Zhaf and the Cellar

Sunday, February 29, 2004

Reading and the Bird 

This is just a quick update to let everyone know that I'm still around and still blogging. I am making dents it the pile of work that remains before me, but I'm still relatively behind and need to keep up the manic pace just to keep up. I've read the novel (353 pages!) and now I'll finish up the article I'm presenting on tomorrow. I need to read it and come up with fifteen minutes of stuff to say about it.

I'd write something else here to make this blog a bit more interesting, but frankly my life is boring when all I do is homework. For instance, other than make myself breakfast and lunch, all I've done is sit on my couch and read straight--nearly eleven hours of reading. The only thing that could even be qualified as entertainment was the bird who likes to nest above my apartment window left and returned twice. Right now, I assume he's sleeping. I hope my living room light does not bother him because, as I'm going to be up for several more hours working and studying, I am not going to turn it off.

:: z. 8:13 PM [+] Permalink ::

...

Thursday, February 26, 2004

Dr. Slightly Green and Dr. Brown Shoes 

Okay, today was a little weird. I had a meeting with the professor I T.A for (Dr. Slightly Green) so we could discuss the approach I need to take when I teach the class tomorrow. Aside from the usual nervousness at the prospect of teaching a class of about eighty students, I admit to being a little awkward in social situations. A case in point, this morning when I went to buy a small coffee and a donut in the library cafe, I ran into another professor while in the line (Dr. Brown Shoes). He was a guest speaker in the graduate seminar I was at last night, and he had written the text that we were using in the course.

Dr. Brown Shoes: Hello, Zhaf. How are you?

Me: Hi, Dr. Brown Shoes. Just getting my morning coffee.

Dr. Brown Shoes: Me too. What did you guys discuss in class after I had left?

Me: Grammar. And how to comment on student papers.

Dr. Brown Shoes: That's always a vexing problem.

Me: I really enjoyed the discussion. It was good.

That's it. That was our entire conversation. As he was paying for his coffee, I didn't know what else to say, if I should wait, or what. Instead, I got a vague look on my face, stood in place for a couple of seconds and left. I didn't say goodbye, see you later, thanks for sharing, screw you pal, or anything. I just walked away. It didn't take more than ten minutes later to feel like a complete fool for not saying anything more. Thus I chalked it up to my social ineptitude, and then inwardly prayed that he might be as awkward as I am and therefore not hold anything against me.

But that wasn't the weird part of the day. As socially inept as I can be, Dr. Slightly Green creeps even me out. The text I need to teach is Sandra Cisneros "One Holy Night." I found it to be an interesting short story that explores the relationship between Mayan and Christian mythology. It seemed to me that Cisneros might have wanted readers to explore the similarities between the two cultures, perhaps as a way to eliminate ethnocentrism.

The weird part was, as we were discussing the possibilities for what the title may have meant, Dr. Slightly Green started singing "O Holy Night." She was trying to remember the verses and explore other connections to the text, but at the same time, she seemed to know every verse almost perfectly. When I admitted that I didn't know as much about the bible as most people, she pulled her copy of it off her shelf and started reading out loud pieces she thought was pertinent to the text. While this might seem tame to read in a blog, I have to say that I felt she wasn't reading it out loud for herself, but rather she was performing it for me. It wasn't the usual Bible as literature approach that I have encountered before. Trusting my internal sense, it just didn't feel quite right. Consequently, as I have now discovered the Professors intense love for Christianity and the Virgin Mary, I have learned that confessions like the one I made might be better kept to oneself.

:: z. 5:02 PM [+] Permalink ::

...

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Work, Books, and More Work: Part II 

Today is the day for work. Although I would rate yesterday a success, the challenge of continuing that success is daunting. If I can remain focused and delve straight into working, I will read two novels today, research articles to present in class next Monday, and write at least five pages for two essays that are works in progress. In addition, in preparation for the other classes, I need to read a short story and an essay: comparatively easy, but time consuming. My upcoming lunch break will include a meeting with a freshman literature student to discuss a writing assignment. To sum up the whole thing: fun, fun, fun.

Normally with the prospect of so much work to do in such a little space of time, I would--to adopt a melodramatic 19th century approach--despair, lament, and bemoan my plight. Yet, I think after all of the psychological crunch that I have been experiencing in the last several months, I am beginning to acclimate to the work load demands that are being placed on me. And in that regard, I am beginning to feel a little more professional, just ever so slightly. It would be misleading to suggest that I have completely found the keys to success and conquered all of my demons. Writing still is a lot of hard work that takes up a lot of my time. There is also the very real chance of failure, but at this point I am optimistic.

So, it is back to work for me. Blog posts continue to be thin here, which is something that will have to continue for awhile longer yet. It may be a fact of my adjustment to the new workloads I will be required to post here less. However, at this point, I am still committing to blogging, and I don't intend quit.

:: z. 11:21 AM [+] Permalink ::

...

Thursday, February 19, 2004

Work, Mistakes, and More Work. 

There's not been much of me around here for the last several days, and I suppose the reason for that is the same reason that it has always been. Primarily, I haven't the time to take away from school to write on this blog. The only reason that I am here now is that I needed a mental break from the constant thinking, planning, and worrying about my seminar papers. To briefly summarize, my first term of graduate school was insane, and I had more then typical amount of trouble. (However, not as unusual as some of the stories I have heard. One person told me that they knew of student who lived in her car for a year while she went to grad. school. It eventually caught up with her.) As a result of the problems from the first term, I have a couple of incompletes that I have been playing like hell to get done. I'm halfway there, but the road is still very long. Tonight, I will work some more.

Yet, just to give you an example of some of the trouble that I have had, I present the following. While going through and grading 40 freshman essays, about four pages each, I came across one paper that I suspected might have been plagiarized. The tip-off was the wide range of sentence style and vocabulary. One sentence looked far too simple, the next one looked far too complex. (To jump ahead, the student didn't plagiarize, but was having significant trouble.) I met with the Professor for the class and we talked about it. She said that we should meet with the student to find out what was the deal. The challenge was to arrange all three schedules together at once. The student proposed a time to her, and then she asked me if the time the student suggested would also work for me. I said yes, but that I needed a confirmation to ensure that the time proposed was going to be the actual meeting time.

Purely by chance, I stopped by the professor's office to hand back some quizzes that I had recently graded. To my surprise, she was in the meeting with the student. I sat down and was available for a little less than five minutes before the student left. The professor was not too happy. I apologized profusely, explained that the adjustment to grad. school has been particularly difficulty for me, and described what I was doing to get everything caught up and not be kicked out of the program altogether. She thanked me for giving her the context, and I sheepishly left her office feeling like a big jerk. Until I realized that the mistake was hers not mine. She was supposed to get back in touch with ME. In my mind there was still a question about where we were going to meet. To be brief and to understate, I felt a bit annoyed.

Ugh. I'm on page six of the problematic seminar paper, and I need to finish it up in the next week so I can be straight with the financial aid office and continue with school. I'm also realizing that to have a job in this field there are two huge factors in doing well: performance, which should be obvious, and appearance, which isn't. Doing well in your courses is only half the battle, you also need to both exude a confident professionalism that assertively impresses practically everyone you meet. I could summarize it by saying that it is like office politics, but somehow it feels more sinister than that. Keeping this in mind, this guy is my personal hero of the moment.

:: z. 5:40 PM [+] Permalink ::

...

Friday, February 06, 2004

Gunga Done 

It occurs to me that most kids today, when they hear Gunga, they immediately think of the craptacular Star Wars character Jar-Jar Binks. Wasn't he a gungan? As I am thirty, all of the modern popular-culture points of reference are becoming harder and harder to keep up with. If I were fifteen again, I would probably know what species Jar-Jar was as if there were an instinctual part of my brain that focused solely on movie trivia such as this.

Yet, sadly, no. My title does not refer to the lovable Jar-Jar (insert irony here), instead it refers to a recent paper that I have finally completed about Rudyard Kipling. Author of Gunga Din, Kipling has been oppressing me with his short story "False Dawn" for the past several days. With space for only four pages, I attempted to argue how Kipling was critiquing the English colonists in India in an attempt to reform the empire and not reject it. Immediately, one can see that my paper was about as craptacular as Jar-Jar. Not that the idea is completely wrong-headed. With some tweaking of the logic, and extensive research, I could write a sufficiently decent paper with such thesis. What makes this work so craptacular is that I tried to argue that thesis in four pages. I could have used more time for revision of course, but I had none. I'm just glad it is, as I said in the title, done. While maybe not a full fledged miracle, I'm going to take this minor achievement as a blessing.

:: z. 5:51 PM [+] Permalink ::

...

Thursday, February 05, 2004

Brief Miracles 

This blog will necessarily be brief because I am still buried under a mound of work that continues to pile up despite my best efforts to vanquish the aforementioned pile. It hasn't been an easy week for me, and the ones coming up are promising to be even busier than the ones before. Why am I making all of this vague? To be honest: I'm not quite sure. So how's this for specificity, I have two short papers to write, research to do for three (15+ pages) seminar papers, four classes to teach, about a dozen more books to read, and countless, countless, oh-so-freakingly-unbelievably-countless more academic articles to read. This cruel mathematics of work makes accomplishing small victories seem like mockeries. Instead of thinking, "hey! I got that paper done," I instead think "oh-my-god! I just finished a paper, but there's MORE to do."

Frankly, it is beginning to worry me because I'm not sure my poor old thinker (aka the B-R-A-I-N) can absorb it all so quickly. I'm hoping that this relentless assault of information will somehow do just that--osmotically filter into my consciousness--so I can emerge from the graduate school experience with a degree and future prospects intact. Talking with the other grad. students, I discovered that falling behind is not that uncommon. Yet, I only pray that I don't make a routine experience stunningly unique by falling further and faster behind that anyone else in the history of grad. school. I tell everyone to wish me luck, but I really should be asking them to pray for a miracle to be sent my way. I really, really, really need one.

:: z. 9:49 PM [+] Permalink ::

...

Sunday, February 01, 2004

No room for Martians 

I thought that I would put this link [Martian Rovers] in one of the side bars of this blog, but I got to thinking: where?

How quickly have I neglected some of the information that I put there. Mostly, I visit the other blogs on a regular basis, and I do check out the daily readeria stuff--but I need to reorganize a bit. Yet, as seem intent on imitating a broken record, I must return to the oft-repeated refrain: I don't have time. My main focus right now is to stay current with posting; maybe in the spring I will do an overhaul. Who knows? Perhaps at that time, I'll even shell out some cash for a place to host some images. Although it would be hard to keep up with posting images as well as entries, I'm sure they'd freshen up the site a bit.

:: z. 1:28 PM [+] Permalink ::

...