Happy Holidays!

Even if your holidays are a mixed-bag of events and activities like mine, I hope that you enjoy yours as much as I do mine! Merry Christmas.

Whoa!

What a roller coaster of a few weeks it's been.

Thing is, it's been busy, busy, but not exciting, exciting. Well, maybe, annoying, annoying. But that's another story for another day (I don't think I can blog about the elearning job till it's over or my head will pop off. Let's just say I'm seriously considering quitting)

But academia went off the rails last month. Part of this was because this term I agreed first to a book review (easy, right?) but then to submit a paper to a collection. The article for the collection was one I'd been really stoked about earlier this year and then it seemed to have dried up, so when the opportunity came to resurrect it, I was excited! But it meant a lot of work at the end of the semester. Not really stress-inducing (that was the elearning stuff), but a lot of extra work.

On top of that, I had to head back to grad institution for a weekend in order to keep my student visa active. I made the most of my time there, but I really could've much better used that weekend to write the book review!

So I'm finally at the end of the semester. The review is still in pieces but the article is submitted. The last exam was on Saturday, so it's graded and final grades are calculated. They just need to be entered into the system.

But then the syllabi need to be written. And in a pique of frustration at both my introductory comp and tech writing texts, I changed them both for this upcoming term. BOTH! What WAS I thinking??

And I've got a new prep, with majors.

I am my own worse enemy.

So that dearth of posts lately? It will either continue because I'm working like a madwoman. Or I'll post more because I'm burying my head in the sand about just how much work needs to happen over the break. Which it will be remains to be seen...

Teaching Collaboration

I know it might sound remiss to suggest that I've not really collaborated with others in teaching before, but I think it's nonetheless fair to say that I haven't done much collaboration before.

I did receive teacher training in the introductory writing course that I was required to teach in my first year of the doctoral program, however it wasn't what I'd call collaboration as much as instruction. We did compare papers and did some group marking, but it wasn't collaborative in the way that everyone contributed equally to the process.

Over this last week, I had the opportunity to talk about tech writing with another instructor. I've always felt like my course is a bit different from others because I don't require the students to write a resume. Just about every tech writing textbook I've ever reviewed includes a chapter on resume writing, and I never really could figure out how I justify the writing of one to be an academic enterprise since there are so many other people out there willing to teach the skill. (I also have come to realize that my experience working in HR means that I often disagree with a lot of the advice that floats around out there, so I wonder if I would do the genre justice.)

But the other tech writing instructor told me she uses the resume as a way of starting to talk about the report project. I hadn't thought of using that way before. But it makes some sense. I don't know that I'm convinced that I should incorporate resume writing into my course, but I can see a use for them that I never have before.

I was excited about talking with another colleague who said she was teaching the Brit lit II course for the first time this coming semester. She is far more comfortable in the first half of the course, while I am in the last, so it seemed absolutely beautiful to talk with each other and use each other's strengths.

Unfortunately she is no longer teaching the course, so we won't have the same incentive to collaborate, though she did give me some suggestions for the pre-1900 material, which was helpful.

All this talk of collaboration makes me wish that I was in one of those disciplines that placed a higher value on collaboration, but perhaps I'll just have to keep my eyes open for opportunities when they do emerge.
*brit lit II - different strengths

I'm tired. How tired...?

I'm so tired that words fail me.

Or, to put it another way. I've doubted my ability to perform the scholarly work that I've undertaken in the PhD more than once during the process. I don't doubt I have the academic chops to do this work anymore. But I am starting to wonder if I have the stamina...!

Whew!

RBOC: Light at the End of the Tunnel Version

Three weeks to go.

• I have six more 8 am classes to teach. Not that I don't like my 8 am class - the students are great! and they're the one group that is still mostly all working and attending. But I really hate getting up early enough to get there for that class. So it will be nice when I don't have to do that any longer.
• I've had three 'date to withdraw' conversations with students. Two will probably stay, and one is deciding. Two more who should have the conversation with me are avoiding class and email contact. Their loss.
• I am saddened and depressed by the thought that the days will continue to get shorter for another five weeks. As much as I love those loooong summer evenings, we sure do pay in the winter.
• I am attending a conference for the first time in many, many years just as a participant. It's in two weeks, and although the timing is less than ideal, I will get to see some friends and hopefully pick up the draft of my dissertation from one of my readers. That means I can see how bad the state of things are, and get cracking on revisions. Good news.
• In another three weeks, I have to finish a book review and polish off the draft of an article. The timeline's tight, but doable if nothing goes wrong. Here's hoping the pigs don't infect me!
• I'm learning to juggle! I'm really, really bad at it right now. I can only manage a couple of passes with two balls without losing them. But it's kinda neat, and I'm sure with practice, I'll get much better at it. Who says you can't teach old dogs new tricks?

Joy of Teaching #16

One of the best things about teaching are the conversations you have with students who have made a conscious decision to attend.

The students I'm talking about are usually a little older (but sometimes only a year or two out of high school). They usually haven't tried something else and are now in their plan B position, but sometimes they are.

The students I'm talking about are the ones who are absolutely delighted with the idea of learning. They have decided to attend school for deliberate reasons (which do not involve 'getting a job' or 'making money') and they know what they want: an education.

I've had several of these students before, but this semester I have one who is eager to learn (but with enough wisdom not to monopolize classtime like some eager-beavers).

That's why it almost broke my heart to grade this student's last paper at a 'C' level because it failed to properly cite sources. It was a brilliant paper, well-written, nicely balancing the different tasks assigned for the paper. But it totally blew the citations. So I had to grade it down.

I hated it, but I couldn't in good conscience give it a higher mark with citation problems. Then I'd have to let everyone slide a bit, and then they'd never think it was important. And it is. I'm not just towing the party line on this one - I think citation is critical to academic work. So I lowered the grade.

The student got it. Although disappointed with the mark, the student told me it was a mistake that would not be repeated, which is a kind of learning I suppose. I hated that it came with such a high price tag - an 'A' paper earning a 'C' grade - but it was a lesson learned. And sometimes those tough lessons are the ones that stick with us. But it was a hard grade to assign.

The student? Absolutely engaged, eager to learn, and understanding that sometimes the mistakes we make cannot be overlooked and they have to hurt in order to be remembered. A student like that is one of them that makes teaching worthwhile, knowing that what you are saying and doing is not just interpreted as 'what the teacher wants' but 'what the expert says I need to do'.

Perhaps I enjoy such students because they validate my own sense of expertise in the classroom. I admit that could very well be a big part of what joy I get from teaching such students. But I'd like to think I enjoy teaching them because they get why I do what I do in the classroom, that it's not about me, but about showing them the way to their own expertise.

The students who are there, wanting to learn, not just pass the course, are ones that bring joy to teaching and make all the other grade grubbing, complaining, plagiarizing ones worth while. Not that there are many of those, but they do drag you down, especially since they tend to come in waves...

You know what's the worst thing about grading?

We talk a lot about how much we dislike grading. I have yet to meet someone who likes that part of the job.

But the worst part about grading?

The sneaking suspicion that despite everyone else's grumbling about it, they still are able to do it faster than you. Oh, and of course they write more erudite comments than I ever seem to be able to.

I just wanted to get that off my chest.

Halfway there!

Yes, we're halfway through the semester. Even if you count exam period, you can pretty much say the semester is half over.

Unfortunately more than half of the work of the course still needs to be completed, especially when I consider the mountain of papers that will still cross my desk before it's over.

But we're halfway.

The other thing that's halfway is my job letters. Yes, I'm almost halfway through my application list.

Of course, if additional postings come up over the next few weeks, that list might grow (that would be good!), but right now I'm halfway through.

But, boy, oh boy! do those application packages take a loooong time to assemble! When every posting wants something slightly different, and each letter needs to be tailor-crafted to the school, there's a lot of time that goes into these things.

The worst part isn't the time though... it's that niggling voice in the back of your head that tells you all these hours of work will come to nothing because no one will call for an interview and you'll be scratching around for work next year.

Man! I hate that voice.

I tell it to shut up all the time, but it just. doesn't. listen.

Today it's practically shouting. I'm thinking sleep might help, but wonder if it might just invade my dreams instead.

Here's hoping it doesn't!

Being pulled in multiple directions

I haven't posted in ages.

It's not that I don't have interesting things to say... I just don't seem to have time to organize my thoughts. Or more precisely, that the only thoughts I have time to organize are the ones directed squarely at clear and measurable aims that have nothing to do with blogging.

It's been a really strange feeling over the last month to be searching for a new job at the same time that I've been trying to throw myself into my brand-new job and do really great at it! But such is the nature of the academic market. I have a ten month term job, but if I want one to follow it once this one ends, I need to start applying right now.

Strange.

At the same time, there's the rather ironic observation that I've been making that throwing myself into a full-time position has actually given me a better appreciation of the kinds of positions I'm applying for in the next academic year.

Doesn't make it any easier to keep two mindsets going at the same time. The only way I can do so is to think of my new job during the weekdays, and my potential job for next year on the evenings and weekends. But it's still a weird division that clashes in my mind occasionally (and has led to some really, really strange dreams, but that's another story!)

I am loving my new job and even survived the week in which 85 papers had to be marked and returned. (It wasn't a pretty week, but I managed it.) We have some really interesting things going on at the school which are exciting, though of course being neck-deep in the middle of the semester sometimes makes it hard to focus on them.

But I wouldn't trade this for a lighter load - I'm learning way too much about how things work to wish the experience away! Here's hoping I find a bit better balance in November so I can return to posting.

Buried

Pick your metaphor, but the long and short is that I'm buried in work and writing letters. It's all so very important, all so very demanding, and all so (just sometimes) disheartening.

I promise to emerge soon... I'm hoping later this week!?

The benefits of just sitting on it

Last year around this time, I submitted a paper proposal on the social effects of zombies in Fido to both a panel at a conference and a call for chapters in an edited volume.

It didn't get picked up. This fact took me a while to get used to - I'm only human, and no one likes rejection - but I got used to it and started brainstorming which journal might suit it. I didn't get very far in the brainstorming because it is an article that doesn' really readily fit into a single category, and really seemed best suited for a special edition (or an edited collection!)

Well, I just got an email from the people I originally proposed it to, telling me they'll be putting out a second related volume, and would I be interested in contributing to that one?

Yes. Yes, yes, yes!

So my sitting on this, trying to figure out where to place it instead actually worked out well, since now I have a venue!

(I also have a two month deadline, but at least I have a venue...!)

Maybe a little procrastination isn't so bad after all!

Best to be prepared

Apparently the University of Florida has a disaster preparedness plan for zombies!

Classroom as cave?

I don't want to become that weirdo prof with the weird quirk, but I'm rapidly on the way there I'm afraid. I'm finding this term that the first thing I do when I enter any of the classrooms that I'm teaching in this semester is to open the blinds.

It's downright cavernous.

I can only assume that the instructor before me in each case is primarily using powerpoints and that's why half the lights are always off and the blinds closed. Thing is, one of the classrooms is north-facing, so there's never any glare. I've taught in this classroom in previous terms, and I can vouch for never having to draw the blinds to show anything on the screen, even in April, when the sun is higher.

I teach with powerpoints occasionally, but I'm finding this consistent drawing of blinds confusing. Part of the reason I don't use powerpoints very frequently is because I think they are structurally limiting, and students rarely interact with either each other or me when the screen is up. Another reason is that the darkness is just too much sometimes for students who are sleep deprived. I have students who have a difficult enough time staying awake with all the lights on and a discussion going on. Turning off the lights just seems to invite them to nod off.

So if the classroom is like a cave, does that mean we're presenting our students with just the shadows? I can't help but think of Plato's cave and the shadows that are just a poor representation of reality that we mistaken for reality itself.

Doesn't that sound a bit like a powerpoint? A shadow of the reality that effective pedagogy should aim at?

The good and bad of canons

I've been thinking about canon formation a lot lately and the publication of the JIL last week has of course raised the anxiety level that I feel about the canon to higher levels. I'm taking the meaning of canon to be broad, perhaps even so broad that what I'm talking about constitutes a field, but because I also see fields as being largely constructed of texts, and acknowledge that some texts are more central to a field, I'll use the idea of canon.

So for me, the canon is the texts that you start with when embarking upon the study of a particular field. You can carve it up into larger and smaller bits, but in some ways, it is easy to see how some texts should be tackled first, while others might be read after one has an understanding of the period.

And let's face it, the canon makes it easier to put together a syllabus the first time you teach a course, because you've at least got some idea of what kinds of texts the students should encounter in your course if they're going to go on to take other courses. (This mostly applies to introductory level courses, but could be applicable at higher levels as well)

Of course, canon formation is fraught with problems, particularly because you can't include everything, and sometimes the things that get included, or even labelled as important, are there for reasons that one might (and should!) question.

So there are serious downsides to canon (or even field) formation. One of my greatest regrets in not pushing to stay in medieval studies is the loss of comfort in a fairly clearly defined canon or field. After all, the primary texts are all there (even if some have yet to be unearthed or discussed) and no more will be produced. It is also a well and clearly established field.

Now before you jump on me, I realize this is an overly simplified explanation of medieval studies and it does not do justice to the vigour and intellect in debates about what constitutes the field.

But what I would point out is that in comparison with the literature of the twentieth century, it is far easier to talk about "medieval literature" as some kind of coherent whole, even as its parts are lumped together under that label than it is to talk about the twentieth century in some ways.

For example, where does the twentieth century end? You could define the field chronologically (as many fields are) and say that the canon could include anything written between 1901 and 2000 (or 1900 and 1999 I suppose). But there's already some debate about the first decade or so of the century as to whether it is more closely related to the Victorian period in the previous century, or to the modernists in the later few decades. So where exactly do you draw the line?

One could legitimately draw it at 1901 at the beginning of the century since that coincides with Victoria's death, but that is more relevant for British twentieth century literature than American or Canadian, or Australian, or,... well, you get the idea. The first World War might be an appropriate place to begin since it involved a radical change in outlook on life, society, nationalism, technology etc. and involved many people from different parts of the globe.

You also then need to figure out where to draw the end of the century, and that's where I think things could get difficult. Certainly Y2K is a candidate and fits very nicely with the calendar, but the hype about Y2K seems in hindsight to be such a joke, that I think I might be reluctant to base the definition of the field I work in as being bookended on at least one end by a joke.

Of course part of the problem in figuring out the line that one might draw between this century and the next (assuming that even drawing lines roughly chronologically is something that we want to do) is that we have so little of the next century to work with. After all, there's only been a decade on the calendar of the twenty-first century, and I'm sure in 1909 it would've been pretty difficult to predict even two decades into the future, let alone further. So the end of the twentieth century could conceivably remain in flux for decades, barring something global and monumental enough to change prevailing ideas or attitudes toward one or more aspects of social interaction or development.

(That's just one of those really long qualified ways of saying, "I ain't got no idea")

Though I do have an idea. I've been thinking about 1989 as the actual endpoint for the twentieth century as a period. My sense generally is that there is a radical difference between the 1980s and the 1990s. Even as I say that, I realize that part of that sense of difference may simply be a by-product of my own life at that point - for most of the eighties I was a teenager while by the nineties, I was a parent and a working schlepp - but I think we can also point to some interesting changes in culture that were reflected in literature.

First, 1989 was the year the Berlin wall came down, which marked an end to a decades-old era and a real hope for the future, not just of Germany, but for world peace and all those good kinds of things. Although AIDS emerged in the early 80s, it really only caught the public's attention with a series of celebrity deaths in the early nineties. The 1990s also marked changes in the space race and consumer technologies with the personal computer becoming affordable.

In literature, it seems at once a little harder and a little easier to characterize a shift between the 1980s and the 1990s. Part of the difficulty in seeing difference is the proximity of the problem - it is always easier to categorize a literary movement from afar than from up close.* Whether this is a problem with categorization or just a reality is hard to say. But literary postmodernism, and cyberpunk as a genre, seem to have mostly died around this time, and if we think of cyberpunk not as a species of science fiction, but as the ultimate expression of a kind of postmodern sensibility in literature, then there seems to be a shift between the eighties and nineties.

I'm hesitant to try to define that shift or articulate what I see going on, partly because I think I am too close to it to see it clearly, partly because what came after will undoubtedly only become clearer as we get further and further into it, and partly because I think my personal history and transition from childhood to adulthood is caught up in much of my general sense of it.

But if you had to pin me down to say "where would you draw the line between a course in twentieth-century literature and twenty-first-century (contemporary) literature? I would say that 1989/1990 would be the place to put that boundary.

*The prognostications of writers in the late twentieth century about metafiction and experimental fiction forms, or even about the death of the physical book were made over and over and yet looking back, many have not come to pass, leading me to suggest that when you're too close to it, it's hard to make predictions about trends.

Higher Education going to the dogs

Dog earns MBA. Nope, not an Onion story.

It may not be the water cooler...

...but I did have an excellent hallway conversation this week that has me pretty excited about the possibilities.

I ran into one of the philosophers in the humanities department across the hall from us and we started talking. We shared what kind of classes we were teaching and what we liked about them, and he told me he was teaching a philosophy of science course.

Since I read some science philosophy in the course of the dissertation, I asked him a bit more about the course, and we talked for a bit about different elements and ideas within the discipline. Although the course he is teaching this term is a basic introductory course, he did indicate that they were proposing a new kind of course for next year. It would be a gen ed course called "Social Constructions of Science" and they were hoping to put it together in such a way that instructors from multiple disciplines would be able to teach it, bringing their own experiences and interests to the course.

I told him I would be very interested in seeing the instructor guide and participating in the later stages of the course development when they start shopping it around to instructors in other disciplines to see how it might work on the ground.

I would love to teach that kind of a course. Even though it isn't a literature course, I think there's a lot of room within a course like that where I could potentially show students how literature might be used to engage with questions about how we understand science. I don't teach much literature anyway, so it's not like I'd be abandoning the teaching of literature if I took on a course like it, and I'm coming to realize that I will probably be happiest in a place where I could work more as a generalist than a specialist (as long as I could still continue to research as a specialist as well).

But the point of the story is that if I hadn't made an effort to get to know this other instructor's name, and took the opportunity to chat in the hall for a few moments, I wouldn't have even heard of this potential opportunity. So even if my group isn't going as well as I'd like, there are other opportunities. I just need to keep my eyes open!

Thinking aloud

I had an interesting meeting today with a couple of other instructors at my school. I suppose you could think of it as a professor support group, though it's a bit more than that since we also talk about teaching, sharing assignments, techniques and ideas about how to keep students engaged (or even awake!)

The university I teach at has a great system of support, and these informal groupings are just one of the programs that they encourage, which is really nice, but at the same time, I feel like none of us are sure what we want to do in this group. See, the problem is, the groups are ideally supposed to be composed of someone who has been around for a while, and then maybe a couple of new people.

In that kind of configuration, the person who has been around awhile gets to hear new ideas and such, while the new people get to learn those invisible ropes that no one tells you about and the rules that aren't written down but count very importantly when evaluation time etc. comes around.

Problem is, there are two of us newbies in the group, and our one member who has been around for a while has been around as part-time faculty for all of that time. Which means that the whole learning the ropes part of the group is less useful since part-time people are kept out of some of the loops. This is partly because the hoops and loops don't apply to them, but also partly because only a few part-time people who put themselves out there and get involved in everything and anything for several years are really noticed by the department.

In all fairness, this makes sense. When I was working part-time, I saw my job as teaching and little more. I was collegial and came out for events that interested me, but I felt no obligation to do a lot of the additional duties that full-time people are expected to undertake. So there is a real divide between full and part time people. It's not an overtly hierarchical divide, but it does divide the two groups in terms of responsibility and presence around the department.

Long and the short of it is, in this group we've formed, we can talk about classroom experiences, and maybe share ideas about marking or assignments, but neither of my group members are going to give me the inside scoop on what's what around here.

Guess I'll have to hang around the water cooler instead... too bad we don't have one...

This is getting old...

I just got a notice from one of the professional associations that I belong to - I am no longer eligible for the graduate student membership rate because I've used that for seven years.

That's a long time! Granted, I began my membership when I was in my Master's program, so that isn't just the doctoral program, but that's still a really long time!

Double your fun

My city now has two universities, not just the one.

It's been a long time coming, so it's pretty cool!

Training horses

This weekend we were invited to the acreage of some friends who are starting to breed horses and during that time, we were able to observe a training session.

It was interesting to see the mixture of authority and respect that is necessary to horse training. On the one hand, the trainer has to make it clear who's in charge. By on the other hand, horses are large animals, and they are so powerful that the trainer has to have a healthy respect for that power. It results in a trainer who might use ropes, or a whip (for the sound more than touch), or a strong voice, while keeping a respectable distance from mouth and hooves.

The power of the horse needs to be respected. The trainer needs to be in charge. It's a situation that doesn't make for any easy answers. Kinda like the power dynamic between teachers and students, particularly when it comes to evaluations!

Think about it.

It's a good tired

It's been an exhausting couple of weeks (I know, I know, it's only Thursday!) This new job is simultaneously invigorating and completely draining. It's great to meet so many other like-minded - and smart! - people, but meeting so many new people at one time can be mentally tiring.

I'm in a term teaching gig, which means I have only been offered work for the next ten months. While that kind of temporariness is no different than working as a sessional (or part-timer), the full-time aspect means that I am expected to perform all the job responsibilities that a tenure-track member of the faculty is expected to do. I will also be evaluated in the same manner, and should I get a job at a university that recognizes my work here, I could apply to have my year here count toward tenure elsewhere.

What that really means is that I am essentially starting an assistant professor job, without the title (or the job permanence).

Of course, since I'm on a short term, and would love to be on a longer term, I also feel the pressure to outperform the actual assistant professors hired in the department, because they are assured of work next year. I'm not. But that's another worry I don't need to think of right now.

I knew from others that the first year is hard. But I knew it in a cognitive way, not the way that my body now knows it. I've been feeling exhausted every day, even though my college activities have usually lasted less than a full 8-hour day. The combination of wanting to make a good impression, taking in a lot of information, making a lot of decisions (e.g. benefits to sign up for), and trying to finish off the writing I wanted to do this summer has meant that I've been sleeping 8-9 hours a night and still feeling not-quite rested.

I don't doubt that things will get easier as the semester and year progress, and I'm relatively confident that even next week, when the meetings trail off and the teaching ramps up I'll feel more like I'm in my element. But right now, I'm feeling old as I toddle off to bed at least an hour earlier than usual...!

New research in epidemiology

Taking zombies seriously.

To think about

In discussing teaching philosophy statements with new colleagues today, one talked about the importance of inspiring non-majors by getting them to understand and value literature for the things it allows us do. Getting students from other disciplines to see the value in looking at things from a different perspective is one of those powerful things that literature can do.

Although I know that, and I figure that English majors know that, I guess I hadn't really thought about how the classroom is an opportunity to get non-majors to see it in the same way. Not necessarily to convert them to English majors, but so that they can use that knowledge to their benefit in their own discipline.

Interesting food for thought.

Library Clues

You know you've been writing in graduate school for a long time when the library has changed the formatting of its homepage twice in the time you've been using it.

You know you're not finding that book when the four libraries (and consortia) you belong to do not carry the book.

The allure of research

One of the things I've learned about myself over the last several years is that I have a mistaken, but nonetheless healthy, conviction that if I just do enough research, my work will write itself. Even though I know it's a fallacy, there is a small part of me that really believes that with enough research, everything will just come together effortlessly and voila! the paper will be written.

I suppose it's not so much a belief as a fervent case of wishing it were so, but it's the reason for every act of writing procrastination that I've succumbed to over the last several years.

I do know that it's false, and so the procrastination never lasts for too long, but it's a potent procrastination force nonetheless. Even now, with a good conference paper that's been invited to be turned into a longer journal article, I find myself tempted to go to the databases, to find the perfect resource that when magically applied to my paper, will turn it into solid gold!

(I'm thinking in magical metaphors because the paper is about magic, though not really about alchemy... hey, wait... No! I must resist the desire to research alchemy as an angle for the paper...)

See what I mean?

Quote of the week

I don't believe any of you have ever read PARADISE LOST, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic, just as Professor Winchester says, and it meets his definition of a classic -- something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature" speech, 20 November 1900

Timeless space

Having spent the last two weeks on a few airplanes, I've come to realize that flying for more than about four hours has a very unreal quality about it, especially if you travel over more than four time zones.

You enter the aircraft, sit down, and patiently wait until allowed to leave again. You try to amuse yourself with movies, or books, or games, but you're in this strange place that has no real reference to the outside world. At 35,000 feet, the world is another place that you're no longer connected to.

And even though your body insists that it is the time that you just left, your mind knows that it must begin to abide by the rules of the time zone you'll be entering, which is sometimes a big enough gap to make you feel terribly confused. And tired. And when you're in the plane, you're not sure if you should be paying attention to your head, which says the time is what is coming up, or your body, that insists on the time that you are leaving.

It's a bit like suspended animation, only you're awake and usually bored.

Nirvana vs Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit up

This is both delightful and disturbing at the same time.

The necessity of writing

For years as a writing teacher I've told reluctant students - usually engineers - that they need to learn to write to be successful. They don't need to do it wonderfully, but they do need to do it adequately.

This necessity has been driven home several times over the last few months. Just the other day, I read about paper written by physicists about magic (it's for an article on technology and magic in medieval literature, and in all fairness, it was about quantum physics). Now, granted, all the primary researchers were located in Spain, so English may not have been a language they could use comfortably. But even with that in mind, there were so many hyperbolic lines of the "since the dawn of time" kind, that I cringed over and over again.

In addition, several months ago I was working with a document created by engineering professionals, designed to act as a training manual. We were to convert the content of the paper version to an elearning program.

Usually, when I work with material from an SME (subject matter expert), my biggest concern is translating written text into the visual and audible forms that perform better on the web. But this time, I spent a huge amount of time rewriting the content. There were problems in the document that were so fundamental that I despaired of repairing them even.

Some sentences were so garbled that I had no idea what it was meant to convey. There were lots of sentence fragments, and some sentences that just left off mid-sentence, as if it was cut-off (though it wasn't!) Faulty parallelisms were rampant, and the document showed little evidence of editing since the topics seemed to be arranged in the order that they occurred to the writer rather than any logical arrangement.

I've always believed that comma use was highly individualistic and variable, but this document used commas in ways that were utterly baffling, as if the writer knew there were rules to using commas and they needed to be followed, but had forgotten the rules and just made them up as he/she went along.

All in all, developing the content for this elearning program was one of the most painful tasks I'd ever undertaken for this company.

In all the time I stood in front of classrooms of engineers, lecturing on the importance of good writing, my motivation was primarily to get them producing things by the end of the term that I could read without cringing. But now that I've seen the result of poor writing skills, I've got even more motivation to teach them (and other writers) how to write clearly, because after reading this training manual, I feel sorry for all the people who tried to learn from it!

The Future of the Professoriate - Extinction?

The Chronicle forum, Faculty of the Future: Leaner, Meaner, More Collaborative, Less Secure is a depressing read. Don't let the title fool you - the positive element "more collaborative" isn't a good thing - it's a survival tactic. Overall, most of the writers take a very bleak vision of the future. It's telling that the only positive view of the academy 20 years from now comes from an administrator, not faculty.

Sometimes it feels like a room of one's own can be a prison when you've got a deadline hanging over your head.

The worst part of writing?

I hate writing plot summaries.

It's a strange but true observation. I get nailed every time a reader comments on my writing that I don't provide enough plot summary of primary sources before diving into the analysis.

Gee, that's probably because I hate writing plot summaries.

Which is really bizarre, considering they really are so terribly simple. While they might not be as simple as I'm suggesting, they really are just a catalogue of important events in the narrative of the novel. And yet, I detest writing them. My drafts always have these little starred lines in them with a note to "insert plot summary here" scattered throughout them.

Why do I detest writing them? I don't know.

Sometimes I suspect it's because they seem so easy. And then I think if they're so easy, they're not very sophisticated. And perhaps I don't want to do them because I don't want to admit I can write so simply? Bizarre logic, but there you go. I just hate writing them.

Starting over... again

I really don't understand why it is so terribly hard to get a handle on each new chapter when I start it. Even in revision, I'm having trouble concentrating on the new chapter that I'm starting to edit today.

Perhaps it just has something to do with the holiday and BBQ yesterday?

Happy Canada Day!

Wa-acko!

Last week, I was in a major tizzy trying to find a book that I've quoted from extensively in my dissertation: How we Became Posthuman by N. Katherine Hayles.

I had come across a reference to it in another article, and wanted to check up on the context since my database of notes didn't have anything down for that particular page. So I started searching my shelves.

I have a lot of shelves.

LibraryThing lists 1199 books in our collection. So, yeah, lots of shelves.

But I couldn't find it.

I looked again.

I asked everyone in the family if they'd seen it. They hadn't.

I looked some more.

I started wondering if I'd lost it. As I thought about it, I realized I had been relying on my notes for the last few years. Perhaps I'd lost it before we'd even moved.

That got me thinking.

So I checked LibraryThing. It wasn't actually listed there. Not a big surprise. I only activated by LibraryThing account in 2006, and I'm pretty sure I read it in 2005.

So then I checked my amazon buying history, since I would've purchased it from them, given it wouldn't exactly be a given that I could find it at my local bookstore.

There was no history of purchasing.

Gradually it dawned on me. This book? The one that plays a pretty major role in my dissertation?

I don't own it. Never have.

But I was convinced for a week that I had. Wa-acko!

Question is: Do I buy it now, or say to hell with looking up this reference? (The local academic library has it out till September, and I want to finish this draft before then)

Decision time.

Up and down and up and down... again

One of the most frustrating things I'm finding in this dissertation editing is the precariousness of my productivity. The littlest thing knocks me off my game into a struggle with frustration.

One day, I have a great writing day, work out part of an argument in what I can honestly say is a beautiful piece of writing, and feel confident that I will finish these revisions and they will be (mostly) acceptable and I will be able to look forward to the defence.

The next day, I flounder around, trying to get a handle on the ideas that seem too large for my head, and so they squeeze out of it, bouncing across the office floor and I have to scramble around trying to pick them back up. But they're slippery, and I can't seem to hold more than one at a time. Which I do. But even then, sometimes I pick one up, turning it this way and that, puzzled at what it means and why I thought it was a good idea in the first place. Sometimes I set it aside, hoping that it will become clearer as time goes on. Sometimes I toss it out the window.

This back and forth between confidence that I'm making satisfactory progress and despair at ever crafting an argument that makes sense is taking its toll.

Today, I'm distracted again. Thoughts of non-work-related troubles keep crowding in my brain, and no matter how hard I try, they break my concentration and I feel frustrated.

Here's hoping tomorrow's a more balanced day.

Best horror movies

A while ago, a daughter asked hubby what were the top 10 horror movies of all time. So we brainstormed. This is what we came up with (in no particular order).

Top Ten

The Thing
Alien
The Exorcist
Nightmare on Elm Street
Halloween
The Shining
Ravenous
American Werewolf in London
28 Days Later
The Fly

The rationale for some of these might not be readily apparent since we used a wide range of criteria, including innovation, scare factor, uniqueness, cinematography, and plot among others (as you can probably tell, we leaned heavily toward innovation).

Honorable Mentions go to

Poltergeist
The Others
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Sixth Sense
Amytyville Horror (remake)
Dreamcatcher
The Mist
Se7en
1408
Hellraiser
High Tension

Again, an eclectic mix of criteria went into deciding the honorable mentions as well. We didn't include any spoofs, since that's a whole other category requiring different criteria, but if we had, I'm sure some Evil Dead and Shaun of the Dead would've made it in.

Happy Father's Day - both to those who love and hate these kinds of movies!

It's a beautiful thing

There's a moment that's absolutely beautiful in writing. It usually comes after you've been struggling for days, knowing exactly what you want to say, but not being able to make it work. Usually, you've been working at it, but it's not happening - type, erase, type, erase, type, erase...

Then on one of those go-throughs, you stop to read the paragraph you just wrote, and it slowly dawns on you that you've got it. It might still be a little rough around the edges, but you've found the structure you needed to make that argument stand out in the way that it deserves.

It's an awe-inspiring moment, and for me, it's always accompanied by a bit of wonder: "I did that?" Wow.

Stuck

I am stuck. Stuck. Stuck. Stuck.

I know what I want to say in this chapter, but I just can't seem to get it arranged right. Too many things struggle for supremacy and all of them seem to be the first idea I should introduce.

But of course they can't all be first.

Short of eenie-meenie-minie-mo, how does one choose?!

Anything to procrastinate?

How much of a lit-geek does it mark me that I've suspended work on the part of the second chapter of the dissertation on The Island of Doctor Moreau because I've just found out that Broadview Press is issuing an edition of it at the end of the month and I want to use it for the edits to the chapter?

One of my only regrets in not becoming a Victorianist is the fewer opportunities I will have to teach Broadview editions of texts (Broadview specializes in literature already in the public domain). I'm absolutely tickled that they are coming out with an edition of The Island of Doctor Moreau just in time for me to use it!

Books, books, books

We attended the giant annual book sale in town here this last weekend, and despite our vows to bring home fewer books than last year (we'd had to buy another bookshelf to accommodate them all), we still came home with a lot. In all fairness, there were three of us searching this time, so we did meet our goal in per capita terms!

But in the traffic jam on the way there, we began talking about the physicality of books, in part because we'd both heard of California's proposition to require electronic texts in all its public schools. News: Here and here. Although we both agreed that digital text is becoming more prevalent and can be useful, we both wondered at the timing of the move.

The Husband (TH) tried the electronic textbook route for one year of dental school and switched back to paper the next because of the headaches using digital texts created. This was about five years ago, so no doubt there have been technological developments. But I have to wonder whether they are enough. If a highly intelligent health professional finds electronic text difficult to work with, what chance does an elementary school child have?

I don't mean from the perspective of familiarity with online venues. Even though I think the idea of 'digital natives' is a fallacy, setting that aside and accepting that perhaps there is indeed something different about the experience of growing up reading paper texts and growing up primarily online, the devices on which online textbooks rely are fickle indeed!

There's no information on how the content will be delivered, but technology inevitably breaks down, often at inopportune times. If the students will access their texts online, they will need to have access ($$$) and that access will need to be reliable, unlike the previous city where we lived. We had to call out the repairmen 3 times in one year to repair our internet connection, and each time it took an average of 5 days to get someone there. If my kids had needed that access for school, we would've been scrambling to get it.

But there's another phenomena that both TH and I, as well as other friends that I've asked experience which has to do with the physical nature of the book itself. Both TH and I have had the experience of recalling something we've read by its physical location on the page. We've remembered for example that it was the second paragraph from the top on the right hand side of the page about 2/3 of the way through the book. A quick flip in the right general section leads you to the source you wanted.

This is because memory is highly influenced by space. It certainly is true that in navigation or danger avoidance, being able to remember *where* those dangers are is an excellent skill, and we all develop this kind of spatial memory, whether or not we apply it to reading. If you can't find your keys, you replay the memory of your actions when you last knew you had them until to you come to the part where you 'see' where you put them down.

What happens to this memory aid on an electronic screen? I understand about the search function of a website - that could act as a replacement for the spatial memory cue. But unless a whole site has its own search function (not impossible), you'll need to rely upon a search engine, so that your search terms will need to be quite specific. Either option requires wading through a lot of other instances of the keyword coming up. Now a persistent person might keep going till they find just the right reference they were thinking of, but if my students are any any indication, they don't bother with much more than the first three hits on any search.

I will admit that it's possible I'm an old fuddy-duddy and the way that I learned to learn does not apply to 'digital natives'. But even so, subjecting all the public school students of California to this grand experiment - and it is an experiment - seems like a premature move on the part of the governor.

Meanwhile, I lugged about 50 lbs of books home. Perhaps I can at least get "pumped" as a result of my love of the physical!

Human Body Parts R Us

*spoiler alert*

I finally went to see Terminator Salvation over the weekend, and found that everything critics were saying about the movie was true. Most critics pointed to its weak plot, which I'll grant was weak, mostly because it was axed in favour of loud explosions.

(Speaking of which, just what were all those Resistance soldiers shooting at in the background during the escape from the compound? If you've got a spotlight on the people you're trying to kill, why is stuff in the background blowing up? Is your aim seriously just that bad? If so, how did you survive against the machines for so long?)

What I am interested in is the final scene, which the filmmakers seem to present in an entirely un-ironic way, but which actually raises some interesting questions that could've re-injected the plot with some life.

The scene I'm talking about of course is the final one where John Connor has been beat about by the Arnold-Terminator (T-800) and is dying because "his heart can't take it". (How cliched!) But aside from cliche, the scene is meant to be a sad one. John's pregnant wife stands next to him, reporting this sad news as his physician to his friends.

Upon hearing this news, the Marcus-Terminator (infiltration model) which has been equipped with the cloned heart and mind of the original, organic Marcus, offers up his heart to John, saying that everyone needs a second chance.

This is where the film loses me.

First, I'm not sure what "second chance" Marcus is referring to. Is he referring to his own second chance, that he has successfully navigated in redeeming his humanity by saving Kyle and John? Or is it John who needs the second chance? And if so, why does he need a second chance? The notion of the second chance is not the same as the notion of another life - the second chance is necessary to correct a wrong done the first time. But in that case, what did John do wrong?

From where I'm sitting, it looks like John did exactly what he needed to do: a) find a way to attack Skynet, b) save Kyle Reese in order to send him back so that he can be conceived. What more does he need to do? He has already fulfilled his destiny.

I leave aside the fact that he is about to become a father himself. While the nuclear family (ha!) narrative is sentimental, frankly, if he were to die, his child would still survive, so he has still been successful there. So since he's provided the military with the tools to beat Skynet and has impregnated his wife, he is in some ways redundant at this point - others *could* take over just fine for him.

Second, and this is probably more important, the transplant itself is problematic. Leaving aside the fact that they are in a battlefield surgery, that there is a need for extensive testing to ensure donor and recipient are compatible, and that heart transplant surgery requires extensive specialized training, the idea of the transplant itself counters the entire message of the film.

The film carefully constructs an antinomy between the organic humans and the mechanical machines and cyborgs. It reifies the natural born human as the ultimate expression of humanity (it's in our face with John's wife's pregnancy), so that this final act of the film seems to fly in the face of what the film has been celebrating the whole time.

In the slap-dash manner that the heart transplant is plotted, the film suggests that humans are just like machines. You get a defective part, you just pop it out, pop in a new one, and you're off to the races again. In some ways, the John (who presumably will survive the transplant, otherwise what's the point of it anyway) at the end of the film will be part cyborg himself. He will have had an artificial organ implanted in his body, making him not much different than the Marcus who has mechanical parts integrated into his.

Unfortunately this movie is not sophisticated enough to make this into some kind of interesting philosophical observation. It really does present the scene in an un-ironic mode. Too bad. There was a lot that could've been done with this idea if they'd just stopped blowing things up (and sentimentalizing family and romantic love) long enough to actually contemplate it.

The RYS post I'll never send

This is a draft of a post that's been sitting in my queue for a long time, and since I know I will never teach public speaking at this place again, I suppose now is the time to post it. Enjoy.

Dear Arrogant Coat-tail rider -

Yes, you. The charming one. Or the other charming one. Either of you. I'm sure when you walked into class that first day and flashed your charming smile at me, you thought you had me in your pocket. But you haven't been around long enough to realize that someone like me has seen your kind before, and I know what you're all about.

I know that the smiles, and the jokes, even the compliments, have all worked on the past, especially as you work your way through the bar, practicing on all the young hotties the lines you're going to use for your debut on Keys to the VIP, but I'm no longer a young hottie. And I saw you coming a mile away.

Your descriptions of the palatial home your parents live in and the expensive cars they've bought you are awe inspiring and I'm sure they work well on the cocktail circuit. But in the classroom, they don't go over so well.

Have you ever taken the time to get to know some of the other students in the class? Do you know about the guy who sits in the row behind you, runs off to work a full-time shift right after class and whose student loan payment hasn't arrived yet? Or the single mother who runs into class just as it starts because she's had to wait for her ex to come pick up their child so she can attend? Do you think about them when you complain about how you're driving a loaner because the beamer's in the shop? Or when you breeze in ten minutes late because you didn't want to rush through your expensive lunch downtown?

Your speech in which you gave detailed descriptions about all the properties and cars your family owned went over like a lead balloon. But I don't think you noticed. How could you? You only had eyes for you.

While I'm asking questions, can I ask one about your writing? Why is it that no matter what the topic, you manage to find yourself inserting a paragraph about how rich your folks are and how hard it is for you living in the apartment they paid for without mom to cook for you like she used to? Is there nothing else in that pretty little head of yours, or is that the only thing you ever think about? It's getting a bit monotonous I must say. I keep telling you it isn't interesting, or even relevant to the assignment, but you don't seem to be paying attention.

I am curious about your parents though. I wonder how much they know about your life, and why they continue to pay your bills? Does the charm work on them? Do you just lie to them most of the time so they don't know that you're pissing away their money by failing all your classes? Or do they just not care? Now, THAT I'm curious about. But whether your beamer's in the shop? I could care less.


Dear Odious Orator -

I know you're much to smart to be taking this class, which is why you've applied to take the proficiency exam in order to bypass taking it. I know you're too good to sit through the 14 weeks of class like everyone else, and I'd never dream of imagining I could teach you anything new if you did come to class.

Several months ago when I gave you several dates when you could come in and deliver the speech component of your proficiency exam, I expected you would choose one in good time and we would make the necessary arrangements. I never realized that your fabulously fun-filled life would make it impossible for you to call until this week. Calling me three times in the last two days demanding to know which days are available next week for your performance might seem like a great idea on your part, but the reason your bright idea looks so dim from here is because that privileged little head of yours is very far up your ass.

The rest of the students in the class have planned ahead, delivered their speeches on time and we've kept to the very tight schedule we've been given this year. But of course we'll chuck it all to the wind to make sure you can present next week before the break. I'll also be sure to mark your performance within an hour of your delivery so that there's no delay in getting you the mark you so richly deserve.

Far be it from me to stand in the way of someone so obviously good at communicating that you have no need to learn anything about the difference between a friendly and a hostile audience.

Ships passing in the night... or something like that

I just completed my writing task for the day as the last person in the family headed out to start her day.

I've tried over the last month to write for at least an hour every day first thing in the morning. Sometimes it ends up being two or three hours like it was today. When I get up, I turn on the computer, make coffee, haul a cup up to the machine and start typing. So far it has worked remarkably well (except for the occasional travel or meeting hiccup to get in the way). I find I write well in the morning (provided it's not too early!) and having accomplished my writing task for the day first thing means it's not hanging over my head all day.

But it's an odd feeling, knowing that I've accomplished what I wanted to today before at least one other family member's day had even begun.

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again

Dissertation re-writing continues apace. I am finding it very slow going on the first chapter revision since it is essentially a new chapter I'm writing, though all the research is there and ready to be inserted as necessary.

The first chapter is the one that I envision laying out the kinds of issues specifically raised by the technologies that are represented in the later chapters, so I had originally written it as a kind of taxonomy of technologies. There were two problems with this:

1) Since I wrote it quite early, I included technologies that I probably don't need to include, and purely as a taxonomy, it became simultaneously dry and rambling. Double whammy for the reader, right?
2) It also was divorced from the literature. In its original incarnation, there was no mention of literary texts or how this would apply. This was because a) I wanted the introduction to deal with the connection between literature and social/technological issues, and b) as a taxonomy, I thought it would be too confusing to try to relate everything to a relevant literary text.

So I was really quite unhappy with the product (and the comments I got from early readings bore that out), but I didn't know what to do about it and it was hanging over my head as I continued to write subsequent chapters.

Luckily, another problem that I encountered when writing the last chapter provided a (potential) solution to the problem of chapter 1. When I was writing the science fiction chapter, I initially wanted it to address three novels (yes, I know that's a lot). Of course as I began writing, I realized I would be at the 70 page mark before I even dealt with the third one of those novels, so I knew I would have to cut one.

I had good reasons for having all of them in the chapter, so it was difficult to decide. But since I had written conference papers on two of the novels (The Calcutta Chromosome and The Stone Canal), I started writing up those ones for the chapter. Then I got to the 60+ page mark like I mentioned and realized the third wouldn't fit.

Then I had an epiphany while sitting on the beach in Barbados. What if I made the third novel, Natural History, the literary model for all that taxonomy stuff I want to do in the first chapter?

Since it had pretty much every kind of posthuman character in it, created by pretty much every emergent technology that I wanted to talk about, it seemed absolutely ideal as a way of modeling all the technologies while connecting them to a literary text.

I got terribly excited at the idea. Yes, I went geek-crazy over a potential solution to a writing problem. But I also immediately started worrying about it. After all, I don't think I've really seen this kind of move in a book before.

Now I know the dissertation isn't a book, but all the same, I'd never really seen someone start off a project talking about just one book to introduce the argument of the project, and then go off to talk in more detail about other books.

So I ran the idea past my advisor in that very hesitant I-have-this-crazy-idea-that-maybe-I'll-do-and-what-do-you-think kind of way. Surprisingly, she gave (equally hesitant) confirmation that that *might* be the way to deal with the problem in chapter one.

So here I sit, trying to match up all the technologies to all the characters and situations in the novel. It's matching up surprisingly well, but there is that little voice in the back of my head saying that maybe once I spend a month doing this, it won't actually work out the way I planned and this version of the chapter will be just as useless as the previous one.

But even if that little voice is right, I now have two versions of the first chapter to work with if a third needs to be created using a different strategy. So it's all good. I'll recycle what I can and rethink what I can't.

Thing is, the more I work with it, the more it seems to do what I want it to do, so I'm hopeful.

But, boy, is it a lot of work to entirely rewrite the thing from the ground up!

Bioethics and PMS

I have been ripping apart the first chapter of the dissertation. I'm essentially rewriting it from the ground up, which means I'm also revisiting many of my old sources. Perhaps because I'm finding a congruence between personal experience and academic reading, I've found the following two passages about pharmacological enhancement from Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness by the President's Council on Bioethics particularly interesting today:

"This enhanced ability [in drugs like Ritalin] to make children conform to conventional standards could also diminish our openness to the diversity of human temperaments. As we will find with other biotechnologies with a potential use beyond therapy, behavior-modifying drugs offer us an unprecedented power to enforce our standards of normality" (103).

and

"...behavior-modifying drugs might not only deprive that child of an essential part of this [socialization] education. They might also encourage him to change his self-understanding, by coming to look upon himself as governed by chemical impulses and not by moral decisions grounded in some sense of what is right and appropriate... technologies aside, merely regarding ourselves and our activities in largely genetic or neurochemical terms may diminish our sense of ourselves as moral actors faced with genuine choices and options in life" (106).

While this isn't the first time* I've read an argument that Ritalin is tamping down our children's abilities to experience a full range of emotions, I'm interested in the connection to morality in the second half. And my first thought is that the writer must be a man if he can't see that it is possible to understand the influence of brain chemistry on emotion while AT THE SAME TIME understanding that it is not the only force controlling behavior.

Any woman with PMS knows what brain chemistry is capable of doing to her emotional stability. But most women learn to control those impulses. There are times of the month where I want to hurl the salt shaker across the table at someone just for talking to me. But I don't. Because I know *I* don't really want to do that, it's just the whacked out neurochemicals that make me feel that way.

In fact, I think that experiencing such forces makes it easier to see how one can choose to entertain emotions or choose not to let them dictate your behavior.

That's not to say it's easy! Don't ask my parents about hurling things - they have some embarassing stories to tell from when I was younger! But without having to overcome those urges and not allow them to dictate behavior, you do become more aware that you do not have to be blown about by the turbulence of neurochemistry.

This is also why I get so angered at men who have assumed that as an angry woman, I'm just experiencing PMS. For me at least, it takes immense amounts of self control at times to not express the emotions I'm feeling, so assuming that I give in to them is insulting. It of course also assumes that they haven't done something to warrant being angry at, which is a whole other story!

This post isn't really about men and women or PMS, but I did find it interesting that the kinds of arguments against using pharmacology as a technology of enhancement for children actually seems to be about more than just children and individual parents' choices about whether to use those enhancements or not. It seems the more we imagine how to get to the "better" posthuman, the more difficult it is to ascertain what we mean by "better."

*The first time I came across the argument, it was actually that Ritalin makes little boys sit still and calm down, while Prozac makes grown women perk up, which pushes both groups towards a homogenous middle. Interesting thought.

Placeholder

Just a quick note since it's been over a week since posting to update that
1) conference went well
2) visiting doctoral institution and friends in the area was great!
3) I'm glad to be home again!

Sightseeing

I wore myself out today traipsing around Ottawa. It is a really good-looking city, and I really appreciated how the combination of the Rideau Canal and the river really makes for a lot of green spaces. With Gatineau (formerly Hull) right across the river, there are some great Quebecois influences, including some really good boulangeries in the Byward Market area.

The Parliament buildings are more impressive in person than on all those postcards, news clips, and other pictures I've seen over my life. I took advantage of being here in Ottawa to take a tour of the centre block. 

I found it quite impressive to see the House of Commons up close and personal. Of course there was nothing going on today, but seeing the chamber in person reminded me that all those images that you see on television or the internet can't substitute for actually being in those spaces.

There's really no substitute for being there yourself. 

The Peace Tower itself offers a pretty amazing view of the city and Gatineau across the river, including at least one set of locks in addition to the ones on the Rideau Canal. I was disappointed to see that the stairs were only considered an emergency exit. I think it would've been neat to climb the tower and see the bells up closer than the quick glimpse through the elevator window that you get on the way up.

But the thing that I was most looking forward to seeing was the Parliamentary library. The structure was originally designed based on the British library (obviously the old one, not the spankin' new one) in 1872 and it is the only part of the building that survived the fire of 1916 because the head librarian had insisted on metal doors being installed, which protected it when the rest of the structure went up.  Quite impressive.

I had seen the Library of Parliament on a list of top ten most beautiful libraries in the world, so when the tour guide confirmed we would be going to the library, I was tickled. 

Yes, I'm a geek.

I actually had one of the security guards remind me that I needed to stay with the tour group because I lingered just a bit too long at the end, reluctant to leave! But it is an absolutely gorgeous library. Of course someone in the group said it looked like a Harry Potter library, which at first I found annoying since the films were based on real libraries, but then I realized that perhaps that was indeed the only context that person had to compare this library to. Regardless, I'd love to wander it unimpeded, but the public has not access to the stacks of this library.  Too bad.

My feet are well worn after trucking from the university to the Hill, through the market and back down Sparks street.  But it was still a good day!

Take off

Just about to take off for Ottawa. I've never been there before, and I've never flown Westjet, so we'll have to see what all the fuss is about. A lot of friends swear by Westjet and swear at Air Can, so I'll be interested in seeing how different the experience might be. Personally, I'd rather fly Air Can than some of the US carriers - I've got an intense hate on for at least one of them - so I'm curious to see how much better Westjet might be!

Past and Future

I'm not thinking of the present right now, since that always seems to consist of dissertation editing. Actually, editing doesn't seem the right word, since it's basically a complete rewrite - at least for the first chapter and introduction, which are the two places where I'm focusing right now.

So I give you the past and the future instead, since they're far more interesting!

Past: I had a good, long weekend, with just the right balance of work and play.

• The new Star Trek movie was good. Better than I thought it would be. Given the number of things the movie had to accomplish: cater to existing fan base, attract new, younger fan base, provide back story for existing characters without irrevocably damaging continuity with the older selves of those characters and plots, I think it pulled it off fairly well. I've seen the criticisms and the praise, and must say that I fall mostly on the side of praise for the flick.... But then again, I've always been more of a fan of Star Trek than Star Wars, so I wanted it to be good.
• I think I've finally really accepted that we own this house we're living in. I've rented for so terribly long that when we moved in, I left things pretty much as they were. We tended to use existing holes for hanging pictures, and I realized the other day that there's a poster on the garage wall that I really don't like - I just never took it down after the previous owners left it behind. This weekend, I felt like I was really starting to accept that it is ours to do with as we please when I dug out a bush that I've never liked, even when we first viewed the place. It feels good to have the horrid little thing gone!
• Went for the first hike of the season. There was still a lot of snow, though it was mostly manageable. In fact, it wasn't the snow that was the problem, it was the run-off that made our trekking difficult. Despite the hike actually only being a short one, all three of us who went are still sore two days later! But it was nice to get out there.
• I finally got to go to dinner with my dear friend from when we lived here before. Both of us have pretty busy lives, but hers is one that I do not envy in the least given all that she does. All the more reason to admire her grace in managing it. I know I could not pull it off as well as she does. But it does mean we don't hang out near as often as either of us would like to. After several weeks of not seeing each other, and several false starts, we finally met for a long and refreshing dinner on Sunday night. Good friends, like family, are one of those things that make all the other stuff in a week worthwhile!
  

Future: this week is a fairly busy one... but in a good way.

• I need to go to the school to talk to the department chair about my brand spankin' new full-time position that will begin in the fall! I'm excited enough to have done a little dance for the benefit of my family when I told them I'd been offered the position at the end of last week. It is just a 10 month term, but it comes with more opportunities and responsibilities than I have had to this point, so that's terribly exciting. I need to meet with the department chair to talk about the details this week.
• I fly off to a conference down east this weekend, so I have to do a final run-through of the paper to make sure it flows properly as spoken word. The argument seems to have shaped up quite well, though I could do with three more minutes of time in order to make it. But overall, it's ready to go. I'm trying out an idea I want to introduce in the second chapter of the dissertation, so I'm really hoping I get some good feedback from the audience about it.
  
• After the conference, I'm heading down to meet with my committee members about revision plans, where to go from here, and now that I've got this new gig, tips about the job I'll be expected to undertake. Heading to my doctoral institution means I have a list of books and resources I want to access that I can't get at here (or not inexpensively), and a short list of red tape to work through, which always goes so much faster in person!
• I also will get to see some people who I haven't seen for over a year, and I'm really looking forward to hanging out with them! I just about talked another far-flung member of our graduate student group into returning at the same time, but she's swamped with work, and thinks it's prudent to get the work done instead. I can't argue with that logic, though I'll miss getting to see her too.
  
• I need to meet with my new boss at the e-learning company. The structure and focus of the organization have changed over the last month, and coupled with a new full-time position - even if it is temporary - will require some adjusting. I'd like to have an idea of what that would look like before I leave town for a week and a half.
  

So that's my life right now. In between the past and the future, I continue to revise the dissertation while trying to complete other writing projects that I've committed to and enjoy my life beyond work. So far, the rain (and snow!) this spring have made it easy to stay in and work...!

Wow, just wow

From one of my favorite diversions (The customer is) Not Always Right when I'm in the throes of hard revision.

I didn't come to college to learn anything!

RBOC: Spring version

I have a few blogs posts floating around my head, but instead of coherent posts, I will provide bulleted snippets of thoughts until they coalesce into something worthy of a single blog post.

• spent the last few days in the mountains, driving in and out for a faculty retreat, and it made me realize spring in the mountains is a very different creature from spring on the prairies
• heard a great presentation by a politician (I know! a politician who was interesting to listen to... rare bird!) on the connection between education and politics - it wasn't just about policy but about the philosophical connection between the two, which actually gave me some things to think about. This might be a future blog post if I can put my thoughts to paper (so to speak)
• youngest daughter's drama production last night was intelligent and fun - the students had actually written parts of the play, and frankly, their parts were the best ones!
• even though I have very clear ideas of how this dissertation draft needs to change before it gets resubmitted for additional revisions suggestions, putting those ideas into practice is proving even harder than I expected (and I had expected it to be hard!)
  
• I had a lot of great conversations at the faculty retreat - a couple of not so interesting ones as well, but mostly, really stimulating and interesting conversations! I'm really glad I made the hour and a half trek out to the site each of the last two days because it was worth it!

That's all I got now folks. Here's hoping I can pull together a better blog post over the next few days.

Milk... does a body good!

Reviews of milk. Not "Milk" but milk.

I especially like the poetic ones...