Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Slim Pickins at D&I

I've been posting lightly here lately, and reading fairly lightly too. Even after culling a few spaces that I rarely read from my bloglines subscriptions, I'm often 150-200 posts behind at any given time. This is not because I don't love you, because I do, really I do.

But it's been hard lately:
  • hard because I want to post about my mom, but can't post about my mom out of respect for her privacy and my desire to keep this space primarily professional. For the record, things aren't dire, but they sure ain't great on that line of conversation.
  • hard because the two committees I've been on lately have been very consuming, and not always productive of useful things to say at any given time.
  • hard because I've been trying to edit and write and revise with all of this supposed free time I imagined myself having and which I do not have. Which means that said editing and writing and revising is way behind schedule. At minimum, I have to have 15 pages written for a plenary in three weeks. I have not yet begun to draft.
  • hard because instead of maintaining my weight as I had hoped, I'm slowly gaining a bit back. And May is still far away.
  • hard because even when the teaching is good, as it is now, it's time consuming. And I just collected a batch of papers today. yippee!
So, y'know, someday, I'll be back to posting 2, 3 times a week, with thoughtful posts like a response to JBJ's important and useful thoughts about assessment. In the meantime, if anyone has A) ideas about how to teach Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work, or b) specific ideas for organizing a 200-level contemporary literature class or c) time to write my plenary talk, or d) a cure for undiagnosable auto-immune connective tissue diseases and the gastrointestinal side effects....I'm all ears.

1 comment:

Dr. Crazy said...

First, I'm so sorry to hear that your mom's doing badly.

Second, a 200-level contemporary lit class? Am I right that this would be about sophomore level? My intro to lit course might work as a useful model for how one might do such a thing (although I do include some non-contemporary texts.... I do a whole "let's see how reading the thing that comes before allows us to talk about something contemporary" thing in there. But so I like to pick texts that work together well thematically (one theme that could be applied to the intro to lit course I teach is nostalgia, for example, or another would be illegitimate desires) and that go across genres. Not sure if this is making sense - it's been a long day.

Anyway, if you'd like to chat about it or to have a look at stuff I've got, just pop me an email.

Take care, and don't beat yourself up for being behind with the writing/editing! And the best talks are written at the last minute (says the procrastinator).