Thursday, May 21, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
End of semester thoughts...
This semester was really rough. I was not happy with anything I produced, not any of it. I am not accustomed to that. I realized today that a large part of the problem was that I didn't write much of anything until the last couple of months. Writing is like using chopsticks for me - I know I'm pretty decent at it, but every time I do it I need some time to remember how it works. I don't know why, and maybe that's something I should explore at some point, but for now I'm glad to have come to this realizaton.
I tried really hard to organize and plan out this semester so I wouldn't get as overwhelmed as I did last semester. Instead this semester was a lesson in letting go of control. The research class completely fucked me up. Last minute changes on an almost weekly basis scramble me, probably more than they should. I chose due dates (when I had the option) that would have resulted in an assignment due every two weeks. But all that got screwed up - the research class was a royal mess, nothing could be completed without approvals, approvals were not granted, blah, blah, blah. Everything became due between April 24th and May 13th. It was way too much work to squish into that amount of time.
On top of that, I was dissatisfied with two of my three classes. By the time assignments became due, I was burned out. I felt like I had been on the end of a rope and people decided to swing it around to see if I could hang on.
I had a slow leak from the first week of class, when a professor changed class day at the last minute and then showed up 30 minutes late to class. I was deflated not long after mid-term and THEN it was time to start producing. Which resulted in poor quality work from me.
I know I need to be the one who makes this work for me, but I feel let down this semester. I only feel like one class challenged me mentally and the others wore me out so I couldn't focus on that one class that meant something.
I will take the next 6 weeks to rejuvenate. I have way too much school left to burn out now.
I tried really hard to organize and plan out this semester so I wouldn't get as overwhelmed as I did last semester. Instead this semester was a lesson in letting go of control. The research class completely fucked me up. Last minute changes on an almost weekly basis scramble me, probably more than they should. I chose due dates (when I had the option) that would have resulted in an assignment due every two weeks. But all that got screwed up - the research class was a royal mess, nothing could be completed without approvals, approvals were not granted, blah, blah, blah. Everything became due between April 24th and May 13th. It was way too much work to squish into that amount of time.
On top of that, I was dissatisfied with two of my three classes. By the time assignments became due, I was burned out. I felt like I had been on the end of a rope and people decided to swing it around to see if I could hang on.
I had a slow leak from the first week of class, when a professor changed class day at the last minute and then showed up 30 minutes late to class. I was deflated not long after mid-term and THEN it was time to start producing. Which resulted in poor quality work from me.
I know I need to be the one who makes this work for me, but I feel let down this semester. I only feel like one class challenged me mentally and the others wore me out so I couldn't focus on that one class that meant something.
I will take the next 6 weeks to rejuvenate. I have way too much school left to burn out now.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Dreaming about my husband
I had a dream last night that Craig and I went to pick up our first veggie share from the Community Supported Garden we joined. We get 19 lbs of veggies each pick up and I was so excited to see many things I had never seen before.
There were Italian rolled eggplants (picutre large eggplants that spilt apart at the bottom and roll up), capped moles (these were small rodents wearing paper hats), and many other things. Just as I started to pile my treasure on the scale, Craig came running with the ONE thing he wanted... a 17 lbs pumpkin. He said it would match the two other pumplins he had and he could chop them up and put them in the compost.
I asked if it was from the sharing table - since it's not really pumpkin season it might have been left over and then it wouldn't count against our veggie share. But no, it wasn't.
I said, "Honey it's 17 pounds! That means we only get 2 more pounds of veggies." He looked at me, all bright eyed and excited and said, "17 pounds! Think of all the dirt that will make!"
I sighed, picked up my Italian rolled eggplant and some pomegrante seeds. (I had to put the capped mole back, it weighed too much.) Then we walked out to the car. Him bouncing along carrying this huge pumpkin and me just shaking my head and giggling at the absurdity of it all.
I married a man who gets really excited about dirt. At least I know there will always be joy in our lives ... as long as there is dirt.
There were Italian rolled eggplants (picutre large eggplants that spilt apart at the bottom and roll up), capped moles (these were small rodents wearing paper hats), and many other things. Just as I started to pile my treasure on the scale, Craig came running with the ONE thing he wanted... a 17 lbs pumpkin. He said it would match the two other pumplins he had and he could chop them up and put them in the compost.
I asked if it was from the sharing table - since it's not really pumpkin season it might have been left over and then it wouldn't count against our veggie share. But no, it wasn't.
I said, "Honey it's 17 pounds! That means we only get 2 more pounds of veggies." He looked at me, all bright eyed and excited and said, "17 pounds! Think of all the dirt that will make!"
I sighed, picked up my Italian rolled eggplant and some pomegrante seeds. (I had to put the capped mole back, it weighed too much.) Then we walked out to the car. Him bouncing along carrying this huge pumpkin and me just shaking my head and giggling at the absurdity of it all.
I married a man who gets really excited about dirt. At least I know there will always be joy in our lives ... as long as there is dirt.
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Point of It All
Spent several hours in the library today, dutifully working on a paper on Derrida, Nietzsche, and Woman. This paper is important to me. More important to me than anything I've done thus far, with the possible exception of my undergrad thesis. I want to do this RIGHT, so I'm doing what I always told myself I should do ... I'm working slowly and closely with the text. I'm annotating almost ever damned paragraph. I want to get this right. The problem is that this paper is due on April 28th... it's now 9:30 pm on April 20th. Time is rapidly slipping out of my hands.
Today, after class ended the panic started to settle on me in a serious way. I've never written a 30 page paper before. Even with footnotes and works cited, my thesis was barely 25. I have a 5 page proposal, which can count as a start. But what that 5 page proposal is seriously lacking is a thesis statement. By the time I made it to my car, I was shaking. What am I thinking going to Massachusetts tomorrow? Yes, it's to do an interview with a woman I highly respect and want to keep as a contact/reference for the future. Yes, the interview is school related. But the class the interview is for... let's just say I can't be bothered to take a class seriously that is cancelled 25% of the time. It's for a class and a professor that I mean nothing to me. Unlike the Derrida paper.
If I do well on this paper, I feel like I can ask the professor for a recommendation for my PhD applications... and a recommendation from her would practically guarantee me a spot at NB, which is my first choice.
So, panic.
I get in the car and the rain which had been coming down at a moderate pace, begins to increase. When I begin to merge from I-280 onto I-80 the heavy rain became torrential and I couldn't see anything. I almost kissed the side wall of the freeway more than once. My windshield looked like Brad and Janet's in Rocky Horror and I realized this could be it. I could hydroplane into the sidewall, into other traffic, into a semi-truck and that would be it. My life could end on I-80 somewhere near Parsippany... and I was panicked about an essay?
Seriously. We all let this happen, all the time. It's part of living a day to day life. But as any good geek knows, the most important thing to remember is "DON"T PANIC" ... not about essays, PhD applications, even hydroplaning on I-80. Don't panic.
The truth is ... I could fail out of grad school. Craig could lose his job. And the two of us could live on minimum wage in a trailer park. And I would be blessed. In the end, it's all about the connections we have to those we love. It's about crawling into bed with the one you love. It's about crashing on your sister's couch on your way to an interview. It's about walking with me in the rain to the library after class. It's about reaching out to discover that others are reaching out to you.
It's about all of you who have crossed my path, walked alongside me, and even ran smack into me and knocked me on my ass ... thank you. It's about you.
Today, after class ended the panic started to settle on me in a serious way. I've never written a 30 page paper before. Even with footnotes and works cited, my thesis was barely 25. I have a 5 page proposal, which can count as a start. But what that 5 page proposal is seriously lacking is a thesis statement. By the time I made it to my car, I was shaking. What am I thinking going to Massachusetts tomorrow? Yes, it's to do an interview with a woman I highly respect and want to keep as a contact/reference for the future. Yes, the interview is school related. But the class the interview is for... let's just say I can't be bothered to take a class seriously that is cancelled 25% of the time. It's for a class and a professor that I mean nothing to me. Unlike the Derrida paper.
If I do well on this paper, I feel like I can ask the professor for a recommendation for my PhD applications... and a recommendation from her would practically guarantee me a spot at NB, which is my first choice.
So, panic.
I get in the car and the rain which had been coming down at a moderate pace, begins to increase. When I begin to merge from I-280 onto I-80 the heavy rain became torrential and I couldn't see anything. I almost kissed the side wall of the freeway more than once. My windshield looked like Brad and Janet's in Rocky Horror and I realized this could be it. I could hydroplane into the sidewall, into other traffic, into a semi-truck and that would be it. My life could end on I-80 somewhere near Parsippany... and I was panicked about an essay?
Seriously. We all let this happen, all the time. It's part of living a day to day life. But as any good geek knows, the most important thing to remember is "DON"T PANIC" ... not about essays, PhD applications, even hydroplaning on I-80. Don't panic.
The truth is ... I could fail out of grad school. Craig could lose his job. And the two of us could live on minimum wage in a trailer park. And I would be blessed. In the end, it's all about the connections we have to those we love. It's about crawling into bed with the one you love. It's about crashing on your sister's couch on your way to an interview. It's about walking with me in the rain to the library after class. It's about reaching out to discover that others are reaching out to you.
It's about all of you who have crossed my path, walked alongside me, and even ran smack into me and knocked me on my ass ... thank you. It's about you.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Poetry
Sliced my thumb instead of an onion today. It did not thrill me. I like to think this shows that I may not be as cool as Sylvia Plath, although potentially more stable. I always preferred Elm to Cut anyway. "I know the bottom she says, I know it with my great taproot. It is what you fear. I do not fear it, I have been there."
That was the first poem I ever properly analyzed. I remember being amazed that I could write so much about so little. I went over on pages and still only wrote about half the poem. It was the first class I took from Dave Stanley at Westminster. He was my advisor and I think the only other class I took from him was a May Term class on American Folk Music. It's his fault I saw and fell in love with Mariza and I will always be grateful to him for that.
I was at Mariza's Carnegie Hall debut. People were standing up dancing in the aisles. At one point she sang a song that included the Portuguese word for kiss and all the sudden the crowd made this huge kissing noise all together. You know the sound. (I just made it to try and figure out ow to describe it - and now I have a dog trying to climb on my lap because he thinks I called him.) Anyway, after the kissy noise Mariza stopped singing and said, "My Portuguese friends, what are you doing? Do you know where you are? You are at THE CARNEGIE HALL!" Numerous kissy noises followed and after laughing she composed herself and continued singing.
When she came out for her encore she tested the acoustics of Carnegie Hall by singing acapella, at one point even turning to face the back of the stage, and her voice carried through the building. We were a few balconies up and had no problem hearing every nuance.
I thought this was going to be a post about taproots and atrocities of sunsets. I'm glad I was wrong. It's better to let the stories tell themselves in their own time.
That was the first poem I ever properly analyzed. I remember being amazed that I could write so much about so little. I went over on pages and still only wrote about half the poem. It was the first class I took from Dave Stanley at Westminster. He was my advisor and I think the only other class I took from him was a May Term class on American Folk Music. It's his fault I saw and fell in love with Mariza and I will always be grateful to him for that.
I was at Mariza's Carnegie Hall debut. People were standing up dancing in the aisles. At one point she sang a song that included the Portuguese word for kiss and all the sudden the crowd made this huge kissing noise all together. You know the sound. (I just made it to try and figure out ow to describe it - and now I have a dog trying to climb on my lap because he thinks I called him.) Anyway, after the kissy noise Mariza stopped singing and said, "My Portuguese friends, what are you doing? Do you know where you are? You are at THE CARNEGIE HALL!" Numerous kissy noises followed and after laughing she composed herself and continued singing.
When she came out for her encore she tested the acoustics of Carnegie Hall by singing acapella, at one point even turning to face the back of the stage, and her voice carried through the building. We were a few balconies up and had no problem hearing every nuance.
I thought this was going to be a post about taproots and atrocities of sunsets. I'm glad I was wrong. It's better to let the stories tell themselves in their own time.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Time hurries on...
I'm not quite certain how it got to be the end of March already, but the end of March it is and here I sit anticipating April in all her cruelty. I'm not certain how it works for other folks, but for me - at this moment in my life - April is the November of Spring semester without Thanksgiving break. It's the time when final papers must move beyond the vague contemplative stage and into the doing some sort of research to lead to getting concrete words on paper.
I turned in one proposal (Discussing Derrida's use of margins to illuminate his discussion of Woman in Nietzsche from Spurs) on Monday. I meet with that prof on Tuesday to discuss my proposal and get advice for further work. Which I could use because the proposal is 5 pages and the 30 page final version of the paper is due April 28th.
I will be turning in another proposal tomorrow, a preliminary proposal for pretend research project on the treatment of gender and non-heterosexual couples in abstinence only education curricula that receive government funding. The final iteration of the proposal is due May 11th, but I have to present it on May 1st.
Before then I have a paper on female authority in Emma due (April 6th, I believe) and a proposal of a final paper on one of 5 Jane Austen novels. What has not already been said about Jane Austen, I ask you? The other day I happened up a book at the library titled Jane Austen and her Gentlemen, so I grabbed it with not real interest but just so I have a book to fall back on. That final paper doesn't have an official due date, but I have decided to aim for fial exam day (May 4th) with a back up date of May 11th when I will be on campus for my research project proposal.
Somehow it's less intimidating when I realize it fits into these few paragraphs.
I turned in one proposal (Discussing Derrida's use of margins to illuminate his discussion of Woman in Nietzsche from Spurs) on Monday. I meet with that prof on Tuesday to discuss my proposal and get advice for further work. Which I could use because the proposal is 5 pages and the 30 page final version of the paper is due April 28th.
I will be turning in another proposal tomorrow, a preliminary proposal for pretend research project on the treatment of gender and non-heterosexual couples in abstinence only education curricula that receive government funding. The final iteration of the proposal is due May 11th, but I have to present it on May 1st.
Before then I have a paper on female authority in Emma due (April 6th, I believe) and a proposal of a final paper on one of 5 Jane Austen novels. What has not already been said about Jane Austen, I ask you? The other day I happened up a book at the library titled Jane Austen and her Gentlemen, so I grabbed it with not real interest but just so I have a book to fall back on. That final paper doesn't have an official due date, but I have decided to aim for fial exam day (May 4th) with a back up date of May 11th when I will be on campus for my research project proposal.
Somehow it's less intimidating when I realize it fits into these few paragraphs.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Why it matters that Nietzsche forgot his umbrella
But, it must not be forgotten, it is also an umbrella. ~Spurs, Jacques Derrida
Nietzsche's notes were published after his death. Unfinished thoughts, half fragments of ideas ... all published. Included a note in the margin that said, "I have forgotten my umbrella."
What a joke, some have said. Too bad they couldn't find his shopping list, others bantered. What a waste of ink, has been the general sentiment.
Indulge me before giving breath to your witty addition to these critiques. Hesitate a moment with me...
The umbrella is that which must not be forgotten. It is a note in written in the margins, that managed to be included in the text. And yet, it has only been written because the umbrella has been forgotten. It is precisely because the umbrella has been forgotten that we can and must remember it. It never was outside the text. It was written with the same ink, upon the same page as the rest. Who are we to determine its legitimacy based solely on spatial relations, on location?And yet, we are so quick to do so.
This is the way it is with margins. It is what has already been forgotten that we must remember, recognize as within the text, for it too is an umbrella.
Nietzsche's notes were published after his death. Unfinished thoughts, half fragments of ideas ... all published. Included a note in the margin that said, "I have forgotten my umbrella."
What a joke, some have said. Too bad they couldn't find his shopping list, others bantered. What a waste of ink, has been the general sentiment.
Indulge me before giving breath to your witty addition to these critiques. Hesitate a moment with me...
The umbrella is that which must not be forgotten. It is a note in written in the margins, that managed to be included in the text. And yet, it has only been written because the umbrella has been forgotten. It is precisely because the umbrella has been forgotten that we can and must remember it. It never was outside the text. It was written with the same ink, upon the same page as the rest. Who are we to determine its legitimacy based solely on spatial relations, on location?And yet, we are so quick to do so.
This is the way it is with margins. It is what has already been forgotten that we must remember, recognize as within the text, for it too is an umbrella.
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