I am having serious doubts that one can teach, do a phd, and raise a child all at once.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
bullets of love
- Mr Fun Guy - which sounds SO lame, but because the inside joke is so great to me I just want to leave it - well, he's just FUNtastic. Undeniably a generally great person and I'm glad we're getting to know one another. Quite the gent. Talented. Ambitious and makes me smile. God-focused. Humble and it's not annoying. Quite happy these days. Quite.
- I've been thinking a lot about how friendship leading to romantic relationships is pretty important. Especially when you, for whatever reason, don't have the ability to give lots and lots of time to figuring out if you're heading toward a long-term committed relationship, ie marriage. You can't get thyself to a nunnery and pray for God's Will to pop into your heart or mind. Living in the world, or different worlds if it's long distance, makes it tough to set aside that kind of time.
- Anyway.. some exciting things are happening in that realm. That's why these bullets are bullets of love.
- Comps studying has come to a bit of a standstill other than listening to Lolita which I'm pretty much done. It got better as I got used to the pukey taste in my mouth that started at the beginning. It is well-written. My question, I guess, is *why* it was written. Because Nabokov..could? Don't get it.
- Way behind on marking. Way. I need to devote a good two days this week to it. Full days. And then some.
- I've been getting emails and messages about how much my students love me. This is a good thing. I also showed an amusing documentary in class about fans of one of genres I'm teaching and they loved it. I am really hoping for good evaluations, even though I know it doesn't *really* matter. I mostly like that they are enjoying the class.
- I often wonder, though, are they learning enough?
- I've been considering hiring a proctor for my exam since it's scheduled so late in the term so that I can return home to hang out with my family since they all miss Peanut so much. I *should* likely read for comps. Right? Well.. maybe. I might come up with some sort of compromise with myself and stay here for two weeks, while Peanut is at the sitter during the days, and go home ten days earlier than I was originally going to.
- Part of wanting to go home earlier is so that I could possibly visit Mr. FG. or he could visit there since he's living close to where my family is. But, that reason for going home early will have to wait and not weigh in yet. Not just yet.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Comps reading
Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita makes me sick. I don't get it.
This will probably get me some gross hits. But, I just feel physically sick with some passages. I don't get the attraction t reading books that explains such a disordered mind in such detail.
Friday, November 06, 2009
on writing grad proposals
There's a word. I can't think of it right now. So, I'm going to put a lesser one in as a placeholder.
Edit. Edit.
Print. Revise.
Print.
DEADLINE.
Oops.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
I thought I would hate this book
But.. I don't.
So far, it's interesting.
Will write more about it when I'm done reading -- likely after I hand in my SSHRC proposal on Friday.
Monday, November 02, 2009
the girl who cried in my class
She came to my office hours and didn't mention it. Was worried about her essay, etc. She came to talk to me and doesn't feel discouraged but seems to be stepping up a bit to write the essay well and came to talk to me about citations.
Good stuff.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
so....I made someone cry.
A student in my class last night. She cried at least twice. Possibly more than I noticed. I tried not to notice.
It's possible that I was a big meanie and trying to impress my mentor who was checking out my class to write a letter for my portfolio. And, also possible that I was trying to address the issue that came up last week on a couple of my midterm evaluations (done by students) that I should be more assertive. And, just did a bad job of it.
I don't know what was going on with her that made her so emotionally invested in something that was really not an emotional issue. Maybe she'd had a bad day. I don't know.
In any case. It was a strange experience. And, I've gotten some good and fun and interesting feedback on fb. But, I just felt like blogging it to somehow make sense of it. If you're a lurker and you teach, please write something. I am fine when a student cries in my office. It's happened before. I know how to handle it. But I've never seen it happen in my classes. I have never been in a class where someone cried.
Actually, that's not true. One of my grad school profs cried in a seminar about something we were discussing. But, that's different.
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...
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Analysis...
Perhaps it isn't all that different, though.
We become emotionally attached to our ideas about literature and life and genre sometimes. Sometimes thoughts and ideas will provoke this sentiment to come out. Some people get angry, and I think I have seen this in my classes. I have felt rage about things that were said in my grad seminars -- even in some of my best ugrad classes I have felt stirred up to the point of anger.
I don't think an emotional response to literature, or history or astrophysics, is a bad thing. In fact, I suppose it's a good thing. It means that we *are* invested in something. It means that we haven't bought into the "nothing has meaning" BS of the postmodern age. Maybe it means that I've gotten a student to grab onto something and hold on and not want to let go.
I remember a while back I read something that Dr. Crazy wrote and I recognized that feeling. It's close to what I'm thinking about here and emotional responses to the things we read -- this is what I remember mostly about this post:
"However excited I am about a project - and really, there's a lot of excitement bound up in this - there's also an angry, upset edge to it. It's intense, and it's difficult for me to control. It's this mix of obsession and fear, of passion and insecurity. It's important, but it's not pleasant."
Sometimes something you come across in literature is important but it's not pleasant. I think that a lot of students arrive at my class and want it to be pleasant all the time. And, while it's pleasant a lot of the time, when we get to the important things -- it's no longer pleasant. Thinking, as Dr. Crazy says, really thinking should cause some discomfort.
I'm trying to think about what to say in my next week's class. I have a few other issues to address, like allowing everyone who wants to speak a chance to speak. I hate that sometimes I have rewarded jackass behaviour with attention in the class and the well-mannered, well-meaning students have had to back down. I hate that and am going to change it.
But, I don't want to apologize for making people uncomfortable or unhappy. I don't want to let them think that an encounter with a new idea will always be a peaceful encounter.
discerning vocations
I've been, once again, discerning vocational things.
Someone's come into my life recently that has made it clear that I have to discern this all over again.
It's all new again. Have I been single that long?
Does this happen often, that when you find someone you not only discern whether you're supposed to be with that person, but also the WHOLE FRAKING THING. Because marriage is this sacrament that I would be an agent of/in/for..and because of the weight of having another person (Peanut) involved in any decision I make -- for some reason this time around I'm very much more aware of the bigness of it all.
That said, it's been light, and one big load of fun. So, for this reason this person's pseudonym shall henceforth be Fun Guy. It's too early to know what things will look like next week or in a month or in a year - but for now Mr. FG has been a breath of fresh air and a promise of something new.
Life is really stressful right now for me and I appreciate the newness of it. My comps are coming up, I'm teaching and creating a new course at the same time, and I am a single mom going to grad school away from all of my family. The teaching has been pissing me off - not because I dislike teaching, but because I'm pretty sure that my department made an error in giving me independent teaching assignments while I'm still writing my exams. Oh, and I've been making students cry. And while it's all busy, and some new, it's mostly just the same academic stuff that got me burnt out two years ago.
But, getting back to the subject and to get kinda sappy for a minute.. Somehow I just feel like I was ambling down the road, looking in another direction or peering in shop windows, and then just as I turn to look ahead again and focus on the road ahead, I see Mr. FG walking in my direction. Right now we've just stopped for a chat to see if we're, after all, really going to the same place. If we are going to the same place, finding out if we'll head there together.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
dangerously tired
I am home to be at a friend's wedding. And, a wake. And, to see family. Students are being neglected in a small way, in that I'm not checking my course email right now.
I'm driving a minivan.
I took the scenic route home, because family who will be babysitting Peanut for the rest of the evening isn't back from funeral. Got some great shots of this place. It's freezing cold, but sunny and then rainy and then sunny again.
Apparently I'm a lot sleepier than I thought. I fell asleep at the wheel, with Peanut in the van. I swerved off the road. Hit a walkway which was going perpendicular to the street and bent the rim of the tire and the tire is flat.
So.. instead of partying - right now, I'm going to go nap.
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