4 April 2025: Especially when she was little, Jo had this habit of leaping on my shoulder in the morning when I opened the curtains. She would then stretch forward and survey the neighborhood.
I thought she had outgrown it, but this morning she startled me all over again. (My hair is wet--hadn't dried it yet.)
1 April 2025: Got to hear a former student read from her debut novel on campus this evening. Another chance to just marvel at how lucky I am to get to do what I do.
27 March 2025: Lucky enough to get to be home this afternoon and watch the Yanks win the season opener. Let's go, Yankees! Let's go, spring!
21 March 2025: One of those days that flew by but also feels very long. But what a fun one! College students are the best (esp. English majors, duh) and Tim is the best.
20 March 2025: Writing this from my hotel room in Pittsburgh after a great first day at the Sigma Tau Delta Convention. Our students are so terrific and spending time with them is such a joy.
19 March 2025: Crazy-busy day, but not a bad one. Been working non-stop with probably about an hour's more work to go before I let myself call it. At the same time, Frost's line from "Mending Wall" (in this post's title) has been in my head on and off all day. Part of the reason is that I taught the poem in ENGL 204 today.
Beyond that, though, the idea of mischief (fueled by the transition to my favorite season) has been kind of fueling my attitude (in good ways).
Anyway, this isn't the most thought-out or eloquent post, I know. (See above--so much more to do, "miles to go before I sleep," to borrow even more from Frost.) But it's enough to "count" for my daily post and get my butt back to work!
14 March 2025: Another Spring Break is winding down and I don't have a single interesting answer for "what did you do over break?"
It's weird to feel bad about this. Because it wasn't a bad week. I got a lot done, enjoyed being a bit lazy at times, and caught up on sleep.
But when you measure your life in the units of the academic year, it is a little bummer when, year after year, you don't have much to say about a week off.
12 March 2025: I keep missing "number" milestones on this crazy 10K steps streak I am on. Just realized I hadn't checked (that is, googled "how many days since December 25, 2019?") in a while and just missed one. Today is day 1904. Doesn't roll off the tongue, but still pretty cool.
Let's see if I miss the big 2-0-0-0 (if it happens) in mid-June.
11 March 2025: Everything is still trash out there, but I just read back-to-back ENGL 102 essays that unironically (I think?) use the word "whilst," which made me laugh. Is Gen Z bringing this one back? Such whimsy!
6 March 2025: We've got a new hire coming into our program next fall and it has me thinking about my own start here way back when.
When she got her first job, a grad school friend who was a few years ahead of me told me something I've never forgotten: the thing you can't anticipate about a tenure-track job is "all of the meetings" and the committees--and all the time they will take. She was, of course, 100% correct. This work is important and sometimes interesting and sometimes even fun, but a lot of it is also boring and can feel like busywork.
Today I've worked all day (from home--which is lovely and a privilege) and maybe 30% of that time went to teaching and students.
The rest? A search committee for another unit and working on our HLC Assurance Agreement (or whatever it's called). And, as always, so many emails.
The steady demand of the work necessary to keep the place running? It's so much of what a lot of us do--and the part no one really talks about and that folks outside of academia couldn't even imagine. (Good for them. They shouldn't have to--unless they are complaining about how we don't work enough or are--hilariously--overpaid.)
This isn't a very profound or even interesting post. It's just what I'm thinking about this evening, looking back nearly 18 years into this.
28 February 2025: Today I asked an English 102 student how his paper, a profile of someone whose life has been shaped by sports, was coming along.
"Good! I kind of like it because I forgot the dude had cancer!"
I promise he didn't mean it in a bad way--he was just glad to have unlocked a rich area to talk about. But his classmates and I laughed a bit. "Does he also have Dad Issues?" I asked.
Later, I was joking to another group of students about my tiny hands and how they are the reason I never had a football career. (Literally, my hands are too small to hold one...)
This kid looks up and says, "You should try pickleball. Lots of old people like it." When his classmates gasped, he said, "No, I mean like my parents. They're like...40."
I about died laughing.
22 February 2025: I decided that I needed to rewatch Season 2 of Yellowjackets before starting the new one. Making my way through it slowly, given how busy things have been. I am glad I decided to rewatch it because it's wild how much I have forgotten. It makes me think I must not have watched it that closely the first time. I know the critical consensus was that this season was weaker than the first--and I agree. It is also much more meandering and gloomy at the expense of a lot of the (dark) fun of of the earlier season. The showrunners' decision to really invest in the supernatural elements also isn't my favorite. But still...it's a captivating show, with such good acting.
Excited to start Season 3 when I finish up.
(Maybe not the best world to dwell in too much, mood-wise, at least not for too long, though...)
6 February 2025: When I wasn't conferencing with students today, I was proofing my book. Found myself moved all over again by this passage from Margaret Fuller's letters: “When I write it is into another world, not a better one, perhaps, but one with very dissimilar habits of thought to this where I am domesticated” (Letters 125). Fuller, I explain, wrote towards and for the world she imagined. It's inspiring.
It is a profound experience to re-read these pages in these dark and troubled day, not because of my writing (ha!), but because so many of these women continue to inspire me as they wrote and wrote and wrote through their own troubled times.
Work Cited
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, Cornell UP, 1983.
4 February 2025: Busy day today; 12 conferences, some book proofing, trivia... Since the election, my work and things like trivia are what have helped me get through the days. And I am grateful for them today. But my goodness: all this evil and cruelty--nightmare after nightmare after nightmare--is hitting me so hard tonight. It's overwhelming.
3 February 2025: "I went from social distancing to infantacide..." --a statement from one of my ENGL 301 students that sounds absolutely unhinged out of context. (She was talking about two sources for her annotatad bibliography about Wuthering Heights.)
Anyway, one day down. Four to go.
1 February 2025: I think I finished the index today. I am just not going to overthink it (she says, immediately doubting that decisions).
Anyway, had a "helper" with me this morning. She switched to "distractor" pretty soon after this, a role she has played on and off the rest of the day.
28 January 2025: Today our NWP site hosted a "How to Write Your Representative" event in the Rams Den. Let me tell you: seeing these students express an interest in writing these letters--and just to spend four hours watching them hanging out and being wonderful and fun and caring with each other--it was exactly what I needed. Spending time around college students is just such a gift.
27 January 2025: Whew! A long and busy day today: four classes, office hours, a meeting, grading, so many emails, and then a guest hosting gig at Captain Benders. I am wiped out but also excited because I should sleep like a rock.
Busy couple of weeks ahead. Feeling on the verge of overwhelmed, but also quietly confident.
22 January 2025: Did being back on campus today and teaching my four classes help improve my mood today (compared to yesterday), even though all of the news coming out of DC is trash?
Of course it did.
Every single day in the classroom is a day with "good" in it.
Every. Single. Day.
18 January 2025: A low-key lovely Saturday, I think? Got up early-ish (for a Saturday), ran some errands, did my weekly housework, and even started working on the book proofs and edits. By mid-afternoon, my to-do list was pretty much done.
Since the weather is looking bad for tomorrow, Amy and I decided to see a movie today instead of tomorrow (alas, no free popcorn from Regal on "National Popcorn Day" tomorrow). We saw One of Them Days, which was silly and funny and really hit the spot. It was also kind of cool to see a movie celebrating Los Angeles, particularly Black communities in Los Angeles, at this moment in time, with so much of the city suffering.
After the movie, we had dinner (where I would have made my dad proud, using a pretty good coupon). Back home now, watching Brooklyn 99 reruns and just relaxing. Again, usually, with a snowstorm approaching, my mood might be more somber, but so far, it's okay.
These kinds of posts are, I know, kind of boring and "laundry lists" that don't take too much creativity or thinking, but every once in a while, I don't mind them as kind of snapshots.
17 January 2025: Sitting in my office on campus just after 5:30 on a Friday, basically ready for when classes start up again on Wednesday (we have Monday off for MLK Day). That's a good feeling: nothing to carry into the weekend. It won't happen again, at least not very often once the grading really picks up, but I am appreciating it now for a lot of reasons.
The biggest one? My book proofs came in yesterday. I've got a month to go through them and write the index. Exciting and terrifying! But I am grateful for the long weekend (including what might be a snow-bound Sunday (and Monday?)) to knock a lot of it out. But enough about that. Feels more appropriate to do some first-week reflecting.
I've got four classes that seem great (plus the practicum). A wide variety of students. Good discusions so far. The 102 students are still a bit quiet, but we'll see.
Yesterday delivered some blows to my pride in my workplace, but those are problems from higher levels/positions of power. At the end of the day, I am still so glad and blessed to get to work with these students.
16 January 2025:
Caught my girl looking so pensive and thoughtful that I almost sobbed.
13 January 2025: Day One went pretty darn well, I think. Great students (of course), some good conversations already, and I managed to get my course prep and other stuff done by 5:30ish and head home.
A couple of snapshots...
11 January 2025: Some Saturday snapshots: a message I found in the new snow and a new box cycled in for the cats. (Guess what was in it.)
8 January 2025: Had my first official meeting of the semester today and then spent a lot of the rest of the day working on the million little things one needs to get done before classes start. Though my vibes still feel off, it was nevertheless nice and soothing to just hammer away at a set of tasks and make progress.
