Category Archives: Dissertation

Sleeping and Waking. Injuring and Running. All in a days work.

Posted on 16 October 2010 | 4 comments

I would teach from nine to four, sleep an hour, and write from six until midnight, night after night.—Marguerite Young

I wish I was this motivated.

I should be. There is no reason I am not.

But, I am not.

So, instead, I teach from 8AM to 3PM—or 4 or 5 if I have a meeting—everyday, coming home to walk dogs, eat dinner, grade, then couch. Instead of writing, I fondle the remote control, waiting for some titillating piece of cinematic prowess to stimulate my mind into wanting to write or read or do anything productive. What I do instead of doing anything remotely academic or intellectual is I fall asleep watching Jeopardy before 8PM. Then I get up at  an ungodly hour in the morning to grade or to read or to plan my day. It’s sad, really.

I thought this weekend would be different. I thought I had a no-fail plan for catching up on all those things I should have done during the weekends when I was otherwise engaged, be my engagement in conferences or traveling or whatnot (side note: I cannot believe whatnot is in the computer dictionary, and that there is no little red line telling me it’s spelled wrong or not really a word.). I thought this would be the work weekend to end all work weekends, but my neighbors and their dog had another plan.

As I slept peacefully on the couch downstairs where I had fallen asleep watching Bones, I heard a loud commotion outside. I discovered that much like every other weekend since they moved in, my neighbors were having a drunken conversation on their front porch. This conversation was taking place in that I’m-trying-to-be-quiet-but-since-I’m-drunk-I’m-really-being-louder-than-usual radio newscaster’s voice. All monotone and spacey.

They were talking about the beers they were drinking; at least they’re drunken beer snobs, so I get to hear all about different, good beeers, instead of then pontificating about the ins-and-outs of beer pong or Asshole. At any rate, the dog must have had to go pee, because they let her out. Normally, she stays in their yard, does her business, and then goes back inside. But, I am sure, since she’s a smart dog, that she recognized the fortuitous twist of fate, the fact that they were so drunk they didn’t realize they hadn’t put her back in the house, and decided to come over into our yard for a bit. Which wouldn’t have been a bad idea if she would have simply stayed quiet and in the front yard.

However, she decided that it might be nice to go to the back and start snooping around, sniffing by the garage door, and nosing around in our back yard. This one, seemingly miniscule, action resulted in my being up from around 115AM when they awakened me with their revelry until about 5AM when they finally got their dog back in the house, and I finally calmed mine down for the third time. Yes, there were three cycles of Jane (their dog) barking and carrying on, which incited Sydney, who got Celie all riled up, who then got Lily all howly, and then I would come thumping down the stairs to quiet them down. On round number two, I took our dogs outside to pee so they could see that it was just Jane who was in their space. They didn’t really care. They didn’t want anyone in their space at 2AM.

Finally, after this second round, after I startled one of the neighbors while he was peeing in a bush, and after he decided to get Jane into the house, I stayed downstairs, sleeping on the couch until the third round of barking which must have been inadvertently stimulated by a squirrel or something in the backyard. Once those dogs get wacky, there’s almost no calming them down! I fell asleep watching Criminal Minds around 5AM. I should have used the time to write or read, but as per usual, I couched and remoted. I woke up about an hour-and-a-half later and went back upstairs to bed. I got up at 815ishAM. Needless to say, I am worthless today, so I am going to try to read the rest of the books I need to read. It’s about all I’m good for.

*

I finally went to the doctor for my ankle, and I have to wear heel cups, do stretches, and massage it with ice frozen in Dixie cups. I am going to start running again on Tuesday, but I have decided to move my runs to the afternoon, just when I get home from school and after I walk the dogs. I am going to start at the very beginning, so I don’t re-injure my ankle. My hope in running in the evening is that I will be able to run out the stress of the day and run in some energy to read and write for the evening. I figure if I can get to the point where I can get home, walk the dogs, and run by 530PM, I will have an hour for a nap/leisure time before Bec gets home. (I may have to reverse the order of the nap and the run.) Then, I will be more energized. Also, I am going to try to avoid the TV and the Internet between 630PM and 930PM or 10PM. Maybe this will help me get more focused as well.

One thing I will also have to work on is the way I eat. I have been eating like crap lately: lots of cookies, candy, animal products, and soda. I am not sure why I do this to myself, because I feel much healthier when I don’t eat these things. I love grape soda, so I am not sure I want to cut it completely, and a couple of Oreos won’t hurt either. I just need to stop eating ten or twelve Oreos and a couple of sodas each day. On top of regular food! It’s silly, really. And, I will need to stop the caffeine intake, too. No more Americanos that aren’t decaf.

Not only will I need to change what I eat, but when I eat. Seemingly, it would work better to eat more for an early breakfast when I first get up , hopefully by 430 each morning. Then by eating more for lunch, too, I will be able to run five hours later and skip dinner, having popcorn and an apple for a light snack before bed.

*

So here I go again setting goals I may not keep. The goal date for the following is July 22, 2011, my birthday:

  1. Finish a marathon.
  2. Stop shaving my head. Let it grow for Locks-of-Love.
  3. Spend at least half an hour reading the Bible, praying, and contemplating God each day.
  4. Have 75% of my students grow one academic year’s growth.
  5. Finish two chapters of my dissertation.
  6. Run 1000 miles.
  7. Stay vegan.
  8. Learn to say only what is necessary. Listen more than talk.
  9. Read one new book and one magazine from cover to cover each week. Follow the news.
  10. Finish painting the outside of the house.

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Posted in Birthday Crisis, Coffee, Dissertation, Fat, Food, Goals, Reading, Relationships, Religion, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing

Whirlwinds. Meanness. Writing. Exercise.

Posted on 24 September 2010 | 1 comment

I started the school year with an equal dose of confidence and trepidation, knowing my ability to teach would have to somehow balance with the expectations of Burris. One thing is true: this month has been a complete and utter whirlwind. I have never graded so many papers in such a short time, nor have I ever had so little time to do any personal reading or writing. I have found myself getting up at 4:00AM or 4:30AM each day this week in order to get grading and planning finished. I have spent the better part of at least one day, if not both days, of every weekend at school working. I haven’t even touched my dissertation, and now I face a couple of late nights working on a presentation for a conference I foolishly applied to attend. However, I do get to spend a good bit of quality time with friends I don’t get to see frequently, so I am looking forward to that part of it. Writing the presentation is an entirely different story!

One month into this new school year, I have to say that my experience is different than I expected. The people I expected to not like, I have grown to love, and the people I expected to really like, I am recognizing I am not so fond of. As usual, I am left with one driving question: Why do people insist on treating each with no compassion and no respect?  When I die, I fully expect  to move into my afterlife, asking to speak to whomever is in charge and trying to understand why people can’t be nice to each other. I will also demand to know why people get cancer and why it seems that the worst, most hateful people continually get ahead. I mean occasionally kind, loving people get ahead, but it feels as if the predominance of folks who are lauded in the media aren’t very nice. It seems as if the predominance of people in my life who have “the best lives” are the most hard-hearted and cruel. I suppose that is what happens when we continually measure the quality of people’s lives by financial success.

As you’ve noticed, and as I’ve said above, this new gig leaves little to no time for personal writing or reading. Normally, I wouldn’t consider working on my dissertation as personal gratification, but I crave a minute of reading a book written expressly for adults. I want to wrap my mind around a little Toni Morrison, and cuddle for a minute with Gloria Naylor. I have even found myself desiring to read scholarly articles! This need will be temporarily sated by my necessity to complete this conference presentation for next weekend. Sarah, Elizabeth, and I are going to Minneapolis, MN, for a fat studies conference. We are presenting on fat, pedagogy, and images. I was going to write about the students I’ve had who have interacted with the ideas of fat and body image, but I think I am going to shift my focus to include conversations or teachable moments in which my students have said things about being fat.

Finally, my body craves exercise in much the same way that my mind craves intellectual stimulation. I desire a run and a swim. I keep thinking that I will start running and swimming in the mornings, but this week I graded instead so next week I am going to shoot for swimming in the morning and easing back into running with a short barefoot run every evening. I feel like a slug. My ankle still hurts, but it is no longer excruciating. I hope the running won’t injure it again, because I have already missed one marathon opportunity, and it sucks.

*

The sun peeks over the top of the gas station across the street, highlighting the new garage being built next door. The rafters and wall-studs are geriatric dinosaurs darkened against the pinks and blues of the early morning sky. Two men sit, silhouetted by the light, by the windows between me and sunrise. They have discussed baptism, blackholes, and solar flares before moving on to high school cross country. Now they give thanks for their posh lives, reveling in the fact that they are not traveling business men who sit “forlorn and lonely” in hotel lobbies.

1 Comment

Posted in Dissertation, Running, School, Swimming, Teaching, Writing

Just A List of Ten Thoughts

Posted on 11 August 2010 | 6 comments

Today I am sitting in Starbucks having just completed some work on my dissertation, and I have a few (about ten) random thoughts:

  1. Writing a dissertation is nothing like training for a marathon. When you train for a marathon, if you have a bad training run, no one knows but you and the handful of people you share that with. When you are writing a dissertation, you can’t hide your lack of work or your foolishly naïve thoughts. Your dissertation director, at least, will always know.
  2. Writing a dissertation is exactly like training for a marathon. Both endeavors are a hell of a lot of work that culminates in one final product, and neither product is really understood by anyone who hasn’t done one. The marathon fills your physical need for challenge and excitement. The dissertation fills your mental need for the same. Neither one is comfortable, and neither one is a known commodity the first time around. Hopefully, there will not be a second time around for the dissertation.
  3. Getting things right with God is a hard job, like training for a marathon or writing a dissertation. No matter how many times I try to regroup and refocus my life with Christ, I find that I can never get it right. It’s a long, constant road to growth. And, for some reason, I keep being prodded to reconsider my career choices. It’s a strange feeling that I can’t quite interpret. I don’t know what God wants me to do anymore, possibly because I have been so focused on what I think I want to do. Should I simply have stayed at Grace? I don’t like to second guess my choices, but I have been spending a great deal of time lately doing just that.
  4. Waiting to put together your classroom because people are painting it right before school starts is a test of patience. Yeah. I think this is self-explanatory. Even though Lisa put the work order in last spring, the painters will be there through the weekend. I am a little panicked, but I know this whole Burris thing will be an exercise in my obedience to God and in my ability to give grace.
  5. Re-learning not to say bad things is a challenge. I recognize that I spend a great deal of my time talking about people and things. I don’t like it when people talk about me. I never used to talk about people. Jaymes wrote in my yearbook before we began dating, “You never say anything bad. How do you do it?” I think I did it because I was so in love with Jesus that I didn’t see any value in getting ahead in this world. How to get back there is the big question. At any rate, I need to stop running my mouth. I am working on it.
  6. Just because you have a few bad runs and you feel like you are gaining weight instead of losing it, that’s no reason to give up running. It probably does indicate that you should start swimming, too, just so that all your eggs aren’t in one basket.
  7. I like music. All kinds, except what Kellie plays, and especially old school Jennifer Knapp.
  8. I don’t think studying in coffee shops could ever be overrated. In fact, when I get the opportunity next summer, I plan to spend great deals of time in coffee shops reading, writing, and dissertating. I might be the person who talks with everyone and annoys the other patrons.
  9. I love being vegan and trying to eat healthy food that I make in my own kitchen. I could really live the rest of my life without ever going out. I’m a good cook. And humble. 🙂 Also, I can’t wait to eat a peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat each day for lunch at school. Eating PBJ makes me feel like a kid again. Young and carefree. I haven’t dealt well with growing up and becoming responsible.
  10. The hot weather makes me happy, but what makes me happier is a good thunderstorm. Thanks, God, for this morning’s amazing show.

6 Comments

Posted in Coffee, Dissertation, Fat, Food, Grace, PBJ, Reading, Religion, Running, School, Swimming, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing

School. Dissertating. Running. Church. Vegan Food Failure #1.

Posted on 12 July 2010 | 2 comments

I went to school today to help rearrange the middle school office, which is a wreck, and I am not sure we improved it a great deal. We have those weird curved (around the corner) style desks where there are two desks attached to each other with a corner piece. Six of them do not fit well in one office. In fact, five of them would probably not fit comfortably. We will mostly be on top of each other, which is fine with me since I only have bodily personal space issues and don’t mind one bit sharing communal living space. I don’t mind if people are climbing all over my desk, as long as they don’t touch me in the process.

Going to school today really excited me for the fall. I want to start planning. I fantasize about what my room will look like, about the lessons I will teach, and about the ways I will interact with the students. If I didn’t have so much left to do this summer, I’d want school to start tomorrow. I walked around and just took in my classroom, looking in every cabinet and touching every filthy, kid-handled surface. I dreamed of burning sage and anointing the doorway, but I don’t want the campus police to be called because of the smell of the sage. (True story: One of my friends had the campus police called on him because he was doing an American Indian prayer/smudging in his office, and one of our colleagues thought he was smoking marijuana. They really came to our hallway and investigated his office until they were satisfied the smell came from sage. In their defense, they smell similar, and you can get high on salvia (sage) just as well as marijuana.) I may have to settle for just the anointing. No one will know what that smell is anyway, and the oil certainly doesn’t smell like pot-smoke like the sage does. I plan to spend much more time in my classroom than I spend in my office anyway. And when I am in the office, I will be working on my dissertation. I would love to get this thing finished as soon as possible. I am hoping to finish by May of 2012, which has been pushed back by a whole year because I will be teaching full time in the fall.

I just started reading a couple of theoretical/theological books to work on framing the chapter about biblical authority. Sometimes it seems like the more I read, the more questions I have instead of feeling like I am actually learning anything and moving toward having answers. Will I ever feel like I actually have some authority over my project? Will I ever be able to say to myself that I have read enough, digested it, and formulated my own opinions/theories about these texts? It feels like a long time coming, and like it may never happen.

Another thing that seems like it may never happen is this marathon. Although my six-mile run went really well on Saturday, my ankle still hurts unless I wear my minimalist footwear. When I wear my running shoes, and I have three different pairs I’ve been rotating, my ankle hurts ridiculously the next day. If I wear my Vibrams, I am fine, but the most I have run in them is three miles. Next Saturday, I am supposed to run 7 miles. Three of those miles will be done in the morning in Pendleton at a 5K that Bec and I are doing together. She’ll walk. I’ll run. We’ll finish together. 🙂 I think I will wear my running shoes for the 5K and my Vibrams for the other 4 miles and see how that works out. At any rate, I need to figure this whole thing out before I am up to running 10-15 miles at a stretch.

My Saturday run was one of the most beautiful I have been on in a long time. I started at about 630 with a nice slow walk down to Elm Street to sort of warm up my legs and work out the sleeping kinks, then I ran along the river from our house to the mile marker by Marsh on Tillotson and White River Boulevard and home. I finished by taking off my shoes and walking barefoot down to Elm Street and back. When I started out, the air was cool and there was a slight breeze. The dun had just poked out from above the horizon and the earth was just waking up. Slowly. As I ran, the sun moved up over the trees and the breeze slowed, giving me a humid, yet tolerable, workout. On mornings like that one, it’s not difficult to worship as I run, remembering the Creator and my place in the creation.

I think my view of my place in this world is complicated by the fact that I restrict myself to thinking worship somehow involves a human church, so on Sunday we went to church at Commonway because we had both been thinking this past week about missing church. Typically, we go to the Sunday evening Commonway service, but during the summer there aren’t as many college students so they meet in the morning with the regular service. The morning service has a whole different feel than the evening one. I enjoyed it, but when school starts back up, I plan to switch back to Sunday nights for a couple reasons.

For one thing, had it not been for my friend Molly and one of my students, we would have made it into the church, through the service, and back out without ever talking to another living person besides the surly greeter who didn’t understand why we wanted to share a bulletin. The speaker even made his way down the other end of our aisle, hugging people as he went, then almost tripped over my foot as he was exiting our aisle, but he didn’t even say good morning. Excellent interpersonal skills.

Secondly, I simply can’t stand selling things in church. I have this strong aversion to churches maintaining bookstores and pay cafés in their facilities. I have more of an aversion when the said money-making institutions are open for sales on Sunday morning as you are walking into the church. I have more of an aversion when there are inserts in the bulletin that advertise the sales going on in said marketplaces, and I just pretty much wait for the roof to cave in when the speaker announces the Bible sales from the dais after he makes a point about the importance of reading the Bible.

As churches today go, Commonway is a good one. They work hard to maintain social outreach. In fact, they have people in Kazakhstan doing some social outreach, they are collecting school supplies for students in Muncie, and they are collecting new kids shoes for those kids whose famlies can’t  afford them. I can get behind all of those things. The message had a good balance of material for new Christians and challenges for those people have been Christians for longer. And, I love the pastor. Matt pretty much rocks.

Vegan Food Failure #1: Taco pizza. Never try to make a vegan taco pizza without taco seasoning. It doesn’t work. At all. You will end up with beans, corn, tomatoes, and salsa on crust instead of taco pizza. Ew, but I hate to waste food, so I ate it, trying my best not to think of it as taco pizza so it would taste better. Okay, I imagined it was simply pizza, so it wouldn’t taste repulsive. I kept trying to get Bec to eat some of it, but she refused. Smart woman.

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Posted in Dissertation, Food, Grace, Religion, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan

Christianity. Games. Conversations. Food and Running.

Posted on 9 July 2010 | 2 comments

Sometimes I think I’m not a very good Christian. I think this because I don’t give enough grace, I don’t read my Bible enough, and I don’t really pray at all anymore. I justify this by believing that the amount of grace I give is way more than most the people around me. I look around, and I see the way people treat each other without even thinking about each other at all and without considering how they are making other people feel. Of course, comparing yourself to other people always gets you just short of nowhere. Just ask any of the Psalmists about comparing yourself to others. I don’t think you’d find one of them, or any other biblical writer for that matter, who advocates measuring yourself on a worldly standard.

That being said, in comparing myself to a biblical standard of grace-giving instead of comparing myself to each other, I fail miserably. In fact, comparing myself to any religious systems standards of person-to-person interactions, I fail miserably. Buddhists might say I am too attached to myself and too concerned about my worldly pleasure. There is a quote that says, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” I think compassion for Buddhists is a lot like grace for Christians. They’re both difficult, because you have to look at people with other-worldly eyes. You have to see past the history you have with them, and look into who they are. It’s like the Christian concept of seeing Jesus in people or the Jewish concept of loving your neighbor. And in Islam, “in one Hadith the Prophet -peace be upon him- said that Allah has commanded him about nine things. One of them he mentioned was ‘that I forgive those who do wrong to me.’” It’s so difficult to forgive, to give grace, to show compassion when we feel we’ve been wrong. In this way, I think I need to practice my Christianity in a more direct and conscious way.

My poor attempt at Christianity lately could stem from the fact that we haven’t been to church in … well, I am unsure how long it’s been. I can’t speak for Bec, but I am starting to miss it. Finding a church is a difficult thing, though. I suppose this problem is then compounded by the fact that I haven’t been reading my Bible consistently, and the fact that very rarely pray. I mean, really pray, or really read the Bible. I do the thing that I despise in other people. I break out the Bible when I get in a theological argument with someone who hurls scripture at me, hurling scripture back at them with equal (sometimes more) ferocious velocity, and I pray when it’s convenient or when I need or want something.

By really praying I mean uttering words from my mouth or in my head to a God who I think is listening. I do, however, pray a lot, if by pray you mean worshiping God for the amazing things [They] have made, praising God for the ability to move my body, as sluggishly as it may be, on my morning run, or thanking God for my amazing life, friends, and family. I think this type of prayer is valid, but it isn’t focused. I haven’t consciously thought about who I am praying to, what or whom I am praying for. I simply let whatever thoughts or ideas I have float up (out, down, around) to God, not really expecting a response or acknowledgment. Does it make prayers invalid if you just worship? Do you have to ask for things?

The same goes for scripture reading. I exaggerated a little when I said above that I only use scripture to refute other people. That’s not entirely true. In fact, recently I have done a few little exegetical projects for friends that have really been challenging and fun, but I don’t do it consistently. I don’t have a set aside time period each day when I devote myself to God alone, reading [Their] words and talking with [Them]. It’s difficult for me to figure out how to develop this discipline while teaching, dissertating (which isn’t a word, but really should be), running, cooking, and whatever else the day holds.

Maybe the conduit for grace I crave to become would come to fruition if I disciplined myself in reading the Bible and praying more. I know in my favorite book of the Bible, James says, “The effective and fervent prayer of a righteous person avails much.”

I am not good at playing games. I never have been.

I had a great conversation over coffee with a very conservative friend of mine this morning. It was the type of conversation I like to have. We do not agree about anything except books and their magic, and yet, when we part company, we can hug each other and know that the next time will be just as good.

I turned right around and had another excellent conversation with two other friends about polar opposite topics. We talked about the road trip we are about to embark upon, and decided that we are all SO ready to see our other friends and spend some time going cross-country. The trip is going to take us to Nebraska and Minnesota, but we are working in North and South Dakota and possibly Kansas, just so we can say we did. Unfortunately, the Badlands are on the other side of South Dakota, so we won’t be able to check those out like we had hoped. Sad day. Either way, we are excited.

It always amazes me how such different people can bring out facets of us that we wouldn’t know we had except for their persistence in bringing those things out in us.

Today has been an excellent food day. I started off with granola in soy milk and a decaf Americano while I did my work and waited to meet with Reta. Once she got there, I got a soy chai latte in a ceramic mug. I have to say that soy chai was possibly the most perfect hot drink I have had in a long time. Chai tea is so comforting, almost like the crying squares on the quilt I’ve had since childhood. The quilt, made by my Aunt Aglaia, has two squares of incredibly soft material. I used to use those two squares to dry my eyes when I cried, and I did lots of crying. I think it is my weird artistic sensibilities. I need to do some art, because it might help me get back to who I was before graduate school before working in a church, and before I became so jaded. I was softer when I was an artist, but I suppose we all change as we age and grow. But I digress.

For lunch, my two other friends and I went to Sketchy Thai, and I had tofu Mee Krop and spring rolls. I followed it up with an iced soy chai. The first one was so good, I couldn’t resist the second. Finally, for dinner tonight after Bec and I went on a nice (our first this summer, and blissful as usual) bike ride, we had garden green beans and sweet potato gnocchi with sage “butter” sauce. I finished it all off with a scoop (or maybe two) of Ben and Jerry’s Berried Treasure Sorbet and a couple (or four) of my mom’s delicious vegan sugar cookies. I would say it was a perfect food day to fuel my six-miler in the morning.

I am hoping to run a fairly even tempo tomorrow, so I am going to get up early to run while it’s fairly cool. I ran three miles yesterday in my Vibram Five Fingers, and my feet felt fantastic when I was finished. But, I am going to run the six miles in my regular running shoes, so I don’t injure myself by transitioning to “barefoot” running too quickly. I’d much rather go it slow than hurt myself.

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Posted in Dissertation, Food, Grace, Relationships, Running, Vegetarian or Vegan