At the Bay

Yesterday I ran the Down's Park 5 Miler, which I also ran and wrote about last year.  It was actually my first race since August, and I really enjoyed it.  I haven't been feeling too great, and I certainly can't afford to get sick at this point in the semester, so I tried to put my competitive urges on the back burner and run it just for fun.  It was, indeed, quite fun.  It was chilly, but the course runs through the fall foliage at the park and along the Chesapeake Bay, so along with my own heavy breathing I got to hear the sounds of the water lapping on the rocks and the leaves crunching under peoples' feet.  I ran it three minutes slower than last year, but I think I still finished with a good enough time to secure 3rd place in my running club's year long "Championship Series" for my group, so I was pleased with that.  They still haven't posted results online, so I can't be sure, but I'll update with that info and the pictures from the photographer when they're available.  Billy, as always, came to cheer me on, to meet me halfway so I could hand off my gloves.  Somewhere in the midst of all of that he took the photos of the bay above and watched an 11 year old girl beat every other woman in the race.  (Because of the way the course loops around, I could hear the crowd cheering for the winners when I was just past halfway, which was really funny.)

It has been quite a hectic past few weeks, which helped to increase the satisfaction of spending some time outdoors breathing the fresh air and watching the sun come up.  I'm beginning to check things off the endless list of responsibilities, though.  While the end of this semester is not yet in sight, I'm managing to prioritize my work appropriately and feel pretty good about where I am right now.  In the past, the last 6 weeks or so of the semester have always seemed so terribly overwhelming, but I'm trying to adopt a different approach this semester, which is also kind of inspired by the running.  Thinking about having 2 miles left to go is much less daunting when you focus on the fact that three miles are already behind you.  So rather than focusing on all that I have left to do, I've been trying to think retrospectively, as well, at all I've managed to accomplish in the past few weeks.  This helps to give me confidence that I'll be able to tackle the goals ahead, as well.

One of the things I'm glad to have in the rear-view mirror now is my presentation at the Reading Comparatively conference, about which I last wrote.  After spending several weeks condensing, reshaping, and practicing my paper, I felt pretty good about delivering it at the conference, and I was legitimately excited to share my research findings with more people than just my professor.  We had a pretty good turnout for the talk-- I think there were over 20 people in the audience, including quite a few of my own professors.  Vickie also came to see what the conference was like and to provide moral support. It was fun for me to have her get a glimpse into what I do, even if that glimpse just revealed to her in more detail just how nerdy I am.

I was the first to present in my panel, and then there were presentations given by another grad student and two professors.  One of them is a pre-eminent scholar in the field.  One of them is currently on a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, working on her second book.  The other one is currently on his second yearlong dissertation fellowship.  So, to say the least, I was expecting to get zero questions/comments about my own paper unless someone thought my conclusions were absolutely wrong.  However, I got all the questions/comments.  I don't know whether I should consider this a sign that my paper was the least well articulated, or that the audience found it interesting, so I've decided it is probably a combination of the two factors.

First, the professor for whom I wrote the paper (and who organized the conference) suggested he had learned a lot from my paper, which was especially exciting news considering that edited the book I wrote about and he edits the Norton Anthology of American Literature.  He also made a suggestion about connecting my argument to Uncle Tom's Cabin, after which one of my co-panelists suggested another text that I might want to look into.  Then another one of my professors asked a series of questions that basically boiled down to "Okay, interesting discoveries, but why should anyone care?"  I gave what I felt like was an honest answer to that question (which I do think I had addressed in the paper itself, if more briefly than I would have liked to have done).  Then a friend of mine who introduced the panel asked the other grad student to talk about his paper in relationship to mine, and his answer gave me some really interesting things to think about in regards to my own argument.  The professor who organized the conference also suggested that he'd like to hold a longer symposium on the topic of "law and literature," which was the theme of our panel, so I might get a chance to give an expanded version of the talk in the spring.  This would be helpful for me, as well, since he thinks I should continue working with my argument in order to get it published.

It's nice to come away from anything feeling like the work you put into it had paid off, so getting to experience that with my race this weekend and my presentation on Friday made for a good couple of days.  I feel ready to take on the rest of the term, which is exactly what I wrote about after the Down's Park 5 Miler last year.  And that semester turned out pretty well for me, didn't it?

("At the Bay" is Katherine Mansfield short story, from her The Garden Party collection.  I wish she was American so I could call her my own.)