Bad behavior

I feel a series of posts coming on in which I will be very happy to hide behind my anonymity.

First up: I have traded a couple of emails this year with a writer I met at an NLNRU event last spring.   She wants to get together for coffee.  Although she is friends with a friend of mine, I just have this strong feeling that she wants something from me, and/or is “cultivating” me out of the sense that I might be useful to her in some way.

I don’t have time for that.

Next: I’m about to struggle with another writer with whom I share an administrative responsibility at P’s institution.  This other writer is senior to me in the broader sense, but in the context of P’s institution, our pull is about equal.  I usually gracefully concede to whatever Senior Writer wants. 

This time, I think I need to dig in my heels. 

And finally: I have to engage in an elaborate piece of administrative theater at NLNRU in which I head up a committee that will go through certain motions in order to ontain university sanction for a decision that we all want to make anyway and that only affects us. 

I can do this, but I’m inwardly rolling my eyes and I do not think this is really a good use of my time.

Just one more full week and then we’re into Thanksgiving week–two days of classes, a teacher work day at SA and one evening class at NLNRU, and then four days off (that’s another post).  Items two and three above need to be dealt with during this week, but then, you know, no one will be doing much of anything the following week.

And then we came to the end

I’m sure you’re dying to know how it all went down.

It was a pretty busy week, and this weekend has been so busy that I am crabby about not having had more down time.  Like a lot of people I could mention, I’m not always very good at sifting the things that sound like they really ought to be fun from the things that actually are.  I did a little too much of the former this weekend.  Oh well. 

And here we are, teetering on the precipice of another week.  SA observes Veterans’ Day on Wednesday, as does the Snork Maiden’s public school, so that breaks up the week nicely.  NLNRU isn’t off, so my evening class will meet, but I ought to be better rested for that and even somewhat better prepared than usual.  Right now, I am underprepared for the first two days of classes, but I think I’ll take a few minutes now to make some notes, then go to sleep early and get up early.

Away we go

The week that lies ahead…Forgive me if this is too boring.

Today, Sunday: I didn’t do any of the grading-related stuff I needed to do, including writing some of my quarter reports on students, but I’ll have time over the next couple of days.  I went running, compiled my November calendar of availability for NLNRU, and filed my online CV with their faculty review system–hope I did this right.  We did some picking up and tidying.  Tonight, we’re having a couple of friends over for dessert and a board game or two.  Need to move at least one more load of laundry and get the clean sheets on the bed.

Monday: I have the morning at SA to work on quarter reports and prep; two classes in the afternoon; a major email to get out to NLNRU advisees.  Home around 4, evening out with Stubb; no plans yet.

Tuesday: A special schedule means I have another morning without classes, very useful since I will still have quarter reports to write and quarter grades to finalize.  Possibly also some phone calls home for students with low grades.  Class (which will be observed by my evaluator), department meeting, then down to NLNRU for student meetings.  Probably finished around 7, then run at the track.  Stubb will take the Snork Maiden to soccer practice and give her dinner; I’ll probably see them both around her bedtime.

Wednesday: SA classes in the morning, last-minute adjustments to grades and reports, will leave after lunch (student club meeting) for NLNRU office hours and evening class.  Long day–home by 10:30 PM.

Thursday:  Busy SA teaching day, including student club meeting at lunch.  Home at 4, dinner with Stubb and the Snork Maiden before an evening special event with Stubb.

Friday: SA classes in morning, prep time in afternoon.   Probably meet Stubb at the SM’s soccer practice at 4 and go for a run.  Quiet dinner at home.

Saturday: Late-morning soccer game, followed by an afternoon session for prospective families at Starfleet Academy.  We’re going to this chiefly to try to get the Snork Maiden excited about applying to SA for next year. 

Sunday: Stubb has a theremin gig out of town, and I’ll probably take the Snork Maiden to the SA middle-school musical production, meeting up with my colleague Natasha B., who has a daughter in the same grade.

Looking over the week, it doesn’t seem too bad–just some long days.  At least I get to spend two evenings out doing things with Stubb.

The songlines

Last year, I occasionally put an extra-credit question on reading quizzes that I thought were difficult, and a question I used several times was something like “What song or piece of music, in your opinion, best expresses the emotion of this chapter/book of the Odyssey/section of the reading?”  Pretty much any answer was okay as long as they connected it to what they had read–e.g., Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” for Book 1 of the Odyssey, because Telemachus receives a call to action from Athena and has to put aside his conviction that his father will never come home.  Sometimes I’d play them a song that had come up on several people’s quizzes.  (And by the way, isn’t it amazing that kids born as late as 1995 know that Journey song?  They say it’s because it’s a stadium anthem.)

I’ve been using that question again this year, and I’ve taken the further step of actually creating a playlist of some of the most suggested (and most appropriate) songs, burning a CD and playing it intermittently in class–sometimes as the students are coming in, sometimes during the break, and occasionally for all of us to listen to at once.  And whereas last year I thought of these questions as an amusing diversion, this year I actually believe that they have significant pedagogical value.  They can’t answer them properly if they haven’t read and understood the text to some extent, and when they hear the music, they remember what they heard and what emotion it represented.  Beyoncé’s “Halo” was a popular choice for Book 5, in which Odysseus leaves Calypso, is shipwrecked by Poseidon, protected by Athena, and then saved by Leucothea’s immortal scarf.  We spent a few minutes in class listening to the song, a few minutes more discussing why it did or didn’t match the book, and now even I remember better what happens in that book. 

So this year’s Starfleet teaching seems to be going really well.  I totally underestimated the value of getting a full year under my belt and becoming a known quantity within the school.  I have a confidence I didn’t have last year that comes from knowing the rhythm of the year and the kinds of issues that come up; the students have more confidence in me because, you know, I have a rep.  I don’t know exactly what that rep is, but I’m noticing a lot less anxiety from the students about the honors class being hard.  It might be partly that last year’s students are telling them, “Sure, a lot of people get B’s and C’s at first, but then you figure out what she wants, and you do better”; it might also be partly that I know that a lot of people will go from low B’s to A-minuses, and so I’m exuding that confidence. 

Maddie, one of the new teachers, is still figuring all this out, and though I think she’s doing a great job, you can tell that some of her students feel like they don’t quite get her yet.   It’s hard to be new.  I find myself hoping that she will be encouraged by successes along the way and not decide she doesn’t like this high-school teaching thing. 

Went to a reading by some of our NLNRU students at a local bookstore.  One of my students from this semester’s class read, and she did a great job.  I think she’s the strongest writer I’ve had at NLNRU so far.  I’m going to try to get her to go to a conference this summer–I’d love to see her get a scholarship to go somewhere and work with some new people. 

This has been another very full week.  I guess they all are now.  Some of the time I feel very proud of the sheer amount of work I am doing and how good I think most of it is.  Some of the time I think I am relying on Stubb and the Snork Maiden to get along without me too much–I’m out two to four nights a week lately, including the one on which Stubb and I go out and leave the Snork Maiden with Miz P.  They can get along without me, but should they have to?

Dream a little dream

Today’s day so far:

6:45: I get up to put the Snork Maiden’s soccer socks in the dryer and drink a glass of Emergen-C with a coffee chaser. 

7:15: Stubb and the Snork Maiden get up, get dressed, and make breakfast.

8:00-9:30: Warmup and muddy soccer game, ending in a tie, 0-0. 

9:45-11:00: Showers and an early lunch for all.  Stubb and the Snork Maiden play levels of Lego Batman on the Wii.  I noodle around on the computer and don’t answer any of my pressing emails or work on any of my pressing projects.

11:30: I lie down with a book.

12-3: Epic nap for me.

3:30-4:30: Modest nap for Stubb.  (At this point, the Snork Maiden has watched about six episodes of The Simpsons on DVD.)

6:00-7:00: Dinner.

7:30: Performance at Starfleet Academy.

Notice the absence of grading, prepping, college-recommendation writing, social correspondence, telephoning, niece-and-nephew wrangling, exercise, housecleaning, laundry or unpacking of the several boxes of my grandmother’s belongings, which my mother sent to me and which arrived yesterday.  I did drift into the guest room several times to look at her little blue wooden secretary desk, which my mother also sent. 

Oh, well, there’s always Sunday, right?

The letter

Here in my second full year at SA, the firsts that used to happen every week (sometimes every day) have slowed to a trickle–but this week I wrote my first two college recommendations!  These were for the two boys I really hoped would ask me for recs, because each worked hard to master skills that didn’t come easily to them.  One is much more academic than the other, but in a math ‘n computers kind of way; still, he really applied himself, took every bit of criticism, and (to his surprise and mine) scored a 5 on the AP.  The other is a very good-natured fellow who’s ranked near the bottom of his class, but who was the big success story of my elective last spring. 

Now I have to write for other kids, including a couple of students I like fine but don’t have anything nearly as interesting to say about, and one who is reaching for a very competitive college where I taught for a few years, and one who really hasn’t worked to his potential. 

I realize these recs are a small part of the application, but I have to believe they matter, or I can’t do a good job on them.  I have five to write in the next two weeks, for Nov. 1 deadlines, and then another three for students who I guess only have regular deadlines, not rolling or early. 

In other news, I have my second cold of the school year.  It’s a minor one, but annoying nonetheless.  It also means that I’m not going to go to the meeting at P’s institution–it is a small meeting and we are rescheduling–so I’m going to go to the event at SA after all, and I’m pretty happy about this.  But I do need a nap first.

The year of the flood

Well, if Sunday night is when I have the time and the inclination to update the blog, then so be it.  Only problem is that Sunday nights I feel more like blogging about my weekends than about one of the various workplace and writing topics that crop up in my thoughts during the week. 

Here’s one, though: Once each at NLNRU and SA in the upcoming week, I am going to miss an event that I feel it would probably be right and appropriate for me to attend.  At NLNRU, it’s a visiting poet reading, with a fancy dinner afterwards; at SA, it’s a performing-arts event directed by one of my colleagues, and some of my students are appearing in it.

The conflict with the NLNRU event is the Snork Maiden’s annual physical checkup, which actually didn’t occur last year, plus she’s been (knock wood!) pretty healthy, so it’s the first time in two years that we’ll have seen her pediatrician.  Stubb could take her, but with puberty on the horizon, I would like to be there.  Also, there’s the whole flu/H1N1 shot thing. 

The conflicts with the two performances of the SA event are a long-planned family event with some of our cousins whom we don’t see often enough (which is also a rare opportunity for a family evening out for the three of us), and an out-of-town meeting with my counterparts at P’s institution, whom I haven’t seen since P. died. 

I’m not thrilled about missing these events, but I am probably more sanguine than I once would have been.  Despite my acclimation to living two lives, I’m perhaps a little more aware that I can’t actually be in two places at once, and less willing to try.  The same week, I have a more important (because sponsored by my department, and because there will be three of us at dinner, not dozens) visiting-speaker event, and I’ll be there for that; at the end of the month, I’ll be chaperoning a different arts performance at SA, and next month I’ll attend a play with even more of my students in it.

I think I probably still overstate the importance of appearing at these things, but I do tend to be overresponsible (except for the times I’m underresponsible!).  Come to think of it, that’s probably how I got where I am today.  I think they are objectively important, but also that everyone understands you can’t appear at everything.

Stubb’s trip interfered with an overnight trip we’d planned, so after the weekend’s soccer and niece-and-nephew-wrangling, we took the Snork Maiden’s friend Dee and decamped to a beach town an hour away.  We stayed overnight, woke up early and went splashing around in the cold surf, picking up shells, and had a picnic lunch.  That was a refreshment to the spirit.  We also saw this enormous pelican, obligingly posing on a railing.

While England sleeps

I’m composing this in the evening, right about the time I should be falling asleep, but I feel the need for a little bit of processing of the weekend before I go to bed.

On the one hand, I didn’t do a lot of work this weekend.  I completed much of my prep for Monday on Friday, and have some grades to record at SA in the morning.  I wrote a quiz on Sunday–took about an hour, including reviewing the book of the Odyssey that I’m quizzing on.  I also spent between one and two hours on Sunday doing some NLNRU-related email.  So it isn’t as though I spent the precious weekend hours doing mostly the stuff I do during the week anyway.

On the other hand, I did put in quite a lot of time doing things for other people.  After the Snork Maiden’s soccer game, I did a volunteer shift at the league table.  (Stubb showed up at 7:15 to assemble goals.  Between the two of us, we’ve done more than our share of volunteering for the team, but we will probably do more, because some of the parents on the team are lame-o-rama, or, as Stubb says, they sohhhck.  I tell you, having two jobs makes it easy to get up a head of righteous-indignation steam about this kind of thing: I have two jobs and I still get my kid to practice on time!  I have two jobs and I still step up when nobody else will do some scut work!  I just fume about this privately, of course.  And I enjoy it, in a not entirely healthy way.)

My sister had a work thing on Saturday, so the Snork Maiden and I pitched in for a few hours over there, wrangling the niece and nephew (now 2 y.o. and 9 mos.), including supper, bath, and bed.  And on Sunday, we went over again, this time with one of the other nephews, Snufkin, in tow because his parents had a thing.  And that thing ran late, so the Snork Maiden and Snufkin hung out and played until the Snork Maiden fell asleep on the couch.  Snufkin’s gone home now, and I am writing this…and pushing the laundry along…and paying bills and all that sort of thing.

The Fun Stuff this weekend was this morning–a run and then going out to breakfast with Stubb (who’s been performing all weekend) and the Snork Maiden.  We hit Target for a few items on the way home, and then spent a half hour cleaning the house (they worked on the living room while I worked on the kitchen) before Stubb zipped off to play the theremin at the avant-garde circus. 

We don’t like to say no when the extended family asks for help with kids, partly because we know what a challenge the little critters can be, and particularly since we are always asking for help back.  Stubb is heading south later this week for a recording session; he’ll be away for the better part of a week, and the Snork Maiden will be spending at least a couple of afternoons with my sister.  And the niece and nephews are delightful little people, really a lot of fun; but small children are so relentless.  And I am finding myself, tonight, doing what I used to do all the time when the Snork Maiden herself was small, which is staying up later than I ought to because I so want some solitude.

But, you know, things are really going well.  The Snork Maiden seems to be settling into her school year, and is getting very involved in a recycling project that her class has embarked on.  I’m feeling pretty upbeat about my classes, and got through turning back the first paper, on which almost all my new honors students do more poorly than they expected, and which is always a little rough for me (let alone them!).  And tonight I get to go out with Stubb, dinner and a movie, which is surely almost like having an extra pocket of weekend (except that I have to get to bed at a decent hour).  So bring on the week!  I’m as ready as I’m gonna be.

First person plural

I’ve been meaning to write about the experience of having two jobs in the way that I’m having them this year, trying to divide my work self evenly and fairly between both of them and still preserve and nourish my home self.  So far–and I must acknowledge that it’s only been a few weeks–it is working out better than I anticipated.  More on that soon.  But an aspect of it that is very strange is that I do feel my work self  is divided.  I go into Starfleet Academy, greet my colleagues, fire up my computer, get things ready for the day, stop into the library, teach my classes, eat my lunch, meet with students.  And then, twice a week, I get in the car, drive to NLNRU, and…greet my colleagues, sort through my files (no computer of my own there yet), meet with students, stop into the library, eat my dinner, teach my class or have a meeting.  It’s like being two people.  None of my SA colleagues know my NLNRU colleagues; none of my SA students know my NLNRU students.  I wear the same clothes and carry the same shoulder bag, but I think I know what Clark Kent feels like when he steps into the telephone booth. 

The lighter schedule at SA has made a huge difference in my ability to do this; I feel that so far it’s more than offset the increase in responsibilities at NLNRU.  It’s also helped that the two schools’ calendars diverge quite a bit; NLNRU was up and running by the time SA got started, and the fall semester will be over two weeks before SA lets out for winter break. 

One of the side effects, for me, of P.’s death has been an intensification of this feeling that I’m, in a way, more than one person–because no one at either place knew P., and so it seems like an entirely different version of me who is mourning his death.  My sadness about P. seems to have reinvigorated my sadness about my grandmother, and it is when I am literally in transit to or from one of these places–driving to SA in the morning, or from SA to NLNRU in the afternoon–that I find myself in tears.

Some love, some pain, some time

Someone I liked a lot died unexpectedly last week.  This person, whom I’ll call P., was a senior administrator at an institution where I don’t work, but have long been involved in a project that brought me into professional and social contact with P. and his colleagues for several days at a time at intervals of six months to a year.  

That was more than enough contact for me to develop an enormous respect and liking for P.  As one of our mutual friends–a writer who knew P. in much the same way that I did–said, he was a brilliant example of what an administrator can be, both serious and humane.  He was a kind person, a good listener, a very thoughtful sort.  I always looked forward to seeing him on my visits to his institution, and am very sad to think he won’t be there next time I go.  I’m also sorry for my other friends there–in a telling tribute to P., the whole community is affected, and there have been many gatherings and events as they try to come to grips with his loss.

This is the third death that feels personally significant to me this year–Craig, my grandmother, and now P.  They are all very different losses to me, of course: with both Craig and P., there’s the shock and the mourning for a life cut short; with my grandmother, some relief that her sufferings are over, and, along with a deep sorrow and missing her, a stronger sense of how present she is in my life.  P.’s death has made me think, though, of how meaningful each of these lives was, whether 41 years long, 94 years long, or somewhere in between–that each of these people was fortunate to live, in the time given, a full, chosen life that–whatever its griefs–used the person’s gifts fully.  And each has left behind many people who will hold up that life as an example of how to live.