. i'm thinking a note on the door might help: "no candy here."

a close call

a long, long while back, when i was taking a course in feminism, there was a student in the class who no one wanted anything to do with. this student was crass, said stupid, distracting things during discussions, was shallow in regards to the most serious of topics, and was overall the sort of person i at least would never want to encounter alone, whether it was day or night, in an alley, car park, corridor, room, open field, you name it. i actually think there might be some danger in such a meeting. this student always struck me as a potential rapist.

this student wanted to join me and another student on the final project. we'd discussed our topics in the class prior, and we had decided to study genital mutiliation in third world countries. this third student wanted to join us because, and i paraphrase, s/he was really into that, and stuff. i hastily declined his/her offer, saying that we had changed our topic to [insert lots and lots of big theoretical words here]. s/he chose a different group.

i bring this up because i had a similar moment today. the project is a presentation on an electronic scholarly edition of some text or person or other. excitement, especially when the variety of cool stuff to look at is so wide open. there is an even number of students in the class, and we are to pair up or work alone, however we decide. obviously, it will be more work to do this alone. there was a list of readily available editions, and it was generally expected that we would choose one of them.

i've apparently become a medievalist without meaning to. the 19th century stuff wasn't doing it for me, and i asked to do the exeter book. there's this really cool cd-rom edition of it that has the lines in various print editions keyed to the recto and verso of all the leaves, and you can enlarge the manuscript facsimiles, and all sorts of drool-worthy things. my request was granted.

there are now an odd number of students in the class who are available for pairing up. we've got one of those students no one wants to have anything to do with in our class, and s/he decided to join me. this is the student who is only interested in what s/he writes, and is, obviously, not going to be interested in the writings of others for this edition work, especially not old stuff like 19th century. imagine, being forced to present on ambrose bierce. the horror.

fortunately for me, the edition is on cd-rom, so only one person can even look at it at a time. it's pointless to work in pairs on it unless there are either two copies of the edition (there aren't) or the partners trade off working with it. this edition is the baby of one of our faculty. this faculty member might trust me with it (i haven't heard back yet), but will certainly not trust this unknown person. so therefore, if i get my hands on the edition, i will not trust this unknown person either.

you don't get far in life letting people borrow things that you're borrowing when the person you're borrowing from is fearful of any damage. for one, i'd be responsible for anything and everything that happens to the edition, no matter who scratches it or whatever. this sucker's over 200 bucks. like hell it's leaving me once i get it.

all these reasons came to my rescue after i floundered in the first part. see, my first response was an incredulous look. s/he stated that s/he wasn't interested in anything else. i told him/her that in that case s/he would definitely not be interested in the old english. s/he got defensive and said that if i didn't want to work with him/her i should just say so (with the implication being that i was a bad person if i said so). i'm just plain terrible at face to face confrontations. so i'm incredibly thankful that the logistics wouldn't have worked out even if i'd been dying to work with this fellow student.

toward the end of the class, some other partnership became merciful and let him/her into their ranks. sadly, i anticipate their grade dropping by at least a letter because of this. the professor grades group efforts like group efforts. the last person to work with this student failed the assignment.

there is a small part of me that feels sad about it, though. while i seriously doubt this student would have actually enjoyed this project, and while i know, logically, that working with this student would have exposed me to a constant string of complaints about the professor, class, assignment, edition, old english language, anglo-saxon studies in general, and state of affairs at the department level... while i know or strongly suspect these things, i can't help but wonder if this might have been a chance for him/her to see how a creative writer can be interested in something beyond themselves. what if this was the potential turning point where s/he could find an interest, maybe become a medievalist, too?

in the end, though, however sad i feel at the thought of what might have been, i think i made the right decision. not just for the logistic reasons, or because partnering with this student would have been death to my grade. but because it would have been a miserable experience that would have caused undo stress and anxiety, on top of the damage from exposure to that sort of negativity. i am, after all, seeking to attain a more positive outlook myself.

about some things, one must be selfish.

l and p

thoughts on improvement

a short while back, i had a conversation with someone who is sadly a fellow creative writer here. this conversation opened my eyes. see, this cw had interrupted our class to tell the professor that s/he didn't feel s/he should be required to know all this MLA stuff, that if the assignments called for it, the professor should teach it to us, and that in fact, everything in the class was completely useless for his/her purposes in life. as a cw person, s/he shouldn't have to ever write a scholarly article anyway.

first, let me say that i would never consider saying such things to a professor, let alone in class. because it's professional suicide for one, and because s/he is dead wrong for two. i mean, i might think MLA is a nit-picky, obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive system for citations, but it serves its function, and as a part of the scholarly community, i need to abide by it. period. don't waste your breath complaining.

then came all this bitching and moaning about the entire way the program is set up. none of the literature seminars are necessary or helpful, and cw people should be exempted from them. in fact, the writing of scholarly papers 'sucks his/her soul out.' that's a steep statement, there.

and the title of this blog entry starts to enter the equation at this point. i mean, the degree is the way it is. this is what the place expects, and those expectations were clearly explained at the very beginning. it isn't as though this were sprung on him/her and s/he hadn't known what to expect.

it reminded me of someone, in fact. i have often told people that i don't do theory. i don't, really. i hate it. it is stupid and pointless when taken to the extremes that some scholars do. i can write with it if i need to, but i'd prefer to discuss the craft involved in the piece i'm writing about. if it's got to be theory, i try to take it out of the critical theory realm and drag it into popular culture or something more palatable.

the thing is, if this cw person is so miserable here, s/he needs to go elsewhere. this is not an MFA program. it's an MA or PhD program. the emphasis is on scholarship. it is assumed that students will do research and write about literature. in the case of cw people, students will also write literature themselves. it isn't about wanting people to leave if they don't fit in. it's about where s/he will be happier. and it doesn't seem to be here.

so in the end, this little in-class incident only somewhat reminded me of some of the things i've said. after all, at the very first, i was disappointed in the lack of creative writing i'd be allowed to do. they've since doubled the workshop number, so i don't see what his/her problem is. but the real thing that made a difference with me, and i tried to tell him/her this, was that i got interested in something.

i actually really like the old english, no matter how i complain about it. i love the literature. i'm enjoying my research and readings. because it's cool, yes, but also because i can apply those cool craft bits from the OE to my own writing. i hated the nabokov class and every single paper i wrote in there, but the books were fascinating. the neat-o narrative strategies were very interesting to observe and perhaps imitate for a mental exercise one day. classes on religions, authors or genres--anything really--can apply to my writing. at the very least, i can take musty subjects and freshen them up by adding a dose of popular culture studies to them.

find something to enjoy, i told him/her after class. find something that interests you, that you can really dig into. there's something out there that will make the scholarship fun.

sadly, his/her response was that s/he was only interested in his/her own writing. not even other people's writing. just his/her own, the 'stuff i write.' i am, quite simply, ashamed to call this person a creative writer. the rest of us are not like this. anyone who is going to be a writer needs first to be a voracious reader. reading one's own work does not improve that work. there must be outside sources of nurishment. the beligerant qualities of his/her answer to my tip tells me that it's unlikely i'll be required to refer to him/her as a fellow creative writer for long. i have no further comment on this that is bloggable.

i'm not going to make further attempts to widen his/her world view. i've said my piece, and i get a strong feeling that further interaction will only draw me down without the benefit of improving on his/her attitude. hopefully, i can learn something from the encounter myself, and just avoid his/her negativity in the future.

it's been a long day. i'm going home.

love and peace.

For the Sake of Ten: Curving of a Biblical Proportion

my students are apparently terrified of their test today. i have received somewhere between 15 and 20 response cards telling me they're not sure what's on it, don't know how to study for it, don't know how they'll do on it, and would like it very, very much if there was a curve. for the record, i told them the truth. everything we read for class is fair game. everything i've said in class is fair game. everything they've said in class is fair game. everything i've posted online for them is fair game. what will most certainly not be on the test? their discussion posts (i may have to read them all, but they shouldn't have to), the content of their papers (they are not what one would call experts in the matter), the content of the syllabus (i've always hated it when teachers were 'smart' and tested us on the attendance policy or some other such nonesense).

and they are scared. one student said the test was a bunch of busy work, since it would take an english major two hours to finish it, and they're not english majors and only have 80 minutes. another said could i pretty please curve it, because then even if i fail there will be more points in my F.

i'm not actually sure what they're so afraid of. i've given them 60 % of the test to look over. i've told them they may use their copies of the stories and whatever notes they happen to have written there, that they could outline possible responses to each essay and thereby have an idea before entering the room for testing. hell, i told them they could highlight the quotes they want to use for their essays, and they've had since tuesday to look at the essays. what i haven't given them is the other 40 % of the test. it's foolish to give students the short answer, matching, etc. questions before a test.

perhaps their fear is that they won't be able to write the essays in the amount of time given, and that they'll automatically lose lots of points if they don't plan their 80 minutes right. and they may be afraid of the trick questions i said i'd scattered in there. if they actually read and don't just skim over the stories, they won't be able to find a single trick on the test. those questions are only tricky for people who didn't read.

i have not told them yet whether i'd curve the test. i don't know myself, yet. certainly, any question everyone misses (unless it's just blank because they ran out of time) will be waived. that's the sign of a bad question. and if i have no A tests, i will add the same percentage of points to each score until i do have and A test. but i've got some very smart cookies in this class, and i really don't think i'll be able to curve the test more than about 7 points worth without awarding someone or someones over 100 % on it.

as i was walking to campus today, abraham's plea to the lord concerning sodom and gomorrah floated into my head. i saw my students begging me to spare them, to curve the test if all 30 of them failed. then if only 25 of them failed. onward through 20, 15, and down to 10. and each time, i said yes, for the sake of #, i'll curve the test.

is that pompous or merciful of me? i'm having a hard time figuring that out. it's not like i think i'm god here. the story is just particularly applicable about now.

love and peace (and curving?)

given the semester so far....

i figure it's time to say Rabbit Rabbit!

supposedly, you'll have luck for a month if you say this on the first of that month. most rabbit entries i see in blogshpere feature pictures of rabbits. i'm not the sort of blogger to feature cute rodents once a month, so this is the best, most fitting picture of a rabbit i could find. see the tracks? see how they hop along? see the arch that looks like feathers? see the little tail feather splotch?

maybe this rabbit's misfortune will become my month of good luck. at the very least, there isn't an owl big enough to snatch me from the ground and carry me off to a nest to be eaten. i couldn't have it much worse than the rabbit.

and let's be honest. the only reason i'm posting this is because i think the rabbit rabbit idea is cute, and never get reminded that it's the first of a month until my rabbit rabbit opportunity is over. don't say that rent should remind me. i almost never pay my rent on the first. i'm always a few days early, and you can't say rabbit rabbit early.

love and peace