No More Diaper Changes

Hi all!  I've finished grading my students' final exams, so this is another semester in the books.  The class I taught this semester was great.  My students were interested and engaged, and I will miss this class.  My work on the Katherine Anne Porter project keeps moving right along, and this weekend I'll get to talk about the project in front of Porter scholars and some of her personal friends.  I'll also present on my own Porter research at a conference this weekend, which will be my third conference presentation of the semester, and each one has come from a different (yet unwritten) dissertation chapter.  Is it any wonder I haven't gotten that first chapter yet?  To me, it is not.  I have been working hard.

I have also been waiting for a final decision about the fellowship process that began way back before the semester even began.  As I wrote before, the committee decided against nominating me for a dissertation fellowship since I don't yet have a chapter to use as a writing sample.  Instead, they nominated me for a fairly new award (I didn't know it existed, actually).  It's designed for students who've made large contributions through their teaching, administrative, and research jobs, and although it doesn't include tuition remission, the prize money would have allowed me to work halftime for full pay next year.  I thought I was a good candidate for this award, and so did my grad director-- after all, I have held teaching, administrative, AND research jobs on campus over the past 6 years, and everyone has nice things to say about my work in those capacities.  Unfortunately for me, the award went to other students.

More fortunately, the team members of the Katherine Anne Porter project wanted to keep me on as a worker next year.  They have offered me funding that will give me a break from teaching, which will make my schedule more manageable.  I am optimistic that this arrangement will allow me to continue working on the Porter project, will let me more time with Nora, and will still give me enough work time of my own to continue making reasonable progress on my dissertation.  I had hoped next year would give me a chance to make rapid, focused progress on my dissertation-- but if that was not to be, this feels like a good back-up plan.

It is not lost on me that this opportunity is available because I have diversified my interests and my time.   (This is what Nate tells me, at least-- that all along I was "diversifying."  I always called it "spreading myself too thin."  But he's right, obviously, even if I didn't see it that way until he said it.)  If I had never taken the Porter job, I would likely have a chapter finished by now, so I may have at least had a chance at a dissertation fellowship.  But those are so competitive that my chances of winning one still would have been slim.  As it turns out, spending my time on the Porter project has not only been enjoyable and interesting-- it has turned out to be the most pragmatic choice I could have made.  Moving forward, I've decided to stop asking these types of questions: What will give me the best chance at a fellowship?  What will help me finish the dissertation the quickest?  What will give me the best chances on the academic job market?  These are the types of questions I've been taught to ask myself when establishing my priorities, but they are not working for me anymore.  I am trying to direct my focus more toward questions like these: What will give me the best quality of life while I work toward finishing my degree?  What work is worth sacrificing family time to conduct, and what work is not?  How can I diversify my skills and interests so that if the academic job market doesn't work out, I will have other opportunities available to me?  How can I spend the next few years so that I won't resent putting all my eggs in one basket if that basket doesn't work out as I hope?  I feel more committed to completing the dissertation now than I did a year ago, which may seem ironic.  I just feel less committed to the somewhat narrow life path of doing what might give me the best shot at becoming a college professor.

The first major change I've made in this regard is to start blogging publicly, under my own name.  If you've enjoyed my writing, and especially if you've enjoyed the posts where I've talked about how my work informs my experiences of motherhood, please visit me over at Feminist Mom Studies.  I see this blog as a complement to my academic work-- both in content and in form.  The attention span people have for blog posts is forcing me to develop a precision of thought that has never been a strength for me.  And the content I imagine for the blog gives me a place to talk about everything I've learned as a mom, a student of feminism, and a teacher.  Should a graduate student be spending time on a blog like this?  It depends on who you ask, I guess.  But again-- this is something I enjoy, and it is something that allows me to utilize and improve the skills and knowledge I've been working hard to develop over the past six years, so I'm going to do it.

I have made the conscious choice, though, to be careful how much I disclose about Nora in that very public place.  And for that same reason, I've decided to set this blog to private within the next few weeks.  I don't know how much I'll continue to write here.  I owe my grandmother a few posts once in a while (Hi, Mimi!), and I'd like to keep writing about Nora more personally, but the type of writing I was doing while pregnant and figuring out motherhood no longer feels compelling to me.  So we will see.  If you'd like to continue reading the blog past that point, please leave a comment below or send me a private message via email, facebook, twitter, or text and I'll be happy to add you to the list of readers and/or to the list of people who receive each post automatically in the email inboxes.

In the meantime, thank you very much for reading along with me here.  This blog has been an important way for me to keep in touch with my family members across the country, and it has also been a place where I've sorted out a lot of the issues I faced as a pregnant grad student and new mom. I'm thankful to have it and hope to share these posts with Nora someday.  Even just looking at the list of tags I can choose from in that bar on the right provides me with an interesting snapshot of how I've spent the past several years.  Before I close things down, I did want to share a few more recent pictures of what we've been up to lately!

Nora came to campus twice last week for end-of-semester activities.  I don't know with whom she is more enamored: the Testudo statue or my good friend Katie.

Nora and I went out to dinner before Mother's Day (Dad was at an Orioles game) and she insisted on wearing her bunny ears.  She spoke to everyone who commented on them, and I love when she gets in a mood to show off her talking to strangers.

We saw the extended family for Easter and Mother's Day, which is always fun.  Nora cannot get enough Lily time in her life.  These two are the cutest.

A childhood friend of Billy's got married a few weekends ago, so we had a fun night out with Chuck and Patti while Uncle Brian babysat Nora.  When she woke up the next morning she was very excited to tell me everything she did with Uncle Brian!  She ate "spugbetti"!  She watched Frozen TWICE!

She insisted on taking a picture of our "same same boots and dresses."  I could not refuse this request, obviously.

Spring BREAK

Every Sunday night, I decide which things I have to get done that week, which things I want to get done, and which things I'd like to begin if time permits. Then I map out my schedule to allow me to accomplish as many of these things as possible. With one full week to go before spring break, I was looking at my upcoming schedule and stressing out.  I was due to attend a conference during break, and I hadn't yet finished writing the paper I was planning to present.  (I've heard plenty of stories of people writing papers the night before or as they travel to the conference, but I need to plan ahead.  Procrastination is not really an option when, on any given day, your toddler could start vomiting and change all your plans.)  I also found myself feeling apathetic about teaching, even though we were set to discuss Katherine Anne Porter.  That is when I realized I needed a break. I spent my entire winter break trying to meet an intense deadline, which gave me no time to prepare to teach a new class.  Ever since the semester began, I've felt like I'm scrambling to keep up with the immediate deadlines without making much headway on my dissertation.

So I decided: rather than continuing to scramble, I would set a reasonable goal, reach it, and then give myself a break.  For that week before break, I decided I would prepare and deliver my lessons, work my hours on the Porter project, and write my conference paper.  I made an agreement with myself that whenever those things were finished, I was going to stop working, enjoy the trip to New York, deliver the paper, and then get back to work after the conference was over.

I finished my paper on Friday afternoon, so I kept Nora home for a mother/daughter day on Monday. Then I took her to day care on Tuesday so I could have a day to myself.  A whole day to myself!  It's amazing how much relaxation you can jam pack into a single day when you don't have a two year old following you around.  I took a long nap without setting an alarm.  I did some reading for pleasure.  I worked on a craft project.  I watched an episode of Shameless when Hulu foiled my plans to resume watching Scandal where I left off.  I went shopping-- in a store! And tried things on!  I got the massage that my mom gifted me two Christmases ago (thanks Mom!).  I drank an overpriced smoothie because, on the very few occasions that I skipped class in high school, my friends and I liked to drive to Lake Oswego to get a jamba juice.  On Wednesday, I dropped Nora off at school for a half day while I tried to pick up the house, got things ready for our trip, and continued working on my craft project.  I'm planning to write a separate blog post about the trip itself, but it was a really great weekend.

On Sunday night at the end of break, I realized I had that old familiar Sunday night feeling-- that ugh, I have to get back to work in the morning feeling.  I used to get that feeling every week when I was teaching high school, but I guess it is something I don't often experience as a grad student.  Now, there is always some work task hanging over my head, so I live in a perpetual state of knowing I have more to do tomorrow than I can actually accomplish.  I was hoping that my break would leave me feeling refreshed, recharged, and excited to resume my work.  I am not there yet, but I feel much better than I did before I took the break.  I've spent most of my time this past week preparing lesson plans for the next few weeks.  I'm hoping this will free up my time and my energy-- both emotional and intellectual-- so that I can begin working on the dissertation again in earnest, and with enthusiasm.

Truth be told, I've done a lot of thinking about how I want to move forward since finding out my project was not nominated for a dissertation fellowship.  Within the next month, I should know which funding options are available to me for next year, and some of them are promising.  The way the chips have fallen, though, has made me reflect further on the necessity of charting my own path rather than hoping I can make my work fit into the model the English department proposes is the quickest route to degree completion and the best preparation for the job market.  So I'm trying to be more conscious of deciding for myself how my time is best spent, and then spending my time in those ways.  It's easy to get caught in the trap of trying to figure out what will make me most competitive for fellowships, what will be best for my job prospects, or what will make my dissertation more marketable.  But I'm in graduate school because I want to learn, because I find the work rewarding, and because I think I have something to offer as a member of this profession.  So from here on out I'm going to try even harder to remember that those are my top priorities.

Aristotle (and Liz) on Happiness

According to the professor whose class I am TAing this semester, Aristotle wrote that "Happiness is full activity aimed at virtue," if we think of virtue as meaning general "goodness" or "righteousness." As he explained to the students, what Aristotle meant is that we are not happiest when we are "having fun"-- we are happiest when we have found something that we willingly devote our whole selves to accomplishing.  This is why, he told them, you feel exhilarated after spending an entire night finishing a project with your classmates, even though it was hard and exhausting.  He said that for a lot of people, they find this place of potential in athletics, or in music.  It is not a "release" from life, like a fun night out drinking with friends-- if you are living your life well, it is life.

Happiness is full activity aimed at virtue.  This is the simple, straightforward phrasing of a concept I have been beating a bush around on this blog for years now.

This is why I did so well on my exam, even though the preparation was hard, and I hated the time it prevented me from spending with my family.  I wasn't nervous about the outcome because I knew I'd given it all I had.

This is why, when I finished the exam, my way of "relaxing" was to start making a quilt.

This is why I stay in grad school at all, frankly.

This is why I love (and miss) distance running.

This is one of the reasons why I was able to give birth to a posterior baby without asking for an epidural.

This is one of the reasons why I survived long days at home with a colicky newborn.

When I was teaching high school, I can remember one point at which I realized most of my freshmen thought it was uncool to "try."  I made each of them write an essay about the thing they worked the hardest towards and actually achieved.  Then they made license plate shaped signs about them, they had to share with the class the story that gave them "license" to operate in my class, and we used them to decorate the walls.  That was one of my best teaching ideas and moments.  Everyone came up with something, and it made a noticeable difference in my classes from that point onward.  It was like, with one activity, we successfully banished from that classroom the mentality that "cool kids don't try."  But I can also remember standing up there at the end and telling them, "What you may not know until you're older, is that it doesn't matter if anyone else thinks what you've accomplished is cool or impressive. Once you know it in your head, and you can feel it in your heart, nobody can take it away from you.  And the people who cheated to get where you got, or even farther?  They don't have what you have."  They were all like, "Awe, Ms. C, enough with the 'life lessons'."  But maybe a few of them carried it with them.

I wish I'd had this phrasing at my disposal then.  Full activity aimed at virtue.  I'm glad I have it now, for when those moments when I need to remind myself.  And for when we need to teach Nora.

Week Two

I have seven minutes before I have to wake Nora up, so I thought I'd post a quick update and say thank you again to all of you who sent me notes after my last post.  Whether or not I am ready for the exam depends on whether the amount of time I have to give is enough to complete enough reading and thinking to be adequately prepared for the test.  Only time will tell, I think.

Week two got off to a better start yesterday.  I was afraid Nora would start crying as soon as she realized she was back at school but, as usual, she did fine with the drop off.  I taught my students for the second time, and I was pleased at the level of talking that went on during our group activity and class discussion.  Most of my students claim to be fairly confident as readers and writers so we will see how the class pans out.  Walking back to my office from the classroom, I felt a bit more like myself again instead of feeling like a ball of emotions, so that felt like a step in the right direction.

Nora still started crying uncontrollably when I picked her up, but her teachers reported that she had a much better day.  (They say this every day, which makes me think they must have been stretching the truth when they told me, on the first day, that she "did well."  I guess it's relative.)  She didn't refuse her bottles, she ate her lunch, and she even drank water from the straw cup, which she has refused to do since she started there.  The biggest step in the right direction, though, was that they managed to get her to take two naps.  Each was only about thirty minutes long, but since she was napping for 30 minutes total each day last week, it was a big improvement.

Well, six of my seven minutes are up so I will end it there.  I'm also including a picture Billy took of us yesterday.  Last week was too much of a whirlwind to get a first day of school picture, so a second week of school picture will have to do.  I am still struggling to figure out the best way to manage my time, the commute to Nora's day care and to campus, and how to develop a routine that maximizes my work time, but hopefully by the start of week 3 I'll have a firmer handle on that, too.

Goodybe, 20s. It's been great knowing you.

Today is the last day of my 20s.  I guess this begs some reflection, considering how much apprehension people generally have about turning 30.  I don't dislike getting older because my life gets better every year. These days, I think it's common to feel like you spend your 20s figuring things out and trying to get to where you want to be, and then you get to spend your 30s enjoying where you are.  I certainly feel that way.  I generally prefer to avoid boasting in favor of letting my actions speak for themselves.  But I'm really proud of everything I accomplished in my 20s, and before bringing them to a close, it feels appropriate to take a minute to acknowledge how hard I've worked and how far I've come.

Far and away, the best thing I did in my 20s was seek out and cultivate relationships with the very best people.  I met, fell in love with, and committed to a man who is smart, funny, hardworking, and supportive.  I've never had to question his love or loyalty, and I have never given him a reason to doubt mine.  We created a spirited, resilient, curious baby girl whose mere existence brings smiles to our faces and joy to our hearts.  I come from a good family, and though I decided to move across the country and made some mistakes along the way, I have worked hard at maintaining positive relationships with my family members.  I get along with and actively enjoy the company of all of them, especially my mom, sister, and brother.  My dad died knowing how much I loved and appreciated him.  I also married into a good family.  I've worked hard at learning how to be a member of a family who does things differently than I'm used to and how to learn from what they have to teach me.   I've appreciated being embraced by them, and I hope they feel, as I do, that we're all better off for having been brought together.  And every step of the way-- college, teaching, and graduate school-- I've managed to find and befriend women who are smart, insightful, honest, and supportive.  I've tried to return the favor of their friendship by displaying the same qualities in return.  I've loved all these people with my whole heart and I've tried to put their needs ahead of my own when circumstances called for it.  I've worked on fostering open, honest, and productive communication with them.  I've tried to encourage them all to tell me when I'm being unreasonable and use honesty to help me become better than I am.  These relationships are the crowning achievements of my 20s.

So while I'm about to list my other proudest accomplishments from this decade, please know that these people I've mentioned above are the ones who've made everything else I've done possible, and they're the ones who've made all of these things feel worthwhile instead of empty.

Academically:
-Graduated from Valparaiso Summa Cum Laude.
-Convinced my professors and classmates that I belonged in graduate school even before I convinced myself.
-Completed my Master's Degree at the University of Maryland.
-Earned the departmental prize for best MA level paper.
-Was admitted to the UMd PhD program, with full funding, in a year when approximately 5% of qualified applicants were accepted.
-Completed a Critical Theory Certificate from the UMd Graduate School despite beginning graduate school with no idea how to describe what critical theory actually is.

Professionally:
-Earned the respect of my fellow teachers and administrators in the four years I spent as a high school teacher.
-Succeeded in convincing my students to give extra effort to their English studies, which I know because they made comments like "I think my brain will explode if I think any harder," they greeted me in the hallways with a smile, they came to me to talk about their lives, and they improved their test scores despite my refusal to "teach to the test."
-Gave countless extra hours of my time as Student Government advisor to enhance for my students the aspects of the high school experience that were the most meaningful to me.
-Was offered and accepted a graduate assistantship at UMd that paid me a stipend on top of complete tuition remission for my master's degree; brought a positive attitude to that job and did my best to be good at it, even though desk work was outside my comfort zone.
-Made the dedicated effort to serve my students as an instructor at UMd despite the vigorous demands of my own academic curriculum.

Personally:
-Lived within my financial means.
-Dedicated myself to giving back to my community through teaching and other charitable acts.
-Lived in Oregon, Indiana, and Maryland.
-Traveled to Ireland, Mexico, California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
-Attended and participated in the weddings of many friends, all of whom remain married.
-Took care of the things that needed taking care of following Dad's death.

Physically:
-Ran a marathon, a half marathon, several ten milers, and countless shorter races of various lengths; earned third place in my running club's yearlong championship series.
-Conceived, carried, delivered, and nursed a healthy baby girl.

Emotionally:
Learned a decade's worth of lessons, the most important among them including:
-Being right is less important than doing the right thing.
-As an educator, the most you can do is give your students the very best of yourself and your talents.  You have a responsibility to try to engage all of them, but once you've done that, you have to focus on the ones who want to learn from what you have to offer instead of dwelling on the ones who don't.
-The true value of a good education is not in the facts it teaches you, but in the way it teaches you how to learn, how to evaluate different pieces of information, and how to use the new knowledge you've acquired to improve your life and the lives of others.
-The only way to maintain a meaningful long-term relationship of any kind is through open and honest communication.
-Loving someone doesn't mean giving them what you want to give; it means doing the work to find out what they really need and figuring out how you can give it to them.
-If I dig deeper, I am always capable of a little bit more than I think.
-Through preparing and persisting, I can endure misfortune and be ready to capitalize on any good fortune that comes my way.
-I am at my best when I know when to ask for help.
-When you lose someone you love, one way to move on is to keep the best parts of the past close to your heart as you continue to look forward to the future.
-Some aches may never go away.  And you may not want them to.
-What's right for me is not necessarily right for everyone else, and I have no right to try to dictate how other people choose to live their lives.
-If you can't or don't acknowledge the position of privilege in which you sit, it's difficult to give anything meaningful back to your community.
-You should only compare what you have to what someone else has if you're looking to make sure the other person has enough.
-If you treat others with fairness and respect, most of them will give it back to you, and the ones who don't will not have the power to get you down.
-It is wise to be emotionally, intellectually, professionally, and financially generous. It makes you feel good to give with no strings attached, and people remember the things you do for them.
-If you don't like the way things are going, it's up to you to make some changes.
-There is always so much more to learn.

With all that said and done, I'm excited to start another decade.  It might seem hard to imagine that my 30s could top my 20s, but when I look at the people I have around me these days, it's hard to imagine they won't.

The Lathe of Heaven

My teaching semester is wrapping up.  Friday was my last day of teaching, today was the last regular lecture, my students turn in their final papers this week, and they sit for the final exam next week.  This means that while all of my preparatory work for the semester is completed, I still have quite a bit of grading to finish before I can call the semester complete and move onto more focused preparations for my comprehensive exam.

The last novel we covered in the class is the only one I hadn't read before: Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven.  This novel seemed like a strange choice to me, but I have now come to believe it should be required reading for all perfectionists with control issues, like myself.  (Added bonus if you're from Portland, because that's where it's set.)  The main conflict of the novel is between two male characters: one of them is capable of altering reality through his dreams, and when his psychologist finds this out, he attempts to manipulate the patient's dreams in order to "improve" the world.  What the psychologist finds out, of course, is that he is rarely able to initiate the changes he'd like to see, and even when he succeeds, the changes he envisions don't turn out to have the results he intended.

Le Guin uses the characters to present two completely opposite worldviews: the psychologist who thinks every man's "purpose on earth" is "to do things, change things, run things, make a better world"  and the Daoist dreamer who says things like "I do know that it's wrong to force the pattern of things.  It won't do. It's been our mistake for a hundred years" (82).  In using these two men as exemplars of two oppositional ideologies, Le Guin is not particularly subtle.  The psychologist says things like "it's not how you get there, but where you get to that counts," while the dreamer disagrees, suggesting "We're in the world, not against it.  It doesn't work to try to stand outside things and run them that way.  It just doesn't work, it goes against life.  There is a way but you have to follow it.  The world is, no matter how we think it ought to be.  You have to be with it.  You have to let it be" (139, 140).  I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to reveal that in the end, the psychologist is responsible for his own demise after trying to take on too much and the dreamer is left to with the opportunity to continue following "the way."

So anyway, I've been giving this a lot of thought.  The other insights the book emphasizes are likewise thought provoking.  It suggests that you can't really know what is best for anyone else, and if you think you know how someone else should behave, it indicates your desire to exert control over them even if you think you have good intentions.  Likewise, the novel argues that even when you do a thing that you think is undoubtedly "good," you can't know for sure that it will only have positive outcomes.  I would argue that the book advocates trying to find your place in the world without indulging in the fantasy that you can exert ultimate control over anything that happens to you or to anyone else.  In a moment that was particularly resonant for me, the narrator suggests the dreamer "took it as it came.  He was living almost like a young child, among actualities only.  He was surprised by nothing, and by everything" (126).

I guess what the book has allowed me to do is achieve some critical distance from my own attitude about life, which has given me the opportunity to consider what some of its negative side effects might be.  I align with the psychologist, not the dreamer.  I don't often try to tell other people what to do, but I absolutely attempt to exert complete control over my own life.  I don't follow any path; I try to blaze my own.  On some level, becoming a mother has helped me to realize that this is an ultimately unsustainable way of being.  It has also made me fear that, because Nora feels like an extension of myself, I may someday find myself trying to govern her choices and their outcomes while ignoring the fact that doing so would be a glorified attempt to control her life in the same way I try to control my own.  I've written before about how spending time with Nora has helped me appreciate the benefits of slowing down, focusing on the moment I'm in, and worrying less about strict schedules and milestones.  Perhaps this is another way of saying she has helped me to recognize some of the benefits of living "among actualities only."  I already know some of life's greatest moments come from setting a goal, working toward it doggedly, and ultimately achieving it.  I think I'm only now beginning to learn that some completely unplanned and unforeseen moments can be equally gratifying.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to achieve a more harmonious balance between attempting to steer my own ship and learning to take things as they come.  I have the sense that this is likely to be something I'll continue trying to balance for the rest of my life.  I'm thankful to my professor for including this novel I never would have read otherwise on his syllabus.  This speaks to one of the reasons why literature is great: it gives us the chance to look at ourselves and our surroundings through different eyes.  It allows us, through the crafting of and the immersion within fictional worlds, to take a fresh look at the one we're living in.  Reading novels is one way of putting us in touch with what it means to be human.

Maybe you're more of a musical person than a literature person.  In that case, I've got something for you, too, off the Jason Mraz CD I just downloaded.  The general message is the same.




And I have one more, by Zac Brown Band:

Keep Your Head Up

It's a busy week here in Baby and Books Land; my students are reading Faulkner and have their first paper due Friday.  This means responding to extra student emails, logging extra office hours, and trying to get extra far ahead in planning so I'll have time to grade next week.  In the meantime, though, I thought I'd share a few recent pictures that show off Nora's new rolling prowess.  She still doesn't like to be on her belly for too long, but since she can now hold her head all the way up, she seems to be learning to appreciate the new perspective.

She's also getting good at rolling from her belly onto her back, so sometimes when she's unhappy on her belly she's able to correct herself.  Between these barrel rolls and her habit of pushing herself backwards with her feet while she's on her back, she is really starting to get around!  Gone are the days of setting her down, going to switch the laundry, and finding her in the exact same spot when I return!

While she's working on keeping her head up, I am too, or else I'd be very discouraged with my students.  Almost none of them had finished Cather's The Professor's House on time, which feels like a personal insult given my relationship with this text.  Maybe when (if?) they pick up their copies of As I Lay Dying they'll understand why I told them that if they couldn't be bothered to read Cather, they shouldn't expect to earn a good grade for the course.  American Literature only gets more confusing from here.

Return to Teaching

Though I've been back at school for a few weeks now, yesterday was my first day of teaching.  Since this is the first time I've taught as a "teaching assistant" rather than as a sole instructor, I was both nervous and excited to meet my students.  I was pleased with how many of them attended discussion, and they seemed like a generally interested bunch of kids.  I think the strangest thing for me will be how little time I actually spend with these kids; as a high school teacher, I saw my students for 45 minutes a day, but as a TA, I only spend 50 minutes with them a week.  I've made myself flashcards and am hoping to have learned most of their names by next week.

While I was at school, Nora was enjoying her longest day yet at her grandparents'.  Patti took some pictures while she was there, so I wanted to share those.  When I showed them to Nora, I told her she should take notice of how happy people are to be holding her because not all babies are lucky enough to be welcomed so warmly by every single relative.

Patti also sent along this photo of me holding Nora during the Ravens' last playoff game.  The year Billy was born, the Orioles won the World Series, so we were hoping Nora might bring the same kind of luck to one of Baltimore's teams... but a trip to the Super Bowl was not in the cards, apparently.  She looks skeptical, so maybe she knew things wouldn't turn out too well.

I'm almost always behind the camera at our house, so it's fun for me to see pictures of Nora taken from another person's perspective!  And it's nice to see that she's surrounded by so much love and affection when I have to be away from her.  I had a hard time being apart from her for so long yesterday, but she was well rested and in such a good mood when I got home that we were able to play for a while before she was ready for bed.

It's the Little Things

I realized it's been a while since I last wrote, and I thought I'd give a brief update on daily life in the Liz/Billy/Vickie/Oscar house.  It's been a crazy busy couple of weeks for me in terms of schoolwork, but I've been trying to stop and savor the nice little moments along the way.

Yesterday, to commemorate three months since we lost Dad, I thought I was finally ready to listen to the CD of "Wedding Ideas" songs he made me before Billy and I got married.  I remembered a few of the songs he'd put on there, but most of them I'd forgotten.  I cried softly most of my way into work, but every couple of tracks he had inserted something goofy, including "The Chicken Dance," which made me laugh.  On my way home after a long day, "Miss You Like Crazy" came on at the end of the CD, and I started to cry so hard I had to pull over.  I realize it's a love song, not a father/daughter song, but I know why my Dad put it on there.  The way the tides have turned since his death hit me really hard, and then I realized it was Natalie Cole singing.  Since she sang the daughter half of "Unforgettable" (an earlier track on the CD, which Dad and I danced to at the wedding), it was all just too much for me.

Most of yesterday was better.  I told Billy that someone must have sent out a memo saying it was designated Pat-Liz-on-the-Back Day.  When I went in to the coffee room, one of our notoriously curmudgeonly professors made a point of telling me what a good job he thought I (and my group) had done presenting questions and leading discussion during our Theory Colloquium on Friday.  Since he is a nice guy but so hard to impress, and since Theory Colloquium is generally such a brain busting experience for me, I appreciated the sentiment.  Later, one of my current professors stopped by the business office to ask a question, after which she reminded me that I had to be ready to lead discussion for 10 minutes during class.  I said I would go first if no one else volunteered, which prompted a complimentary conversation about how I am always prepared.  She told me how much she appreciates that I do the reading each week and come to class ready to talk.  During the break in that class, I was chatting with a classmate from the Women's Studies program in the bathroom when she randomly said "I just wanted to tell you that I love listening to you in class.  Every time you talk I just think, 'yes!'"  I also found some great material for my research projects in the Katherine Anne Porter archives, so all in all it was a rare day of complete gratification.

A few other equally comforting and fun things have happened in the past few weeks, so I thought I'd share them, too, especially since they're the things I would have loved to talk to Dad about if he was still around.

A few weekends ago, before I met Danielle to catch up over breakfast, I stopped by the Annapolis Striders 10 mile race I wasn't running to pick up my award from last season.

I'm disappointed that I haven't felt up to competing in any of the races this year, but it was nice to get my first "trophy" since middle school and to be reminded that during a time when I had more control over my circumstances, I accomplished the goal I set for myself through sheer strength of will.  Breakfast with Danielle was refreshing, too, and left me feeling ready to head home to tackle another long day of homework.

Vickie invited me to look at an apartment complex in Baltimore with her.  I tried to keep my opinion to myself until she shared hers, but she liked it as much as I did, and she moves in at the end of the month.  The two bedroom apartment seems HUGE for a first apartment, the location is great, and she already has her first roommate lined up.  It has been fun to hear how much she likes her job at Hopkins, and I am looking forward to seeing how life unfolds for her.  If I was a 24 year old, young, professional female working in the city, I would love to live where she's living, so I can't wait to hear about all the fun she's going to have.  (And I don't think I'll mind visiting her at her pool, which is right on the harbor.)

We celebrated Billy's birthday in a low-key fashion, but the weather was nice, our moods were good, and for a few more months he and I are technically the same age, which means he can't call me old!  He also agreed to spend our anniversary weekend attending the US vs. Spain Davis Cup tie in Austin, Texas, which I am really excited about.  I've always wanted to watch Davis Cup tennis, I've always wanted to go to Austin, and it's been a while since Billy and I got to go away alone together, so I am really looking forward to the trip.

Baseball season opened and the Orioles are off to a promising start.  They've already won a bunch of games, and more importantly for me, they look like they are having fun out there.  They have been like a different team since Buck Showalter took over as their manager, and it makes being a fan much more fun.  It also makes me realize that one person really can make a big difference.

Each year the English department puts together an online-published journal of the best papers from English 101, which is the "intro to writing" course I taught in the fall.  When I realized that one of my students was among the 15 or so students whose papers were chosen to be included, I sent him an email to congratulate him on his accomplishment.  He wrote me back to thank me for all of my help with his papers, to tell me how much he got out of the class, and to say that I'm the first one who ever made English "exciting."  Maybe he caught me at a particularly fragile moment, but it made me cry.  So often students want to blame the teacher when they do poorly, but this was the first time a student wanted to give me part of the credit for his personal accomplishment.  Teachers are so rarely thanked for how much work they do, and students are much quicker to complain than to praise, so to hear all of that in one simple, kind email really touched my heart.  And reminded me why I keep wanting to teach... which was a good reminder to be given.

And, finally, when I plugged in my camera to get that photo of my trophy, I realized that because the camera has been sitting on the dresser for the past few weeks, I have several goofy shots of Oscar burrowed in the bed to share.  I don't know if anyone else finds these as amusing as I do, but he always helps me remember to stop and smile at the little things.  So happy Wednesday, everybody, from our house to yours.  I hope you're enjoying the little things along the way.

(I don't know anything about this book, It's the Little Things: An Appreciation of Life's Simple Pleasures, but I liked the title.)

The Little Engine That Could

Hi everybody!  Yesterday I submitted a 32 page seminar paper on Eliza Haywood's Fantomina and the 17th century scientific revolution.  I have been busting my brain on this project for several weeks.  At the end of the day, I have no idea whether my professor will find it adequate or not.  I took on some very complex theoretical frameworks, though, so I'm really proud of where the project ended up.  I think that's supposed to be the point of a seminar class, anyway, so I'll consider it a success no matter what grade my effort garners.  It's funny how sometimes the class you thought you'd be least interested in is the one that motivates you to push yourself to produce your best work.

I also taught my last undergrad class of the semester, so it finally feels like some of the pressure I've been under is lessening.  There's still a lot of work to be done; I collect final papers from my students tomorrow, so I have to grade those and finalize their grades for the semester by the 17th.  Yesterday, when I collected their final participation self-evaluations, one of the most quiet girls had written a short note about how much she had enjoyed the class.  It reminded me that one of the things I learned while teaching high school was that you have to consciously make the effort to avoid doubting yourself just because some of your students frustrate you.  They're the most vocal ones, but they tend to obscure the fact that for most of the class, things might be moving along quite well.  I always want to feel like my courses are ones in which students get out of them what they put in, so I need to re-learn to stop getting so frustrated by the students who don't put in much effort, and re-learn that the students who sit there quietly and periodically compliment my shoes before class might be learning as much as I hope they are. I also had three students schedule appointments during office hours to go over last minute questions about their papers, and all three of those conferences went really well.  I quite enjoyed talking to those students and could tell that they had been putting a lot of work into their research projects.  I hope I'll be able to take those moments away with me and leave the grade complaints behind.

I also have to research and write a 10 page paper for my postcolonial class, due December 20.   Though I think I know where I'm headed for that paper, I don't feel like I have a great idea.  I think I may have run out of great ideas and/or the energy to conceive great ideas for this semester, and I think that's okay.  Just do the best you can is the mantra that has been on repeat through my head this semester, so I'll give that paper as good a shot as I can muster.  Everyone likes to tell me things like "Nobody loves every paper they submit" and "Sometimes a course just doesn't strike a chord with me," but I've never actually submitted a paper I wasn't quite proud of, so we'll see how it goes.  At least I can direct my focus on that paper once my grading is done rather than trying to work on it while doing 18 other things simultaneously.

Then I have the entire holiday break to work on a research project for my American modernism seminar.  I am actually quite excited about that because it feels like I will finally be getting the chance to focus specifically on my area of interest.  It will also give me some increased motivation to read some of the books/articles I've been meaning to read but haven't been able to find time to get through.  I hope working on that will keep my momentum going through the break while still allowing me to feel like I've had a break from the intensity of the semester.  After this week, I don't have to be on campus again until the end of January, and I realized recently that this is the first time I've had over a week off since I began graduate school.  Even this past summer, when I had a month off of work, I still had to go to class four days a week for my intensive German class.

I'm also looking forward to going back to Oregon for the first time in two years.  It will be fun to see my parents and several friends, and I'll finally get to meet Krista's little ones.  My dad recently told me that my grandparents are going to be in town for part of our visit, so that was just like icing on the cake.  While we're home we're also supposed to finalize plans for our Australia trip!

I hope that in the long run, I'll be thankful that I put in these few hard, high pressure months to get a little bit ahead of schedule on my funding package.  It's comforting to know that I'll never have to teach students and take classes in the same term.  And I hope that next term will feel a lot more manageable by comparison. I still have a lot going on, but I'm not teaching, so I hope I'll be able to avoid the feeling of being completely and totally overwhelmed.  The comments of my classmates and professors suggest that they don't feel like my work has suffered too much as a result of my over-commitment, but I know that Billy and Vickie and a few friends have seen just how close to the edge this semester has pushed me.  I hope for all of our sakes I'll be able to continue getting better at finding a healthy balance between school and home life.

Robinson Crusoe

As you may know, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is the story of a man who recounts the monotonous details of his life at an excruciating level of detail because, among other reasons, it makes him feel like what he is doing matters (though he is stranded on a desert island for much of the narrative).  In the spirit of this novel (often called the first novel ever written, depending on how you classify it), I thought I would follow up my last post about a slightly more harried than usual day on campus with a description of what I did yesterday, which was a typical work-from-home day for me.

I woke up at 7am.  I intended to start my day by getting my day's allotment of student paper grading out of the way.  I only made it through three of the six papers I had intended to grade before I gave up to move onto something else.  I showered and got dressed, hoping this would make me feel like my day actually started with the next activity.

Then I got through about 40 pages of Robinson Crusoe before I had to quit that, too.

I read two articles about Katherine Anne Porter's work and typed up their entries for the presentation I'm due to give on KAP on Wednesday.  I emailed the curator of the KAP collection to ask her a question about the letters I read last week, to which she promptly responded with a very helpful answer.

I graded the remaining three papers from the day's allotment.  I formulated a plan for dealing with an act of academic dishonesty and emailed the student to request a meeting.  I considered smashing my head into the desk but restrained myself.

I read 20 more pages of Crusoe.  I cursed Crusoe for feeling the need to be so specific.

I took a 20 minute nap.  It is nearly impossible for me to make it through a day of reading at home without laying down for 20 minutes.  I have been told that my grandfather was narcoleptic, and I don't know if there's a narcolepsy "spectrum" like there is an autism "spectrum," but if there is, I'm on it.  I don't actually need to sleep, really.  I just need to lay down and give myself permission to drift off into sleep, and then I feel recharged.  Usually I am asleep within two minutes and I wake up on my own before the 20 minutes is even up. Sometimes I have brilliant ideas while transitioning from sleeping to wakefulness, but yesterday was not one of those days.

I spent a few hours reading a chapter from Jill Casid's Sowing Empire.  When Billy got home, I reached a stopping point, and we went to the gym.  On the way home from the gym, we picked up a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store.  I made a mental note that grad school is still better than working in a grocery store deli (I used to do this).  I made side dishes to accompany the chicken and Billy, Vickie, and I enjoyed dinner together.  (Verdict: Kraft's new "Homestyle" Mac and Cheese is still inferior to Velveeta Shells and Cheese.)

I finished the Casid article, then read 40 more pages of Crusoe.  Having finished 100 pages by 8pm, I decided I was quitting for the day.  I went downstairs to watch TV with Billy and Vickie until bed.  I felt satisfied that the only thing I had failed to accomplish in my plans for the day were the final 60 pages of Crusoe.  I questioned my level of sanity when I realized that I had assigned myself 160 pages of this dreaded tale in a single day.

In the midst of these activities I sorted, washed, dried, folded, and put away 4 loads of laundry.  It has also been brought to my attention that I ate nearly an entire bag (approximately 25?) chocolate mini-donuts.  I was not aware I'd eaten so many until Vickie and Billy independently lamented the missing donuts.  Over the course of the day I also glanced several times at the 300 page novel I am supposed to finish by Thursday.  I don't have a good feeling about the likelihood that it will be accomplished, but I feel okay about this, because it's a book I will actually look forward to reading over break.

Before I fell asleep I said a mental thank you to my old Graduate School Director, Kandice, for the double course release this year.  Teaching and taking three classes this semester is taking its toll on me, and I am thankful every day that I don't have to do it again next term.

And then I slept.  Well.

A Grain of Wheat

This morning, I went for my first outdoor run after several weeks of trips to the gym for workouts on mechanized equipment.  The weather was just too great to pass up, and one of my classes did not meet last week, so that has allowed me the chance to make some headway on getting ahead instead of feeling like I am constantly behind.  As soon as I got onto the trail, I noticed that I was in the middle of an official race.  And because of where I'd started, I was just behind the leaders.  This was made me laugh to myself until I got a cramp.  I got to see firsthand just how fast the winners of these events run as they sailed past me, one after the other.  I did get a few cheers at one point, though, from some people who I assume mistook me for the female leader.  Fortunately, after I'd finished my first mile or so, their route took them off the trail, so I got to enjoy my last four miles in (relative) peace.  I don't know how fast I ran, but I pushed myself pretty hard at the end, and it felt great to be out in the fresh air again.  It reminded me of a quote from A Grain of Wheat, by Ngugi wa Thiong'o which I read for class last week. One of the characters is running in a race during his village's celebration of Kenyan independence, and we're told "he used to run in all long-distance races.  He had even developed a theory about such races.  'They test how long you can endure hardship,' he used to say.  'You say to yourself.  I will not give up: I will see this to the end.'"  Indeed.  If I've already unlocked a Kenyan "theory" of long distance running on my own, I'm destined for a faster race pace, right? : )

Since my schedule's not quite as tight this weekend, I thought I'd take a minute to share with you all what I'm up to this semester.  It's a lot of work, but so far I'm enjoying all of it, so that keeps it manageable.

I'm teaching English 101, which is officially called "Introduction to Academic Writing."  I only have one section with 21 students, so I really can't complain.  It's not a literature based course at all-- it's the class the incoming students are required to take to prepare them for the writing assignments they'll have to complete thereafter in their academic careers.  The teaching model is based in rhetoric, so I get to teach some of the things we discuss in our department, but mostly I'm responsible for helping them learn how to become better writers.  All PhD students start out by teaching this course, and a lot of them complain about it because they'd rather be teaching literature and there's a lot of grading.  I like teaching writing, though, and since I'm only teaching one section, the grading responsibilities will not be as overwhelming as if I'd been required to teach two.

I'm also taking three classes.  On Tuesdays I'm taking a class about 18th Century Experimentalism and Natural Philosophy.  Or, as I might title it, "How science as we know it came to be."  I'm technically taking it because I slid through our MA program without taking enough classes in pre-1800 subjects (one of my professors changed the scope of his class at the last minute), so it's a requirement, but I've been wanting to take a class with this professor, anyway, so I'm enjoying it.  She tried to kill us with the reading assignments in the first two weeks, but now that I've accomplished those, I'm hoping it will be slightly smoother sailing for the rest of the semester.  Plus, we've finally gotten started on the literature written about experimentalism, so I'm starting to feel more "in my own element."

On Wednesdays I'm re-taking a class on American Modernism/Modernity that is similar to the one I took in Spring 09, which I might title "Whatever Liz wants to read."  Since we took the class with this professor last time he taught it, my friend Katie and I are taking it as a pseudo independent study.  We're attending class on days that address new texts and working with our professor outside of class that relate more specifically to our research interests.  It's really an ideal scenario for me, because it's precisely the type of literature that I want to be reading, and his flexibility with the syllabus will allow me to get an early start on working on the reading list that will ultimately serve as the basis for my comprehensive exams next year.  (Yes, I am always looking forward.  No use in standing still.)

On Thursdays I have a class in Postcolonial Literature and Theory survey course, which I could otherwise call "Books written by people whose names I can't pronounce."  I feel completely clueless in this class, because after we left Conrad and Achebe behind in week one, I've never even read any of the authors we're covering, not to mention the texts we're assigned.  It's supposed to be a survey, which means an "intro" to the field, but since it's the only postcolonial class offered this semester, a lot of people who specialize in this area are enrolled in it, as well.  The one saving grace for me is that I've read a lot of the critical theory that serves as the foundation for the field, so even though the texts are new, the ideas are ones I'm used to working with.

These seem like a strange hodge podge on paper (or online), but as always, they begin to grow together more than I had originally anticipated.  One of the articles I had to read for my PoCo class last week mentioned one of the texts I'd read for my Experimentalism class the week before.  And so it goes.

The final thing I want to mention is that I've decided to stop making this blog "searchable" via google and the like.  This means you'll no longer be able to type "Literature is where I go" into google and pull up the blog (I hope), so if that's how you're used to finding your way to me, please add the URL as a bookmark or put me in your blog reader instead.  I'm careful about what I write here, since I know I'm sending it out into the public world, but the blog is not really meant for consumption by those who don't know me personally, so I don't see any reason why people need to be able to find it in their search engines.

Hope you've all enjoyed a restful weekend, and that your week ahead is productive.  Vickie is set to return to MD tomorrow, and the new season of Glee premieres the night after that, so things are looking good for us this week.  No races coming up anytime soon, and a whole month before the next Navy football game, but maybe that means I can get even farther ahead in my studies!

And just for good measure, here are a couple pictures of Clara and Cash enjoying the brand new additions to their families:

Thanks for sharing the pictures, guys!

Anchors Aweigh

Still no time for words.  But here are some pictures!  Navy lost, but the sun was out, and we had fun.  And I got to take a bit of a break from all this craziness.

I took this next photo thinking, "I can just flip it around and the M will be right side up!"  It didn't occur to me that the whole world would then be upside down.  I think I'm brainfried.

So I tried again.  The marching band on the big screen above the Mids' seating section.  (How do they pack them into such a tight space at the stadium in Annapolis?

Other news in brief:
-We lost our second softball game via slaughter rule.  For some reason unknown to myself, I tried to dive for a ground ball that went between me and the shortstop.  I did not get an out.  I did not even stop the ball to keep it in the infield.  I just ripped open my knee and am now developing the only scab I can remember having in recent memory.
-We went to our friends' new house for a housewarming party on Saturday.  Billy can now add beanbags to the list of tossing games he excels at.
-I finished the syllabus for the class I'm teaching.
-I had the distinct pleasure of wading my through the single worst/most difficult text I've been assigned in grad school in between all of the above.  I managed to say something about it in class tonight that I don't believe was completely idiotic.  So I will count that as a success.
-I have had very little time to follow the US Open.  This depresses me.  I'm trying to carve out enough time to watch a match in the case that Nadal and Federer both make it to the final.  I like Rafa's chances this year.

(Anchors Aweigh is apparently a very popular book title.  I don't know what any of these books are about, but I must go to bed if I am going to accomplish a full week's worth of reading tomorrow.)

The Deep End of the Ocean

Classes started this week.  In my first one, my professor said "Cold water, meet deep end."  No kidding.  I'm actually a fan of jumping unabashedly into the deep end, but this is all a bit much for me.  I'm treading furiously until I can get my bearings and adjust to my new schedule of teaching and studenting, but until then, I'm feeling completely overwhelmed.

So I've got pictures for you, instead of word vomit.

They were supposed to give us a sample syllabus for the course I teach, and I was fully planning to follow it.  Don't try to reinvent the wheel, I'm always trying to tell myself.  However, they still haven't done it, and I can't keep waiting forever.  So I found myself planning it like this:

I believe this to be bordering on certifiably insane.  But I have something even crazier to share.  This is a photo of my assignment book, for the assignments that were due this past week, which means they all had to be accomplished before classes had even begun:

And here's the list for next week.  Please note how few cross outs I have yet managed to accomplish.  Yet, I've been reading and planning almost non-stop since Tuesday morning.

Other news in brief: 

I dove for a ball in our softball game last night and tore open my knee.  A nasty scab is forming.  And I didn't even stop the ball.  And we played such a bad single inning that the game ended early on account of the slaughter rule.

Andy Roddick did me a favor by bowing out of the US Open in the second round, so I am no longer tempted to set aside my work for tennis watching.  Though yelling at a lineswoman for mixing up her right and left can hardly be considered "bowing."  I have a lot more to say about this but no time in which to say it.

Must get back to work. 

(The Deep End of the Ocean is a book by Jacquelyn Mitchard that I can remember reading back in the 90s when Oprah put it on her booklist.  I believe it fed nicely into my John Grisham crime novel obsession.)

Death in the Afternoon

When I was teaching high school, we talked about how Hemingway coined the term "grace under pressure,"  and I showed them his episode of A&E's "Biography," which explains Hemingway's relationship to bullfighting, about which he wrote Death in the Afternoon.  In short, Hemingway had a deep respect for bullfighting because he considered matadors to be the individuals who best demonstrated grace under pressure.

One of the reasons I love sports so much is because they afford athletes opportunities to demonstrate grace under pressure.  This week we got two great examples.

Pitching a perfect game in baseball is a demonstration of grace under pressure-- history shows that maintaining your mental composure enough to keep making outs until the very end is an almost impossible feat.  We all know that Jim Joyce botched the call at first base and ruined Armando Galarraga's chance to have a perfect game recorded in the books, but what impressed me most was Galarraga's immediate response to the call.  If you watch the video, you notice that for one split second when he knew he had made the out, he started to celebrate-- but when the call was made, he just smiled, stared at Jim Joyce, and then walked back to the mound.  HE SMILED!   And then he recorded the next out!  There was a lot of hype after the game, and all the analylists practically started singing kumbaya because Joyce apologized and Galarraga said "nobody's perfect" (even though he had been)... but what I'll remember is that smile.  My brother Nate was impressed by this moment, too, and wrote on my facebook wall, "Someday I'll tell kids about the grace with which Armando Galarraga handled himself in that situation."

Maybe that smile grows out of ten years spent in the minors before being called up to the majors.  Maybe it comes from the maturity of being able to recognize the strength of one's accomplishment even without official recognition of that accomplishment.  In the Women's final at the French Open, we also saw an experienced player earn the chance to make good on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  Before the French Open, Francesca Schiavone had never advanced beyond the quarterfinals in a Grand Slam tournament.  She'd only won three tournaments in her whole 12 year career.  She was the heavy, heavy underdog.

I'll admit that when I started watching the match, I wanted Sam Stosur to win.  I'd been impressed by her giant-killing journey to the final: she'd already upset Serena Williams and Justine Henin, the two favorites to win the tournament, and had destroyed former world #1 Jelena Jankovic in the semis.  I was already imagining how exciting it would be to experience in person the Aussie hype that would have been around Stosur at the Australian Open in January had she won her first slam on Saturday.  But even though no one gave Schiavone a chance, she came out with a game plan that handcuffed Stosur, and it became impossible to cheer against her.  With the chance to win the match in the second set tiebreaker, when most players participating in their first slam final against a heavy favorite would have tightened up and choked, Schiavone took risky shots, executed them perfectly, and began jumping for joy after each winner.  Aside from Serena and maybe Kim Clijsters, the women in today's game seem afraid to rise to the challenge in this way.  I generally find the WTA tour uninspiring precisely because it so sorely lacks these kind of grab-the-bull-by-the-horns moments.

But Schiavone is evidently not our average WTA player.  Afterward, Schiavone said "I took it, and I didn't lose the chance. I didn't care about nothing. I want to take that [ball] and play my tennis. It was the moment."  Peter Bodo also reports that when she was asked how she accomplished something so much greater than anyone had ever expected of her, she responded, "Every morning that you wake up, you work to do something like this. So maybe it was far away in reality, but here [she pointed to her heart] it was never that far."

Thanks, Armando Galarraga and Francesca Schiavone, for reminding me this week how much the human mind is capable of achieving.  For reminding me that the moments when we are placed under the most pressure are also the moments when are given the opportunity to surpass everyone's expectations.  For demonstrating, as Schiavone said, that "This is mean that everybody have the chance to be who really you want to be, and to do everything in your life. This is what's happen to me."

Cliffs Notes: My Ántonia

My dad thinks he is pretty clever. Today I was excited to receive a package from him in the mail, but I didn't even have to open it up before I realized what it was. I'd recognize these severe black stripes juxtaposed against a gold background anywhere.

He sent met the CliffsNotes for Cather's My Ántonia to remind me that next year I'll have students again, and some of them will prefer shortcuts. : )

I actually don't have a problem with Cliffs Notes. Right inside the cover there's a message from Mr. Cliff Hillegass which concludes, "A thorough appreciation of literature allows no short cuts. By using Cliffs Notes responsibly, reviewing past criticism of a literary work, and examining fresh points of view, you can establish a unique connection with a work of literature and can take a more active part in a key goal of education: redefining and applying classic wisdom to current and future problems." Sounds good to me, Cliff. (I'd like to ask him to elaborate on what he means by "classic wisdom," but he's dead, so I can't.)

I like that Cliffs Notes get students to begin thinking about the implications of a text instead of just focusing on plot points. Obviously, I would much rather have my students read the original texts in their entirety, but I'll definitely take a student who has consulted a study guide over one who hasn't prepared for class at all. Students who are familiar with the book's content can at least participate in discussion. After a good classroom discussion, students who skipped the reading sometimes go back and read the source text. I think it's my responsibility as an educator to make them want to read the text rather than just requiring them to read it.

I do have a funny story, though, about SparkNotes (the free online study guides). When I used to teach Huck Finn, one of the questions on a reading quiz required the students to name a character. I used to tell them that if they couldn't remember the character's name, they could describe the character and still get partial credit. On one question, they kept writing "Tom's cousin." I had no idea where this came from. I looked back at the text to see if I had missed something, but it didn't say anything about the character being Tom's cousin. I went to the SparkNotes summary, though, which identified the character as Tom's cousin. I guess that relation is explained in Tom Sawyer, which I have never read, and so whoever wrote the Huck study guide added that info. I really enjoyed letting them all know that I caught them, and I left the question in every year. Showing the students that I was "onto them" was one of the things I enjoyed about being a high school teacher.

Mostly, though, my dad's gift reminds me that next year, I WILL get to have students again. I can't wait. My first year out of the classroom felt like a nice break because I could focus on my own interests again... but now, I really miss teaching. I'm thankful for the office job I have on campus that has funded my Master's degree, but I can't say I'll miss cross-referencing spreadsheets or pestering faculty members to approve their timesheets. I hope to have the opportunity to begin teaching undergraduates, but high school students have their own special charm, too.

This long, difficult journey all began for me back in 2000 because I really wanted to be a teacher. I left the classroom because I wanted to get better at teaching, and I can't wait to try my hand at it again now that I've done two straight years of advanced thinking about these texts.

Before I can get back to the classroom, though, I have to get through this Master's project. For the next week, it's back to Miss Willa. I think I have settled on which specific issues my paper will address, so now I just need to re-read The Professor's House before I can sit down to pound out the third installment of my Willa Cather Great War project.

(Cliffs Notes actually have some interesting parallels to Willa Cather. Their creator, Cliff Hillegass, was born in 1918, when My Ántonia was originally published. And guess where he lived and worked? Nebraska!)