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!
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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.