Next week, on a day when I will be on campus for thirteen solid hours, meeting in conferences with students, teaching classes, and attending that other type of meeting, the chair of another department has thought nothing of compelling me to meet the new hire in her department. This new hire has no family in [...]
Archive for August, 2007
30 Aug
What? Already?
My teaching week ended at 10 last night, along with my grad seminar. Awesome group: as lively and smart as enough of my undergrad writing-intensive lit class. I was on an adrenaline high when I got home last night, replaying especially inspired bits of discussion to myself. Is that extremely geeky?
This fall beats last fall—my [...]
28 Aug
Michael Vick I’m not, but. . .
. . . the next time I’m walking down the sidewalk, and a dog on a long leash starts climbing on and licking me while its owner giggles, “Don’t worry! He doesn’t bite,” is it OK if I pounce on the owner while spraying him or her with spit?
I mean, my paws haven’t been padding [...]
28 Aug
Repeat customers
Of the 42 students I’m teaching this term, I’ve taught 11 before, one of whom is in her third course with me. Yet another 10 report that a friend referred them to my classes.
Now, I taught over 400 students last year, so at least ten of them are bound not to hate my teaching “style” [...]
26 Aug
Virtue and virtuosity!
I’ve boasted of my mad culinary skillz here at least once before, but this evening I feel particularly self-congratulatory. See, I started the day with a refrigerator not terribly full of vegetables threatening to rot, if not riot. And given the chronic cash-flow problem induced by my quixotic pursuit of freedom from Sallie Mae, combined [...]
26 Aug
In which I’ve finally lost it
It’s been a while since I’ve posted about the little critters who insist on sharing my space, but don’t be mistaken into thinking that I’ve missed out on clearing away their exquisite, not-little-enough corpses or on hearing the John Cage-like clicking of their exoskeletons all this time. Not at all. Never mind that the [...]
25 Aug
Frau! Doktor! Professor! (?)
The other day I received a letter from a student notifying me of a medical condition. He had made his own letterhead on, oh, I’d say 20 lb., 25% rag content paper. Nice. The letter itself concluded with a P.S. reminding me to observe the norms of confidentiality “like a real doctor (no offense!).”
Like most [...]
24 Aug
Readership issues
As if I weren’t having enough issues determining where to pitch my writing in real life, I found this blogthing rather belatedly over at Lumpenprofessoriat’s.
This for a lone use of “shit.” Maybe I shouldn’t have posted that poem, with all its nervous fucking, behind the cut. Or maybe I should be posting wholesomely nauseous cartoons [...]
22 Aug
Unfrozen cavewoman professor
Ladies and gentlemen of the University, I’m just a cavewoman. I slipped on some idealism and slid into graduate school, where I read some books and taught some young people. Then some of your administrators hired me to teach at your institution. Your world frightens and confuses me!
Sometimes your meetings make me want to get [...]
22 Aug
Well, this can’t be good
For the past month or so, I’ve been full of energy. But now, as the first day of classes nears, I can hardly drag myself out of bed. In fact, this morning I fell back to sleep seven times at twenty-minute intervals. I finally awoke a little before 8 a.m. It was the first time [...]
