I was browsing the WriteRCastle Twitter feed, and whoever's behind it re-posted a joke that was so amazingly bad, I had no choice but to stick it up here. To wit (or at any rate to groan):

Two philosophers walk into a bar. One asks, "Can you mix me a Nietzschean Cocktail?" The bartender shrugs. "Kant."

It almost makes up for the frustration I've felt today while trying to a.) find Millay criticism in online databases*, and b.) finish this frakking B5 fic.


* I've decided to write on her celebrations of transience. Wish me luck, especially considering there is literally a book of essays on her, and that appears to be it, aside from two biographies. Good thing this paper appears to be intended as a mainly formalist analysis.

...My poetics paper is due in a month, isn't it? Ah, hell. I should start thinking about that.

Also, today, I realized that the semester is actually a day shorter than I thought it is. Wish I'd found that out before I gave my students a new schedule for the next unit. *headdesk* We have exactly one day of class after Thanksgiving. How much do you think we can actually get done? Exactly. I was going to have them do peer review, but given that none of them are actually going to write the paper over Thanksgiving, I think it'll be futile. Maybe I'll just have them write the first two pages and workshop them. GAAAAAH. I need another week in this semester!

Also, my microwave is completely dead, which I found out as I was attempting to heat up my oatmeal this morning. Luckily, I had a leftover muffin. But really, not a way I needed to start this day. ARGH.

I haven't written SG-1 fic or really even thought about the franchise in seriously like five years, so God only knows how much resemblance this actually bears to canon, or, for that matter, to graduate programs in archaeology. But I've pretty much written it for the lols, and because I wanted a story to go along with my icon.

(Since I'm teaching my students about plagiarism on Monday, I would be a hypocrite if I didn't mention that the idea for said icon is not mine. I saw a version of it, I think with a different picture and slightly different wording, many moons ago, but haven't seen it around since, so I made my own. Whoever came up with this icon idea, you're brilliant. :))

Title: They Didn't Teach This in Grad School
Author: icepixie
Rating: PG
Word Count: 358
Summary: "Sure, the freshmen he'd taught as a grad student might have murdered Middle Kingdom culture, the English language, and possibly his soul, but at least they hadn't been trying to murder him."

( Silliness )

Or, A Cautionary Tale About Balancing Teaching and Scholarship
by icepixie

Me: Hey, thesis! Man, I am so excited about finally spending some time with you tonight.
My thesis: Oh, you won't be spending time with me tonight.
Me: What?!
My thesis: I'm tired of you always off grading, or preparing for your classes, or reading for that other class you take. Don't think I can't see how often you have ink stains from your grading pen on your fingers.
Me: I know I've been distant lately, but we had dinner together last week, didn't we? And I brought you some new ideas from your favorite theorist...
My thesis: Sorry, I have to wash my hair.
Me: But baby, come on, we've gotta get some work done...
My thesis: I deck myself out in quotations and metaphors, I put my best paragraphs forward, and what do I get? "Not tonight, dear, I have grading." Forget it! I'm not about to be won over by theorists, or poems, or anything else you're bringing to the text.
Me: But I cleared off my schedule for you tonight and all day tomorrow. We won't have to leave Word until Friday morning! Whatdya say?
My thesis: Eh. I'm not feelin' it.

UGH. I am never, ever assigning this many homework assignments/papers ever again. I gave back a ton of crap on Monday, then got more crap on Wednesday, and have finally finished everything--except now I'm going to get another assignment on Monday, and yet another on Friday. They have their next paper due the following Friday.

Plus, while my brilliant plan of having the kids write responses to each other's proposals in class did get me out of having to talk for that part of class, I then had to read the things. I think it may have ended up being more work for me in the end. (Although I'm a freak and like grading more than teaching, so that was sort of okay.)

Anyway. Now I am finally, FINALLY going to get to work on MY scholarship, which I have definitely been neglecting over the past few weeks. Assuming I can stay awake long enough to do so after my marathon grading sessions, anyway.

We were reading this in my poetry class today, and when asked to characterize it, one guy said, "Icarus didn't fail. He just decided to stop succeeding."

Perhaps I should starting writing that on my students' papers.

"Dialectical chickens." Oh, Jameson scholars.

(Hmmm. I need a Hegel icon, don't I?)

Things I should not do:

1. Try to grade all twenty-two papers from a section of 101 in one day. Hahaha. Yeah, that was courtesy of the bad idea bears. Somewhere in the middle of the sixteenth paper, I had to give up before I started writing gibberish on the page. (These were 4-5 pages each, so not horrible, but not insignificant.) However, I was victorious today. I am not thinking about the six revisions to the first paper and sixteen extra credit personal essays I still have to grade.

2. Go two weeks without grocery shopping. Because then I will inevitably have to go do it in a downpour, because I'm out of everything. (Then again, there have been precious few days in the last couple weeks without rain, so perhaps it was inevitable.)

*

Unrelated to any of this, I found out the other day that the MLA guidelines for the works cited list have changed again. TO STUPID ONES. Seriously, they don't want the URL of a website anymore. Let me repeat, they don't want the URL of a website anymore. I...professors are the ones who make this crap up! They of all people should know how much more work that's going to create when we have to go check our students' sources because some piece of writing they included sounds a whole lot better than anything they've turned in all semester!

And now they also want the word "Print" after an entry for each print source, which is...redundant, to say the least. "Asinine" might be a better word. I mean, presumably if you've got Author/Title/City/Publishing Company/Year it's a book, yes? There is no confusion here? Then again, at least it's not losing functionality. We should count our blessings.

*

I have many words on narratology to read. I should get on that.

Have given up on writing for the time being. Will try again after class.

For now, I am going over the chapter of theory on the lyric mode I read for class, but didn't really understand. I'm sure W.R. Johnson is brilliant and all, but I have to admit, reading this book is kind of like having a wave wash over me and being left only with some seaweed in my teeth after it's over. Or something like that.

A few months old, but THIS RIGHT HERE is the main reason I am not continuing on to a PhD.

(I hear stories from people on the market of hundreds of people applying for each position out there. Some of those hundreds have been looking for a tenure-track position for three or four years. I can have trouble finding a job without sinking four or five more years into higher ed, I think.)

I got told last night at class that I was "a legend among the first-year MAs." Apparently they think I have a complete draft of my thesis done already. I...am not sure where they heard this, because I definitely only have sixteen pages now. Which, yes, is further along than pretty much everyone else in my year, but it's not that remarkable. Nevertheless, I was rather pleased to hear that. :D

Teaching is less pleasing. It is getting easier, thankfully, but today I think I just confused my students while getting them to perform a mini rhetorical analysis in groups. I think they got by the end that they had to make a claim about the work rather than just restating MLK's argument in "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," but it was hard going. I'm glad I had them do it in groups, and didn't try to do it as a class, or have them work on it individually. Friday we're doing specifics of how to write a good intro, thesis, body paragraph, and conclusion, so I'll take one of their claims that they came up with and use it as a sort of running example--how to write a good statement of this claim, how to back it up, etc. Maybe that will make more sense. I guess this might be something where I just need to talk at them for a while, rather than trying to facilitate discussion of the topic that eventually arrives at answers. I try to stay away from lecturing, because if I do that, then why did I make them read the chapter in the book, you know? But this seems to be something that needs it.

Anyway, we're doing the body paragraph as a hamburger thing, which should be good for some laughs, especially since I can't draw on chalkboards at all.

And at least most of the kids are trying and willing to struggle with the material. I do have a few who are obviously completely uninvested and will undoubtedly fail out by November (the one who's missed three days of class already comes to mind), but on the whole, I have a good group of students.

And now I have to go read, because ILL finally got a book I need to me, but I only get it for FOUR DAYS. Grrr.

It feels weird only having one class that I have to go to campus for. (Thesis hours technically count as a class, but my thesis is starting to become a process of "take a month to write a chapter, discuss it with my director for an hour, take another month to write another chapter, etc." so...yeah.) I think I'm going to very much enjoy this class, though; it's kind of a poetic forms throughout the ages class, with a particular focus on lyric--or at any rate that's what we're starting with--and obviously this will be helpful to my thesis. The prof is a wonderful, hugely entertaining guy. This should be excellent.

Tomorrow I make my students WRITE! Mwahahaha! BTW, did I mention that before our first class meeting yesterday, one of my kids went on Blackboard, found the syllabus, and brought in his homework for Friday? It was just signing a piece of paper saying he agreed to abide by the syllabus requirements (my goal was to have them figure out how to print things from Blackboard, since they'll need it for class readings), but still. That's kind of amazing.

Finished Spaced last night. I knew what to expect this time, so it was a lot easier to fall into the rhythm of the episodes. Plus, Tim and Daisy are just so freaking cute. Eee. (Plus? EPILOGUE. Awwwwww.)

*

I'm writing the proposal for my 102 class, and I've gotta say, I'm really thrilled about it. 101 is kind of exciting too, but this class is going to be awesome. With some help from a doctoral student (who coincidentally happens to be the other person in the department doing contemporary Irish poetry), I figured out how not to have to cut anything from my mammoth potential reading/viewing list! MWAHAHAHAHAHA! I'm going to make each of them sign up for three extra readings per semester, and have a Blackboard discussion-board conversation among themselves in the small groups that result for each reading. Then they'll have to present on the text and their discussion for a few minutes. It'll be GREAT! And I won't feel guilty for leaving, say, Asimov off the syllabus for the entire class in a sci-fi course.

The paper assignments are going to be pretty cool as well, if I do say so myself. One of them is on fan culture in general (observe a message board/LJ comm/whatever and write a paper about what you see), and for another, one of the options will be analyzing how some fan works of the student's choice interact with/transform their source material. It just occurred to me that there's a slight possibility someone might stumble across my fic in the course of doing those assignments, which would be incredibly weird, but I guess I can live with it. (I have yet to decide what my answer to the inevitable question of "Do you write fanfic?" will be. I have no intention of telling them my nom de plume ever, but I'm not sure whether to deny everything, or just say, "Maybe I do, maybe I don't; if you're still curious after the semester ends, I'll give you a straight answer.")

...Okay, I want to be part of a choir singing "Diaspora Oratorio." (Listen.) It's amazing just listening to it; I think it would be transcendent to be surrounded by other musicians, helping create the sound.

And there are several other pieces I'd like to choreograph to ("Blood on the Scales" comes particularly to mind).

*

( Some thoughts on sci-fi settings that got long )

Still going slightly mad, but I've finished the revisions to my syllabus. HALLELUJAH. (Okay, I'm still debating whether to add in a writing reflection of some sort at the end, but...this is harsh, but I don't want to read them. The kids don't want to write them, and it seems especially futile when I'm already making their last paper due on exam day. Their participation grade is already enough of a gimme, too. I think I'm just going to skip it.)

Still have to reword parts of my last two paper assignments (well...sometime before, uh, October, anyway), and I'd like to get some more done on my thesis before the semester starts. But I feel much better about the syllabus.

In other news, thanks to some finagling by my dad, I got the BSG S4 soundtrack tonight. I haven't gotten to listen to much yet, but the first track, aka the extended and non-acapella version of Gaeta's Lament? HOLY CRAP, THAT IS FANTASTIC. WOW. Alessandro Juliani is amazing.

Now that there are fewer than two weeks until classes start, I'm FREAKING OUT busy preparing for the semester. I've been skimming the flist, and replying to comments, but that's about it. Once the semester gets underway and things get less crazy AND I STOP FEELING LIKE I'M GOING TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK, I'll be around more.

Wish me good psychiatric care for the inevitable nervous breakdown I'm about to have luck!

ETA: My director loved my thesis intro. :D Of course, now I feel bad that I've only written two more pages on it since I mailed the intro off. Er. One more thing to add to the pile!

Finished the introduction to my thesis! It's...longer than many papers I've written. Wow.

I just sent it off to my director. *has a minor panic attack* Crossing my fingers to get a couple more pages on my first chapter done tomorrow, so that I can meet my goal of twenty pages by the time the semester starts in a month.* I won't really be able to work on it next week because all my books and papers will be up in Knoxville while I am not, and then teaching workshops are going to eat the week before classes start. Argh.

* Speaking of panic attacks: I WILL BE TEACHING TWO CLASSES IN EXACTLY ONE MONTH. AAAAAAAHHHHHH.

Heh. So I'm reading an article on Yeats and postcolonialism, and...basically the author is blowing a big fat raspberry at critical theory in general. He's pretty much saying, "Get your theory cooties away from my sacred Literature! Damn postcolonialists! Get off my lawn!"

Really, it's hilarious. For certain values of "hilarious," anyway. Working in the academy possibly recalibrates one's amusement meter...

(This same guy also gives Susanna Clarke a run for her money in the footnote department. There's one page with two lines of the article, and forty-two lines of the footnote. Which continues for twelve more lines on the next page. Footnotes: ur doin' it rong.)

In other news, today I solved to my satisfaction a problem involving Boland's representation of women that had been bugging me all summer. HOORAY.

You guys! I just read a book chapter that analyzes Eavan Boland's writings about place with a deconstructivist lens, and it didn't make me want to bash my head against a wall! Progress!

(Or, you know, I finally drank the Koolaid. If I start blathering about signifiers and signifieds, send me to detox, eh?)