Don't sob for SOBJA

I've been tempted to stay home for the rest of the semester so I can focus on recovering from SOBJA Syndrome, but it turns out that our short-term disability insurance doesn't apply to employees who are simply Sick of Being Jerked Around. There's no cure, either, and no known effective treatment except stepping back and taking a little perspective, but it's hard to see over the rim of the tub when one is immersed in SOBJA. (There's a little allusion to an Edgar Lee Masters poem, a reward for the attentive.)

So let's take the long view and seek reassurance that what I'm doing here matters. Just in the past week, for instance, I've had delightful and encouraging encounters with three of my former students, English majors who have gone on to do good work in the world. 

Last Wednesday an alum visited my American Lit Survey class and brought along thirteen students from his high school AP Literature class. Last summer this alum had emailed to ask whether I'd mind if he dropped in the next time I found myself teaching "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," because he'd enjoyed discussing the poem in my class five or six years ago but he wanted a refresher course. I said sure, and one thing led to another and soon enough we ended up with a full classroom, something I haven't seen in a while--his AP Lit students outnumbered my American Lit students significantly. 

And they were great! Only a few of the AP students contributed to the discussion, but they all paid close attention to the text and stayed off their phones, and a few of them came up to ask questions at the end. I had a great chat with my former student but what I enjoyed most of all was seeing him interact with his students and inspire them to read and think and learn. Good has been done here!

And then the next day I observed a class taught by another former student of mine who graduated 22 years ago and now teaches in my department. Another full classroom! What a treat to see my former student empowering her own students to engage with edgy texts and lead discussion of difficult topics. It's always rewarding to see a student step into her calling and become a peer.

And then on Saturday, between dropping my son at the Columbus airport and visiting the orchid show, I had breakfast with a former student who graduated in 2008 but stayed in our area for some years afterward. She was a nontraditional student when I taught her and we bonded over shared experiences, and now we are close friends despite seeing each other only a few times a year. She's putting her writing skills to good use and inspiring others to do the same.

It feels self-serving to say so, but when I see my former students working so hard to rock their world, I want to put my hand up and say I did that--or at least I played a small part in making it happen. It takes a village and so on, but if I made any small impact on enabling a student to make a meaningful impact on the wider world, I want to give myself and my colleagues a little pat on the back.

And I would do so if that darned SOBJA Syndrome weren't making my joints so stiff. 

 

Turn my back for five minutes and everything falls to pieces

I step away from news coverage for a few hours and suddenly we're at war again? Can't I take a little media break without missiles being launched?

I shouldn't have taken a break at all, thanks to a crazy crowded week that ended with a sudden change in the deadline for my massive editing project, which was supposed to be due by March 12 but is instead due on Monday. That would be the day after tomorrow. Ten days earlier than expected. And while I had been on track to deliver the goods by next Friday, March 6, I'm not at all ready to deliver on March 2, especially since the deadline change was announced late on Friday afternoon, February 27, after I'd already gone home. Yes: someone informed me late on FRIDAY that the massive editing project I'd been planning to deliver NEXT FRIDAY is instead due THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. There aren't enough exclamation marks on the planet to express how I feel about this surprising development.

So yes, I should have dropped all my plans for the weekend and spent the whole day editing institutional prose produced by a writers with various levels of skill, some of whom write quite clearly while others may (may!) have used AI to produce sentences that juggle academic jargon in various combinations without saying much of anything. First thing this morning I ought to have glued my eyeballs to the monitor and my fingers to the keyboard until the work was done, but I didn't.

Instead I got up at 4 a.m. so I could be showered, dressed, and ready to leave by 5, skimping on the morning caffeine quota so I wouldn't have to take a million rest-room breaks during the two-hour trip to Columbus, with my son driving my car because I can't see in the dark so I just sat there trying and failing to get a photograph of the orange moon. 

Dropped him at the airport at 7 a.m. so he can fly to Banff for a ski trip, which makes me happy both because I love to say Banff--Banff Banff Banff--and because my son is getting a chance to have an amazing adventure before he has to face some serious medical tests that could reveal all kinds of scary things that I'm not yet authorized to write about and in fact shouldn't have said anything about even now, so ignore that. A brief hiatus before things get serious--that's something to celebrate (but I've already used up all the exclamation points on the planet, so I'll celebrate more subtly).

Also worth celebration is the fact that yesterday I scheduled the final payment on our mortgage, exactly 22 years after we signed the loan papers. By the end of next week, my house will be paid off. I can't hold a mortgage-burning party because there are no actual papers to burn, but I've been doing a little internal tap-dance ever since I hit "send" on the online payment program.

And I took that tap-dance with me this morning on my excursion to Columbus, because if I'm going to get up at the crack of dawn to take my son to the airport, then by golly I'm going to get some fun out of the deal: first a chatty breakfast with an old friend, and then an hour or so at the orchid show at Franklin Park Conservatory. I kept seeing what I thought was the most gorgeous orchid ever, but then I would turn a corner and see another even more gorgeous. So much more uplifting than institutional prose, and easier on the eyes too.

I used my phone to take photos but kept away from news media all morning, and I didn't even turn on the radio while driving home because the silence felt soothing, so imagine my surprise when I arrived home and discovered that the world has gone to pieces while I wasn't looking--again--but I can't even think about it because all that institutional prose failed to edit itself in my absence so I've got to hunker down and get it done.

Tomorrow's going to be rough: after our (very early) church service I'll go to campus so I can use the big monitor that doesn't fatigue my eyeballs quite so quickly, and I'll just sit there and edit edit edit until there's nothing left to edit. Could take hours, could take the whole day, could leave me a gibbering idiot by the time I'm done, but you know what? It will get done. Because that's how I roll. No matter how annoyed I am at the unexpectedly mobile deadline, and no matter how much the whole rest of the world may try to distract me, I will fulfill my duty to the letter and send the edited files off even if the effort wears out my fingers and reduces my vision to a vague blur. IT WILL GET DONE. Tomorrow. Or else.

Meanwhile, let's look at orchids:

It's been a Monday

Monday! More snow and gray skies and cold cold cold, plus a commuter student who couldn't get to campus and wants to make up the reading quiz when there are no makeups, ever, for any reason, except I will offer extra credit opportunities later in the semester, but the students who were present to take the quiz all aced it with the exception of one who admitted struggling with the reading, and why is it so difficult to read Eugene O'Neill? My final time teaching Long Day's Journey into Night and once again I wonder why no theme park has yet opted to open the Tyrone Family Thrill Ride. (The rest is silence.)

The brain feels frazzled after responding to emails and editing accreditation documents and writing a letter of recommendation and prepping for meetings later in the week, and why do meetings tend to come in clusters? Every project I'm working on has a major deadline in the next two weeks, which makes some sense since everyone wants to get things done before Spring Break, but my eyes hurt and I can't think straight so I seem to have copied a bit of text into the wrong document. Accreditation and recommendation: the words aren't at all the same but they sit in similar spots in my work queue right now and they seem to be invading my dreams.

And meanwhile all the things I can't write about are disturbing my sleep. The other morning at 3 a.m. I awoke in a panic to puzzle over a number I'd heard in an all-campus meeting, and a week later I still can't make sense of it, or of the number of people who are publicly blaming the College for the resignation of yet another coach (not our fault but if I tell you why I'd have to kill you), or of why I'm obsessing over an inconsequential number that ought to appear in next year's contract but probably won't.

So it's been a Monday. When I get home and my hubby asks how my day has been, I'll be hard pressed to come up with a coherent response, but then anyone who expects coherence at the end of a February Monday when the world seems to be going to pieces is probably delusional. 

 

Friday poetry challenge: The Spring Can't Come Too Soon Blues

One day this week I watched coal barges crashing through river ice and saw a great blue heron contemplating a meager spot of open water in an otherwise frozen wetland, and the next day I went to work without a coat on and felt the approach of something fresh--Spring! 

I may have had a spring in my step after I sat down and posted all the College's home baseball games on my calendar, each little electronic appointment glowing like a promise of sunshine and happiness, even though I know some of those dates will include wind or cold or sunburn or misery. Baseball is coming--can spring be far behind?

But Spring Break is also coming, when I hope to spend some time with the grandkids and look at birds and maybe visit an orchid show--and oh yes, get a root canal--but this week three different administrators have tried to colonize my Spring Break calendar with various types of meetings and responsibilities. Which of these tasks would be least onerous during Spring Break: root canal, group document-editing session, all-morning training meeting, or interviews with prospective job candidates? I choose root canal.

So on a very gray, damp, but not at all cold day, I'm singing the Spring Can't Come Too Soon Blues: 

Well you can freeze me in December and throw blizzards at my January days
Yes you can freeze me in December and throw blizzards at my January days
But when I hear those baseballs coming
You'd better get those snowdrifts cleared away.

Mr. Groundhog saw his shadow and we're all prepared for six more wintry weeks
I say Mr. Groundhog saw his shadow so we'll wear our coats and scarves for six more weeks
But when spring training's on the radio
Mr. Groundhog's not the weatherman I seek.

Now Spring Break is in the offing and my calendar stands clean and clear and free
Yes Spring Break is in the offing and my calendar should still stand clear and free
But if you stomp all over my free dates
I swear you're gonna see the back of me.

 

Now your turn--loosen up your rhythm and put your blues into rhyme. 

My fifteen minutes of fame

I had less than an hour yesterday to prepare to be interviewed for a local television news report about Toni Morrison, who is the subject of a year-long celebration throughout Ohio. I wasn't exactly dressed for the camera, but at least they didn't pan down to show my wacky socks. I'm pretty sure I said a whole lot of brilliant things about Toni Morrison's impact as a writer and editor, how she created psychologically rich characters and explored themes that resonate with readers, including issues of race and gender and identity formation and friendship and the way the past can haunt us, but in the news report they used what was probably the least important thing I said, about how Morrison's books often reflect her Ohio origins. That's it. I'm not going to comment on the news reader's delivery or the content of the report (which you can view here), but I will note that my very favorite thing about this brief video clip is that you can clearly see Twinkie the Kid smiling over my right shoulder. 

For anyone who wonders why Twinkie the Kid sits in such a prominent place in my office--well, of course there's more to the story. For today, though, I'm delighted that I didn't make a total fool of myself on the local news, even if my voice sounds like it belongs to someone who's spent a life smoking three packs a day. (It's just sinus congestion. Lifetime non-smoker here.)

Anyway, my fifteen minutes of fame are over and now I need to get back to work, with the assistance of Twinkie the Kid.

Minor obstacles in a major project

Show of hands, please: who wants to spend a morning fuming over inconsistencies in file-naming conventions?

I remember a time years ago when I had to insist that students follow a strict pattern for naming files submitted for grading so I wouldn't end up with an online folder full of Word documents all named something like Essay 1. These days a student submits the document through Canvas so it stays firmly attached to the student's name and the actual file name doesn't much matter. I no longer have to give instructions about file names or even warn students not to insert rude or obscene suggestions within the file name. (Apparently some of my students share the juvenile sense of humor demonstrated by the prior owner of my first campus computer, who applied a very special name to each drive in the directory: testicle, scrotum, penis....)

But today's file-naming mess has nothing to do with student work. My current administrative role requires me to read, edit, and bring into one consistent voice a bunch of Very Important Documents, and I say "a bunch" because so far I can't figure out exactly how many there are. It ought to be easy to locate the drafts amongst the shared folders devoted to the project, but because of inconsistency in naming files, I have to hunt amongst hundreds of documents to locate one that might be called 3A Draft or Draft 3A or Final Draft 3A or Final 3A Draft or any of an infinite number of possible permutations, each located in a different spot in the alphabetical flood of files. And then I see two files right next to each other, one named 2B draft final  and the next named 2B final draft. Which is the real final draft? I don't want to read and edit the wrong one!

The deadline for this project is tight and inviolable, but so far I've spent most of my time simply trying to locate the proper documents without any confidence that I've found them all or found the right version of each one, a situation that makes my brain hurt. Trust me--you really don't want me editing Very Important Documents when my brain hurts. Which is as good a reason as any to stare out the window until I can see straight again.     

Jammin'

My husband got home around dusk yesterday and said You've got to see this so I went out and had a look. It was definitely worth seeing: thick fog hanging above a creek so choked with ice that it bulged on the upstream side of our neighbor's low bridge,. The icejam caused ice chunks to pile up more than a quarter mile upstream past our bridge and sent water over the banks into the low parts of our meadow. The creek looked solid, but if you tried to walk on the jammed-in ice chunks you'd soon fall victim to gaps and instabilities. The ice chunks looked spooky in the fog but far scarier was the prospect of further flooding. If the ice and water can't move past the jam, there's nowhere for it to go except where it can do the most damage.

There's a metaphor in there somewhere but it's too hot to touch right now--or too cold to handle.