“I don’t think many people would of gave him the chance,” writes one of my freshmen in his first short paper, simultaneously reassuring me that the whippersnappers here are just as brilliant as they are in Zembla and making me want to bash my own head in with a rock.
Monthly Archive for August, 2007
In my new job, I am teaching some literature survey courses, which means I have to abide by some curricular protocol and not just teach whichever armload of novels happen to be infatuating me at the moment. This semester, that means less Nabokov and Eggers, more Homer and Chaucer.
Currently we are up to our ears in The Odyssey, and let me tell you, ninety percent of my time is spent trying to assure them that I do not care how they pronounce all the Greek names, and then, after they insist on it, pronouncing the Greek names for them over and over. Discussion will be rolling merrily along until someone is all, “So, like, when Odysseus is telling the Fye…the Fye…the Fay…the Fah…um, so, the guys? With the feast? How do you say that?”
This makes me want to bang my head against the desk until all goes blissfully, quietly dark. I am extremely glad our version of The Canterbury Tales is translated into Modern English, because hearing them struggle through the Middle English might just drive me over the edge. I do not even want to think about what they are going to do with the names in The Ramayana or The Tale of Genji. I don’t remember there being this much complaining about strange words back when I taught German, but I assure you the pronunciation itself was just as abominable.
Incidentally, I am enjoying The Odyssey much more than I thought I might. It is one hundred percent tolerable, and I have not even threatened to kill myself once. The Pillow Book, on the other hand, is absolutely where it’s at, and that’s no lie. Have you guys read that one? If not, put it on your list, post haste.
The coming month or so is Dissertation Completion Crunch Time (side question: doesn’t it feel like I have been working on this for approximately seventeen years? I can barely wait one more fucking SECOND to be done with it so I can stop sitting at desks all day and start losing the dissertation weight, which is kind of like pregnancy weight except less socially acceptable).
ANYWAY. It is crunch time. I hate that expression, but there you go. I have been working on the damned thing all weekend and my brain is currently the intellectual equivalent of tapioca pudding. I have had to come to the realization — or, rather, I have had to finally admit the long-known fact — that my usual attitude toward academic scheduling is not going to work if I am going to get this finished on time.
Normally, I like to treat this business as an 8-5 job, after which I can either go out, or come home in the evenings and watch far too much TV while effectively clearing my head of the day’s travails. A long walk with the dog, a couple of glasses of wine, and a dose of whatever J.J. Abrams show I am currently addicted to — these are the things I prefer to do if I’m spending the evening at home. I surely do not like to spend yet more hours at a desk thumbing through theory books and staring at the same goddamned Word document that’s been open somewhere in the background of my desktop for, like, eighty billion years.
Although I have a lovely home-office set-up happening in my new apartment, it still sort of pains me that I have to use it. I know, I know, my life is hard. Woe is me. I have officially quit for the night, though, and it is not yet midnight. Maybe there is time for some relaxification before bed?
P.S. Now that I have declared this blog officially up and running again after my long semi-hiatus period of limbo and confusion, I am trying to update my links and such again. Have I missed something? Have I missed you? Let me know. Also, since so many of my old favorite blogs seem to be defunct now, do you have any recommendations for me?
We’ve just finished the first week of classes here at Wordsmith College, and on this lovely Friday night I am sitting home, snuggled up with the dog, sipping a glass of cheap Pinot Noir and relaxifying myself. I may be wearing sweat pants. Or “yoga pants,” if that sounds less disgusting. I had planned on going over to a friend’s house where her momma was gonna fix us up some grits, because you know I would love to shovel piles of grits into my face (as it has been years since I’ve had any), but after a long day in the office working on the last chunk of dissertation, I was ready to call it a day. It’s almost like I am working for a living or something.
On the one hand, I feel like a bona fide professorial adult-type person, what with the people politely (and as of now erroneously) calling me Doctor and everything, but on the other hand I start obsessively thinking about the dissertation and how I am this close to being done and how Now Is The Time When I Had Best Not Fuck Things Up, Good Glaven. I think this time next week the balance will tip slightly in favor of adult-type personhood, because that is when my first official Real Job Check will come rolling in.
Oh, Money! how I think about it constantly. I have mentally spent that first check five times over what with the fantasies of new sleek Modern furniture, faintsy shoes, haircuts, pedicures, and slightly less cheap Pinot Noir. Never fear, though, I shall not be spending the hard-earned cash on print sundresses, fake pearls, and Topsiders. After all, these kids spend their hard-earned? parents’ cash to be taught writing and literature by bona fide professorial intellectual-type adults, and we all know that those types of people are bound by law to wear jeans, Chucks, and some combination of tee shirts, cardigans, and blazers (elbow patches optional). It would merely confuse the little whippersnappers if I came in looking like some random Muffy from the country club, wouldn’t it?
In teaching news, I have three classes, which is more than a bit exhausting, especially in comparison to the Graduate Fellowship schedule I am used to. In addition, I teach all three classes on the same days, almost right in a row. By the time I am in the afternoon writing class I am generally so tired and parched that I’m more than a little tempted to just shoo them away after fifteen minutes and head for the bar. It is, though — and will remain — much less bad than I thought it would be, all the teaching. Once I have 47 frillion papers to grade all at once, however, I warn you that I will officially commence the bitching. It could get ugly.
For the most part I like my students. They are on balance less interesting than the Zemblan whippersnappers — here, approximately 99% of them spent the summer on “mission trips” in poor countries, ostensibly easing the people’s hunger and lack of decent health care by filling their hearts with Godslove. “Godslove will cure your AIDS epidemic, don’t worry! All that genocide your people suffered? Part of Godsplan! Just accept Jeebus into your hearts!” Oh, I digress. My point is that they’re all Christian-values types, insofar as they can be (binge drinking on Game Day, church services with a hangover?), and thus somewhat boring.
On the plus side, they actually do what they are asked. Ask them to divide into small groups? They do. Ask them to go to a certain page in the reading? They do that, too. When I am the first person to enter the classroom and am busy setting up the projector, say, they ask me if it’s all right to come in. They ask me if it’s all right to leave to use the restroom. The wouldn’t dare address me by my first name. I mean, I am all for questioning authority, and everything. I might have even had some such message emblazoned on a bumper sticker on my high-school hoopty-ass car. It’s just that, well, when the authority in question is me…. Shit, I am getting old.
It’s a general phenomenon, though, the politeness — I have had more casual conversations with strangers on the elevators in my building than I had the entire time I lived in Zembla. Back when I was doing my freshman orientation oh-so-many years ago, I had to go to a session for out-of-state students. The gist of the whole thing was “Welcome to the South, and Good Luck” (wasted on me, as I grew up in the South, but some of the Yankees did look a mite worried at the whole prospect). One of the things they told us was that we could expect strangers on the sidewalks and in elevators to greet us — “Here, we just smile and say ‘hey.’ That’s what we do. So when you see someone you don’t know starting to talk to you, don’t freak out, just smile back and say ‘hey.’” This little speech replays itself in my head every day now, when I am stuck in the elevator with some stranger insistent on making pleasant chat with me. I just smile back, and say “hey.” At this point, what with my three classes full of identical sundress debs, the supposed stranger on the elevator might just be one of my own whippersnappers trying to butter me up.
After a month in New Wye, I have learned a few facts about the Local Ways and Customs. For example, I now know where all the print sundresses and pearl stud earrings in the country are being stockpiled. Every New Wynian lass between the ages of 15 and 50 is prancing around town, fake tan all orangely aglow, with her floral print sundress rustling around her knees and her earlobes slowly being stretched out by massive (fake?) pearls. New Wye is also, it turns out, the place where all the Topsiders of the 1980s came to die — they’re all here, still kicking, barely, strapped to the sockless feet of the local young men. And I bet you thought it was safe to forget those unfortunate shoes, didn’t you?
Also in no short supply here: the middle name. Good glaven; I know Every Fucking Body’s middle name, because they all go by either their first and middle names or the middle name exclusively. The ones with first and middle names are the ones that get me — they’re all Mary Jo and Hillary Fay and Taylor Louise and Justin Bobby. Because it needs to take people longer to say things around here, of course.
I have one more class to teach this afternoon, after which I will be able to tell you a little bit about what I’m sure will be the Extreme Awesomeness of the whippersnappers’ writing skills. Ahoy, it’s papers already! Someone hold me.
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