Category Archives: Dissertation

Muncie Mission. Organization. Marathon Training. And Compassion.

Posted on 6 July 2010 | Leave a comment

I was shocked to hear on the radio this morning that the Muncie Mission had a horrible fire. I was even more shocked to hear that the dormitory side of the mission was pretty much a loss and that a good portion of the men lost their belongings in the fire. How messed up is it to have such horrible circumstances that you end up living in a mission, and then have the mission along with your belongings burn down around you. Here are some links to articles about it:

WISH TV

Muncie StarPress

WTHR

According to all of the articles, everyone got out of the mission safely, but there is about a million dollars worth of damage to the brand new building.

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I am trying hard to face the things I need to face in the upcoming weeks, and I realize that I waste quite a bit of time procrastinating the things I need to do, sometimes to the point of not being able to enjoy leisurely activities because I know I have so much work weighing on me. So, one more time I am going to try to work on this horrible habit of procrastination and learn how to get what needs to get finished, finished in a timely fashion. I had to edit my plan to tackle all of the things I need to tackle by August 18. I only switched a couple of things, but here is the revised schedule of how I plan to accomplish all of it:

  • House painting—WEEKENDS
  • Dissertation—MORNINGS
  • IEI—AFTERNOONS
  • Running—EARLY MORNING before dog walking, must get up by 6
  • Write On! and Planning for School—EVENINGS
  • Disc Golf, etc.—IN BETWEENS

With the exception of these activities, I am on an activity blackout. Unless it’s already on the calendar, it’s not going on the calendar. I’ve spent too much time playing during the first part of the summer to keep up that level of playing for the rest of the summer and still accomplish what I need to. Sorry.

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Today was the first day of marathon training, and I ran my three miles. It felt good, even better since I’ve been trying to go easy to let my ankle heel from whatever is making it ache. I am trying to maintain this vegan diet to cleanse my body and to lose some weight, so I can run the marathon. I know I am going to have to stick to my run/walk pattern to finish 26.2 miles, but it might be easier to finish if I could lose a few extra pounds between now and then. Yesterday was a good eating day. I started with sweet potato waffles with berry syrup, sausages, and fresh fruit. I ended with garbage pizza that had mushrooms, squash, and tofu on it. With just a week of not eating animal products, I feel quite a bit better. I can’t really describe how it feels, but my body feels lighter and I feel more in touch with myself and with the world. Running only helps with this connection. As I was running this morning, I kept listening to my breath, feeling my feet touching down on the ground, and thinking that this is what it feels like to be alive. I wonder if that is what I will think at mile 26.2?

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I’ve been reading a website called Tiny Buddha. I have been introduced to all sorts of ideas about compassion, happiness, and positive thinking. What I like about this particular website is that it’s written from multiple perspectives, and people can send in their own thoughts about various topics. It’s helpful to me to read about how to think positively, but it’s also affirming to know that some people just need to be left to their own devices. In other words, I am learning to be compassionate, but that there will be people in your life that are simply disagreeable and that no amount of trying will make them like you, respect, you, or treat you well. You have to know you have tried to be compassionate, but you also need to be compassionate to yourself. It’s difficult for me to recognize when to stop being compassionate or when to stop giving grace. I tend to err on the side of giving it too much, and I let people walk all over me. Tiny Buddha and some other Buddhist readings I have been doing have helped me to see that you can show compassion to others only when you have compassion for yourself. I am working on this.

The difficult part of this is that Buddhism also advocates forgetting yourself. How do you forget yourself and have compassion for yourself as well? Here in lies the rub.

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Posted in Disc golf, Dissertation, Goals, Grace, IEI, Reading, Relationships, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing

Vacation and the Rest of Summer

Posted on 1 July 2010 | 2 comments

I just learned that I start teaching at Burris on August 18th, which means I have approximately six and half weeks (not counting the week I will be gone to Nebraska and Minnesota) left to accomplish all of this:

  • finish painting the outside of the house (the floor will wait until next summer)
  • finish a chapter of my dissertation (or at least get a really good start on it)
  • work 20 hours each week in the IEI
  • start training for the marathon in November (once school starts add lifting weights and swimming)
  • go through all of the Write On! Featherweight stuff and get it together
  • plan for the entire school year next year (two seventh-grade, two eighth-grade, and one tenth-grade year curriculum plans)
  • play some disc golf, basketball, and possibly soccer (can someone teach me to play soccer?

Here is how I plan to accomplish all of it:

  • House painting—WEEKENDS
  • Dissertation—AFTERNOONS
  • IEI—MORNINGS
  • Running—EARLY MORNING before dog walking, must get up by 6
  • Write On! and Planning for School—EVENINGS
  • Disc Golf, etc.—IN BETWEENS

I am sure there is something I am forgetting. I am not sure I can accomplish all of this in 6 weeks. Say some prayers, breathe some for me.

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My family (Dad, Mom, Adam, and I) just got back from vacation in Cincinnati. Cincannati is like dissecting owl pellets: you have to wait through the disgusting stuff to find the gems inside it. The majority of the city of Cincinnati, not the suburbs or the outskirts, looks like the worst neighborhood of most other big cities. We wanted to walk to Findlay Market, but the shuttle driver at our hotel said he’d better drive us because the neighborhood was so bad. I agree. Usually, I am unmoved by deteriorating neighborhoods. I am not afraid of loitering people, or run-down buildings, but this area of Cincy was more than just derelict. People had looks in their eyes that were so down-trodden, so forlorn, that I was afraid of them. They looked the way Cormac McCarthy describes people in The Road. That desperate. That carnal. While we were there, each morning the news reported several shootings within a couple of miles of the hotel. My dad couldn’t sleep because of all the sirens, and there were literally 50 or so homeless people sleeping on the grounds of the library across the street.

However, much like other big cities, if we stayed South of our hotel, toward the Great American Ball Park, there were no worries. In fact, there were multiple tourist attractions and affluent shopping malls, complete with Brazilian steakhouses and upscale clothing stores. I wish I could rest one day from thinking about culture. I wish the injustices and inequalities weren’t so blatant to me. Sometimes I just want to go back to not recognizing the painfully obvious way our society is stratified. I can’t though, so my heart hurts. I have a hard time having fun, but I have a hard time identifying how I can do anything to help a system so big and so broken. One of my constant prayers is for God to show me my role in helping to fix our very broken world.

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Also, I found this amazing graphic to help me plan meals while I am training.

The only hard part about this pyramid is drinking enough water. Our water tastes pretty gross, and even though I know algae isn’t bad for me, I still don’t want to drink water that tastes like organic matter. Ew.

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Food: banana, juice, sweet potato waffles with strawberries, blueberries, and a touch of syrup, carrots, cherries, tortilla with faux peanut butter and strawberry jalapeno jelly, a few Thai chips, chocolate soy milk, salad, guacamole and salsa and chips, cauliflower, blackberries, peach, veggie burger with bread,

Exercise: walked the dogs,

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Posted in Disc golf, Dissertation, Fat, Food, Goals, IEI, Running, School, Swimming, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing

Blah. And some more blah.

Posted on 17 June 2010 | 2 comments

I need to start writing here consistently, and I need to finish the two book reviews that I started when I was in Florida. I need to paint the house. I need to finish the floors. I need to plan for next years’ classes. I need to work on my dissertation and meet with Debbie tomorrow. I need to spend time running. I need to write my presentation for the PCA conference in October. I need to revise a couple of essays and send them out to try to get them published. I need to give time to my friends and family. It’s slightly overwhelming, and all of this in a summer that I thought might be relaxed. I need to not be so overwhelmed by all of my activities, commitments, and self-assigned bullshit.

But, first, I need to finish these end of course assessments for the IEI at Ball State, which is where I have a summer assistantship.I am having a hard time getting motivated because it’s a bit intimidating to make assessments for courses you’ve never taught and probably never will teach, though I’d love to teach in the IEI. I think it would be very satisfying. As for my summer work, it’s different. It’s challenging. It’s fulfilling.

It’s different because I have never considered how to teach a language in a very short amount of time to someone who doesn’t speak it, much less if that person is beginning college or graduate school, which I think are very different considerations. I am not sure that it is as important to teach a graduate student how to keep a daily planner as it is to teach the same skill to a 19-year-old college freshman. All college freshman should have to take a study skills class, regardless of their ability to speak English or not.

It’s challenging because I have some very definite ideas about what students should know when they enter an English 103 or 104 classroom, and my ideas don’t necessarily jive with what the IEI instructors can accomplish in their seven or eight courses, which I believe are taught in seven weeks each. I could be wrong. Anyway, the classes go from fundamental (or survival) through communicative to academic. My task for this week is to design reading assessments for each course to test the learning outcomes for each class. This task is challenging when I have only learning outcomes, and no real grasp on or feel for the students. I said today when I was talking to the director of the IEI that this is challenging for me because I view language acquisition to be a much more organic process than academia views it to be. Think about how you learned language. Did you ever take an end of course assessment? Probably not, but then again, you weren’t trying to acquire a language in a few short months; you had years to do it.

Finally, it’s fulfilling because the end result is that people are equipped with one more skill that will make their lives in the US a little easier. I can imagine nothing more intimidating than being in a new culture without having command of the language of that culture. I by no means believe that all Americans should be required to speak English; we are far too diverse of a culture to require that. I do, however, believe that going to school at an American institution requires that you be able to speak, read, listen to, and write the predominant language of that institution and to be able to do it well. Particularly, the humanities require this. I am still trying to decide if getting a science, math, or another non-language-intensive degree should require a command of English, since we are in the US (I suppose the predominant language at some American universities is Spanish, Portuguese, or French?). I am leaning toward no, but it’s up for debate. At any rate, this summer work is fulfilling, too, because it’s forcing me to have to reconsider all those things I think about language. And, I am learning new things every day. Very good.

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I am at a point where I just want to lose weight, which makes me a very bad fat studies scholar. I love food too much. I love good healthy vegan cooking way too much. I could seriously eat all day long, but then I’d have to run all day long. And my foot’s been really funky, so I haven’t run at all, only walked. And not much.

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I want to write a list poem about freedom, or imprisonment as outlined in Sarah’s post. I just need time.

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Posted in Dissertation, Fat, Food, IEI, Pedagogy, Reading, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing

Sunday, June 13

Posted on 8 June 2010 | 3 comments

Sunday, June 13 will mark one year of taking life seriously. It will be one year ago on Saturday, June 13 that I weighed myself when I got home from family vacation and decided it was time to do something about my lifestyle. I think the weight, a magical 256.4 pounds on my brother’s bathroom scale, was just the quantitative evidence of the feelings I had been having for quite some time. I have never been one to gauge my health or my happiness by a number on a scale, but I had been feeling particularly unhappy with myself for quite some time. This feeling of unrest had more to do with my inability to find clothes that fit, my disappointment with my level of physical fitness, and my general feeling of blah. I knew I needed to make some changes, so I said to myself that my changes were not going to be about losing weight, but about getting to a place in which I felt good both physically and emotionally. On Sunday June 14, 2009, I started running. Actually, what I started doing was walking. Slowly. I started by running 30 seconds to a minute and walking a minute in between each “run.” I built up to “running” 13.1 miles on May 8, 2010. I didn’t get the time I wanted, but I finished, and as a side perk my blood pressure is lower than normal, I’ve lost 40 pounds, and I feel a million times better.

I suppose since it’s been a year, it’s time to set some new goals. One goal I had already set for this year was to run a marathon the fall after my 36th birthday. I am maintaining it as a goal by signing up for one on November 6. Here is my list of goals for this year from June 13, 2010 to June 12, 2011 (they are in no particular order):

  1. Finish the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon on November 6. Running, walking, or crawling.
  2. Shave my head on June 13 and on the 13th of every month all year long.
  3. Contemplate things outside of myself. Cultivate spiritual wholeness.
  4. Have 75% or more of my students grow one academic year’s worth of growth during the school year.
  5. Finish two chapters of my dissertation.
  6. Run 1000 miles (3 miles per day). Run and walk a combination of 3000 miles (10 miles per day).
  7. Go vegan. Stay at least lacto-vegetarian.
  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, in print.
  10. Finish painting the outside of the house.

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Posted in Dissertation, Fat, Food, Goals, Grace, New Year, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan

A Great Summer Ahead?

Posted on 26 April 2010 | 6 comments

As it turns out, I didn’t get a summer assistantship, so I will be living on tax money and student loans. Any other time I would be really weird about not getting an assistantship, but I am going through a major “I don’t care” phase right now. It will be nice to take this summer off with nothing to do but finish projects around the house, finish the dissertation proposal, play disc golf, and run. I will be a little more in debt when the summer ends. Then so be it. I’m already wallowing in debt as it is.

I attribute this phase to the fact that I have been buffeted on all sides this semester by people who think they are doing the world a favor by maligning me. One of the maligners reminds me of Hillary Faye in the movie Saved.

There is a scene in the movie in which Roland (Culkin) is watching Hillary Faye (Moore) abuse Mary (Malone). He says to Hillary Faye, “You have everything, Hillary Faye. What are you afraid of?” I want to ask a couple of people this same question: “You have everything. What are you afraid of?” I suppose my friend Monica is right: these people have no control of any other part of their lives, so they find it necessary to manipulate and control others. I always wonder why, though, I seem to be a favorite target. If anyone has any idea, could you please let me know. I am perfectly willing to admit to any part that I have in this fiasco, but I am having a hard time seeing what I have done to deserve the treatment I have received. I want the nightmares I have that are induced by these people to stop coming so frequently. And, frankly, I am getting tired of being the rug that people wipe their feet on. Thanks, I’d like my self-assuredness back now.

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I am beginning to get nervous about the IndyMini because I was sick all week last week and only got to run about 15 miles, if that much. My sinuses are rebelling because of the increase in pollen, but they have relaxed this week so I should be back in good shape come tomorrow morning’s run. I think I am going to try for a nice, slow five-miler that I know won’t compare to Friday morning’s beautiful four along Lake Shore Drive and Navy Pier. The sun was just peeking over the horizon and the booms and clicks of the lighthouse warning systems were sounding. The seagulls were screeching and the lake was slapping up against the wooden poles of the pier, and all I could think about was how I wondered if the people who get to run there every morning know how lucky they are. I figure they take it for granted after a while, but maybe there are a few of them who know it’s a privilege to be able to soak in the pleasure of the shore every day.

I also wondered why I always want to be anywhere, anytime but where or when I am. I spend a lot of time worrying about the future, trying to make up for the past, and not reveling in the present. I am trying to learn mindfulness. I am trying to just be. But I am having such a difficult time with it.

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Posted in Disc golf, Dissertation, Relationships, School