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...

Well, that's over, whether for better or worse

So the interview went fine. There was a question from the HR rep that I hadn't anticipated, so I answered a variant, which unfortunately ended up being the answer that I should've given to the next question.

Dang.

And I of course thought of a wonderful, brilliant answer a half hour after walking out of the room.

Darn.

Oh well. The teaching demo went better than I thought from my end - I actually found it fairly easy to "teach" to people I knew had already mastered the material. I did discover that the examples I used were less-than-useful because they did pose a bit of a challenge to the "students". That could be a bad thing if it made them feel confused or frustrated by those examples. I think that could actually sink the interview.

The good news I learned after the interview was that they should have some part-time work for me in fall, which is good to hear because I didn't get anything in the first go-round of course assignments in April. So I will be working there in fall - the question is just whether it will be full-time (with all the other tasks/responsibilities that go with that) or adjuncting again.

The weirdest part of the whole thing is that I walked out of the interview over to the department office to mark a deferred exam from last term. Weird to interview and then be reminded that you already work for them at the same time!

More nervous than I have a right to be

On Friday I got a phone call for a job interview, and since then I've been trying to decide if I even mention it here. You see, I've got this fear that if I mention the interview, I'll jinx it, not get the job, and then feel like a big loser for not getting it.

But it's also been consuming much of my waking thoughts over the last several days. Perhaps just because something is consuming all my thoughts isn't enough reason to blog. But then again, blogging is a slightly narcissistic activity, so why isn't all-consuming-thought a good reason for a post?

Anyway, it's a one-year teaching job here in town. The thing that's freaking me out is the teaching demo. I have to prepare a 10-12 minute lesson on transitions for a first year writing class.

Sounds simple.

It is.

But I'm still a little weirded out by it. It's not like I'm nervous about the idea of teaching - I'm not. Nor is it that I don't know how to teach such a lesson - I do. I've actually planned out the lesson for within the allotted time. I'm just nervous about trying to do it in front of an audience who I KNOW aren't students. Particularly since it will be an interactive activity. I just know that the killer for the teaching demo will be if I allow myself to dwell on the fact that the "students" for this demo are the people judging whether I'm a good teacher or not!

I know students evaluate our classes, but they don't really know anything about pedagogy and, really, for all the groaning we as adjuncts might do about student evals, there isn't that much riding on them (or at least, not JUST on them).

But it's hard to teach to people who you know already know the material. Especially if you suspect they actually know the material BETTER than you do! I've done workplace training before where I've known some of the trainees already knew the material - it's an awkward experience at best.

I tell myself it doesn't matter if I don't get the job (though it would be nice). I tell myself that the interview and demo itself are great experience, since this certainly won't be the last time I do either.

But that doesn't make me any less nervous.

All I can do is keep practicing the demo and answers to sample questions. And try not too think about how much I really would like this job!

Poor confused bunnies

The rabbits that frequent our neighborhood are in the process of changing colour from white to brown. So they're sort of mottled right now.

They are starting to blend into the browns of not-yet-awakened spring vegetation.

But since most of our precipitation this month has been in the form of snow,* the poor bunnies must be awfully confused about what colour they need to be!

*the snow isn't terribly cold, and it doesn't really stay long on the ground, but seeing white flakes coming down day after day has sure made it seem like spring is far away!

Now it makes sense

I just figured out via an email exchange who it was who probably pushed for that very disappointing reversal of job market support last year.

It wasn't who I thought it would be.

Not that it makes much difference. What's done is done. But by the sounds of the exchange this week, it appears that I may face similar opposition this year.

I must tread carefully, even though part of me wants to yell in frustration. Instead, I must be deferential and meek. I must do nothing to antagonize.

And here I was just starting to finally feel confident about the project. Now to know there's still doubt about it, even after all the work I've done since last fall, is disheartening.

My first response was "I'll show you". Which is probably a good response.

But that little voice in the back of my head whispers, "but what if you can't?"

I'm trying to ignore it.

Anybody got a pair of ear plugs?

How I feel this morning

Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy announcement

So, the title of the final installment of the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy will the The World's End.

Much speculation is ensuing in the blogsphere about which genre Pegg and Wright will tackle next. Having tackled the zombie movie parody in Shaun of the Dead...









...and then the buddy cop movie in Hot Fuzz




Many are wondering what's next. My first thought was science fiction. With a title like The World's End, that would fit. But parodying science fiction can be a tricky thing. Remember Galaxy Quest?

At least it's not gone that far yet

I had a dream last night that I was at a conference flipping through the program when I came a across a whole section of full page colour ads from job hopefuls, advertising their specialties and how attractive they would be as faculty. In the dream I wondered how much those ads would cost and who I might know who could help with the design.

At least the job market in academia hasn't got THAT competitive... yet.

Zotero saves the day!

I downloaded zotero today - a Firefox extension that promises to help me organize my notes in exactly the ways I've been wanting to.

I've been searching for the last few months for some way to make my new Mac more useful to my academic work. Specifically, I was looking for a way to take notes like I do in Endnote on my PC. I really love my Endnote, but I started checking out sente for the Mac after a friend recommended it.

But ideally, I wanted the flexibility to be able to transfer my files from PC to Mac and vice versa. I won't be able to dump the PC for a while, since I have to interface so much with PC-related programs for my e-learning job. But I wanted to use my Mac for more than just writing. It's been great to use for the writing, and I love the versatility of the machine, but I wanted notetaking capability too.

I'm almost skeptical because zotero is looking like it's absolutely everthing I want. I can create libraries, conduct searches and enter notes like I can with Endnote. Although it's a browser application, you don't need to be connected to the internet to use the files, so even when I'm cheaping out on the $15/night that hotels charge for access (what is that about anyways?!), I can still use the application.

As well - and here's where I'm breathless in anticipation of the possibilities - it can run on both my Mac and PC because it's a browser application. Not only that, but if I download the beta version, it promises to sync each computer's content with the other! Sync it every time I open one or the other! So that I'll always have a complete library of resources, regardless of which computer I'm working on. No worrying about whether I've updated all the files and transferred them from one computer to another. How cool would that be!? Of course I have yet to download the beta version, but I'm already super-duper impressed with the standard version.

And the best part? Transferring all my Endnote library to zotero is just a matter of a couple of clicks.

I can see this product making my research much easier in the future... the only thing cooler than discovering it now would've been discovering it a year ago!

Repetition avoidance

You would think that the part of my elearning job that requires me to review the website material before releasing it to the client would be easy. After all, it involves clicking through all the components and then listening to whatever audio and/or video components are on the site to make sure they say what they're supposed to say.

The only problem is that at the end of the project, listening to those audio and video components AGAIN is about the LAST thing I want to do! At the end of the project I've already:

• read through the materials provided by the client and/or discussed the project content with them
  
• scripted the content for audio/video appropriate format/language
  
• been at the video shoot/audio recording, including all the re-takes/re-records
  
• (in some cases) been in the editing suite while the editor completes final edits of multimedia content
  
• listened to/watched all audio or video to ensure it was recorded correctly before sending it to the web developer
  

So the final quality assurance of the video and audio component will be at minimum, the sixth time I've heard the same material.  

Sometimes, it's just really hard to listen to it just ONE more time...!

email's great... email sucks

Two emails this morning have got me realizing how good it is for some things and how horrible for others.

The first is a complaint about grades. I began to compose an answer explaining why they student's grade kept going down from first draft to second to final (hint: no change/improvement!) but then realized, I'm not about to defend my grading criteria via email, so erased all of it and told the student to make an appointment. If he shows up, I'll talk.

The second is a series of emails from the web developer for the online work I do, asking for "descriptions" of each of the sections of a course we've developed. I've said in at least three emails that the title of each section is pretty descriptive of what's within it. Since the developer has all the titles, I figure it would be easy to replicate that in the description. But I still keep getting emails asking for the description of each section.

Finally, I spent a half hour taking the document that lists all the titles, and adding a description line. Each line looks something like this:

[title] "describes [title]"

Seriously.

Somehow I suspect walking down the hall to the developer's cubicle to explain this would've taken much less time (not to mention my frustration) than having to write out an entire page of titles with the word "describes" in front of them!

Email's great for some stuff - I love it and regularly communicate by it, even sending off long missives... after all, I organized a whole conference long distance via email! But there are limits...