Head of a Woman Reading

There's a hurricane headed towards Florida today, and I feel like something isn't quite right. I am not in Florida, but my body feels off. I feel sluggish yet antsy. I can't seem to focus. My mind is uprooted. I keep thinking that I forgot to do something important, that I should be doing everything and nothing at the same time. I am anticipation. There's a hurricane headed towards Florida, and even though I'm not there, I can understand what people mean when they talk about somatic, embodied responses. Like most Floridians, I can archive my childhood by weather--hurricanes, yes, but really all matter of storms, lightning strikes, floods, tornadoes. I remember my brother driving us to church and the wheels through the puddles arced the rainwater up and over the side of the car like some eerie combination of tunnel, bubble, and fountain. I remember seeing lightning strike a tree outside my bedroom, the whole trunk ablaze in an electric blue like a neon sign and then ...

 Am I allowed to admit that I don't have a passion for teaching students that don't care?  Nothing gets my imposter syndrome rollicking like teaching. I did not dream of being a teacher. I was an intensely shy child, and though I loved learning, I never wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to write and research and think, and at some point along the way I accepted that teaching would be part of it. The more I've taught, the more comfortable and confident I've become as a teacher, but I guess even I have a limit.  Has teaching changed? Have students changed? Were my professors just as annoyed by students who were totally unengaged? Was I just oblivious to the slackers around me? The irony is that the only way humanities as a discipline is barely surviving is through general education classes, but then we are just stuck teaching students who don't care. And then the burden of teaching becomes making them care--and I feel like confessing daily that I don't have that sk...

The advice for academics was always that you should use your teaching to help foster your research and vice versa. Ideally, you would make things easier for yourself by teaching what you wanted to research. I increasingly understand the pull of this inclination as my reading list grows and my time and brain energy for reading shrinks. Just the other day I caught myself wishing I could do oral comps again, but with a new list of books that I didn't even know I wanted or needed to read when I was in graduate school. Of course, the problem with this advice is that it takes for granted steady student enrollment in literature classes and thus that students will want to read the same things that I want to research. But for now, here's a random little daydream about a class on gender and socialism in literature, which is also just me selfishly turning my reading list that never gets read into a class that will force me to read it.   

 As an exercise for writing personal essays, I had my students write a boast. The prompt was to write a paragraph telling everyone about something they are good or proud of, large or small. I can't take credit for the assignment; I stole it from a friend who stole it from a famous writer. But the students seemed to enjoy it and even read theirs out loud. My friend rightly suggested I write one myself and share it as the example. In some ways having an example maybe limited their creativity, but I think it did make them feel more comfortable praising themselves. Anyways, here is my little example:  I am a really good friend. I’m a good listener. I’m good at checking-in and following up and keeping track of and setting aside time. I don’t prioritize friendships less than other relationships. When K had to quit her job because something shitty happened, I met her every morning for a walk until she got a new one. I show up. I try to only give advice when it’s asked for. When L had...

 In my election cycle re-watch of The West Wing, the Toby vibes are strong. I have a theory that I can chart my own radicalization and/or the increasing neoliberal-ification of politics by how I feel watching The West Wing during election season. The show shifts surprisingly from timely to outdated to inspiring every time I watch it. Right now, there are some especially interesting scenes and conversations given the genocide happening in Palestine. Perhaps the gutless brilliance of the show is that it never actually says anything fully, allowing so many of its scenes and conversations to feely weirdly relevant no matter when you watch it. All of that is to say that I am not an apologist for the show's politics, I just like shows with ensemble casts and clever, unrealistic dialogue. Call me a millennial, I guess.  This election cycle re-watch, however, the vibes are coming up Toby. Does this mean I am in my cynical era? The obvious irony, of course, is that the more that Toby ...

I have thoughts to say about writing, teaching writing, and what writing looks like in universities. But for now I just want to leave these little tidbits for my future self. "We aim to make better writers, not necessarily--or immediately--better texts." --Stephen M. North, The Idea of the Writing Center "The second thing that it's made me realize is that English departments, film departments, art history departments, comp lit departments do not teach students how to write criticism. They teach them how to write a college level essay that has an audience of one, it’s the person who is grading that essay. I think you need an entirely different curricular structure to teach criticism. The same way I think you need an entirely different curricular structure to teach journalism. It's not just about recording somebody and then writing down what they're saying. You need a different curricular structure to teach something like broadcasting or podcasting or translati...