I’ve had a rough couple of weeks. September never used to be so stressful, did it? But there’s a fast-flowing river of crap that I’ve been trying to canoe my way up, and I guess it’s inevitable that such a trip would include some messiness. So on my plate:
Writing Project budgets and reports. These are so flippin’ complicated for someone with good financial sense that they leave me–with only a passing understanding–bewildered. I’m lucky that Rachael and Michele are keeping a pretty good handle on it, but I’m still the bottom-line responsible one, so it worries me that we may not dot-and-cross those essentials.
English department work. I’ve had to make trips to Sacramento and Redding on business for the English department. While neither was a task that was unpleasant in any way, they just sucked up some hours that I wish I could have put to better use. Windshield time, I guess it’s called. I think if I had a long commute, I’d go crazy. Anyway, the Redding trip was to observe and write a report on a colleague teaching a course at our satellite campus, and it was great to watch his class–wonderful teacher. So that’s off my task list. But the Sacramento trip was for technical assistance in getting our English Ed program approved, and the work behind that is still pending–loads of revisions to make to our document, which to start with was over 1,000 pages. Urgh.
Promotion portfolio. I found out about 4 weeks ago that I’m eligible for promotion to full professor this year. I don’t know why, but I had it in my head that it was next year–I was thinking a six-year cycle, just like the normal term for assistant-to-associate term. But it’s five years. Okay. So I hadn’t done any of the things I was planning to do this year to prepare for that promotion review, like get nice letters from other academics from across the country with whom I’ve worked over the past 11 years, or testimonials from the great leaders I work with in the Writing Project, or anything like that. But I do have 3 new book chapters/articles just this past year, plus more than a dozen conference presentations and over $300,000 in grant money since tenure. I’ve decided to (try to) take the zen approach my friend and colleague Thia recommended (from when she was in the same position): ask for the review, and if you get it, be happy. If you don’t, you’re no worse off than you were before, and you simply ask to be reviewed again the next year. Repeat until promoted! Anyway, all the materials for my portfolio are due on Monday, and then it’s just a waiting game of review by department, chair, college, dean, and provost, with results coming in mid-May. I’ll just be happy once it’s off my plate.
Observations. I had to be observed while teaching twice in a row, by colleagues. This is really kind of silly that I get worked up about it, as I’ve never received any bad reviews (not even lukewarm), but I had trouble sleeping the night before each of the observations. I think in part it’s because both of the people observing me are people I respect deeply and know are amazing teachers themselves, so I wanted to make sure all went well. I haven’t received the write-ups yet, so don’t know what they thought of the classes they saw. Oh, yeah. I’d never before been observed teaching this particular class format (it’s a hybrid face-to-face/online class, with 100 students), and it’s not always easy to manage a big group. I bet that was part of the anxiety.
NCWP reunion retreat. Thursday and Friday of next week the NCWP’s Summer Institute participants will re-unite at a resort up in Lake Almanor. This is always a wonderful event, both relaxing and stimulating (does that make it oxymoronic?), but prepping for it is stressful. I generally do the shopping and food preparation duties, and while I enjoy it, it’s still something more to think about and keep track of that adds to the confusion.
Grading. Keeping up with 2 (approx.) 1-page assignments per week from 100 students is tough. I’ve been trying to comment on almost each one, as well, and it’s pretty engaging to do, but takes a flippin’ long time.
Whiskeytown 9 to 5. I just paid my registration fee for this endurance mountain bike event, which my riding buddy Gary and I are riding solo on our unicycles again this year. Last year, despite the 8 hour nature of the event, we discovered we had only four and a half hours of endurance in us before we both started getting some serious leg cramps. We completed two laps (about 20 miles, with 1600′ climbing per lap) last year, and are shooting for three laps this year. I’m worried about it, though, in that I feel like I’m in worse shape than I was last year (or at least have had less practice, I’m pretty certain), while Gary’s lost something like 40 pounds and ran a “casual” 16 miles on Sunday. I know he’s approaching the race with a “we’ll just go out and have fun” attitude, and won’t care about our times or anything, but I don’t want to be an anchor in our effort.
So that’s it. I’m really hopeful that by mid-October I’ll feel sorted out. But I won’t hold my breath for it. There’s always more work to come!
Today began with a 3 mile run with Tyler. Now, I’m not much of a runner on the best of days, so deciding to go out running with a 14-year-old who has been training every day is probably not the best decision. I survived, anyway, although my hips are both a little sore now. It’s an odd place to ache, too. I’m not dealing as well with getting back into running as I did a few years ago when I trained to run a marathon. Or so I think. I’m unwilling to go look at my training blog from those days to see.
After lunch, the whole crew drove to Oroville to help Lisa get her class ready for tomorrow’s first day of the school year. I felt bad because Lisa seemed a little overwhelmed and had a hard time prioritizing the to-do lists, and we weren’t really able to help until she gave us directions. But we eventually got things put on the walls, or put away, or otherwise managed, so I think we didn’t waste her time.
When we got home, I fixed the flat tire on my bike and did a couple small modifications to the brakes on two of my munis. I’ll be ready to bike commute this week. I think I’ll accompany Tyler on his bike commute tomorrow, as we’ve been giving him rides to school the last two weeks, and I don’t want to throw him to the wolves, as it were. There can be some scary drivers out there at half seven in the morning in Chico.
Chico State starts classes tomorrow, but I don’t teach until Tuesday. I’ll be meeting with Suzanne about some NCWP business tomorrow, and (I hope, anyway) will also get things settled for the first day of teaching, too. I haven’t had any “naked dreams” yet, and have actually felt pretty calm about the start of the school year. I hope that the calmness carries through the week, but I’m a little doubtful.
I still have some things I’d like to do. Such as … doing a quick little video that shows how to find my office (most students don’t know the Research Foundation building exists, much less how to find it!), and getting a couple of extra copies of the course texts that I can give away on the first day just for fun. I’ll get done what get’s done, I suppose.
Todd Finley, over at the English Education Prof blog, has once again pointed me to something provocative. This time, it’s another video by Michael Wesch, the cultural anthro prof who made the very cool “The Machine is Us/ing Us” video about Web 2.0. In this video, students contribute information about their practices as students, and it’s both enlightening and disturbing.
It was finally a pretty day in Chico; sunshine, upper 90s, and an air quality rating in double digits (50 or lower is “good”; we were at around 90 today, a big drop from the mid- to upper 100s last week). Last night, when I was cooling off in the pool around 10 pm, I could see constellations in the sky; the previous night, I could see 3 stars; the night before, only the smoky orange moon.
I spent a few hours on the article Rochelle and I are writing, and it’s almost a complete first draft. I’m guessing another couple hours will finish it. I think Rochelle and I are going to have to do a little Skype tomorrow (she’s in Chile, poor thing …) to get it all sorted. I want to send a draft of some type off to the editors before I head to Oregon on Wednesday.
We’ll be picking the children up in Oregon, too; they’ve been staying at Lisa’s parents’ lake cabin,four-wheelering, jetskiing, pedal-boating, lake swimming, inner-tubing, and other gerunds that are far more interesting than what I’ve been doing. It will be good to see the boys again, but it has been very peaceful here lately, too.
There’s a pretty thoughtful (and almost, but not entirely, rant-free) post today in Rate Your Students.
American higher education reflects the values of American society and those values are largely consumerist. Which is to say, anti-intellectual. On the other hand, most professors in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences value intellectual effort, if not always for its own sake, for reasons that go beyond the consumerist model of education. We think ideas and knowledge are important, not just because one can turn a profit with them, but because one can use ideas and knowledge to think about the world and understand it. But the whole purpose of consumer culture is to anesthetize one to ideas.
Although I generally disagree with much of that site’s posts (which typically excoriate students; I’d be identified as a Pollyanna), I often nod in agreement about the observations of higher education. The quote above seems very much on track, from my own experiences, and brought to mind a presentation at the NCWP’s Summer Institute a few weeks back. Heather, one of the participants, was using corporate accountability publications (from places like Starbucks) as a way to facilitate her community college students’ critical thinking about consumer culture. I hate it when students suggest that an idea in class is being “over analyzed,” when we’re really only beginning to analyze something. But I suspect that their resistance is not so much powered by a (perceived) desire to shirk hard thinking, but rather comes from the discomfort associated with questioning the consumerist dogma we’re raised to embrace in the US.