Notes From The Final Days Of Leisure

Susan Sontag wrote that we live in an age of extremity, characterized by “the continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror.”

She was clearly describing the academic’s life. Joke! She was describing consumerism and war.

Anyway, the school year is about to start, and my body is flooded with terror and dread, even though I know within a month or two I will be mired in the banal grading of a thousand papers on Freud. I really like the rhythm of the academic year. I like that there is this slow ratcheting up of intensity as September looms, then fall semester starts and you are operating at Max Capacity, hunching over your desk until your very bones ache, losing a ton of weight and having nightmares about the Bible. Then Christmas break, hurrah! You sleep and sleep and eat and eat and eat and eat. If you’re smart you already did your spring syllabus in the summer, so during Christmas you just watch movies and let your brain doze idly, recovering. Then spring semester starts and it all happens again. By the end of spring semester, when you’re finally finished grading a final exam AND a 10 page final paper, you feel like a literal million bucks. And look what’s here! It’s summer again! And it all went by so fast. Soon we’ll all be dead.

Yesterday in my terror I wrote a job letter, a research proposal, I finished my syllabus, cleaned my office, and made an enormous to-do list. I have triple the amount of students/classes this year as I did last year, plus advisees, plus being on the market, so I am I think understandably a little bit panicked. I have never had this much work to do before, and I simply won’t know what it will be like until I’m in the middle of it. I’ve tried to set myself up for success as best I can–I’ve planned almost every class of the semester, I’ve written all my exams and writing prompts, I’ve got all my readings in order, and, most importantly, I’ve taught this class before, but still. How am I going to keep track of everyone? Office hours! Dear god, the office hours. On Mondays I will be on campus from 7:30 in the morning until 7:00 at night.

But it’s okay, because I like my job.

Liking your job is a blessing. We all have to have jobs, so you might as well like yours. My job is increasingly becoming menial labor where once it was considered very respectable but I still like it. I sometimes picture professors and students, locked together in the classroom, trying to have school, while all around them swirls the ever-intensifying administrative bureaucracy that is proving to be the slow death knell of the American university system. And yet, in the hurricane of paperwork and committees and “learning assessment outcomes” and ramping up of business programs and increasingly untenable tuition prices, there you still are, you and your students, in the classroom, trying to do what you all came there to do. I think you’d have to be a really sad person to not still feel Called by some aspect of that, to not still feel the weight of your responsibility to your students, whose fault none of this is. Maybe nobody else in the world gives a shit about what you do, but this classroom of students is waiting for you to help them, and in spite of the fact that 67% of professors in America are now adjuncts living below the poverty line, you still care about that, damnit all to hell, once more into the breach old man

For our birthdays (p.s. my birthday was a couple days ago, I celebrated by feeling sorry for myself and then eating an entire pizza (exaggeration (not about the pizza)) my mother in law gave us Target gift cards. I assume you realize that I never go to Target–thus, having the gift card is making me weirdly excited. I picture Target as a Christmastime jamboree, filled with all sorts of things I would want to purchase! In reality I imagine this is not the case, although I think I made a realistic list:
– desk hutch
– adapter thingy so I can listen to iPod in car
– notebooks, pens, folders, post-its
– Taylor Swift album (JOKE)

I also have to move to a new office and get to know a new office mate, which is bothersome. All my life I’ve wanted my own office and I came close to getting one this year but then it was snatched away at the last possible moment (yesterday).

Breathe! My old man and I have a plan. Instead of freaking out about traffic, which is my usual M.O. during my commute, I am going to re-think my time in the car, and approach it not as dead commuting time but rather as Decompressing Podcast Time. I’m always stressed out about how far behind I get on my podcasts. Now I can do probably two a day! Okay, so that’s good.

Food: New schedule, new life. The old man has sworn that he will actually be in charge of dinner MWF this time, unlike last time when he half-assed it like half-assing was going out of style. He says when I get home at 7:00 on Mondays he will serve me a drink and have music playing. What a delight it shall be. I in turn have promised to actually eat lunch at school, so that I do not arrive home a completely deranged evil-tempered fucking asshole.

Water: I have promised myself to drink water at school so my mouth does not become a poisonous wasteland

Clothes: I have a couple additional pairs of shoes and will get a couple additional outfits so that I do not become so demoralized by my appearance this year. I may also get a hair dryer but I am not sure

Grading: I have to cut my grading time literally in a third and I don’t know how I’m going to do it. This remains an unsolved challenge! Suggestions welcome. Don’t say egg timer because I do that already and it doesn’t really work

Notebooks: A notebook for every part of my life. Class notebook; jobs notebook; new book notebook; old book notebook. That’s four new notebooks. Get thee to Target

This week:
– read Marcie’s chapter
– finish/submit my article
– dry cleaner
– mail all that stuff
– bridesmaid dress

Okay. Lists help a person visualize realistically instead of just having nightmares about carrying huge stacks of paper around campus in the rain in your pajamas because you forgot to get dressed and now it’s too late and your whole class is waiting for you and somehow Ryan Gosling is there and he’s shaking his head with disgust because you didn’t realize this was an Algebra class.

I’m excited for school to start, so I can ply my trade! I may sometimes complain, but overall I am very happy and also extremely lucky to be where I am, and I know that. It is very fun and cool, to have a job that makes you afraid and nervous but that also satisfies you to the point of tears, when it satisfies you. It sure beats driving the ice cream truck.

God bless us every one