RBOC: More Catching Up

Attempts at blogging have largely failed. I'm still trying though. I promise.

In the meantime, things worth noting:

• April snow froze my car shut this morning
• for those wondering about when it would happen, word of my departure has reached the students. It happened largely by accident. The first reveal was intentional - a student asked if I could be the faculty moderator for a student atheist group. The second was my slip-up in discussing an event being planned. And more recently, a candidate was brought in for my position, and the department took them to a restaurant where a number of our students work.
• Surprisingly, the stack of boxes in my office has yet to draw a single question.
  
• I came in 7 out of 63 and 9 out of 33 in my March Madness pools. Good enough for a little bragging, but no actual financial gain.
• I've recently watched Synecdoche, New York and Gran Torino, and loved them both for very different reasons. I strongly recommend both, but each with a warning: the first is not an easy film intellectually, the second is not an easy film in terms of cultural sensitivity.
  

Hope you're all well.

Signs of Growth

Spring is here. And gone. And back again. And likely gone again tomorrow.

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The conference planning continues along, in that way that suggests that the ruling members of the planning committee don't exactly have their feet on the ground. I spent a significant portion of last not looking for my temper which got off leash and access to my e-mail. Drafts were written. Things were quoted - perhaps the worst thing one can do in an e-mail argument. In the end, I found it and reigned it in.

I was tempted to resign, to cancel the things I'd organized and to let them go it alone. I was tempted to give back funding and salute as the remaining organizers were left to twist in the wind.

Cooler moods prevailed. It's been awhile since I've found myself pushed to that point. Had it not been for the love I have for this organization, which has been kind to me and instrumental, I might have.

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The other day, coming out of the gym, strangers were talking in the hallway. They were circled, and sprawled across the corridor, so no one could easily pass. There are boundary issues at play here. It's one of the things I won't miss - that sprawling lack of awareness that others might also - must also - pass through space. But I digress.

One man said, "As you can see, I have a problem with shrinkage."

The others laughed. And as I squeezed through, I suppressed the reply that raced automatically to my lips. Ten years before, it would have slipped out before I'd seen it coming. Growing up, my friends and I made jokes on each other whenever they came up, whatever they may have been. It was hard to ignore the urge.

But I couldn't help laughing a little on the way to my car, and wishing I'd only known one of them so I could have let fly.

"You can't call it shrinkage if it's always that way."

Checking In

I'm sitting here, sore from the gym, tired from the whirlwind of the term, reading "Joe Gould's Secret." Lurking at the back of my head over the last few days has been the fear that I am not the academic I thought I was.

I am thinking about writing, which isn't what I do, and thinking it is something I might like to try more. I'm thinking about how the research I do isn't the thing that my students connect with. Shouldn't it be? Why is it when I teach the things around the edges of my part of the field, trying to define it, that it is those things the students connect with?

I'm feeling guilty as my department is slowly descending into panic about my departure. It would help if, when people asked me about the new job, they didn't always begin with "So, you're abandoning us...." A friend mentioned wanting to throw a party for my departure, and I immediately thought of 40 people all starting their celebration for me that way, followed by loud demands for a speech.

Earlier this week, I looked at an ad for an apartment that said tenants could get use of the washer and dryer in the basement for $50 in additional rent, provided the use was limited to one load per week. Everything about looking for apartments depresses me.

All of this is funny as I'm still excited about the position.

Whirlwind of Productivity

Today, I'm in my office, which is freezing though it sounds like the heat is on, and I've got the song "Mercedes Boy" by Pebbles stuck in my head, though I haven't heard it since probably 1989 and I've got iTunes on loud shuffle trying to exorcise it from my head.

Go on, click that link and suffer with me. I bet you didn't know there was an extended version. Thanks, YouTube!

As the title says, I've been all kinds of productive in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, I graded 25 projects and provided detailed feedback. I wrote two reference letters - though I need to proof them this evening. And for the conference we're "helping" to co-host (the other co-hosts have largely vanished and my co-conspirator here has been the usual level of disorganized) was falling behind on things, so I also sent out 50+ acceptance letters.

The conference is tiring me out, as I knew it would. All the things I was afraid would go wrong have. Big Ideas/Bigger Mouth from the other U - who asked to co-host - has found all his promised funding gone, all his "friends who would do us favors" vanished, and may well have gone on vacation. That's left us to find the keynotes, to review the proposals, to send the acceptances, and thus far, to come up with all the funds that have been come up with. For my part, I've put together a banquet, transportation to the banquet and a local tourist attraction, found a band, ordered drinks, ordered the furniture and the setup, found the funding for all of that at a tiny university in an economic recession, and last night, sent out all the acceptance letters.

I'm tired. And yet my grading is caught up, and my lectures are planned. I do not deserve "Mercedes Boy." I don't. If this is karma, I'm sorry for inventing polio. I didn't mean to. Please stop this song and let me rest.

Place Your Bets

So a few of you have asked about this, and I thought it'd be a good thing to bet on. Tonight, at 7:04 p.m., I told a student that I've taken a new job and won't be here in the fall. The student isn't in my department, but I'm at a university of about 2,700 students.

Anyone care to bet on how long until my students hear about it and begin to ask questions (and possibly freak out)?

Or maybe I smell

I described an event a few nights back to my roommate as feeling like I'd attended my own autopsy. Really, the last few days have felt that bumpy.

There's a point, I suppose, after you take a job but before you've left for it where everyone has to give up on you. I suppose I've hit that point, and it's been strange trying to deal with it. A few nights back, I attended a party one of my colleagues was throwing, and throughout the time I was there, I actually found folks I work with moving away from conversations with me. And when conversations did happen, they almost invariably began with something like "So, traitor, have you found an apartment at your new job yet?" As I entered the kitchen - where folks in my discipline invariably gravitate to at any party - I heard someone whisper "Do you think you'll take Curmudgeon's office?" To my credit, I didn't interrupt or immediately think about pranking the person who gets my little slice of poor ventilation. This, though, seems to be the tone of things for my remaining weeks.

I suppose it's a blessing that I've stopped getting asked to faculty meetings, but it's another strange symptom of things. But it's a little odd that people actually get quiet when I round a corner or stick my head in the doorway. It's like I'm being forced to be a short-timer: if I can't do the right thing and lose all interest in things here, interest will be lost for me.

freakout

So after much delay, I heard from the editor of my book today, and the word wasn't bad but it wasn't good. Mostly it wasn't good because this book is taking forever, and now it's going to take a bit more. Part of the problem is due to some bad information I was given, evidently, and I can point this out, but it wouldn't really get me much benefit. The long and the short of it is that it's back to the keyboard for me on the book. I'm trying to stay calm about it, as it seems like everything ties back to this book somehow: the new job, funding, conferences, blah blah blah.

At the end of it, I suppose, it will still be published, and probably it won't take as long as I think it's going to. And there was some very useful feedback - some nice critiques of things that didn't come out as strongly as I wanted and some suggestions for places to go to bolster my research. But it still feels like a huge setback.