Trying to Catch my Breath

About a week and a half ago, I found that I was very short of breath. When I was toying around in meditating, I couldn't get those deep, lung-expanding breaths that the guru on the podcast intoned. At the time, I attributed the inability to inhale from the gut as the result of a lifetime of holding my stomach in. Then, I went to work out and found myself disturbingly short of breath for three days in a row. Actually, the shortness of breath itself only frustrated me because my inability to inhale enough oxygen made those mile painfully difficult and meant that I could only go 6 or 8 miles at best, and very slowly. I nearly quit after three on one day because I was sure that I would faint. Combined with a preexisting pain in my right arm -- probably the result of a hurt nerve from overly heavy bags -- and the frustration became disturbing because the medical databases suggested that I was suffering from a heart problem.

Shit. My grandmother died of a heart attack when she was barely sixty.

Of course, if you leave out the arm pain, which, as I said, is most likely the result of a hurt nerve in my shoulder, shortness of breath can also mean anxiety. Now, I am a generally anxious person. Usually I am the tweaking ferret, and I worry so constantly about every damn little thing (thank you, dad, for the propensity) that I know anxiety inside an out. I've even had one or two full-blown anxiety attacks that are a sight to behold, even from the inside of my head. "This ain't that," I told myself.

Yes, actually, this was that, except this time the this that was that did not involve an attack so much as a constant pulse of uncertainty sitting just at the surface of my consciousness.

How did I discover this? Well, I got some news this week. Potentially good news. The news isn't my news, really. The news is good news for the Gentleman Caller. Fantastic news, in fact. This news, however, affects me and my future, but requires several steps that rely upon other people and other sequences of events. If all goes well, my life will become quite topsy-turvy over the next few months and up through the next two years. I'm rather stunned since I didn't actually do anything myself and am rather the passive beneficiary of someone else's good fortune.

The minute I found out the big piece of good news, and then when the first event in the other sequences of events occurred with much better results than we could realistically imagine, I could breath. I had enough oxygen. I ran ten miles with little danger of passing out on the treadmill. My arm still hurts, but maybe I should see the doctor about that.

I'll tell more details as I can, but I'm bursting with the need to shout all of this out, and I fear jinxing it all if I do.

Not that I'm superstitious or anything.

Another Moment in which I Doubt My Fitness for this Job

My students have a paper to write every semester. This is the worst torture for them, of course. Not only to they have to write, but they have to visit a museum (often a revelation for them), and they have to read articles or encyclopedia entries or excerpts from books in order to evaluate the museum exhibit. I gave up on letting them find their own research because -- well, that's a whole other story about teaching them that "I put these search terms into Google and these were the first ten hits that came up" not being the best research method. I know they can't be learning that in their writing classes, but then, they can take a whole host of classes requiring writing and research without having taken the entry-level writing class. That is also another huge problem in the structure of the curriculum; and, dammit, I do actually have to teach them some history.

I digress. The point here being that they have a list of things to read, and these things are located somewhere in the library, either in the databases on the library web-site, in reserves, or -- gasp! -- on the shelves in books. I tell them this explicitly in class and on the instructions; but I'm realizing that knowing that the readings are there to be found is, for once, not the actual problem.

The actual problem is that there is a reason that they think research means "I put these search terms into Google and these were the first hits that came up." The reason is that their entire experience in finding things on their own involves that very method. They cannot imagine that there is another way to find information; and I face a room of ignorance -- not stupidity, not willful ignorance, but honest-to-god examples of people who don't know and don't know what they don't know -- that I cannot begin to fathom. Heck, I don't know what they don't know, and every time I think that I have assumed completely blank slates, and assumed a certain basic level of ability to figure out basic problems, I find that I am wrong.

I ran into this problem this week. A student chose a museum exhibit, and one of the readings for that exhibit is a long, essay entry in a specialized encyclopedia (and I cringe that I am considering an encyclopedia a legitimate source; but, see the above problem of blank slates and difficulties in figuring things out). Fortunately, this student was aware of what he didn't know or at least that he might not know, and asked questions.

"Can we find this online," he asked.

"No," I said. "This is an actual book in the library."

He looked perplexed.

"You know, those things with pages between two boards that are on the shelves?" I teased. Then, I apologized for teasing, although I meant it in good humor, because clearly he didn't get that this is something common that old fogies like me encounter among the younger generation and I was just as much teasing myself for being an old fogy as he was for being of this electric information age.

He still looked perplexed. "How do I find it?" he asked.

"In the online catalog," I said, assuming that was the end of it.

You know what assuming does, right? Fortunately, this student wasn't going to let me inadvertently make an ass out of him by assuming that he knew what the catalog was or how that might lead him to the book in question. After class, he came up to ask me, "How do I find it?"

"It's on the shelves," I said.

"Yeah, but where?"

I opened up the library website and showed him where to put in the title of the book, then showed him the book's record. "This is how you find out where it's located in the library," I said.

"Oh!" he said in the sort of tone that suggests he was thinking, "who knew it was that easy?" He pointed to the links in the record and asked, "so I just click on that and it will take me to the encyclopedia?"

"Hunh?" I thought, followed by, "oh! They are so used to encountering the concept of an encyclopedia in the form of Wikipedia that they think all encyclopedias are online. He thinks the record is a link, not a map." Not an irrational assumption, given that many encyclopedias have shifted to online forms.

"No," I told him. "This record gives you the call number, which tells you where to find the book in the library."

He gave me another perplexed look. His classmate, who had joined us because she had the very same questions, gave me a look as if I had just told them that the Easter Bunny would deliver the book to them.

"That's the call number there," I said, pointing. "It tells you where the book is located on the shelves."

They both looked at me as if I were speaking in Klingon and expected them to understand me perfectly. At which point this thought dawned on me: "they have never in their lives had to find a book in a library. I really am speaking Klingon to them." So, I asked, "you haven't ever had to do this have you?"

They gave me sheepish looks. "That's o.k.," I said. "I grew up with a librarian mother and I'm a librarian, too. I sometimes forget that not everyone knows this." So, I explained to them about the way that call numbers work, and that, if they get lost, they can ask the reference librarian.

Let me tell you, the librarians are ecstatic when you ask them library questions, not "where is the bathroom?" or "can you help me fix the printer?" I can't blame them! I feel the same way when I am asked a history question and not a grading question.

After they left, my head almost imploded. "How?" I thought. "How can you not know how to find a library book?"

How, indeed. They can't because, unlike me, they did not grow up in a house with a librarian or with people who went to libraries. (Shoot! I even had a feeling of being a real dinosaur because I remember card catalogs, which were in use as recently as 25 years ago, and they have no frame of reference for such a creature.) Libraries are not places that they have frequented, and they don't think of books as sources of information. If they go to libraries, they don't go to find information in the library itself. They they go to use the library computer to surf the internet for information or to print out documents. The library is, for them, essentially a big computer lab. Public libraries, with their funding slashed beyond viability, are not open when they can go to them, so they more often turn to the school's computer lab to do what they would otherwise do in a library, and they treat the school's library like a computer lab. If they study in either the public or the school's library, they go to study their textbooks and (god willing!) their notes. They don't think that they can just reach out and expand what they are learning by pulling a book off of the shelf or logging into the library databases. The riches of the library are right before their eyes, and they have no idea because they have not yet learned to recognize them.

I'm not being a Luddite. I know that libraries are not just about the books. They are Grand Centrals for information, be in online in books or with the help of the librarian. The problem is with what people call "information literacy," or, more accurately, the lack thereof. If the information is not in the first ten hits of a Google search -- and the Google search with only the specific terms of their chosen topic -- then it either must not exist, or the means of finding it is a mystery. Strategies for searching, or even knowing that there should be other ways to get at the information, seem unknowable.

The process of education should be a process of knowing what once seemed unknowable. Those two students now (let's hope!) know how to find more information. I think this is a great gift that I hope they can use. At the same time, I'm naively shocked that they just learned this. Yet, what in their experience has led them to learn this earlier. They are, after all, freshmen. I can't speak to their grade school experience because I don't know what goes on in grade school, really, other than lots of testing, and I certainly don't know what went on in their particular grade school, or on what they were concentrating regardless of what was going on.

What did occur to me is that the librarians and various writing teachers try to teach them information literacy, and we are all supposed to be doing so in these programs about writing across the curriculum or disciplines or whatever. The weakness of those programs, however, is that teaching this sort of literacy, especially when they arrive in our class with little to no foundation for it, takes a lot of time and we already have to actually teach the content of our own discipline. Heck, the same is true even in writing classes. Writing teachers have to teach about how to write a sentence, how to organize an essay, how to construct an argument, how to take notes. A single assignment or class or orientation does not suffice to make students even remotely capable of even the most basic research beyond "search terms in Google."

I start to wonder if, given this day and age and the habits that the students already bring to our school if maybe there should be more than a library orientation in order to teach students to effectively find and evaluate information. I wonder if a whole course should be devoted to this -- a course with as much weight as the freshman composition and college algebra and introductory survey courses of all disciplines. I'm thinking of something like the course on reference work that I took in library school, except tailored for freshmen of the information age. This seems like something too important to be left to a class meeting or an orientation or anything that doesn't require some focused exercise and discipline on basic research skills taught by information specialists. It would provide a foundation upon which professors could build in order to teach students how to research for their particular discipline (or, so one assumes, given that one big problem we also face is the fact that our students aren't transferring skills like writing a sentence from one class to another).

Meanwhile, I look out at my class and I wonder what do they not know and how can they figure out that they don't know it, and I wonder what I don't know that they don't know and how can I figure out that they don't know it. Things that I can't imagine not knowing because I don't remember a time when I didn't are things that they have no idea exist. How on earth can I breach that gap of ignorance on both sides to make the learning process slightly less painful and expect from them results that they have a remote possibility of achieving?

Fantasmagoric Ancestors

Remember that scene in Bull Durham in which Annie tells Crash that she thinks, because of her love of animals, she was probably Francis of Assisi or Catherine the Great in a previous life? Then, Crash asks why people always think they were someone famous in a prior life. No one ever thinks that they were Joe Blow. Of course, she laughs and says, "no, no! It doesn't work that way."

I noticed the same thing among some people doing genealogy. Not all genealogist, but some. For instance, when I was in grade school, one girl bragged that her ancestry took her all the way back to Catherine of Aragon. One of her classmates said that his took them straight to Henry VIII. ("My how their family has fallen," I thought -- but in the language of a 12-year-old.) There's currently a guy running around Baltimore perpetrating the fraud that he is the direct descendant of Frederick Douglass -- although how he is keeps changing. Even my mother used to tell me that my father's family descended from Valcour Aime. "It just doesn't count unless you can connect yourself to someone famous," I thought.

Of course, if you can't connect yourself to someone famous directly, you can include your ancestors in ostensibly noble categories of people. Hence, all of the southerners who, in the words of my grandmother, "don't have to feel guilty because your ancestors didn't own slaves." Yes, really, my parents and grandparents and their various kinfolk all said the same thing. How this squares with also being a descendant of Valcour Aime mystified me. Even a census record showing differently doesn't stop that line of argument. The response was either, "well, they treated their slaves well" or "well, it was the times" or "well, the women didn't own slaves." In fact, I had a friend whose grandmother owned up to their slaveholding past, but, as he said, "to hear her tell it, Africans were diving into the ocean and swimming for South Carolina just to be slaves on their plantation, that's how well they treated them."

This categorical association, however, is usually a bottom-up sort of interpretation. "Our people were union men from the beginning," one friend bragged. He, incidentally, was That Professor, the one with the red Che Guevara banner in his office. "I'm a descendant of the X family and the Y family on both sides, and so is my husband," one woman told me. "They were the original, hard scrabble settlers of this old New England town." (Yeah, isn't that usually a joke about working class southerners? That our family trees have no branches and it made us all idiots?) This working class immigrant and pioneer narrative is much more common than the Great Ancestor narrative, given the history of this nation and the size of the population. All of it seems to stake a claim to both earned citizenship and an inheritance of citizenship in the U.S.

In the past 20 or 30 years, other people claim Native American ancestry, which seems to claim a stake beyond an immigrant lineage. I knew one guy who, nearly in his fifties, discovered that one of his great- or great-great grandparents was Cherokee. He then grew his hair into braids and decked himself out in turquoise and beads. Two other women, upon the release of Dances with Wolves, embraced their Cherokee and Chickasaw ancestry and did the same, except they skipped the braids. They must have worn 10 lbs of silver and turquoise to work every day. That turquoise and silver were Navajo was beside the point. The jewelry was a tribute to their grandmother, who was born Cherokee and told to deny her 100% Native American ancestry.

The Native American connection sometimes has a mercenary quality. I had a friend who used a genealogical library to research prisoners of war. She said that, at 5 pm, the place filled up with people either searching for Confederate ancestors so that they could join the Sons of Confederate Veterans, or Cherokee ancestors, so that they could get on the tribal rolls -- or something of the sort. I've even heard of people trying to prove some sort of minority-status ancestry in order to apply for benefits, scholarships, and minority-owned business status.

Everyone wants some sort of proof of genetic nobility, genetic citizenship, a birth right. They want some sense that in there very person survives all of the ideals of America, even if those ideals are ahistorical and constantly changing. They want a claim to place in the old world and the new. They want sense of self that transcends the here and now. Yet, the claim says more about the person staking the claim in the here and now than any of the ancestry does.

I'm not immune to this. Yet, I realize that, given my actual ancestry, I am the descendant of villains. We were the bad guys, the slaveowners, the overseers, the imperialists, the Indian killers, the Confederates, the drab, boring perpetrators of the benign evil of the status quo. This, of course, squares with my own self-loathing and cynicism.

See? My claim says more about me in the here and now than my ancestry does.

Being the descendants of the villians is a hard lineage to claim in fact or in fantasy; and, while I do, I want to counter it. Thus, I have invented another, fantastical lineage.

While I do have French Canadian, Cajun and Louisiana French Creole ancestors -- hence, the Valcour Aime story -- I imagine some of them not in Louisiana, but as Nova Scotian metis.

I have a picture of a young girl, French Canadian. I think she might be my great-grandmother or her cousin. She has dark, curly hair and a nose that bespeaks a Mediterranean ancestry. "A Jew," I decided. "Or perhaps a Gypsy. They had to flee Europe to escape the pogroms. Or maybe they were descended from marranos."

My great-grandfather's father (or perhaps his father -- my grandmother's stories underwent constant revision) was an Irish immigrant. I decided that he was the remnants of leprechauns or Celtic druids or, at the very least, Black Irish. His mother died on the voyage to America (again, my grandmother is the source, so probably not), but I imagine that she was not buried at sea but returned to it when she found her selkie skin in her husband's pack.

Because my grandfather's last name was Kemp, the same as the actor who originated some of Shakespeare's early comic roles and then became a wandering Morris dancer, I have claimed him as my own.

My grandmother's father's name was Loupe, which is French for female wolf, so I invented a story about La Loupe-Garoues, female werewolves wandering the swamps and riverbanks of the Mississippi, a sinister, land-bound version of selkies, incorporated into folklore about the Deslondes rebellion (top that, Anne Rice!).

Yes, all of these are ridiculous. I intend them to be. What does it matter who my actual ancestors were or what they did? I can search for their documentation and then place them in narratives that make them better than they were. Their actual stories only inform my privilege, and my privilege in the here and now is what I have to address. If I am going to invent stories about ancestors, stories that say more about who I wish I were and who I want to be, I might as well make them good stories. Mythical creatures, actors, and outcasts are much more interesting than the truth.

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ETA, 2/26: My SiteMeter reveals that someone along the River Road found this blog by looking for the subject of a post from three (or four?) years ago. I have ancestors buried -- or once buried, since their tombs have long since been busted open and filled with moss rather than bones -- in the town where this person's isp address is located.

Cockamamie Ideas

I'm working on having more sympathy with my students for some of their cockamamie ideas that they present in their assignments. By "sympathy" I don't mean to excuse them but, rather, to take a little time to prod them to listen to the words that are coming out of their mouths (or out of their fingers) and examine them a bit more.

For instance, in covering Reconstruction, I ask students to evaluate the successes and failures of the era. I have honestly had a number of students essentially say that Reconstruction's failure was good because it led to the Civil Rights Movement and the rise of such leaders as Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X.

Let's leave aside that the invocation of these three is usually an indication that the student in question didn't read the text and is relying on common knowledge and look at the basic argument that the students are making. Reconstruction, a period of incredible advancement for African American civil rights, ended. In its wake, segregation, qualifications for voting, lynching, and everything else that falls under the heading of Jim Crow, fell into place. That was all ultimately fine because then there was a Civil Rights Movement. The students don't consider that, had Reconstruction ultimately succeeded, had there been no Compromise of 1877, then maybe -- just maybe -- there might not have been a need for a Civil Rights Movement. They don't consider that some sharecropper in Mississippi in 1925 was thinking "hey, this is o.k. so long as Martin Luther King, Jr., can become famous" or even that Martin Luther King, Jr., standing on the Lincoln Memorial thought, "dang, I'm glad Jim Crow happened so I could get up here today and denounce it."

I don't mean to mock them. Really! Nothing they have ever done in their educational life has asked them to consider the implications of anything. Nor do I intend to open a debate on an alternate history in which Reconstruction was successful because that could last forever and I confess that it is not a field of my expertise. Instead, I'm looking at the reasons that students might fall into that pattern of thinking that horrendous events are o.k. as long as they produce great people.

I find this line of thinking very similar to their understanding of the abolition movement as one of self-help in that it overlooks the vast importance of the possibilities presented during Reconstruction as well as the culture that resulted in Reconstruction's end. Also, it reduces the complexities of that moment in history, and the injustice that followed, into a Pollyana narrative that I often find associated with "achiever" stories. This person or that person overcame the institutionalized racism/sexism/classism/heterosexim in order to become great and an inspiration for others, leaving room for the inference that perhaps that racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism or whatever else are not so bad if this one person can become great in spite of them.

I'm trying to be more sympathetic to my students who fall into these patterns of thinking because these patterns are cultural ruts, ideas that serve a particular purpose to inspire individuals but not necessarily to inspire change. Because these stories are cultural ruts, and because my students are new to this world of ideas, I have to meet them where they arrive. Where they arrive, in the classroom, they have not questioned so many of the ideas that they carry about because those ideas so self-evident when they have gone unchallenged.

I also try to have sympathy because I know that I can come down harshly on them simply because these cockamamie ideas are exactly the type that I would have held when I was their age -- heck, even when I was older and should know better, and even now as I run head-first into an awareness that I often operate under unexamined bad ideas.

In fact, this process of examining these cockamamie ideas is precisely reason that the humanities are important. When you study history or literature or philosophy or languages, you are exposed to a wide variety of ideas in a short and concentrated period of time. Exposure to these ideas is like travelling to another place where your concept of "normal" or "self-evident" or "objective" are all challenged. Seldom in your life, unless you have an extreme experience, will you encounter and engage with so many different concepts and in such a rigorous way as you do in college humanities courses.

You explore the act of thinking deeply and broadly in these college courses, questioning human knowledge and considering real problems that have existed in the real world, regardless of what those detractors of the "Ivory Tower" say. In fact, if you engage with the humanities as you should, as an exploration of ways to think about the world, you may find yourself questioning the animosity toward the "Ivory Tower" and realizing that its detractors are actually full of shit. What's more, you can explore these ideas without actually having to commit to one or the other because you are doing just that: exploring, learning, collecting these ideas.

That is also why research is important to teaching, even to people who teach only the survey courses. When scholars research, they are going out there on the cutting edge of thought, of exploring new ideas, generating new knowledge, and conceptualizing real problems in the real world. These scholars may not necessarily bring the specifics of their research to class; but, because they also work in concepts and questions that are applicable to other eras and specialities, they can apply those ways of thinking to the survey courses as well as to specialized courses. When those same scholars step into the classroom, they are about a decade ahead of the textbooks, and can bring new concepts or new ways of looking at old concepts to their students. Their students are not necessarily going to go beyond that survey class in that field of study, but they will have been exposed to a new way of thinking about the world and will have learned to begin to question what they know and how they know it. They will have learned this because people who do this as a matter of course and as part of their jobs will be showing them how to do it.

Furthermore, this is not a matter of generating a workforce for Business, this is a matter of developing a thoughtful and educated citizenry. Clearly, we are at a loss for that these days, when every half-assed -- no, quarter-assed, eighth-assed, sixteenth-assed -- idea is taken equally seriously and without any evaluation or context.

Therefore, I'm developing sympathy and patience for these students. They come to me with cockamamie ideas. As their teacher, I'm supposed to draw these cockamamie ideas out for them to examine, consider, and evaluate, then send them off in the world hoping that something stuck and that they can apply that skill to everything else they encounter.

Miscellaneous Holiday Items

In a grocery store that caters to a large, observant population, management finally expanded and moved the Passover display to the usual holiday display section:


It was twice as big as the Easter section and almost as large as the Christmas section had been. The Easter section, incidentally, went up on January 2 along with the Valentine's Day displays.

The Easter section had this:
Plush Peeps! Of all sizes! Even in basket form! I kinda want the ones in the box. Ironically, no actual, edible, sugary Peeps were in sight.

This was:

Am I a total perv with a dirty mind, or is that vaguely obscene?

Random Updates and Stuff

PITA colleagues:

This week, the Interrupting PITA interrupted my class yet again, despite a locked door, to pass back papers. I stopped the class cold and stood by, patiently watching. The students clued in to what was happening and some started to giggle. Finally, Interrupting PITA caught the snap. She didn't apologize, but before the next class meeting she told me that there would be no more interruptions. Let's see how long this lasts. Also, I've found that if I arrive just as her portion of the class ends, she clears out sooner. Score two for passive aggression!

The Diva has yet again demonstrated a propensity for last-minute planning and notification. Since the dean has my back, my new tactic is "poor planning on your part does not constitute and emergency on mine."

I very much worry about what they think of me, and how they will talk about me and evaluate me. I suspect that Interrupting PITA does not respect my teaching style, and I absolutely do not trust the Diva's jovial and friendly demeanor. I'm southern, I know how that can be. Plus, last year's experience. Still, I have this deep urge to be liked and needed and all of that bullshit, which I have also learned leads to all sorts of hell.

The Gentleman Caller, however, has taught me a great word to use in these instances: Irrelevant. "She doesn't respect my teaching," I whine. "Irrelevant," he said. "She will say bad things about me," I moan. "Irrelevant," he says. So, yes, certain things are utterly irrelevant when someone else is misbehaving.

Meditating:

I took Ubab's description of the ancient Hindus using mediation and drugs to achieve euphoria as licence to meditate while under the influence of rum. That worked! The ability of alcohol to lower inhibition (and judgement) and to allow you to feel all tingly in every part of your body combined with meditation's concentration on every sensation as it happens led to an epiphany that took me a step further away from my constitutional anger. Imagine that! This was the reason my analyst told me to try meditation. Of course, we were also discussing ways to achieve these sorts of realizations without chemical aid. One step at a time.

Burn-out:

I confess that this semester I have only 4 classes, down from the usual 5. This small miracle came about because my role as the women's studies whatever comes with the same credit as teaching a class. That means that last semester, with both the whatever and my usual five classes, I was technically doing the work of 6. I can use that extra class to either earn overtime pay in the spring, or to buy myself out of a class in spring. While the money would be nice, I am still fortunate enough to place a greater value on time and sanity. (That hasn't always been the case, and my colleagues with children, especially if they are single parents, don't have that luxury.) So, I bought myself out of a class. That means that, while I am technically doing the work of 5 classes, only 4 are actual classes (although two are online, which is kind of the work of two classes each, but that's another story).

The whole point of this is to say that the reduction of teaching by one class had made all the difference so far. I feel this blessed little space open up in which I can actually breathe and don't feel so pecked at by the students. In fact, I can start to see them more as a collection of individuals rather than a gigantic, famished, descending flock. Granted, we haven't had any really major assignments due, so check in around spring break to see if I'm still feeling less burned-out; but right now, I find myself shocked at the end of the day to realize that - oh! wow! -- I am not forgetting one class, or don't have that many more students to worry about and that -- wonder of wonders! -- I can write! Thus far, my only ire has been toward the PITAs -- at least at work, don't get me started on the workings of this nation.

Research:

I've discovered a new method to go about organizing my thoughts in my research. I was asked to give a paper on one of the women in my study, and ended up writing a mini-biography of her. In doing so, I realized that the process of writing the paper was a way to manage the project as a whole. When the whole book looms ahead and above you, like a gigantic Everest of a mountain to climb, you can be overwhelmed. Focusing on each chapter, makes the mountain into a series of hills, which is less overwhelming. This is nothing new to anyone who has done this.

Still, since I have several women's lives to reconstruct and interpret, and many of those lives intersect with one another, and several of them appear and reappear, I felt like I had this huge knot to untangle. So, focusing on one thread, and reconstructing it all the way through on its own, seeing where the intersections will come in so that I can develop them in those chapters, and ensuring that I have something like a consistent grasp on this woman's arc really helped push the project forward. When I have several of these plotted out, I can then begin to braid them together. In fact, the braid starts to form even as I focus on the single woman.

How many more metaphors do you think I can bring to this description?

Anyway, the end result was that I had pushed forward more than one chapter at the same time. Also, I think I have stumbled upon something that no one else has even considered, and if they had they wouldn't apply a gendered analysis to it. Every now and then, I get this feeling that I may actually be doing something fresh and original. It's quite exhilarating!

So much for the warm-up for the day. Now on to the real writing!

Meditation Migraine

For a variety of reasons, all connected to me being so high-strung, my analyst suggested that I try meditation. I'm a terrible meditator. The inside of my head -- heck, the inside of my body -- contains a cacophony, noises of thoughts and insecurities and ideas and plans and memories all shouting and clanging against one another and I can't quite relax or focus or do whatever it is that you are supposed to be doing while mediating. In fact, I'm not even sure what you are supposed to be doing while meditating. Yoga, I got, because you have to focus to keep your balance or to get a deeper stretch. Just sitting there? At best, I fall asleep.

Still, I'm up for almost anything, and she suggested that I go to this place where people meditate in a group with a leader or guide or guru or whatever they are called. The group meets in a Unitarian Church, of course. I haven't yet gone to the group, but I did find their website and they have online "guided meditations," which I used as a substitute and which I have tried four times.

On the first try, I started up a migraine. Seriously! I listened, and relaxed, and felt myself relax. Then, I felt that electric worm of pain wriggling its way down the crevices of my brain and had to run for the Sudafed immediately. Fortunately, the Sudafed caught the headache before it could do any damage.

The second attempt was in the morning, before work. No electric worms that time, but I don't remember much about it at all except that I seemed particularly on and focused all the way through my teaching. That reminded me of back when I played Mrs. Venable in Suddenly, Last Summer. On the night of our first performance, as the theater filled up and the young women bubbled around me, I sat on a chair and, I suppose, meditated. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths and calmed myself down. When I got up to make my entrance, and for the rest of the performance, I was there, in the character, in the moment, uninhibited. That's what my classes felt like after the second attempt at meditation, and the feeling was exhilarating, which made me want to try a third time.

On the third time, I fell asleep.

Still chasing the "there" feeling, I tried again, this time for 20 minutes instead of 10. Good god, but sitting in one place trying to focus on just being right at that moment is difficult. Running 10 miles doesn't take that much effort. Still, I could do it for a second or even two in a row a few times. I felt myself relaxing just a bit here and there. I also felt pain.

Yes! Pain.

Not psychological pain, but actual pain in my muscles. This happens when someone gives me a back rub or a massage. I walk around with lots of aches and pain and tension. When my muscles start to relax, the pain focuses, becomes localized, concentrates itself into particular places, like where the strap of my bag sits, or just below it. Like in my jaw, where I grind my teeth. Like up in my skull, where the migraines hibernate. Like over my skull, in a half-cap of tension. Somehow, I don't think this is what is supposed to happen!

Also, I don't think you are supposed to be lightheaded afterwards. I think I don't breathe deeply enough. The guru kept saying to relax the abdomen to get a deeper breath. Thirty years of conditioning to hold my stomach in just will not let me do that.

I'm waiting for the "there" feeling to kick in. Perhaps I won't notice until later in the day.

Meanwhile, I have to go find the Sudafed because that electric worm of migraine is stirring and only the Sudafed can beat it back into submission.

This HAS to be a Parody

Seen at Tiger Beatdown and Shakesville:



I could not have taken this trailer less seriously if Jack Black had played the mysterious man with the clunky line in the opening. Doesn't "Part 1" seem like a punch line?

Does Everyone Have this "Completion Agenda," (Drink!)?

Every semester I give my online classes a little survey assignment asking them typical introduction questions such as "what is your major" and "why did you decide to take this class" and so forth. I don't do it with all of my classes because the main purpose of this exercise is to walk them through the process of uploading assignments and using the software and a whole host of other technical processes without the added stress of a grade on an assignment. This is, essentially, an easy A (and still...,but that's not my point). In reading these assignments, however, I pick up some common themes. These themes also show up in my regular classes.

The first theme has to do with the reasons for taking the class. For the U.S. history survey, they all cite requirement for degree or transfer. Some say that they like U.S. History anyway, or want to learn about World War II or the American Revolution; but all cite the requirement. For the African American history survey, which is not universally transferable as a history requirement, fewer say that they have to take it and more say that they want to take it. "I want to learn about
MY history," they write. "I want to learn about MY people." People of African descent, even if they are not U.S. American, seem to feel a greater connection to and ownership of the material covered in the course than any American students feel about American history, at least at the start of the semester.

The next has to do with reading. I ask first how many hours they spend online each week. Then, I ask how much time they spend reading per week, and what they read when they do. Now, I do suspect that they underestimate the online hours and over estimate the reading hours. Still, they apologize for the high number of online hours and the low number of reading hours. The interesting point here, however, has to do with the way that they see reading and the internet as mutually exclusive. To them, the internet does not involve reading -- and perhaps I should ask what they are doing online when I ask that question. Reading, on the other hand, only involves books or magazines. Those are the reading items that they cite when answering the second part of the reading question. Some say that they also read newspapers, but don't specify if the newspapers are online or the old school print version. In other words, you read objects, not screens.

The last has to do with the question, "what usually interferes with your ability to do well in school." Every single one of them says, "work," "family" or both. Most work full time, many have children in school (even some of the men cite children as an interference), most take classes full-time. Then, they tell me that their biggest flaw as a student is procrastination. I somehow think that, while procrastination might be involved, they are saying that they are procrastinating when they are, in fact, exhausted or placing school lower down the list of their priorities than they ideally would like.

Which brings me to the title of the post. As I mentioned before, the new buzzword from the upper adminosphere is "completion agenda." (Drink!) You can trace this buzz all the way up to the President of the United States. "Completion" (drink!) in this case, seems to mean "graduation with a degree." The "agenda" (drink!) means a focus on teaching effectiveness (drink!), outcomes (drink!), and a whole host of other programs and committees and evaluations and so on and so forth that involve research and the compilation of data and numbers and graphs and flowcharts all focused upon the teaching end of the institution. While the "completion agenda" (drink!) seems like a good idea in theory, but if you look at what it means, then you start to see where the major flaws lie in pumping money into a "completion agenda" (drink!) for community colleges.

Graduation from a community college is not the goal of many of our students. For some, yes, but many others plan to transfer to a four-year institution. They are at a c.c. because it is cheaper and closer to home. Given that we are in a major city, and have yet another major city within commuting distance, with many four year colleges and university all nearby, transfer students are probably a pretty big chunk of our student body. We also have students who jump between colleges of all sizes. Some have a near full-time load at a university but couldn't get into that one class, so take it at the cc, others just take a class to take a class (generally older and not our largest group, but they are still included in the numbers). While the college wants to persuade these students to get a degree from our school then transfer, the students don't really see the benefit of that, especially if they are transferring to a school out of state. Therefore, "graduation" is not necessarily the "completion agenda" (drink!) of the students.

Second, the focus of the "agenda" (drink!) does not seem to address the context of students' enrollment. Look at what my students identify as their main obstacles. Look at the schedules they set for themselves because, first, they don't want to be in college forever; and, second, full-time is cheaper than part-time in the long-run. They work full-time because they have to, even with loans; and loans are not exactly the wisest solution to getting more people to explore higher education. At least, loans are not the wisest solution for the student. Sallie Mae may think otherwise.

Yet, I don't think that any of these "completion agenda" (drink!) plans address these very things that prevent students from completing their own agenda. Do they ask students about their obstacles? Do they investigate ways that the school could address these obstacles? Do they consider this problem from the students' point of view?

Supporting better instruction is all well and good, yet the solutions tend to mean more "study the problem" and "compile the data" work and less of the types of time-tested adjustment that actually DO support better instruction, like smaller and fewer classes for more full-time faculty. As a result, when the upper-level adminosphere issues pronouncements for such plans, the faculty instinctively bristle with cynicism at the assumption that we aren't doing our jobs, the knowledge that a lot of money and time will go into this when both might be better used toward something else, and the awareness that the real problem is much much larger than the number of people who get associate's degrees.

Most of my own cynicism comes from seeing how the previous buzzword plans have played out. We will see how this one goes. Still, I don't have much confidence that it will go differently because a focus on the college and only the college means that activity can be created in order to give the appearance that something is being done.

These buzzword plans always remind me of some of the old office jobs that I used to have wherein the amount of work that I did or did not do was beside the point, just so long as I created the appearance of being very very busy.

Lessons: When is a Budget Necessary? When is Action Necessary?

I think the answer to both questions in my title is, "Always and Now."

Thank you all for your support in my my multiple PITAs situation. As I said before, the strategies and tactics that you are all offering help me frame the situation more diplomatically when I want to yell, "OMFGWTFF?" That many f-words really doesn't accomplish anything -- well, not anything toward any original goal.

On the Diva PITA: She is now going around duplicating some of my work and making sure that I am included in the correspondence. If she wants to do the work, fine, but please don't come back and say that I'm not adhering to my responsibility.

Meanwhile, I contacted my dean, who is very cool. In fact, the administrators up my chain of command on my campus are all very cool and are not included in my indictment of "administration." My chain of command includes administrators who actually think faculty are competent and knowledgeable, and believe that part of education involved the creation of conditions in which faculty can do their jobs. The "Administration" who drive me nuts are those upper level Vice-presidents of Vice-presidents of New and Shiny-shiny Things. They don't trust faculty and seem to view us as the main detriment to education and the functioning of the college.

Anyway.

I contacted my dean and apologized for begging for a huge sum of money in our prior correspondence and explained how there must have been some "miscommunication" along the way as to how this whole event would pan out. Wholly plausible anyway. She said to think nothing of it.

Then, I asked what sort of power I have to resist anything that I think might be unwise. Some of what is going on here is my own dysfunction of wanting to please everyone and be seen as good at my job and therefore be liked and needed. I'm finding that if you realize that at any level your goal is to be liked and needed, you are on a fool's errand.

I also am uncertain as to the chain of command in this position. Who has what authority over me (and over whom do I have any authority)? Is the Diva issuing orders, or asking for help? Is my help expected or offered? I know that I would be wise to facilitate a good working relationship, but are we partners or subordinate and supervisor? It's all very vague. All of which resulted in me responding, "o.k., I'll go ask for the funding," when I should have said, "Our campus cannot do that." Except that I wasn't sure that I could say the last.

Now I know. The dean said to push back against unreasonable requests or send them directly to her, and she will be happy to say "no." This isn't her first time at this particular rodeo.

Again, Sal told me this last year when a really really huge event was dumped on her and there was no way on earth that she could take it on, especially since it was in the summer. She was leaving the position, so had no reason to volunteer, and I hadn't yet assumed the position and am not contractually obligated to work in the summer. I am, however, contractually obligated to deliver a manuscript, and that manuscript required research in the summer. In any case, I seemed to have forgotten that experience or didn't connect the dots very well.

Perhaps it shall not surprise you to learn that the other PITA chastised (although not to our faces) both Sal and I for not being involved in the really really huge event that was dumped on our campus without even the pretense of asking if we could handle the project.

I digress.

Meanwhile, I've learned another general "how to get shit done" lesson here. If you want to plan some sort of big event that will require funding for things like honoraria, lodging, travel, refreshments, and printing, then a good idea might be to compile the budget before committing to the project. That ways, you can explore options for funding the project or discover if the project is even viable in the first place. A good idea might also be to poll the people who will be involved, especially those who will be sacrificing lines in their own departmental budgets to support this endeavor, to discover if this is a wise project to pursue. There might be better programs on which these funds could be used, or you might get more people invested in the program.

Is this what other people do: create budgets before jumping in with both feet? My own speakers' series and other events that I do haven't involved any cash, except what I pay for really really bright paper for fliers, so I have no experience in launching an event that involves funding. Still, now that I'm in the middle of it, this seems like a wise idea, even if not required.

As for my other PITA, well, I tried the locked door suggestion. The doors automatically lock upon closing. I usually rig them so that they don't out of capitulation to the tardy and incontinent. So, this time, I didn't. The door locked on closure. Twenty minutes into my class came a tapping. Before I could do anything, a student turned around and opened the door. The PITA colleague then stepped in to give the student a hand-out to pass around the class. She was in for all of two seconds, but still.

When you hand student things during a class, their instinct is to look at those things, meaning that I had students shuffling through a hand-out for another class in the middle of mine and I had to ask them to stop, which wasn't fair to them because they were just doing what any other human would do: be distracted by a distraction. So, this week, I address this problem head-on or I will consider myself a bad professor.

Will Someone Not Rid Me of these Divas?

Thank you for your comments on my last post. I can use a lot of the language you've offered in confronting her because, right now, my own language runs toward the OMFGWTFH! Also, you've confirmed my suspicion that I'm not the diva in this scenario and that I'm totally within my rights so say something like "OMFGWTFH!" Although that may not be the most productive course of action.

Sadly, the person in question IS the head of learning communities, so no going to the head of learning communities to intercede on my behalf. I'll have to muster the energy to handle it myself on the first round. I confess that have dreaded working with her ever since the second week of class the first time we worked together. The community was developed by her and someone else and "it's really important to keep it going." In theory, yeah, I'm for that. In practice, why oh why of all of the qualified professors for her half of the deal does it have to be her? Since I'm the only full-timer who does my class, I'm kind of stuck with it all unless I do something highly drastic like develop another class that only I can teach -- a year long process or more when you have to run it through a curriculum committee -- and then schedule it at the same time. I'd do that in a heartbeat if I had the time, but research and writing take precedent over all other new projects.

So, yeah, I'm going to have to take this one head-on but diplomatically or it will just get worse. It already has gotten worse because that list of 10? Most have happened repeatedly, but nine of them actually happened this week alone. If that fails -- and I could be nice and give her three chances -- then round two is the dean. The dean, incidentally, probably doesn't want to see me coming because one of the divas from the previous post created a potential disaster and expected me to help her fix it by going to my dean and asking for a shitton of money.

On that one -- another OMG that I probably should have seen coming but it was flying a little under my radar. That diva came across the opportunity for a somewhat famous author (not like, Stephen King famous, more like "was reviewed in the New York Times" famous -- at least to me) to come speak at our school. The Famous Author is travelling from point A to point B and offered to give lectures at points along the way. We, of course, would be willing to have the bookstore sell her books -- the last of which I thought was fairly old for a book tour and was, in fact, published five years ago.

That I thought, "oh, how generous of Famous Author" should be a testament to my naivete. That, when told that the event would be at my oft-maligned campus, I thought "oh, how generous of the Diva" is a testament to my inability to add 2 and 2 together and realize that she would not be so generous as to have Famous Author speak at our maligned campus if the theater on her campus was not undergoing renovations. Although, I did rather suspect that being the point person on my campus would me that I would be doing a good deal of the ground work, which I didn't mind for various reasons that I am still sorting out with my analyst.

In doing the ground work, I discovered that our lovely new campus theater that is not supposed to be "for profit" is generally booked by non-college organizations over a year in advance. In fact, if I want to use it for any event NEXT year, I should reserve a space now. So much for student-centeredness (drink!). Let's not also forget about the fee to use the theater facilities, as well. So, I've found a suitable classroom and tried to add a little sophistication to the arrangements by looking into some other little niceties.

Then, on a Friday afternoon, minutes before I'm headed out to pick up the Gentleman Caller from the airport (meaning that I had other things on my mind that did not involve other people's tizzy fits of their own creation), I received a panicked e-mail from the Diva saying that the contract has to get to Famous Author by MONDAY MORNING at the latest and we are close to four figures short of her speaker's fee.

Dammit. That's what you get when you break your rule about reading office e-mail on your research and writing days: Shitstorms in the inbox.

Anyway. Speaker's fee? Of that amount? Maybe this is another testament to my naivete or maybe this is a testament to my bad memory, but I don't recall that this was an issue four months ago when this was first presented.

Maybe I should get some information on solid commitments and facts and numbers and possible fine print before I start assuming that people are being generous with their time and expertise. Maybe I should dig in my heels at the words "maybe" when uttered in connections with future events when no other solid information has been offered.

Nearly four figures. Oh, and we need to find lodging for Famous Author, can someone volunteer their home? Otherwise, Famous Author won't need anything else but those list of items that I had not heard anything about before but it seemed I should have because the phrasing of the sentence implied that I had already taken care of that list of items. I later found that some of those listed items are a physical impossibility; but, oh!, she MUST have them.

At which point came the dawn. Famous Author travelling from point A to point B wants someone to pay for her trip home. I've heard of a somewhat Famous Historian who does the same thing and won't even visit his own parents until he finds an institution near their home that will have him as a speaker and pay his travel expenses. I think had I realized four months ago that a significant amount of cash would be required -- I'm suspecting that I'm hearing only a fraction of the cost -- and that such funds were absolutely not available, I might have suggested that our efforts might be put to better use in bringing more local talent to the school -- and I have a list of suggestions!

Part of me would like to think that Famous Author is not this much of a prima donna herself and that I'm just confusing the actual requests with the rather panicked, last minute and obfuscated way that this crisis is being presented to me. After all, having an honorarium and the expectation of lodging isn't unreasonable for someone speaking on campus. I'd expect it if I were her because we are asking her to work and her labor is worth something. I wonder how this original offer to speak was actually offered or what I forgot that led me to think that this financial problem was not going to crop up.

As for the "rider" sort of requests, it isn't like she demanded removal of all brown M&Ms. I'm getting substitutes for the things that are impossibilities and I would hope that Famous Author would not walk in, see the substitute, and storm out. Much of the diva energy is coming from the Diva herself.

Anyway, back to the Friday afternoon financial panic. Close to four figures short and could I go to my dean and anyone else to ask for it? Now, I don't know a damn thing about fundraising beyond, "let's have a bake sale." I'll do a bake sale. Not that it would raise the necessary amount, but it would feel slightly less humiliating than going to my dean and anyone else when people are getting furloughs and serious educational needs are not being met because money is so tight and then asking for what seems like a huge amount to me for an event over which people on our campus had very little to no say in staging.

Yet, there I was, on a Friday afternoon, one foot out the door to pick up my Gentleman Caller, crafting a very humble, diplomatic and gracious letter to the dean and others asking if they might know where such an amount could be raised. I made sure to put this crafted letter at the top of a forward containing the Diva's letter saying that she was short of cash to ensure that it would be read and understood that this begging was not my idea.

That I didn't hear back the dean for five days suggested to me that I had overstepped my bounds. My dean observed that the amount seemed a bit steep and that she could only offer this smaller amount. God, I felt like I was taking crumbs from a starving baby. Not because of the dean, but because I just know that some other program needs the cash more -- like my own speaker's series, for instance, which is going to languish because I've pretty much hit the end of the local talent and even the tiny fees of local speaker's bureaus would have to come out of my pocket. Others must be in the same boat.

As for anything else involved in this venture, I have no idea what needs to be done in general so that I can anticipate any disasters that could be easily avoided with just a slight bit of foresight. I can't trust that such things like publicity will be done in a timely manner or that they won't be dropped on my lap at the last moment.

I really should have listened to Sal, who had this position before I did. She warned me to refuse any request emanating from that campus and from the Diva because it would just lead to a mess that could have been avoided. I suppose I was still trying to ingratiate myself to her in order to ingratiate myself to my own dean and prove a professionalism that I absolutely did not need to prove. Sell yourself short, and that's what happens.

The overall lessons that I'm taking away from all of this are to avoid developing the personality of a tweaking ferret, to find the huevos to confront problems without anger, to learn how to function effectively with astoundingly disorganized people, and to figure out when something is someone else's problem of their own creation and I don't get a damn thing out stepping up to help except seething frustration and long bitching blog posts.

A Whole New Level of PITA.

I have a higher level of PITA category to discuss: those colleagues who overtly and repeatedly disrespect the integrity of your classroom by:

1) Holding on the the classroom until the last second before your own class starts, thereby moving your set up time into your class time.

2) Making your set up time include closing all of their files and logging them out of all of their programs.

3) Remaining in your class because they are interested in the subject, then grading while you lecture.

4) Making a production out of leaving your class while you lecture.

5) Arguing with you in front of the class about the placement of desks, despite the fact that the placement has nothing to do with them.

6) Ignoring the etiquette of returning the classroom to the way you found it so that other professors don't have to use their class time cleaning up after you.

7) Entering your classroom to return papers to their students. No apologies, no "excuse mes," no indication that they are interrupting those students, distracting the other students, and distracting you. Indeed, they exude a sense of entitlement to do so.

8) Referring to you as "Miss Bluestocking" in front of the students despite the fact that you spent five minutes on the first day of class explaining to the students that they should refer to all of their professors as "Professor" since that is, in fact, their professional title.

9) Conferring with students in your classroom while you lecture.

10) Ignoring your subtle hints when, as they engage in some of this behavior, you stop the class and quietly but pointedly look at them, just as you would a texting student, as if to say, "I'm sorry, are we disturbing you?" The students get it.

Every day it's a new level of WTF?

Number 1) and 2) are perpetual problems that all professors have had with this colleague, and this colleague will not change because this colleague beleives that the class is entirely theirs until the strike of the hour. No matter how much earlier I come in and stand patiently to the side, no matter how aggressively I begin the motions of setting up my class, this colleague thinks that the class is all hers until the strike of the hour.

I can't do anything about 3) because this is part of a learning community, so this colleague feels entitled to sit in my class in order to keep up with what we are doing. Fortunately, this collegue has another class beginning about half-way into my class (hence, the production of exiting my classroom). I'm willing to put up with the production if it means the collegue is gone -- except when the colleague returns for 7). Number 7)? I just stood there with my jaw hanging. It was a "slapped in the face with a lollipop" moment.

If I make a big deal out of 8), then I look like a prima donna, and there are too many of those and their primo don companions (thank you for that one, Susan!) running around. Fortunately, the class clown kinda picked up on this, and started to tease me with "Ms. Bluestocking." "Professor," I corrected. "Miss Bluestocking is your 3rd grade teacher." This was a jocular exchange, but he took the fall in order for me to make a point with the colleague.

Number 3) is part of a larger pattern of behavior outside of the classroom in which the colleague seems to attempt to pay attention, then demonstrates clearly that this is, in fact, feigned attention.

As for the rest, I'm going to have to cowgirl up, get over myself, and aggressively confront this situation head on because, damn! What is wrong with this person? I just have to figure out the most diplomatic way to do so.

In general, I don't dislike this colleague, and this colleague can be of help in several matters that don't involve my classroom. At worst, she's probably well-meaning but clueless; and I don't want to create animosity.

Still, you can't just treat another professor's classroom this way. You undermine her authority and teach the students that her class is not as important as yours. I'm complicit if I don't put my foot down.

Any suggestions?

PITA Colleagues and the Reduction of Burnout

Most of my colleagues are great people. Walking through campus last night, I could see into classroom windows where they were teaching and thought, "I work with some really wonderful professors." In fact, I can still say that, in three and a half years, only one or two real jerks have made themselves known (and we know who one of them is).

Nonetheless, there are always those one or two who can just make you want to scream. Aren't they always the ones that you have to work directly with, as in team teaching or on projects and so forth? Otherwise, you wouldn't notice their PITA* qualities. That, or you would notice, but the PITA qualities would have no impact upon your life so you can just say, "Ahhh, isn't that just like Prof. X?" and go on your merry way.

The project situations, however, are another sort of relationship. You become intimately acquainted with their particular eccentricities and, in the interest of being a "team player" (drink!) and because they are superior to you in rank of some sort, you end up deferring to their quirks. Because you defer, you have to go find a punching bag afterward. Not a metaphorical punching bag, but an actual one.

I'm trying to put a positive spin on my interactions with these PITAs. Spin is not difficult in the aftermath of the interactions. During the interactions, on the other hand? Well, you do everything in your power to keep from running to the punching bag mid-sentence -- or from saying something tart that you will, of course, regret when it comes back to bite you in the metaphorical butt.

I think that the main thing that I'm finding is the Peter Principle. Actually, maybe it isn't the Peter Principle -- I've worked with disastrous examples of the Peter Principle and these colleagues in no way attain those epic depths. Maybe it is just the phenomena of people who have always worked alone, and who are best at working alone, ending up in a positions requiring them to work with others. As a result, they have no idea of their own quirks and no skills with which to reign in those quirks. The quirks are really their own business when they work independently, but become a potential disaster for anyone with whom they work. They certainly are inconvenient.

For instance, waiting until the last second to do something, and then expecting everyone that they are working with to just drop everything to attend to the matter, and THEN being harshly critical of the work of everyone else, wanting them to change in in the last 1/2 second, despite having had that work for over a month and not having looked at it until the last 3/4 of a second. Or not giving everyone else all of the necessary information at the start of a project, even when it is available. Then, at the last minute, letting it seep and drip out in bits and pieces to the people who have to act on that information, sending everyone into a panic.

Their coworkers strain to keep from reminding them that "poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine." Except that it does because failure of the whole endeavor makes everyone involved look bad. If you are me, you also live in a state of heightened fear that you will be the one blamed -- if not officially, certainly by the person who created the situation -- because that's how these things play out.

Ahh! The smell of fatalism in the morning. Smells like defeat.

As I wrote, I'm trying to put a good spin on these things. First, this is just the grown-up world of interaction, and I have worked for more than one boss who had far worse quirks than these. None of them have asked me to sit on their lap in a conference, for example, or purposely created the sort of disaster that could lead to the unemployment of everyone else involved but not themselves. Remembering this helps me keep my cool and keeps me from running for the punching bag mid-sentence. I actually act like an adult. That's a good skill to have finally learned by my fourth decade on earth.

Second, when you work with or for people who do things at the last second and work themselves into a tizzy, you can look ubercompetent if you just remain calm, offer them anything that looks like a solution, and have your own work done at least by the last minute. Also, it helps if you wear a jacket. Jackets look sharp, giving the illusion of ubercompetence. So do ties, even if you are a woman. Sometimes, smoke and mirrors can go a long way in that direction.

Third, you become less burned out on your students. After all, while you expect better from your students because they are, after all, grown ups themselves, you can remind themselves that they are the students. They are still learning that college isn't grade school and that they can't revert to that sort of behavior. Plus, you are in a position to enforce that "lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine."

Which is to say that, three weeks into the semester (and without yet having to deal with any mass influx of grading with it's attendant stream of excuses and requests for exceptions), I am much less burned out than I was before the semester began. Part of it has to do with actually being in a classroom teaching. Online will absolutely NEVER replicate that energy. Part of it has to do with being just busy enough not to afford the time for burn out. Part of it has to do with defending my research time and space (and trying not to appear like a diva about it).

This will absolutely change by Spring Break, but right now, everyone in the classroom is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for learning -- or something approximating that -- including me. As temporary as that may be, it beats the hell out of massive burnout!

The mantras also help. I wonder if I can come up with some for these PITA colleagues? I wonder if the same ones will work?

----------------------
*PITA = Pain In The Ass. Yeah, it's not just a flatbread anymore.

No on HR3

Via Shakesville, where Melissa McEwan has a great roundup of commentary. Small government -- except when they want to regulate women's bodies. As if convicting rapists weren't difficult enough. As if abortions from rape were draining the government coffers. It's downright hateful.

Not just no, but HELL NO.