It's August!!!

Those are not exclamation marks of joy. They are exclamation marks of panic. How did it get to be August already?!

What this of course means is that - as usual - I will not have completed all the things I wish to by the end of the summer and need to review my to-do list with an eye to prioritizing the things that absolutely must get done in the next three weeks. But even after I've crossed some stuff off the list (it will have to get done eventually, just not in August), it still seems pretty darn long:

Productive Disagreement

I'm in the processing of preparing a paper for a conference that came up pretty much at the last minute. Those of you who also write conference papers on short notice know what I'm going through - the great idea, the anguish of trying to translate that idea into words, the endless search for the right way (or at least a good way) of expressing those ideas. Sometimes it gets a bit frustrating trying to translate those thoughts into words that would make sense to other people.

The argument is pretty basic. The abstract I sent in outlines it:

The futuristic (Nano)visions of Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber

Most visions of human technology of the future extrapolate the technological developments of the current moment to suggest that development will continue to penetrate human existence, enabling humanity to accomplish more while it also becomes more reliant upon those technologies. Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber begins on such a world, a world penetrated by nanotechnology to such an extent that the humans living on Toussaint feel it gives them a “sixth sense” even if it really is only a “crutch” (Hopkinson 328). However, as the action of the novel switches to New Half-Way Tree, it ultimately reveals that the interconnectedness that the “Granny Nanny” web of nanomites provides a poor account of the diversity of human experience without the stories and the relationships that also make up the life of humans.

As a technology, the nanomites of Hopkinson’s novel envision one way that the nanotechnologies under development in contemporary technoculture might affect human lives. In Nanovision: Engineering the Future, Colin Milburn suggests that nanotechnology is built on such promises, writing that, “the possibilities opened by the capability to restructure and rearrange matter at the nanoscale are immense…. the world itself can be transformed, our lived realities made completely malleable, guaranteeing that the future will be radically and immeasurably different from the present" (6). Milburn further argues that this vision of the transformative nature of nanotechnology is closely affiliated with the imagination, so that writing about nanotechnology is science-fictional in nature.

What makes Hopkinson’s novel unusual is that it counters the technophillic adulation of nanotechnology often presented within science fiction texts. Like Joan Slonczewski’s A Door Into Ocean, Midnight Robber suggests that enabling technologies do not need to be machinic or divorced from the biological reality of human life. Adopting a Caribbean patois language and attitude, the text provides a refreshing alternate to the masculine, hard science fiction that characterizes writing about nanotechnologies. At the same time that the novel valorizes hard work, relationships, forgiveness, and storytelling over reliance on technology to manage the business of everyday life, the ending suggests a role for nanotechnology that does not unduly intrude or cause dependence for the humans of New Half-Way Tree.

I was doing a good bit of flailing with this one - there's only about a page written so far - so I did what any other writer trying to put together an argument does when stalled: more research! In this case, I found a paper on the same text - Midnight Robber, slightly different idea - web of communication rather than nanotechnology, but still pretty close.

The great thing about reading this paper is that I disagreed with so much of what the writer was arguing. We agree on a number of points, but I felt like this particular writer ignored the entire last half of the book. Which got me thinking about the last half of the book in ways that I hadn't before. And I actually thought some interesting (at least to me!) thoughts about that half of it.

So, I feel reinvigorated for writing this thing. It still needs to get written, and there will be plenty of staring at the screen, tugging at hair, wandering around the house while trying to work out the argument, but I've got a jumping off point now, which is what I really needed.

Productive disagreement, indeed!

When a Bad Experience turns Good

A little while ago, I presented a paper on a single author's work at a conference and it went badly.

It was scheduled for 8am and not only was the audience only 4 people, the other two presenters didn't show up. So I moderated my own paper. Awkward. Especially since two of the audience members were only there to see the paper of a no show.

As I had recently experienced a major setback just before this, I felt like the whole conference was a bust and was really a bit angry that none of the people who I had begun to think of as friends, not just colleagues, who  usually present in this area and might show up were even there. Not even the area chair.

But. A couple of months later, I got an email from that author I was talking about. Apparently the one person in the audience who knew the novel I was talking about also knew its author and told the same about the presentation. The author asked if I would mind sharing the paper. I said, no problem, and sent it as well as some other conference work I'd done on other books. Then we emailed exchanged for a bit, which was really useful because it gave me a chance to find out what the author's perspective was on things I was seeing in the book (not that I necessarily always give that credit; my favourite prof used to always say, 'writers lie' even about their own work). I of course also thought it was kinda cool to email chat with a real author, since I only know a handful of authors, and none of this one's stature (not that it's huge; just bigger than anyone I've met to date). So, yes, I was a bit impressed that an author might take the time to ask about what us academics are writing.

But it also goes to show that even what you think are some of the lows of a career can turn out okay. You just never know....

Ultimate Geek Club

You know how book clubs are cool?

Okay, maybe you don't think they're cool. That means you might want to skip this post. Or. You might want to read on and hear about what would probably be your idea of the worst possible kind of book club. Well, either way...

A couple of friends and I decided we needed to get our theory game on and put together a theory reading book club.

Yup. Theory and book club together.

We've begun with Elizabeth Grosz's Time Travels: Feminism, Nature and Power.

I've gotta say it's been a really good experience so far. Not the book. There are several places where Grosz sets up strawmen as caricatures of what those ideas really are just to knock them down. And that's a bit annoying (especially since she picked on science fiction and science studies - two things I can say I know a little bit about).

But getting to talk to other people about the book, hearing their understanding of it, has really helped me understand some of the parts of the book better than if I had read it alone. And it reminds me of the best parts of doctoral seminars where you get to share ideas with really smart people. I mean, you get some of that at conferences, but at conferences you have to put together a formal presentation and often people don't know what you're talking about (that's the worst, isn't it? When you've slaved over a paper for months and then no one in the audience knows the book/theory you're talking about and you get no questions whatsoever.) In seminars, or in our academic book club, you all are all the same page and get to share cool ideas.

So. It may be one of the geekiest clubs ever, but I'm liking it!

"Glacial" just seems too fast for such responsiveness

Got two job rejection letters today. Two. To which I applied, oh, seven months ago. Seven.

For goodness sake! I know that you only sent out all the rejection letters once you had a signed contract in hand with your selected candidate, but really, if I didn't make your first cut, why couldn't you have mentioned so then? That would've been what, November? maybe December?

In the real world when I worked HR, we either advertised that we would not contact unsuccessful applicants, or contacted them after we set the first interview schedule. Because, really, if you didn't make the cut the first go round, we don't really want you. We always first-interviewed 6-8 people for one position, and if you made it into that first pool, there was no guarantee you'd make it to the second interview or to an offer. But more importantly, if, for some bizarre reason, I interviewed 8 people in a first interview and found them all ill-suited to the position, I wouldn't go back to my pile. I'd repost. Now, I realize that's not quite possible in the academy because you risk losing the line if your search isn't successful, but seriously, if you went through a dozen first interviews and then selected three for campus visits, what would be the chances you would return to the original pile if none of those worked?

I'm willing to bet zero.

So, seriously people, it's almost insulting to get a letter this late in the game, like you thought I still had a chance. I'm not that dense. I got the message loud and clear when I didn't hear from you by January (and when the job wiki made it clear you'd contacted interviewees a month before that).

While we're on the topic, don't be so cheap that you send a letter that is on a photocopied sheet of your letterhead. Seriously, how much would it cost to at least use the real deal? I did. Why can't you?

A Different World

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind roaming this world for a world. Getting a bit tired of the one I inhabit.

Almost over

Where to begin?

The end of semester is keeping me busy. Our exam period runs for two full weeks, and even though I only have three exams to invigilate (and then grade of course), they started on the first day and will end on the penultimate day of exams. This was actually good because I squeezed in a conference between the first and second exams. I was thankful I didn't have to get a substitute to cover the exams because we had two other faculty members who needed coverage for exams because of family emergencies and I think it took some time to find help for the second one (I helped the first one).

I also learned that I wasn't selected for an interview for a position that I thought was ideal. That one stung, probably worse than any other has because I've worked in the department before and they'd seemed happy with my performance. But no interview.

Nothing like an event like that to get you rethinking strategy. It's no mid-life crisis or anything, but my attitude toward the job market has changed slightly as a result and I've realized that it's going to be a bit harder than I thought it was (and I don't think I harboured any misconceptions about how hard it would be). So I'm mostly stuck inside my own head figuring all this out. Maybe once I do, I'll have more to say.

Happy Blogversary!

Eight years.

Eight.

Wow. Hasn't seemed that long. But the calendar doesn't lie. It's been up and down lately here, and I know that. Part of it has been deliberate. I've tried not to just use this as a place to complain. And I've felt so tired and frustrated for a number of different reasons this semester (and before, for that matter), that I haven't posted.

I've been trying to follow Thumper's advice in this.

But eight years seems worth commenting. And it's worth reminding myself about what eight years means for many of my students. In fact, this afternoon during a presentation on why Canada should rejoin the ITER project, a student said that we should change our policy because "global warming has gotten so much worse since 2003 when we dropped out of the program."

It was a phrase that caught me off guard, because for me, 2003 feels like it was just a little while ago. But for my student? It was probably junior high, maybe even earlier.

Wow.

Rainbows!

So much water on the road that I saw rainbows in the spray coming off the truck in front of me. A touch of brightness in an otherwise messy ride home...

How many Robax were consumed this weekend?

This is a question I'm curious about. We got a big spring snow this weekend - thank goodness it started on Saturday morning and the usual weekday commute was spared the mess. But, boy, was that snow heavy to move because it was so wet.

I took it in shifts, but still feel a bit stiff. I wonder how many other people are feeling the same way this weekend?

Good news is that the sun has been shining brilliantly all day, which not only helps rid us of that snowfall, but also just makes everything so much more cheerful. Which is good. Tomorrow the marking parade begins and won't ease up for at least two weeks. Another kind of drift to get buried in!

Life outside the academy

I've been realising how different the world looks from within and from without the academy ever since I joined the board of a civil society organization in my city. At first, there were moments when I felt like I was talking a different language than the other board members, or rather, it might be more accurate to say that I felt like they were talking with an accent that I couldn't quite make out at times; like every once in a while I'd lose a word or two. It was a strange feeling.

Things have gotten better since I began - perhaps I've just learnt the lingo, or maybe I'm just listening more attentively and working out the differences.

But there are real differences between the way we do things in the academy and the way things can get done outside of it. Today we spent much of our day generating outcome measures for each of our programs. Our session was partly educational, teaching board members how to do so, which meant the day was quite long and we didn't get through all of them. But that's beside the point.

What was refreshing was the latitude we had, not only in deciding what our desired outcomes were, but also in the kinds of programs we might choose to undertake. So many times when I think of the kind of outcome planning I do in the university, there are a large number of constraints on it. That's probably because most of the outcome planning that I do relates to course planning, or slightly more broadly, curriculum planning. But those kinds of plans are incredibly constrained: by schedules, by class sizes, by institutional goals, by the limitations of time and available space, and by the sometimes limited forms of evaluation available to assess student learning.

In the nonprofit sector, we have limitations (most often financial), but those limitations are transient; we can change many of those limitations by partnering with other organizations or finding additional sources of funding. The academy is far more static, making it very difficult to think about really doing things differently than they are done right now.

Which means that as difficult as it is to interpret the language, the payoff in freedom to imagine how the world can be a better place and how I can contribute to that, is worth it.

Losing my mind?

In the month since the last post, I'd suggest I've had ideas for about a dozen posts.

So, what's the problem, you're wondering. Why no posting?

These ideas tend to occur in the middle of class or a conversation or the daily commute, in other words, when I'm busy doing other stuff. By the time a computer is in front of me, I either can't seem to garner the energy to post, or I've forgotten what I thought about. I realize the latter might be an indication of the quality of the posts. How many times as a child did I call out 'mom' 'mom' 'mom' only to have forgotten what I wanted to ask by the time I had her attention. And her response? 'well, it mustn't have been that important if you forgot'. Guess so.

1 down; 13 to go

Wow.

This first week of classes was intense. There wasn't really anything unusual that went on; it's just that I was out of town until the day before, so that even though I'd prepared all the syllabi etc. before I left town, I still felt like I was thrown into things. Hence, it is Saturday, and I'm scrambling to prep one class for Monday in order to avoid the stress of feeling like I had no idea what we'd be doing in the next class as each one would end.

I know people who can teach like that. But I'm not one of them. It makes me uncomfortable not knowing what we're doing in the next class - I like to have a couple planned out at a time.

But if this keeps up, it's gonna be a wild ride (again!) this semester...

Walk fast to live long or live long if you can walk fast?

This interesting article "If you want to live longer walk faster" describes a fascinating study that found a correlation between life expectancy and the speed at which senior citizens walked. Interesting correlation.

But the title is misleading. The study researchers suggest that the correlation between life expectancy and speed of walking may be because those who walk slowly are in poorer health than those who walk faster. That suggests that the relationship between the two is one in which the ill health causes the slow pace; in other words, those senior citizens who moved slower were already unsteady or in ill health before their pace slowed. It's less likely that these people slowed their pace and then happened to get ill.

Sure, I admit there's probably a connection between walking rapidly and better health - I know when I get moving, I feel my heart rate elevate slightly - it's a bit of exercise without going to the gym that keep my cardiovascular system in better health. But the title is misleading. It seems to suggest that if you walk faster you'll live longer, when walking fast is just an indicator of better health. And this is only in senior citizens, not necessarily in younger people.

Such sloppy titling annoys me. I realize that the title is far more eyecatching than "Slower people die sooner" (though that's not bad), but it really presents the possible connection backwards, suggesting that the reader will live longer by walking faster. Someone who doesn't read carefully might not notice that the actual study suggests something different. Not irresponsible, but this kind of sloppy science reporting does nothing to make the connection between science and everyday life clearer; instead it favours muddying the waters. Such sloppy writing makes the science seem a tad frivolous. Despite the inappropriate title, it's an interesting article. But it still annoys me a bit.

Resolutions?

'Tis the season for New Year's resolutions, but I just can't seem to come up with any. Just like I couldn't seem to come up with a Christmas wish list when my family wanted one, but I sure started thinking of stuff I wanted only a couple of days before the holiday. Too late to do any good for the holiday, but maybe I'll come up with resolutions in another couple of weeks when I've had time to think about it.

I do know there's one thing I want to need to do this semester though: I need to go back to a reading schedule like I had when I was in the research phase of the dissertation. I got almost no research work done this fall and that can't continue. I know part of the reason why I didn't get much research done was the 4 course/3 new prep schedule and the applications, but part of it was also I think because I didn't set a schedule. I tried to research after everything else got done, which meant that a lot of other things just expanded to fill the available space, leaving nothing for research.

Since I've got two conferences already scheduled and both are preliminary work on the new direction I'm taking to move from dissertation to book, then I'm going to have to get the reading done that I want done. That will require a schedule.

So there. One "resolution" I suppose. Job done.

The hiatus

Ah, the wonderful week between Christmas and New Year's is now restored to its rightful work-in-pj's-if-you-work-at-all state. MLA is next week, and at the end of it to boot, so right now, I sit happily at home working in comfy clothes and taking lots of breaks to do fun things. As it should be.

This Christmas was the first one where all the girls had to come home for it (even if coming home just meant driving across the city) and it was a very different Christmas for it. It seemed the day was set apart a bit more because it wasn't just that we all came downstairs that morning and voila! there were presents under the tree. This time, there was a distinct sense of pre-holiday - no girls around - and holiday - everyone here.

I liked it.

That might be because I have the coolest, most wonderful daughters ever. And a wonderful husband who tolerates our tendency to collectively giggle once in a while!

I hope you had a good holiday too.

Dear winter solstice, please come soon...

The worst part of December is sitting down at your desk in the dark to begin working, then turning off lights as the day progresses, and finally having to turn them all back on before you're finished...

'Tis the season(s)

The biggest problem I have with December - especially this year - is that several seasons converge within the month of the year that features the least amount of sun. And while I don't think I suffer from SAD, I find the lack of sun much harder to take than the cold weather. Having said that, today's December is a trifecta of intersecting seasons:

• #1 There's Christmas of course. Which I never seem to think of until at least late November, and then it feels like I have no time to devote to it because of season #2. The outside lights are up, and thanks in part to my wonderful spouse, all the gifts are purchased (as long as I didn't forget anyone!). But the tree isn't up yet. Yes, I admit it. The tree's not up. It will be up by the end of the weekend (and the Christmas wine will be bottled by then as well), but not yet. Perhaps I'll even do some food preparation - to date, all I've managed is to buy a turkey...
  
• #2 End of semester is the biggie that's taking up a lot of time. It's not just the exams either. I've been asked to take on two new classes for next semester during December here as well. Both are new preps, though in one I'm taking over for another instructor, so most of the texts were already chosen. Even taking the easy route and teaching things I already know, it will be a lot of work next term. More importantly, it has meant that I've spent time during the period when I'm usually writing and then marking exams, deciding on book orders. My exam schedule kinda sucks too. Of the four courses I taught, the first two exams were the first day of exams and the last two on the last two days of exams. So they're weirdly spread out. But that's good because part of reason #3 kept me busy between.
• #3 Job market season makes the whole fall semester busy, and if you're lucky enough to get an interview, you need to start preparing just after you finish sending out letters (and sometimes they even overlap, like they are for me this year). I had a first interview earlier this week by video hookup because it was a good distance away. I suspect they did many of their interviews long distance, so I don't think I was disadvantaged by the virtual presence, but I did find that couple seconds lag on the video feed hard to navigate at first. And I of course walked out thinking of things I should have said - some are lessons learned for next time. I think I could be happy working at the institution, though it's not a dream job. But maybe the dream job isn't what you want to aim for straight off the PhD. We'll see. There's another to prepare for in a few weeks, so I hope I can take the lessons learned in this one and perform well in that.
  

So, the intersection of so many competing needs is meaning my December is super-duper busy. I'm not complaining. I expected all of these things to meet in December, though it is a bit tiring. But I'm hoping that by the afternoon of the 23rd, I should be able to catch my breath and maybe start wrapping gifts!? Maybe.

Well, that didn't turn out quite like I imagined it would

I marked a mixed bag of final exams on Saturday, and honestly, I thought they would have been more uniformly good.

In that poetry class I was teaching, I decided that the final exam would be open book and that the students would have one task: create an anthology, selected from poems we studied, accompanied by an introduction that demonstrates what they learned during the class.

Frankly, I thought it sounded like a fun assignment. They would get to look over everything they'd done, think about it, and come up with an explanation of why we studied some of the things we did (i.e. why they are important things to learn).

I told them ahead of time it was open book and warned them that it would require them to think creatively. I even told them it would be to their advantage to insert tabs or use some other means of being able to quickly identify what we did in class. I also warned them that planning their response would be important and that they should give themselves enough time to plan rather than just diving into writing the exam when they got it.

Then they walked into the exam room (on a Saturday morning - how cruel!)

Some of them got it. They realized that the task was designed to test their knowledge and that they would need to demonstrate it by specific reference to the poems they chose to include in their anthology. They did a great job of selecting poems that served them well in highlighting several important features. Actually, many of them got it. Some ran out of time because they got caught up minor details, but most got it.

But some of them really missed the boat on this one. They tried to write about just about every poem we studied (and we studied more than 40 of them). Consequently, they did a horrible job of it. Some of them really got hung up on obscure forms like the villanelle and sestina, when we spent ten times as much time talking about figures of speech or sound structures, or even the use (and abuse) of poet biography when talking about poetry. No one failed the exam because they all were able to talk about some of what was important in the course. But some of them did a poor job of connecting what they'd learned to actual example. That was disappointing.

I get that the kind of meta-commentary on the course inherent in the task is difficult to undertake and that students often aren't asked to produce it. But they were English majors taking an elective poetry course - I guess I expected a bit more because they obviously very consciously choose to take the course. I would think that would have produced some more conscious learning on their parts. Their other assignments seemed to indicate they were thinking critically about the material.

Another weird thing that happened is that a couple of students wrote the introduction to the anthology as if they were planning syllabi, saying things like "Students should read this poem to..." I was so confused by this I went back to see if I'd inadvertently said something in the instructions that would lead them to think I wanted them to plan a mini-version of the course. But no, there's nothing there. Then I found myself wondering if those students didn't know what an anthology was? Perhaps. Then again, maybe they were just so focused on their own experience in the class, they steered toward course planning rather than anthology planning without really being aware of what they were doing.

What was probably even more surprising though was that some of them seemed to not understand the possibilities and perils of open book exams, leading me to think my colleagues are not offering them very often. I had one write a note in the margins that he/she wasn't sure of a spelling for a term when the glossary of terms in the back of the book was right there on the desk. Look it up! It's there for you to use. We'd even talked about this and I'd suggested that any annotations, sample scansions etc. they'd done in the text did not need to be erased before the exam.

What disappoints me the most in the poor showing is that I decided to make the exam this way because I thought such a task would not only assess their learning, but also be a final opportunity for learning. I wanted it to be not just evaluative but also a chance for the students to reflect critically on what they learned and how they learned it (i.e. which poems were most demonstrative of the skills they've developed). That didn't happen to the extent I thought it would. So I'm disappointed.

Looks like it's not just the students who learned a lesson here!

I couldn't have planned it better myself

In the poetry class I'm teaching, we began the first "real" class by reading William Butler Yeats' "Adam's Curse" because of its pairing of hard labour and creative production:

We sat together at one summer's end,

That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,

And you and I, and talked of poetry.

I said, 'A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

Better go down upon your marrow-bones

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;

For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen

The martyrs call the world.'

. . . . . . . . . And thereupon

That beautiful mild woman for whose sake

There's many a one shall find out all heartache

On finding that her voice is sweet and low

Replied, 'To be born woman is to know-

Although they do not talk of it at school-

That we must labour to be beautiful.'

I said, 'It's certain there is no fine thing

Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.

There have been lovers who thought love should be

So much compounded of high courtesy

That they would sigh and quote with learned looks

Precedents out of beautiful old books;

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;

We saw the last embers of daylight die,

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky

A moon, worn as if it had been a shell

Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell

About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:

That you were beautiful, and that I strove

To love you in the old high way of love;

That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown

As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

1903

And the poet who we're studying in the poet study? The one that the students chose*? William Butler Yeats

Couldn't have planned that better myself.

*Actually, there were two proposals tied for the highest number of votes. But as brilliant and interesting as the proposal to study Dr. Seuss's poetry might have been, I broke the tie by picking Yeats, thus reinforcing conventionality. But for a second year course, a survey, it seems to me that conventionality is entirely appropriate.