pep talk to self
this is your day, self. you can do it. you can finish something. mastering crops in farmville does not count, but showering does. so does dropping out of grad school.
This is about what I feel like right now. In my head I am on my way to stab the professor who informed a bunch of my colleagues (and thus indirectly the rest of them, because grad students can gossip) in seminar today that I am an incompetent grad student who can’t get her papers written on time. I am hoping he turns into a puddle of bloody goo like the vampires on True Blood instead of a pile of dust like in Buffy, because that will make it much more satisfying to stomp around on his remains.
(Source: , via dyskrasia)
I need to be writing a course description right now but I keep getting distracted by my office-mates’ conversations about cats and Juggalos.
young adults taking my class: please, please, please figure out how to make an interesting argument.
Their first papers are due Thursday, and about 25% of the class has emailed me draft thesis statements or paper topics, and I know that none of them have started writing yet so I don’t expect them to be super focused at this point, but so far there’s only one of them who I think I can trust to come up with an interesting argument without me asking a million leading questions to point them in the right direction. These are smart people, they say smart things in class and they are absolutely capable of coming up with interesting arguments. It’s just that they don’t quite seem to understand how to get from the general topic to the kind of issues that they can actually say something meaty about in 5 pages. And I totally sympathize with that — without my boyfriend, who kept asking me the leading questions until I figured out how to ask them on my own, I don’t think I’d have written a single interesting paper over the whole course of my undergrad career. So I’m just whining right now. I get why it’s difficult, and it’s ridiculous for me to be complaining about having to do this part of my job, but just. Please write me some papers that are as smart as you are, guys.
ipnotika replied to your post: Today, in I Feel Old News
I generally have an easier time understanding what the receptionists (all nice older ladies, and by older I mean 60+) than my coworkers. *sigh*
Yeah, I’ve always had a much easier time communicating/being friends with older people than younger people. The kids in my program are all very nice and very smart, but they also pretty much all seem really young to me.
On the other hand, I tried to talk to a professor who’s about as much older than me as I am older than my colleagues (in other words, she’s in her early 40s) about LOLcats and got a blank look and a “What’s that?” When I explained she said, “Oh, yeah, I think I’ve seen those.”
Talking to people is hard.
Today, in I Feel Old News
This afternoon, I told a colleague (who, despite the way this post makes him sound, is actually quite smart and a pretty nice guy) about my student telling me yesterday that she’s more excited by Frankenstein than she has been about a novel since her 4th grade teacher was reading Harry Potter to her class. And then this conversation happened.
Colleague: How weird to think that Harry Potter was around when our students were in 4th grade! But no, I guess we weren’t in 4th grade that long before Harry Potter.
Me: Uh, dude, I was in 4th grade in 1987.
Colleague: WHAT. Really?!? I had no idea!
Me: Yep. That’s probably about when you were born, right?
Colleague: [sheepishly] I was born in 1985.
Me: So, yeah, pretty close.
[slightly awkward pause]
Colleague: Wow, so, elementary school in the 80s, that must have been awesome.
Me: It was elementary school, I don’t think it’s changed that much.
Colleague: But you probably had to learn about Russia and stuff, huh?
Me: Well, yeah, the Cold War was still going on. We had to learn, like, all the states in the USSR, and it was a big deal when the Berlin Wall fell, which was… sixth grade for me, I think.
Colleague: Did you, like, have to hide under your desks and stuff?
Me: [laughing hysterically] No, it wasn’t the fifties, man. I’m not that old.
Colleague: I kind of feel like I missed out by not being a kid in the 80s.
Me: All the 80s stuff is pretty much still around. Transformers, My Little Pony… that crap never went away.
Colleague: Yeah, but I just feel like I missed out on things. Like, I don’t know, Mr. T.
Me: Well, yeah, there was more Mr. T back then, it’s true.
[pause]
Colleague: Hey, I hope I didn’t offend you by assuming we were contemporaries.
Me: No, it’s kind of nice to hear that I don’t seem really old to everyone. I feel really old a lot of the time.
Colleague: Oh no, you shouldn’t. We’re all old. I think everybody automatically turns 40 when they start grad school.
…And then I pretty much LOLed forever, but only on the inside because children are really sensitive about being laughed at.
in which i have a relatively good teaching day
Today in my Gothic literature class that I am rather unbelievably being allowed to teach to actual undergraduate students:
- I tried to get them to talk about how Terminator is a Frankenstein narrative so I could recommend Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which is seriously, genuinely Good Shit. (I failed. I will try again, because it is the best sci fi show to appear on TV in the history of ever. Incidentally. If anyone reading this is looking for TV recommendations. WATCH IT)
- I talked to them about the technological singularity, and tried to get them to admit that it freaks them out. Not so much.
- I talked about this fact as a function of the age gap between me and them, and then I had to be like, “but I’m not that much older than you guys! Actually! I just meant I had fewer internets as a kid?”
- And then I had to be like “actually I think the singularity is awesome and I can’t wait for it to happen!” Which is true. But probably made me sound kind of desperate in context.
- I talked to them about 19th century galvanic experiments, conducted in public, in which electrodes were attached to the severed heads of executed convicts and their facial muscles stimulated so that the bodiless heads made various facial expressions.
- I continued to talk about this until I felt my students’ facial expressions registered sufficient disgust.
- One student told me that she liked a certain passage from Frankenstein so much that she took a picture of it and made it her phone’s screen saver.
- The same student told me after class that she’s a science major and hasn’t been this excited about a novel since her 4th grade teacher read her class Harry Potter.
- This made me happier than anything else has in my entire grad school career so far.
They need to develop a pill that would ensure that no matter what happens you will not cry within a certain length of time after you take it. Useful for meetings, breakups, fights with your mother, and so many other things. Get on it, science.
Science, please invent this and deliver one to me before my meeting with my graduate director tomorrow morning to discuss why I have four incompletes on my record and am the worst student ever.
“Goodnight kittens / goodnight mittens” -Friedrich Nietzsche
I have fond memories of my mother reading this to me when I was little
Who knew she had a devious plan all along, or that it would work so well
When close-reading goes too far.
(via desliz)
Wait until you’re a grad student and have 50 out at a time, Grover. It’s not so exciting then. Especially when it’s time to lug them back to campus.
(Source: likelovecraftinbrooklyn, via firstbook)
ipnotika replied to your quote: Often, one of these characters’ comments is…
Dinosaur Comics is Gothic.
OH SO GOTHIC. I’d explain why, but (a) you already understand, and (b) I need to save my brain for writing 40 pages on why both Wordsworth and children’s lit are Gothic.*
This is relevant, right?
This is always relevant.
I think about this every single day.
(Source: thementaliz)
Also totally buying her book. And not even buying it used, because starving grad students unite.
I found out yesterday that one of my grad school colleagues is a published author. She’s published at least one short story collection, which gets some fairly glowing reviews. She also happens to work on precisely my academic field of interest (gothic/sci fi).
She’s a very advanced student, so it’s not like I feel like I’m even in competition with her at this point in my grad school career. But still, internet, I am intimidate.
I am of the opinion that if you want us to bring the articles to class, you should give them as handouts. Not everybody can afford to print eight bajillion PDFs.
Ugh, seriously, what ever happened to readers? Grad students at my school are given an allotment of 500 pages of free printing per semester, and I just blew through nearly 20% of it today on one week’s worth of readings.
Cute animals. Profanity. Literary nerditude. Rainbows. Legless dogs. Attempts to be a less clueless person.
"Cento" Copyright © Andrew Brinker 2011.
