Sturm und Drang

...which, incidentally, as I've just discovered, is the name of a Finnish metal band. B, you must have known this already. It also expresses, quite adequately, the general tenor of this semester. Hence the lack of blogging. Q and I are taking turns talking each other down off the ledge, though lately, to be fair, she's been doing most of the talking and I've been doing most of the near-leaping. But here we are. Mostly, I'm maintaining of balance of dread and excitement. Running helps. Food helps. Kitties help.

First, the job market: Wow. I've already received one rejection, and one university lost their funding for the position I applied for. Today, though, I'm mailing five more applications to bring me back up to a total of 50. I really can't decide how I feel about this. My understanding is that you're supposed to keep looking at ads as they keep trickling out year round. I had to force myself to do this yesterday and only barely suppressed feelings of nausea while clicking through the pages. But then I think that the job for me might be the one I don't apply for! You can imagine. So, this is exciting in a way. It's the culmination of so very many years and so very much work. Not to mention the sacrifice of full adulthood in exchange for a grotesque, protracted adolescence (of which I am reminded every time I speak with my family). I'm excited at the prospect of starting over somewhere. Of having a real job. Of . . . beginning, really. Again. What balances and occasionally overwhelms all that sunshine is the prospect of getting fifty more rejections. Slough of despond? Here I come.

Teaching: I can't complain, really. I did get that one gem about Victorians that pretty much redeems a lot of other things. I still have the angry confronto, but he seems to have diverted his ire away from me directly and more toward the major injustice facing white men in America today (the only "legally oppressed group," in his words): affirmative action. Other than that, he's mostly fine, and even my white power kid doesn't seem overly upset by having to read bell hooks. Or maybe he's just punching walls every time he leaves my class? Tough to say. As I like to say, I'm happy with just about anything short of overt hostility. I said this to a man who teaches in the African-American studies department recently, and it cracked him up. The exciting news is that I think I might get to teach a one-credit seminar in the Spring on a topic of my choice. I proposed a course via the website for this special program, and it looks like I'm being approved! Though, as I confided to my office mate yesterday, I feel like kind of a fraud because the website specifies "distinguished faculty" as the people who teach this class. My sense is that they probably have a hard time getting "distinguished" faculty members to propose the courses because they don't pay much at all. In fact, one faculty member told me he'd never done it because it isn't enough money. And, indeed. But this isn't why I want to do it. If I get the class, I'll no doubt write more about it. I just can't help but be cautious until I see my course listed on their seminar offerings page. And then people have to sign up for it. Keep your fingers and toes crossed!

By the way, has anyone had the opportunity to see any of the new Charm School: Rock of Love Girls? Fucking fantastic. In fact, I'm miffed that it isn't on today, so I can watch it during my run. Real Chance of Love looks like the worst, lamest spin-off evah. And this coming from me.

For Queercat

The hilarious, existential angst of Jon Arbuckle, Garfield Minus Garfield. Ummm. Feeling a little interpellated right now. Resisting.

Hilarious

It's probably just my slowly setting in paper-grading hysteria, but this is my favorite quote extracted from an evening of freshman writing:

"The troops on the battlefield also want to walk away as Victorians."

It has a quiet sublimity to it, no? A close second would be a description of Rambo, refusing to settle down, "budding heads" with the authorities.

Ahhhhhhhh.

Heirlooms!

Things That Make Me Want to Die

In no particular order:

1) Going on the job market, but not having finished any applications, and with no end in sight.

2) The idea of not going on the job market.

3) Sarah Palin

Teaching Antics, 2.0

It's been many years since I've taught two classes simultaneously. It seems ridiculous to complain about the work, as actual professors, particularly in the early stages of their careers, have MUCH heavier teaching load. So I'm not going to complain. No promises for how I'll feel after grading my first batch of 48 papers, though. But, really, the whole experience is throwing me for a bit of a loop. I'm trying to get my head around how weird it feels some days. In previous years, whenever I had a bad classroom experience, I alternated between feeling like it was just me sucking and suspecting that actually the students played a large hand as well. While I remain completely aware of my own tendencies toward suck-titude, I'm now laying much more responsibility at the door of simple classroom chemistry. I can now go from my first class--where one of my students is likely to yell at me, one is going to perform his abject dissaffected ennui, and one, I've recently realized, is a white power kid--to my shy but engaged and respectful second class--where even the dude leaning his head against the far corner of the room is nice and speaks in discussions. Oddly, the white power kid is perfectly fine in class, while the disaffected kid made a point of coming up to me after class yesterday and saying: "Yeah, your comments were really vague, and generic, and totally unhelpful." Blech. I'm resisting the urge to generate a taxonomy to explain the different types.

Bottom line, I kind of like it and hate it at the same time.

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