Category Archives: School

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:

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

4 Comments

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

Failure? China. Appointment.

Posted on 9 October 2010 | 3 comments

Epic fail: I am so bad at this full-time job thing. I don’t like it. I like having lots of time to myself. Being around people wears me down. Groups of people wear me down more. Warring factions about put me over the edge. Having a meeting every time I turn around is even worse. I love the students. I love my subject area. I love teaching. But I hate this job.I know I have to have a full-time job, and there isn’t one I’d rather have than this one. But, I really want to just live instead of working and somewhat living.

I think I made either the best or worst educational move of my entire life. In my 10th grade English class, we have been reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” and Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil-Disobedience.” Naturally when Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize, I seized the opportunity to discuss his act of civil disobedience with my students. I have a Chinese exchange student in my class, so I figured she’d be able to help us understand the whole thing a bit more. Maybe she could even help to explain why China is so upset about his win. I showed these two videos:

But first, we read this article from the BBC. We also discussed some of the comments following the article.

About half-way through the first clip, I looked over at Nancy (my Chinese student) and noticed that she was looking frantically through her computer. She was frowning and looked mostly confused. When the videos were over, I asked the students to discuss two things in their groups: (1) Why were the Chinese so upset that Liu won the award? and (2) How was Liu exercising some of the ideas from Emerson and Thoreau’s writings? One of my other students also wanted to discuss why it is that American and British media always end up making other countries look barbaric in the news. I set my students loose in pairs and groups to discuss these three things.

I noticed that Nancy was still looking through her computer and that she hadn’t joined a group for the discussion, so I went over to her desk to discuss with her. When I approached her desk, I never in a million years, could have predicted what she would ask me. She looked up at me and said, “What happened at Tienanmen Square? What happened in 1989? I have never heard of this that we watched.” I am sure my mouth gaped a bit, but it was more at my own stupidity. Of course, with Internet censorship, she had never heard of the protest and civilian slaughter at Tienanmen Square. Why would she have heard of it? The military won, the people succumbed, and things went on as usual.

To discuss the event would mean to have to explain that they do, in fact, want their citizens to conform to a certain way of thinking. And, to discuss the event would mean owning that they killed a few hundred unarmed protesters. It would be like honestly discussing what happened to the homeless in New York or who gave the orders for the National Guard/ROTC to start shooting at Kent State.What’s even stranger about the whole situation is that even after Liu won the Nobel Prize, when Nancy tried to search for him on Chinese websites, all she could find was that he was a political prisoner. Maybe then it would be a bit more like doing a search for Mumia or Leonard Peltier and only being able to find what the government thinks of them, not what their supporters think of them.

So, I’ve either given a young woman a reason to question authority, or I’ve given her government a reason to be suspect of her. Either way, I hope she continues to ask questions about this, because it’s an important moment in history.

On Monday, I finally have an appointment to see a doctor at Central Indiana Orthopedics. Hopefully, he can help me get this ankle back in running shape so I can shoot for a spring marathon. We’ll see. I’ll update next weekend.

3 Comments

Posted in Running, School, Teaching

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

This I Believe. Language. Seminary.

Posted on 26 August 2010 | 4 comments

Again this year, I am having my students write a “This I Believe” essay. I like to begin the semester (school year) with my students explaining why they believe in a particular idea, concept, or theme. I like to do this for two reasons, or probably more, but it helps me to get to know one big belief they hold, so we can talk about it throughout the semester. And, it helps me see how they already write about their beliefs, so I know what I need to teach about argument, about rhetoric, and about those pesky little things like grammar. I have a student writing about how fantastic he is, one writing about the first amendment, and one writing about friendship among other things. Fantastic topics, really, if they can pull them off with good, solid examples.

I have already had two parents tell me that they are thrilled that their children are actually writing in class school this year. Well, yeah, the only way to learn how to write is to actually do it. I figure it’s somewhat similar to trying to become a mechanic by learning the parts of an engine, but never putting the whole thing together. I suppose it might run, but it certainly wouldn’t run fluidly. Apparently, in the past, there has been a great emphasis on vocabulary and spelling without putting them into practice in writing. I really see no point in learning these skills separately from writing. In the same ways that reading and writing are related, and listening and speaking are related, vocabulary and spelling are related to writing. They all work together! Our language acquisition and usage functions as a gigantic web in which we learn how to speak and write. It’s ridiculous to separate them out on a regular basis. Enough ranting.

In other news, my Vibrams wore through the right sole. That’s my longer leg, which is probably why my other leg gets a hip ache, and that leg’s quad is always sore when I run. I can’t imagine being Wilma Rudolph. She deserves some mad props, running with legs that were once crippled. Seeing as how no one thought she’d walk normally, I guess she showed them by earning the title of Fastest Woman in the World. That’s right, Sister, run on.

In other news, I’ve been looking at recent AUSOT student orientation pictures. I remember being so optimistic and hopeful that anything I did in a pulpit would make a difference in this big, fucked-up world. I remember thinking that my sexuality had nothing to do with quality of pastor I would become. I remember hiding so far back behind those robes and stoles hanging in that seminary closet that I could barely see the light and the freedom that would eventually come from re-opening the door and leaping out a few years later. I remember thinking that my piercings might be a stumbling block for some and taking them all out, just to turn around and put them all back in. I remember being so in love with theology and talking about God and getting to know Jesus that I couldn’t focus on much of anything else. I remember passionately wanting to learn Hebrew and Greek. I remember walking in to the first orientation session and seeing some of my classmates and thinking that I could never be as put together as they were. I remember so many good things from my three years, but I also remember some bad. I remember being called a Femi-Nazi by a fellow student in a computer lab. I remember being so conflicted in classes when some of my beliefs didn’t align with the beliefs of others. I remember the pain and suffering that I put other people through, and though which they put me through. I remember knowing in the very core of my being that my sexual orientation wasn’t a choice, but that it was a gift from God that could rightfully be honored in a healthy relationship.

Now, I look back with a mix of joy and sadness, really the way that all people, if they were honest, would see the history of their lives. I think nostalgia is bound up in the details of remembering both good and bad, positive and negative, in equality. Both facets of our memories make us who we are. Do I love the fact that I met so many beautiful people? Yes. Do I love the fact that I questioned my identity in the world and in Christ on a daily basis? Yes, and no. Do I love the fact that I was made to feel like my own understanding of the gospel message was somehow errant because it didn’t align with the status quo? No. So, it was a tumultuous time, a blessing of a tumultuous time. Two of my students are writing their essays about how everything happens for a reason. I agree, but sometimes it is damn confusing how that all works out.

4 Comments

Posted in Religion, Running, School, Teaching

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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I like music. All kinds, except what Kellie plays, and especially old school Jennifer Knapp.
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.
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.
The hot weather makes me happy, but what makes me happier is a good thunderstorm. Thanks, God, for this morning’s amazing show.