Tis the season to flee folly

At the moment end-of-semester grades were due this morning, I was up to my elbows in dusty file folders. There's something cathartic about tossing out instructions for appliances we no longer own, discarding paperwork from our vain attempt to refinance our home 12 years ago, shredding bank statements from accounts that have long been closed. Out you go, warranty card for a defunct weed-whacker! And here's another! How many weed-whackers have I killed over the years?

Also on the agenda this week: sorting out a book mess in the basement, taking a load of stuff to the Goodwill, getting the spare rooms ready for the grandkids' visit. Not so long ago preparing for such a visit would involve setting up a crib and high chair, but these days the little people don't require so much special equipment: I clean the rooms and make up the beds and they figure out the sleeping arrangements themselves. I miss having babies around, but I appreciate the fact that the kids have their own tastes and preferences and can negotiate the logistics amongst themselves.

Of course it's a little more complicated shopping for people who have devleloped their own tastes. A toddler can be made to don any frilly little bit of frou-frou a grandma picks out, but I wouldn't have wanted my grandma to pick out my clothes when I was 11. Any kid old enough to create her own Amazon wish list deserves to have her tastes respected.

But I think I've done pretty well on the holiday shopping this year. And while I'm learning to respect the young folks' tastes, I'm also trying to bake some of my holiday cookies without butter (because of my daughter's difficulty digesting dairy products). Russian tea cakes with plant butter? It's worth a try. Is it possible to make holiday cut-out cookies without any dairy products in the cookie or frosting? Time to find out.

With one semester over and the next not starting for weeks, this feels like a good time to toss out old follies--warranty cards, paperwork, habits, recipes--and try something entirely new. I may sometimes be set in my ways, but I'm still capable of adapting to new challenges. Why else would I have a pound of avocado butter in my fridge?

(How do you milk and avocado? Inquiring minds want to know!)      

Narcissistically yours

Someone I care about gave me a gift of smelly soapy products:

 

 Very nice! But then I looked more closely at the name of the scent:

 

Narcissist! Is someone trying to send me a message? 

I'm at the point in the semester when I need messages to be clear and unambiguous. I'm so immersed in grading student prose that when I see a sentence I don't quite understand, I assume that the problem is mine instead of the student's. Maybe that guy really intended to assert that a certain poet "secedes in her mission"! Maybe that other student was trying to be clever in stating that the film adaptation "compliments" the original text! And I'm just exhausted enough that when a student says the reason I can't access the assignment is "user error," I wonder what error I'm making that disables the embedded link.

I tried to send a clear message to the post office this morning without going postal, but now they've got me questioning my ability to determine what's real and what's a nefarious plot to drain my bank account. I've written before about our difficulties in getting packages delivered properly, and for a while service has been okay, but this week it took a turn toward the surreal. 

Monday: a flat package containing 8x10 photo prints had "Photos--do not bend" printed on the package, so instead of folding the photos and cramming them into our mailbox or driving up to the house to leave them on the porch, the carrier set the package ON THE GROUND beneath our mailbox, between the road and the drainage ditch, IN THE POURING RAIN. By the time we picked up the mail, the cardboard was falling to pieces (but the photos were in plastic so they survived).

Tuesday: The mail carrier drove up to the house to deliver a package and we took the opportunity to show him what was left of Monday's packaging, and he explained that a substitute carrier had delivered on Monday and should have known better than to deliver a package on the ground in the rain. Won't happen again!

Wednesday: I was driving home late after a final exam, in the dark, in the snow, so exhausted that I wasn't even planning to stop at the mailbox until I saw a large package ON THE GROUND, IN THE SNOW, right next to the road where any fool could run over it, run off with it, or knock it into the drainage ditch. If I hadn't stopped, it would have sat there all night--unless it got stolen or, I don't know, mauled by coyotes.

So this morning I went miles out of my way so I could be at the post office when the doors opened. I was patient. I was calm. I was as pleasant as I could possibly be under the circumstances, but I let them know in no uncertain terms that it is not okay for my grandkids' Christmas gifts to be dumped in a heap by the side of the road.

The postal worker on duty was very apologetic. Substitute carrier, didn't know the area well, won't happen again, blah blah blah.I'll believe it when I see it, but maybe after all this you can understand why I was a little flustered this afternoon when I received a text message explaining that a package could not be delivered and had been returned to the post office and I would need to pay 23 cents to have it redelivered, and the only way I could do that was by inserting a credit-card number.

On the one hand, I am desperate to make sure my remaining packages get delivered properly, and 23 cents seems like a small price to pay; on the other hand, since when has the US Postal Service demanded my credit card number in a text message? And while the site I was directed to looked like an official USPS site, the url was full of odd words that looked like Chinese names.

Of course it's a scam. And of course I'm befuddled enough to be susceptible to such a scam, but a few brain cells that remain intact stopped me before I put in my credit card number and urged me to call the post office again. The message I received there was clear, direct, and unambiguous: Don't submit your credit-card number. It's a scam. Tell your friends and family! 

So that's what I'm doing. You're welcome! 

(A narcissist would have kept that info to herself.)

Get a load of that!

How do you wrap a gift of gravel? I'm not talking about a chunk of coal you might put into a Christmas stocking but a truckload of gravel that got dumped on our driveway yesterday, just in time for my birthday. You can't put a truckload of gravel in a box or tie a bow around it, but it felt like a wonderful gift even if it wasn't intended for my birthday.

Similarly, the students in my African American Lit class didn't intend their final papers as birthday gifts, but reading them made me feel blessed and grateful to have taught such a clever and insightful group of students. And the all-campus meeting didn't resemble a gift but at least it didn't include any more budget cuts. I'll accept that.

Of course there were some real gifts. I enjoyed dinner with family and friends at my favorite local restaurant, and I took home a box of leftovers so I can enjoy some spicy lamb vindaloo for today's lunch--and make my taste buds sing all over again.

And then there are the mugs. A colleague in the biology department has taken up ceramics as a hobby and sells some beautiful things at a local gift shop, where I lusted over them last week. Fortunately I have a husband who can take a hint, because now those mugs are mine. They're not perfect but I love them anyway, which could also be said of my driveway and my students' papers and my campus--and, indeed, my world, which is a mess in so many ways but still feels like a gift intended just for me but one I'm happy to share with so many imperfect people. 

So happy birthday to me and happy holidays to everyone and if you want to enjoy a really gratifying load of gravel, come and see my driveway.

Ugly is in the eye of the beholder

This morning a person I don't know very well asked me whether I was on my way to an ugly sweater contest, and the problem with not knowing this person very well was that I couldn't tell whether he was joking. It's true that I was wearing a festive red sweater with fuzzy snowflakes scattered all over it, a sweater I love because it's warm and cozy and it matches my car (and that last consideration tells you more about me than about the sweater), but I've always felt that this sweater was tastefully restrained, unlike the gaudy, overdecorated, sparkly, jingly sweaters that end up winning those ugly sweater contests. So I didn't know what to say to this guy and I ended up saying nothing, which felt like a repeat of previous conversations in which he had struck me dumb by making statements that either suggested a sense of contempt for me and my work or else were intended as (not very successful) jokes, but the only way for me to understand the intent of these comments would be to get to know this guy better, which would require spending a lot more time in conversation with a person who may (?) consider what I do for a living as less than useless. Or maybe he's just joking! I don't know, am I overthinking this?

I spent way too much time ruminating over this on the way home and then I threw together a batch of cranberry pumpkin bread, which allowed me to take out my frustrations with a wire whisk and also use up leftover Thanksgiving ingredients, which felt virtuous. Now I intend to sit in front of my Christmas tree in my holiday sweater and listen to Christmas music as the cranberry pumpkin bread baking in the oven fills my house with a delicious aroma, and, yes, I'll enjoy the company of the sassy little bird sitting under my tree--after all, it wouldn't dare make troublingly ambiguous comments about my attire because its attire is just as festive as mine. (And not at all ugly.)

 

The "no" normal

That was a great event last week, a colleague told me; It made things feel almost--normal.

And she's right. For a few brief hours on a Friday afternoon, a group of faculty and a few administrators gathered in a big meeting room to nosh, sip, chat, and hear interesting presentations about two colleagues' sabbatical adventures. This was an attempt to revive an earlier tradition: twice each semester, we would meet at some nice off-campus venue for an hour of socializing (with finger foods and an open bar) and an hour of hearing reports about colleagues' research or creative projects. 

That tradition was derailed a few years ago, first by Covid lockdowns and then by budget limitations. This semester, though, one of my committees was tasked with bringing back the practice on a smaller scale: staying on campus, using our campus food service, relying on the Powers That Be to donate a few bottles of wine. But despite the limitations, the event was a success--and, yes, it felt normal, or as normal as we can manage under the circumstances.

Now we're back to wondering how long this new normal will last. We've been in a state of budget crisis for so long that crisis no longer seems like the right word; inadequacy of resources is just part of the furniture, a bad odor in the air we breathe. When some new bad news comes down the pike, as it did this week, we just shrug and carry on as if it's just what we'd expected. But once in a while I see signs that the crisis has reached an unprecedented state; yesterday, for instance, I learned that no one has applied for a sabbatical for the 2025/26 academic year. That's right: not one faculty member is taking advantage of the opportunity for a semester away from teaching at full pay. Not one.

What does this mean? Are we so beaten down under the burden of our straitened circumstances that we just can't manage the energy to apply for a sabbatical, or is staffing so tight that departments don't feel capable of covering classes? Or maybe the faculty who have viable research and creative projects are are the job market or don't want to commit to two more years of teaching after the sabbatical? We have to consider the fact that we've replaced so many tenure lines with contingent faculty that we no longer have many faculty eligible for sabbaticals, but even so--nobody?

Whatever the reasons, this situation makes me really sad. My committee fought to get approval to seek sabbatical applications and the PTBs agreed to fund a limited number of sabbaticals, but somehow, nobody bothered. Maybe we've adjusted so thoroughly to being told what we can't do that the word no has come to feel normal. Maybe we just can't imagine a clear path back to yes.

But for a few brief hours on a Friday afternoon, we enjoyed a room full of yes. How can we nurture that feeling so that the default no no longer feels normal?

Good thing Wile E. Coyote doesn't live here

High on my list of things to be thankful for today is that the coyote that hung out for a while in front of our trailcam in the wee hours of the morning did not come down the hill to raid the smoker where our Thanksgiving turkey was lingering all night long, and neither did the coyote make its presence known to my husband on any of the times when he went out to check on the smoking turkey through the cold, rainy night. Wile E. Coyote would probably have formed a dastardly plan to capture the turkey, but our resident coyotes don't seem to have an account with the Acme Corporation so our turkey just kept smoking.

I am thankful for a husband who loves to smoke meats even if it means going out in the rain at 2 a.m., unaware that he is in the presence of coyotes. I'm thankful for the turkey itself, tender and juicy and full of flavor, the centerpiece of a feast that required group effort and cooperation. I'm thankful for my son's willingness to reach down items from tall cabinets, set a lovely table, and apply his upper-body strength to the rolling pin when my shoulders are sore from cleaning and coughing. And I'm thankful that the coughing is over and I'm healthy enough to do all this cleaning and cooking and even go out for a walk after the rain stopped.

I'm thankful for South African guests who brought custard pie and said my tangy cranberry chutney reminds them of home. I'm sad that the grandkids couldn't be here, but we'll see them at Christmas and I'm thankful that they're enjoying some time with their cousins. I'm thankful for the sound of the dishwasher clearing away a big portion of the mess, and now that everyone else is napping or heading home, I'm thankful for a chance to look through the latest round of trailcam photos and marvel over the coyotes and other wild things that share our land without disrupting our lives. I hope we can do the same for them.

This big buck was caught on the trailcam five or six times over a few weeks.

Several foxes have been moving through by night.

Coyote, hanging out just uphill from the smoker early this morning.

  

Still here, despite everything

Fifteen years ago tomorrow I spent a full eight hours at the cancer center waiting for and then receiving my final chemotherapy treatment. Every year since then I've paused at the beginning of Thanksgiving week to remind myself that the number one thing I'm thankful for is that I'm still here. 

Which is what I wanted to yell the other day when I overheard some colleagues out in the hallway discussing who will move into my office after I retire.  I'm still here! Haven't left yet! Please don't salivate over my goodies before I'm gone!

And today I spent 45 minutes on the phone having a consultation with a retirement specialist associated with my pension plan. Mostly what I learned is how much I still need to learn, but in my defense, I spent years buried under so much medical debt that I assumed that I'd never be able to retire, and I ignored everything related to retirement. But now all the big horrible debts are gone and by this time next year I should have my mortgage paid off, so retirement is looking more and more possible. 

Necessary, too. I realized over the weekend that I messed up on a student's grade because I simply did not see a note she'd attached to an assignment. I've grown accustomed to the fact that my eyes are failing me, but when they start failing my students, it's getting to be time to quit.

But not today. (You hear that, office-coveters? I'm still here!)  Today I'll teach my classes and attend a meeting and wait patiently for the email system to be restored and celebrate the fact that, despite everything, I'm still here! And that's something to be thankful for.

A study in bleeping scarlet

The fire alarm box in the hallway is beeping loudly and showing this error message: Problem in system. I feel that. My personal system isn't beeping but it's making me want to whimper or cry or curl up in a ball: big red welts on my arm scream scratch me, scratch me while my scarlet nose begs for a tissue and my red scratchy throat howls for herbal tea.

Let the record show that I felt fine before the capstone presentations last night but by the time I was halfway home my throat was so sore that I had to call my husband and ask him to put the kettle on so I could have some soothing tea when I got home. My drippy sinuses and sore nose kept me up half the night, and then this morning I woke up with welts all down one arm. No idea why. I'm wearing two layers of long-sleeved sweater just to prevent me from scratching.

The capstone presentations are not to blame. They were great--my students made me proud--but probably the stress involved in making the whole thing happen opened the door to whatever virus happens to be going around. Or maybe it's an allergy attack. Maybe I'm allergic to sudden snow squalls, multiple late meetings, and driving home on wet roads in the pitch dark. Any one of those things could make me want to proclaim Problem in system! 

My colleague and I reported the fire alarm problem and now someone has come over to make that bleeping beeping stop. No more problem in system--or at least no more beeps. So easy: press the right button and all is well. If only my own system could be silenced so speedily.

 

 

Derailed by a one-track mind

I'll be glad when my senior capstone students are done with their presentations because I'm tired of thinking about them and I'm pretty sure everyone close to me is tired of hearing about them. We are as prepared as we'll ever be and there's really nothing more I can do, but despite all my attempts to think about something else--anything!--the impending presentations keep hijacking my thoughts.

For instance: I'm driving past my neighbor's new sheep pasture, admiring the adorable little sheep and the big fluffy white dog that seems so attentive to the needs of the sheep, and suddenly I'm wishing I had a sheepdog to herd my capstone students' PowerPoints into the inbox.

Or I get to campus a few minutes later than usual and can't find a spot in my usual parking lot so I park near the President's house, and as I walk amongst the beautiful historic homes and lovely fall leaves, my thoughts immediately go to how dark that stretch of road will be at the end of the day when I'll be walking out there after my capstone students' presentations, eek!

Or I'm reading the agenda for this afternoon's Faculty Council meeting and I see a vague reference to "brief/initial discussions of miscellaneous topics," and instead of chuckling heartily I wonder when I'll once again be able to engage in discussions of miscellaneous topics instead of obsessing constantly about my capstone students' presentations.  

I envy the volleyball player who did her presentation on Monday because now she can stop thinking about her capstone presentation and instead focus on other things, like playing in the NCAA volleyball tournament for the first time in Marietta College's history, but I can't even think about buying tickets to the opening game until after I get through my capstone students'  presentations.

For the benefit of all, I probably ought to just hide out in my office until this whole ordeal is over, because there's nothing better than being done with my capstone students' presentations.

 

 

An epidemic of pre-presentation nerves

A colleague told me the other day that before his dissertation defense, he practiced his presentation at least four times every day--for WEEKS. "I could present it for you right now if you asked me to," he said and I believe him, but we had other things to do at the time, like discussing how we're preparing our capstone students for their final presentations.

This is a big deal, and I don't know who is more nervous--me or my students. Well, okay, they're probably more nervous, or we're nervous in different ways. I'm nervous about making sure the technology works, remembering to take extra batteries for the microphone and clicker, making enough copies of the rating sheets for all the faculty members present, walking up on the stage to introduce students without tripping on the steps, and dealing with whatever unexpected issues arise in the course of the presentations.

Based on the questions my students have been asking me, they're nervous about other things. What if they pass out on the stage? (Remember to breathe! Eat! Hydrate!) What if they forget all their important points? (Note cards! Manuscripts! Practice practice practice!) What if the presence of so many profs, classmates, and family members makes them so flustered they drop their note cards or throw up all over the people sitting in the front row? (We'll be there to help! We're all rooting for you!)

In fact the most difficult task for me right now is convincing my students that we are rooting for them. This presentation is the culmination of their work in the English major, so every prof in the department feels invested in their success. The students worry that we'll be sitting out there judging them, ready to tear them to pieces on the rating sheets, eager to throw them questions that will knock them down a peg, when really we want to see them shine. You'll never have a more supportive audience, I tell them, but my students seem to see us as ravening lions waiting to pounce.

My primary task, then, in this last week before their presentations is to calm them down--but not so much that they fail to prepare properly. Today I'll tell them about my colleague who practiced his dissertation defense four times every day for weeks, and then I'll pause for a moment and add, "Only four times a day. Is that enough?"

A little liminal

When people ask whether I get tired of my long drive to work and back I generally tell them No--the drive along the river provides a nice transition between home and the rest of the world. The bridge over our creek is an important part of that transition, the last piece of home before I venture forth or the last hurdle before I'm truly home, and because of this I like to pause a moment in my comings-and-goings, to open the windows and fill my ears with the sounds of running water and my eyes with the beauty around me. Sometimes I see birds or deer or a big fat groundhog but more often it's just trees and water. Today the big sycamore that leans across the creek seemed to glow in the early-morning fog, pointing toward the road that would take me to work, but I didn't want to go--I wanted to stay there all day and listen for the words under the water that Norman Maclean writes about in A River Runs through It. Nevertheless I obeyed the call of duty and drove away, carrying the sound of the creek and the glow of the sycamore with me like a benediction.

 

Stayin' alive

Last week one of my senior capstone students immersed in the demands of producing an annotated bibliography asked me, "Has anyone ever died from this process?" But in the middle of drafting week another student said, "I'm really excited about writing this paper." I've just read his draft and he has a right to be excited. It's neither complete nor perfect, but it's full of interesting insights and analysis--and well written, too.

You will survive this, I keep telling my capstone students, and so far they haven't disappointed me. The annotated bibliography was a big hurdle, but it didn't kill anyone. Now they can focus on synthesizing all those ideas into a major analytical essay and a public presentation. We looked at drafts yesterday and we'll practice presentations next week in preparation for public presentations the following week. Time seems to accelerate at this point in the semester, but after the public presentations we can all take a deep breath and exercise some thankfulness. 

At this point the students are doing all the hard work. I'm reading long drafts, yes, and offering detailed suggestions, and I've finally organized a presentation schedule that works for everyone, including the volleyball player who suddenly discovered that the team's unprecedented unbeaten season will earn an invitation to the NCAA tournament, which conflicts with the original capstone presentation schedule. 

First, though, I'll spend this weekend working my way through nine drafts, all but one comprising over 2000 words. Some will require a frustrating amount of detailed commentary and attention, but I'm already excited to see that we've reached this point in the project with something worthwhile to show for all our work. The senior capstone project may be daunting but it hasn't killed anyone yet, and I for one hope to maintain that record.

Writing "Life Writing" into existence

What's Life Writing they keep asking, and I keep telling them It's writing...about life. The course hasn't been offered for a few years so I guess it's not too surprising that our students don't have a clue what might distinguish Life Writing from other types of writing, but next semester I'll be guiding a dozen or more students through a class I've never taught before so it's about time to figure out what it might be.

I ought to know: I designed and proposed the course more than a decade ago, but then we hired a writing specialist who needed some upper-level classes to fill out his schedule so he took over the class before I ever had a chance to teach it. We were in a different place as an institution back then and I had some different interests, so the sample syllabus I had to create for the course proposal isn't proving too helpful in our current context. But in the lead-up to this bizarre election season I needed to distract my mind with a compelling project, so instead of doom-scrolling I've been finding readings and constructing writing assignments and developing a structure for the Life Writing course I'll teach next semester.

The course will begin with at the center--the individual self--and move slowly outward. Students will read short memoirs and write their own, and then they will read and write about how the self gets entangled (with activities, fields of study, or other people). Then we'll move to reading and writing the life of another person, focusing on unsung heroes or hidden figures. Then we'll bring together the perspectives of several people in an oral history project that I hope will illuminate pivotal points in the students' understanding of the wider world.

We'll read short works by some fabulous authors--Leslie Jamison! Susan Orlean! Drew Lanham!--and one book, Salman Rushdie's Knife, which illustrates the stages of writing about lives from the individual self to the entangled self to the wider world. 

And then I have to tackle the Honors element. Just under half of the students will be taking the course as part of the Honors program, which means they'll do all the work the other students do plus an activity that presents an extra challenge. I'm thinking of asking them to transform one of their pieces into a multimedia essay incorporating visuals, music, or video to enhance the words, or maybe I'll ask them to work in small groups to produce a podcast. I would love to give them a group project: setting up a storytelling booth on campus to collect oral histories of our own part of the world. What kinds of permissions would I have to get to make that happen? Would the Mass Media department share their recording equipment and expertise with my students? Looks like I've got some work to do to determine feasibility.

But hey: having a challenging project is just the ticket for maintaining sanity when the world seems to be careening toward catastrophe, so let's put words on the page and write some lives.

Step of faith

Some time ago I was sitting in a church sanctuary almost Shaker in its simplicity, with elegant lines and proportions, understated decorations, a lofty ceiling and big glass windows opening to a lush, green swath of woods; the church was hosting an art show at the time, so beautiful things were hanging on all the walls and my daughter's choir filled the space with music to exalt the soul. Sitting in that pew surrounded by my family and by so much beauty, I thought, If I could worship in this kind of environment every Sunday, I would be a happier person. 

But of course that's ridiculous. Even if I lived close enough to attend that church, it wouldn't host an art show every Sunday, nor would my daughter's choir perform there more than once a year. And besides, I never experienced their usual mode of worship, heard a sermon, or fellowshiped with the congregants. The church appealed on an aesthetic level, but when it comes to matters of the spirit, beauty isn't everything.

If I could design the ideal church, I would start with that simple but elegant design and develop a liturgy that would appeal to the whole person--heart, soul, mind, and body. But even if I included all the things I love about a worship service (great music, thought-provoking sermons, meaningful liturgy) and left out the things that leave me cold (lackluster singing, music blasting so loudly it hurts my eardrums, gaudy stained glass), I still couldn't guarantee that the church would attract the one thing that makes a church a church: the community of people who care about each other. My ideal of elegant simplicity would leave others cold--I mean, lots of people like stained glass! The thought-provoking sermon that sparks new insight in my mind might strike others as too heady or uninspiring. And the music that soothes my soul may not appeal to someone whose musical tastes start and end with Elvis.

So if the perfect church does not exist, I'll have to put up with the imperfect church--and the imperfect church will have to put up with me. But that can be a problem too. Like many pastor's wives, I tend to get buttonholed as an appendage. I am the pastor's wife: that's all anyone seems to want to know about me, and when I reveal other aspects of my being, I am met with befuddled looks or dismissive comments, like the time I told a parishioner that I teach writing and literature and he said "Why would anyone need to learn that these days?" 

So last week when I heard the poet Christian Wiman talk about his struggles with faith and art (on the podcast No Small Endeavor, which I highly recommend), it resonated deeply, especially this passage:

I do feel like faith is the most important thing in my life, but I've never found a form that is satisfying to me, or in which, to put it more bluntly, more sharply, a form in which I don't feel that my own experience is being violated.

And so that's a constant wrestle for me because I'm desperate for some community in which to believe. And at various times in my life I've had that, and I do believe in it very much. And I respect the institution of the church. I respect my students who are going into these jobs. Many of my students are becoming ministers, and there's something heroic in that at this particular cultural moment.

But for myself, I have always felt outside of the institution, and I don't consider myself a Catholic or a Protestant. I do consider myself a Christian, but I'm pretty frustrated with the ways that we try to tame God, and try to contain God in ways that make the experience palatable, gentle, socially sort of lubricating.

....

I mean, I've been to so many different churches and always something happens that, that I just disagree with so profoundly or often there's a mismatch between the urgency with which I feel in my own interior communion with, and wrestling with God, and the banality of the spaces in which this is supposedly being expressed.

And so, I'm often bored out of my skull at church, you know, and if I'm not bored, I'm often I just disagree so profoundly with what's being said. And I also feel that most churches don't allow for a space for how wild God could be, you know? I mean, Annie Dillard has that famous paragraph about saying that people should be wearing crash helmets in church, and, you know, lashing themselves to the pews.

I think this is a typical problem with an artist, because if you feel, you know, most of my sense of faith comes from my experience of art. I mean that is an intense engagement with God and with reality and then to step into somewhere where you're just sort of having coffee hour.

The notion of trying to tame God into a palatable form--I feel that deeply. The feeling that I have to put big parts of myself into a box before I enter into the sanctuary--been there, done that. The banal spaces and small-minded ideas squelching the wild unpredictability of spiritual experience--it's a problem.

Which is one reason why yesterday I attended a service at a church where I was pretty sure I wouldn't know anyone and therefore no one would know me or judge me or treat me like an appendage. I wanted to have a spiritual experience unencumbered by anyone else's expectations, and you know what? I did. It wasn't the perfect church--the ceiling was low, the altar cloths were faded, and I didn't entirely understand the liturgy--but I had an experience of the wildness of God and I left feeling refreshed and happy. Which, right now, is probably enough.

An appointment with autumn

Last week when one of the Powers That Be tried to schedule a meeting with me for this morning, I begged off by saying "I have an appointment that will keep me off campus all morning." I did not feel the need to mention that my appointment was with a great blue heron.

Of course at the time I had no idea that I'd be meeting with a heron this morning. I did have an appointment--in Athens at a car dealership to get a new rear window on my car so I can start using my rear-window defogger. I've owned that car for just over a year, but early last fall I started seeing news reports about people whose rear windows shattered as soon as they turned on the rear-window defogger, so I decided to avoid using the defogger and wait for a recall notice, which arrived in due course over the summer. First I had trouble scheduling an appointment and then I had to reschedule because of a conflict and I was determined to get that window replaced before the mornings get any frostier, regardless of the needs of the PTBs.

So I've had the car appointment on my schedule for weeks but just this week the gorgeous fall foliage inspired me to add a stop to my Athens itinerary. I left in the dark and arrived at the shallow upper end of Strouds Run Lake in the soft early-morning light, which made the world look like a watercolor painting, and right in front of the parking area stood a great blue heron.

I saw ducks, too, and a few geese and sandpipers and even a lone red-winged blackbird that should have left for a warm winter home already, and I saw the rising sun paint the sky pink and the leaves yellow, orange, and red. For a while there were no sounds beyond the ducks' quiet squawks and the wind rustling through the leaves, so I stood there and drank in the beauty without a thought for what I might be missing on campus.

I'll pay for it, of course--I'll have to scramble to get through all those annotated bibliographies and deal with whatever complications arise from my dereliction of duty, but I came home with a new rear window with functioning defogger, a host of photos, and a sense of calm that can only come from looking away, if only temporarily, from the daily grind. 

I don't know how long I watched that heron before it finally flew off into the distance. My spirit took flight with the bird, but my body sighed and drove away toward duty.

  

The impending Bibliopocalypse

A dozen times this morning I wanted to stop and take a photo--of colorful leaves reflected in the river, pink stripes in the sky highlighting red and orange trees, light filtering through leaves so golden they seem to glow from within. I keep telling myself I have enough photos of fall leaves but I'd better enjoy them while I can because soon I'll be immersed in a task that will keep me tied to my computer screen for hours on end.

I refer, of course, to the Bibliopocalypse. I have gone on record confessing that I hate annotated bibliographies. They're a pain to teach and a pain to grade and they inspire a host of complaints among students. So much can go wrong: not enough sources, the wrong kinds of sources, inadequate summaries, absent evaluations, every type of format error known to the MLA handbook, and I have to keep an eye open for every possible problem. First I count the listings and determine whether they're in alphabetical order, and then I go through them with a fine-toothed comb, marking problems and offering suggestions. Then there's the rubric, the grade, the comments--a total slog, but if I assign such an onerous task, my feedback had better reflect some serious effort.

If everyone hates annotated bibliographies, why not just ditch the assignment? Because gathering, summarizing, evaluating, and citing an array of sources is a valuable stage in a large research project. In first-year composition courses I might require students to turn in individual source evaluations over the course of a week or two, but for the English majors in my capstone class, they've already submitted a research proposal so now they have to show that they've put in the legwork to locate appropriate sources. If they do a thorough job summarizing and evaluating those sources, they'll be way ahead of the game when they write their drafts next week. And then we'll be off to the races with presentations, revisions, and final papers. There's no turning back now--the rest of the semester is just one big assignment after another.

So I have only 24 hours before the Bibliopocalypse, and I intend to enjoy them. Look at those leaves! But the time I have a minute to spare to look outside again, they'll all be on the ground. 

 

 

The mail must go--somewhere

What I learned this morning when I called our local post office to complain about a missing package:

Thanks to staffing problems, the USPS no longer employs a regular delivery driver for our rural route. Instead, they rely on temporary drivers borrowed from other post offices.

Temporary drivers can't be expected to be familiar with our route, so when they see our mailbox sitting across the street right next to our neighbor's mailbox, they may not be certain which house the mailbox serves.

Our house isn't even visible from the mailbox, so if they deliver our mail to the house nearest our mailbox, they'll get it wrong every time.

Therefore, if the Amazon package-tracking software says our package was delivered "On or near the front porch," it doesn't necessarily mean our front porch.

The temporary delivery driver promises to retrieve the misplaced package and deliver it properly today.

What does our local post office do when they can't find anyone to serve our rural route? Well, the postmaster kindly informed me that often he has to deliver mail along our route after the post office has closed for the day--and if he has to serve other rural routes as well, he may be out past midnight getting the mail delivered. This explains why our mail, which used to arrive reliably by 1 p.m., now often gets delivered long after we've gone to bed.

After this short conversation, I have developed a new appreciation for our local postmaster...but I wish the USPS would find a way to compensate rural delivery people so we could go back to having a postal carrier we know and trust instead of some temp who can't find our house. Neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night can stop the mail, but staffing problems can certainly slow it down.

The future awaits, but not very patiently

The future is calling! It's so demanding--just today it wants me to produce a schedule for a January teaching workshop, a list of classes I'd like to teach next year, a plan to help an advisee complete his graduation requirements before May, a final book order for a new class I'm teaching in the spring (and maybe some thoughts toward a syllabus?), and an essay question for Wednesday's exam.

The exam question is easiest: I don't like the essay question I used for this material last time I taught the class, so last Friday I put my students into small groups and asked them to discuss concepts appearing in the readings and write sample essay questions. All the sample questions circled around a tight little cluster of interesting concepts, so I'll knead and twist all the questions together until they form a coherent and compelling prompt.

Other demands from the future won't be solved so simply. Some require me to look to the past: When was the last time we offered a teaching workshop on this particular topic and how many participants did it attract? What classes have I offered for the past few years and how many students enrolled? How has the College previously responded to the particular type of glitch messing up my advisee's schedule? What book did I intend to order when I initially proposed this new class seven years ago, and is it still relevant today? (The future doesn't really care why I am only now able to teach a class that was approved seven years ago, but that's a tale for another time.)

The most complicated demand from the future deals with my teaching schedule for the next academic year, because I have to look forward and backward and even sideways to balance what I want, what my English majors need, what we've offered recently, and what our limited department can reasonably be expected to do without being permitted to replace lost positions. 

I need to fill out my schedule for Fall 2025, Spring 2026, and Fall 2026 (so I can retire in December 2026, hurrah!). I have a list of classes I'd like to teach, but I wonder whether our English majors would benefit by my branching out a bit. Our expert on pre-Civil-War American Literature has not been replaced and probably will not be replaced for quite some time, so this year our English majors are getting no exposure to American literature before the Civil War except the little bit of it we covered in my African American Lit class early in the semester. How long are we expected to continue with no early American literature classes? How will that affect our majors' future prospects? Should I offer to teach the early American Lit survey even though I've never done it before? Should I develop an upper-level course on an early American author (Melville!)? If I teach a class or two outside my area of expertise, which of my regular classes should I sacrifice? 

That's too much to think about right now, but the future is standing outside my office door tapping its foot and demanding some answers. I'm tempted to close the door in its face so I can focus on today's issues--like lunch. Surely the future can wait until after I've eaten? 

Random bullets of bright spots in a bleak week

• Sure, the temperature was hovering just above freezing this morning, but we still have big fluffy yellow sunflowers standing tall outside my building, bright spots in fall days that vary between bright and bleak.

• In my usual parking lot the other day I noticed that every car was either gray or black except my red car and my department chair's blue one. My department does its part to bring a little color to campus, but we can't be expected to carry the ball for everyone.
  

• Our volleyball and football teams are still undefeated, a feat they've never before accomplished in my 24 years here. At some point they'll meet Mount Union, but I prefer not to think about that right now. Besides, maybe this is the year someone will prove that Mount Union is just as fallible as the rest of us.

• And so, apparently, are the Yankees. It is a joy to have my Cleveland Guardians playing October baseball, but they've been struggling against the Yankees, which makes last night's walk-off win so much more exhilarating. I keep playing this video of David Fry's game-winning home run. Makes me happy every time.

• Speaking of struggling, a prof from another college told me about an attempt to cut costs and improve efficiency on her campus: they eliminated all the photocopiers on campus except for one and put one person in charge of doing all the photocopying so that faculty have to send their copy orders to the Copier Czar to be printed out. But what happens when the Copier Czar wants to go on vacation? Faculty received an email telling them no photocopying for two weeks, so plan ahead!

I guess I'm happy that no one has tried to do that here--but I'd better keep the idea under wraps lest someone get inspired. So don't tell anyone, okay? I like my photocopier right where it is.

Combustible

 As I stare at my sandwich, I keep thinking about Jack London's story "To Build a Fire." This poor guy trudging through the Alaskan wilderness in fifty-below weather is going to die if he can't start a fire, but he's dropped his last matches and he can't pick them up with his gloves on-- but if he takes off his gloves, his fingers will freeze and then how will he build a fire? 

I wish I could build a fire in my office, but instead I'm wondering whether I should try to eat my peanut-butter sandwich with my gloves on--and risk getting glove fuzz on my sandwich or peanut butter on my gloves--or take off my gloves to eat so that my fingers get so cold I can't type?

Turn on the space heater and risk blowing the circuit breaker? Leave the space heater off to ensure sufficient electricity to do my work? Every option has its down side.

The bigger question is why I keep having this kind of dilemma. I mean, anyone who knows how to read a weather forecast could have foretold that we would need heat in the building this morning, but no heat is to be found. I've been trying to work with my gloves and coat on and a big shawl wrapped around my shoulders, but hunching under the shawl gives me a sore neck and back while shivering against the cold upsets my stomach and gives me a headache.

Worst of all is the anger. Trying to work in this kind of cold produces a constant simmering anger that threatens to burst out at any moment, so that I'm afraid to interact with students or write emails lest I lash out. If only the anger could produce enough heat to allow me to take off my gloves! But no--the anger just makes me want to cancel classes and go home, or else take early retirement and leave my freezing office behind for good.

Right now, though, I need to figure out how to eat my lunch. I guess I'm thankful that I'm not trudging through the Alaskan wilderness in fifty-below temperatures, but if I don't get this anger under control, I may just spontaneously combust.

Dance party in the sky

My day started very early with a doctor's appointment and blood draw before breakfast plus a flu shot that may have contributed to the overwhelming desire to sleep that hit me by midafternoon, but by that time I'd spent three hours driving north to meet my old grad school friend for lunch and a refreshing chat and then driven another 40 minutes to the home of my daughter and son-in-law and, of course, the grandkids, who read to me and played their piano pieces and demonstrated their progress in eating with chopsticks, so by the time the sky got dark enough to make the Aurora Borealis visible in northern Ohio I was so tired I was tempted to give it a pass, but the young folks convinced me to join them on a late-night jaunt to a local field where we were able to view the light show without obstructions, and when the middle grandkid said "There's a whole dance party going on in the sky," I had to take it on faith because, sadly, I couldn't see anything except a whole lot of dark sky with a pinkish tinge in certain areas, but fortunately the camera saw more than my aging eyes could see--and even if I couldn't see the dance party up there, I could see the grandkids dancing around in a field in their pajamas and warm coats and hear them marveling over the wonders playing out far overhead, and after the long and winding road I'd traveled to make it to that point, that moment was worth every ounce of effort.

 

Now that's some powerful teaching

I was reading The Last Devil to Die, a Thursday Murder Club mystery by Richard Osman, when I happened upon a passage that made me laugh out loud. It's a little long but worth the effort. Nina, an archeology professor, is meeting with an apathetic student whose name she can't remember when they are interrupted by a hefty Canadian thug named Garth: 

There's one with her now, an identikit boy of around twenty, a first year, certainly. He's called Tom or Sam, or maybe Josh. The boy is wearing a Nirvana T-shirt, despite being born many years after Kurt Cobain died. 

They are discussing an essay he hasn't written. "Roman Art and the Manipulation of Historical Memory."

"Did you enjoy the reading at least?" Nina asks.

"No," says the boy.

"I see," says Nina. "Anything else to add? Reasons you didn't enjoy it?"

"Just boring," says the boy. "Not my area."

"And yet your course is titled 'Classics, Archeology and Ancient Civilizations'? What would you say your area is?"

"I'm just saying I don't pay nine thousand pounds a year to read a bunch of left-wing academics rewriting Roman history."

"I imagine it's your mum and dad paying the nine thousand pounds, isn't it?"

"Don't privilege-shame me," says Tom or Sam or Josh. "I can report you."

"Mmm," says Nina. "Am I to take it that you're not planning on finishing the essay anytime soon?"

"Read my file," says the boy. "I don't have to do essays."

"OK," says Nina. "What do you imagine you are doing here? What and how do you hope to learn?"

"You learn through experience," says the boy, with the world-weary air of a wise man tired of having to explain things to fools. "You learn from interacting with the real world. Books are for lose--" 

There is a knock at Nina's door, despite the SUPERVISION IN PROGRESS note stuck on it. Nina is about to send the unseen caller away when the door opens, and who should walk in but Garth, the colossal Canadian she had met at Sunday lunch.

"Sorry, this is a private session," says Nina. "Garth, isn't it?"

"I need something," says Garth. "And I need it right now. You're lucky I even knocked."

"I'm teaching," says Nina, then looks at the boy. "Up to a point."

Garth shrugs.

"So you'll have to wait. We're trying to discuss Roman art."

"I don't wait," says Garth. "I get impatient."

"Probably ADHD," says the boy, clearly glad there is now a man in the room.

Garth looks at the boy, as if noticing him for the first time. "You're wearing a Nirvana T-shirt?"

The boy nods, sagely. "Yeah, that's my vibe."

"What's your favorite song?"

"Smells Like--"

"And if you say 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' I will throw you out of that window."

The boy now looks decidedly less happy that there is a man in the room.

"Garth, I'm teaching," says Nina.

"Me too," says Garth.

"Uh....," says the boy.

"Easy question," says Garth. "Nirvana is the fourth-greatest band of all time. Name their best song."

" 'The Man Who...,' uh."

"If you're about to say 'The Man Who Sold the World,' think again," says Garth. "That's a Bowie cover. We can have a different discussion about Bowie when we're through with this."

"Leave him alone, Garth," says Nina. "He's a child. And a child in my care." 

"I'm not a child," says the boy.

"You want me to help or not?" says Nina. "Why don't we call it a day anyway? If you haven't done the essay, there's no point."

"My pleasure," says the boy, getting up as fast as he can.

"Wait, you didn't do your essay?" Garth asks.

"Leave him alone, Garth," says Nina.

"What was it about? The essay?"

"Roman art or something," says the boy.

"And you didn't do it? Couldn't be bothered?"

"I just...didn't...just wasn't...interested."

Garth roars and beats his chest. The boy instinctively ducks toward Nina, and she puts a protective arm around him.

"You weren't interested? In Roman art? You are out of your mind. You're in this beautiful room with this intelligent woman, and you get to talk about Roman art, and you're not interested. You're not interested? You've got three years till you actually have to go and get a job! You know what jobs are like? Terrible. You think you get to discuss Roman art when you've got a job? You think you get to read? What are you interested in?"

"I have a TikTok channel," says the boy.

"Go on," says Garth. "I'm interested in TikTok. I was thinking of dabbling. What do you do?"

"We do....fast-food reviews," says the boy.

"Oh, I like that," says Garth. "Fast-food review. Best burger in Canterbury?"

"The Yak House," says the boy.

"Noted," says Garth. "I'll check you out. Now I need a word with Ms. Mishra here, so I'm going to ask you to skedaddle."

The boy doesn't need asking twice, and shoots for the door. Garth puts out a massive arm to stop him. "Three things before you go though. One: if that essay isn't done next week, I'll kill you. I mean that. Not like 'Your mom will kill you if you don't tidy your room.' Actually kill you. You believe me?"

The boy nods.

"Good, stop wasting this opportunity, brother, I swear. Two, if you tell anyone I threatened you, I will also kill you. OK? Not a word."

"OK," says the boy.

"It better be OK. God cries every time someone lies to a Canadian. And three, the best Nirvana song is 'Sliver' or 'Heart-Shaped Box.' Understand?"

"Understand," agrees the boy.

"I played bass for a band called Mudhoney for two tour shows once. You heard of them?" says Garth.

"I think so," pretends the boy.

"Great, you check them out, and I'll check out your TikToks. Off you go, champ."

Garth ruffles the boy's hair and watches him run out. He turns back to Nina.

"Nice kid."

Since reading this, all I can think about is how different my life would be if I had a Garth in all my classrooms or standing in the corner for every student conference. It wouldn't do much harm to throw anyone out of my office window, but I suspect that Garth rarely has to follow through on his threats.

An awkward interregnum

Here we sit in an odd interregnum: things are going swimmingly in class and out; I'm checking things off my to-do list, planning campus workshops, developing plans to celebrate faculty research and scholarship, enjoying opportunities to make good things happen on campus, but at the same time in the back of my mind sits the constant awareness of the looming Board of Trustees meeting where Important Decisions will be made about how we're going to continue digging ourselves out of our ongoing budgetary mess. 

Earlier in my career I was never really aware of when the Trustees were meeting or what they might be doing; if they made a decision that affected me, I assumed that someone would let me know. But ever since we dug ourselves into this budget apocalypse, every Trustees meeting feels like an existential crisis. Will they cut programs? Cancel positions? Impose further restrictions? Or will they announce some big new donation to fund an initiative that will save all our necks? 

I tell my students that liminal space is a place of possibility--we stand in the threshold of opportunity where anything can happen--but it's also a space of limitation because we can't fully engage with activities on either side when we're stuck in the doorway. But here I sit, uncomfortably aware that something is going to happen in the next couple of weeks, or maybe nothing will happen and we'll scrape along as best we can with the resources available. 

So things are good! Until they're not--and who knows when the door of opportunity might slam shut in our faces?

  

Would you get a root canal from a Muppet?

I was trying to tell my students what it felt like to get a root canal from an endodontist who looks just like Dr. Bunsen Honeydew but they said Who's Bunsen Honeydew, which made me want to throw in the towel right there and then because I'm clearly getting too old to communicate with these infants, but then one of them said Is he the Muppet in the lab with Beaker? and I breathed a sigh of relief, but by then I'd ventured pretty far from the point of the story, which is that I spent two hours this morning having my jaw and face stretched and immobilized so a bunch of sharp, whiny dental instruments could do horrible violent things to one of my teeth--a tooth that required attention from a specialist because the roots are curvy, much like the rest of me--and to multiply the usual horrors and indignities of dental care, the face of the man wielding those instruments looked just like Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, which made me want to either laugh or scream (because of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew's calamitous klutziness with tools in clips like this one) except I couldn't do either because I couldn't move my mouth, so that I had to grunt faintly when Dr. Not-Bunsen-Honeydew asked me repeatedly whether I was doing okay, and when I really needed a rest room break so as to avoid an embarrassing incident in his nice sanitary endodontal office, my attempt to say rest room caused the endodontist to respond, So you say you're Russian?, which I'm not, and even if I were Russian I doubt that I would feel the need to convey that information whilst having my rotten curvy tooth drilled by a guy who looks like Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.

But I made it to the rest room without incident and I survived my root canal and I taught my classes, despite feeling about 102 years old, and the novocaine had worn off by the time classes were over so now my primary goal in life is to hunt down some pain-killers and call it a day. A bizarre day, but at least the hard part is over.

Irony, sardony, Irene-y, unread

The visiting writer talks with her hands, squeezing an invisible ball as she describes her attempts to put pressure on language. I watch her, mesmerized, glad for an opportunity to sit at a desk like a student and listen for a bit.

But not too long, because those desks are uncomfortable. Even more uncomfortable was the temperature in the auditorium where the writer later gave a public reading. I had the foresight to take a blanket, but it didn't help much. Every day I experience the irony of constantly being urged to cut costs while working in buildings so excessively air-conditioned that we have to huddle under blankets so our lips don't turn blue.

Speaking of irony, why don't we follow Nella Larsen's example and adopt sardony? It shows up in Passing with a footnote claiming that Larsen was the first to use the word in print, but apparently it never caught on. I could dish out sardony every day of the week if there were any market for it.

My students discussed the first half of Passing on Wednesday, and at the end of class I asked them to predict what might happen next. Without fail, their predicted humiliation and doom for Clare Kendry. No one even mentioned Irene. I mean, how could anything significant happen to sweet little Irene? Surely she's just an objective observer of Clare's downfall! I'm eager to see how my students feel about Irene after reading the rest of the text.

I just hope they're actually reading it. Inside Higher Ed featured an article the other day asking "How Much Do Students Really Read?" It turns out, unsurprisingly, that many students prefer not to read their texts but instead watch videos or scan AI-generated summaries. One exception: English majors are more likely to read texts, some completing as much as 75 percent of assigned readings. I pity the English major who reads only 75 percent of Passing--or of Percival Everett's James, which we're finishing in my capstone class today, or Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys from last semester. The revelation at the end shifts the meaning of everything that comes before. 

What came before that shivery reading by the visiting writer? A discussion of tattoos--namely, the dearth of same amongst English Department faculty. I shocked our students by telling them I have two tattoos but then I had to explain that they're just dots tattooed on my hips to guide the great big clunky medical machine that delivered precision rays of radiation to my innards 15 years ago. Another colleague admitted to having a small fraternity-related tattoo, but the rest of us are woefully unadorned. I proposed that we hold a student competition to design an appropriate tattoo for the entire English department, maybe some memorable words from a text, provided that anyone still knows how to read words (she said sardonically). Then instead of putting pressure on language, we could allow language to put pressure on us.

Read but not said

My capstone class will start discussing Percival Everett's James this afternoon, having finished with Huckleberry Finn last Friday. A few students are listening to the texts on audiobooks, so I asked them how the audiobooks handle the frequent use of the n-word. Apparently the narrator just says it, out loud, over and over again.

In class we're talking about the n-word and using the phrase the n-word but not saying the word out loud. In interviews about James, Percival Everett states that he chose to use the word in the novel because he didn't want to whitewash history or misrepresent the nineteenth-century vernacular, but while he uses the full word in the novel, he says the n-word in interviews. 

One student in my class tells about the time when her high-school English teacher introduced study of Huck Finn by going around the room and requiring each student to say the n-word out loud so they could get comfortable saying and hearing the word they could not avoid seeing on the page, but enough students (and parents) were uncomfortable with the exercise that the teacher backed off. 

Another student is student-teaching in a local high school and feels that trying to teach Huck Finn in today's high school environment would be more trouble than it's worth. I see her point, but nevertheless I jumped at the opportunity to teach Huck Finn alongside James. If nothing else, the portrayal of Jim in Huck Finn provides a valuable lesson on why it's important to empower diverse voices. Huck's voice is so charming and full of energy that it may distract readers from the stories he's eliding or ignoring altogether. James fills that void, providing a compelling counternarrative that sends us back to Twain with new insight, new questions.

But still we struggle with how to handle the n-word. In my class the word remains read but not said, which is an imperfect solution but at this point it may be the best way to introduce students to the incredible story of James.

Obvious or oblivious?

There I was in the middle of yet another meeting designed to inform me of all the ways I'm failing to follow proper campus purchasing procedures--frequently-changing procedures for which I was never trained and that until recently were not even part of my job description--when I had a sudden epiphany: the procedures in question were so completely obvious to the expert that she couldn't imagine that they wouldn't be similarly obvious to me. 

I mean, aren't we all born with an inherent ability to distinguish between a requisition and a payment request? Don't we just innately know which online form must be submitted before the event and which one comes after? Don't we come out of the womb aware that one of these procedures requires a detailed quote while the other requires an invoice? And if we bobble the procedures and submit an invoice with the wrong online form, aren't we just about the stupidest people ever to have walked the earth?

I don't even want to go back and count all the times I've griped about the constant struggle to figure out campus budgeting and purchasing procedures; just thinking about it wears me out. But today I'm interested in the deeper issue: why would someone who has developed a specific area of expertise assume that whatever is obvious to her must also be obvious to others? 

What would this attitude look like in my discipline?  

Okay, class, you must all have come to college well aware of how to construct an effective thesis statement, so let's not look at any examples or discuss their strengths and weaknesses. Just write me a good thesis--and if you don't know what that means, what's wrong with you? 

Dear colleagues, I had intended to organize a workshop to help you design writing assignments to discourage plagiarism, but the methods are so incredibly obvious to me that I can't see the point, so never mind. 

So you say you're struggling to understand Charles Chesnutt's dialect tales? Just look at the words on the page! The meaning is obvious!

These examples are, of course, ridiculous. If I assume that whatever is obvious to me must also be obvious to others, then why am I here? And if we all adopt this attitude, then why does any institution of higher education need to exist?

Fortunately, ignorance is a renewable resource--that's what keeps us all in business. I am willing to admit my ignorance and gather the knowledge required to fulfill my duties--but I'll never learn if the experts assume that what I need to know must already be completely obvious.

A nightmare too far

I dreamed I was getting ready to start a new graduate program to seek a Ph.D. in Psychology. At age 62. In Kentucky. While maintaining my day job teaching in Ohio. And in my dream the thing that worried me the most was not the stupidity of starting a new Ph.D. on the verge of retirement or the fact that Psychology would require me to do scary things with stats and spreadsheets--no, the burning question that turned this bizarre dream into a nightmare was What will I listen to on all those long drives?

Fortunately, I woke up from that nightmare, and the real-life nightmares I've been facing in my daily life are much less stressful. For instance:

I keep being required to feed people. Now I love feeding people if I'm doing the cooking; putting together a tried-and-true recipe in my own kitchen is one of my love languages. But I don't like being in charge of selecting food for a group of campus colleagues. I worry about making the wrong choices to suit every palate, and then I worry about submitting the invoice incorrectly so it doesn't get paid, and then I worry about forgetting to put the leftovers in the fridge. This happened once over the summer when a plate of chicken-salad sandwiches got overlooked and sat out overnight, and then I couldn't just throw them away in the nearest trash can because staff cuts have led to changes in the trash-emptying schedule so I had to go wandering around looking for a trash can that was likely to be emptied within the week or risk living with the smell of three-day-old chicken-salad sandwiches in my workspace. Nightmare.

For a morning person, a slate of back-to-back classes and meetings running from 1 to 6 p.m. on a Monday is another kind of nightmare, but at least I won't be expected to think too much at this afternoon's meetings. In one meeting: I'm assisting a colleague who is working remotely, so I have to get to the room early, pull up the Zoom link, connect with my colleague, and then stand by throughout the meeting to step in as needed: Bev, can you check and see if everyone is on the same page? Bev, can you troubleshoot that problem? Bev, can you let me know when everyone has finished that task? I can't lead the workshop myself because it deals with the kind of software that makes me break out in hives, but I am happy to help my colleague, who has helped me often in the past. But frankly, it would really be easier if she could insert a computer chip in my brain and then run me around the room like a remote-control robot.

Over the weekend I tackled the first major pile of grading for the semester, which included some student handwriting that nearly drove me demented--but the content of the essays was so delightful that it offset the nightmarish scrawls. Today I'll grade a pile of essays submitted online, which I couldn't do over the weekend because a nasty stye in my eye made staring at the small computer screen painful. The papers will be more readable on the big monitor in my office, but the eye still hurts. Not so much a nightmare as an annoyance, especially since nobody will mind if I put them off for a day or two.

Similarly my crowded schedule of meetings and tasks this week: It will be a challenge to get it all done, but it's doable as long as I keep up a steady pace, and if I have to let something slide, there will be no screaming involved. So I guess my daytime nightmares are pretty tame these days. I may experience some discomfort--but nobody's forcing me to drive a six-hour round trip twice a week with nothing good on the radio. That's a nightmare too far.