That Toddling Town
Just back from Chicago, and the CCCC. It's much better than the MLA conference, because the people aren't as pretentious. I didn't hear the standard, "I know this obscure theorist" discussions that I'm so familiar with from MLA. Amanda says that the bulk of composition professors in the U.S. are middle-aged white women. If this conference was true to the demographic, she's right on the money. My paper went well, I think, with great questions fronm the audience, and another really good presenter. Unfortunately, David Elias was unable to make the trip, so I read his paper, too.
Chicago is a great city. We got to see the Art Institute, where Amanda finally saw my favorite works there, Cornell's boxes. Then we were off to the Adler Planetarium, where our trip was far too short. We saw a show there, but as soon as it was over, the Planetarium closed. So my trip to the gift shop was off, which was a real bummer. Amanda scored quite a bit of stuff in the Art Institute gift shop, but I held myself in abeyance until the Adler because I was looking for some cool new posters. Oh well, such is life. We did, however, get into a great impromptu discussion with two barflies who worked at Tower Records. One turned around when I commented on the American edit of "Brown Eyed Girl" that he had just played on the jukebox, and the other came to "save" us from the first and engaged in a rousing defense of Bukowski's work. I told him he was preaching to the choir on that score.
Now it's back to the grind, the week after Spring Break, and school resumes again. It turns out that this may be my last semester here. Amanda got very good vibes from the interviews she had in South Carolina, and I can make more money adjuncting there than I can as an Associate Professor here. Just what I thought. We'll see. First she has to get an offer from one of those places, then I'd have to chuck it all in here. Believe me, it won't be the money that holds me here.
Sunday, March 10, 2002
Avoiding Grading
When you're as deep into grading avoidance as I am right now, anything sounds good, even downloading india.arie mp3s and listening to bootleg Tenacious D stuff. I've been at it for a while today, while a stack of papers stares at me from the dining room (that's right, they can stare through walls, and you can feel the resentment in them as it bores into your back).
If it weren't for grading, this would be a great job. I think every prof, somewhere in every semester, reaches the end of the rope, and gets into grading avoidance. Usually that happens toward the end of the 15 weeks, so you can just push on through and get done, despite the pain of reading yet one more set of bad papers. However, this semester I've got it bad. It's not even spring break yet, and I'm already burnt. I'll get them back to the students tomorrow, but between now and then will be about ten hours of pain. It's stuff like this that makes me envy the people at R1 institutions, with 2/2 teachings contracts. Of course, I'd have to put out a national article every year, something slightly less onerous than grading, but then again, who am I kidding? I'd never even make the first cut for a position like that.
I think one of the reasons why I am so out of grading is this job search. Amanda has a series of interviews over spring break (all in South Carolina, a place I could really enjoy), and we've been talking about what to do if she gets an offer there. I think she'l really like it, and I don't want to do the typical academic couple thing of being apart for a year, so I think I might take a year's leave from EKU next year and look into positions in SC. Amanda thinks that I'd be better off in a high school, where I won't have to do all this non-compensated stuff like web design and committee work and CCSA and tech writing. Maybe there's something to that, but I've only got the seed in my mind so far -- I'll need to think about it for a while before I make a decision.
When you're as deep into grading avoidance as I am right now, anything sounds good, even downloading india.arie mp3s and listening to bootleg Tenacious D stuff. I've been at it for a while today, while a stack of papers stares at me from the dining room (that's right, they can stare through walls, and you can feel the resentment in them as it bores into your back).
If it weren't for grading, this would be a great job. I think every prof, somewhere in every semester, reaches the end of the rope, and gets into grading avoidance. Usually that happens toward the end of the 15 weeks, so you can just push on through and get done, despite the pain of reading yet one more set of bad papers. However, this semester I've got it bad. It's not even spring break yet, and I'm already burnt. I'll get them back to the students tomorrow, but between now and then will be about ten hours of pain. It's stuff like this that makes me envy the people at R1 institutions, with 2/2 teachings contracts. Of course, I'd have to put out a national article every year, something slightly less onerous than grading, but then again, who am I kidding? I'd never even make the first cut for a position like that.
I think one of the reasons why I am so out of grading is this job search. Amanda has a series of interviews over spring break (all in South Carolina, a place I could really enjoy), and we've been talking about what to do if she gets an offer there. I think she'l really like it, and I don't want to do the typical academic couple thing of being apart for a year, so I think I might take a year's leave from EKU next year and look into positions in SC. Amanda thinks that I'd be better off in a high school, where I won't have to do all this non-compensated stuff like web design and committee work and CCSA and tech writing. Maybe there's something to that, but I've only got the seed in my mind so far -- I'll need to think about it for a while before I make a decision.
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