Some Thoughts from A Really Scattered Weekend

- The girl two machines in front of me at the gym today had a ridiculously nice ass. Like the Platonic ideal of what a white girl's ass should be. To quote Ron Burdgandy, I wasn't even mad, just impressed. I was tempted to tap her on the shoulder and ask what her strength routine is but I decided in time that that was kiiiind of creepy so I abstained.

- Big shout-out to Dmitri for drunkenly hassling me about learning and using the multi-touch shortcuts on my new computer. Because man, they are amazing. It's not quite as "how did I live without this?" as when I first switched to a Mac and learned about keyboard shortcuts, but it's definitely increased the ease with which I navigate documents, especially in terms of web surfing and reading long articles. It's a good reminder to me not to be a secret Luddite who never upgrades her software because learning about all the "improvements" is too much of a pain. Turns out calling them "improvements" is not merely a scam to make you reboot - software upgrades are useful! (See also: my giving numerous students higher grades on presentations because I didn't realize that the reason their powerpoints looked so much better than mine was because they were using a version that didn't predate the Bush administration.)

Also - considering how much money I didn't have I paid for this thing, it only makes sense to get as much out of it as possible.

- Holy crap my back is sore. (Doo-dah, doo-dah...) 

- After a successful (almost too much so) day at the mall with Marshelle and Jessie, I realize the reason I feel like all my clothes are boring and plain is not in fact because it's hard to find any other kind these days, but merely because I almost never go shopping anymore (and when I do, for the past year or so it's pretty much exclusively been at Target).

- I've been starting to think that the question of whether or not a given dude has any potential traction as someone who'd fit well with me (and vice versa, of course) is not in fact as difficult to shed light on as I've been feeling it is for the past year or so - but simply a matter of asking myself if I could imagine him working at a Tarsa family Christmas. Not necessarily instantly fitting in like one born to the role (I'm looking at you, Tom Harper) - just that the idea of them there doesn't make me wince in discomfort. I feel like much wasted time in my romantic history could have been avoided if I had realized this earlier on. But then - such is youth.

- Writing that last point started off being about dudes but definitely ended up being about my family. And has made me realize that I really miss them. I think a lot of my distance from them over the past year or so is more a defense mechanism than anything else. I can't see any of them more than a few times a year at this stage in my life. There's nothing I can do about that. I was brought up to value opportunity over geographical fidelity, and my life to date reflects that. But damn - sometimes I wish that was not among the family values (especially the ones I got an extra-large dose of as the oldest) and we'd all settled down within an easy drive of home. (Which would still be in New Hampshire in this fantasy, btw.)

- This weekend has completely fucked my sleep cycle and is threatening to set off my anxiety issues about falling asleep. Joy. Hopefully I can drag myself out of bed early enough tomorrow to start repairing the damage. 

- Some really great, productive reading and thinking for my prelims question this weekend - somehow, between the not sleeping and the staying out too late and the shopping excursions. Looking at a few theoretical approaches to the word vs image question in regards to meaning-making and then finishing with what amounted to a practical-minded and applied consideration of the same issue by Edward Tufte (whose Beautiful Evidence I am 100% assigning next time I teach 201) was incredibly useful. It highlighted the benefits and shortcomings of both theoretical and practical approaches to the question (and all questions, I guess) - both from a scholarly standpoint and a pedagogical one. 

And less convolutedly - if you're looking for a good starting point for thinking about how to begin bringing multimodal work into your teaching (or your own writing), this is a really great book to check out. It's by no means perfect -  its focus on quantitative content doesn't always result in a clean map onto Humanities writing, and he's kind of a jackass at many points. But by jettisoning all the anxiety about the word-vs-image hierarchy and simply asking "how can we use the visual to present evidence in as effective and beautiful a way as possible?", he's able to come up with some truly incredible ideas and illustrations of them.

Things I Learned This Winter (a selection)

- I am a compositionist first and a rhetorician second.

- A truly awesome pair of shoes can make you feel better about everything in your wardrobe and are 100% worth investing in.

- "Oh well, it probably won't make much difference anyhow" is NEVER the right attitude to take on insulating your apartment.

- It's also a bad position to adopt towards paying parking tickets on time, letting your registration expire, and eating Valentine's Nerds and Hot Pockets 2 meals a day for three weeks.

- My instincts are usually right when it comes to ebay auctions, when I don't need another drink, and men. Just, you know...fucking learn to listen to them.

- Polo will always knock his water over. It doesn't matter where I put it.

- Renee + me + Plan B = never a bad idea. Except when I'm not listening to that second instinct above.

- I kind of really do have a boner for digital writing. I'm where I belong.

- Many of my academic insecurities could be lessened if I would just make more time for reading in my field. (Cue prelims!)

- I'm happier when I pay my bills on time.

- I enjoy myself some genre fiction from time to time, but round about the 10th book in a row it stops being a refreshing change and starts being a rut.

- Don't put 3/4 of your winter clothes away after the second 60+ degree day in April. This is a huge mistake and will result in your wearing the same 4 outfits for the next three to five weeks. (I cannot stress this one enough. I've been all "damn...I have *no* clothes" for weeks now, and tonight when I went to finish the job I was like, "oh...that's why.")

- No matter what their official titles may imply, my professors are not really all that interested in giving me personally tailored advice or mentoring outside the obligatory.

- Getting some time in outside is incredibly good for my mental health, even if it's very very very cold out and hard to make myself do it.

- My writing is good. But it could definitely be better, and for that to happen I'm going to have to work at it.

- It's always a good idea to brave an epic blizzard for a Snoop Dogg show.

- Remember how you used to listen to music all the time - walking, on the bus, working, writing, walking? Do that again.

- It's hard to un-care for someone once you open that door.

- People exist who think you are genuinely good at your job.

- You may be considerably above average at winter driving, but you're decidedly mediocre at knowing what to do once actually stuck in a snowbank of some kind.

- Relatedly - I have some pretty sweet neighbors scattered through the nearby blocks - friends and semi-strangers alike.

- Wisconsin winters are incredibly hard on me. I know blaming Mother Nature is the world's biggest cop-out and I'm not saying I couldn't do more to mitigate their effects. But looking back on the past 12 months the correlation between the quality of my mental state and general lifestyle and the season is too strong to deny - winter Fucks. Me. Up.

And so I'm that much happier it's spring. It's waking me up, and I'm excited to start a new phase, where what I'm learning is less about enforced work and disappointment and cold and more about passion for my field and possibility and Ralph Lauren photo shoot-esque outings on Mendota.

Life's not so bad. I need to be more positive. There's a lot on the horizon worth being happy about.

[sings] Just blog-post while you work, doo dee doo doo doo dee doo...

Some work-related thoughts!

- "Of course, those students, like students today, say that they aren’t influenced by advertising (or song lyrics or any other aspect of popular culture that one attempts to bring into focus so it can be studied)." - Judith A. Wooten, on the popularity of asking students to analyze ad jingles back in the 80s. I found this quote today in Judith Wootten's 2006 CCCC address, and god damn it's the gospel truth. It's like once you ask them to analyze how something's going about fulfilling its goals, they instantly regard all such attempts as inherently flawed and ineffective, regardless of whether it was written by FDR or Charlie Sheen on a coke binge.

- How did I forget for so long what a bee I have in my bonnet about the limited role given to student voices in comp pedagogy scholarship? Oh wait - because I realized that unless I put in some massive reading time to back myself up it was too risky, as nothing pisses people off like being told by an unremarkable grad student they're irresponsible and exploiting their discourse position.

- This week feels really weird, with everyone gone for CCCC (Cs/ C's/Sees/Seize/ however the fuck one best expresses that in brief). Tomorrow and Friday especially - it's very strange to have nothing on Thursday except teaching, and two Fridays in a row without a staff meeting? I feel like I'm in BizarroDepartment.

- Some of my students did amazing work on this last project. True, I might have wished that the best project didn't forcibly remind me of my online dating experiences, but I suppose one can't have everything.

- Scene from my office hours today:
Me: "So I think that's pretty much it...do you have any questions for me?"
Student: "Yeah - what's on your shirt?" *points directly at my chest*
Me: "...Ben Folds."
Student: "Cool. Now I can stop staring."
*awkward pause*
Me: "...alright then, see you in class."

Epiphany comes but twice a year

Today I had one of those awesome moments of clarity that allow me to pretend for 10 months of the year that I secretly enjoy the end of the semester. I still have 17-20 pages to write, but I can see the entire path now, all the way to the end. I know where I'm going. It came late this term, but damn it still feels good.

I also discovered that Mike's syllabus requests a "20 to 30" page paper rather than 25 pages, as everyone's somehow come to believe. This was a joyous discovery, and led directly to the aforementioned flash of insight.

I will finish. There will be a life after this semester. It sounds stupid, but it's like driving in a lot of fog - everything feels less oppressively endless if you can see where you're headed.

[sings] "I Saw Five Hundred Thousand Tasks Come Sailing In, Come Sailing In, Come Sailing in..."

- Just cited my professor in the paper I'm writing for him. Here's hoping I'm correct in thinking his is not one of the articles I grossly misrepresented in my annotated bibliography, since I pulled the text from there...

- I fucking hate not having a parking space. I've literally paid more in tickets than I would have to get a spot. I need to do something about this. Anyone have a driveway/garage spot I can rent for the winter? (Bonus points if I can pay in cookies, hugs or stimulating discourse on visual rhetoric.)

- So while I'm slowly working to distance myself from my self-assigned title as the Worst Graduate Student of All Time, I'm falling deeper and deeper into the pit of being the Worst Adult of All Time. See: unpaid parking tickets, unspeakably stressful UW Credit Union debaucle, failure to have bought AN single Christmas gift, the fact that upon waking this morning and realizing I had eaten the last of my Candy Cane Kisses my first thought was "dammit, what the hell am I going to eat for breakfast now?", etc.

- I have still not watched the film upon which the bulk of my aforementioned paper's argument will rest. My draft currently starts with "[insert stuff about the scene where he walks btwn Towers here.]" That scene is the basis of my whole case.

- I discovered that Penny's recent gastric distress was almost certainly due to her new habit of eating my hair elastics. Guess that's a good reason to follow through on my constant resolutions to stop leaving them all over the house.

- It's been a year since I wrote a long paper so I might simply be forgetting (altering my own memory of the historical narrative, if you will - which you shouldn't), but I do not recall having this much trouble organizing the initial presentation of my idea. Sheesh. Turns out situating yourself in a scholarly context is complicated. Yeesh.

- [A bit later:] ...okay. I might have dramatically underestimated what I have to say for Mike. For the first time EVER, I think I have too much theory and context to present and not enough of my own ideas. I might not have to come up with a new argument for Christa - I might just split the idea further and make Mike's paper entirely about framing the kind of images I'm looking at and Christa's entirely about Man on Wire and what it's doing with 9/11. Maybe. Because I am looking at some serious length issues here.

Fucking ideas. And standards. Bah. I'm going to Woodman's.

(A second later - How is all that typing only 2 pages long???????)