Monthly Archive for January, 2008

back to black

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on January 29, 2008
in Academia, Cheese Sandwich, Depressertation and Paedagogy
. 2 Comments

I’ve written before about how hard it was for me at some points during the dissertation-writing phase of graduate school. When you aren’t taking classes or even having regular meetings, and the only thing you have to get out of bed for is teaching two days a week, it’s easy to let the days slowly melt away into a sludge of nothing, barely differentiated by the faint lines of a teaching schedule and the map of various weekly drink specials around town. Monday morning: teaching; Monday night: dollar beers; Tuesday morning: sleeping; Tuesday evening: two-dollar drinks and karaoke; and so on and on it goes until you have been “working” on your “project” for several years and it feels like only a week has passed. Because, you know, all your weeks are exactly the fucking same.

What with all the cheap drinks and the karaoke and the getting paid to do nothing, that probably sounds like a pretty sweet deal, but I can assure you it isn’t. There’s a constant lurking web of guilt, inadequacy, and fear in the back of your mind — not to mention the fact that all the drinks and pub food and lounging around have some seriously detrimental effects on your figure. I mean, unless you want to look like an extra in a Sir Mix-a-Lot video, or, worse yet (because let’s face it, those Mix-a-Lot girls were pretty fly), Valerie Bertinelli’s before picture.

My weeks still all look pretty much exactly the same, but there are a few small but important details that change everything: there’s the busy schedule (four classes, if I haven’t mentioned it — full professors only teach two classes and yet make 3x my salary, but that’s a bitch for another time) and there’s the fact that I am no longer living under the shadow of a project I have no idea whether I will actually have the gumption to complete. Instead of moping away all my free time either in the campus area hostelries or in front of an episode of One Life to Live with my jammies on, I am actually at school, doing work, accomplishing things, teaching the whippersnappers, and other productive, meaningful activities.

My Mix-a-Lot ass is slowly shrinking back down to its usual size, and I am finding the mental energy for things like crushes and doodling and memorizing song lyrics and hiking and art projects. I think I am slowly starting to resemble a person I used to know somewhere. Somewhere like, oh, I don’t know, college, maybe? It’s been a long time. Anyway, enough of this maudlin introspective shit: I think I am off to go pencil in some yoga on my schedule for tomorrow and then doodle some Decemberists lyrics and think about boys.

this is actual

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on January 24, 2008
in Paedagogy
. 5 Comments

“Not knowing what words mean will be a major obstacle in the way of your understanding literature. Use the dictionary.”

wednesday morning ennui

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on January 23, 2008
in Cheese Sandwich, Food and Drink and Paedagogy
. 10 Comments

I arrived an hour late to my “Office Hours” today and I can tell you that I did not care one whit.  Oh no.  I’m sure none of the little whippersnappers will be wanting to stop by and see me until approximately four hours before their essays are due, which means I still have a couple of weeks of slack time before the raging crush of student conferences begins. (At which point I will hide away in my office all day, fielding thoughtless, annoying questions, with barely a spare moment to complain.  Somebody hold me!)

As for my time in the office today, I have to sit up here and think of some smart things to say about Romantic poetry and also come up with a plan for my writing kids’ essay assignment.  Bleh. I am in a sour mood, all due to an accumulating list of minor annoyances, beginning with a major debacle at the best vending machine downstairs — the vending machine that sells smartwater, which is basically the best water ever, and not just because of the cute goldfish who seems to be swimming in the bottle.  Luckily, I managed to get my water in spite of all the forces of the universe struggling against me, and now here I sit, feeling marginally better hydrated, and yet totally unwilling to think about planning my classes.   Whine, whine, whine.

In other news, I might ask a boy out on a date.

me and the whippersnappers: we get along like positrons and anti-neutrinos

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on January 17, 2008
in Cheese Sandwich, Film and Paedagogy
. 7 Comments

It’s been another long week in New Wye, what with the teaching and the reading and the grading and the hey-hey-it-hoits-me, as Professor Frink would say. I am thinking about making Frink my role model in all things professorial. No one can say that is a bad idea. Mahoyven.

Life has generally been good, with the exception of a few minor annoyances. For example, all of my debit, credit, and ATM cards seem to expire all at the same time, and let me tell you it is near impossible to get your bank to mail you the proper replacement card to the proper address and bother to include a PIN. Impossible. This never would have happened had Parallel-Universe Me (the excellent bank employee) been somehow running things at all the various financial institutions involved. Thankfully for my sanity, though (but not for my convenience), there is no such thing as Parallel-Universe Me; there is only This Me, and This Me gave up the banking gig a long time ago.

School has been as busy as humanly possible, and the thought of “time for research” makes me either want to laugh or cry till I piss my pants. Research! Feh! There is only time to be moderately prepared for class, at best. This is why it is wise that I have decided to make one of my classes a film class: film screenings do not take much prep time on my part. I just have to put the film on my Netflix queue and sit on my duff waiting for it to be delivered. And on that note, have you seen Hoop Dreams? If not, you should. I know next to nothing about basketball, and am generally at best a one-sport lady, making time for the Red Sox and the Mariners, maybe, and that’s about it. Nonetheless, I find this documentary to be completely compelling and at times heart-wrenching. You should watch it. It will change your mind about a lot of things, the entertainment value of documentary film least among them.

I have hope for a lot of my students — some of them have really been impressing me so far, so I am looking forward to reading their papers. Some of them, however, have already been giving me the stink eye. You know that look that spells This is a Required Class and I Have to Take it but I Don’t Have to Like It? That look? Well, they have that look tattooed across their faces, where normal human expressions should be. Speaking of tattoos, one of the Stink Eye kids asked me out of nowhere the other day whether I had any tattoos, “because, like, [her] other, like, English Teacher Lady had all kinds of tattoos,” and I couldn’t decide whether to tell her sternly that that was a completely inappropriate question, punch her in the face, or show her my tattoo and ask her if she didn’t think it was, like, so totally bitchen. But then I remembered that kids these days don’t know the meaning of the word “bitchen,” literally or figuratively, so I opted for the face punching. I expect a stern memo from the dean any day now.

academia: it is still a crock.

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on January 8, 2008
in Academia and Paedagogy
. 2 Comments

Today was the first day of classes, and my first day of teaching four in a row.  Let me tell you, people, that is a tired-making thing to do.  Standing in front of a room of glassy-eyed undergrads while you explain the course plan, teetering around in heels and feeling too hot in pin-striped trousers and long-sleeved shirt in the unseasonably warm (70 degrees!) New Wye weather, and then doing it again, and again, and A-FUCKING-GAIN, well, that is enough.  I won’t even get into the errand-running and grocery-shopping hell that is back-to-school week around these parts.  Ugh.

I came home, ditched the shoes and the trousers, poured a glass of wine, threw a handful of cashews down my throat, and then proceeded to basically lie on the couch until I felt vaguely human again.  I was so busy I forgot to eat all day, so those cashews and wine were like precious sustenance.  On days like this, I feel like my insides have been removed with a giant ice-cream scoop, and the floppy shell of my outsides has been unceremoniously dumped aside. Teaching: it really feeds the soul. And can you believe I have to go in tomorrow to read the stupid play I assigned for Thursday?? What a crock.