Home Improvements

So I just had one of those moments where I realized that I've unconsciously crafted a life for myself that in many little quirky ways (and some less little and less quirky ways) adheres to the values and habits of my own family - specifically in this case my mother. (This is a totally random opener, I'm aware.) Moments like this are almost always positive for me - they make me feel good about the adult I've become, about how my background has stayed a part of me through it all (even if I sometimes feel like there's nothing left to me but work, my love for my cats and a growing case of OCD about neatness).

What was it you ask that triggered this feeling? Scissors. Or more specifically, the realization that I own three pairs (four if you count the kitchen shears) - and thus can always, always find a pair when I need them. This felt surprisingly good - like realizing you've unconsciously managed to live up to some small but significant parental expectation. Which I guess is kind of what it is. Like Grampa and his perennial insistence on always having a flashlight in the car (something that's become a staple family in-joke at this point), always putting the scissors back in their place so they are they for the next person is something I remember being a thing growing up. Except the reason I likely remember it is because no one ever did it. Like, ever. So it was always hell finding some when you needed to wrap a gift, clip an article, cut a tag. (This is why I have the incurable habit of ripping my tags.) So as a result our house eventually just had scissors more or less everywhere. Junk drawer? Ancient slightly rusty black-handled scissors that looked like they'd been around since prohibition. Top drawer of the sewing machine? Slick uber-sharp heavy-duty mauve-handled shears that Mom would kill you if you didn't put back. Drawer of the huge heavy metal desk in the basement? More old-school metal ones. My top right desk drawer? Normal paper-cutting scissors. Kitten's room? Some safety scissors. Sewing basket? Embroidery shears.

...I'm digressing. And possibly exaggerating somewhat. But the point is: today I needed scissors twice in quick succession, and was able to quickly locate a pair in two separate locations, right where they belonged - and then I instinctively put them back. And it made me feel good about the life I'm building, a reassurance that there's always going to be more making me up than the last three years, and that graduate school is temporary but being a Tarsa is forever.

And thank God for that.

Thoughts while working

April 7th
- Wow my back hurts. Words cannot express how much I regret missing that Groupon for the massage place across from the Coop.

- A student today reaffirmed my recently slipping belief that the vast majority of students see anything below a B as an actively bad grade, which makes me feel better about my grading this year. I've been trying to toughen up my standards but I still sometimes worry I'm too lax - but if it is in fact true that most of them are upset at receiving a C (rather than indifferent with a splash of "darn," as I'd been starting to think), then my usual spread of a few in the 90-95 range, a few in the 72-78 range, and the rest in between puts my course about where I'd want it to be in terms of difficulty and standards. Not that every assignment every semester plays out in that range, of course. But the point is - I'm much less afraid now that I'm either too hard or too easy.

- I'm loving this weather. Is spring finally here??

April 18

- HOW did it take me this long to start using Zotero?? While I don't quite have the hang of how best to use it yet I can already tell it's going to save me a lot of time. That is, unless I become unreasonably anal about how everything is organized and waste hours arranging things for no reason aside from my own neurosis.

- My search for prelims readings just turned up an article entitled "Review Essay - The Internet."

- ...wow. So the Council of Writing Program Administrators just put me through literally 10 attempts at making up a password secure enough to be deemed worthy of defending my WPA conference submission form and the like - strictest most annoying standards for a password I've ever encountered in a civilian context. And then when I finally found one and finished registering, they promptly sent me an unencrypted email containing my new super-secure password plainly written out. Amazing.

[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."

Facebook and Mechanical Perfection - On Faina's response to crediting her with discovering DamnYouAutoCorrect.com:

First comment to Faina (actually published): I strive to keep the balance between me and everyone else as close to 50-50 as possible when it comes to contributing to that project.

Second comment to Faina (only published here because it was that much too shaming): ...which can take effort, since my spending 3-4 minutes constructing the above sentence in order to subscribe to my increasingly particular aesthetic mechanical demands is becoming more and more typical.

...I'm not even going to tell you how long it took me to format the title of this post and determine if portions of it should be placed in the body instead. I think I'm being haunted by the Ghost of Current-Traditional Rhetoric.

Priorities

I'm watching the first episode of The Walking Dead (itself a commentary on my priorities) and amidst the zombies, mayhem, shoot-outs etc I find myself most in awe of how incredibly warm and pleasant the weather there looks. That seems like the most unrealistic thing.

Practice Spontaneous Acts of Quasi-Humerous Passive Agression

I know I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm going to go on record as someone who kind of loves heated gradlist discussions. I'm a big fan of their increased frequency lately, and if someone doesn't make a Follies sketch about that shit it'll be a damn shame.