Here Be Dragons (or Gremlins)

Obviously,  no one was rapturable, so we are still here. At least, I am still here; but I was always going to Hell, anyway.

I'm having an identity crisis of epic proportions and have had a difficult time writing about a significant chunk of it because I'm actually, for once, afraid of saying too much and hurting someone in particular in the process. So, I've tried to talk over that part of the identity crisis with him. I'm sure that it will all go away once everything is underway. Meanwhile, as I have to pack and to plan out not just my summer but the next year of so, I feel it sometimes consuming me. Then, I binge -- but that's another story for another time.

Part of my identity crisis has to do with the way that I separated my not-Clio research life from my Clio bitching and moaning life. I haven't sorted out what goes where and it chokes my ability to write in either space. The only way to the other side of that identity crisis is through it, and I won't get there if I don't write it. That, too is another story for another time.

For this time, this is my most worrisome identity crisis: I'm not sure who I'm about to become. Once I'm in the middle of it, I will know that I am still just me, for better or worse. Right now, however, I'm learning some of the things that are essential to my identity that I had not before considered.

An independent income is one of those things. Much of my life has been tied up in finding work that I find satisfying and important. That road has been long and winding. Over the weekend, a friend described me as "taking the long way around the barn." "Around the barn, through the fields, along the fences, into the neighbors' fields, and -- oh! Hey! Look! Flowers!" I concurred. I wish I could have found my focus earlier; but, as my analyst keeps reminding me, I had a lot of shit to wade through first. I still wade through it -- like right now -- but I'd like to think it is more knee deep or ankle deep than over my head these days.

Anyway, I've found my work and my work is central to my identity and that is just a fact. I can't fight that anymore, especially since the work -- that is, the research -- is satisfying. I won't stop working in the next year, and the job beyond that will allow me to do more work. What I'm finding surprising is how much an income is crucial to my identity. Income intersects with the work, but it also separates itself into its own issue.

I've been earning my own income since I was seventeen. Actually, if you want to count babysitting, since I was thirteen or fourteen. Obviously the income wasn't always enough to allow me to live on my own or anything of that sort. Heck, even once it wasn't enough to allow me to live on my own and I still lived on my own! (That's also another story for another time, and one that has been partially told in my early blog posts.) Still, like Virginia Woolf wrote, that little bit of money made a difference. Income gave me independence, which grew with the size of the income. Income and that independence also became central to my understanding of myself as an adult. To have money, to be able to live on my own, to take care of myself, made me a grown up. This was particularly important to me at a period of my life when everyone I knew wanted me to stay a child, despite the fact that I was far far too old for anyone to think that was a healthy idea.

Seriously, I was well into my twenties and everyone in my life had some deep investment in me being a little girl, non-threatening, non-sexual, dolled up in pink and bothering no one by staying in my frilly little girl's room and keeping the house clean. I was actually in physical danger in my own home if I deviated and behaved like a grown woman. My late teens and early twenties had me in this weird bind in which, I had to behave like a grown person to escape my environment, but behaving like a grown person in my environment before I had the means to escape it meant that I could be assaulted in some way or other. Then, I was assaulted in the environment into which I wanted to escape. In fact, I was assaulted twice, once in the professional sphere and once in the private. Resisting the professional assault jeopardized my ability to survive there, too, since the perpetrator was key to me receiving funding.

Luckily, I found ways to earn an income slightly outside of that environment, eventually, and that did a world of good for my sense of myself. That income allowed me to be independent and grow-up in ways that I had not before. It also allowed me to become less of an ugly person, or at least my ugliness morphed into something else. I suppose it still is. That, too, is another story for another time. Suffice to say, the reason I have only snapped to my professional focus in the past half decade was because I had other things distracting me. I had to wade through all of that shit.

Anyway, the whole point of this is to say that an independent income, the ability to take care of myself, has always been something more than a paycheck. I think anyone who has ever been unemployed, knows this, too. It has been independence, it has been self-protection, it has been adulthood. Remove the income and I become dependent, vulnerable and infantilized.

I hadn't thought of this in years, but now I am thinking about it because, while I can research and write next year, I won't be earning an income. This hits me unexpectedly. This ran through my kidding on the square about being a "kept woman." This hits me every time I try to find some way to describe exactly how I'm able to research and write in the Emerald City. This even hits me with the shame I feel at the pay cut I will be taking to go to the Burned Over College to work (although I will be on the fast track for tenure, and I actually get a pay increase relative to the cost of living). I can live with the pay cut because I can afford to take care of myself if -- godforbid! -- anything bad should happen and because I do get the Gentleman Caller every day. Both more than compensate for the cut. Still, that income doesn't come in for another year. So, despite the fact that the Gentleman Caller doesn't see it this way (and is a tad insulted that I would), despite the fact that he in no way contributes to this feeling through anything that he says or does, despite the fact that he tires to help me reframe this neurosis and explain to me that interdependence is part of a partnership, despite the fact that I wouldn't give up this year in the Emerald City for anything, this gremlin presses itself against me, breathing down my neck, pressing its claws into my scalp, and sneering in my ear that I am still a mere child, unable to take care of myself.

To exacerbate this feeling, to give that gremlin greater strength is the fact that I'm leaving the first place that has felt like home in over a decade in order to live in someone else's home, I'm leaving my life to join someone else's. Again, he is a little hurt that I feel this way, and I understand this. I'm not used to being with someone else, and being with someone else has always been a fight for my own identity within the relationship. This has, really, been the case since birth. Only this time, the enemy is not the other person by any means. The enemy is that gremlin. I am the enemy.

I have to explain to myself that I won't feel this way once things are actually moving -- like when I start packing after I finish this blog post, like when I'm in the car headed in that direction, like when I see him again for the first time in a month, like when I get to the other side of the rainbow into the Emerald City. I'll write a post making fun of myself for this anxiety, for this stage fright, for ever thinking that something like an income could challenge my sense of Clio-ness.

Nevertheless, at this moment, that challenge is there, and it is part of this identity crisis. I'll just have to see how it develops. As I told myself when all of this went down, "this is all going to be an awesome adventure." As I told myself, too, "adventures aren't always stress-free and fun and new. They can be scary and uncomfortable to." In fact, scary and uncomfortable mixed in with the stress-free and the fun and the new are sort of what separates and adventure from a vacation. So, this is the scary and the uncomfortable. This is "here there be dragons" at the edge of the map (or, in my case, gremlins).

Time to get moving into it, anxiety, identity crisis and all.

This is the END!!1!!!ONE!ELVENTY!!!1!

Tomorrow is the end of the world.

You are excited, I know.

If tomorrow were seriously, really, actually the end of the world, do you know what I would do? I would do all of those drugs that were supposed to have long-term consequence, not the least was hard jail time in "Just Say No" America, and that I was far too square to do back when all of my peers were doing them. X, LSD, anything else referred to by initial? I would be there, trippin' and playing Clapton (he was "God" after all), and watching the end of the world. In fact, I'd probably think that I'd been raptured. I'd damn well believe it!

Then, at 6:01, I'd be puking my guts up.

It's a Good Thing I'm Not Teaching Next Year

College Misery's "Weekend Thirsty at Semester End"asks "what did you fuck up this semester?" I could probably think of many things. I probably fucked up agreeing to work with Interrupting PITA colleague, who really seems entirely unaware that other professors exist and use the same classrooms as said PITA. I probably fucked up in getting involved with that whole Famous Author and Diva incident. Hell, there are about a million things that I fuck up in any given week. The thing that I really fucked up? I have no idea how this happened, but the results are that at least two of my classes had absolutely no As in them.

How does that happen? Not one student earned anything near an A.

Lots of them earned some big honking Fs. One student actually came in and took the final despite having an average grade of a 4 going in. Yes, you read that right. A 4. Single digit. It was only that high because said student had excellent attendance. There are also those who drop out without going through the formality of dropping. I take consolation in the fact that I can't do anything about any of those students because I can't grade what they don't do. They opted out of their own education.

Of the others, they at least put in some effort, so I look back and try to figure out where I went wrong. What could I have done? What I'm finding, in reviewing their papers, and in reviewing my grading, is that the problem is a lower level of not being able to grade what they don't do. That is, they turn in their assignments, but they don't complete all of the requirements of the assignment or they misunderstand the assignment entirely -- twice. Some don't understand that five pages of quotes -- even properly cited -- linked together by single original sentences does not constitute an essay. Some don't understand that four times in a row. How do I find the words to explain what they aren't understanding? How do I figure out what it is that they aren't understanding? How do I find that line that marks the end of the territory where I can do anything -- where the other side of the line marks the territory of their effort?

I despair. Usually the ones who make me despair are, in reality and despite my bitching, a small minority. This semester, they are the majority, and there are maybe one or two bright stars or glimmers of hope among them. No more. Even those who, based on class participation, are very smart and clearly doing the work, fail when the time comes for writing pretty much anything. Worse yet, they fail again, and again, and again, regardless of any hand holding or scaffolding or feedback.

Here is an example of how I despair. When Interrupting PITA and I gave our final, she included a template for an outline. "Dear god!" I thought. "By this time, shouldn't they be able to organize their information themselves? Isn't that what the whole composition portion of our classes is supposed to include? Aren't they supposed to be tested on their ability to do this in order to survive in other classes -- like MY portion of our classes?" Yet, even with the outline, they still cannot organize their information and they sure as heck can't get beyond gut-feeling emotion to support that gut-feeling with actual information. PITA said that the reason that she gives them the template is that no one would pass the class without it -- despite the fact that she goes over this sort of skill extensively in her portion of the class. By "pass" she meant get at least a C. She told me that, in the composition courses and in the pre-college-level courses, no As are common.

This is such a discouraging aspect of this job. I hate grading because part of me feels as if I am being graded myself. I feel as if their failures to comprehend are my failures in communicating the material or my expectations; and I have no idea how to make myself any more comprehensible. So, grading feels like a futile task, more so as the semester progresses and the grades do not improve or only marginally improve. I don't want to do what PITA did because I see that as lowering standards. I understand that, at our college, you are supposed to avoid lowering standards by giving the students more opportunities to rise to them. Maybe I'm delinquent in that regard. At the same time, I look at her, giving them a million opportunities and, on the whole, they don't rise.

Is it me? Is it them? Is this the world -- that most people really can't do college work, or are so horribly unskilled for college work that they need another twelve years of preparation before they can think of it? Yet, at the same time, the world seems to demand that they have that damn diploma?

It's easy for me to scoff at the demand for the diploma. I have four. I'm beyond fucking privileged in that regard. Yet, their reality is that there is a demand for diplomas, and dinner depends upon attaining the degree. Fucking market.

Next year I will be in a green, lucky place, an Emerald City. I will also be a kept woman, since I'm going to that green, lucky place on the good fortune of someone else (and I think you know who) and his accomplishments, and I can't get a work visa because the citizens of the Emerald City need the work themselves. I can do my own work, the kind that got me into this business in the first place. Maybe the Emerald City can cure me of this despair before I go back to teaching (fortunately with a lighter load in the new place). This is, again, beyond privileged; but it is also good for everyone. I'm useless as a teacher right now.

Meanwhile, I have to get through the next week. Hell, I have to get through this weekend.

Oddly, this burnout feels like a loss, like grief, like that exhausting, hopeless inability to prevent the inevitable and yet still raging at it. I'm pissed at them, at me, at the system; but, ultimately, I'm not even pissed anymore. I'm just sad.

A Day at the Park

Seneca Falls. THE Senceca Falls:This was my second visit here, the first being in 2000 on a singularly rainy and cold day. I confess that now, as then, all of my ability to judge or critique anything fled and my response resembled that of a person on a religious pilgrimage. "Oh, my god!" I sniffed. "I'm so grateful for their work." Sniff. It's pathetic, really; and yet, there I was, at the Bethlehem of the American movement, the altar of my two gods: women's history and women's rights, acting like a complete pilgrim.

I like this wayside sign showing the different incarnations of the Wesleyan Chapel since the Seneca Falls Convention.:

The last incarnation, which included only remnants of the original building under a covering resembling a picnic pavilion, was abandoned when the park became aware of the weather's impact on the exposed walls. Hence, they decided to reconstruct the chapel insofar as they had evidence, while also being clear about the difference between the reconstructed and the original parts. Hence, the different coloration of bricks in the picture at the top of the post.

This is the wayside sign about the convention itself. Look closely and tell me if you think the man sitting at the front of the pews on the far left is Frederick Douglass, or if he is the man standing with his back to the artist. Maybe both. Fred was just that great!

Here is the inside the museum (which is next door to the chapel). They did not let me hang on him for a photo. Besides, what with all of my sniffing and gushing, I did have to retain a small scrap of dignity.

The rangers told me that he looks like James Brown. I can't disagree.

I forgot to take a picture of the pregnant woman or the little girls included in the sculpture. I also did not take a picture of the group of young women and their one guy friend, all from Geneseo, who came through. That makes me happy to see young people interested and -- based on the evidence of their t-shirts -- actively engaged in feminism. In fact, one of the things that I love about this museum is that they don't shy from the big ole F-word.

Afterwards, I went to take in one of the other joys of the Finger Lakes: the wine trails. I find this funny because Douglass and all of the other early woman's rights activists tended toward temperance.

Except Elizabeth Cady Stanton. You just know she nipped a bit, just for fun, when no one else was looking.