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.
