When your director emails you early Saturday morning and asks for your phone number so you can have a "quick chat" over the weekend, should you be concerned?

I ask only out of curiosity, of course, because my brain has chosen freak out oh no what did I do what is happening without my permission. I am also glued to my phone in a way that is ( Read more... )

I have now seen The Avengers twice. Life is fantastic. So is visiting old friends, attending movie premieres in costume, and having my first chapter FINISHED.

Now to grade final portfolios and go to Kalamazoo!

I just figured out what my conclusion needs to say. It is new and provocative and sets up my next chapter beautifully. It also takes an awkward but necessary background section from my intro and turns it into brilliant and necessary support for my literary analysis. I also taught my last class, accepted applause, and received every single final ( Read more... )

Dissertation progress today: on the one hand, I wrote five pages. On the other, I discovered that at least four should probably be deleted. Over the last two days, I have written eleven pages but only netted perhaps 1000 words ( Read more... )

Dear students ( Read more... )

1. Against all logical laws, the total amount of work I have to do seems to increase with each thing I get done rather than the opposite. Since time decreases, this is quickly becoming what looks like an insurmountable problem ( Read more... )

I passed! I passed and my examiners said I was awesome! Life is so absolutely amazing right now. Going out to celebrate!

It's the first day of classes. I teach from 2-3:15, then go straight into my two-hour oral exams at 3:30 ( Read more... )

I have been reading from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep since I got back to Charlottesville. I am becoming dangerously unhinged. I have vague memories of leaping out of bed last night from where I had collapsed early to go panic at Michael about hair color. Or something. I also keep losing track of what day it is and what has ( Read more... )

In the last five days I have been observed while teaching twice, conducted six hours of student conferences over two days, graded twenty midterm portfolios and ten paper rewrites, and organized an out-of-class movie viewing that fits twenty different schedules. It has been the perfect storm of teaching responsibilities ( Read more... )