On the back burner

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately.

Mostly about my future.

When I finished my M.A. year, I was burnt out. Personal and academic stress wore me out that summer. I earned my B.Ed. to please my parents and because I didn't know what else to do with myself. I taught high school after that because I needed a job and I didn't know what else to do with myself. I was then both burnt out and miserable. Somehow, through a series of coincidences and some incredible luck, I came to apply for the job that I have now. This is my fifth year at this job.

Over the years, I've had a lot of questions about my plans for school and when I would be going back to do my Ph.D. For a long time, I couldn't face the idea of returning to school, but eventually I began to soften as I realized that I miss my intellectual pursuits. When I got this job, I thought to myself, "This is the universe speaking. You are meant to go back to school." Some of my friends and colleagues put forth compelling arguments about the experience of graduate school. It all seems so exciting.

But I can't do it.

I love the idea of pursuing a PhD, but I can't commit to the reality of it.

A PhD gets me nothing but the glory of the intellectual pursuit. In my current job, where I am hired at the Instructor level, I don't need a PhD. If I got one, it would make no difference to my employment situation: no raise, no change in responsibilities. If I wanted to pursue a job with a higher status, I would have to give up what I have now--and what I have now is pretty good. I make more than most adjuncts do, with pension and benefits to boot, and I have a decent amount of job security. I've gotten used to making money, to paying back my student loans, to eating decent food, to owning a house. I also have other things to think about: the possibility of having children, for one; travelling, for another.

I would love to do it some day, for its own sake. In the meantime, I have a life to live.

Why bother?

As always, Karie over at Fourth Edition shares some interesting thoughts about why she blogs, which naturally makes me think about why I blog.

When I started blogging, I was in my final year of high school. I wrote a lot in high school. There were literal boxes full of things I'd written in my parents' basement until recently, notebooks upon notebooks of poetry, short stories, screenplays, etc. I wrote letters to friends. I wrote mini-essays when I was bored in class. I had a direction and a discipline at that time that seems breathtaking in retrospect.

I wrote a lot in university as well: essays, mostly, although I still made an effort to write creatively when I could. In the summertime, when I would work at THSWSNBN, I would carry a notebook and pen in my costume's pouch so that I could write in idle moments, or at least jot down any interesting ideas I had. Working there was very good for me in so many ways, not least of which was the sheer number of creative people that I worked with: there was always something to inspire me.

Now that I'm a grown up, though, I don't have the same drive to write that I did when I was younger. Writing takes both time and discipline, neither of which are abundant in my life. It also takes drive, and I think that is the bigger issue here. I actually blame my job for this: I spend so much time reading bad writing that it has affected my ability to be objective about my own writing, and it has lead to a terrifying fear that my writing might actually be terrible and no one has ever told me. Everything that I write sounds hackneyed and cliched at worst; at best, it sounds profoundly uninteresting.

So I write here because it keeps me writing--no matter how bad I am afraid that I am, I still can't quite bring myself to give it up. I've made a concerted effort to refocus my energy into this blog in the last year and a half, and I think it's been (mostly) working. One of the things that I preach at my students is that practice makes perfect (or at least better) for writing, so I'd best follow my own advice.

I'm unlikely to be a blogger who acquires Fame and Fortune through what I write here. (Heck, I'm unlikely to be a blogger who amasses more than thirty regular followers.) But I am a blogger who has found a voice that allows her to write as often as she chooses, about the things that she chooses, and who is able to use that to push her writing forward. I don't post everything I write, and I don't write in as much details as I sometimes think I might. So why bother? I bother because it keeps me writing. As long as I'm writing, I haven't given up hope.

Graduation Day

Yesterday, I attended my first convocation ceremony at the university. Just as I had completed my fourth year at my "new" job, the students I taught in my first year had just completed the fourth year of their degrees.

They came to me as teenagers, some as young as seventeen. I was their teacher, but they were my school: I had just come out of one of the worst years of my life to date, and I didn't know my ass from my elbow. I wasn't convinced that I should be teaching, or even if I could teach any more. You'll notice that 2007 was this blog's worst year in terms of posts, as well, which I think speaks to my frame of mind--I just don't write when I don't feel well.

As usual, though, time and experience are the best teachers. I learned so much in that first year, far more than I think the students got out of it. I learned the pleasure of teaching people who actually want to learn, and I learned the aggravation of teaching those who are only there because someone else has paid for them to be. I learned how to grade, how to explain grades in a way that seems clear and fair. I learned how to find plagiarists, which instincts to trust. I learned how to break out of my shell, how to see myself as an authority in the classroom, and how to get others to see me as an authority as well.

It is so much easier to see your own mortality through the aging and experiences of others. When I look at my students four years later, I can hardly believe the changes that some of them have gone through. Their faces are so much more mature; they are so much more confident than the little kids who came through my classroom, who were nervous about speaking in front of others and so eager to make friends. I couldn't be prouder of them, but the pleasure in their success is tinged with some sadness on my part. And so it goes...

Second Best

I've spent most of the last week cooking.

I made more of perpetual Nut-house favourite, Anna Olson's gyoza. Easy but time consuming, they are tasty morsels, and very filling.

I made blood orange sorbet in the ice cream maker attachment for the stand mixer. I haven't quite got myself motivated to make actual ice cream yet, because every time I look at a recipe that calls for more than a cup of whipping cream, I have a bit of a heart attack. Sorbets, however, are perfect--delicious, simple, and (relatively) healthy, since I get to control how much sugar goes in to it. (It also makes lovely daiquiris, too, and if the price of limes ever drops, I will be making margaritas by the pitcherful.)

I've also made bread--more specifically, caramelized onion beer bread. I have actually not made bread very many times in my life, but this recipe was so simple that it turned out incredible. The student services department hosted a "Northern University's Best Baker" competition today, with categories in cakes, cookies, squares, and bread. I chose bread because I wanted to try a savoury option. A brief visit to a friend's gourmet food shop/bakery last weekend suggested a caramelized onion and cheese bread to me, and the recipe above sounded the most delicious of all the hits that my google search turned up.

I made the first batch on Monday, omitting the cumin because a) I didn't have any cumin seeds, and b) I just forgot to add the ground cumin. It was delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I ate the two loaves by myself because Mat hates onions and wouldn't touch it. I used Sleeman Honey Brown as my beer of choice.

When I made the dough last night, I remembered the cumin. It smelled fantastic today while it was baking, but I couldn't taste it as much as I would've thought in the finished product, probably because it was just the ground cumin. The bread was even better the second time, I think, and the judges thought so too--I came in first in the bread category, and in second overall. (I lost to a very elaborate 4-layer cake.)

Other than that, most of today has been lost to cleaning--we finally trucked our unusable computer desk and broken washer off to the dump, and we moved the furniture in the living room around--it's so much nicer now. Almost like we live in a grown up house.

A storm front moved westward through NBRC yesterday, gifting us with about 40 cm of the white stuff. Today, we've got a different storm front moving east from Montreal, but this one is only bringing 10ish cm and a great deal of wind. The schoolbuses are cancelled throughout the city; my sister's office has closed for the day. The university is still open because the city buses are still running. (Those jerks would keep driving through the apocalypse, I think.) Fortunately, I had no plans to go to the school today. Classes finished on Friday, and my exam isn't until next Monday, so it's all grading from here on out. I can't think of a better day to spend holed up with some essays, the cat, some knitting, tea, apple cider, and some knitting.

The knitting guild's holiday party is tonight. I'm making pulled pork in the slow cooker, and serving it with tiny slider buns. We're also doing a blind stash exchange, where people will wrap up things from their stashes and we'll pull numbers for them, so I need to figure out what I can bring.

I grafted the hood on mom's sweater last night. I am quite proud of this--grafting in pattern is not an easy challenge, but somehow I managed to get it right on the first try. Unfortunately, I am now about 90% sure I don't have enough yarn to make the sleeves, and I am freaking out. I think that I need to step away from the project for a while so that I can figure out what I want to do about it. There are a few people on Rav who have yarn from the same dyelot, but I feel strange about PMing someone and saying, "Hey, want to sell me some of your yarn that you obviously have earmarked for other projects?" Currently I'm kind of leaning towards just buying more from Knit Picks and alternating skeins if the colour shift is too dramatic.

Sharing Birthdays

The day before I turned 3, my mother went into labour, and produced Middle Sister. I was sorely disappointed: my mother was in the hospital for my birthday, and Middle was not what I had believed her to be. She was not the fully formed playmate I had wanted, and she had failed to materialize in time for Hallowe'en, so we didn't get to go trick-or-treating together. Such is life when you are 3.

We went out last night to celebrate our co-birthdays, and we had a really lovely evening with our friends. I had to give Caitlin an IOU instead of her actual gift--I'm buying us tickets to see Hawksley Workman when he comes to town next April, but the tickets haven't gone on sale yet.

Today has actually been pretty quiet. A few of my students made me a birthday card (on lined paper with highlighters) and Mat made me a cake. The most exciting (questionably so) thing that has happened today is that the computer in my office stopped working halfway through the day. My office computer is an IBM NetVista Pentium 4, complete with original floppy drive, and it has been getting increasingly cantankerous these last few months. It currently takes over half an hour to complete its turning on cycle. I am hoping that I will be able to have it replaced fairly shortly, as it makes it very difficult for me to get anything done at work.

The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Mostly. It has been a hell of a couple weeks around here. I might have to write this entry as a bullet point list for the sake of clarity. I'm hoping your regularly scheduled blogging will resume shortly. Anyhow, here is what I've been up to:

• Collective Bargaining - I sit on the bargaining committee for my union, and we have finally started negotiating a collective agreement with the university's administration. Things have gone quickly so far, but we still have the big stuff--compensation and workload--to get through. It will be very interesting to see how this goes--the Ontario government has asked for a two year wage freeze for all public servants/groups that receive transfer funds; it is likely that we will be offered 0-0 for the next two years.
• New school year. You'd think, since this is my fourth year in this job, I'd remember how hard that first week of classes is: a million names to remember, new schedule and locations to memorize, no more napping in the afternoons...but I didn't remember, and last week just knackered me. I'm so lucky to have Mat in my life--if I were left to my own devices, I would probably eat pizza for the entire first month of school because I am just exhausted when I get home from work right now.
• Test knitting. I'm almost done my second test knit. The first was a stranded pattern done in sport weight yarns, so it was a slow(er) project. I've only knit one other stranded project in my entire life, so don't ask me why I came up with a fairly involved stranded design...but I did. My second knit is in a worsted weight yarn, and I'm so happy that I saved it for last because it's working up like a dream. I'm going to mail them out tomorrow, and then I just have finish writing the patterns.
• Bachelorette party. This was a very good night. The theme was "Wear It Again" (as in, wear a dress that you've only worn once) with a side of "underwear" (everyone brought me a pair of gotchies and I had to guess who brought me which). There are lots of photos here, although I will warn you that there are pictures of a) crocheted thongs, b) phallic pastries, and c) firemen having hoses pinned on them.
• Various and sundry wedding planning. I finally have all the fascinator things, but haven't quite figured out what I'm doing. I do not have all the jewelry things, which is irritating. At times like this I feel like the persecution complex that I have in relation to Canada Post is actually quite justified.
• My cat hates me again.
• I AM GETTING MARRIED IN TEN DAYS FRAK

Les Invasions Barbares

I've written approximately four half posts here in the last few days, but I just can't seem to settle on anything. I have only a few days left before the semester starts, and the time seems to be filling up quickly: I have meetings with my chair, with the scholarship committee, with the collective bargaining committee, and a breakfast with the first year students, as well as a visit from my mother. (One of her best friends from nursing school is teaching in town for a few days, so she's driving up to visit Middle Sister and I, and have dinner with her friend.)

I've also got knitting to do. I sold two patterns to Three Irish Girls a few months ago, and the yarn arrived last week for me to work up my samples. I need to finish them quickly so that I can mail them away to Minnesota. (I'm very glad that I started with the fingering weight project first; the worsted weight one will take less time to knit up.) I'm still plugging away on my mum's Rogue (the goal is to finish last year's present for this year's Christmas). I've also got the idea in my head that I want to make a Little Sister Dress for a colleague whose wife just had a baby girl.

The competition list for the Elmvale Fall Fair are up now, and I am bound and determined to enter some of my hand knits this year. There are several different knitting categories, which generally have fewer than five entries in them. I also have this crazy idea that I could throw together a few sewing projects for that too...plus the sewing and knitting projects I want to have done for the holidays this year.


Speaking of holiday knits, I finished these yesterday, and I foresee a fair few pairs in my future. The embellishments are done by needle felting, and I added a few of the beads leftover from when I made Larisa.

From The Office Of...

I am at work, in my office.¹ I've been asked to present at the New Faculty Orientation today on the union's contract negotiations with the university², so I am dressed and professional and wearing heels, and await the presentation. I am also basking in the air conditioning. It was 29 degrees in the house when I left, and I don't imagine that's much improved.

Thus, I am taking advantage of the opportunity to organize my fall knits list, and to think about what holiday knitting (if any) that I want to pursue this year. I've been plugging away, slowly but surely, on my mom's Rogue sweater (which I'd love to have done for Christmas this year). There are a couple of things that I'd like to knit, but I've got some yarn coming to knit samples of two of my designs. Once the yarn finally gets here I will have a fairly tight turnaround with those, so I'm trying to stick to simple and in progress projects in the meantime.

=====
¹ The comma there is quite important. Without it, the sentence would've read, "I'm at work in my office," which is not, strictly speaking, exactly true.
² Or lack thereof.

Academic Freedoms

Strange things are afoot at my beloved tiny university. I've already discussed the whole honorary degree debacle at length, but it just keeps getting stranger and stranger. The university quietly released a new policy this morning on protests, disruptions, and demonstrations on campus; this policy outlines the administration's new policy on how to deal with potentially "disruptive" behaviour. The policy itself is quite brief, so I'd recommend reading it if you're interested. Essentially, the university is giving itself the right to shut down demonstrations, protests, and any other behaviours that it deems "disruptive" or not "consistent with the University's mission." (I think it means "mission statement," but this policy is poorly written on many levels.)


The policy claims that its reach is applicable "where there is a material disruption of, or interference with, instructional activities, other University business and campus events." There are two curious things about this: first, the policy's title implies it only addresses "Public Events", which instructional activities are clearly not; second, the phrase "material disruption" is vague. What is a material disruption as opposed to other kinds of disruption? Material to me implies something physical or tangible. My assumption is reinforced by the third type of improper action: "material interference free entry to or exit from the university," which absolutely makes sense, but again begs the question of "what is a material disruption?"

The more troubling part of the policy is the second part of the guidelines:

2. Demonstrations are limited to appropriate areas or public forums that do not
include, among other locations, faculty and administrative offices, classrooms
and other instructional facilities. The University will designate areas for
speeches and demonstrations. These areas will be designated as "Free Expression
Areas". Use of these areas for speaking, demonstrating and other forms of
expression will be scheduled through the Vice-President, Academic and Research
Office to best accommodate all interested users.

The first thing that jumps out at me is the use of the term "Free Expression Areas," which I find problematic for two reasons: first, it differs from the "Free Speech Areas" identified in the document's title¹, and second, the use of a term like "Free Expression Areas" implies that all areas not designated as such are thus not places of free expression? That troubles me greatly.² It is absolutely an attack on academic freedom, but it is also an attack on personal freedoms. It is also, in my opinion, a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

There has been quite a lot of commentary on the policy through the school email, all of it excellent. The best response, I think, is the one that points out the policy itself is totally unnecessary, since the things that it outlines as "improper actions" are actually considered, you know, offences under Canadian law. It's also worth noting that this move to "Free Expression Areas" parallels what's being done for the upcoming G8 summit in Huntsville, scarcely 150 kilometres from our doorsteps. Interestingly, the administration has responded

I know that not everyone shares my ire at the idea of giving Harris anything more prestigious than a membership in the IGA cookie club, and that's fine. I'm choosing to protest the degree by not attending the ceremony.³ I think--I hope--I believe, though, that the policy as outlined is not something that anyone should be in favour of, for a variety of reasons. Is a policy necessary? Perhaps--but not this policy. It's quite telling that the VP-AR's office responded to the concerns by saying that the policy "needs work" and its current form does lend itself to authoritarian reading. He did, however, agree with the numerous recommendations to refer the policy to the Academic Senate.⁴

Needless to say, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

=====
¹ See what I mean about the quality of the writing?
² A lot of the response to the policy thus far has focused on ideas about what people feel the roles of the university and of a university education are, in terms of critical thinking and critical discourse. I'm not quite convinced that this is the role of a university education any more, but that is another entry for another time.
³ This is a change from when I wrote "The Subtle Knife": while it's true that I probably would skip the APS grad, I now feel strongly enough about this whole thing that I want to emphasize that my non-attendance is out of principle, not laziness.
⁴ I actually like the VP-AR. I don't agree with all of his decisions, obviously, and I don't think that he spends enough time trying to understand our university as distinct from other schools in the province, but I think that he could/would be a good administrator somewhere else.

The Subtle Knife

If you ever want to get me started about something that irks me, just ask me about the use of email services at the school. The university contracts out our email to Google, which is fine.¹ What is not fine is that there is a "everyone@tinyuniversity.ca" email address that does exactly what it implies: sends the email to everyone who works for the university. Obviously, this does serve a useful and important function, since sometimes there is information that everyone needs to know, but it's also led to some very bizarre (and unprofessional) flare ups: in some ways it's neat because it spawns discussion within the university, but in other ways, it can be really frustrating to sort through all of the extra emails to get to the ones that I actually need to answer.

It also irks me because, on some level, I'm actually kind of a Smug Asshole sometimes, and more specifically, I'm a Smug Asshole Who Hates It When Old People Can't Be Bothered To Use Technology Correctly. All of those unnecessary Reply Alls that reveal too much personal information, or petty grievances, etc. make me crazy. (See, I told you, I'm a jerk.)

We're about a month away from this year's Convocation ceremonies, and one of the honorary degree recipients is a very controversial figure: former Ontario Premier Mike Harris. Harris is most (in)famous for bringing the Common Sense Revolution to Ontario, which resulted in substantial cuts to health, education, and social assistance programs, the privatization of former public sector entities, and the formation of the megacity of Toronto. (Granted, he also balanced the budget, got approximately 500 000 people off of welfare, and added some 378 parks and protected areas for Ontario.)

Naturally, this has sparked a fair amount of outrage among certain groups of people.² One faculty member wrote a very thoughtful letter to the effect that after due consideration, he didn't feel that he could attend the convocation in question because he didn't want to provide a tacit endorsement of Mr. Harris through his presence there.³ He encouraged the rest of the faculty to make their own determinations about what their presence at convocation would mean. There have been a number of response to his email, but the latest one in particular sticks in my mind.⁴ The writer asks:

At the beginning of teaching and learning is ignorance and curiosity. I come with a surfeit of both. Please forgive a Harrisy and allow me to ask "what did he do to you?" -- you educators, you academics, you people with powerful minds and voices.

What did he to do me? Oh, brother. Where do you want me to start? How about with the two separate times my mother was laid off from her nursing job due to hospital cutbacks? How about when 2/3s of the teachers at my high school were issued pink slips? How about the two separate teacher strikes that happened in my school board? How about the introduction of standardized testing (EQAO) and the farce that is the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test?⁵ The many, many problems with the New Curriculum? The elimination of the OAC year, and the resulting problems with the double cohort? (Middle Sister was part of that.) The consistent cuts to post-secondary education? Or maybe you've heard of the town where I was born--a little place called Walkerton?


These are the things that resulted from the Harris government that are the most personal to me. It does not even begin to address the things that happened to the province I live in and its culture: Ipperwash, the hospital closures, the privatization of the 407, teacher testing, the changes to labour law, the budget problems that occured after he resigned.

It worries me that the university wants to ally itself so closely with him, particularly given that we have a substantial aboriginal student population, and that we've invested a significant amount of time and effort into both attracting aboriginal students and working to ensure their success.

------
¹ Well, not really fine in the broader sense that there are significant privacy concerns that arise from using Gmail, but I generally like the interface of it, I like the pre-loaded address book, I like the Google apps, and I also really like that we now get 7 gigs of space, unlike the 750 megabites that we had under the old system.
² It's actually a bit more complicated than this for reasons that I'm not really supposed to talk about because the announcement has yet to be made, and won't be made for about 16 months, but if you really want to know, the Toronto Star has speculated about it here.
³ The convocation is the one for the Faculty of Applied and Professional Schools, which is not one that I would normally attend, so I don't actually need to make this choice.
⁴ I've since been informed that this was intended as a genuine question; I had initially interpreted it as hostile, but apparently it is not.
⁵ Sure, the test scores keep going up, but that's because the test keeps getting easier, not because literacy levels are any higher.

as we walk in fields of gold

As it is apparently a pretty cinematic week 'round these parts, we went to see Iron Man 2 last night. (I've also watched both A Streetcar Named Desire and Party Monster this week.) IM2 is pretty much exactly what you'd think it would be: it's nowhere near as bad as some early reviews implied that it was, but it certainly doesn't exceed the original. The only thing in it that really bothered me was a touch of lazy writing: to have two Russian characters and not ever really acknowledge what that means...I don't know. I suppose that a) one of the characters is technically American (in which case the naming of that character is unfortunate) and b) as Mat points out, the vast majority of the film's audience knows nothing about twentieth century Russian history. (Which is, I suppose, unfortunate, since so much of the Iron Man stuff is informed by the Cold War...)

I received my course evaluations for the Winter term in my mailbox at work yesterday, and they were the best set of evaluations that I've received yet. (We are evaluated by both a 5-point Likert scale scantron sheet as well as an anonymous written form.) I received a 4.40 out of a possible 5.00 for my Likert scores, and the most negative comment that I received in the written was that I was "just okay" in seminar. I also had a couple of people comment that I was "well-groomed" which is...hilarious? bizarre? irrelevant? untrue? I try not to think too much about my evaluations because they don't necessarily mean anything, but I have to confess, it's particularly gratifying to have such good evaluations for this term because my evaluations for the Fall term were actually the worst evaluations I've had in my three years here. It feels good to have made that kind of improvement, and to know that my students enjoyed this year as much as I did.

I've cast on a February Baby Sweater, and I have to say, it's a bit terrifying. EZ's pattern doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense to me, but I am trying my best to trust that it will turn out well. I guess that if it doesn't, at least it's a very small sweater, so ripping back won't be too painful. I'm using one of the yarns I picked up last weekend, a superwash DK dyed by Tanis Fiber Arts in a beautiful blue/purple mix, and it's knitting up beautifully.

into the great wide open

As part of my trip home on the weekend, I persuaded my mother to part with her DSLR camera for a few months so that I could learn to use it. Photography has been an interest of mine since I got to take a black and white photography class in my grade eleven year. We learned how to use SLR cameras and to process and print our own film. My parents bought me my own camera as a graduation present--an old 35mm Praktica, made in the German Democratic Republic. It suited me well, but eventually the light meter went on it (and the film counter never worked properly) and I got sucked into the world of digital point and shoot cameras. (Which is not a bad world to be in, per se, but it does make for some lazy photography.)

I've been pondering the purchase of a digital SLR for a while now, and I think this is the year to make it happen. I'm hoping that I can re-learn a lot of the stuff that I used to know about photography by using my mom's camera; if I can't, it will be good to know that before I blow $700ish on the Nikon D5000 that I have my eye on...

One of the appealing things about the university here is that there are a number of hiking trails behind the school. The very first weekend that I moved into the residence here back in 2000, my new roommates and I went on a hike to the waterfalls. We were led by a guy named Ben, who was tall and good looking and said things like, "You can trust me. I'm a geography major." (This was a lie. We definitely got lost at least once that day.) I had not been back on the trails since, until today. I convinced one of my co-workers to take a break from his article writing and enjoy the sunshine. Unfortunately, this rather backfired as it snowed for a good portion of our trek, but it was a very good time anyway. The waterfalls are not on a steep incline, but they do go on a good ways, and they are very rocky. I got to climb out along the rocks and stand in the middle of the falls, which was very cool.

I don't spend nearly enough time outside. Part of this is where I live--can you really blame me for hibernating during a Northern Ontario winter?--but part of it is my own nature, which likes the comfort of being inside. I need to change this, though. I can't even describe the way that I felt today, standing out on the rocks with the water rushing all around me. It was, for lack of a better word, amazing, and it was exactly what I needed--it cleared out my head for me, and I've been substantially more productive all day as a result.

I didn't get a lot of pictures because I was too busy looking at everything, and I'm not thrilled with the pictures that I did get. I have a lot to learn about photography. But it's a starting point.

in the arms of a poet

I'm about to see a major project come to fruition tonight: My department's fourth annual creative writing exhibition. I've spent much of the last month drafting letters, booking rooms, emailing, editing copy, calling writers, cajoling writers, badgering writers, and all manner of stuff. I'm excited because it is good to see the results from the things that you do. Knitting is good for this; teaching first and second year university students critical reading and writing skills is usually...not. I've also been self-appointed as the event photographer. The university has loaned me a Nikon D-SLR, which is quite nice, and I'm hoping to spirit it away home to take pictures of Finished Objects, and also of the Cat.

I'm wearing my new sweater for the first time in honour of the occasion. I've already got two compliments on it from students.

the most blunderful time of the year...

The countdown is on. One day left to this week; three days left next week, and minimal teaching all around. (Minimal teaching, of course, means maximal marking. Bah humbug to that.) I'm always ground down this time of year; I let my job be more stressful than it should be, and I am so effing ready for a break I can taste it. I went to bed at 11 p.m. last night, and woke up around 7:30 this morning. It's now 4 in the afternoon, and I am exhausted. There's nothing left in this tank. Just air.

(As an illustration of my point, I just paused from writing this scintillating rumination on my life to go pick up some stuff from the print room here. Apparently, you actually need to send documents to the printer before they will be printed off. Where the heck is my telepathic printer?)

Don't get me wrong. I like my job. But I'm ready for a break right now. I'm ready for comfy clothes and healthy food that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, and time spent with a cat who has no sense of entitlement except when it comes to the Boyfriend's computer chair. I don't want to read more essays that misinterpret both texts and questions. I don't want to be as tired and frustrated as I am right now.

I'm hoping the quick trip home this weekend will refresh me. If not, maybe I will just sleep for the whole month of December.

I open at the close

The first 'real' week of school has been quite a challenge. I've got seminars in two courses this year (the first year intro course AND the second year British literature survey) and the balancing act required therein has been difficult at best. Add in a little personal turmoil and you've got the makings of a week that I'm quite pleased is over.

I taught scansion in the first year courses and it went from being an unmitigated disaster on day one to being mostly okay by day five, which is excellent since it's something that I'm totally crap at. If you want obscure New Wave song lyrics from the 80s, I'm your girl. If you want to know anything about rhythm...well...*cough*. I get to teach it again in second year next week, so we'll hope that they are able to grasp it. Overall I've been really impressed with my second year courses thus far.

I received an email from an old internet friend that I'd fallen out of touch with several years ago. After adding each other to the key social networking places (as you do) we discovered that since we last spoke, we have continued to share interests. It's hard to explain why that makes me so happy, but it does: the friendship that I treasure most seem to be those that can hang infinitely in the balance, but always fall back into place in the most satisfying way that says: Here we are again.