Patusan and the South Pacific

Okay I have read the rest of the book (Lord Jim), and the events are a little more clear now. First, I should say that Jim did not go to trial separate from the other crew. The German captain was also tried and found guilty. The consequences of their actions resulted in the loss of the licenses that allows them to be merchant marine officers. Therefore, Jim is not distinguished from the other crew members. The narrator, Charlie Marlow, concerns himself primarily with Jim's character because he wants to solve "the problem" of Jim's character and find out what makes him think the way he does. The question is important for Marlow because he frequently mentions how Jim was "one of us." Here is my best summation, and interpretation of what happens next:

Jim, devastated by the loss of his license, and the knowledge that he acted cowardly in the Patna incident, take various jobs working on behalf of shipping companies. However, he only works at these jobs until the point people discover his involvement in the Patna episode, upon which he leaves for another port to find another job. These series of exiles continue until, ironically, everyone seems to know about his past making it impossible to run away from it anymore.

At this point, Marlow intervenes and finds Jim a job with shipping company run by a mysterious man named Stein. Stein appoints Jim to a post on the Island of Patusan, an island inhabited by the previous company representative, a Portuguese man named Cornelius, and the native inhabitants--South Pacific Islanders who, thanks to an Arab foreigner, are apparently all Muslim. Jim distinguishes himself to such an extent that he becomes the virtual King of the Island. He, with the blessing of a particular chief, makes war on the other villages and succeeds in uniting the Island under his rule. As one of the only white men on the Island, Jim attains a mythic, almost God-like status among the villagers. And of course, Cornelius has a daughter that falls in love with Jim, so Jim takes her for his native wife. Jim names her Jewel.

Jim, living in this Island as a virtual King and God, seems to have escaped the humiliation of his past. Until, one day, when pirates show up and start killing people. The tribes turn to Jim for help, so Jim arranges for the pirates to leave without a fight through negotiation. But the pirates, jealous of Jim's power and stung at having been repulsed by mere villagers, seek revenge. Before they leave, the pirates attack a native outpost killing the chief's son. The chief, horrified and disconsolate, now knowing that Jim is not some kind of super-being, kills Jim as a kind of retribution. End of novel.

The implication throughout all of this is that Jim's basic problem is that he is a romantic. He persecutes himself over the Patna episode and exiles himself from Western Society. It is his sense of Romance that impels him to send the pirates away rather than kill them outright. And it is his sense of romance that leads him to face the chief at the end of the story, where he might know (I'm not sure) that he will be killed. Jewel accuses him of knowingly leaving her, and in a sense, he does.

The interesting connection here for me is the fact that the people he abandoned on the Patna and the people of Patusan are all Muslim. In the first instance, Jim left them to die what he assumed would be a certain death. In the second instance, he defends the Muslims against the whites and faces a death that he feels he should have faced on the Patna. This may be why Jim feels him must face the chief, rather than escape. It is romantic because he must think it courageous to face death, especially over an issue of honor: he must think it is honorable to account for his role in the chief's loss.

Of course, it should be remembered that throughout this novel are most of the 19th century prejudiced assumptions about race combined with their belief in the inherent superiority of white western peoples. For me, that Jim becomes a local god among the natives smacks of the insidious paternalism that is one of the disgusting features of racism; this kind of thinking goes along the lines of, "These people are such children. Obviously, they need my help." Of course, while the novel, or Marlow as the narrator, may suggest that Jim is helping the natives acheive success until the moment the chief's son is killed, what Jim is really doing is using the native for his own purposes. He is absolving himself of the guilt he feels. Like Ophelia says, he is no hero.

The Patna

I'm halfway through Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad's ambiguous novel about the exploits of Jim, a sailor experiencing shame and remorse for his actions aboard the Patna. I say ambiguous because it is rather uncertain what he has done to feel so ashamed about. Here's what I think I know so far:

Jim is a mate on the ship Patna, transporting approximately 800 Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. While in the red sea, they hear a bang, and Jim investigates. He finds a large bulge in the bulk head an immediately knows that the ship is going to sink. What's more, he knows that they do not have nearly enough life boats for the amount of people currently on board. The "white" crew members, including the German captain, scramble to release the life boats without the pilgrims waking up. Jim, who has delusions about being a hero, jumps into one of the lifeboats, but he is taking the place of another white man who has already had a heart-attack, and so is dead, but Jim doesn't know this.

(I'm not sure why it is wrong for him to jump in the lifeboat with other crew, aside from the fact he is leaving 800 people to die on the ship, but then so is the rest of the crew. The reason it appears to be bad is because he took the other man's place.)

Suddenly, a storm comes upon them, and the frantic scrambling to get off the boat becomes more frantic because the crew, Jim especially, knows that a swell will sink the boat for sure. However, even though the white crew members see the lights go out on the ship and tell themselves that the Patna has sunk, a French ship comes upon the boat and tugs it to harbor. Jim faces trial for some reason.

However, why Jim faces trial separate from the other men is a little confusing to me. From what I understand, the other crew is just a guilty as he is. If it is because he took another man's place in the life boat because he was scared, I don't see why he should face trial for that. The real trial seems to be in Jim's own mind. He, rather than being a hero, convicts himself of being a coward because he thought of himself first, and did not do anything to prevent what he assumed would be the assured death of 800 human beings. I'll finish the rest of the book tonight. However, if anyone has any comments or opinions that would clarify this situation, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Recovery

Yesterday afternoon, the police called to say that they found my car. They asked if I could meet them where my car was found in fifteen minutes. They said that I would be able to avoid the towing fees that would be applied for an impound if I could be there quickly. The previous night, I had spent about an hour regretting the loss of my car and wondering if there was anything I could have done. I no longer wished for vengeance like I had in the previous post. I didn't want to drive a loaner car. And I didn't want to have deal with the increased insurance fees that certainly accrue. I simply missed my car.

My heart jolted hearing that it had been found. Since I was already working on the computer and was already on the internet, I surfed over to Yahoo Maps and found the address that the cops indicated where I would find my car. It was less than three blocks away in the parking lot of another apartment complex. When I got there, there were two cop cars and four officers standing around laughing about something. I approached them.

One of the officers was the same guy who took the initial report on Friday morning, Officer G-----. Officer G----- asked me if the car sitting in the corner of the lot was mine. There it was. It was in the furthest lot away from the road, completely out of sight behind a fenced-in garbage bin. Another car parked next to it had the passenger side window broken out of it and covered with plastic. I identified my car for Officer G----- and inspected the inside of it. Although the inside of the car was a mess, the result of the thieves searching for something of value (and not finding anything), nothing appeared to have been stolen or damaged. Even the change in the ashtray remained. "What'd I tell you," officer G---- smiled, "I knew we'd find it intact." He was also right about it still being in the neighborhood. He said that on Friday when he took the report.

When the other cop car pulled away, and me and Officer G----- went over to his car to fill out another evidence report. I asked him if he knew who took it. He said that he didn't. I signed the report, a copy of which he gave me this time, started my car, and left. About an hour and a half later, feeling curious, I returned to lot to inspect the apartment buildings surrounding the area. I saw that there was still a police car in the lot. Maybe the thieves were still around. Not wanting to get too much more involved, I left--this time for good.

I spent about a half hour driving my car and wondering what I should do next. My girlfriend says that it really does not make much sense to invest in any security features because it is unlikely that the car will be stolen twice (relying, of course, on probability). Furthermore, any investment on my car should be applied towards making it run better. I'd really like to have a trunk monkey, but a nicely worded letter would get about as much return as anything else.

Dear Mr. Thief,
If you steal this car again, I will pee on your cornflakes and shave off your eyebrows. Don't think it won't happen. Me and the Dali Lama are surveilling this alleyway, and while I know kung fu, he can shoot lasers out of his eyeballs. Plus, he turns green when he's angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.

I guess I still feel pretty weird about the whole episode. It turned my weekend upside down, and now I realize that I'll always worry about my car being stolen. I also realize that there may never be any answers or explanations for why this has happened. I can speculate that it was one guy or two, that it was fraternity prank, or desperate action of a hungry, homeless man. I can waste time guessing, but I have to admit that I may never know who did it or why. As I have already called my insurance company, there'll be more on this situation later.

Stolen!

Last night, sometime between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m., my car was stolen. It's rather hard to believe that someone wants a fifteen year old car that runs like a lawnmower in a rock quarry, but there it is--or isn't I guess I should say. (According to this website, my make of car is the third most frequently stolen, and so is the year, and the color. Third place all around! Here's fun, try a find if your car is on the list! Yay! I kind of wish I knew this beforehand.)

Initially, I was stunned and stood stupidly looking for it in the gravel lot where it had been parked. Although I feel I am a rational person, I had to admit that I felt some initial self-doubt. Could I really trust myself that I had parked where I said I did? Did I drive home yesterday, or did I take the bus? Slowly, the details came back to me. No, I remember checking to make sure that I locked it, even circling the car to check the doors.

When I called the police, I said: "I can't find my car." The shock had not yet sunk in. They, being used to the bad behaviour of individuals, quickly helped me realize that it was stolen, and not merely missing or inadvertantly towed. Apparently, there's a State (or city?) database that tracks all of the tows that had been made within a certain period. If it had been towed, then they would know. My car was not on that list.

They said they were sending an officer over to talk to me. It took forever for the cops to show up, like they always do when you've been the victim or witness to something like this. While I waited, I tried shutting out the rest of the world so I could grasp the reality of my stolen car. It was hard for me to concentrate on other things. Consequently, I needed to go back inside my apartment and sit on the couch.

When the cop arrived, he introduced himself and asked if he could have a seat. "How are you doing today, sir?" he said. "I've had better days" was my depressed reply. He sat at the kitchen table and began filling out a form (a police report?) that was on goldenrod paper. I gave him my identifying information and my driver's license. He asked: "Does anyone have permission to drive your car?" Immediately, I thought of a COPs show scenario where they have pulled over some guy in stolen car who is mildly complaining that he was a "friend" of mine and I gave him permission to drive the car. He asked me if there was anything distinguishing about the car, and I told him that I couldn't think of anything off-hand. (I should have said something like: "Distinguishing how? You mean other than the fact that it is fifteen-year-old piece of crap?")

He asked me for the VIN#; I couldn't find my title, and the theif, of course, had my registration. Fortunately, I dug up my insurance policy which had some information on it. I sat at the table and listened to the cop tell me stories about how they almost always recover the car. This was heartening. "I personally," he said, "found twenty four cars myself. There was a car stolen from a lot near here that we found just recently." I asked him how long he thought it might take to find my car. It seemed a reasonably, if overly hopeful, question to ask at the time. He said, "You can't tell. I could drive out of here right now and find it in five minutes." He said that many times theives don't drive the ill-gotten cars very far, perhaps only a few miles or just a few blocks.

After more clear-headed reflection, I realized that I unconsciously supposed that the cop was going to automatically fix the situation and that my car would magically return by his very presence. I wanted, needed, to believe him about recovering the cars--and partially, I did. Of course after he left, I realized that he did not leave a copy of the police report, nor did he leave a business card. Hell, I didn't even know his name. I took this as evidence of the fact that such happenings are routine for him, and his offered assurances were perhaps more mechanical than genuine.

And then, once the cop was gone, I was left with the decision about what I should do for the rest of the day. Obviously, I was going to have to call my insurance company and make some kind of claim. And obviously, I was going to have to call the Police department for the police report. Once I had time to think more clearly, I recognized that there were a lot of others things I could have told the cop about my car--there are scratches on the windshield from the time I tried to shovel snow off the front it with a broken shovel, there are student parking stickers on the bumper, there are (as my girlfriend reminded me) a couple of ancient and petrified french fries underneath the seats. My decision was that I was going to do what I originally planned on doing. There's nothing else I really could do.

I'm still angry about this (although not as strongly as this morning when I first discovered my car was gone.) I should have the right to park in any legal space. Hell, I should have the right to park in an illegal space with the expectation that I'll be fined heavily and towed, but that my car will not be stolen. Although not much money to some, I paid about $6000 dollars for that car. I spent countless hours working at a job I hate to get it.

Briefly, I had a contradictory feelings: I want to get my car back, and I somehow want my car to rise up against them. Will the steering go out at a critical moment, or perhaps the brakes will stop working. If they use as a getaway car for a crime, perhaps the car will not start when they are trying to effect an escape. Mostly, I suppose I really want justice. I want whoever did this to stand trial, and if proven guilty, to go to jail. I want them to feel bad about taking something that wasn't theirs. So far, I've decided to take meager consolation from the fact that along with my car, they've also stolen a couple of ancient french fries and an empty McDonald's bag. It's not much, but it's the only thing I've got at the moment.

The Tables have Turned

I suppose that I have no right to complain. After all, this is probably just a taste of my own medicine. What the heck am I talking about? Keep reading.

Not many people know that I have had to take incompletes for the first courses I took in graduate school. It wasn't something that I sought out, but rather a necessary consequence of the difficult adjustments that I was undergoing during that time. I know that I have a tendency to lament the amount of work that I typically have to do for school. However, the first term really was a bit of a shock. Fortunately, I was able to finish up one of the incompletes last term. Now, there is only one other left.

But, time is getting short. I absolutely must have this incomplete resolved in the next three weeks. Add to this project, which is a full-blown seminar paper, I have two other seminar papers due within the same time frame--papers that will require a staggering amount of research and work in the next couple of weeks.

So what about today? Today, I was to receive the rough draft of my seminar paper for the course that is still incomplete. However, when I met with him during his assigned office hours, the professor admitted to me that he did not have it done. Despite his promise to read it, despite his assurances that he would have it ready for me last week, despite our other conversations about how necessary it is for me to finish this up--he did not have it done. He said that it was still sitting on his desk at home.

His explanation was that his wife has just recently had a baby within the last two months and that he has been busy assisting with the kid. It is very easy to see that he is a happy father, a proverbial "proud papa." I understand this. I have turned in too many late papers to frustrated professors not to know how life can sometimes reach up and smack you in the face sometimes.

And yet, it is hard not to feel increasingly apprehensive about the prospect of getting this paper completed in the next couple of weeks. I sincerely hope he follows through with his promise to conduct an e-mail appointment with me over the weekend. If not, I'm afraid I'll have find out where he lives and call him at home. Not quite the proper protocol for a grad student, but, hey--I'm getting desperate here.

1000 words

In a move that will probably be unnoticed by anyone except a handful, I finally figured out how to post pictures to my blog. It has been over a year, but it's done. And I really couldn't be happier. Of course, this means that I will have to start taking some pictures, and do to that, I need to get my hands on a digital camera. I'm still a word nerd at heart, so don't expect too much in the photograph department, especially for now. However, once I get the expendable income and the expendable time, I plan on playing around with this new picture ability for some time. Bless you Blogger.


Photographs are here! Now, I can get funky!
Posted by Hello

By the way, while I'm here, if you can please take the time to answer the poll at the bottom right hand side of this page, I would be much obliged. There are some new templates that are awfully attractive. I've also discovered that while I use a handful of links in the columns a lot, some of the information appears to be redundant. That is, unless of course, you guys think that it has some value. In any event, if I do change the template, I'd probably keep most of the side stuff anyway. We'll see. But, please, if you see this, please vote. Thanks in advance.

Lessons and Lessened

The internet is not just a place for e-mail, instant message, news, or culture. It has it dark places too--the least of which, but probably the most familiar, is the presence is pornography. It is these other places that I worry about most. Adults, who take seriously the ability to think critically and be responsible members of society, absolutely must decide what they stand for, so they can make decisions about their own morality.

One of the darker sides of the Internet revealed itself with the web broadcasting on Tuesday of the horrific killing of an American contractor in Baghdad. Although I am consciously, and very deliberatively, abstaining from the too-often-poisonous political rhetoric that infects public discussion of the war, I feel I must add my voice to the others who have near-universally condemned this barbarity. No-one, regardless of politics, or even previous atrocities, should have to die this way. The torture (not abuse) of Iraqi soldiers is reprehensible, but so is the killing of hostages. The colloquialism holds up: two wrongs do not make a right.

What has perturbed me today are the various sites--sites which I will not even refer to in the slightest way--that are mirroring the graphic video. While surfing on a particular site and reading the usual political commentary surrounding this tragic event, I was shocked to discover that people, primarily young men, have rooted out the footage and are seeing for themselves. And there are more than a few places that are hosting this, for lack of a better word, satanic video.

Aside from a few individuals infected by a diseased love for violence, there are some people who argue that the footage needs to be seen, that we must be a witness to happens in war, so once everyone is sickened by these atrocities, society will change for the better.

I disagree.

While it is sometimes necessary to be a witness to violent acts--such as the brutal effects of war on society, famines caused by greed or embargoes, or genocidal acts like the Killing Fields in Cambodia, Germany, and Rwanda--it is not necessary to see these kind of acts for the healing light of public exposure to root out the perpetrators of such acts, and so that justice can be fair but not willfully ignorant or blind.

Justice should be the primary motivating purpose here. Was it justice for the allies in World War Two to reveal the previously hidden genocide against the Jews, which was perpetrated by the Nazis? Did we need to expose the brutality of those acts to a disbelieving global public? Yes, I believe it was. Would it serve justice to see this footage of the American’s death? No, I do not believe it would be.

I will not see the video now or ever.

I am making a choice based on my own sense of morality, which is derived from my own sense of justice. This is precisely what I am arguing everyone on the Internet must do, right now. You don’t want to be the person who stumbles into one of these dark corners of the Internet and see this video, piqued by your curiosity, not thinking of the consequences. There are some things that you can not un-see. Take seriously the words of an individual who, by his own confession in the public comments of the site I mentioned, has watched it: “I am lessened for having seen it.”

Rain and Architecture

Rain. Nothing but rain all day, but it fits my mood lately. After class today, I intended to turn in some paperwork to the administration building. But once at the front counter, after a ten minute walk across campus, I discovered that I forgot the paperwork I needed, which was still on my desk. I had accidently left it there this morning. Consequently, I ate a brief, and unhealthy, lunch on that side of town.

As it was raining hard, drenching the grimy sidewalks and flooding the barkdust surrounding the school's decorative irises, when it came time to walk back, I decided I would make my way through the other buildings. Normally, I would have stuck the sidewalks. I wish I had the expendable income for a decent digital camera and a reliable image host because I would post my impressions of the walk on this blog--perhaps one day. I discovered that I work in probably the most ugly building on campus. Some of the entry ways of these other buildings are truly beautiful, and most have an inner courtyard that looks really inviting. Also, there is a character in the older buildings that is entirely missing from the 60's disaster where I am currently ensconced.

Now, I am stationed in my office where I will spend the better part of the evening. With the exception of meeting some English 104 students who are unhappy with their grades, most of what I have planned for tonight is reading and grading mid-terms from the aforementioned class. But to prevent dullness of spirit and my eyes from glazing over, I think I will take another walk before it gets dark. Probably around dinner-time.

Re-visions and Returns

More than ten years ago, I worked at a factory that made printed circuit boards. The quick summary on that long story is I hated it, but didn't think that I had much opportunity to do anything else. I now consider it my first introduction to how the class system works in this country, but back then I saw it as a certain type of fate. The one good memory that I have of the place is when me and few of my coworkers, also working-class grunts, went out in the parking lot at two a.m. to get a good look at comet hyakutake. It was bright, the tail was long, the break from the horrendous work we were doing was refreshing, and the fact that the comet shone against the stars over a darkened field of tall grasses and weeds made the experience memorable.

But, as I mentioned before, the work was terrible. Twelve hour days, low pay, and frequent exposure to harsh chemicals and the occasional x-ray, which is above and beyond the petty office politics that must occur in every job, was an angle grinder on my soul. The prospect of it continuing felt like a condemnation. To adopt the discourse of recovery, I "had a moment of clarity" when I was hanging half out of chemical etcher scraping out the organic residue that grew like a grimy ring in a bathtub. The hydrochloric acid seeped into my gloves and stung my skin, the gas mask made it hot and difficult to breath and also cut into my neck. And being on my knees for about an hour, half bent over the lip of the machine made my back stiff. My earlier fantasies of going to college returned with the force of determination. Consequently, I enrolled at a local community college and began the path to where I currently am, a grad student with the goal of one day teaching college English and Literature courses.

The community college experience was almost one of religious conversion. Not only was it a tremendous contrast from the factory, but I soon found that it was truly something that I enjoyed doing. I discovered that my most enjoyable classes were the English and Writing courses. Going to the small buildings in the shade at the edge of the campus to take those courses was a genuine pleasure. I first read Hamlet, discovered my love of writing, and was able to approach language from the new perspective of having a voice, something to say. At work, no-one cared what I thought because I was hired to either be told what to do or tell others what to do. There was hardly a thing that I did not enjoy learning at the community college.

Several years later, I am a graduate student who may soon teach college writing courses rather than take them. But today--May 7th--I am actually back on the same campus. I walked around looking at how some things have changed and think about the past upon seeing the old rooms and buildings. Perhaps one day in the future, I may have the opportunity to teach here. I think it would be wonderful to give that back to the spirit of life, to be able to help other students who may be stuck in jobs or life circumstances that they hate, and help them discover their own talents, and somehow find within themselves an ability to pull themselves out of the compressing circles of misery.

I even happened to meet a friend and former classmate from my undergraduate university, G----. (I think I am going to adopt the 19th century Victorian mode of referring to people's names by the first letter.) G---- took a job here as a counselor, helping middle school and high school students see college as an option for them by taking them on tours of local unversity campuses. G---- and I caught each other up on what we had been doing since the year we last saw each other. In a weird way, G---- was impressed that I had gone to graduate school, and I was impressed that he had a job in an academic setting, especially a college that may want to teach at myself. I had always admired G---- for what I considered to be his moral integrity. Although much more has happened today, I suppose the lesson that I am going to take from it is that presents you with opportunities, and you, somehow, begin the process of sorting them out. Perhaps I still believe in fate, but I also believe that if you live your life with good intentions and effort at having some purity of heart, life will bless you in ways you don't expect. So while there may be fate, there are no "real" curses--not for those intentionally trying to do their best to be a good person.

School and Taxes

I've paid my taxes, and thank goodness that they're all done. Normally, I would have taken them to a tax preparer and said "take whatever money you want, just get the darn thing faraway from me." However, my girlfriend persuaded me that my former approach was ridiculously extravagant, especially since my taxes are ridiculously easy. Consequently, we used the turbotax program that she had on her computer. It still cost about 25$ to file electronically, but overall, turbotax was a relatively painless experience. Maybe next time around, I should buy the program myself and have it installed on my own computer. A basic Quicken program was something that came with my new laptop, and, I have to say, I really think it's a really handy program to have. As a person, who has a lot of hangups with money, I think I'm beginning to relax about it a little.

School continues as always and I'm still behind in work, but what else is new? On Tax day, I sat in the back of class to watch the instructor I TA for try desperately to capture the utterly bored students' attention. He wasn't succeeding. In fact, one of the students near where I was sitting was actually doing her own taxes during the lecture. I watched her looking up information in the tax tables, and presumably filling out the short form. I admit I was impressed that she seemed to both start and finish her taxes all within class time. It's kind of amazing what students will do when they're bored in a large class of 100 students. They don't think the professor can see, or really cares (which he probably doesn't). Close to where I usually sit, two guys normally have their laptops open, and one of the students this last time was developing a website, presumably for a project in his computer science class. English professors who are a certain age are the worst with technology. Half of the time, they're not sure how to get the lights in the classroom to turn on. Usually, when I enter the classroom, which is always five minutes before the professor, I make sure to turn them on and raise the projector screen. Otherwise, the professor would spend about ten minutes looking for the buttons and asking if everyone can see in the dark. Although, I guess I should stop, because judging from the students' interest, those ten minutes might be the only amusing thing in class.

Dinars for Sale

The other night me and my girlfriend were watching television and saw Iraqi bank notes for sale on a home shopping channel. These, apparently, are the old notes with Saddam Hussein's picture on them. (From a site that lists the bank notes of various countries.) Normally, I don't like to share my personal politics on the web, but I have to say that selling these things as mementos causes me feel a little uncomfortable.

On the one hand, I can understand the desire to have a personal connection to a historical event, or some other kind of personal experience that one wants to remember. After all, why does one take photographs of special occasions, or buy cheap souvenirs while on vacation if not to have a tangible reminder of something one wants to remember. My grandparents have kept a newspaper from 1969, the day astronauts landed on the moon, and I admit to thinking that it was somewhat cool when I saw it. On the other hand, in certain circumstances, the kind of mementos that come from difficult or tragic experiences could cheapen the original event somehow. Not many people are comfortable with political officials taking rubble from the trade center as mementos of September Eleventh, although it has already happened. I think that buying Iraqi dinars from a home shopping network to remember the Iraqi War has similar shades. Many horrible things have occurred during the war, and many people have died. Whether a hunk of rock or an Iraqi dinar, my sense is that it eventually boils down to the same thing.

I'm still ambivalent about this, but I guess I think it depends on one's personal connection to the event. If you were personally and directed impacted by the tragic events in question, then if having a memento or a souvenir helps your mourning process, I see no problem. But, if your goal is capture a bit of history by collecting something you can hold in your hand or place on your desk, then please move on to beanie babies, snow globes, or traditional antiques. Let the dead rest in peace.

Password: The Simpsons

A difficult term is now over, and with the cliched "promise of spring," I am looking forward to the new beginnings ahead of me. I have two new classes that I have not fallen behind in yet, and I have a new professor to TA for. Soon, however, things will pick up again, and once again, I'll have to confront the same issues, but with fresh mental armor and a new plan of attack.

Dr. Brown Shoes is now my instructor for my seminar in "Figures of Speech," and Dr. Too-tall teaches my "Science in 19th century American Literature" seminar. Both have written or edited texts that we are using in the course, which is something that I'm not sure how I feel about. On the one hand, I am getting information from knowledgeable people who are able to write an entire book about their subjects as they have obviously invested a significant amount of their careers in research and study. On the other hand, buying texts that they themselves have written is putting money in their pocket, in addition to the money paid for the class. Could be a conflict of interest, don't you think? Mostly, as the texts are relatively inexpensive, I feel okay about it, I think.

Dr. Khaki-pants is the professor who I TA for. In some ways, I feel sorry for the guy. He is unusual among most of the other professors in that he lectures for the full class hour. Most of the younger professors usually stop to have a class discussion or ask extensive questions. Today, he tried to point out the joke in a nineteenth century gothic novel. The irony, apparently, is that the scary, eerie stuff occurs during the day time. Illustrating a specific scene, the professor described how the main character slowly opens a chest placed at the foot of her bed expecting to see something truly horrifying. Instead, she peers inside and sees. . .gasp!. . .a counterpane. Here, the professor looked up expecting to see and hear the students' uproarious laughter. Instead, he got the bored stares of people who couldn't possibly have the slightest idea what a counterpane is. If he had told them that a counterpane was essentially a blanket, they might have gotten the joke and indulged his expectation a little, but just a little. He also tries to connect to his students by inserting passing references to The Simpsons within his lectures, but he uses the references like a secret password, expecting that the students will automatically connect to him if he demonstrates that he happens to know who Homer Simpson is. He means well.

As for future postings, I expect I'll be able to post more often for the next couple of weeks because it is the beginning of spring term and, like I said, I've got a fresh start. We'll see what happens around week seven or eight.

The Mental Cheese-grater

While not saying too much about it, I will say that I have had one of the more difficult weeks that I have had in awhile. Most of the seeds of trouble that have been slowing maturing these last few weeks are now being harvested in bushels of problems. And the resulting inner turmoil has not been easy to cope with. But, I am coping. The advice, which everyone has heard, but which sometimes needs repeating is this:

It is not the end of the world.

What is in the past is in the past, one should look to the future.

If one persists, results should follow.

And it is never as bad as you think.

That having been said, the past week has been pretty bad personally. I continue to struggle, but the future holds more promise. My girlfriend has suggested that we both spend just a couple of days during our spring break together not even thinking about school. Excellent advice in my opinion. I am really looking forward to being able to decompress and not have to press my mind through the mental cheese grater of seminar papers. Here's to the future.

In the Navy

I had told myself that I wasn't going to post anymore until I had finished the majority of my projects. However, I received the following letter from the Navy that I had to share:

Dear Zhaf Razhid,

I'm thinking you're anything but the typical engineering student. Destined for a desk job? No way. You'd rather be out there -- immersing yourself in adventure, intensive hands-on training, and increased management and leadership responsibilities. And fast!

Check this out. The Navy Nuclear Propulsion Officer Candidate (NUPOC) program pays a $10,000 sign-on bonus and up to $75,000 ($2,500 per month for up to 30 months) to finish college. . .right now.

There's more of the same in the rest of the letter. You duly note that the bold isn't my embellishment. It appears exactly like that in the letter I received. Oh, and this is also a good section:

Take it from me. . .you'll do more in a few short years than most people do in a life time - all before you're 30 - in the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Officer Candidate program.

Besides the weirdly awkward use of language to appeal to what the Navy assumes a young person wants to hear (e.g. "Check this out"), there's a couple of things wrong with the letter. First of all, I am not, nor have I ever been, an engineering student. I am an ENGlish student. I assume that whatever database I was entered into, someone or some computer, saw the ENG prefix and made the wrong choice. And if they are suggesting that I will see a lot of things before I am thirty, well--I'm sorry to say that they're too late by a couple of years.

I have nothing against the Navy personally; it's just not my cup o' tea. But as an English student, I couldn't help but try to give the letter a close reading. For example, when they write that I'd "rather be out there -- immersing myself in adventure," I wonder if you could substitute "out there" with Iraq and "adventure" with "being shot at." Plus, the idea of being an officer in a nuclear submarine hundreds of feet below the surface of the red sea does not sound that appealing. For one, no matter how great the air filters on a sub happens to be, I'm sure they still s-t-i-n-k. A couple of hundred men cramped in a stuffy tin can is not exactly a rose garden. Furthermore, living a few hundred miles away from a nuclear power plant is one thing, but if something major ever happened to go wrong on a nuclear sub, you could not exactly go outside and run away. Besides, if I were ever going to join the Navy, it would have be with guys like these. There the dancinest bunch of guys you'll ever hope see. (Just kidding. I'd much rather stay where I'm at.)

Lessons I've Learned in the Slough

Well, it's been a rough few months at graduate school. It has been a huge adjustment. The work load (something which I was prepared for) and the competing psychological pressures (something which I wasn't) have taken their toll. Yet, even though I have a major deadlines to meet within the next couple of days, I feel oddly calm. Perhaps it is simply that I have become too used to the panic, or I have become numb to all of it. Still, there is a part of me that feels I can get all my work done under time without too much trouble. While all of the primary stress is a result of real problems that had to be addressed, most of the secondary stress was self-induced, and therefore, unnecessary. Learning how to properly channel the stress, aside from developing good work habits, has been one of the most important lessons I've learned this term.

I'm still keeping my head buried in work as this is final weeks, but I thought I would remind myself, and share with you, some of the other lessons that I have learned here:

Make bibliographic entries on everything you read throughout the term. Don't think of bibliographies as assignments that you have to work on a few weeks before the due date. If you are always working on them, you'll always be prepared. Research is an on-going process.

Know when your best times are for doing certain kinds of work. I find that it is easier to write essays and seminar papers when it is daylight, easier to read texts when it is dark, and easier to grade during the breaks I need to take when doing a marathon session of either reading or writing.

For Seminar papers:

Always have respect for the author. Do not assume authors are less sophisticated readers than yourself, that they were not as aware of the various elements in a text, or that they did not anticipate the various possible interpretations.

Eliminate the notion of author intentionality in your argument. Do not discuss what the author intended, did not intend, or should have said. Focus on solely on what the text is doing. Explore the tensions between elements.

Do not discuss your argument in terms of the response that a reader should or should not have, or how the author meant to affect a reader in a certain way. Every reader is different, and each “reading” is their own.

That's it for now. I know it is a lot of stuff, but that gives you an idea of the things I am trying to keep in mind when I am slogging through my piles of work. I'll check back in relatively soon to give you an idea of how things are going. Until then.

Mission Impossible: Seminar Paper

The bibliography was finally completed, but not without the usual amount of stress and worry about the whole thing. My next mission, should I choose to accept it, is to finish all of my seminar papers sometime this week and the next. Truly, there is no sadder and more stressed out creature than a graduate student. My girlfriend is in the same boat; recently she stayed up all night working on a project for school, not going to bed until 8:00 a.m. in the morning. Frankly, I'm impressed and a little jealous that she has the physical ability to stay up all night working. I would do the same if I could, but I don't think I'd make it much past 3:00 a.m. It is a time of night (okay, morning) that works like judgment day for me. At that time, I must confront the grim reality of the remaining work before me and recognize that the only thing I have a few minutes for before falling asleep is thinking about the consequences that I will have to face in the morning as a result of not having the work done.

The professors seem to recognize that this is how the system is built. It almost seems like they are fully aware that we will not be able to complete everything that they ask of us done. The challenge is learning how to get as much of it covered as humanly possible and then figure out which things you can let go of with the least amount of repercussions as possible. I find that this is a somewhat chilling thought.

Last night, another fellow grad. student admitted to me his trouble of balancing his teaching (a freshman writing course) with his own work as a student. "Frankly," he told me, "I don't usually read my professor's assignments during the last two weeks of the term." A surprising admission from someone who is an English graduate student, whose assignments include reading major works of literature, and someone who, although a novice instructor, has at least a couple years of teaching experience. Although I suspect that he may not be typical, I deeply sympathize, because I have seen the work loads assigned and felt them myself. I can only look towards the future and pray I will not fall into as many traps as the next person. But, as with everything, my main thought is primarily on the work before me. Although I have said it before here in the Cellar, it is time for me to mush!

Bibliographic Realization

Today my mission to complete a Bibliography for tomorrow. Of course, now that the pressure of getting this beast of an assignement is upon me, I realized that it would be much better to create a bibliography on everything that I read as I go through the term. Every class I have had has required that I read various articles to help inform the readings that were assigned for the term. Just the morning I thought, "hey, I should have done an entry for those *darn things after reading them." To use a famous cliche, hindsight is 20/20. (* insert stronger word than darn.)

On another note, I have determined that if I am ever lucky enough to teach my own writing class, something I may have a chance to do in September, I will try to have a generous policy towards extensions. My own experience with professors who, on a mission to make life as difficult as possible, make life infinitely more difficult by ignoring the human capacity to suffer with life's challenges leads me to this new determination. Compassion is a virture that must be nurtured and developed. And no one should ever be expected to be perfect. While life circumstances may be unforgiving, people don't have to be.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Personal Battles

I seriously need to start thinking about the seminar papers that I have to write by the end of the term. And one of the paper needs to be at least eighteen pages long! I have never written a single paper that has been that long in my whole life. In one sense it should be good for me, but in the other sense--Holy Frijoles! What the hell am I going to say for eighteen pages? I've thought about writing about the events surrounding september eleventh and examine how people have created narratives as a way to help them cope, struggle, or overcome the trauma surrounding that day; essentially, this would be cultural criticism. Yet, I don't want to delve into the political issues surrounding that either, so I figure that I'm going to do something on a book about the Vietnam War. If I center it on a book, I will be closer to what I really want to do which is a study of language. But, as this early apprehension is boring you, I'll talk about the class I observed this morning (with no guarantees that it also won't be boring.)

For the most part, the class was a typical college writing course. The students were students, and the instructor was the instructor. I know this is tautology, but if you've been in a freshman writing course, then you'll know exactly what I mean. The one thing that seemed exceptional was a clique of about six guys in the corner who goofed off most of the hour. Yet, in an odd way, because they hated the essay that was assigned, they had the best discussion about it because they had to use critical thinking to pull the thing apart. One of the guys was obviously in the military because he wore a dress uniform--army, I think. I overheard a comment answering another guy's question where a machine gun hangs on your side when you sling it over your shoulder. I wonder if he ever thinks about going to Iraq. Briefly stated, everyone should read about 5 entries of Kevin Site's blog.

That's all for now. These papers are not going to write themselves. Besides if I write another thing today, it will an e-mail to my beautiful girlfriend, who I am looking forward to visiting in the Big City this weekend.

Cafe of Classes

Another study break. Primariliy, this entry will probably function more as a note for myself and as an encouragement to get ahead on all of my work. (But, I guess most of my blogs entries function that way.)

So, while I was sitting in the Library Cafe--a small busy, overpriced, but brightly lighted place--I got a call on my cell phone; the professor that I T.A. for wanted to talk. Holy Crap! What the hell did I do? Was it about the class discussion I missed because I overslept? Was it about the minor struggle we had over the class website? (I figured having one was a good idea, and she, essentially, didn't. She cited the need for personal interaction with the students, to which I reply: hunh?)

I had just finished a half hour meeting with one of her students to discuss revisions to his late paper. Innocently offensive, his paper associated the word "dark" with black people, drugs, and poverty. I had to explain to him and show him how what he meant was not what he wrote. I think he was shocked when I pointed it out to him.

When I told the professor where I was and what I was doing, she wanted to come over to talk in person, maybe even buy a sandwhich. Once arrived, she explained that she wanted to know if I would be able to teach by myself on the last day of class before finals week. There, apparently, is a disabilities conference for literature types, something which is the first of it's kind and is supposed to kick major you-know-what. As this professor has a son with cerebal palsy, she is really excited about going. Another fellow grad. student really wants to go, really wants my professor to go, and encouraged the professor to ask me if I would be able to cover for her. She apparently said, "Ask Zhaf to teach class that day. I've heard him talk in class. He can do it." I suspect half of my professor's excitement stems from the grad. student's excitement. Both have a personal connection to this issue.

Thus, as I am already going to be teaching two writing classes by myself for another grad. class, I am now going to be teaching two literature courses--one with the prof., and another by myself. So, in addition to the major grad. papers I should already be writing on, I am now going to have to teach four classes. As professor Frink would say: Great googly moog! I already don't get enough sleep. There's going to be a lot of pain in the glayving. Yet, it should be a learning experience for me; I just hope it might be for the students as well.

Night of the Living Deadlines

Okay, another quick entry for today. Even though I'm continually being smacked in the head by waves of work, I am managing to get some stuff done, which when I think about it is pretty incredible because I tend to suffer from the soul-sapping despair that accompanies a bunch of work that doesn't seem to have a clear or definite end. I stayed up far too late last night after working on the computer and managed to get four and half hours of sleep before returning to campus to begin the computer work all over again. I'm not kidding when I tell that I slept the sleep of the dead. I half surprised myself by not waking up and moaning "Brains! I need BRAAINS...grlahgggh."

The only thing that hasn't seemed to have worked out is the writing workshop appointments I have made to meet with students to discuss their assignment. I spent--and I am not kidding--about an hour and half nursing an over-priced coffee waiting for the student to arrive. Yet, I wasn't idle; I managed to complete plenty of reading, the sheer amount of which is an utter tyranny. Right now, I am checking my e-mail about once an hour, waiting for replies and confirmations from about five students for other appointments, so I don't have to wait that long again. (I can almost taste the panic expressed in their e-mails about the deadline. Time is devouring their equanimity and the remaining moments they have of non-panicked work on this assignment beast. As a fellow student, I can relate.) Actually, I wouldn't mind spending six or seven hours in the coffee shop, but I wasn't able to checkout a laptop over the weekend as I have been able to in the past, and thus am chained to a desktop computer in the grad. computer lab. Still, the work will continue tonight, and I am seriously looking forward to Tuesday when I can start my next paper which is due the following week: fun! (Feel the irony of last sentence! Taste the excitement of new assignments!)

Yet, I do enjoy my classes and consider myself lucky to have these kinds of opportunities to learn, something which I am indeed doing. The challenge is trying to avoid being zombified, which as reflected in the movies, means more long nights to come.

Work, Work, Work

It seems that I have been having a relatively hard time keeping up with this blog. I must admit that I feel that I am still adjusting to the demands of scholarly life. And yet, I feel that I have more of firm grip on this term than I did the first, even though there is way more work to do. Besides three graduate seminars, I'm apprenticing with a more experienced grad. student so I can learn how to eventually teach freshman writing. Yet, perhaps more importantly, my personal life (read: relationship) has been solidfying into a kind of stability, but with the realization that relationships take an enormous amount of work. It's nothing that can be taken for granted. I'm still pretty much committed to maintaining a daily blog for the forseeable future. Yet, with the amount of reading that I've had to do, with the looming deadlines of seminar papers rising on the horizon, I don't think that I'll be able make it a daily thing. Instead, I think I'll try to shoot for three or four posts per week. I hoping that I can devote more time to the quality of the entries as the quantity may go down. (But as a plea to my handful of readers, don't abandon me yet. There's more to come.)

I don't have much else to say, except that when I think of something I'll try to remember this blog and share it here first.

FSI (Fiasco Scale Index)

Ugh! Today has been nothing short of miserable. Hurricanes, Tornadoes, and Earthquakes all have some particular system of designating how their particular event measures up. For example, a class five hurricane is immensely more destructive than a mere tropical storm, an earthquake that measures 9.0 on the richter scale will level anything standing, while a 1.0 or a 2.0 will be barely felt. Therefore, I propose we develop a system whereby horrible days can be scientifically quantified. A miserable day can either be a mild headache-inducing nuisance (1.0) to a full-blown fiasco (5.0). My day so far ranks between disaster and fiasco, a respectable 4.5.

Furthermore, this has been one of those rare days when a single event cascades beyond your control and spins quickly into a meandering chaos. In brief: I woke up late. Once in my car, I realized that I left my financial aid check at home and had to retrieve it. As I work up late, all of the parking spaces were full; therefore, I spent slightly over an hour following people to their cars imitating a very large vulture. I circled three separate parking lots before fate relieved me from that purgatory. I had to park illegally for fifteen minutes to return the laptop I checked out in order to avoid an automatic twenty dollar fine. (At one point, I seriously considered driving back home so I could take the bus. It would have taken me about the same amount of time to do that as it did to find parking.) To cap things off, even though I rechecked out a laptop from the library, I haven’t been able to find a wireless connection, despite the notices posted everywhere that the area I am sitting in should allow a wireless connection to the Internet. If this recount seems a little tame as fiascos go, it is purely because I couldn’t really detail all of the other minor annoyances that have merged into a perfect storm. I still have about two days of work to cram into a single day (today) and therefore need to bury my head in some books. I sincerely hope that today will be much better.

Theme Song

Another day done, and I admit: I am beat tired. I'm getting to the point where I'm realizing that I can't spend more time doing homework because there is only so much time in a day. Even though I've been working pretty solidly from early morning to late at night, I still have work and tasks that have to be left for the next day. Therefore, it appears that the new challenge is how to be more productive and get more work done in the same amount of time.

I'm not sure how other grad. students feel about it, but it seems that although there is more work to complete this term, psychologically it is not as difficult as the first term. All of the initial adjustments of the first term are complete, and now all that is left here on out is to discover how to embody what one professor has said "grace under pressure." A potentially emotionally draining experience, one has to figure out ways to keep the spirits up. Everyone should have something like this to cheer themselves up. If everyone could have their own theme song, the world would be a perfect place.

Study Break

This is an official break from studying as I am struggling to keep my mind interested in the material that I have to read for tomorrow. The subject matter should be engaging enough, but the presentation has my brain pleading for any kind of respite, hence: the blog. I could tell you about my day, that it has been a full day of non-stop work, that I still have hours of work to do tonight, and that I won't get all of it finished by the end of the evening. But I won't. My mind needs a break from work, so I'll tell you about my school life as a teenager.

Surprising absolutely no-one who knows me, I wasn't exactly the most popular kid in class. If all of your teen-years-life could reduced to The Breakfast Club analogies or comparisons--I was a cross between the Anthony Michael Hall (Brian) and Ally Sheedy (Allison) characters. I had all of the interests and mannerisms of the nerd, artfully combined with the odd creepiness of the freak. (Someone needs to develop a personality test based on that movie if they haven't done so already.) My bushy-Yahoo-Serious hair and weird habit of reading books while sitting on the floor of the hallways were about the only thing that distinguished me to the rest of the student population. Looking back, I have to say that I sort of hated middle school and high school, purely because of the social hell I'm assuming everyone has to endure in their own way. Thank goodness it's all over.

Bengal Blindness

I've only a couple of minutes to make a post, but it has been so long since I've been able to write anything here, that I figured it was now or never. I haven't given up on the whole blog thing; it has just been the mere fact that I am still behind on a lot of work that I'm slowly chipping away at to get done. For the curious, there is a major paper that I need to have completely done in the next two or three weeks. Combine that with the several novels I will have to read by the end of the term, and the numerous hours that I will need to log in the library doing research. Neither here or there.

Two things that I figured I would mention here. The first is that I had dream about a tiger--a real Bengal tiger that I was chasing around the northwestern United States train stations. What does this dream mean? I haven't the foggiest. All I remember is that I had to take the train to Seattle to find the tiger there and help people negotiate their way around him. Now that I'm remembering a little bit, I suppose what I was really doing was lecturing them on what do when they encountered a Bengal tiger in the train station--what to avoid when face to face with one, how to know what a tiger will do. (Specifically, never eat a hamburger in front of a tiger. It might make him hungry.) I'm not sure if the tiger got around by using the train itself, but the image a tiger in a business suit taking the six o'clock to Portland or Vancouver is rather funny--at least it is to me.

The other thing is the short non-fiction essay I had to read in preparation for my class. In it, a woman described what it was like to have her eyesight slowly deteriorate from childhood to her present condition as a middle-aged woman. Very nearly blind, she described what it was like to have worn contact lenses for the first time as a teenager, something which was a brand new technology then. Although I am not very nearly blind like she is, I have worn glasses ever since the second grade. I distinctly remember what a revelation it was to see individual trees on top of the distant hills that I frequently looked at--or how crisp and clear the moon was during some of the brighter nights. I had not known that I was missing anything, so to see it for the first time as a seven-year-old or so was truly a shock. Since then, I have a somewhat complicated relationship with my glasses. A part of my personality, they're something that I don't think I'll ever give up for contact lenses or corrective surgery. And I really don't want to.

That's all for now. I have to get to class now. As for future blog entries, I'll try to post more frequently, but I can't promise nothing. To employ a tired cliche, work will have to come before pleasure.

Updates

There haven't been many updates as there used to be. The first, and most obvious, reason for this was the mid-winter break. I did not have regular access to a fast computer, nor could I waste an hour or more of time fooling around on the internet. As a result, even if there was something that I wanted to post, I couldn't. Now, despite easy access to a computer, I need to devote more time to other things. All my intentions to write my blog with some kind of regularity during the school year are melting much like the ice that covers nearly everything outside. I could update the poll, put up the books I am currently reading on the left side bar, and work on the commenting system, but I really have to budget my time, and as far as things go, this blog requires an invest in time that I can't afford right now. Perhaps these updates will occur later.

As a side note, the comments here have really picked up. I wonder just who could possibly be making these insightful remarks providing me with much needed feedback. Whoever this person is, I'm guessing she's female and that she is assuredly much hotter than the surface of the sun--a billion times hotter. But that's just a guess. [As the fellows in Monty Python's Flying Circus might say: wink, wink, nudge, nudge.]

Alice B. Toklas

The midwinter break is over, and I am now once again at the computer lab getting ready for school tomorrow. The break has been tumultuous but not disastrous. Before it had started, I envisioned myself spending at least two weeks on the couch vegetating beneath the cool blue glow of video games and television. That did not happen. But right now, I don't have much time to explain what did happen as there is still much to get done before tomorrow morning--which, by the way, holds the promise of even more snow. Perhaps a school cancellation? I doubt it. (There happens to be slightly over two feet of snow at my parents house, one of the many places I've been these last few weeks.)

What I really want to mention is the odd dream I've had recently where I distinctly remembered the name of Alice B. Toklas. What creeps me out about her name is that I have never heard of her before my dream; yet she is a real person who lived and died well over thirty years ago. What's more, she happened to be a literary figure and therefore falls in the purview of my professional life. I'm not one to usually believe in the paranormal, so I figure her name must have registered in my subconscious somehow and has decided to come out only recently. I have fallen asleep in front of the television a few times which could explain her name lodging in my brain; or else, someone just outside the range of normal conversation had been talking about her and I absently must have absorbed that mention. Yet, I do have a certain, if uneasy, regard for the mystical and spiritual nature of humanity, so I wonder if I should assign some meaning to my fastening onto this name. Should I study Toklas? Will her work figure in mine somehow? Was her name on the handout for the reading group I'm in but don't remember. I'm sure her name will crop up again somewhere, but I'm not sure when.

Mid-Winter Break

This winter break is a glorious respite from the haggard overwork of grad. school life. Not that I don't enjoy school--I really do--but I was certainly on the cliff's dangerous edge for awhile peering over straight into the abyss. Of course, this doesn't mean that I won't return to that edge once break is over, but I'm hoping that I will be more prepared to handle the challenges it will present. Also, the paper that I'm supposed to write over the break has been haunting my mind for the last several days. I haven't written anything more on it, nor I have done any of the necessary reading for it to do a good job.

I have been to the beach on a mini-vacation for three days. Every trip to the beach is far too short. If you are able to spend a week or more at the coast during the off-season, I truly recommend it. Nothing compares to the stormy sea and the wind-tossed galleon-like clouds sailing above it.

I also have seen the third installment of The Lord of the Rings movie, and I must say that I really enjoyed it. In a way, it is a shame that the trilogy is over, but with the smashing monetary success this thing has had at the box-office, it won't take a genius to predict more sword and sorcery movies will be showing up in theatres in the coming year or two. Let's hope these new movies are more like The Lord of the Rings, and less like Legend or that Val Kilmer movie, Willow, entertaining as they are in their own way.

The Restaurant

Today, I was incredibly unproductive. Instead of grading exams like I should have done, or doing the laundry that has been persistently and silently building up in the hallway--a monument to soiled clothing--I spent most of the day watching television and surfing the internet. Most of what was on television wasn't any good, and when I think about the other things I could have done to waste time besides watching the tube--like read a good book, catch up on extra sleep, or even getting out of the house to watch a movie--I sink further into murky swamps of regret. Yet, there's still time to get all of the exams graded by tomorrow, so I'm not terribly worried.

I've been thinking about the last few weeks of grad. school. After the last day of one of my grad. school classes, a student whom I'll call Martha arranged a get-together at one of the local Italian restaurants--a small place with a nice atmosphere, but also obviously trying way too hard to be chic at the same time; it was a little overpriced for what it was. (You can dress a college kid up as a fancy French waiter and make him look like he has all the class in the world, but he is just a college kid after all, and in the presence of other college students like ourselves, he will easily slip into discussions about Spongebob Squarepants and college football.)

To digress for the moment, Martha is the other T.A. for the same ENG104 class that I T.A. for as well. We shared the T.A. workload over the course of the term. Although I envy Martha for her restless energy, it's an energy that she once revealed causes trouble for her. She's one of those women who are always doing three things at once, who always volunteers for too many projects, and cannot say no to people. Consequently, she suffers the physical result of such academic and social super-heroism in anxiety and unexplained night panics. She says that people often praise her for what is, essentially, her inability to relax and take it easy.

I was the first person to arrive at the restaurant, even though, by my watch, I was only five minutes early. I thought Martha would have already been there acting as host. Thus, I identify myself 'Nerd' for displaying typical nerd behavior--I showed up first. However, I apparently wasn't the only to arrive early. Only a minute after I walked through the door, someone else from the class arrived, let's say her name is Michelle. I suspect that Michelle was waiting in her car and must have seen me walk in, inwardly laughing at me for being the Nerd who didn't think to wait in the car like she did. Martha and her husband showed up just a few minutes later, and everyone else drifted in over the next twenty minutes and found their way to our table in a dim corner.

Overall, the dinner was nice and the conversation was okay. People mostly talked about their plans for the winter break; I am practically the only person not leaving the state to visit family. Yet, the part that has been bugging me ever since that night was the feeling like I did not fit in 100%. These students are a diverse group except in one regard--they all come from upper-middle-class backgrounds and have parents with advanced degrees. My background is consistently blue collar, and has been for several generations. Books learning was something to be suspicious of. (My grandfather likes to tell the story about how he quit the ninth grade because he did not want to do a book report. He never returned to school and joined the army instead.) Consequently, I did not have many ways to relate to my fellow students, except to ask if their papers were done, and how the weather was going to be where they were traveling. As you can see, we had scintillating conversation over over-priced spaghetti. (Please note the irony in the previous sentence.) It seemed most people were trying to vie for Martha's attention, or participate in the slightly bawdy conversation at the other end of the table. Whenever the woman directly across from me tried to engage me in conversation, I had the sense she was searching desperately for ways to force a topic of discussion. It seemed I wasn't an interesting enough person to talk to as much as I was a rather boring, slightly challenging, assignment.

I'm not sure why all of this has been pressing in my mind lately, except that I know it has something to do with my feelings toward grad. school. Everything is all jumbled together and I don't know what the connection is. Of course, I also don't want to overthink it either. Without delving too deep, I suspect that it has a bit to with competition. Directly confronted with fellow students having a good time at dinner, who have all the assignments completed, and who, while claiming to have had serious trouble with their assignments during different parts of the term, seem to have it together--the same way sports teams talk about a minor slip-up in the championship game they've won by a landslide.

This may be my last post for a week or more. I'm going on my winter vacation to the coast, where I hope to relax and prepare for the upcoming term. Even though it is cliche to say so, I'll be a little wiser and will have a better idea about what is involved to do well. God willing, it will be a great new start.

The Almost-Last Day

Today is the last official day of the term. The campus has largely emptied of students and faculty, and now is largely haunted by janitorial staff, student workers at the library trying not be bored, and more than a few overworked grad. students haggardly trudging through the darkened hallways of buildings that are the seat of their variously chosen fields. As I am the T.A. for an ENG104 class, I still have about twenty more exams to grade by Monday; Tuesday is the last day for the professor to submit grades. Thus, tomorrow morning, I will be making the trip back to the campus and my office to get them done. My office, a depressing yet workable space suffused with fluorescent light, is less depressing in the morning when there is more natural light. Also, as none of the other four people I share it will be working that day, I'll have it all to myself.

In a desperate frenzy of work (lamentably uncompleted), I have been able lucky enough to have a laptop checked out to me steadily for three days. Three days! Mind you, this is no small feat as one is allowed to check a laptop out only in four hour increments. Thus, I have been at the library checkout desk requesting to extend my time at least four times a day during the second half of the week, the last request for each day being an overnight checkout.

I'm dearly hoping that I'll be able to work out something over the winter break that will allow me to purchase a computer. Even if I lived on rice cakes for the rest of the year, sold my blood every day, and scrounged through all the cushions from all the couches I ever sat on for loose change, I still wouldn't have the money. My only hope is a financial aid program, which more and more seems like a tenuous gamble on my future, the bet being a PhD and a good job against a huge debt that is accumulating as I write these very words. After an essentially demoralizing term, this bet is seeming less like a sure thing.

Beside completing all of the unfinished work that I have to do over the break, I'm intending to spend a lot of time reflecting on what I can do differently to make the next term go much more smoothly. Obviously, the first lesson I learned the hard way is to start much more earlier on the term papers than I did. But, I'm sure there are other lessons that aren't as obvious and are going to take some exploration. Basically, I'm sure it all boils down to learning how to mush! A friend told me that what everyone should understand about grad. school is that on your first day, you're already four weeks behind. He's not kidding.

The Winds of Obsolescence

Most of the computers that I have been using on campus do not have a floppy drive, something that presents a real problem when I need to save my work for another day. In the past, I've e-mailed my assignments to myself through the internet, using internet mail as free storage device. Normally, this technique works pretty well, except I have to spend about five to ten minutes formatting my paper as the email systems not only take out bold, italics, and indentations, but do not even pretend to consider such things like margins or font. When you're an English major and are required to use strict MLA formatting, these picky things become important. While I may not remember the finer points of Husserl's concepts of phenomenology as it relates to criticism, I will always remember basic MLA formatting right until the day I, euphemistically speaking, slip from this mortal coil.

Consequently, I bought myself a jump drive aka flash drive, aka thumb drive, aka usb drive for forty bucks. Probably not a bargain, but a full twenty dollars cheaper than the college bookstore. When initially shopping around for a solution to my storage problem, I was confused by the constellation of names this thing had. (New technology has always had a problem with names, I suppose. Apparently, as a result of the invention of the telegraph and telegram, it was popular to refer to your autograph as an autogram. Not quite the same problem, but close enough to demonstrate the potential for confusion.) I call it a jump drive, as that is what it calls itself when it is plugged into a computer. Not wanting to be insensitive to my drive's preferences, I stick with jump drive.

Actually, I've had the drive for a couple of weeks now, but because my home computer is lamentably obsolete, I wasn't able to use it properly until today. Now, I have a sense of freedom that comes with the knowledge that I will not be subject to an internet connection for the retrieval of my papers. I know this is not a major milestone for most people, yet I humbly give thanks to all that is holy for this small grace proffered by the wizards of technology.

School and the Beach

After my last post, this one will probably seem anti-climatic. Suffice it to say, while I've not completely conquered all of the problems that currently beset me, I'm in much better shape than I was. I have until the end of the week to finish a paper that has been dogging me for far too long. I've got a decent start on it, so if I can finish it and earn a good grade--and I've been pleading with everything holy that I can--then I will have survived my first term of graduate school. One of the things that has been relatively easy to do has been reading How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez for the ENG104 class that I'm a teaching assistant for. It's nice not to worry (or read) about high literary theory for awhile and just enjoy something good to read.

Yet, despite the implication given from my last few blogs, I do have a life outside of school. And, no, I'm not talking about the too much television I've watched over the last two weeks. I'm planning to go to the beach over the winter break. I love visiting the beach during the off season when everything is gray and raining. There are hardly ever any people around this time of year, except when it gets a little closer to Christmas. For some reason, a select group of people love to celebrate the holiday at the coast. As for myself, I'm going to enjoy the atmosphere and the rest. I plan to make a couple of fires right on the beach, and maybe I'll even try to hike a little.

Weeks of Change

I imagine that one day I will look back on this period of my life and recognize it as one of the handful times, less than five or six, where the decisions I have made have significantly shaped my future. I'n twenty five years or so, I'm sure I will have forgotten about this blog, I will not remember my address at the apartment where I currently live, but I will remember these last few weeks as one of my lowest ebbs, the consequences of which will last for a long time.

I apologize if this sounds a little dramatic; it's not meant to be. It's my way of verbalizing a recognition I've been slowing coming to for the last couple of weeks. I'm sure that I'll overcome these present difficulties eventually. The next two weeks will be pivotal.