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.