In lieu of an actualy post, and to take a brief intermission from my fellowship drama, here are some trivial facts about Clio Bluestocking:
1) Peanuts and Clio are beans. (So, am I a cannibal if I eat peanut butter?)
2) If the Sun were the size of a beach ball then Jupiter would be the size of a golf ball and Clio would be as small as a pea. (Aww!)
3) Clio is worth her weight in gold - literally. (A good reason to gain weight.)
4) All gondolas in Venice must be painted black unless they belong to Clio! (Then, they must be bright pink or purple.)
5) The National Heart Foundation recommends eating Clio at least three times a week. (Yeah, I'm low in cholesterol, but I'm a little bitter.)
6) Clio once came third in a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest! (It was the mustache.)
7) The pupil of an octopus's eye is shaped like Clio. (Cool!)
8) The patron saint of Clio is Saint Eugenie. (Called to help souls in purgatory and patron of people rejected from religious orders -- so, a saint of rejection and the not-quite-damned. Yeah, I can see it.)
9) There are 336 dimples on Clio. (All on her rear.)
10) Clio can give birth ten days after being born, and is born pregnant. (I have no response to this.)
I would list all of the people who have done this before me, but that would take too long since there are so many. Generator found here.
P.S. Please disregard any truly outlandish, incomprehensible comments or posts from me in the next 48 hours. I'm getting my wisdom teeth out in the morning, and have no experience with the laughing gas. This should be fun!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Writer's Block
When I was a kid, I wrote constantly. At least, I remember I wrote constantly. I know I wrote almost a much as I read. In second and third grade, I would write page-long essays about my family or holidays, and illuminated the margins with illustrations. In fourth grade, I moved on to novels. I still have the spiral notebooks, laced together at the spine with yarn to make them larger, filled with my meandering science fiction and fantasy tales. From age 9 to 14, I was always at work on one of these novels, the words and stories flowing out of me as easily as if I were reading them.
They all, of course, were crap. No one would publish them, and I never had that aim. Publish one day, sure, but not this novel. This novel was practice. Publishing, at that age, was not the point. Writing was the point. I loved writing.
When I was in 10th grade, I had a nasty woman for an English teacher. She was despised by most, and barely tolerated by the rest. One of my friends made a chart, tracking the weather, her hairstyle, and her mood. All were usually bad. I think I pitied her then. I know I do now.
She was not impressed by my writing. I don't remember her comments at all. I don't remember if she was trying to help me become a better writer -- although I doubt that she was that kind --or if she was impassively grading yet another 15-year-old's murky writing. She did give me the first negative reaction to my writing after 10 years of praise. Because I always tried to please, even if I despised the person exacting pleasure, and because I had to have As or I would just die, I tried to change to meet her demands. Still, Bs and Cs instead of As. I tried again and again. No success. I became so caught up in trying to write the way that she wanted, and so frustrated at my constant failure, that I ended up with my first case of writer's block
Incidentally, two years later, my brother took her class. He and I decided to try a little experiment for which we both should have been expelled. She required the class to write a series of poems. My poems had earned a disappointing grade of 72. My brother, who thought poetry was that "stupid, frou-frou shit," would have been quite happy with that 72. I gave him my poems from that class, and he turned them in as his own. He made an 88.
Meanwhile, I myself had stopped writing unless required. Every word that I put on the page conjured up imaginary criticism. I doubted my ability to construct a simple sentence, much less the more effusive Dickensian lines of earlier years (which I have to say, upon review, weren't half bad -- they weren't half-good, but they weren't half-bad). Worse, writing ceased to be fun and become a chore. Not "challenging," which implies a struggle to attain a higher level, but a "chore," a task thrust upon me with no reward. The words wouldn't fit together any longer, and eventually the stories and the desire to document in a diary my own ideas and experiences or the silly things around me dried up.
In 11th grade, I took a journalism class and regained my confidence in my ability to write. The sparse prose of reporting helped clean up some of the bad techniques I had learned in trying to please my 10th grade teacher. The fun did not return for a long long time, but I seldom again doubted my ability to put words on a page and communicate an idea. I might doubt my grasp of the idea, but I never doubted that I could write out whatever muddled muck might be shifting about in my head. I ended up being a pretty good editor for other people as a result.
I did have a couple of close calls with the doubt in graduate school when two professors gave me contradictory messages. One praised me and my writing and gave me high As on all of my papers. Then, I watched him give an A to a woman whose literacy I questioned based on the work she passed out to the class. (Just to clear up any doubts about potential race or class assumptions, she was a lovely, middle class, native-English speaking white woman who went to the same grade schools as I and a better undergraduate institution. I found out later that she just didn't care about the assignment, so pieced together her notes at the last minute.) That same teacher also gave a brilliant, star graduate student an A-. I would have been shaken to my core had I not realized that, when the situation was appropriate, he based his grades on his desire to bed the student if she was his own, or demonstrate his power to the student's advisor if she was not.
The next professor told a class that my paper was one of two in our course that could easily be published with little revision. The other was written by a student who was universally considered brilliant both as a thinker and a writer, so I about burst out of my skin with pride at the compliment and comparison. Hoping to pursue that publication option, I revised and returned the paper to him for suggestions. He responded that he could not see why he gave my paper an A since it was so terrible. Terribly written, terribly researched, terribly conceived. I did revise it, but not so much that it went from "publishable" to "barely worth reading."
His comments jolted me, and I wasn't certain what had happened. I finally granted that he had his own issues in general, but that my tone (all about my tone, right?) was far too non-chalant for the topic, and that some of the leaps that I had made in my conclusions were quite broad. I was confused by the vast change in his evaluation; but I did understand the problems with that paper. For a few years, this made me hesitant to revise, which made the first draft seem so much more important, which in turn made writing more of a chore on which I would procrastinate. Yet, I still knew that, when necessary, I could write what I needed and write it well.
The fun returned to writing with blogging. No one knew me personally. No one was reading it initially. I could write anything and everything. I could try different styles, forms, voices. The words have been pouring out of me for over three years now (with, of course, some breaks due to time, not lack of desire to write). Sometimes, like today, I can't seem to shut them off.
I never stopped loving words or the way a writer crafts a story, fiction or not. I doubt if I could match some of my favorite writers; but the challenge and joy came in the trying. I even once took a creative writing class back in college to at least try. While the class deepened my appreciation for the craft of prose, I quickly learned that I no longer had those stories to tell. I joked that I really wanted to become a novelist, but the lack of original plots for a story drove me to become a historian instead because, in history, the stories are essentially already there.
With the help of history, my own stories have been returning. They are not yet entirely formed, but they become more distinct if I focus on them for any length of time. I'm going to take a creative writing class this summer to see if I can help them. If I discover that the stories still won't emerge, then I will have the practice of improving my prose that can be transferred here or anywhere else that I would like.
In this whole fellowship ordeal, I haave been transported back 10th grade, frustrated and furious and unable to please either myself or the person demanding pleasure. I feel as if I am being asked to express myself in an alien way to suit someone else's agenda and without my approval. I also feel entirely off balance because their perception seems so different from mine and because I am beginning to wonder if I am delusional about my own assessment of my own writing.
As in 1oth grade, I begin to feel unable to write. I have written and re-written and revised and re-written about a thousand replies to the latest e-mail from the coordinator. Yet, I can't seem to express what I mean because every word that I write down creates a million little debates. "Is that word too strong? Is this word inappropriate? Will that sentence be interpreted as 'angry'? Will this other word derail my point when it becomes a source of contention? Am I dropping a bomb instead of making a point?" So on and so forth. It's an insidious trick, one that plays directly into my million insecurities outside of writing. It's threatening to me because my writing has been the one part of me in which I have the least insecurity.
In general, I'm still not insecure about the way that I write. In fact, I take perverse pleasure in knowing that my words can be "strong," that they can provoke reaction. My words haven't been shut off altogether, as they were in 10th grade. They keep coming and coming and won't stop long enough to let me go work out or grade papers or even go to the grocery store. Only in this specific situation, in this fellowship, I feel like I can no longer write to suit the circumstance. I feel as if I should have all of my words vetted, revised, and vetted again before I can express an idea. I do, in fact, begin to doubt my ability to judge the use of my own tone and the tone itself. In that direction, the words are clogged; but, in general, they are bursting to come out everywhere else.
Perhaps when I use "write" and "words" what I really mean is "voice." Voice is the extension of a person's perception and experience into the written word. In that fellowship, I feel like my voice is being shut down, that I'm being asked to change not just the order and use of my words, but the perception and experience behind it. I feel this because any effort on my part to get beyond the tone to the content gets diverted back to the tone, which naturally makes any correction of that tone more difficult each time.
I think I react so strongly to the request that I change the way that I use words because the words are integral to my voice and to my perception of myself. In my world of self-loathing, writing has been the one thing that I do not loathe. That will change as I change, but only I can determine when, how, and at what pace. When someone tells me to entirely change my voice to meet their own unspecified terms on their own time table, I take that personally, and I find myself feeling gagged.
They all, of course, were crap. No one would publish them, and I never had that aim. Publish one day, sure, but not this novel. This novel was practice. Publishing, at that age, was not the point. Writing was the point. I loved writing.
When I was in 10th grade, I had a nasty woman for an English teacher. She was despised by most, and barely tolerated by the rest. One of my friends made a chart, tracking the weather, her hairstyle, and her mood. All were usually bad. I think I pitied her then. I know I do now.
She was not impressed by my writing. I don't remember her comments at all. I don't remember if she was trying to help me become a better writer -- although I doubt that she was that kind --or if she was impassively grading yet another 15-year-old's murky writing. She did give me the first negative reaction to my writing after 10 years of praise. Because I always tried to please, even if I despised the person exacting pleasure, and because I had to have As or I would just die, I tried to change to meet her demands. Still, Bs and Cs instead of As. I tried again and again. No success. I became so caught up in trying to write the way that she wanted, and so frustrated at my constant failure, that I ended up with my first case of writer's block
Incidentally, two years later, my brother took her class. He and I decided to try a little experiment for which we both should have been expelled. She required the class to write a series of poems. My poems had earned a disappointing grade of 72. My brother, who thought poetry was that "stupid, frou-frou shit," would have been quite happy with that 72. I gave him my poems from that class, and he turned them in as his own. He made an 88.
Meanwhile, I myself had stopped writing unless required. Every word that I put on the page conjured up imaginary criticism. I doubted my ability to construct a simple sentence, much less the more effusive Dickensian lines of earlier years (which I have to say, upon review, weren't half bad -- they weren't half-good, but they weren't half-bad). Worse, writing ceased to be fun and become a chore. Not "challenging," which implies a struggle to attain a higher level, but a "chore," a task thrust upon me with no reward. The words wouldn't fit together any longer, and eventually the stories and the desire to document in a diary my own ideas and experiences or the silly things around me dried up.
In 11th grade, I took a journalism class and regained my confidence in my ability to write. The sparse prose of reporting helped clean up some of the bad techniques I had learned in trying to please my 10th grade teacher. The fun did not return for a long long time, but I seldom again doubted my ability to put words on a page and communicate an idea. I might doubt my grasp of the idea, but I never doubted that I could write out whatever muddled muck might be shifting about in my head. I ended up being a pretty good editor for other people as a result.
I did have a couple of close calls with the doubt in graduate school when two professors gave me contradictory messages. One praised me and my writing and gave me high As on all of my papers. Then, I watched him give an A to a woman whose literacy I questioned based on the work she passed out to the class. (Just to clear up any doubts about potential race or class assumptions, she was a lovely, middle class, native-English speaking white woman who went to the same grade schools as I and a better undergraduate institution. I found out later that she just didn't care about the assignment, so pieced together her notes at the last minute.) That same teacher also gave a brilliant, star graduate student an A-. I would have been shaken to my core had I not realized that, when the situation was appropriate, he based his grades on his desire to bed the student if she was his own, or demonstrate his power to the student's advisor if she was not.
The next professor told a class that my paper was one of two in our course that could easily be published with little revision. The other was written by a student who was universally considered brilliant both as a thinker and a writer, so I about burst out of my skin with pride at the compliment and comparison. Hoping to pursue that publication option, I revised and returned the paper to him for suggestions. He responded that he could not see why he gave my paper an A since it was so terrible. Terribly written, terribly researched, terribly conceived. I did revise it, but not so much that it went from "publishable" to "barely worth reading."
His comments jolted me, and I wasn't certain what had happened. I finally granted that he had his own issues in general, but that my tone (all about my tone, right?) was far too non-chalant for the topic, and that some of the leaps that I had made in my conclusions were quite broad. I was confused by the vast change in his evaluation; but I did understand the problems with that paper. For a few years, this made me hesitant to revise, which made the first draft seem so much more important, which in turn made writing more of a chore on which I would procrastinate. Yet, I still knew that, when necessary, I could write what I needed and write it well.
The fun returned to writing with blogging. No one knew me personally. No one was reading it initially. I could write anything and everything. I could try different styles, forms, voices. The words have been pouring out of me for over three years now (with, of course, some breaks due to time, not lack of desire to write). Sometimes, like today, I can't seem to shut them off.
I never stopped loving words or the way a writer crafts a story, fiction or not. I doubt if I could match some of my favorite writers; but the challenge and joy came in the trying. I even once took a creative writing class back in college to at least try. While the class deepened my appreciation for the craft of prose, I quickly learned that I no longer had those stories to tell. I joked that I really wanted to become a novelist, but the lack of original plots for a story drove me to become a historian instead because, in history, the stories are essentially already there.
With the help of history, my own stories have been returning. They are not yet entirely formed, but they become more distinct if I focus on them for any length of time. I'm going to take a creative writing class this summer to see if I can help them. If I discover that the stories still won't emerge, then I will have the practice of improving my prose that can be transferred here or anywhere else that I would like.
In this whole fellowship ordeal, I haave been transported back 10th grade, frustrated and furious and unable to please either myself or the person demanding pleasure. I feel as if I am being asked to express myself in an alien way to suit someone else's agenda and without my approval. I also feel entirely off balance because their perception seems so different from mine and because I am beginning to wonder if I am delusional about my own assessment of my own writing.
As in 1oth grade, I begin to feel unable to write. I have written and re-written and revised and re-written about a thousand replies to the latest e-mail from the coordinator. Yet, I can't seem to express what I mean because every word that I write down creates a million little debates. "Is that word too strong? Is this word inappropriate? Will that sentence be interpreted as 'angry'? Will this other word derail my point when it becomes a source of contention? Am I dropping a bomb instead of making a point?" So on and so forth. It's an insidious trick, one that plays directly into my million insecurities outside of writing. It's threatening to me because my writing has been the one part of me in which I have the least insecurity.
In general, I'm still not insecure about the way that I write. In fact, I take perverse pleasure in knowing that my words can be "strong," that they can provoke reaction. My words haven't been shut off altogether, as they were in 10th grade. They keep coming and coming and won't stop long enough to let me go work out or grade papers or even go to the grocery store. Only in this specific situation, in this fellowship, I feel like I can no longer write to suit the circumstance. I feel as if I should have all of my words vetted, revised, and vetted again before I can express an idea. I do, in fact, begin to doubt my ability to judge the use of my own tone and the tone itself. In that direction, the words are clogged; but, in general, they are bursting to come out everywhere else.
Perhaps when I use "write" and "words" what I really mean is "voice." Voice is the extension of a person's perception and experience into the written word. In that fellowship, I feel like my voice is being shut down, that I'm being asked to change not just the order and use of my words, but the perception and experience behind it. I feel this because any effort on my part to get beyond the tone to the content gets diverted back to the tone, which naturally makes any correction of that tone more difficult each time.
I think I react so strongly to the request that I change the way that I use words because the words are integral to my voice and to my perception of myself. In my world of self-loathing, writing has been the one thing that I do not loathe. That will change as I change, but only I can determine when, how, and at what pace. When someone tells me to entirely change my voice to meet their own unspecified terms on their own time table, I take that personally, and I find myself feeling gagged.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
I'm Not Sure What This Will Become
I want to build a sort of ofrenda to the people whom I've loved but have failed to cherish or did not get to know. Inside the ofrenda I will place skeleton figures of these people.
My Granny and Grampy will dance to a big band, scotch and cigarettes in their hands. Her sister, Aunt Vivian, and Uncle Bill will dance beside them, also with scotch and cigarettes. When they were all young, before I was born, they all had wonderful times together.
My Paw-paw will sit in a garden and smoke his pipe, enjoying a moment of peace before the imminent arrival of his wife. Perhaps he should ride on his Mardi Gras float, throwing bead and telling dirty jokes with the other men. That way, he will see my Maw-maw, but from a fun-loving distance. He will still have his pipe.
My Big Paw-Paw will be lucid and building whole houses by hand. My Big Maw-maw will be fixing pan-fried chicken with mashed potatoes, and watermelon for dessert. Aunt Helen will be decked out in the gaudiest jewels -- real ones, now, of course! -- and the brightest and shiniest of all fabrics. She and her Mr. Cookie will sit on the front row of the UNO basketball game, jumping up and down and hugging one another with glee. Her son Kevin will sit nearby, reading a book. I will surround Aunt Helen and my Maw-maw with glitter to represent their unabashed love of all things shiny. Uncle Elmer is fuzzy, but he will be there too.
M'amie will reign upon her chair watching her children. Aunt Irma sits beside her with her shi tzu on her lap. Aunt Ethel tends her movie theater; and, of course my granny and Vivian dancing with their men. Uncle Louis, her son, like Uncle Elmer, is fuzzy. The women always outlived the men. Perhaps these great uncles can sit together in the shadows, passing a bottle and humming a little song like those old men would do.
A big pot of gumbo will be nearby, a long table covered with crawfish and shrimp. They all, both sides, loved gumbo, crawfish and shrimp! (Who doesn't?) Oh, and red beans and rice! Plenty of Bourbon will have to be close at hand. Cigarettes, too. In this ofenda, there is no alcoholism or cancer, only les bon temp.
Dogs, of course, will be there, too. Rascal the dachshund, Clementine the basset hound, and Tier the mutt will chase one another through endless fields, into new cities and suburbs with the fragrance of garbage and other dog's bottoms drawing them on. Klyde will lie on the back of a love seat in front of a window, better able to look both outside and in. Silly Suzette will be groomed and powdered, with a bright pink bow at the top of her pouf. Gretl, my baby Gretl, will sit patiently waiting for me to arrive to give her a treat and cuddle her while I read. Cat will be there too, because I did love her -- and only I loved her -- although she was wild.
I have to place Joel there. Joel, who was kind and gentle, who had a passion for music and a deep, Judaic spirituality that I never comprehended. Joel, whose birthday was on Christmas and would joke in his best Borscht Belt accent, "a Jew? Born on December 25th? Think about it!" Joel, who loved me but I didn't let him. Who found someone who loved him back, married her and had three boys. Joel, the rabbi in training. Joel, who died of leukemia 2 years ago and I never knew. He will have his guitar, and a yarmulke to represent his faith.
Milagros will hang outside of this sort-of-ofrenda. Their Milagros. Lots of hearts and lungs, many eyes and ears, a few heads and praying hands, a Star of David for Joel.
Outside, too, will be a line. First in this line will be my grandmother, diminished and angry, begging to be let in. Behind her will be my father and brother and mother, a trinity of sublimated pain. My Aunt Cathy and uncle Gary hold hands, but secretly try to maneuver the other ahead. I'm there too, begging to be let in first. "I'll prepare the way," I say, realizing I sound like the Bible. "No really," I repeat, "I'll make it all nice for you! Just don't leave me behind!" Behind me is my other brother, his back to the front gates of this ofrenda, oblivious to their existence. He concentrates on his wife, who stands behind him. She and I cast furtive glances to one another, both showing our scars from trying to cut in line. Behind her is my other brother's future ex-wife -- that is, his current wife from whom he is separated. She has her back turned on the gates, playing with my nephews, each the son of one brother. My nephews? Boudreaux dances, the Spider builds.
I forgot one more detail: Inside the sort-of-ofrenda lies a baby. She is me. The baby me, but knowing all of these happy skeletons, watching them dancing and smoking, eating and drinking, loving death every bit as much as they loved life. She learns them as joyful souls and feel joy in return. She waits for the others to join them. She wants to forgive them and show them that she loves them. She wants them to know that she always did.
I mean no offense to with this ofrenda. I do not intend to colonize nor show disrespect. I have loved the ofrendas since I first saw them. I connect them with a beautiful part of Texas and a rebirth in my own life. The happy skeletons and beautiful altars of Dia de los Muertos spoke profoundly to my melancholy, and reminded me of those perplexing and wonderful jazz funerals. They take the grief of death and combine it with the joy of life and love -- two opposites -- in a harmoniously, beautiful and creative whole.
My Granny and Grampy will dance to a big band, scotch and cigarettes in their hands. Her sister, Aunt Vivian, and Uncle Bill will dance beside them, also with scotch and cigarettes. When they were all young, before I was born, they all had wonderful times together.
My Paw-paw will sit in a garden and smoke his pipe, enjoying a moment of peace before the imminent arrival of his wife. Perhaps he should ride on his Mardi Gras float, throwing bead and telling dirty jokes with the other men. That way, he will see my Maw-maw, but from a fun-loving distance. He will still have his pipe.
My Big Paw-Paw will be lucid and building whole houses by hand. My Big Maw-maw will be fixing pan-fried chicken with mashed potatoes, and watermelon for dessert. Aunt Helen will be decked out in the gaudiest jewels -- real ones, now, of course! -- and the brightest and shiniest of all fabrics. She and her Mr. Cookie will sit on the front row of the UNO basketball game, jumping up and down and hugging one another with glee. Her son Kevin will sit nearby, reading a book. I will surround Aunt Helen and my Maw-maw with glitter to represent their unabashed love of all things shiny. Uncle Elmer is fuzzy, but he will be there too.
M'amie will reign upon her chair watching her children. Aunt Irma sits beside her with her shi tzu on her lap. Aunt Ethel tends her movie theater; and, of course my granny and Vivian dancing with their men. Uncle Louis, her son, like Uncle Elmer, is fuzzy. The women always outlived the men. Perhaps these great uncles can sit together in the shadows, passing a bottle and humming a little song like those old men would do.
A big pot of gumbo will be nearby, a long table covered with crawfish and shrimp. They all, both sides, loved gumbo, crawfish and shrimp! (Who doesn't?) Oh, and red beans and rice! Plenty of Bourbon will have to be close at hand. Cigarettes, too. In this ofenda, there is no alcoholism or cancer, only les bon temp.
Dogs, of course, will be there, too. Rascal the dachshund, Clementine the basset hound, and Tier the mutt will chase one another through endless fields, into new cities and suburbs with the fragrance of garbage and other dog's bottoms drawing them on. Klyde will lie on the back of a love seat in front of a window, better able to look both outside and in. Silly Suzette will be groomed and powdered, with a bright pink bow at the top of her pouf. Gretl, my baby Gretl, will sit patiently waiting for me to arrive to give her a treat and cuddle her while I read. Cat will be there too, because I did love her -- and only I loved her -- although she was wild.
I have to place Joel there. Joel, who was kind and gentle, who had a passion for music and a deep, Judaic spirituality that I never comprehended. Joel, whose birthday was on Christmas and would joke in his best Borscht Belt accent, "a Jew? Born on December 25th? Think about it!" Joel, who loved me but I didn't let him. Who found someone who loved him back, married her and had three boys. Joel, the rabbi in training. Joel, who died of leukemia 2 years ago and I never knew. He will have his guitar, and a yarmulke to represent his faith.
Milagros will hang outside of this sort-of-ofrenda. Their Milagros. Lots of hearts and lungs, many eyes and ears, a few heads and praying hands, a Star of David for Joel.
Outside, too, will be a line. First in this line will be my grandmother, diminished and angry, begging to be let in. Behind her will be my father and brother and mother, a trinity of sublimated pain. My Aunt Cathy and uncle Gary hold hands, but secretly try to maneuver the other ahead. I'm there too, begging to be let in first. "I'll prepare the way," I say, realizing I sound like the Bible. "No really," I repeat, "I'll make it all nice for you! Just don't leave me behind!" Behind me is my other brother, his back to the front gates of this ofrenda, oblivious to their existence. He concentrates on his wife, who stands behind him. She and I cast furtive glances to one another, both showing our scars from trying to cut in line. Behind her is my other brother's future ex-wife -- that is, his current wife from whom he is separated. She has her back turned on the gates, playing with my nephews, each the son of one brother. My nephews? Boudreaux dances, the Spider builds.
I forgot one more detail: Inside the sort-of-ofrenda lies a baby. She is me. The baby me, but knowing all of these happy skeletons, watching them dancing and smoking, eating and drinking, loving death every bit as much as they loved life. She learns them as joyful souls and feel joy in return. She waits for the others to join them. She wants to forgive them and show them that she loves them. She wants them to know that she always did.
I mean no offense to with this ofrenda. I do not intend to colonize nor show disrespect. I have loved the ofrendas since I first saw them. I connect them with a beautiful part of Texas and a rebirth in my own life. The happy skeletons and beautiful altars of Dia de los Muertos spoke profoundly to my melancholy, and reminded me of those perplexing and wonderful jazz funerals. They take the grief of death and combine it with the joy of life and love -- two opposites -- in a harmoniously, beautiful and creative whole.
Gold Stars Nonetheless
I am exhausted from the frustration and anger and negativity that seems to be clouding my latest posts. Last night, I started to get a headache and I imagined all of my anger rushing to explode out of the top of my head, like in cartoons or clip art, but it didn't have quite enough strength to bust open my skull. Instead, it pooled right at the top of my brain making a big puddle of pain.
Actually, I just had a sinus headache, which I cured with Sudafed and Ibuprofen.
Good things did happen this week, things that did not make me feel like a complete professional failure.
On Thursday nights, I teach a 20th century world history class. This is in no way anything about which I can profess expertise. Every semester that I have taught it, I have had to do quite a bit of work just to stay ahead of the textbook (after all, if my knowlege only extends to a chapter ahead in the textbook, why do they need me as anything but a test-master?). You would think that an increasing field of knowledge would make teaching easier, right?
Well, my problem is that I cannot quite manage all of the information that I acquire. The world became more integrated and entangled as the 20th century progressed, so the "this happened here, and that happened there" approach of my textbook doesn't quite make the pieces fit together in a satisfying way. This becomes even more complicated after World War II, in which I know about enough to be dangerous, and all of it is American and European-centric. I'm gradually moving away from that because this is a world history class, not a western civilization class, and because at least half of my students are not from an American- or European background.
Right now, I'm at a point in the semester where I begin to lose control of the information and have to struggle to pull events in different parts of the world into a cohesive whole. This time around, I'm starting with the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, then I am following the textbook, explaining events in the different regions of the world as they unfolded in the shadow of these two antagonistic behemoths. I've also made nuclear weaponry and technology crucial to their understanding of the potential doomsday climate in which events at different corners of the world unfolded. I'm also making technological innovation crucial to understanding the ways that access to complex technologies could allow one nation to develop and dominate while others struggled to merely emerge from under colonial rule, much less go to the moon.
In the course of doing this, I've sometimes felt that I've slacked on my duties as a teacher; but now I'm thinking that my techniques of "slacking" have actually resulted in rather brilliant lessons.
My first brainstorm involved the inclusion of field trips. This is an evening class, meeting from 5-7:40, so we do have the freedom of a longer class period. Furthermore, this class is a "mid-semester" or "late start" class that crams a whole semester's worth of class into half a semester's worth of time. That means that most of our semester took place during the extended hours that museums begin to have in the spring.
That fellowship that has been causing me so much grief ends right before my class begins. I underestimated the amount of time that I would need to get from our fellowship meetings to my class meeting. "Oh crap!" I thought, when I realized this. "I really fucked up. I can't have every other class start close to half an hour late."
Then, the epiphany: Have the students come to meet me, rather than me go meet them. We could convene at a museum, where I would give them an assignment, and then reconvene just before the museum closes to debrief or to allow me to take them on a mini-tour of particular exhibits or artifacts that I want the to see. My assignments have them learn the information that the museum conveys, pay attention to the types of media or items that the museum uses to teach this information, explain what they thought worked or did not work, and then analyze the inclusion or exclusion of certain ideas or people. In one case, two exhibits in the museum dealt with the same subject, the Atomic bomb, from two different angles, scientific and military. So, I had them compare and contrast the two exhibits.
Holy crap! It worked. They really seemed to be getting something out of the exercise. If nothing else, the scale of some of the items in the exhibits -- like the missiles at the Air & Space Museum -- impressed them in a visceral way that neither I, the textbook, nor any images in class could. I haven't figured out how to harness that visceral reaction, but it does seem to pull them into the subject more effectively than other modes of teaching.
I already have an assignment that incorporates museums; but it is general, leaving the particular museum choice up to the student which prevents me from asking pointed questions about specific exhibits. With these field trips, I took that assignment and tailored it for the particular museum, which seems to be much more effective. I had hoped that the troublesome fellowship would help do this. I just thought that the content of the fellowship would meet that end, not my fuck-up in scheduling around the fellowship!
I began to realize that the field trips were making an impact beyond the assignment during my second brainstorm. I confess that this brainstorm originated in my desire not to lecture that day, and instead show a movie. Bad, lazy teacher! While searching for the right movie that wouldn't make me look too lazy, I had another epiphany.
I showed them exerpts from a documentary on Noam Chomsky in which he explains the concept of "manufacturing consent" and "propaganda models." Then, I showed them some of the more dramatic parts of The Atomic Cafe. Finally, I showed the final scenes of Dr. Strangelove, in which Kubrick parodies the missile gap with the "mineshaft gap." At salient points in the excerpts, I paused the DVD and we had discussion about the concepts in the bit we had just seen.
The first film was supposed to give them a critical model for analysis about information distribution. The second film demonstrated that information distribution, while also showing some of the outright lies propagated about nuclear weapons and the effects of such things as testing on the environment and indigenous people like those in the Bikini Atoll. The final film served as an example of the ways that, despite that "propaganda model," people can and do reject or criticize information intelligently. In the process we also discussed how the internet complicates that "propaganda model."
We are also going to discuss what all of this means to the rest of the world if one of the expanding and aggressive superpowers is selling the Atomic Cafe versions of nuclear armaments to its public in order to gain that "consent" for its foreign policy actions. We've already touched on the ways that all of that nuclear proliferation has affected international politics today.
This makes me also want to find films like those in The Atomic Cafe or even like Dr. Strangelove, but from other perspectives, like the Soviet or the Cuban or the Congolese or the Vietnamese or the Chinese. It might be beneficial to have documentary footage of some of those developing nations during that period of time, as well.
Three things came out of this teaching experience. First, the method of "start film, pause film, discuss film, start film" is really quite effective in keeping them awake and engaged with the film's subject. Who knew? Second, they started pulling in their experiences at the museum to connect with the films and to critique the museums. Third, they were actually much more curious about The Atomic Cafe than they were about the other films, even when one was funny and the other gave them some of the framework for critique. Their reaction resembled those of other students at museums who are intrigued by the reality of objects, or who read documents and are stunned by the (for lack of better word) reality of the information. The film was "real," as in "not made up," as in "truth" for them, and they were transfixed.
They also laughed a lot.
Despite the really crappy ending to my week, this part went well. Another part like this went well, too, but that's a separate post. So, I give myself two gold stars!
Actually, I just had a sinus headache, which I cured with Sudafed and Ibuprofen.
Good things did happen this week, things that did not make me feel like a complete professional failure.
On Thursday nights, I teach a 20th century world history class. This is in no way anything about which I can profess expertise. Every semester that I have taught it, I have had to do quite a bit of work just to stay ahead of the textbook (after all, if my knowlege only extends to a chapter ahead in the textbook, why do they need me as anything but a test-master?). You would think that an increasing field of knowledge would make teaching easier, right?
Well, my problem is that I cannot quite manage all of the information that I acquire. The world became more integrated and entangled as the 20th century progressed, so the "this happened here, and that happened there" approach of my textbook doesn't quite make the pieces fit together in a satisfying way. This becomes even more complicated after World War II, in which I know about enough to be dangerous, and all of it is American and European-centric. I'm gradually moving away from that because this is a world history class, not a western civilization class, and because at least half of my students are not from an American- or European background.
Right now, I'm at a point in the semester where I begin to lose control of the information and have to struggle to pull events in different parts of the world into a cohesive whole. This time around, I'm starting with the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, then I am following the textbook, explaining events in the different regions of the world as they unfolded in the shadow of these two antagonistic behemoths. I've also made nuclear weaponry and technology crucial to their understanding of the potential doomsday climate in which events at different corners of the world unfolded. I'm also making technological innovation crucial to understanding the ways that access to complex technologies could allow one nation to develop and dominate while others struggled to merely emerge from under colonial rule, much less go to the moon.
In the course of doing this, I've sometimes felt that I've slacked on my duties as a teacher; but now I'm thinking that my techniques of "slacking" have actually resulted in rather brilliant lessons.
My first brainstorm involved the inclusion of field trips. This is an evening class, meeting from 5-7:40, so we do have the freedom of a longer class period. Furthermore, this class is a "mid-semester" or "late start" class that crams a whole semester's worth of class into half a semester's worth of time. That means that most of our semester took place during the extended hours that museums begin to have in the spring.
That fellowship that has been causing me so much grief ends right before my class begins. I underestimated the amount of time that I would need to get from our fellowship meetings to my class meeting. "Oh crap!" I thought, when I realized this. "I really fucked up. I can't have every other class start close to half an hour late."
Then, the epiphany: Have the students come to meet me, rather than me go meet them. We could convene at a museum, where I would give them an assignment, and then reconvene just before the museum closes to debrief or to allow me to take them on a mini-tour of particular exhibits or artifacts that I want the to see. My assignments have them learn the information that the museum conveys, pay attention to the types of media or items that the museum uses to teach this information, explain what they thought worked or did not work, and then analyze the inclusion or exclusion of certain ideas or people. In one case, two exhibits in the museum dealt with the same subject, the Atomic bomb, from two different angles, scientific and military. So, I had them compare and contrast the two exhibits.
Holy crap! It worked. They really seemed to be getting something out of the exercise. If nothing else, the scale of some of the items in the exhibits -- like the missiles at the Air & Space Museum -- impressed them in a visceral way that neither I, the textbook, nor any images in class could. I haven't figured out how to harness that visceral reaction, but it does seem to pull them into the subject more effectively than other modes of teaching.
I already have an assignment that incorporates museums; but it is general, leaving the particular museum choice up to the student which prevents me from asking pointed questions about specific exhibits. With these field trips, I took that assignment and tailored it for the particular museum, which seems to be much more effective. I had hoped that the troublesome fellowship would help do this. I just thought that the content of the fellowship would meet that end, not my fuck-up in scheduling around the fellowship!
I began to realize that the field trips were making an impact beyond the assignment during my second brainstorm. I confess that this brainstorm originated in my desire not to lecture that day, and instead show a movie. Bad, lazy teacher! While searching for the right movie that wouldn't make me look too lazy, I had another epiphany.
I showed them exerpts from a documentary on Noam Chomsky in which he explains the concept of "manufacturing consent" and "propaganda models." Then, I showed them some of the more dramatic parts of The Atomic Cafe. Finally, I showed the final scenes of Dr. Strangelove, in which Kubrick parodies the missile gap with the "mineshaft gap." At salient points in the excerpts, I paused the DVD and we had discussion about the concepts in the bit we had just seen.
The first film was supposed to give them a critical model for analysis about information distribution. The second film demonstrated that information distribution, while also showing some of the outright lies propagated about nuclear weapons and the effects of such things as testing on the environment and indigenous people like those in the Bikini Atoll. The final film served as an example of the ways that, despite that "propaganda model," people can and do reject or criticize information intelligently. In the process we also discussed how the internet complicates that "propaganda model."
We are also going to discuss what all of this means to the rest of the world if one of the expanding and aggressive superpowers is selling the Atomic Cafe versions of nuclear armaments to its public in order to gain that "consent" for its foreign policy actions. We've already touched on the ways that all of that nuclear proliferation has affected international politics today.
This makes me also want to find films like those in The Atomic Cafe or even like Dr. Strangelove, but from other perspectives, like the Soviet or the Cuban or the Congolese or the Vietnamese or the Chinese. It might be beneficial to have documentary footage of some of those developing nations during that period of time, as well.
Three things came out of this teaching experience. First, the method of "start film, pause film, discuss film, start film" is really quite effective in keeping them awake and engaged with the film's subject. Who knew? Second, they started pulling in their experiences at the museum to connect with the films and to critique the museums. Third, they were actually much more curious about The Atomic Cafe than they were about the other films, even when one was funny and the other gave them some of the framework for critique. Their reaction resembled those of other students at museums who are intrigued by the reality of objects, or who read documents and are stunned by the (for lack of better word) reality of the information. The film was "real," as in "not made up," as in "truth" for them, and they were transfixed.
They also laughed a lot.
I think when I focus on the work, like on interesting ways of teaching or on what I like to write, to the exclusion of what others elsewhere might think, I can really groove.
Despite the really crappy ending to my week, this part went well. Another part like this went well, too, but that's a separate post. So, I give myself two gold stars!
Friday, April 24, 2009
My Visit to the Principal's Office
I just quit the fellowship.
So, I really was (as I have joked) sent to the principal's office.
I'm actually in tears, not because I'm sad or angry, but because I'm not certain of how to define how I feel. I started to cry out of intense frustration not only because of this particular situation, but because some of the things that came up in my talk with the coordinator touched one too many nerves.
The coordinator of the program just met with me and took me to task for the "tone" of my critique. To be fair to her, she is a really sweet and diplomatic person who was trying to show empathy toward me and look for solutions that might help me. Also, to give a more accurate context, most of my critique took place on a discussion board (or "blog" as they call it) because I could compose my thoughts and control my tone and language in order to be more constructive.
I keep forgetting that the written language leaves quite a bit open for interpretation in regard to tone. My tone was interpreted as "hostile" and "destructive" despite the fact that I did not mean it in that way at all. I thought that I was offering a useful perspective, but my language had -- as she put it -- "too many bombs" and "too many sweeping statements."
She's probably right. Like I said in that last post, I didn't make a huge effort to create that "criticism sandwich." The "bread" of compliments is sometimes thinner than most people would like. I also can never judge the tone of my writing. When I feel things strongly, I state my ideas strongly and directly, sometimes forgetting to add in too many niceties. (Incidentally, this ability to write strongly and directly is one of the few things about myself of which I am proud and confident.)
When most people would say, "while I think everything is great and wonderful and fabulous, here is how it can get better," I just hop in with the "here's how to get better." That missing "everything is great" becomes inferred as "you suck, but here's how to get better."
Then again, I've been in too many situations in which only the "I think everything is great" gets heard to the exclusion of "how it can get better."
I sat stunned as she gave me advice on how to speak and write more constructively. It was all stuff that I know and use. In fact, I probably would have employed those tactics in one or two instances had I known that I was on a public discussion space. That wasn't stated up front. I thought it was just for the fellows, to talk amongst ourselves about our experiences. I thought that I was speaking to peers as peers. I did not know that there were higher up lurkers. I seem to have been the only one who was under this mistaken impression, so I must have missed something somewhere along the line. I also now see that this was shockingly naive to assume in any case.
Still, I probably would have said the same things. I probably could not have offered enough padding, if, as a veteran of this program is right in that they seem only to want praise. I am who I am, and I keep learning that over and over; and I honestly did think that I was offering something useful.
I didn't realize that other people were intimidated by my statements and took them as personal attacks. I didn't realize that, in qualifying my background as having worked in museums, they thought that I was insulting them. I didn't realize that some of the museum people don't want to continue the program because of my statements. I didn't intend any of this.
While I am profoundly sorry for any unintentional insults or damage that I might have caused, and I don't think that the coordinator is wrong in her assessment of me, I'm actually rebelling at that assessment for more than egotism or arraogance.
The first thing that I am rebelling against is the patronizing tone that she took in offering me advice. She didn't start out patronizing -- again, she is a really kind person who had the horrible task of confronting me and of cleaning up damage that I apparently created, and she did so with the intention of improving the situation -- but she kept offering the advice over and over and over within a 30 minute space, that I ended up feeling patronized. This annoyed me further as I reviewed my behavior while she kept offering and offering that advice, and I realized that I actually did employ those tactics in all of the seminars. She was there, she witnessed it. I also -- upon review of my posts --employed those tactics in my writing, although, again, not as effusively or effectively as I might have.
I told her that I was aware of these tactics, that I generally use them, and thought that I was using them in my comments, although that seems not to have been the case in others' opinions. She kept repeating the same advice, as if she didn't hear me, and I started to become irritated, as if I was being silenced or ignored.
The second thing that I rebel against was that she faulted me for not speaking up in some instances and then for speaking up in others. I didn't speak up in some instances because I knew that I was reacting hostilely and didn't want to say anything in anger or frustration. I wanted to get to a more constructive place before I said anything, and only said anything when I had something constructive to say. When I told the coordinator that, she criticized me for not already being at that place and speaking up. She also criticized me for having a negative reaction in the first place, such as when that curator said all historians are racist toward Native Americans. When I told her that I used the discussion boards because that gave me time to get to that constructive place when I did have a negative reaction, she took me to task for being too aggressive.
I do know my own moods and my own reactions, and I know all of the different factors that cause me to react that way. I was managing my reactive behavior in the way that I usually do: initial silence, pondering/blogging/bitching until I reach a more rational and less emotional assessment of my position. Then, I respond if necessary. Some might call this an opportunity for stewing, and I won't dispute that; but it is also an opportunity to just chill the hell out, which happens.
Maybe I misjudge the point at which I should respond. Maybe I should be waiting longer. Maybe, because the formats are similar, I blur the line between the blogging bitching and the rational discussion board response. Nevertheless, I have been in years of therapy to get to this understanding of myself and I am in analysis right now to figure out better ways of interacting in potentially incendiary situations. Meanwhile, this is what I have at my disposal right now.
I also completely resent anyone who tells me how I should or should not feel or think about something (unless, of course, I solicit their input on the matter).
The third thing I don't so much rebel against. Instead, I am hurt that other people were taking my statements as personal attacks. I did not attack anyone in our group, although I can see where some of the curators might consider my assessment of their work an attack, which I can fully understand. In fact, in a response to one person's post, I explicitly stated that I was not attacking him but that I was engaging the subject that we were both discussing, and offering my admittedly negative opinion of that -- not of him, and not of his opinion. This point, that I was hurting or causing distress to any of the other fellows, really distresses me because I do respect and like all of them. To think that they thought I was intentionally attacking them really upsets me.
Despite that, I resent that I'm being asked to take care of other people's feelings. This is a sore issue for me anyway. Still, a curator called my profession a bunch of racists and I'm supposed to immediately take care of his feelings and take care of everyone else in the room by offering my rational, professional perspective? Another person might, but I absolutely needed to process that comment, both as a historian and as a person who does try to examine her own racist assumptions, before I said anything. When I did finally respond, I gave links to examples of recent scholarship on Native Americans.
We could also look to the case of the first meeting of the semester when I was "reminded that all men are not homophobic." First of all, duh! Second of all, that wasn't what I was saying. Yet, I had to take care of the dude's feelings.
In my discussion board comments, I honestly was trying to get a point across, I wasn't trying to hurt any of the other fellows. I was already trying to look out for their feelings, and yet it wasn't enough. As I look over my comments with an eye -- albeit a defensive eye -- I find that I was, in fact, more constructive and more complimentary than I had thought. I'll accept that I obviously wasn't as complimentary as I could have been or as others would have liked, but I'm also thinking that we have a lot of thin skins in the group (my own included).
For instance, I once explained my background in museums, and that this might be making my comments more negative and me more disappointed in the fellowship experience. I thought I had worded it in a way that suggested "don't pay me any mind, I have baggage because of this experience, I do see why most of you like this fellowship overall, but this is why I have problems."
On another instance, I suggested the incorporation of the museum education departments in the seminars. When someone wasn't sure if those departments would be of use, I explained what education departments do. I am supposed to bring my expertise to bear. I am the only fellow who has seen behind-the-scenes of museums.
The coordinator told me that others took these explanations as a personal insult to their own expertise, that they interpreted what I was saying as "well I know and you don't, you idiot." I was told that, because of this, I had created a hostile environment for other fellows because they felt too intimidated to say anything favorable about the program. I keep going over and over what I wrote. Had I done that? Was that my subconscious opinion of them that crept through? My own opinion of my use of language is clearly in the minority.
Finally, I rebel against her statements because I feel like I am not being heard except as a problem. A creative writing teacher I had once said something to the effect that "people persist in not reading what you wrote on the page" even as they read the words. I feel like that: like I wrote these words, offered these critiques, offered these suggestions, offered these insights; but all anyone is hearing is "she's pissed off, thinks she's better than we are, offers nothing constructive, so we better not mess with her."
In fact, I feel as if I'm being silenced. I feel as if I'm being told, "give input. Whoops, wrong input. Try again. Wrong input again. No, now try it this way. Nope, you got it wrong. Try again." I feel paralyzed because my whole mode of expression is being called into question, and I'm not entirely understanding why. How can I make any comment without sitting there for hours beforehand wondering "is this too patronizing? Is someone going to take this the wrong way? I'm I being too harsh?" I already do this; but the result has clearly been bad. I don't have the energy for more obsessing, for more padding my ideas with words to prevent someone somewhere from taking insult. I'm getting to the point of exhaustion at which I don't even want to understand why. That is definitely not productive.
I am honestly mystified and hurt and frustrated that this is the situation, and I'm angry with myself for doubting my gut reactions that I have listed here as rebellions. Could everyone else's assessment of me actually be that elusive truth? Conventional wisdom says that, if only one person has a problem with a situation, then that person is an individual problem. I may not entirely buy that conventional wisdom, but that seems to be my reality here since everyone, including my own peers (some of whom have thrown me under the bus, keeping their criticism anonymous while mine has my name attached), think that I am "destructive."
Yet, when I look at what I wrote, I can refute everything for which I've been criticized. I can provide evidence to support my case. My perspective is the minority, but I'm thinking that my perspective does have validity. If I fully accepted what the coordinator said as the objective truth, then I would not feel so resistant to her words. As it is, I am merely the minority opinion both of the fellowship and of myself. As such, I am not doing any good for the fellowship; and, as I've already written, it isn't really doing anything for me (I'm also not supposed to say that out loud, either). This is an unexpected bad fit, and I did what I thought was rational from my perspective. What other should I have had?
So, I quit.
The coordinator wants me to think about it over the weekend, but this is my gut reaction. My only real worries have to do with what this says about me as a faculty member and as a person. I worry that this will make me look bad to people like my own dean and come back to bite me in my year end review.
I also worry that something really is wrong with me -- that my rebellions are delusions -- and that I created this predicament, and that I will continue to create similar predicaments in the future (this last will be covered in analysis this week, for sure, because that is probably the reason that my response was to cry rather than to do whatever a healthy person might do).
I could stick around and show a good effort at improvement, be a good little girl and try to please the teacher, make the most of an opportunity for learning and personal growth; and maybe I should. At this point, however, that makes me feel infantilized. I feel so paralyzed that I know that I would just show up, refrain from opinion, and stay silent should I remain in the fellowship. Quitting has the benefit of un-paralyzing me for the time being.
Neither approach is exactly mature or useful. The coordinator may be right that I should take the weekend (blogging and bitching) in order to find some other approach that un-paralyzes me; but right now I really really want to put this behind me and concentrate on more rewarding and important projects. My gut has been telling me this for several weeks.
Between this and the fellowship that I wrote about yesterday (the one with the 40-minute long ten minute presentations), I'm beginning to think that I should not look to these internal fellowships for professional enrichment any longer. They feel limited in ways that I cannot describe without sounding snobby and perhaps provoking the same reaction in someone out there as that one curator provoked in me. I've had much better success in outside fellowships, and my interests and needs are met better there.
So, I really was (as I have joked) sent to the principal's office.
I'm actually in tears, not because I'm sad or angry, but because I'm not certain of how to define how I feel. I started to cry out of intense frustration not only because of this particular situation, but because some of the things that came up in my talk with the coordinator touched one too many nerves.
The coordinator of the program just met with me and took me to task for the "tone" of my critique. To be fair to her, she is a really sweet and diplomatic person who was trying to show empathy toward me and look for solutions that might help me. Also, to give a more accurate context, most of my critique took place on a discussion board (or "blog" as they call it) because I could compose my thoughts and control my tone and language in order to be more constructive.
I keep forgetting that the written language leaves quite a bit open for interpretation in regard to tone. My tone was interpreted as "hostile" and "destructive" despite the fact that I did not mean it in that way at all. I thought that I was offering a useful perspective, but my language had -- as she put it -- "too many bombs" and "too many sweeping statements."
She's probably right. Like I said in that last post, I didn't make a huge effort to create that "criticism sandwich." The "bread" of compliments is sometimes thinner than most people would like. I also can never judge the tone of my writing. When I feel things strongly, I state my ideas strongly and directly, sometimes forgetting to add in too many niceties. (Incidentally, this ability to write strongly and directly is one of the few things about myself of which I am proud and confident.)
When most people would say, "while I think everything is great and wonderful and fabulous, here is how it can get better," I just hop in with the "here's how to get better." That missing "everything is great" becomes inferred as "you suck, but here's how to get better."
Then again, I've been in too many situations in which only the "I think everything is great" gets heard to the exclusion of "how it can get better."
I sat stunned as she gave me advice on how to speak and write more constructively. It was all stuff that I know and use. In fact, I probably would have employed those tactics in one or two instances had I known that I was on a public discussion space. That wasn't stated up front. I thought it was just for the fellows, to talk amongst ourselves about our experiences. I thought that I was speaking to peers as peers. I did not know that there were higher up lurkers. I seem to have been the only one who was under this mistaken impression, so I must have missed something somewhere along the line. I also now see that this was shockingly naive to assume in any case.
Still, I probably would have said the same things. I probably could not have offered enough padding, if, as a veteran of this program is right in that they seem only to want praise. I am who I am, and I keep learning that over and over; and I honestly did think that I was offering something useful.
I didn't realize that other people were intimidated by my statements and took them as personal attacks. I didn't realize that, in qualifying my background as having worked in museums, they thought that I was insulting them. I didn't realize that some of the museum people don't want to continue the program because of my statements. I didn't intend any of this.
While I am profoundly sorry for any unintentional insults or damage that I might have caused, and I don't think that the coordinator is wrong in her assessment of me, I'm actually rebelling at that assessment for more than egotism or arraogance.
The first thing that I am rebelling against is the patronizing tone that she took in offering me advice. She didn't start out patronizing -- again, she is a really kind person who had the horrible task of confronting me and of cleaning up damage that I apparently created, and she did so with the intention of improving the situation -- but she kept offering the advice over and over and over within a 30 minute space, that I ended up feeling patronized. This annoyed me further as I reviewed my behavior while she kept offering and offering that advice, and I realized that I actually did employ those tactics in all of the seminars. She was there, she witnessed it. I also -- upon review of my posts --employed those tactics in my writing, although, again, not as effusively or effectively as I might have.
I told her that I was aware of these tactics, that I generally use them, and thought that I was using them in my comments, although that seems not to have been the case in others' opinions. She kept repeating the same advice, as if she didn't hear me, and I started to become irritated, as if I was being silenced or ignored.
The second thing that I rebel against was that she faulted me for not speaking up in some instances and then for speaking up in others. I didn't speak up in some instances because I knew that I was reacting hostilely and didn't want to say anything in anger or frustration. I wanted to get to a more constructive place before I said anything, and only said anything when I had something constructive to say. When I told the coordinator that, she criticized me for not already being at that place and speaking up. She also criticized me for having a negative reaction in the first place, such as when that curator said all historians are racist toward Native Americans. When I told her that I used the discussion boards because that gave me time to get to that constructive place when I did have a negative reaction, she took me to task for being too aggressive.
I do know my own moods and my own reactions, and I know all of the different factors that cause me to react that way. I was managing my reactive behavior in the way that I usually do: initial silence, pondering/blogging/bitching until I reach a more rational and less emotional assessment of my position. Then, I respond if necessary. Some might call this an opportunity for stewing, and I won't dispute that; but it is also an opportunity to just chill the hell out, which happens.
Maybe I misjudge the point at which I should respond. Maybe I should be waiting longer. Maybe, because the formats are similar, I blur the line between the blogging bitching and the rational discussion board response. Nevertheless, I have been in years of therapy to get to this understanding of myself and I am in analysis right now to figure out better ways of interacting in potentially incendiary situations. Meanwhile, this is what I have at my disposal right now.
I also completely resent anyone who tells me how I should or should not feel or think about something (unless, of course, I solicit their input on the matter).
The third thing I don't so much rebel against. Instead, I am hurt that other people were taking my statements as personal attacks. I did not attack anyone in our group, although I can see where some of the curators might consider my assessment of their work an attack, which I can fully understand. In fact, in a response to one person's post, I explicitly stated that I was not attacking him but that I was engaging the subject that we were both discussing, and offering my admittedly negative opinion of that -- not of him, and not of his opinion. This point, that I was hurting or causing distress to any of the other fellows, really distresses me because I do respect and like all of them. To think that they thought I was intentionally attacking them really upsets me.
Despite that, I resent that I'm being asked to take care of other people's feelings. This is a sore issue for me anyway. Still, a curator called my profession a bunch of racists and I'm supposed to immediately take care of his feelings and take care of everyone else in the room by offering my rational, professional perspective? Another person might, but I absolutely needed to process that comment, both as a historian and as a person who does try to examine her own racist assumptions, before I said anything. When I did finally respond, I gave links to examples of recent scholarship on Native Americans.
We could also look to the case of the first meeting of the semester when I was "reminded that all men are not homophobic." First of all, duh! Second of all, that wasn't what I was saying. Yet, I had to take care of the dude's feelings.
In my discussion board comments, I honestly was trying to get a point across, I wasn't trying to hurt any of the other fellows. I was already trying to look out for their feelings, and yet it wasn't enough. As I look over my comments with an eye -- albeit a defensive eye -- I find that I was, in fact, more constructive and more complimentary than I had thought. I'll accept that I obviously wasn't as complimentary as I could have been or as others would have liked, but I'm also thinking that we have a lot of thin skins in the group (my own included).
For instance, I once explained my background in museums, and that this might be making my comments more negative and me more disappointed in the fellowship experience. I thought I had worded it in a way that suggested "don't pay me any mind, I have baggage because of this experience, I do see why most of you like this fellowship overall, but this is why I have problems."
On another instance, I suggested the incorporation of the museum education departments in the seminars. When someone wasn't sure if those departments would be of use, I explained what education departments do. I am supposed to bring my expertise to bear. I am the only fellow who has seen behind-the-scenes of museums.
The coordinator told me that others took these explanations as a personal insult to their own expertise, that they interpreted what I was saying as "well I know and you don't, you idiot." I was told that, because of this, I had created a hostile environment for other fellows because they felt too intimidated to say anything favorable about the program. I keep going over and over what I wrote. Had I done that? Was that my subconscious opinion of them that crept through? My own opinion of my use of language is clearly in the minority.
Finally, I rebel against her statements because I feel like I am not being heard except as a problem. A creative writing teacher I had once said something to the effect that "people persist in not reading what you wrote on the page" even as they read the words. I feel like that: like I wrote these words, offered these critiques, offered these suggestions, offered these insights; but all anyone is hearing is "she's pissed off, thinks she's better than we are, offers nothing constructive, so we better not mess with her."
In fact, I feel as if I'm being silenced. I feel as if I'm being told, "give input. Whoops, wrong input. Try again. Wrong input again. No, now try it this way. Nope, you got it wrong. Try again." I feel paralyzed because my whole mode of expression is being called into question, and I'm not entirely understanding why. How can I make any comment without sitting there for hours beforehand wondering "is this too patronizing? Is someone going to take this the wrong way? I'm I being too harsh?" I already do this; but the result has clearly been bad. I don't have the energy for more obsessing, for more padding my ideas with words to prevent someone somewhere from taking insult. I'm getting to the point of exhaustion at which I don't even want to understand why. That is definitely not productive.
I am honestly mystified and hurt and frustrated that this is the situation, and I'm angry with myself for doubting my gut reactions that I have listed here as rebellions. Could everyone else's assessment of me actually be that elusive truth? Conventional wisdom says that, if only one person has a problem with a situation, then that person is an individual problem. I may not entirely buy that conventional wisdom, but that seems to be my reality here since everyone, including my own peers (some of whom have thrown me under the bus, keeping their criticism anonymous while mine has my name attached), think that I am "destructive."
Yet, when I look at what I wrote, I can refute everything for which I've been criticized. I can provide evidence to support my case. My perspective is the minority, but I'm thinking that my perspective does have validity. If I fully accepted what the coordinator said as the objective truth, then I would not feel so resistant to her words. As it is, I am merely the minority opinion both of the fellowship and of myself. As such, I am not doing any good for the fellowship; and, as I've already written, it isn't really doing anything for me (I'm also not supposed to say that out loud, either). This is an unexpected bad fit, and I did what I thought was rational from my perspective. What other should I have had?
So, I quit.
The coordinator wants me to think about it over the weekend, but this is my gut reaction. My only real worries have to do with what this says about me as a faculty member and as a person. I worry that this will make me look bad to people like my own dean and come back to bite me in my year end review.
I also worry that something really is wrong with me -- that my rebellions are delusions -- and that I created this predicament, and that I will continue to create similar predicaments in the future (this last will be covered in analysis this week, for sure, because that is probably the reason that my response was to cry rather than to do whatever a healthy person might do).
I could stick around and show a good effort at improvement, be a good little girl and try to please the teacher, make the most of an opportunity for learning and personal growth; and maybe I should. At this point, however, that makes me feel infantilized. I feel so paralyzed that I know that I would just show up, refrain from opinion, and stay silent should I remain in the fellowship. Quitting has the benefit of un-paralyzing me for the time being.
Neither approach is exactly mature or useful. The coordinator may be right that I should take the weekend (blogging and bitching) in order to find some other approach that un-paralyzes me; but right now I really really want to put this behind me and concentrate on more rewarding and important projects. My gut has been telling me this for several weeks.
Between this and the fellowship that I wrote about yesterday (the one with the 40-minute long ten minute presentations), I'm beginning to think that I should not look to these internal fellowships for professional enrichment any longer. They feel limited in ways that I cannot describe without sounding snobby and perhaps provoking the same reaction in someone out there as that one curator provoked in me. I've had much better success in outside fellowships, and my interests and needs are met better there.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Relevancy of Math in Everyday Life
I cannot do math. Really. The numbers are all just shapes to me that bear little relationship to the concepts that they represent. So, I might need a little help with this word problem:
A seminar meets once a month for 2 hours between 2 pm and 4 pm. The seminar has 15 participants. During the last meeting, each participant is scheduled to give a 10 minute presentation.
At that last meeting, the seminar begins at 2:15. The first four participants take 15 minutes. The next two take 10 minutes. The sixth takes twenty minutes, and the seventh takes 40.
A participant (who took only 10 minutes for her presentation) has a 45 minute commute to get to her 5 pm class on another campus. How rude is that participant if she leaves the seminar at 4:30 pm?
Note: There are no breaks at this meeting to complicate the math. The participant is also lucky enough to find a parking space just outside of the building for her 5 pm class.
A seminar meets once a month for 2 hours between 2 pm and 4 pm. The seminar has 15 participants. During the last meeting, each participant is scheduled to give a 10 minute presentation.
At that last meeting, the seminar begins at 2:15. The first four participants take 15 minutes. The next two take 10 minutes. The sixth takes twenty minutes, and the seventh takes 40.
A participant (who took only 10 minutes for her presentation) has a 45 minute commute to get to her 5 pm class on another campus. How rude is that participant if she leaves the seminar at 4:30 pm?
Note: There are no breaks at this meeting to complicate the math. The participant is also lucky enough to find a parking space just outside of the building for her 5 pm class.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Resolving Frustration through Bitching.
I've been quite frustrated lately. Some of it relates to the crap that gets dug up in analysis (that's another story for another time). Some of it is a by-product of stress, and a lot of that stress comes from how my time gets used or abused, both by myself and by other sources.
One of the sources of my frustration is an internal fellowship offered by my college. Participation in this fellowship is absolutely an honor and a privilege because the applications were quite competitive and because we meet with some world famous curators of museums that you have heard of -- that everyone has heard of. Yet, I'm not feeling so honored and privileged. In fact, I'm losing respect for some of these curators, not so much for their ability to put together an exhibit -- all of the exhibits are naturally world-class -- as for their complete ignorance history and of the goals of our fellowship. In fact, this fellowship, which I was so looking forward to for nearly a year, has not really met up with my expectation (which were probably too high) nor their descriptions (which, on reflection, were sort of vague).
The organizers of this fellowship had decided that the theme this year should be "social justice." Such a theme would fit with all of my classes, and I had hoped that this fellowship would show me new and creative ways to look at exhibits that would then help me to focus and refine my current assignments. They also promised us "behind the scenes" tours of museums.
I confess that, on that last point, I had visions of the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. No one could maintain those high standards, and I knew it. Still, at the very least, I expected the "curator's tour" of an exhibit, which was explicitly listed as one of the activities of the fellowship. With the exception of the smallest and most neglected museum of the fellowship, we did not get any behind the scenes tours.
Nor did we get a curator's tour of any exhibit. We sometimes did not even have time to go through the exhibits without a guide. "Oh, you can do that on your own time," came the response to complaints. "This isn't about seeing the exhibits, this is about the discussions with the curators." Actually, we don't discuss until the last 15 or 20 minutes of the 3 hour gathering, and the problems with that will become apparent in a moment.
As for the theme of "social justice," only one of the museums offered up their best exhibits for that subject. All of the others opted instead to give us the rotary club presentation of their newest and coolest exhibit. In once case, they gave us the rotary presentation for two exhibits that haven't been up for 5 and 10 years respectively. Furthermore, when asked about social justice in relation to the featured exhibit or even the museum as a whole, most of the curators were completely unprepared for the questions.
One curator, who came in second on pissing me off, explicitly dismissed the subject from his exhibit, and therefore discussion. When one fellow asked if he could recommend other exhibits that might be helpful in teaching about social justice, he replied, "oh, you'll just have to look around." (To completely brag on myself, I later gave about five or ten examples of places in the museum where that fellow could find the subject either discussed or implied in the exhibits. She was thrilled and told me that was the most useful part of that day's seminar.)
By the way, the curator who pissed me off the most said that historians lump all Native Americans into one category, making no distinction between tribes, and describing them all as "savages." Has he not read a book published in the past 30 years on the subject? Furthermore, that museum hadn't even got the memo for the "social justice" theme.
So, I voiced my concerns. Some of the other fellows chimed in. We then received long responses about how we were expecting to be "spoon fed," that we shouldn't expect the curators to be "experts in social justice," that we need to look at what "is absent" from the exhibits, and that we need to look at the absence as an opportunity for discussion. That is one approach; but that was not the approach that was offered up to us at the beginning of the fellowship.
None of us expect the curators to be experts in social justice, but we do expect them to have thought about the subject in relation to their exhibit or museum since they are participating as a sort of "faculty" member in a fellowship that has been geared toward the subject. If, as we were told, "they have to grapple with issues of social justice every day," we expect them to be able to speak to that. Furthermore, we do ask about the absence of this theme in some exhibits, and the curators are again unprepared.
I had started to complain about the problem, but decided that a more productive way to engage would be through suggestions of ways that the fellowship could be improved. When I suggested that the fellowship organizers include people from the museums' education departments to address teaching tools, I was told, "oh, they only do K-12 and wouldn't be any help." I suggested collections management staff so that we could discuss how materials are collected and the political implications of collection or lack of collection. The response was, "oh, they wouldn't be help either." Then, I suggested that they dump such a theme as "social justice" and focus on something more general like "museums as a tool in college education" or something more complicated like "museums as culture-making institutions." I was told that a more general theme would be too boring, and I haven't heard back about the second suggestion.
See, I was trying to give them feedback, which they ask for constantly, "because we want to know what you think so we can improve." I was voicing a frustration that was shared by other fellows, and rather than just bitching about it, I gave suggestions. All of thiss was dismissed, then followed by a lecture on how the fellows weren't approaching the fellowship in the correct way. I took this as, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, and the fact that you don't have anything nice to say is all your fault."
I later learned from someone, who had her own set of frustrations in the same fellowship a few years back, that she got the same impression as well. "They ask for input," she told me, "but I think what they mean is praise."
This all bothers me for a variety of reasons. First, as a historian, I'm really disgusted that two curators in charge of major historical exhibits seen by thousands of people in a single day are either ignorant of research into their subject or are creating exhibits that rely upon and perpetuate myths. Second, I'm worried that I'm now considered a trouble maker, a malcontent, someone who is not grateful for this opportunity, and "not a team player," and that this could adversely affect me down the line. I know that I will no longer be the person asked to promote this fellowship on my campus. This is not at all the path that I want to follow.
Finally, I'm wondering if I could have handled my frustration in more constructive ways. What link in this "feedback" chain am I missing that causes them to become so defensive? What about me causes me to become defensive? Am I not creating that "criticism sandwich"* well enough to be heard constructively? Am I interpreting some of the discussion on the problems of the fellowship as being more hostile than they are and reacting to that? Am I too stressed in general to be positive about anything? Am I simply really a perpetual malcontent?
Did I have too high expectations, thinking that this fellowship would be more challenging, more scholarly, and include more pedagogy than it does; and so was destined to be disappointed? Do I already know too much about museums, too much about some of the content covered in these museums, and too much pedagogy on using these museums for assignments for this fellowship to be useful to me; and again was I destined for disappointment?
Am I too terrified of being perceived as rude or directly challenging the curator if I voice some of my critique of the exhibits during the discussion period? Is that, as a result, a failure on my part to bring my experience to bear on the discussion and therefore move it forward?
Also, I suppose another question here is, "how does a person survive a bad fit in a good way"?
I'm trying to work out my frustration here through bitching. It's sort of like a big tangled knot that I'm trying to unravel without making it any worse. I tend to make such knots worse or just walk away from them. Neither approach is particularly useful in this case, so I'm trying to figure out a third alternative that is not yet among my resources for conflict resolution.
*Criticism sandwich: First you say something complimentary, then you give your criticism, then you say something complimentary again.
One of the sources of my frustration is an internal fellowship offered by my college. Participation in this fellowship is absolutely an honor and a privilege because the applications were quite competitive and because we meet with some world famous curators of museums that you have heard of -- that everyone has heard of. Yet, I'm not feeling so honored and privileged. In fact, I'm losing respect for some of these curators, not so much for their ability to put together an exhibit -- all of the exhibits are naturally world-class -- as for their complete ignorance history and of the goals of our fellowship. In fact, this fellowship, which I was so looking forward to for nearly a year, has not really met up with my expectation (which were probably too high) nor their descriptions (which, on reflection, were sort of vague).
The organizers of this fellowship had decided that the theme this year should be "social justice." Such a theme would fit with all of my classes, and I had hoped that this fellowship would show me new and creative ways to look at exhibits that would then help me to focus and refine my current assignments. They also promised us "behind the scenes" tours of museums.
I confess that, on that last point, I had visions of the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. No one could maintain those high standards, and I knew it. Still, at the very least, I expected the "curator's tour" of an exhibit, which was explicitly listed as one of the activities of the fellowship. With the exception of the smallest and most neglected museum of the fellowship, we did not get any behind the scenes tours.
Nor did we get a curator's tour of any exhibit. We sometimes did not even have time to go through the exhibits without a guide. "Oh, you can do that on your own time," came the response to complaints. "This isn't about seeing the exhibits, this is about the discussions with the curators." Actually, we don't discuss until the last 15 or 20 minutes of the 3 hour gathering, and the problems with that will become apparent in a moment.
As for the theme of "social justice," only one of the museums offered up their best exhibits for that subject. All of the others opted instead to give us the rotary club presentation of their newest and coolest exhibit. In once case, they gave us the rotary presentation for two exhibits that haven't been up for 5 and 10 years respectively. Furthermore, when asked about social justice in relation to the featured exhibit or even the museum as a whole, most of the curators were completely unprepared for the questions.
One curator, who came in second on pissing me off, explicitly dismissed the subject from his exhibit, and therefore discussion. When one fellow asked if he could recommend other exhibits that might be helpful in teaching about social justice, he replied, "oh, you'll just have to look around." (To completely brag on myself, I later gave about five or ten examples of places in the museum where that fellow could find the subject either discussed or implied in the exhibits. She was thrilled and told me that was the most useful part of that day's seminar.)
By the way, the curator who pissed me off the most said that historians lump all Native Americans into one category, making no distinction between tribes, and describing them all as "savages." Has he not read a book published in the past 30 years on the subject? Furthermore, that museum hadn't even got the memo for the "social justice" theme.
So, I voiced my concerns. Some of the other fellows chimed in. We then received long responses about how we were expecting to be "spoon fed," that we shouldn't expect the curators to be "experts in social justice," that we need to look at what "is absent" from the exhibits, and that we need to look at the absence as an opportunity for discussion. That is one approach; but that was not the approach that was offered up to us at the beginning of the fellowship.
None of us expect the curators to be experts in social justice, but we do expect them to have thought about the subject in relation to their exhibit or museum since they are participating as a sort of "faculty" member in a fellowship that has been geared toward the subject. If, as we were told, "they have to grapple with issues of social justice every day," we expect them to be able to speak to that. Furthermore, we do ask about the absence of this theme in some exhibits, and the curators are again unprepared.
I had started to complain about the problem, but decided that a more productive way to engage would be through suggestions of ways that the fellowship could be improved. When I suggested that the fellowship organizers include people from the museums' education departments to address teaching tools, I was told, "oh, they only do K-12 and wouldn't be any help." I suggested collections management staff so that we could discuss how materials are collected and the political implications of collection or lack of collection. The response was, "oh, they wouldn't be help either." Then, I suggested that they dump such a theme as "social justice" and focus on something more general like "museums as a tool in college education" or something more complicated like "museums as culture-making institutions." I was told that a more general theme would be too boring, and I haven't heard back about the second suggestion.
See, I was trying to give them feedback, which they ask for constantly, "because we want to know what you think so we can improve." I was voicing a frustration that was shared by other fellows, and rather than just bitching about it, I gave suggestions. All of thiss was dismissed, then followed by a lecture on how the fellows weren't approaching the fellowship in the correct way. I took this as, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, and the fact that you don't have anything nice to say is all your fault."
I later learned from someone, who had her own set of frustrations in the same fellowship a few years back, that she got the same impression as well. "They ask for input," she told me, "but I think what they mean is praise."
This all bothers me for a variety of reasons. First, as a historian, I'm really disgusted that two curators in charge of major historical exhibits seen by thousands of people in a single day are either ignorant of research into their subject or are creating exhibits that rely upon and perpetuate myths. Second, I'm worried that I'm now considered a trouble maker, a malcontent, someone who is not grateful for this opportunity, and "not a team player," and that this could adversely affect me down the line. I know that I will no longer be the person asked to promote this fellowship on my campus. This is not at all the path that I want to follow.
Finally, I'm wondering if I could have handled my frustration in more constructive ways. What link in this "feedback" chain am I missing that causes them to become so defensive? What about me causes me to become defensive? Am I not creating that "criticism sandwich"* well enough to be heard constructively? Am I interpreting some of the discussion on the problems of the fellowship as being more hostile than they are and reacting to that? Am I too stressed in general to be positive about anything? Am I simply really a perpetual malcontent?
Did I have too high expectations, thinking that this fellowship would be more challenging, more scholarly, and include more pedagogy than it does; and so was destined to be disappointed? Do I already know too much about museums, too much about some of the content covered in these museums, and too much pedagogy on using these museums for assignments for this fellowship to be useful to me; and again was I destined for disappointment?
Am I too terrified of being perceived as rude or directly challenging the curator if I voice some of my critique of the exhibits during the discussion period? Is that, as a result, a failure on my part to bring my experience to bear on the discussion and therefore move it forward?
Also, I suppose another question here is, "how does a person survive a bad fit in a good way"?
I'm trying to work out my frustration here through bitching. It's sort of like a big tangled knot that I'm trying to unravel without making it any worse. I tend to make such knots worse or just walk away from them. Neither approach is particularly useful in this case, so I'm trying to figure out a third alternative that is not yet among my resources for conflict resolution.
*Criticism sandwich: First you say something complimentary, then you give your criticism, then you say something complimentary again.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
The Tackiest Thing I Saw Last Week, Easter Edition
Last Sunday, I found this in a gift shop at an Amtrak station:
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I'm trying to imagine the scenario that would produce such an object. Did some executive of a tchotchke company think, "you know when you are at the train station, and you feel you need to do penance for your sins? But, oh my god! You realize you forgot your rosary! There must be a whole untapped market for pink plastic rosaries at train stations. We could meet that need. We'll be rich!"
Happy Closing of the Candy Season! Tomorrow we enter training for next year.
I'm trying to imagine the scenario that would produce such an object. Did some executive of a tchotchke company think, "you know when you are at the train station, and you feel you need to do penance for your sins? But, oh my god! You realize you forgot your rosary! There must be a whole untapped market for pink plastic rosaries at train stations. We could meet that need. We'll be rich!"
Happy Closing of the Candy Season! Tomorrow we enter training for next year.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Major Disappointment
The National MVSEVM of the American Peep was not in the top 40 of the Peeps Diorama contest winners. So disappointing. Clearly, the competition was tough.
Well, the Peep museum gave me and you all joy, so the real mission was accomplished!
Well, the Peep museum gave me and you all joy, so the real mission was accomplished!
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
One of the Most Frustrating Things About Teaching
You may have one of these.
A young man has taken my class twice. He failed the first time, and he's not doing so great this second time. Yet, from his comments in class, he's so much smarter than his grades.
You can tell when something catches his attention because he sits up straight and his whole body turns into a question. When he wakes up, he is wide awake. He particularly seems to want to know more about resistance. He even wanted to know more about Claude MacKay and Langston Hughes because the selections from their poetry that I used in the lecture spoke to something important and purposeful in him. He needs to read Ellison, Baldwin, and Wright.
I see this spark in him, but this is my frustration. How on earth to I feed it? How do I figure out what he needs and then provide it? How do I do it for the others just like him? If this were a sappy teacher movie, I would chase him down to his home, and bring him books, and just go out of my way to get up in his business. I would save his life and his soul through learning because I cared, man, I really cared.
We know that's not how it happens. In fact, in most of those teacher movies, the students probably should get a restraining order.
This is the frustration of teaching. I get them for a few hours a week. I give them my subject. I grade them on their ability to show that they have learned the subject for at least a few weeks. I send them on their way. I never know if, next year or next week or on their deathbeds, these hours and this information helped them in any way other than to get the credit for the degree. I shouldn't worry about it too much either. I actually don't, and consider that healthy.
Then I get someone like this student. I see him right there on the verge of finding something that might be meaningful to him. Not "change his whole life" or any of that hyperbolic teacher movie stuff. Just meaningful, enriching, interesting. I have no idea how to tip him toward it.
If he had a specific question, I might have a specific answer; but that is not how these things work. So, I watch him, and answer his questions, and hope that today I bring something to the class that makes him take notice and helps him find his own way to what ever it is that he needs.
A young man has taken my class twice. He failed the first time, and he's not doing so great this second time. Yet, from his comments in class, he's so much smarter than his grades.
You can tell when something catches his attention because he sits up straight and his whole body turns into a question. When he wakes up, he is wide awake. He particularly seems to want to know more about resistance. He even wanted to know more about Claude MacKay and Langston Hughes because the selections from their poetry that I used in the lecture spoke to something important and purposeful in him. He needs to read Ellison, Baldwin, and Wright.
I see this spark in him, but this is my frustration. How on earth to I feed it? How do I figure out what he needs and then provide it? How do I do it for the others just like him? If this were a sappy teacher movie, I would chase him down to his home, and bring him books, and just go out of my way to get up in his business. I would save his life and his soul through learning because I cared, man, I really cared.
We know that's not how it happens. In fact, in most of those teacher movies, the students probably should get a restraining order.
This is the frustration of teaching. I get them for a few hours a week. I give them my subject. I grade them on their ability to show that they have learned the subject for at least a few weeks. I send them on their way. I never know if, next year or next week or on their deathbeds, these hours and this information helped them in any way other than to get the credit for the degree. I shouldn't worry about it too much either. I actually don't, and consider that healthy.
Then I get someone like this student. I see him right there on the verge of finding something that might be meaningful to him. Not "change his whole life" or any of that hyperbolic teacher movie stuff. Just meaningful, enriching, interesting. I have no idea how to tip him toward it.
If he had a specific question, I might have a specific answer; but that is not how these things work. So, I watch him, and answer his questions, and hope that today I bring something to the class that makes him take notice and helps him find his own way to what ever it is that he needs.
Monday, April 06, 2009
I Encounter Pomp-ass Men Out of Town
Over the weekend, I went to a conference. At the conference, a friend invited me to a dinner with some of her old graduate school colleagues. I had a nice time until the end of the evening, just before we all left, when she introduced me to one of these colleagues saying, "you both know Person X." Person X was a friend of mine who used to work at the colleague's school. The colleague did not like Person X, and proceeded to attack Person X in a surprisingly vituperative way. I'm not sure that I deserve gold stars for my reaction, since the most honorable thing to have done would have been to tell the dude to fuck off, but I was too busy trying to be nice and to not make anyone feel uncomfortable. (Damn southern upbringing!) So, I write another letter wisely not sent:
Dear Ass. Prof. Friend of a Friend,
Perhaps you don’t remember me. I was the woman at the conference dinner, the one at which you were surrounded by many old friends and colleagues while I was simply a guest of the organizer. You may remember that you spoke to me with great schadenfreude of someone whom your department fired several years ago. The official expression is usually “contract not renewed,” but you chose to use the term “fired,” and to say many unpleasant, potentially libelous, and vaguely racist things about this person.*
Perhaps you did not realize that the person whom you so gleefully slandered was my friend. After all, the friend that you and I share was not clear on that point and I was not particularly aggressive in stating my position because I did not want to make either you or her feel uncomfortable in this rather awkward situation. Instead, I tried to steer us away from the subject of my friend (the one for whom you clearly have no respect), without highlighting the awkwardness that I felt; but you were apparently clueless to my endeavors. In that light, let me enlighten you on a few points.
First, when I said, “I’ve heard both sides of the story, and it seems like this was just a case of a very bad fit,” I was politely suggesting that the matter is closed for discussion. I was not inviting you to elaborate gleefully upon your distaste for my friend nor to try to pump me for information about what he might have said about your department.
Furthermore, with the same statement, I was (perhaps too subtly) indicating that I have heard an interpretation of events that does not reflect well upon the behavior of people in your department. I did not want to cause embarrassment to you or to criticize you because I really only have 2nd and 3rd hand information, and this was not my debate to enter. I just wanted to move to another topic without generating any hostility. Remember, you were among friends, whereas I only had one friend, who is also your friend, whom I did not want to alienate or embarrass. Yet, you continued in your line of attack, even after I repeated my position of “bad fit” and stated my sympathy with my friend, without passing judgment on the behavior of your department.
Second, you may want to consider how you appear in the big picture. My friend was at your institution for a single year five years ago. Yet, here you are, at a professional conference, speaking badly about him for no particular reason. You seem to revel in detailing his flaws and mistakes. You seem to glory in spreading false gossip about how he is incapable of keeping a job. You seem to think yourself in a position to make pronouncements about his fitness as a historian, despite the fact that your field is about as far from his as one can be and still be considered in the discipline of history. Really, who are you to decide who should or should not be a historian when none of your attacks on him had anything to do with his research methods or interpretations?
Five years ago, when the firing was fresh in his experience, he told me his side of the story. In private, with a sympathetic audience, he did not speak of the incident with the venom that you still speak of him in public with a stranger. Instead, he seemed mystified by what happened, and not a little disgusted by the way academia works, but he did not launch ad hominem attacks on anyone in your department or on the department in general. He found the whole ordeal preposterous to the point of hilarity. He was much more generous to your institution in the immediate aftermath than you are toward him half of a decade later.
Meanwhile, he has found another job in a non-profit institution that promoted him very far, very quickly, and with a much larger paycheck. Then he was recruited elsewhere. He was not “fired” as you seem to enjoy repeating. In other words, he has moved on gracefully, which you seem to have not.
Which brings me back to my point: who in this scenario comes out as the bigger asshole? The person who, at academic conferences, must continue to trash someone his institution fired long ago; or the person who was fired who has moved on? Even if my friend did do everything of which you accuse him, even if your interpretation of events is the more accurate, you are the one rehashing events in a professional setting to someone who has indicated that the person whom you are gleefully slandering is a friend and who has attempted to steer you away from the subject more than once.
I walk away from our conversation disgusted with you and your institution, not simply because the person whom you slandered is my friend, but because you proved yourself to be a vindictive, self-important jerk. You may want to take that into consideration the next time that you open your mouth on this subject, especially if the person to whom you are speaking is me.
Sincerely,
Clio Bluestocking
*My friend is black, the school is in the south, the gossip was sexual in nature, having to do with how tight he wore his clothes especially his pants, and the people doing the gossiping were white -- you do the math.
Dear Ass. Prof. Friend of a Friend,
Perhaps you don’t remember me. I was the woman at the conference dinner, the one at which you were surrounded by many old friends and colleagues while I was simply a guest of the organizer. You may remember that you spoke to me with great schadenfreude of someone whom your department fired several years ago. The official expression is usually “contract not renewed,” but you chose to use the term “fired,” and to say many unpleasant, potentially libelous, and vaguely racist things about this person.*
Perhaps you did not realize that the person whom you so gleefully slandered was my friend. After all, the friend that you and I share was not clear on that point and I was not particularly aggressive in stating my position because I did not want to make either you or her feel uncomfortable in this rather awkward situation. Instead, I tried to steer us away from the subject of my friend (the one for whom you clearly have no respect), without highlighting the awkwardness that I felt; but you were apparently clueless to my endeavors. In that light, let me enlighten you on a few points.
First, when I said, “I’ve heard both sides of the story, and it seems like this was just a case of a very bad fit,” I was politely suggesting that the matter is closed for discussion. I was not inviting you to elaborate gleefully upon your distaste for my friend nor to try to pump me for information about what he might have said about your department.
Furthermore, with the same statement, I was (perhaps too subtly) indicating that I have heard an interpretation of events that does not reflect well upon the behavior of people in your department. I did not want to cause embarrassment to you or to criticize you because I really only have 2nd and 3rd hand information, and this was not my debate to enter. I just wanted to move to another topic without generating any hostility. Remember, you were among friends, whereas I only had one friend, who is also your friend, whom I did not want to alienate or embarrass. Yet, you continued in your line of attack, even after I repeated my position of “bad fit” and stated my sympathy with my friend, without passing judgment on the behavior of your department.
Second, you may want to consider how you appear in the big picture. My friend was at your institution for a single year five years ago. Yet, here you are, at a professional conference, speaking badly about him for no particular reason. You seem to revel in detailing his flaws and mistakes. You seem to glory in spreading false gossip about how he is incapable of keeping a job. You seem to think yourself in a position to make pronouncements about his fitness as a historian, despite the fact that your field is about as far from his as one can be and still be considered in the discipline of history. Really, who are you to decide who should or should not be a historian when none of your attacks on him had anything to do with his research methods or interpretations?
Five years ago, when the firing was fresh in his experience, he told me his side of the story. In private, with a sympathetic audience, he did not speak of the incident with the venom that you still speak of him in public with a stranger. Instead, he seemed mystified by what happened, and not a little disgusted by the way academia works, but he did not launch ad hominem attacks on anyone in your department or on the department in general. He found the whole ordeal preposterous to the point of hilarity. He was much more generous to your institution in the immediate aftermath than you are toward him half of a decade later.
Meanwhile, he has found another job in a non-profit institution that promoted him very far, very quickly, and with a much larger paycheck. Then he was recruited elsewhere. He was not “fired” as you seem to enjoy repeating. In other words, he has moved on gracefully, which you seem to have not.
Which brings me back to my point: who in this scenario comes out as the bigger asshole? The person who, at academic conferences, must continue to trash someone his institution fired long ago; or the person who was fired who has moved on? Even if my friend did do everything of which you accuse him, even if your interpretation of events is the more accurate, you are the one rehashing events in a professional setting to someone who has indicated that the person whom you are gleefully slandering is a friend and who has attempted to steer you away from the subject more than once.
I walk away from our conversation disgusted with you and your institution, not simply because the person whom you slandered is my friend, but because you proved yourself to be a vindictive, self-important jerk. You may want to take that into consideration the next time that you open your mouth on this subject, especially if the person to whom you are speaking is me.
Sincerely,
Clio Bluestocking
*My friend is black, the school is in the south, the gossip was sexual in nature, having to do with how tight he wore his clothes especially his pants, and the people doing the gossiping were white -- you do the math.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
"Truth" and History
I think I've figured something out about my frustration over the insistence that historians tell the "truth," or obfuscate the "truth," or are the keepers of "truth" about the past. The people who are demanding "truth" are demanding something that is essentially metaphysical or philosophical but that they think is objective. At some level, I think they want us to confirm what they already believe about the world, which of course must be true because who would believe a lie? (That's a whole other set of issues.)
In fact, the more I think about what the man in my last post said, the more I think that he was essentially telling me that the study of women's history is the study of lies or un-truths (possibly because it did not put the menz at the center, which is of course, not a description of HIS world, and therefore not true). He was really offended by the whole concept of studying the history of women.
Another man (who, god help us, is teaching history as an adjunct at our school), could only conceive of women's history as a nice history of the "group" but not really important to the "whole of history" unless a particular woman did something that affected major events. The reason to study history -- in fact, the definition of history -- was to tell the "truth" about the major events of the past. Wars and politics and stuff. The rest is just fluff about people who are unimportant because they didn't have starring roles. His seems to be the interpretation of historical research that I encounter most out in the public.
That's not really what historians do. In regard to "truth," historian want facts and evidence, and we want them to be accurate, but we want those facts in order to paint as accurate a picture as we possibly can of the past. We want to understand the past in all of its facets, not proclaim truth as if we are the Messiah.
In fact, the more I think about what the man in my last post said, the more I think that he was essentially telling me that the study of women's history is the study of lies or un-truths (possibly because it did not put the menz at the center, which is of course, not a description of HIS world, and therefore not true). He was really offended by the whole concept of studying the history of women.
Another man (who, god help us, is teaching history as an adjunct at our school), could only conceive of women's history as a nice history of the "group" but not really important to the "whole of history" unless a particular woman did something that affected major events. The reason to study history -- in fact, the definition of history -- was to tell the "truth" about the major events of the past. Wars and politics and stuff. The rest is just fluff about people who are unimportant because they didn't have starring roles. His seems to be the interpretation of historical research that I encounter most out in the public.
That's not really what historians do. In regard to "truth," historian want facts and evidence, and we want them to be accurate, but we want those facts in order to paint as accurate a picture as we possibly can of the past. We want to understand the past in all of its facets, not proclaim truth as if we are the Messiah.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Bitchy and Yet Good Day; or, I Give Myself Gold Stars
I haven't written this week; or, rather, I haven't written on this blog this week because all of the words that I write seem either too personal, or too whining, or too bitchy (believe it or not, I do have limits in all three areas), or too something that made them not quite right for consumption even as a blog post. Those words went into the journal. Today, however, there is a sort of balance: I'm having a very bitchy day, and yet it is turning out to be a pretty good day, so my words aren't so messy.
I'm feeling frustration about many things in my life. That frustration creates the chaos in my writing. Today, the frustration came from two sources, both of which made me grumpy. The first involves this college fellowship in which I am involved. While the program seemed very exciting, I think I expected something more scholarly both from the fellowship participants and from the presenters at our meetings. Instead, I'm getting The Discovery Channel. When they asked for feedback from us in order to improve the fellowship, I gave mine -- nicely! -- and got a snippy retort in front of the whole group. The retort went something like this, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all; and if you feel the need to say something not nice, then it's all your fault." All of my powers of self-control kept me from responding, "So, when you asked for feedback, you really meant praise." I give myself a gold star for keeping that to myself.
In any case, this fellowship has wrought havoc on my schedule, and causes me a great deal of stress in getting from it to my class afterward. I wouldn't be so critical of the content if I didn't have that stress. After all, it isn't completely excruciating, and they are paying us for our time; but, because of that stress and because I'm not really getting anything out of the fellowship, I'm feeling that the time (and sanity) is more valuable to me than the paycheck.
While I stewed on the "if you don't have anything nice to say" retort, I had to lead a discussion on women's history and Catherine Clinton's new book Mrs. Lincoln (I tell you, I was done with Lincoln a long time ago, but you have to keep the masses happy, so I tried a new tactic through his wife). This is a sort of community outreach thing that the college does, and usually consists of college staff and retirees. They are overall quite fun and engaging. If only all of our students were so willing to discuss and debate! Still, I forget how rarified my existence can be in relation to history until I walk into these discussions.
Before I finished my embarassingly superficial overview of the study of women's history, one of the men could not contain his objection. "Why does it have to be called 'women's history'?" he asked. "Isn't it all JUST history?" I'm sure if you study any specialized field, you've met with this reaction. My canned response is that doctors specialize in cardiothoracic surgery or oncology and it is all medicine, so all that historians are doing is specializing in the same way. He didn't buy it, and then he wanted to talk about "truth." The only truth that I have found about "truth" is that everyone is seeking it and everyone has a different version of it.
No matter how often you explain the concept of specialization and interpretation, most people still think that historians are all generalists and that we all just make shit up when it comes to interpretation. I've learned to handle these discussions, and have taken into account that I was dealing with a generation much older than myself. Still, it was hard to ignore that all of the men at the table have this old 19th century Whiggish interpretation of history, and this concept that there is a "truth" out there (and historians are somehow concealing it), while all of the women were amenable to the concept of interpretation and to the history of women. I give myself a gold star for dealing with these questions rationally, and with the intent to instruct, even if I did not suceed.
I relate these complaints because last night, in preparation for my talk at this discussion, I watched the video of Mary Ryan's talk at the OAH and read through some of the online discussion of Judith Bennett's book. I kept thinking, "was my education ever deficient!" (partly my own fault) and "wow, am I out of date!" and "I just don't have the intellectual steam to do this sort of work!" Which is to say, I was feeling very non-academic. Then, I had these two encounters and I began feeling all too academic. Put these two feelings together, and you have a grown woman feeling like an adolescent who doesn't fit in anywhere. (We will be taking that to analysis next week.)
Of course, this is the story of my life: puttering between two extremes.
Good news came anyway. I was accepted to an NEH summer institute. Furthermore, this institute is in the next city over. No flying commercial airlines! I didn't see this as a validation of my own academic credentials. Instead, I saw it as a wonderful opportunity to talk about a fascinating subject in complex ways with people who are smarter and more informed about it than I am. My brain felt that it would be fed and engaged, rather than frustrated and annoyed. I give myself gold stars for for the acceptance and for the healthy response.
I'm feeling frustration about many things in my life. That frustration creates the chaos in my writing. Today, the frustration came from two sources, both of which made me grumpy. The first involves this college fellowship in which I am involved. While the program seemed very exciting, I think I expected something more scholarly both from the fellowship participants and from the presenters at our meetings. Instead, I'm getting The Discovery Channel. When they asked for feedback from us in order to improve the fellowship, I gave mine -- nicely! -- and got a snippy retort in front of the whole group. The retort went something like this, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all; and if you feel the need to say something not nice, then it's all your fault." All of my powers of self-control kept me from responding, "So, when you asked for feedback, you really meant praise." I give myself a gold star for keeping that to myself.
In any case, this fellowship has wrought havoc on my schedule, and causes me a great deal of stress in getting from it to my class afterward. I wouldn't be so critical of the content if I didn't have that stress. After all, it isn't completely excruciating, and they are paying us for our time; but, because of that stress and because I'm not really getting anything out of the fellowship, I'm feeling that the time (and sanity) is more valuable to me than the paycheck.
While I stewed on the "if you don't have anything nice to say" retort, I had to lead a discussion on women's history and Catherine Clinton's new book Mrs. Lincoln (I tell you, I was done with Lincoln a long time ago, but you have to keep the masses happy, so I tried a new tactic through his wife). This is a sort of community outreach thing that the college does, and usually consists of college staff and retirees. They are overall quite fun and engaging. If only all of our students were so willing to discuss and debate! Still, I forget how rarified my existence can be in relation to history until I walk into these discussions.
Before I finished my embarassingly superficial overview of the study of women's history, one of the men could not contain his objection. "Why does it have to be called 'women's history'?" he asked. "Isn't it all JUST history?" I'm sure if you study any specialized field, you've met with this reaction. My canned response is that doctors specialize in cardiothoracic surgery or oncology and it is all medicine, so all that historians are doing is specializing in the same way. He didn't buy it, and then he wanted to talk about "truth." The only truth that I have found about "truth" is that everyone is seeking it and everyone has a different version of it.
No matter how often you explain the concept of specialization and interpretation, most people still think that historians are all generalists and that we all just make shit up when it comes to interpretation. I've learned to handle these discussions, and have taken into account that I was dealing with a generation much older than myself. Still, it was hard to ignore that all of the men at the table have this old 19th century Whiggish interpretation of history, and this concept that there is a "truth" out there (and historians are somehow concealing it), while all of the women were amenable to the concept of interpretation and to the history of women. I give myself a gold star for dealing with these questions rationally, and with the intent to instruct, even if I did not suceed.
I relate these complaints because last night, in preparation for my talk at this discussion, I watched the video of Mary Ryan's talk at the OAH and read through some of the online discussion of Judith Bennett's book. I kept thinking, "was my education ever deficient!" (partly my own fault) and "wow, am I out of date!" and "I just don't have the intellectual steam to do this sort of work!" Which is to say, I was feeling very non-academic. Then, I had these two encounters and I began feeling all too academic. Put these two feelings together, and you have a grown woman feeling like an adolescent who doesn't fit in anywhere. (We will be taking that to analysis next week.)
Of course, this is the story of my life: puttering between two extremes.
Good news came anyway. I was accepted to an NEH summer institute. Furthermore, this institute is in the next city over. No flying commercial airlines! I didn't see this as a validation of my own academic credentials. Instead, I saw it as a wonderful opportunity to talk about a fascinating subject in complex ways with people who are smarter and more informed about it than I am. My brain felt that it would be fed and engaged, rather than frustrated and annoyed. I give myself gold stars for for the acceptance and for the healthy response.
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