Avoiding Work

It's an easy thing to do, this avoiding work. With the web, and the novels I need to get through, it's very easy not to write or grade. In fact, I'm skipping both of those even as I write now. I have a debate to do on the nature of government this Wednesday night. I need to distribute my opening remarks by tomorrow morning to the other participants. I'm deep into avoiding that right now. I've also got two stacks of papers that need grading by Tuesday -- maybe I'll get one of them done by then. I also have to do a midterm exam for my online class and put it up by Wednesday.

To this mix add the fact that Amanda has been out of town all weekend and that I spent yesterday coaching the Academic Team at a tournament. Yeah, I guess I'll be working late tonight.

So I'm reading Naipaul's A Bend in the River. I need to do so because it's one of the works chosen to test the masters students on this year. Once again, I feel like Jim Dixon in Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, because I've not read something I should have. His description in that book of the ultimate English professor game, "Humiliation," is brilliant. A group of "literary" people gather, and one person calls out a title of a book that she has not read. She scores one point for every person in the group who HAS read that work. That's it; it's very simple. However, the psychology behind it is brilliant. Obviously, you will score the most points with "classics," works that you think everyone else has read. So you need to profess your ignorance of some of the stalwarts of Western literature. In short, to win you must humiliate yourself. Of course, with my lack of desire to read Melville, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, or any other 19th-century overdrawn crap, I guess I can usually clean up on that game.

anyway, here are some links you might like:

Overcoming Procrastination
The UIUC Counseling Center has this nice little page explaining why we do this and what we can do to stop. I think I'll read it tomorrow.

V. S. Naipaul: An Overview
George Landow, one of the gods of lit on the web, has done this site as part of his poco work.

Kingsley Amis
A nice primer for the man and his son (Martin), by Books and Writers, a site I've trusted for a while now.

Applying for Jobs

I think I whine quite a bit about money. At least, that's what people tell me. It's galling, however, to know that it will be another two years before I make what the average college graduate makes in these United States. By that time I'll have had six years in here, been promoted and tenured, and still not be making what the average BA will be making (of course, by then their average salary will be higher, so I probably won't be making it then, either).

There are places that actually pay a livable wage to those who teach. I'll be applying at places like Cal State Sacramento, Murray State here in Kentucky, The College of Charleston, among others, this year.

I was so frustrated that I wrote to ms. mentor, who writes a column for The Chronicle of Higher Education. She answered me in today's column. Yes, it's a nasty little business, full of deceit and trickery and the willingness to disupt your life so that you can live decently.

Kentucky's new state program is called Education Pays. Given the data they've collected, they seem to be right. Education does pay, just not for educators.

Hell of a Speechwriter

The boy is a doofus, who always looks too damn smug, who doesn't have two brain cells to rub together, even when it's his day to use the family gray matter (Jeb gets in on MWF, W gets it TR, but all weekend, because, after all, he's the prez). But he's got a hell of a speechwriter, and he knows how to deliver a line. He hit all the spots he needed to hit, emphasizing tolerance twice (twice daily might be what we need).

Now what? I'd like to think that we're out of harm's way, but I can't convince myself of that. Instead, I think we're in for more attacks, not necessarily from the air. We've been hit in the solar plexus of the military-industrial complex, and at the nerve center of international finance. I think entertainment is up next; these are the cultural artifacts that the Great Satan exports, and the things we're hated for.

Duck and cover, kids, we're in for a long fight.

Like Bookends

I heard from some old friends this week. Doug Rice I've mentioned before. He's the guy that's going to hook me up in Sacramento. Actually, he's the guy who speaks highly of the place and makes me want to go there. But I also heard this week from Kathryn Rummel, a friend from UNC who's now at California Polytechnic State U, in San Luis Obispo. It's gorgeous out there. She's got a great job, but I feel a bit sorry for her, out there by herself. Oh, I know she's got plenty of friends out there and she's not only respected but liked in her department, but it still must be tough, a Kentucky girl out there on the left coast.

Kathryn and I never knew each other well at UNC. We were chatting aquaintances, people who would pass in the halls and say a few polite meaningless words (I am sure that I was wearing the motley, not her). and then I came here, minutes from her parents' place in Lexington, and she went there, thousands of miles away from here. We stayed in touch by email, and I can remember communicating with her on a level that went far beyond what our friendship warranted, because it was so easy to be honest and hurt and lost and confused and lonely when it was only me and the computer. There was no need to get defensive, no need to rationalize, no need to raise my hackles over some unintended slight, no need to do anything except imagine her and Sukie, her dog, in a great many-windowed apartment near the beach, walking in the sand every day. And so I did.

Lately we had slipped out of touch. It was probably my fault, although I don't know why. I still think of her often, and how different her life must be. It will be nice if I can maintain this opened door. I'm not good at a distance (it's why I think ultimately distance ed will fail -- it will take two to six percent of our students, and that's it -- faculty are better face-to-face), but maybe I can try harder.

Exhausted

It's been a hell of a week. I know, nothing like what people in NY are experiencing (buona fortuna, Tom Cultice and all my friends at Mannes College of Music, the Jesuits at Xavier, and all the help and hearts of Bailey House), but still tiring for me.

Tomorrow I go to spend the day teaching an appropriate topic, Workplace Violence. Needless to say, I've got my case study lined up. I do this a few times a semester, for NAILM and for EKU's Community and Workforce Education. I got to be good at this when I worked at UNC Hospitals and had to develop policies dealing with this issue. I ended up doing this schtick at plenty of places.

There's more to do and more to grade, so I'm off.

Avoiding Grading

Is there a better grading avoidance device than a terrorist attack? It's just minutes after the World Trade Towers and Pentagon bombings and I've got almost 30 comp papers to grade. I'd rather watch the news sites crash than grade. Hell, I'd rather do anything than grade (well, almost anything).

How about these links:

Terrorism -- Intelligence Threats Assessments
This is a link site to all the docs needed to become an expert on terrorism.

The Anarchist Cookbook and The Terrorist Handbook
They're both here at this weirdpier site.

The Pentagon
Makes you all warm and fuzzy for the arms merchants.

How Does It Feel?
This may be what the rest of the world is saying to the U.S. right now.

Feeling Puny

I made a great blogging mistake today -- I looked at other blogs. Man, I thought I was hip, I thought I was up on the design, I thought because I tweaked the html in this template that I was hot shit. Well, I learned just how puny I am this afternoon. There are some awesome sites out there, with witty, interesting people writing incredible stuff. I saw a lot of sites, and they all looked better, linked better, and created something more interesting than this.

So maybe I've got it all wrong. I read some articles that suggested that blogs should be annotated lists of sites. Well then why the hell am I writing this prose? Where are my pix? How about my unusual and thought-provoking links? The details of the fascinating and envy-provoking life I live? The fun city I live in and my drunken wanderings through it?

Man, I got nothing.

And to top it all off, I graded my online class for most of the day and spent the rest of the time trying to copy a cd with a new miniCDRW that hangs at 2:37 of every cd. Now I've got some nice new coasters, and one data cd that I did manage to burn.

Anyhow, you want links, here are some links. They're not trendy, they're not particularly cool, they're just there to make you think:

Path to Peace
History of Northern Ireland peace process and ongoing negotiations from ireland.com. Just plain sad.

Company
The U.S. Jesuits put out this mag. Show me someone doing work as important.

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
You think life is tough for you? Check this out.

Jimmie Spheeris: A Memorial Gallery
This guy was awesome; I've got some of his vinyl, and he still rocks.

Grading on Saturdays

This has got to be the worst thing about being a teacher. Grading is bad enough: reading papers where I know I'm spending more time on them than the author did, noting and correcting the same gradeschool-level mistakes over and over again, writing comment after comment in the recognition that, for many students, the transfer of knowledge from one assignment to another is a dicey proposition. And to do this all on Saturday? Miserable.

I got into this dodge because I told myself that I was sacrificing money for time, that I was never going to make any decent cash, but that I would have more time for the rest of my life (let me tell you about what professors of English get paid -- in my fifth year, after being promoted early to Associate Professor, I still can't make what starting English ass't profs makes at our benchmark institutions -- I'm still at least one year away from 40K). Well, it just doesn't work that way. This semester I've cut way down on my work time, which means that I'm putting in 40 hours of work instead of my usual 60. And what do I have to show for it? Nothing but debt and the recognition that next year, people will be hired in above me (or above someone in the department, a truly despicable thing). It's no wonder I'm looking for a new position.

I ran into (well, it was an electronic "ran into") someone I went to grad school at Duquesne with. He's at Cal State at Sacramento, where I'll be applying. Doug Rice does work that I don't understand, and I understand and appreciate lit for a living. But hey, he's in the Acker vein, and he's pissed off Senators Helms and Ashcroft, so he must be doing something right. I think about him in that big Teaching Assistant office at Duquesne, holding court, being loud, and generally tossing out offhand comments that could rule your life if you thought about them (they did for me). And I think of those straightlaced, buttoned-down, incredibly Catholic people we shared an office with, and I just laugh. Do a google search on Doug Rice and read a few of the reviews of Blood of Mugwump and A Good Cuntboy Is Hard To Find. It may not show you where literature is going, but it will open your eyes to the possibilities.

Doug, it was good to rediscover you after so many years. I trust you are well and still ranting. I'm happy your voice is recognized and celebrated.

Weighty Things?

Are these things really supposed to be weighty? I mean, I guess I just don't understand the audience here. Am I writing with a bunch of shoegazers who will only read these things as testaments to their melancholia? Am I writing with technogeeks whose acronymic language is even more filled with nonsense than my own? Am I writing with Salinger wannabes who details the minutiae of their angst-ridden lives? I'm not sure. And I guess the fact that I mentioned these three groups demonstrates that I must possess a bit of each of them myself. Oh well.

Anyhow, today I saw those teacher evals on collegeclub. They were exactly what I expected. No, there weren't any about me, but those about the people I knew were accurate, as far as I can tell. Of course, those who post such reviews usually have an ax to grind, so everything should be taken with a grain of salt.

I need to spend more time looking up info on the Ardoyne school protests. I was on ireland.com the other day reading about it and got sick thinking about the bombing of children -- this must be how people of good conscience felt during the 60s when people were bombing churches in the South. But I also got homesick for the place -- I know I've only been there a few times, but it's a much better, much friendlier, much more intelligent place than I've been living in here. Today they announced that the protest wasn't violent yesterday: "There was a peaceful but noisy protest outside Holy Cross yesterday as around 100 Catholic schoolgirls and their parents walked to the main school gates. Around 200 Protestant residents blew whistles, sounded air horns and banged bin lids as they passed. The chairman of the school's board of governors, Father Aidan Troy, said he was relieved. "We can live with whistles. They are better than pipe bombs," he said."

So what is it? Such a violent place, where pipebombs are diplomatic tools and keeping track of the splinter groups that wish to continue the violence could be a full-time job. And then there's the ROI, where you can be a world away from the violence and think you'll never see it again. Yeats had it right, it's filled with a terrible beauty, which calls to me and repulses me at the same time.

Rhythm

I guess the trick for blogging, as for any other writing, is rhythm. So now, even when I don't feel like it, I'll write a bit as I recover from reading student responses to questions I posed on Wordsworth and Coleridge. My students this semester are an interesting lot. My advanced tech writing class is small, with good students, willing to work hard and put int he time to learn something. My beginning tech writing class is a bit more scattered. There are some excellent people there, and some who are dreading learning with me, because I require more work that the other tech writing classes do. The comp class is finally getting into the swing of things; like most intro writing classes, they're a bit shy, always trying to get over and get out of work, but, when pressed, will step up, for the most part.

I'm trying to see if my classes are rated in CollegeClub.com, but there's something wrong with the javascript, so I really can't tell. There was an article in the Eastern Progress, the school newspaper, about sites where students grade their profs. To be honest, I welcome such a thing. I'd like to see us be held as accountable as we hold our students. I know that there are many ways that we can influence student evaluations of us (I've personally witnessed such things as bringing cookies in on the day evaluations are completed, telling students what to write on their evaluations, and even ripping up any bad evals). We need to remember that we owe something not just to out colleagues, but to our students as well. We owe them quality teaching and respect for their endeavors. I know plenty of people who have one or the other of these, and I know a rare few, the best professors I can recall, who have both.

Why blog?

Because I teach this stuff, and I'm still trying to figure out how to write, or what I do when I write.
Because maybe I can see myself get better as I do it.
Because, as I've told many, I don't have a creative bone in my body (my use of this turn of phrase should prove my point), so maybe I can hone something creative here, or at least peer over the fence.
Because it's another form I may need to know.
Because there's just me and the screen.
Because the cats and dog are asleep and my wife isn't home yet.