Three years and two months ago I arrived in Funky City for my first tenure-track job. At last, my job had come along! My temping days were over, but alas, life was no song. My landing was not gentle, and I’ve written about some of the disasters that greeted me here. I often felt I [...]
Archive for the ‘this academic life’ Category
6 Sep
Jimmy Choos via Campus Mail
The first thing that popped into my head when I awoke, some eighteen hours ago, was, of all things, the hold music for Fed Ex. Doong doong doong ding ding doong doong doong-doong, goes the vaguely xylophonic synthesizer. And that’s not the annoying part; that would be the pop pop pop pop pop pop pop [...]
4 Aug
A consumer’s report
There’s a commercial for a big-box office supply store that, to a soundtrack of “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” depicts a middle-aged dude gliding gleefully through the store’s aisles riding a shopping cart, followed by a pair of miserable children dragging their feet in funereal gloom. It’s back-to-school time! For obvious reasons, that [...]
14 Jul
Writing like an undergrad
On my way to the office this morning (cos I’m trying to avoid getting sucked into and enraged by the Sotomayor hearings, though I wound up listening to them at the office and getting enraged, anyhow: Jeff Sessions, your disingenuousness makes you sound so dumb that it vindicates the Senate Judiciary Committee that blocked your [...]
8 Jul
Today’s binge
Date: July 7, 2009
Written: 3000 words
Deleted: 500 words
Consumed: 1 cup yogurt
32 oz. coffee with soy milk
1/2 cup stale trail mix
handful of chocolate-covered pretzels
hot green tea
1 cup leftover macaroni and cheese
an entire bag of microwave popcorn
tepid green tea
Phoned: Mom, who, upon hearing about my formidable accomplishments today, did not ask about my prospects for making her [...]
29 Jun
Done
Not quite ten hours ago, I returned from my twenty-third conference presentation. Moments thereafter I added the line to my CV. It will take me about a week to unpack my luggage, a small, non-hipster messenger-type carry-on.
Call it superstition, but I do not list presentations on my CV until I have actually presented or moderated—I [...]
12 Jun
Repeat after me:
I do not hate this.
I do not hate this.
I do not hate this.
I do not hate this.
I do not HATE this.
I do not HATE THIS.
I do not
I do.
9 Jun
Envy
Once upon a time, I was just beginning my teaching adventures. The course, of course, was composition. For some reason, such as unoriginality, a great clump of us teaching neophytes had assigned an “advertisement analysis.” The students’ task was to find an advertisement, to figure out some question about the appeals made, and then to [...]
4 Jun
Eeeeeeeuuuuuwww!
Like virtually all of my colleagues, I have tried to personalize my Soviet-issue office. This task is no small one, when you consider that the furniture is Soviet-issue, too. Well, no, I exaggerate: it came right out of Dilbert. The environs are an ironic challenge for humanists, who like to think of ourselves as being, [...]
17 May
Note to self
Next year, carry—don’t wear—your regalia to your soon-to-be-former students’ commencement ceremony.
Why? Well, when I walk the few blocks between my office, where I keep my regalia, to the jumbotron-fitted site of JPU’s festivities, I am inevitably congratulated by a dozen or so misty-eyed parents and assorted other well-wishing fans of pomp and circumstance. Never mind [...]
