Best $30 I ever spent

This week I made an appointment at my old hair salon. I haven't been to it since I moved away five years ago - partly because I was gone, and then once we came back, there was little need since I was wearing my hair long. Not to mention, it's location isn't very convenient.

This week I made an appointment and when I got there said "My hair is a disorganized mess. Make it better" or something along those lines.

I wish I had done this months ago. Although I've lost some of the length I had last week, my hair can't by any stretch of the imagination be called short. My stylist didn't recognize me, but hey, last time I saw her, my hair was about 3" long, so I can understand. But she is just as fabulous with long hair as with short. I cannot believe how different that cut has made me feel!

It isn't just the hair. I look in the mirror and feel like I look younger, more beautiful, happier. I know it's not just the cut, but eliminating the frustration I sometimes felt when it was a couple of inches longer has worked wonders. I never would've thought a haircut could do that, but it did. Amazing!

Sunshine and wine

The sunshine in California was absolutely wonderful! I adored being able to sit out on a patio, drinking wine, having great conversation with good friends, then eating barbecue, more wine, and a tour of some really gorgeous country. Life could be fun if every weekend included a day like that...

I suppose if I really did get my wish, I *could* get bored of it after a while. Not the sunshine or the wine. But I suspect I'd run out of interesting things to say to interesting people.

I guess it's a bit like what my mother told me when I complained that I couldn't have my favourite meal every night. She told me that if I did, it wouldn't be my favourite anymore and I'd get tired of it night after night. What made it special was that it was so rare.

So I suppose a Saturday afternoon in Napa/Sonoma with good friends (and wine) could fall into that category. But I'm also pretty sure that it would take a lot of Saturdays for me to tire of it! Such generous and wonderful friends I have!

San Francisco

Conferencing is going well - We're about half way through the conference, and so far everything that I wanted to do or to see has gone off without a hitch.

I saw my advisor yesterday - gave her a chapter (which she seemed genuinely glad to receive), listened to her paper (fabulous!) and had dinner together with a number of her colleagues, which was fun. I don't quite think of them as my colleagues, but I suppose if I want to joint their ranks soon, I'll have to get used to that!

My paper went off fairly well this morning too. We had a miscellany of papers on the panel, and I wasn't quite sure how they would all fit together, but it turned out that they fit very nice - and that's always a good thing when that happens. I'm moderating a panel later this afternoon, which promises to be a lot of fun as well if the conversations I've been having with people are any indication, so I'm looking forward to that. Here's hoping the rest of the conference comes off without a hitch too!

Sleepy and fat

I'm not surprised by the latest finding that sleep deprivation leads to weight gain. I've always known that when I'm the most tired is when I feel like I just want to eat! And the more tired I am, the more fat I want in what I'm eating. Though I also tend to drink more when I'm sleep deprived. Not intensely tired, just not getting enough sleep.

It makes sense I suppose that when the body hasn't had enough sleep, it needs extra energy during the day and you feel hungrier. Good thing I've been (mostly) getting enough sleep - otherwise I'd be ballooning!

(Un)forgettable

A few weeks ago, a colleague and I were laughing when we figured out that our boss was confusing the two of us. Before we figured it out, we'd both been confused at various times because he would tell one of us something and think the other one knew it. We had a good laugh.

But I don't feel like laughing any more. Today my boss mistook me for someone else! Now there are three of us who he is confusing... or maybe just confusing me with two other people. I've often been mistaken for someone else before, but this strikes me as a tad ridiculous.

I guess I haven't made a good impression, or at least haven't made a memorable one.

This day in (blog) history

March 13th must be a good blogging day. Since I began this blog, I've written a post each March 13th, so I suppose now is not the time to stop posting...

On March 13, 2007, I wondered what the world needs with another English major. The answer was "a lot!"

On March 13, 2006, I introduced yawp.

On March 13, 2005, I struggled with figuring out what of the mountain of things that needed to get done I would do first. Coincidentally, I'm struggling with the same thing today, except the list of things that HAVE to get done first - the urgentnotimportant - is longer than it was that day.

On March 13, 2004, I celebrated the return of a working computer and the easing of academic requirements for a particular course.

So, what's going on today?

Well, I've got way too much marking to do. We're only in the second week, and I feel a little overwhelmed. Already. I think it's mostly because I didn't get a break between the last term and the start of this new modified term. And I've got to create a podcast for one class next week that I'll be missing for the PCA conference.

At least the conference paper is mostly there. It needs some theory in the middle, and I'll need to trim up the plot descriptions in order to stay under the time limit, but I think it's doing what I want it to - that is, to provoke conversation about the definition of the vampire. At least I hope it will. The conference schedule itself is getting really hectic with meetings, dinners etc., so my down time will be minimal, but if it's at all like other PCA's I've attended, I'll enjoy myself immensely.

The good news is that I think I circumvented the virus that was trying to take me down earlier this week. On Monday I started feeling that heat and itchiness around the eyes that usually signals a cold and on Tuesday, my cheeks (sinuses) started aching too. Today, neither area is feeling any worse, and if I can take good care of my body for the next few days, I may have dodged the worse of the bug. Here's keeping my fingers crossed.

So this March 13th post is pretty boring. But it's not like it's the first time I've posted a boring post. Thanks for suffering through oh my faithful reader.

I have no idea what to title this post

Writing has been very challenging for me lately. I've felt the absence of writing peers desperately lately and could really use some encouragement as I slog through my current phase of writing.

It's not that the writing's bad. It's just that there's so much going on right now that prioritizing is becoming a problem. You know, that feeling when you have so much to do that you don't know where to start? There are just so many things that are "urgent" and "important" or even just "urgent" and "not important".

I really do try to categorize things according to that cross section, where urgent+important gets done first, urgent+notimportant and important+noturgent get done in various combinations next, and noturgent+notimportant get done last. But it's interesting how both noturgent and notimportant can so quickly change into urgent and important when you don't get to them.

Lately,

• a job application
• taxes

have been urgent+important

with

• student marking

always taking up the urgent+notimportant category.

Yes, you heard what I said. My student's writing is not as important as mine. Mine will dictate what kind of job prospects I have. Theirs is loose, casually constructed and sometimes done under duress because they have to take the course. But I am paid to respond to their writing and they need that feedback in order to complete the course in time, so it gets categorized as urgent. But it takes away time from what's really important to me.

I've actually made some progress, but most of it has been of the rearranging/editing kind for the dissertation, so it isn't really growing. Harder to see the progress when you're shuffling things around, though the shuffling is a really good thing. I was trying to pack way too much stuff into my introduction, and by distributing key sections of it to other chapters, I managed to chop its monstrous size in half. Now I can build up the parts that need building without feeling like the introduction's becoming a two headed monster!

But before that oh-so-important task of dissertation editing, I need to finish writing the conference paper for next week. It's about half there, but it's really unstructured right now and needs some form to hold its bagginess together.

The Tomorrow's Professor blog has had some interesting posts on writing lately, particularly about how to unclutter your writing, but I find that much of their advice is to do things I already find myself doing. No help there. Apparently I know what to do, and I'm doing it fairly efficiently. I'm just not doing enough of it. Simple.

Sometimes I think the frustrations I have writing the dissertation are similar to the frustrations dieters or smokers have. I can read all kinds of books, get all kinds of advice, but when it really comes down to it, I just have to write. When you're trying to lose weight or quit smoking, you can spend all the time in the world talking about it or reading about it, but it really comes down to action. If you want to lose weight, burn more calories than you take in. If you want to quit smoking, stop putting cigarettes into your mouth and lighting them.

If you want to write a dissertation, quit whining and start putting words on paper.

There. That's my advice to myself. Do you think I'll take my own advice?

Being mom

The other day I walked past a storefront at the mall called "The Mom Store" and although I didn't look in, as I walked past, it didn't seem like it was a store for moms per se, but for babies because it was filled with strollers, cribs, toys, bath aids etc. And I found myself thinking what a misnomer the store was - it should've been called "The Baby Store" (though I suspect that name had already been trademarked, hence The Mom Store).

Then this week, I came to the realization that the gradebook I'm using is running out of room and I'll need a new one.

Yes, I know there are online gradebooks, but I prefer to record attendance and grades on the spot in an actual book. And if you're going to accuse me of being a luddite for doing so, you haven't been paying attention to this blog.

My point is, I've been searching for a replacement and every place I look, the only record books I can find have little hearts, or teddy bears, or stars plastered all over them. Ugh! What do high school teachers use? Are you seriously telling me that they ALL just use Excel? Nobody uses paper anymore? In not being able to find a plain record book suitable for adults, I'm a little offended that "teacher" seems to equal "grade-school teacher" only. Just like the "mom" in the store name mentioned above really translates as "woman with a baby".

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There have been several times over the last few years... okay, actually, the last couple decades... when I've come across various arguments about being a mother and identity.

Often the article (or more lately, blog post) has been written by a woman who is about to become a mother, or who has recently become one. These writers often worry that their careers will be damaged, that they will talk endlessly of their children (much to the boredom of others around them), or that they will somehow lose their identity.

Their arguments all just feel so disconnected from the reality I live in.

I've been trying to work out why. Am I defective? If everyone else feels their identity is forever changed by having kids, why don't I feel the same way? Did I miss something? Does that make me a bad mother?

The nearest I've been able to figure out is that having children when I was young meant that I skipped over all that worrying about identity and careers and such. Not that I'm advocating having children young. Or advocating not having children young. It's just that I think having children young inherently skips over this question. After all, when you're in your early twenties, you have yet to establish the career that could be potentially damaged by having children. Not having had a career before the kids came along, meant that my worklife post-kids couldn't really be compared to worklife pre-kids since the pre-kids part was so short (and was what I would define as "work" as opposed to "career").

And how do you worry about eroding your "identity" when you've barely begun to develop it yourself? I can see how living as an adult for a decade or more before having children, could make the decision to have children feel like an entire change of identity. I understand those kinds of changes that make you wonder who you will be without ____ [fill in the blank with whatever is relevant] I suppose when you've only been an adult yourself for a few years, becoming a parent gets mixed up a bit with becoming an adult, so that being a parent seems like a natural extension of adulthood. No traumatic change here, just part of the package. Not that mixing up adulthood and parenthood isn't without its (potential) pitfalls, since separating them again after the children grow up could create problems.

I think it's telling that whenever I might try to do so, I have great difficulty imagining myself as not-parent. Some people can remember not being a parent. For me, there never really was an adult me that wasn't a parent - what adult years I had that were childless were short and so close to adolescence that they sometimes don't even seem to be adult. Adulthood and parenthood are really one and the same thing for me - they're synonymous in my vocabulary. Again, not a good/bad thing, just the way it worked out.

All this isn't to say that having children at a young age is a good thing. On the contrary. There are a lot of things that I did the hard(er) way because I was doing them with the kids. For instance, it would've been nice to be an adult student without balancing family life the whole way through. And I know there are things that more financial stability (which older parents usually have) would've provided my children that they didn't get. Then again, we simply lived the lives of a family living at or below the poverty line. There were plenty of other people in that boat with us, both with and without kids.

So it's not a matter of good or bad, just that for me, I never experienced an identity crisis in becoming a mom. But I do feel like we generally forget that "mom" isn't a cookie-cutter label. It isn't just "woman with a baby" or "woman who gives up career" or "soccer mom" or any of the other labels we so easily slap on it. I'm still a mom even after my kids can get their own breakfast (ah! sleeping in again on the weekend), dress themselves, drive a car, fall in love, live with their boyfried, have kids of their own etc.... It never ends. My mom is not only a grandmother but still a mother as well.

So why do I feel like I'm being pushed out of the category of "mother" now that mine are growing up? If there's an identity crisis here, it will be learning to be an adult without being viewed by society as a mother at the same time.

Articulating a teaching philosophy

I've been trying to write a teaching philosophy over the past few days. It's an interesting exercise fraught with what seem like numerous pitfalls. Advice ranges all over the place and the lists of "do's" and "don'ts" seems endless. I've decided the only real solution is to focus on what I do and let the advice go its own way.

But when I think about how I teach and why I teach the way I do, I find that my teaching philosophy seems to be a result of negotiating between contradictions.

On the one hand, it's important for students to see the relevance of what they do in the classroom to their lives.
On the other hand, they need to learn basic terms, ideas, and critical habits whether or not they're "relevant" to their lives.

On the one hand, post-secondary students are adults.
On the other hand, especially junior post-secondary students are not experts in the conventions of their field or the academy and they need to be taught the behaviours expected within the post-secondary educational setting.

On the one hand, I am not an entertainer.
On the other hand, I need to gain and keep the attention of my students if they are to learn what I am trying to teach them.

On the one hand, I am the one expert in the room.
On the other hand, collaboration with peers can be a powerful way of learning.

On the one hand, students need to know how to use available technology in order to succeed in their fields.
On the other hand, I need to use the best tool available to convey an idea, even it its one of the simplest tools available (like say a pen and piece of paper).

On the one hand, course objectives are there to set ou the minimum expectations for everyone in the class to achieve.
On the other hand, each student comes into the class with their own strengths, experiences, weaknesses, and goals, and I need to be able to recognize and respond to those differences.

On the one hand, the semester is very short.
On the other hand, what I teach can last a lifetime.

See what I mean? The way I teach and the reasons that I teach the way I do seem to arise out of these conflicts. I use technology, but only when I think it will be the best way to convey information or to facilitate learning. For example, I've always like to teach film. But films are between 1 1/2 and 2 hours long usually, and unless you have a three hour time block, it's difficult to show a film in its entirety in one session and then have a significant discussion about it. But showing a film and then discussing it several days later also tends to be less dynamic because the students don't have the experience of watching it immediate to mind. But the last time I taught a film, I required the students to log onto a threaded discussion and continue discussing a film we watched earlier that day, which provided an immediacy that you can't get by waiting for the next class meeting and generated a good conversation. In this case, the technology is a tool that helps me provide the students with a richer learning environment.

But at the same time, I also often use a comprehension exercise with my students that requires them to graphically represent one of the readings they've done. I supply the markers and colored paper - they supply the interpretation. It's simple, but students regularly tell me that having to visually represent a written text helps them understand the text better.

So where do I stand on technology in the classroom? Well, it's nice to have (when it works!) but it isn't the solution to every pedagogical problem.

So what do I write in the teaching philosophy about technology? I suppose I'll just have to say "it depends". But I think the tension produced by all these conflicting ideals is what produces my explanation of how I teach and why I teach the way I do.

It just seems unsatisfying to say that my teaching philosophy emerges out of contradictory impulses.

Church Bulletins

Thank God for the Church ladies who type them. These sentences actually appeared in church bulletins or were announced in church services:
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The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.
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The sermon this morning:
"Jesus Walks on the Water."
The sermon tonight:
"Searching for Jesus."
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Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.
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The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been cancelled due to a conflict.
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Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say "Hell" to someone who doesn't care much about you.
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Don't let worry kill you off - let the Church help.
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Miss Charlene Mason sang "I will not pass this way again," giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.
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For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery down stairs.
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Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir.
They need all the help they can get.
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The Rector will preach his farewell message after which the choir will sing: "Break Forth Into Joy."
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Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.
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At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be "What Is Hell?"
Come early and listen to our choir practice.
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Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.
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Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.
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Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.
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The church will host an evening of fine dining, wuper entertainment and gracious hostility.
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Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM - prayer and medication to follow.
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Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B. S. is done.
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The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.
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The Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.
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The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.
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Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance.
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The Associate Minister unveiled the church's new tithing campaign slogan last Sunday: "I Upped My Pledge - Up Yours”