Look! It's the feminist boogeyman!!

Gotta love this headline: Vatican Letter Denounces 'Lethal Effects' of Feminism (Washington Post, requires registration: try my favorite work around, bugmenot for a password.) Most of the other news headlines Google comes up with contain my all-time favorite phrase, "radical feminism." Can't find the actual letter online--wouldn't you think the Vatican would publish this stuff??--but from the various news stories we have once again the favorite myth that feminists somehow believe (a) that men and women are exactly alike; (b) that men are bad. How these two seemingly opposing beliefs are reconciled isn't clear. Probably it has something to do with women being illogical creatures, after all.

You know, I'm not going to say anything new about this dumbassery, which itself isn't new. But as a Catholic, one of the things that attaches me to the Church is its long history of genuine intellectual engagement and scholarship. Yes, I know there's a lot of evil crap there too, but the Church has also produced some very thoughtful and intelligent theology and philosophy. The other thing is that the Church--with its worship of Mary, its tradition of the saints, the veneration of Mary Magdalene, nuns--feels in many ways very open to women. But dear god, the crap they've come out with about women under John Paul II continually tests my belief that intellect and women have any role in the Church at all.

Protection

I have been thinking lately about my protective streak. It is fierce, and I think it is this trait above all that constitutes the "bitch" side of my personality, because I will use it not only to protect others, but to protect myself. Once I was in a bad mood, walking around running errands with pseudonymous kid, who was fussing (and pissing me off), and some (probably crazy) guy came up and started mock-fussing at pseudonymous kid and I blew. up. in. his. face. He was probably six feet tall, and I am not a big woman, and he just about fell over trying to get away from me, as heads all up and down the block whipped around to see what was going on. Probably they thought he was trying to kidnap my son or something. It was a remarkable moment for me, the visceral realization that size doesn't matter nearly as much as aggression. You don't want to fuck with me when I am in a bad mood.

I think, however, that this instinct comes in handy when teaching. I am one of those women whose raised eyebrow speaks volumes, and students catch on pretty quickly that they don't want to come fussing at me about extraneous shit. On the other hand, I will also go to bat for them against monsters real and imagined: grade anxiety, the fear of never getting into a good med school, feeling stupid or invisible. Protective me says there is no way any students of mine are gonna slide by believing bullshit myths, so I get those myths right out there and talk about how stupid they are. "Guess what?" I say. "You've spent your whole lives being told you need good grades to get into college. Well, now you are here and it doesn't matter any more. That's the secret no one tells you." Of course someone wants to go to graduate school or whatever, in which case I concede that yes, GPA does make a difference, but really not nearly as much difference as good recommendations and well-written papers. I tell them my undergrad GPA (unremarkable) and point out that, well, here I am.

There are bigger, better things about my protective streak, too. I am usually more outraged by injustice than I am afraid of the consequences of my outrage: as a kid, this got me beaten up once or twice, but it also meant that I was popular with underdogs. Never underestimate the power and loyalty of the underdogs, baby. I think it means now that I am well-liked and well-respected as a "no bullshit" kind of person whose alliances and friendships include underdogs as well as bigwigs, who (tries to) look at all sides of a problem and qualifies suggestions by saying what I do and don't know about the issue, who is pushy but more than willing to be told I am wrong about something if I am. Paradoxically, perhaps, my protectiveness means I am a fairly open book: I am usually pretty comfortable with people knowing what I am thinking because I am pretty comfortable defending myself if I have to.

I've been thinking about this lately because I have been making friends with someone who is not an academic (hooray!) and sort of seeing myself through their eyes, rather than through the ridiculously microscopic viewfinder of academe. It makes me realize that, in the last year or so, I have sort of forgotten this part of myself, and been feeling like someone who fears speaking truth to power, who fears what the future holds, who is unsure of herself and her place in the world. Sure, I have these fears: everyone does. But really, I am not that person, not at all. I am actually the person who, despite a lot of fretting, ends up doing pretty much what she wants to do even when it doesn't follow her own script: marrying younger than I would have expected, to someone in a line of work I would never have even considered possible, inventing the terms of the marriage on our own, leaving him behind at his bizarre job while I went off to grad school far away, getting myself knocked up in the middle of my dissertation, insisting on taking 3 months' maternity leave from a side gig I had (though it cost me the job, the fuckers), getting a solid job despite the odds, and now deciding that even though the script and everyone around me tells me this is a good job--which it is--and I should feel lucky to have it--which I do--that that is not enough. I imagine that that person will manage to find a way to get what she wants: she usually does. Good for her.

Musing about course planning

So I haven't blogged in a couple days because, really, I don't have much to say (how's that for a promising introduction?). Course packs coming along well: I am actually looking forward to this new undergrad course, although I am somewhat daunted by the final third, which covers material I've always found fun and interesting but never taught or researched very thoroughly. Have, however, ordered a passel o' books on the subject for the library, books which undoubtedly I will check out and fail to read except for the possibility that I may shamelessly crib lectures from selected, hastily-skimmed-over chapters. Sigh. Then again, given that I would really like to develop this new material well enough to use it as the center of other courses in the future, perhaps I will be a Good Professor and do like I did in grad school, really preparing and digesting the material as I go.

The graduate course is less structured. In a sense this is fine--it's a graduate course, after all, and part of the whole point is to allow/encourage/require the students to figure out their own approaches to the material, as I'll tell them on the first day. It's on the topic of my primary research, with a lot of new primary material. New to me, and to everyone else, so that one of the really exciting and daunting things about this course is that we'll be picking our way across a pretty untrammelled field. In the past, I have taught a version of this course. I don't know if I want to do the same assignment this time: I already have the assignments worked out, but I'm not sure my university's resources can support it. Maybe with a little tweaking.

I do really try to avoid having graduate courses just require the standard seminar essay, where everyone takes one of the primary texts on the syllabus and tries to apply the theoretical frame offered, or some version of it. Grad students get plenty of practice doing that, and while some of their seminar papers may be seeds for further work at some point, mostly these papers are just exercising the critical muscles. Which is fine and a big part of what grad school is for; but there are other kinds of papers to write, other kinds of work to be done, and I want them to be told that and to be taught how to do it. Here is how you go into an archive; here is how you formulate a research question that takes into account what you can access; here is how you write something up when the fact is that you've hit a dead end; here is how you write an interesting and helpful summary of a bunch of new or neglected material, simply to point out that it's there and what is in it. In this sense, I think my approach to course planning inverts the usual model. I encourage undergraduates to develop their own topics and approaches, often suggesting interdisciplinary possibilities, instead of assigning topics, on the grounds that undergrads need, in part, to figure out what they are interested in. But graduate students need training in a very particular skill set, so I give them less, not more, freedom than I do undergrads in terms of what I expect their assignments to achieve.

I had one course in grad school that required the kind of very directed, very specific paper topic that I usually require. It was taught by the man who eventually became my advisor. We had to pick a work and research its critical history, then summarize. At first I resisted, recognizing that clearly this wasn't going to end up with a publishable paper (because of course I published essays from all my graduate seminar papers--NOT) but in the end that, and another very directed and structured course by the same guy, were the most valuable experiences I had in graduate school, the ones that really taught me skills that I use all the time.

I remember my advisor once told me he got really poor teaching evaluations. I know why: he was extremely directive, asked obviously leading questions which he would usually go on to answer himself, was fairly inflexible about the kinds of topics students could write on, was blunt to the point of rudeness ("while that presentation was thorough, it was also thoroughly dull"), and scared the crap out of the students. And yet. In retrospect I think I learned an awful lot about teaching well from him, by reflecting on the work I'd done in his courses, realizing how well it prepared me for the steady, detail-oriented aspect of research and scholarly writing, recognizing how his well-structured syllabi really did give students an overview of a field, and--to be fair--figuring out why, despite all these things, students didn't feel comfortable in his courses. I really should write him a letter, I think.

Funny how so much of what I do as a teacher is based, not on actual study of pedagogy, but just on the luck of the hand I was dealt as a student: imitating stuff that was good, adjusting stuff that was bad but that, in retrospect, I can see had valuable intentions, jettisoning things that I think were pointless or confusing. Everyone does it this way, of course. Does anyone want to share?

Chickens, coming home to roost

Ugh. Email today from colleague reminding me that the MA student whose thesis I am second reader on is waiting for my comments. Luckily I printed out her draft yesterday and will read it today. Have to figure out hours/pay to extend my research assistant's hours just a bit, maybe, until she can finish this project--note to self: blog "ode to research assistant" soon--course packs due, like, now, and while I'll get the undergraddy one done this week (somehow, if I can just stop sex chatting with my favorite sex chat partner during the day, damn him! but I think we are actually talking about writing something together for publication!), the graduate one may take a bit longer. Or maybe not, if I just realize that about 60-70% of that course can be lifted straight from an honors seminar I've already taught. Kitchen, of course, still coming along slower than I would like (but, coming along): clearly we aren't going to get the house painted before school starts up again. August is breathing down my neck.

You know, if other people didn't have deadlines too, it would all be much easier. It's not my stuff that's a problem--it's forgetting about everyone else's.

Resolved: must stop sleeping 'til noon. Buy a rooster.

Speaking of sexual embarassment....

This--from a blog I truly adore and never comment on, apologies Faustus, but I am such a fan--is just fucking hilarious. Make sure and read Faustus' dignified responses to the comments, as well.

Yes, this is much better

Today I went out and bought a bottle of Laphoraig, some Neruda, and the new David Foster Wallace. I feel so incredibly self-indulgent. I am going to spend the rest of the evening in bed, drinking scotch and reading poetry with the Democratic convention on in the background.

Tomorrow I have a lunch meeting with my research assistant, who I am cleverly going to have find out about my software needs for this grant. Since that will make me go to campus (!) I'll also do some xeroxing for my course pack and finalize the book order for one of my courses. My goal is to finish up the course pack this week so that I can turn, in August, to my new article and the other stuff I need to do before classes start up in September.

Procrastination as play

In fact, I am not procrastinating. It is the weekend, and after last week's fucking meltdown, I have decided I need to give myself permission to take weekends off again. I give myself that permission a lot, and in fact I do take weekends off (graduate students now reading, yes, we do, and you should too) and then I will start to freak out or have a "big" something that I am worried about and I will start sitting at my desk on the weekend--not working, mind you, checking email and other things, on which more in a minute, but pretending that I'm going to start working "any second now" until the day is over and I am a fucking neurotic mess. I know we all know what that's like. So anyway, after doing that to myself yet again last week, I am now on a no-weekend-working jag, goddamnit. Though I still feel a teeny tiny bit like, "well, but wouldn't it be a good idea to look at the essays in that one reader and maybe get a jump start on putting together that course pack this week?" because, as we all know, work that you "sneak" in when it's not "officially" working time and you're doing it just because you're curious about what's in that essay you're going to actually officially read on Monday is, in fact, much easier to do for some reason.

But I am procrastinating in the sense that I am now writing a second blog entry rather than going and fixing lunch for me and pseudonymous kid (who is, bless him, playing quietly on the bedroom floor while I sit with my laptop). I am procrastinating by blogging in order to try to save myself from my other procrastination habit, the one that nearly sunk me this last week and that I am now inspired to "confess" both because of my last post and because Dr. Crazy gave me the intellectual justification I've been searching for as I've been trying to figure out, all week, why I feel compelled to make my confession on this blog. I've been not doing it because of the surveillance thing I talked about in my last post, partly, but more because, without some reason why I'm doing it, it merely seems self-indulgent, and not in a good way. But I think with Dr. Crazy's help I've finally put my finger on it.

This week, I've been procrastinating horribly by hanging out on sex chat rooms and talking dirty to total strangers over the internet. It's the kind of thing one can do while at the computer, so one has the illusion that one is going to start working "any minute now" but it also, of course, occupies the mind well enough to overwhelm the anxiety of sitting at the computer. It would probably be a much healthier habit, work-wise, if I were actually going out, getting drunk, and fucking strangers, since at least I would get some exercise and get away from my desk, but I live in a tiny town and there is just no way I am taking that risk. Because not only am I a professor, I am married. This is not a problem for me or my husband, mind you, but it is a major problem in terms of not being perceived as a whore, professionally speaking. It's one reason why I have got to move out of small-town midwesternness: I know people do freaky shit in the small town midwest, but it is a lot easier to get away with in a city somewhere. Actually, I think what I want is just the knowledge that I could do freaky shit if I chose to: I'm not out there joining swinger's clubs or inviting people to have threesomes. My sex life is in fact fairly sedate and shockingly monogamous--I just reserve the right to be not-sedate and not-monogamous if I want to, damnit. This secret side of me has gotten more play, mentally and emotionally speaking, since I moved here, and it's obviously got everything to do with being a displaced way of acting out my resistance, not to my marriage (which is in fact fine, thanks for asking) but to the whole women-professors-as-asexual-beings thing (thank you, Laura Kipnis). Which is ridiculous, since virtually all the women I know in academia are very comfortable with their own sexuality, thank you very much. But still.

Interestingly, however, I have been thinking about writing porn on the side, and that I would be willing to do under my real name: why not? Anyone who worked with me would "know" that it's "just writing." Again, we have the divide between the body and the text that we are all so very invested in pretending exists. I don't think I'm advocating for a seamless integration of the two--that would be ridiculous, and I'm not under the illusions that people in other lines of work freely talk about their sex lives on the job. But I do think that in other lines of work, there is a more accepted understanding that the division between professional and personal identity is fairly clear. Less so, perhaps, for other professions that, like "professor," have this aura of sainthood about them: you don't want to know that your doctor is a sadist, for example. Still, though, I think ours is a profession with a shockingly limited sense of range. Note that I say "sense" and not reality: surely there must be many ways of being a professor, and certainly there are tons of people out there who get up to all sorts of things in their spare time. And we are all aware of women who have written their dissertations on working in strip clubs and the like. I knew someone once who was quite open about going to the fetish clubs on the weekends. But there's always a sense that these things are "okay" (if they're okay at all) only if they are properly intellectualized: "I'm interested in the aesthetics of fetish gear." Intellectualizing that shit is fun; but the shit is also fun on its own, isn't it? Like NASCAR?

The goal, I think, is that work and play don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Who cares what I look like?

This started as a comment to this post over on Playing School. But then about halfway through I realized that I should really put it on my own blog for reasons that, I hope, are evident in the content itself. But you might want to read profgrrrl's entry first to get the context.

That anonymity discussion is still on my mind too. I am interested in, and bothered by, the fact that so many of us seem to feel somewhat defensive about our decision to blog anonymously. I am put out by the implications in some of the comments over there that somehow anonymous blogging should be beneath academics. I feel compelled to cover up my irritation --i.e., initially acknowledging it only in the comments to profgrrrl's blog rather than over at leushke or on my own blog, and that annoys me too.

And now I have this feeling that, having gotten a couple trackbacks and gotten readers--which I'm very glad for--suddenly I'm "on the radar" and even though I'm anonymous, I feel more constrained about the subject matter I can/should write about here. There are things that are on my mind that now I think don't "belong" on an academic blog--another kind of blog, maybe. And yet, for solid professional reasons including my research area and the whole question of gender and academic identity, I know that these topics can and probably should be addressed; more to the point, I want to write about them. So actually, it isn't I that thinks they don't belong on an academic blog; I think other people might think that. I started an anonymous blog not just to bitch, but also to talk about these things, and yet now that people are reading the darn thing, I am nervous again. It's heinous.

Having put that out there, no doubt I will talk about some of those things, many of which--as profgrrrl's post implies--have to do with sex and sexuality. So, I started out my comment on her blog (which you are now reading here instead) with a couple of anecdotes: a colleague once told me something I was wearing was "too sexy" to teach in. Another colleague--he was joking, and I took it as such, but still--referred to my "hooker boots" once at a meeting. No, I do not wear fetish wear to work: but I do prefer clothes that are somewhat tailored and/or body-conscious. At my urban Ph.D. institution, this was just fine; I merely looked stylish. Here, at small midwestern town, I get comments. Interestingly, however, the students (grad and undergrad) seem to "get" that style is not the same as a come-on. Occasionally they will compliment my boots, but that is about as far as it seems to go. They merely seem to assume that I live in nearby Big City, and are always surprised when they spot me around town: "oh, you live here??"

Now, I can hear in my mind's ear someone saying, "oh, you think the students get it but I'm sure it's a distraction, especially for the young men, blah blah." But I look at it differently. I've taught now for nearly a decade, and I have had a lot of conversations with students about feminism, women and careers, children and careers, style, fashion, and work/life balance. My sense is that--especially for young women, but also and not unimportantly for young men--seeing a youngish woman standing at the front of the class wearing fashionable red boots and a well-tailored dress is a formidable statement. When that same prof is approachable and friendly--"oh, you like my boots? Thanks, me too. Where did I get them? They were on sale at Nordstrom's last week, you might still find a pair in your size if you go this weekend"--and extremely professional--"ok, enough about clothes for today, let's get started, pop quiz everyone!"--it accomplishes a few things that I think are important.

1. It shows students that feminism is not a dirty word; it is a pity that so many people still hold the "feminists are hairy-legged man haters" stereotype, but the fact is they do, and I think looking femme and being quite open about also being a feminist is not a bad thing to do. Especially since I always nip comments like, "well, but you're not like most feminists" right in the bud, and we talk about fashion, style, social conventions, and how they work. When these discussions come up, I make a point of asking the students to think very hard about whether my "exceptionalism" (i.e., my femme appearance) is not part of why they are, paradoxically, willing to take my feminism more seriously rather than disappearing it as merely sour grapes, and what this says about the continued expectations put on women to look "good" before anything else.
2. I have had tons of feedback from female students on this issue. Impeccably groomed young women tell me they think more critically about why they spend so much time on their appearance, and what the costs and benefits of it are; quiet pretty girls who sit in the back of the class sometimes begin raising their hands and offering surprisingly insightful critiques of misogyny in the texts we're reading (I am thinking in particular of one extremely conservative young woman with manicured nails who got married right after graduating--I recently wrote her a glowing recommendation to graduate school); already politicized community activist types confide after class that they never realized that their disdain for the sorority types was itself a form of internalized sexism.
3. The men, too. They start listening better to the women in class; they point out that fashion is not just a female issue, that achieving the "right" casual guy-type look is also a lot of work; they talk about the various cultural meanings of male fashion (goth, punk, emo, frat boy, jock) and speculate on whether the "hairy feminist" stereotype might not have its parallels for men (e.g., "all frat boys are date-rapists"); they tell me that wow, I thought this was just going to fulfill a distribution requirement, but now I am thinking of taking other courses in X subject, is so-and-so's course next semester any good?

In other words, the sleek boots and tailored clothing help me create a functioning feminist classroom. The private stuff that I fear is "unacademic" is very much a part of my academic identity; the bitching about job stress is a personal and self-indulgent but no less important critique of academic culture. The fact of anonymous academic blogging is itself the object of study; this stuff doesn't belong in a locked diary somewhere, it belongs out there where people can think about it. That so many of us put it out there without our names on it might be perceived, not as a problem, but as a gift.

Good friends? Thanks, I made 'em myself

Well. As profgrrrrl surmised, I ended up calling my grad school friend today and just confessing that I'd had a meltdown, didn't get my proposal finished up, needed to finish it, and couldn't leave town after all. She sounded a little disappointed--wouldn't we all love to have a grad school friend drop in for a couple of days?--but also a bit relieved: she's had tons of houseguests this month already and is leaving for a vacation next week and she and her partner were fighting already this morning over who was going to work on the weekend and who was going to be the responsible parent. Gotta love those grad school friends, the ones whose lives are as chaotic as our own, and who you can really let your hair down and admit it to. Also got a call from another dear grad school friend (who reads this blog, one of the few people who knows who I am), obviously concerned--we played phone tag a bit and I didn't get a chance to talk to her yet but just knowing she had called made a world of difference. And finally, a third friend in the mix, newish and long-distance, with whom I have a "date" just to talk this evening: I decided last night that I really needed to give myself permission to be "bad," that is, to do whatever I wanted today, so I did. Was feeling better, less insane, by dinner time today, when said friend messaged me this afternoon wanting to talk and I said I had to write a bit this evening, after all, just to jump start myself into tomorrow, and we set a time for talking later which, of course, defined perfectly about 2 hours for me to work in. Which is how it's actually done, kids.

So, after fixing dinner (kitchen renovations coming along--almost ready to paint! Then begin installation! Will hopefully be finished next week sometime!), I settled pseudonymous kid down with yet another movie (resolved: trip to the zoo this weekend, he needs to get out of the house and away from the tv and I need to get out and away from the damn computer), and imported the paragraphs that will serve as the template for my lit. review. Tomorrow I edit them and change the formatting from Chicago to MLA (ugh, I have to get some software that'll do this for me), draft the "objectives of this study" section, et voila. Print the fucker out and turn it in on Friday.

So thank you friends--both real life friends and supportive blog commenters--for the help.

On anonymity

Really interesting discussion over on leuschke.org about anonymous academic blogging. (Note to self: update blogroll soon. Why not do that some time when I'm not working??)

As I said in the comments, the question of anonymity is extremely troubling--and interesting--to me. I feel strongly that if we would all say publicly the things we say privately (on blogs, to our grad school friends, to our partners, whoever) about things like work/life balance, how much we *really* write during the summer, and so on, that academe would be a much better place. In real life, I am a person who freely says things like "nope, I never read that journal, I know I should but I don't" and I've noticed how often an admission like that causes everyone around to relax. It's obviously the appeal behind that game, the David Lodge one, where people "confess" about which books they haven't read. Academia, it seems to me, is full up with unspoken rules, some of which a lot of us break frequently: you're not supposed to walk into lectures unprepared on a regular basis, you're not supposed to surf porn in your office, you're not supposed to write conference papers at the last minute. (The corollary of that last rule is that actually you *are* supposed to write them at the last minute, and then talk about it as *if* you think it were a Really Bad thing to do, but in a way that shows that really, look how clever and busy you are!) There are rules that, frankly, I don't *know* if other people break them yet--I'm shocked at how little I read, and while I hate that I don't, I just cannot make myself do it: I collect books about my subject and not about my subject, and they genuinely seem interesting, but when it comes to picking them up suddenly it's work and it's so dreary and so they sit on my shelf and help me pretend that I read things. Does everyone do this? I know everyone does to some extent, but I don't know if they do it as much as I do.

Part of what's unnerving about being a junior academic is that you DON'T yet know the unwritten rules--even in grad school I had a terrible time with this, because being the forthright person I am, I just don't get why people don't tell you things like "look, I really don't expect you to do all this reading, but I provide it so that there's a range of stuff from which you can pick and choose according to your interests." One of my major strengths as a teacher is that I DO articulate that stuff as much as possible, and my students are extremely grateful. One of the things I adore about my dissertation advisor (who is famous both for his work and, if you get people drunk, for being shockingly tactless) is that his tactlessness means that he speaks the truth. I remember his saying to me, "No one reads everything they cite." That's one of those unwritten rules that, in my gullibility, I needed articulated, and it was like a light in the wilderness. Not because I was reading everything I cited, but because I was feeling like I was supposed to. So maybe junior academic anxiety is just leftover graduate student anxiety, who knows. I think, in part, it is.

At the same time, though, I think that both graduate student anxiety and other forms of anxiety need to be taken very seriously. My impression is that academics are extremely anxious people, and many who seem not to be (including myself, believe it or not) are, underneath. There's something wrong here, and I don't think it's just that academia attracts anxious types. I think in part it's those "unwritten rules"; I think in part it's the permanent job crisis; I think in part it's the fact that the profession is enormously--and in my opinion, disfiguringly--status-conscious; I think in part it's the inevitable tension between having lots of unstructured time and fairly demanding standards (less demanding than we often pretend, but more demanding than we usually admit to).

All of which is just to say that this blog is in large part about discontent, and figuring out what discontent means. But I don't want to pee in my own soup.

Uh oh

I feel like I'm melting down a bit. I have a grant proposal that's due this week, and I'm leaving for a conference tomorrow so I have to finish it tonight. For the last two days I've spent virtually all afternoon and all night (until 5, 6 am) sitting at my desk. Writing nothing. It's not even that hard, much of it is a cut and paste job from other stuff I've already written. But I'm feeling paralyzed and logy. It's the feeling you have when you are trying to make yourself do something but you secretly know that you will end up, after much agony, deciding not to do it.

Except that I have to do this: I've said I'm doing it publicly, and I have a sort of partner in this project to whom I'm accountable. I think in the back of my mind I'm deciding to blow off the conference (I'm not presenting, only attending) except that I've already made plans to stay with an old friend from graduate school and I really am kind of looking forward to that. I need to do it, actually--part of my "meltdown" feeling is that I'm starting to feel agoraphobic and I really need to get out, to interact with something that exists somewhere in my own head.

I don't know if this is depression, or anxiety, or just a particularly bad strain of procrastination, or what, but honestly it's a bit scary.

Another thought on the TA thing

The comments on the TA discussion over at Echidne of the Snakes crystallized a really obvious point that I somehow just talked around and around in my earlier post: TAs are employees who just happen to work for the same institution where they go to school. (Easy for everyone: the school doesn't have the expensive of advertising and hiring, and the students don't generally have to go through the rigamarole of applying and interviewing for the job.) One person, two distinct roles. This is made clear by two facts: 1. not all grad students teach; 2. once ppl graduate, they often continue teaching at their doctoral institution while they look for a more permanent job.

The recent ruling disingenuously uses the fact that the two roles are played by the same person to say that the roles are no different, that the one subsumes the other.

It's kind of like if you work for GM and also buy their cars: is anyone gonna argue that since you own a Pontiac, you are therefore a customer and not an employee?

Raising the next generation of literary critics

Pseudonymous kid: "Mama, Brer Rabbit is Bugs Bunny's cousin!"

Me (!!!!!): "You know what? You're right, he must be. And their grandparents came from Africa."

Fuck the NLRB

Ok, this sucks ass: Labor Board Says Graduate Students at Private Universities Have No Right to Unionize (NYT permalink; for password, go to bugmenot). Chronicle article here, with link to a PDF of the ruling.

Nice quote to end on, though: "'I understand that they say it would be too disruptive to the great American education system,' Mr. Wheeler said. 'Once upon a time, they said that unionizing would be too disruptive for American manufacturing. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now.'"

Disruptive my radical commie ass. I think what the various unionization movements on campuses around the country have shown is that the only thing that really disrupts anything is when short-sighted administrations waffle or resist unions: I'm not aware that, once unionization happens, it makes a whole lot of difference to the way things are run, except that the grad students have health insurance and maybe one less thing to fret and worry over. I don't know jack about university finances, of course, but I have yet to hear of any school going broke over unionizing.

My take on the whole thing--and I did get the ball rolling on my own Ph.D. institution's unionization push, which eventually succeeded after others, with more stamina, pushed it through--is that the only thing that got me through my own dissertation, really, was coming to terms with the fact that as a teaching "assistant" I was, in fact, having a career. A very low-paid career, to be sure, but by the time I got my "first" job I had years of teaching experience and several courses under my belt. (All the more reason why "starting" salaries in the professoriate are so irritating--because in most cases one is not "starting" at all.) I remember early in graduate school, pre-union drive, Cary Nelson came to speak and made a strong pro-union case, and I was the person who stood up and said that unions were all very well and good in the short-term but really, what we wanted was jobs when we graduated; true enough that, but prior to my realization that my teaching *was* a job, even then. I figured it out a couple of years later: those early years of teaching are very much like entry-level work in other professions (with, in some cases, less supervision and more responsibility, even); the problem is not that the lack of tenure-track jobs = a lack of jobs; it's that the lack of t-t jobs = the inability to ever have job security or get promoted. Temp work is work, all right: it's just dead-end work.

Figuring that out, and learning to think of myself AS a professional, rather than a student, buttressed my self-confidence enough to push forward on the diss. I figured out that my dissertation wasn't the hurdle I had to jump over to get into the profession, because I already WAS in the profession, and doing quite well at it, so obviously somewhere I had already shown that I was competent. Similarly, on the job market, it helped me both present myself with confidence, as an experienced colleague, and it also gave me the reassurance that, even if no job had been forthcoming, I had already had a respectable career in the field, equivalent to the career arcs of a lot of my non-Ph.D.-pursuing college friends who were switching to something else around the same time. Yeah, it was roughly a decade of seriously underpaid work, but still, it was roughly a decade of, well, work: course planning, teaching (full time in my last year), and research. In fact, the last couple of days I've been reminding myself that really, my job responsibilities now are pretty much what they have been for years, albeit with more committee work (though that unionization drive, occasional committee work, and a bunch of other activist shit that I took on was not all that different from the service requirements for assistant professors).

It honestly surprises me that anyone in this profession can put forth the argument that graduate instructors are "just students." I have this feeling that by blogging this, I'm preaching to the choir; but obviously some folks in academe still want to believe the stupid apprenticeship model. At my doctoral institution, the official statistics were that grad students taught about 25% of contact hours; the real statistics, if memory serves, were more like 60% once you included the folks whose Ph.D.s were still in the mail, teaching classes they'd been teaching right up to their defenses but no longer technically "TAs," and once you included section hours for huge lecture courses as teaching. Or maybe it was that grad students in the humanities taught, like, 60% so that the average across the university was around 25% given that med students seldom taught, or something. I don't remember the specifics, just the numbers. (See what a crappy researcher I am? This is how I do everything. Remember vague conclusions but not the evidence that led me to them, knowing that if I really needed to, I could go back and retrace my steps. My mantra? "If I know how to find it in a book, I don't need to keep it in my head.") Anyway, it's obvious that no Ph.D.-granting institution in the U.S. today could survive without graduate teaching; TAs are essential to the labor force. RAs too: as I told my undergrad RA today while I was buying her lunch, it's quite amazing to realize that the major difference between research as a student and research as a professor is that, as a professor, other people actually HELP you with it and YOU, as well as they, get paid for "your" research; as a student, you get paid for doing other people's research, but not your own.

I'm not and never will be at the point of leaving the profession out of principle, like Erin O'Connor: if I ever leave, it will be for far more selfish reasons. But, even as I struggle not to let my personal anxiety and doubt keep me from realizing that I have a pretty good gig, I am firmly determined not to buy into the bullshit. If we're going to stay in the system, the least we can do is be honest about how it works, and keep in mind that a big part of our jobs is to take care of our students--especially when they're colleagues, as well.

Ugh

Apparently Blogger is having MAJOR problems with Safari after whatever-it-was they did with it earlier this week. So posting may be a bit sporadic for a while because god knows I hate to have to launch IE. . . .

Do I hate to write?

It's actually a serious question. Presumably, disliking writing is a Bad Sign for someone for whom writing is a major part of the job description; then again, a lot of people who write for a living hate it. Oh god, I'm catastrophizing again. Why not just go ahead and dislike writing sometimes without making it a referendum on one's entire life?

One of my major professional goals is to develop a saner approach to writing, following the guidelines laid out in the oeuvre of Robert Boice (which, by the way, if you write for any reason, I highly recommend his stuff) (oh shit, I don't know why the link to his page on Amazon isn't working--just go to Amazon and do a search if you don't know his work already). So far my success is, let us say, imperfect. Whether or not blogging is maladaptive (procrastination) or adaptive (good practice in regular writing for an audience) is yet to be seen: at the moment I am using it to "take a break" from working on a damn grant proposal. The proposal is to get some travel money to support work I've been doing for quite some time now--you would think I could knock out a description of my project in my sleep. But NO.

Ok, then, if describing the project is too hard right now, how about working on the budget? Normally I enjoy that kind of paperworky stuff enormously, doubtless because it feels productive without actually requiring a lot of thought. But even that I don't want to do today. Maybe it's the weather, which is craptastic. Maybe it's that I stopped taking bcp this week because I am a GENIUS who thinks that the best possible plan is to get myself knocked up while searching for another job. Maybe it's that I am terrified of doing this project for some reason--I can't even say, no matter how cranky I'm feeling, that I think it's uninteresting. It isn't. Nor can I say that I think it's unimportant. While it's hardly going to eliminate poverty, it fills a sort of surprising gap in my field, one that other people are starting to get interested in but so far no one has put their finger on the thing I am so cleverly working on. It even has some interesting buried possibilities for sexy contemporary practical real-worldish things, though those won't come out in the current book--maybe the next one, if I am so lucky.

The real problem, of course, is that I DO know why this project is, in its modest way, important, and I am desperately afraid that I won't do it justice, that all I'll manage to do is to draw other people's attention to my little way of thinking about the thing, only to get the kind of godawful reviews that say things like "while so-and-so identifies a new and interesting problem, she completely fails to answer her own questions or even to see the true import of her project." And then someone else will do the work that I wanted to do, only they'll do it right and I'll end up with that feeling of "damn, that's exactly what I wanted to say. . . ."

In other words, it is not writing I hate. It is the prospect of publication. The grant freaks me out because if I get the money, then I have to go do the work; and if I go do the work, then I have to publish my findings. And if I don't get the money, then how will I go do the work? And if I don't do the work, then how will I publish? And we all know what happens to people who don't publish. They are forced to wear a scarlet "F" for the rest of their days, and end up finding some kind of crappy job where their major skill is typing quickly, and for the rest of their days they never lift their eyes from the floor, out of shame.

So basically, whatever happens, I am destined to be a laughingstock. I guess I might as well get on with it, then.

Wait, I know this guy.

This essay in yesterday's (Monday's) Chronicle cracked me up and offers an entry into a subject I was ranting about over dinner on Sunday: academic snobbery and its parent, academic insecurity.

"the Affected Accent Summer Camp (AASC) will turn you from a humdrum faculty-lounge fixture into an exotic scholar whom no one can afford not to take seriously."

There's this guy I know. In my field, he's pretty well-known, and I admire his career: while still a junior academic, he has successfully managed to fulfill the mandate to publish "real" scholarship while at the same time having a minor but not unimportant "popular" presence. He's done both the narrow, ivory-towerish stuff and the broad, cool stuff that doesn't really "count" much for tenure but that, imho, we should be doing more of. Anyway, I've met him at least half a dozen times at conferences: my field isn't that huge, and I share some of his interests. He's always been a bit distant in that "oh, i'm well-known, who are you?" way but hey, that's so much a part of the job that it doesn't really bug me.

And he has this accent, see. Which I always figured came from having lived somewhere else when he was young, or whatever, and didn't pay a lot of attention to. Until he and I were attending a panel together, and before it got started, we were chatting a bit, and someone else leaned over and said, "excuse me, but your accent. Are you from X country?" And he says "Ah, no. People always ask me that, but I really have no idea what they're talking about--I was born and bred in Y flyover state. I suppose I might have picked up a bit of an accent in my research travel, but really I don't hear it myself."

And I was all, "What???? You don't know what people are talking about??? You don't KNOW you have this accent???? Give. Me. A. Goddamn. Break." (No, I didn't say this out loud, more's the pity.) I mean, if there's anything more affected than a fake accent, it's pretending you don't know you're doing it.

Then the conversation turned to regions--where people are from, what places we like, etc. Said conference happened to be taking place somewhere I am very fond of, and Mr. Affected Accent made some snide remark about how he just couldn't "bear" the balmy weather and blah blah this place is so out of the loop academically, so far from the Old Country, etc. So, just to fuck with him, I said, "You have an objection to perfect weather? Are you nuts? You think that Research I School where this conference is being held is somehow inadequate, academically speaking?" and he was all, "Well, it's no Harvard" (no, he does not teach at Harvard), and I laughed and said, "You are completely out of your mind," and maybe something light about how narrow academia is. I mean, dude: you've done some stuff that has sold to the general public: why are you such a snot about popular taste? (Obviously because we're talking the NYRB-reading public, not the NASCAR public, but still.)

Then I saw him at a conference again a couple months later and he had no idea who I was. Which is why I feel comfortable publishing this story, by the way.

Anyway, so Mr. Affected-Accent guy is exhibit A in my argument that the status-culture of academia is simultaneously hilariously ludicrous and irritating as hell. Now, I will be the first to admit that I am totally status-oriented. I believe we are a status-conscious species, although of course what constitutes "status" varies depending on context. I admit that I like telling people I'm a professor, I am kind of a foodie, I buy expensive cocktails rather than beer when i go to bars, and one of the things I dislike about my current location is that it is so freaking "wholesome": in a word, provincial as hell. Yeah, I am a fairly typical urban type. But. I do at least know that this attitude of mine is, in its snottier manifestations, completely obnoxious and shallow, and that my preference for urban culture is itself a form of provincialism. And even though I love cities, I cannot BEAR the specific academic snobbery that somehow any place other than the Capitols of Europe is somehow, well, beneath notice.

It never ceases to shock me how all these people who are supposedly trained to think have absolutely *no* perspective on their own idiotic prejudices. I mean, fine, decide that you don't like, say, the south. But recognize that the south is a popular place to dislike, and consider the possibility that in disliking it you are not being quite the independent thinker that you're trying to present yourself as. (Of course the flip side is good old fashioned American anti-intellectualism, and the Chronicle article linked above--like a lot of the "lighter" pieces in the Chronicle--doesn't fully escape this.) But why does it have to be one or the other, anyway? Can we enjoy, say, car racing as a spectator sport even while we think critically about, oh, I dunno, its obvious sexism? Must we get sucked into the idiotic and pointless "culture wars"? Can we have fun AND think? And if you genuinely think that car racing is loud and boring and, yeah, sexist, and you really do prefer classical music and leather-bound books and that preference isn't just some pose (I for one dislike car racing), must you look down your noses at people who have different tastes? It's so freaking obnoxious, and such a cliche. And this kind of snobbery, or a version of it, is so very much a part of academic culture: yes, it's a grotesque stereotype, but tell me that it isn't true that your tastes and accent matter, mark you as someone who "counts" or someone who is maybe quaint and likeable and good fun, but not really anyone to take "seriously."

In other words, my god. Let's try to be a little more self-aware. My own self-awareness means that I am fully conscious that part of why this kind of attitude bothers me so damn much is because it's so seductive. We all end up bitching about how naive undergraduates are (right, we were all sooooo sophisticated at 18), or how unacceptable it is that non-majors might not be really invested in our course (when we ourselves constantly bitch about the burden of course preparation and grading), or whatever. I've found myself doing these things this year, and I hate it, because I used to get so mad at other people who did that. There is, of course, the long-standing research vs. teaching hierarchy, which we all say is so unfair even as we all internalize it and use it to judge our colleagues (I know I do): "oh, so-and-so can be safely ignored because he is old tweedy deadwood and seems far too invested in his students' lives, but I really do need to cultivate this other person because they are obviously a departmental powerhouse and have several Important Projects that they are working on." There are, of course, shades of gray, but I think anyone who pretends they don't play this game is lying their ass off.

I am hating the status game right now because it is preventing me from thinking clearly about my next step. (Of course, the thing to do is to get critical distance from academic culture, just like I'm advocating critical distance from NASCAR: ideally, one gets to the point where one enjoys it on its own terms without necessarily endorsing those terms. But that would require a measure of security and relaxation I somehow lost on the job market.) I like students, goddamnit, and I respect that my own esoteric field is not really that important to most of them, even while I strive to help them all learn how to enjoy it within a framework of their own interests. I'm wondering if I might not want to just get into academic advising, or undergraduate programs, or something that's more administrative and less tenure-trackish. But it's hard to think about and impossible to talk about b/c you have to pretend that you are little Ms. Gung-Ho and you are dedicated--dedicated!--to the life of the mind, that everything else is secondary and anything that's too sensual or practical--like my god, good weather or not wanting to move across the damn continent and leave all your friends, or admitting that the students have a point, they really DON'T need to know this stuff in real life and it IS more fun to go drink beer with your friends than to go to the library (but no, I will not give you credit)--is just self-indulgence and really, not that important.

It's what I used to call the "brain-on-a-stick" phenomenon. And it's so freaking annoying.

Because goddamnit, I like decent weather.

Ah, beer.

Whereas Professor Bitch has actually done what passes for a full day's work in July (actually, now I glance at the clock, it has been about 8 hours, including minor web-surfing and a break to play with pseudonymous kid); and whereas Professor Bitch has cleaned up cat vomit; and whereas my study is stifling hot (windows in old, not-yet-renovated house do not open, ugh!); and whereas I am extremely sick of sitting on the computer; and most importantly, whereas I am now enjoying a COLD BEER:

Be it resolved that this shall be a rather short entry.

I actually have a draft based on something in today's Chronicle of Higher Ed. that I wanted to say something about; maybe tomorrow. Today I will merely express my EXTREME GRATIFICATION that people actually seem to be reading and commenting on this blog (and such nice comments too! Thank you!) and say that I am pleasantly surprised that after only a few days the darn thing does appear to be serving a purpose both for me and for an actual audience. Shock, amazement.

I guess there is definitely something to be said for the ways that academic life (hell, for all I know, all jobs are like this) splits performance from experience. Feminist or Marxist analysis of what the divide between "success" as externally judged and "discontent" as personally felt shall have to wait for another time, though. In the meantime, though, it is very nice to know (well, one knows, of course, via common sense; but it is always nice to have actual confirmation) that I am not alone in this boat.

To the person who asked about where I am/where I want to go: much as I long to go into great detail on that question, I am far, far too paranoid to be that specific. I will say only that I have moved from a large city to a small town, and there is NO WAY IN HELL I am staying here. Not. Gonna. Do. It.

What I am gonna do is go have a beer and smoke a goddamn cigarette if I can manage to do it before Mr. B. comes back with pseudonymous kid and catches me setting a Bad Example.

So here's the deal

For better or for worse, I have decided that I will be leaving this job in a year. Well, maybe two. I waffle. I fear that "maybe two" will turn into "maybe three" and so on, but partner B. swears he will not let this happen. We have begun making plans: doing what's called "informational interviews" with people about possible job opportunities in the place we want to live (note to self: WRITE THANK YOU LETTERS), taking into account resale value as we renovate the house, starting to tell close friends of our plans.

The problem, though, is that we don't know what to do next. Do I want to find another tenure-track job? I really don't know. Do I want to switch careers? I just might. I can't tell whether constantly returning to that thought (and pursuing it, by starting to ask around, and even write about it here) means that yes, that is what I want to do; or whether it means that no, I am just commitment-phobic (yeah, right, the problem with married women who have children and Ph.D.s is their fear of commitment) and / or overreacting to the fact that I do not like this place. By "place" I don't mean job--on the other side of the "maybe my gut is telling me to do something else" argument is the feeling that, if I were living someplace I liked, I would be quite happy in my job. So, do I just want to move? And if so, where, exactly? It's really two questions: job, and place. Plus a third: time. Because I can probably, if I want, get a t-t job in the region I want, if I am willing to wait (hence, "maybe two").

And I dislike unknowns. I think this instinctive conservatism is probably part of the academic character: after all, what is more secure than tenure? Not everyone who gets into the academic funnel gets tenure, of course--but we all perceive that as a problem because tenure is what we all want, i.e., security. I want security too, but I am beginning to realize that I don't want it at any price, and I am beginning to suspect that maybe I don't want it as much as I think I do. Maybe I actually think security is a little bit dull.

Of course, all this worrying notwithstanding, I am--in true ruthless bitch fashion, and totally in keeping with my character--actually doing all the right things. I will be looking at the t-t job listings this year. I am writing and publishing. I am being conservative and doing the things I need to do to look like I am 100% gung-ho about this career. At the same time, I am quietly asking around and looking into other opportunities. If spring comes and I get a job offer at some college or university, my intention is to look at it and try to make my decision based not on the question of whether it is the "best" offer I have gotten (or the only one), but rather on the question of: do I want this job? Does the offer actually interest me, as opposed to just being "an" offer? (We are setting aside the fact that I did, in fact, actually want the job I now have.) If the answer to those questions is no, or if no offer is forthcoming, then in spring we begin seriously applying for other, non-t-t jobs.

This is a rational, intelligent, and eminently practical plan. It will almost certainly work. Note that a key element of the plan is the vow to cross no bridges before we come to them.

So why, then, do I keep giving myself cramps craning my neck to see down the path?

I love the internet

This site has 24 different (excellent) versions of the song "Body and Soul" for downloading, and seems to suggest that there may be more later--worth bookmarking, methinks.

Manual Labor Good

Today I was a bad professor and spent the afternoon peeling old wallpaper. We are remodelling the house, you see. Stripping old wallpaper is oddly satisfactory, like when you were a kid and spread glue on your hand and let it dry and peeled it off. I'm sure we're giving pseudonymous kid lead poisoning as we get down to the old paint. That and the chemicals we are using to melt the wallpaper glue and whatever the black shit is that was used to glue tiles to the wall, ugh. But it is fun, and one has the feeling of actually accomplishing something tangible and immediate, not to mention the satisfaction of working up a sweat scrubbing gunk off the walls. I was so worked up with the joy of physical movement that, on catching a glimpse of my ass in the bathroom mirror as I undressed, I decided to do 50 squats before hopping in the shower. Which I'm sure will suddenly turn me into Maria Sharapova overnight.

Now we are off to a friend's house for dinner, thank god, saving us the hassle of trying to cook and the expense of deciding fuck it, let's just go out again.

Feminism 101

It never ceases to shock and upset me that otherwise supposedly intelligent people just cannot get past the idea that having children is a "choice" and that any proposal to benefit kids and/or their caregivers is somehow unfair. So, this piece from Crooked Timber on the new book No Exit -- What Parents Owe Their Children and What Society Owes Parents (which I shall have to put on my Amazon wish list and hope to read but probably never actually get around to). While I agree that the proposal to pay primary caregivers $5000/year in cold hard cash 'til the kid turns 13 sounds great (while we're at it, let's universalize health insurance), I completely disagree that the libertarian objection to this kind of thing isn't easily dismissed.

First, we have this--"I'm not persuaded that there really is a loss of autonomy involved"--which is just laughable and not worth refuting; childbearing is so very NOT "of a kind with other autonomy losses consequent on voluntary choices" because, as the book apparently points out (according to the very essay I'm quoting), having a kid is pretty much the only "voluntary" decision that one is not allowed to walk away from. Literally: this very evening I found myself explaining to pseudonymous kid that no, I could not let him just sit in the car while I went into the fast food place (yum) to buy dinner because 1. it is dangerous; 2. it is illegal. A small, petty example, but a significant one that, until you've had a little kid who you must tote around, like a 25 lb. sack of stubborn, questioning, clumsy potatoes that kicks off its shoes at every opportunity but can't put them back on by itself, you can't really understand. I would wager that there are few other voluntary commitments that require so much physical and mental energy. You try thinking when your kid won't shut up asking you "why" every 30 seconds, and then tell me there's no loss of autonomy there.

More significantly, the CT piece goes on: "The libertarian objection simply takes the institutional status quo as authoritative, and says "Look, you know what the circumstances are, or you should know, and if you make this choice in these circumstances, you're on your own; why should other people have to help you out?" Understanding the situation of the primary caretaker as one of diminished freedom or autonomy simply concedes to the basic thrust of this argument; and once it is pointed out that the parent is not lacking in autonomy, there are no further resources to respond to it." This is the enormous logical flaw at the heart of the libertarian argument. Why do we take the institutional status quo as authoritative, as normative even, and NOT take basic facts of human biology as authoritative and normative? Yes, individuals can choose not to have children. More power to them. But collectively, on both the social and species level, we cannot make that choice. Being living creatures and all. Moreover, the economic disadvantages of having kids pretty much accrue because we've all agreed to alienate our labor. Ok, fine, but let's don't pretend that it is the children, rather than the social structure, that is the "choice."

Later on someone says, "I thought that people who have children do it largely because they want to." No. People have children because if you fuck someone of the opposite sex, chances are that sooner or later you (or, if you are a man, your partner) will get pregnant. It's lovely that we have ways of avoiding this, and tragic when people who want kids find out they can't, but let's not be stupid: having children is not the choice. NOT having children is the choice.

To be fair, the commenter who said that was responding the weak argument that we have a social obligation to take care of children because they are the next generation and will pay for our retirement, run our nursing homes, etc. etc. Again, I say no. We have a social obligation to children because CHILDREN ARE PART OF SOCIETY. As they are young and dependent, the obligations of adults towards them are greater than theirs towards us. But see, they do grow up (if our obligations are fulfilled), and then they take on social responsibilities too, including caring for us when/if we ourselves become dependent. This is a nice thing, but it is not the REASON we should take care of children, it is merely the logical consequence of doing so.

Finally, a more minor point. A couple of people point out that giving out cash benefits for having children would probably encourage people to have kids earlier. Then we have the question of whether this is good or bad. My answer is that it is almost certainly good. Having children in, say, your late teens/early 20s is healthier, easier, and by the time the kids are in college you are still, say, 40--young enough to start a career, start pursuing advancement in a career you're already in, even switch careers. The only reason having kids young is "bad" is because the social stigma and economic disadvantages are quite strong, and mutually reinforcing.

And it's only because we take the social stigma and economic costs of childbearing (and if you think that childbearing doesn't carry a social stigma, think again) as normative that people even have arguments like this one.

Now what?

So having started this thing I find myself wondering what to do with it: what tone to take, what content I want, etc. I know that one thing I want is the space to muse and think through job and career planning (on which more in a bit). It would be nice to be able to comment on things I read. But at the moment I feel oddly uninspired. This is a surprising reversal from the past year, when I immersed myself in blogland in part b/c I was not doing the work I wanted to be doing. (Although, when I look back at all I did last year, I obviously had to have been working some time.) Now I am feeling pretty on top of things work-wise and yet--or maybe as a result--I don't feel terribly urgent about saying anything. I suspect a lot of this is mitigation of anxiety; I hope that feeling less anxious won't mean becoming complacent.

The funny thing is, back when I was preparing for the job market, I thought I wanted nothing more than a job with a reasonable teaching load, maybe some research support, not terribly stringent tenure expectations. I swore that if I got a job like that I would gladly settle in, buy a tweed jacket, write the occasional article and maybe a modest book, teach affably, and putter.

In fact, I could do that here. Easily. But now that the possibility is within my grasp, it horrifies me. I am having a bad case of "is this all there is?" I have always enjoyed teaching, and done it very well: now, I find myself complaining about students and unsure of how to strike a balance between wanting to develop new and interesting courses and wanting to do as little prep as possible. My research topic is interesting when I get into it, but it is very easy to put down and I don't feel any strong compulsion to pick it up again: if it evaporated tomorrow I wouldn't care a whit. I'm not feeling enthusiastic about much. In the past, I was motivated largely by anxiety and the desire to please; now, that anxiety is fading, giving me the space to wonder if I am really interested in what I'm doing for its own sake.

And I can't tell if this is a wakeup call, simple regional dissatisfaction (expressed as dissatisfaction with the job that is the reason I live where I do), or merely growing pains.

Presumably time will tell. But patience has never been one of my virtues.

best line i've heard all day

"Maybe Kerry wants to be president after all." (Wonkette)

Hope so, but I really am starting to wonder.

Blue

So I decided, after that last post, to hell with it, I'm going to go take my kid--I will have to think of a suitable pseudonym for him later--outside, and myself too. We went out for a cheap lunch, wandered through a couple of shops. We're walking downtown, across the street from the fancy restaurant my department took me to when I was here on my job visit (a good restaurant, where I will treat partner B. someday when we can afford it), when pseudonymous kid says, "Mom, why is that light blue?" I look around to see what he is talking about, but I don't see a blue light. "Which light?" I say. "Where?" "The light all around," he explains. And lo and behold, I realize, he's right! The ambient light here *is* blue! "You're right," I tell him, "it is blue. Probably because of the clouds that are blocking the sun."

No wonder it's so depressing. Even in July, it's overcast much of the time. And things tend to look sort of grayish and dirty. When I first moved here, I thought things just *were* dirty--some places are cleaner than others, no? and I figured that this was just a town that didn't clean the streets much, or maybe the winter salt made everything dingy, or something. The salt doubtless has an effect, but I think pseudonymous kid is right. It's the light. People's clothes look shabby and overwashed, and their faces look tired and underwashed. It's the visual equivalent of the way your feet feel when you've been barefoot all day and they're dirty. Things look kind of wintry even in the summer.

I think this has a lot to do with my feeling that I really need to get out of here. Maybe the home remodeling project should involve buying full-spectrum light bulbs or something, to counter the seasonal affective disorder that apparently affects all seasons.

Why so bitchy?

I wonder if anyone else is as disorganized as I am. There are always a zillion things to do: work shit, home shit ("make dentist appointment. Get new glasses"), personal shit ("gee, I haven't taken a shower in a couple days. What I wouldn't give for a pedicure"). Individual tasks, like planning my graduate course, will sink under the horizon while I am fretting about something else, like straightening up my office and thinking about my undergrad course, and then they will surface again at 3 am while I am lying awake in bed. Others will simply be postponed indefinitely: for instance, said office-straightening (i.e., putting books on shelves in some kind of coherent order so that I can actually figure out what I want to teach by scanning the shelves rather than relying on my crappy memory) has been waiting to happen for a year. I've been throwing books on the shelves any old how, and have been living with that for 12 months now b/c I haven't had time to impose order. But then when you do it, it feels like such a huge waste of time, and one is sure one should be doing something else but can't think of anything else to do because, of course, one is too disorganized to remember what one should be doing. In the meantime, I get tense and bitch at my partner, who is busy remodelling the house, and because he is tearing out cupboards while I am thinking about the relative merits of various anthologies, our son spends yet another summer day sitting inside. This seems to be how I live my life.

Which brings me to the question: why an anonymous blog? Well, because, like all academic types, I am paranoid. I am certain that everyone out there is as disorganized and lazy as I am, and I know that my own geographic discontent and frequent doubt as to whether I really want to be doing this are pretty common as well. But, as  someone else once said, "I am busy trying to be the person my department and I have agreed to pretend I realy am," so I want a space to try to figure it out (geographic discontent means leaving your therapist behind) without having to worry about adding "indiscreet and self-sabotaging" to "lazy and disorganized" as self-descriptors. Of course, by pretending, in real life, to be a person that I think no one really is I merely substitute "hypocritical" for "self-sabotaging." Well, don't we all.

Sometimes I remember that in a former life I was actually confident and self-assured, and would take my kid to the park once in a while.

Introduction

The events are real. The thoughts are my own. But the names have been changed to protect the guilty and the innocent.