Fall
The air got all crispified this week, finally allowing me to do some work in my airless office, which had been page-curlingly humid and 85 degrees. In October. End of the world and all. But now it's definitely autumn, and the Nowhere, WI Main Street Association has wrapped dried corn stalks around the streetlights. Starting next week the ground will be crunchy and brown underfoot as I trudge to campus, and everyone will have drippy noses and rosy cheeks. Fall is good stuff.
A couple friends that I haven't seen in years are rolling through Wisconsin this month. I'm getting really bad at keeping up with my friends, and if they don't call me back, I'm inclined to ring and e-mail them less frequently. I think the internet has the opposite effect on correspondence that we would've hoped. Knowing we can be instantly in touch with anyone we want has had the same democratizing effect on friendships that Google searches have had on information. I can just pull up Melanie or Ian or Jeff in a couple clicks, so why should I worry that they might be drifting into indifference. The machines make no distinction between nytimes.com and theonion.com and objectiveministries.com, so why should they make a distinction between my high school best friend and that interesting guy I met on a plane last year? We're codable, so we're discardable. Not to mention that keeping a blog (however sporadically) gives one's distant friends the illusion of being in touch without requiring them actually to be in touch.
Quality of life on the $8.15/hr Assistant Professorship varies from day to day, with a direct correspondence between my state of mind and the amount of grading I have in front of me. And it can truly be atrocious. One of my students wrote a paper the last word of which was "and." Another titled her essay "Gender as According Hemingway's." English is not these people's second language, they're just barely monolingual. And this is supposedly a selective Liberal Arts College. Oh, well. I will make them slightly better, and that'll be an accomplishment. In the meantime, I have this crap taking up my brainspace while trying also to revise and resubmit an article on Dickens, write a chapter of my book, and find a job at a somewhat better institution.
I'm finding it an interesting contrast, being on the job market again at this stage. For one thing, having any job at all is a huge bonus. The air is clearer and I'm less desperate. I don't have to apply to the U. of Mississippi at Plumpot, for example. Also, I seem to know someone at every school I'm applying to. One of my friends is on the search committee, in fact, at one of the big, well-libraried, well-endowed universities, and another friend is the dreaded internal candidate with whom I'll have to compete for that cushy Seven-Sisters job out east. Some of these departments have interviewed me before, and although now I can talk about a couple more years of teaching and a book contract, I don't quite know what I'll say differently.
A couple friends that I haven't seen in years are rolling through Wisconsin this month. I'm getting really bad at keeping up with my friends, and if they don't call me back, I'm inclined to ring and e-mail them less frequently. I think the internet has the opposite effect on correspondence that we would've hoped. Knowing we can be instantly in touch with anyone we want has had the same democratizing effect on friendships that Google searches have had on information. I can just pull up Melanie or Ian or Jeff in a couple clicks, so why should I worry that they might be drifting into indifference. The machines make no distinction between nytimes.com and theonion.com and objectiveministries.com, so why should they make a distinction between my high school best friend and that interesting guy I met on a plane last year? We're codable, so we're discardable. Not to mention that keeping a blog (however sporadically) gives one's distant friends the illusion of being in touch without requiring them actually to be in touch.
Quality of life on the $8.15/hr Assistant Professorship varies from day to day, with a direct correspondence between my state of mind and the amount of grading I have in front of me. And it can truly be atrocious. One of my students wrote a paper the last word of which was "and." Another titled her essay "Gender as According Hemingway's." English is not these people's second language, they're just barely monolingual. And this is supposedly a selective Liberal Arts College. Oh, well. I will make them slightly better, and that'll be an accomplishment. In the meantime, I have this crap taking up my brainspace while trying also to revise and resubmit an article on Dickens, write a chapter of my book, and find a job at a somewhat better institution.
I'm finding it an interesting contrast, being on the job market again at this stage. For one thing, having any job at all is a huge bonus. The air is clearer and I'm less desperate. I don't have to apply to the U. of Mississippi at Plumpot, for example. Also, I seem to know someone at every school I'm applying to. One of my friends is on the search committee, in fact, at one of the big, well-libraried, well-endowed universities, and another friend is the dreaded internal candidate with whom I'll have to compete for that cushy Seven-Sisters job out east. Some of these departments have interviewed me before, and although now I can talk about a couple more years of teaching and a book contract, I don't quite know what I'll say differently.
posted by James at 9:16 AM
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