First of all, let me tell all of my readers and friends that I am fine, and so is Lady. Neither of us got hit by any of the really nasty shit that rolled through here yesterday/last night. In fact (luckily), Newton didn't get anything but a moderate thunderstorm around 2AM -- everything else split up and went around me in one direction or another, doing nothing here but a few rumbles of intermittent thunder and some decently strong winds.
For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, turn on the news; I'm sure sooner or later they'll say something about the tornado devastation in Kansas, especially the Wichita area. Yesterday there was something like 122 tornado touchdowns, with a large chunk of them in and around my area. Wichita got slammed by a few of them -- there's a lot of widespread damage down there, but little of it is severe. Lots of damage to some homes and to places like the aircraft manufacturing plants, some businesses in the downtown area, etc. No fatalities (not here, at least) and no life-threatening injuries, though, from what I've heard. A lot of Wichita is still without power, and the police/national guard/what-have-you have cordoned off the more damaged areas of the city so that said damage can be assessed. The weather people are saying that it at least one of the tornadoes that hit was an EF3, but they're still trying to figure out how many there actually were because they all hit after dark (like 8:30-9PMish). The local stations were running live newscasts all night long until at least after 3-4AM when I went to bed, keeping everyone who still had power abreast of the situation. In short, it's a complete mess. I've been trying to get in contact with friends in the area all afternoon, and while some of them have had damage to their homes, all I've heard from are okay.
As I said, though, I am very lucky -- it was pure chance and pure happenstance that the tornadoes didn't come up to Newton, though other small towns around Newton got hit and sustained a fair amount of damage. Because of the storms rolling in, Lady left early yesterday afternoon to get back to school safely (we were planning one of our normal full weekends together after she came in on Friday afternoon), so she's okay as well. The storms/tornadoes never reached the little town her school is in, thankfully.
All in all, it was a really strange capper to a really strange week. In fact, this week (as well as all of the tornadoes and stuff this weekend) will go down as one of the most odd weeks of the entire spring semester, with lots of good/bad stuff happening back to back. So, to be brief about it, let's start from the beginning.
Last Monday, I was able to successfully register for fall semester. Thankfully. I did indeed get into the Playwriting and Surrealism in Poetry classes I was planning to take (along with my thesis hours, of course) and my thesis prospectus got full, final approval from my readers/directors. All of that is taken care of, and I am now set to end the semester smoothly and have my third -- and last -- year of graduate school begin in the fall.
However, what happens between now and then remains to be seen.
As mentioned in my last post, I threw my proverbial hat in the ring to apply for teaching online sections of 101 or 102 for my entire last year of school here. I did this for several reasons, including the fact that it would give me more free time in the fall to work on my thesis and work on my actual classwork, but also because there's a $1700-1800 training session that I get paid for if I were going to teach said classes. Or, at least I thought that's what it was. It's not. I learned this week that it isn't that much money...it's more. According to one of the guys who's teaching it now (who will graduate in a month), it's three thousand dollars they pay you to attend the training sessions to teach these online courses. $1700-1800 would have been enough to cover all of my expenses for the summer, comfortably at that, but $3k can and will also allow me to not really have to worry about a whole lot of anything, and will allow me to get the repairs done on my car -- repairs it so desperately needs, but I'm so desperately broke right now.
Of course, I have heard nothing about who's going to be selected to teach these classes; nobody has as of yet, and my backup plan -- teaching normal summer sessions -- is in much the same boat. They haven't selected anyone for those teaching positions either. As mentioned before, if I am so unlucky to get neither opportunity, I'll probably have to spend my summer working at Arby's (or somewhere akin to Arby's) just to be able to pay the bills and survive. Yes, that's how bad it gets in the summer, folks -- it gets really really bad for finances for poor graduate students who don't have anywhere to go or anything to do for money during those months. My only other option (and probably my primary option, first and foremost) will be to try to get back on at the newspaper in some capacity if everything else falls through, even if it's just for a few short summer months. Those people there love me, and I should have an easy in if they need someone a few hours a day or more during those summer months. I'm willing to do pretty much anything I can for them, to be honest. It's not like I've lost any of my writing or layout skills.
As for planning for my future? I'm still looking at positions and places to live back east in New England or the mid-Atlantic area. Lady will be returning there after she's done with school anyway, and neither of us want to remain in the midwest any longer than we have to (the weather this weekend is but one of the many reasons why). The problem is that I'm still a year out, and can't focus on any of that stuff too much until I'm zeroing in on a timeframe of when I can leave this state. Jobs and teaching positions that are available now won't be available in a year, and likewise there are new jobs and positions that aren't there now but will be there in a year. I could drive myself mad looking for that stuff now as-is. While I haven't necessarily put it on the "back burner," as they say, I have definitely been focusing a lot more on this year ahead of me first and foremost, because right now I have to worry about that work much more.
I also found out this week that my spring semester next year won't be as easy as I originally thought it would be, though it will still be pretty easy. I was originally planning to take thesis hours and nothing else, as I need no more credits to graduate other than those after this coming fall. However, if I don't take at least six hours, I am not classified as a full-time graduate student, and that gets reported to the student loans people -- who will try to start collecting my loan debt early (which, obviously, I cannot afford yet), so I'll have to take at least one other class even though it doesn't matter when it comes to graduation. I've planned to just take the visiting writer again, mainly because it's a 3-hour course and there's virtually no work required for it other than meeting with said writer once a week for an hour. Regardless of whatever/whenever I'm teaching, I can work that in -- and paying for an extra class is a lot cheaper than being forced to start paying my loans back before I'm even done with school. Besides, the visiting writer is usually immensely helpful in critiquing my poetry anyhow, and it's a really fun experience.
This coming week is another strange one as well; I have in-office conferences with all of my students (so I don't really have to "teach" anything), but those take a lot of mentally-draining time, and I've still got my other normal classes as well. However, I do have an extracurricular engagement on Thursday afternoon -- the spring MFA poetry reading in the library.
I've mentioned this before, briefly, but I'll go into it in a little more detail. Y'see, every semester, the library hosts this "MFA Poetry and Fiction Reading Series" or something like that. Depending on the semester, it's either a forum for those graduating to show off, or if there are few graduates, it's a forum for all of us in whatever discipline (fiction in fall, poetry in spring) to actually read our works aloud in an on-campus setting. Oh, and the library films it for the archives. Yes, they film it. They have to get permission from each reader on whether or not they want to be filmed, too. I, of course, don't mind it. Well, except for the fact that if I fuck up, it'll be caught on film for the ages.
This semester it's unique because I'll be the only reader who will return to Flat State University in the fall. There are four of us reading total -- two of them (the ladies) are graduating, and the third is not graduating but is leaving the program to move to Denver. I'm the fourth. Apparently there wasn't much interest in this semester's poetry reading -- but as I haven't read in a year (read: since the last one) I wanted to do it. So I volunteered. The reading is at 4PM on Thursday afternoon, and apparently they're posting flyers about it around campus this week, including all of our names and stuff like that. I'll be sure to get one of them for my "graduate school scrapbook." No, I don't actually have one of those. That's a joke. I'll still get an extra flyer anyway.
As there are only four of us, I'm planning to take a change of clothes with me to school that day, and will dress up as much as I can. Like, shirt and tie dressed up. Part of this is for me, part of this is because I never dress up for anything, and part of it is because Lady is planning to come in for the night so that she can see me read. I'm not yet completely sure whether she'll make it in, but she's planning to, anyway. If she does, maybe I can get her to take some good pics of me at the reading. So yeah, the reading should be fun. I used to be all about the readings, getting exposure out there, showing off, etc. I really haven't been too into it for a long time, however, because I've been so focused on just getting all of my work done during any given semester. I'm actually looking forward to it this time, though. For the most part, anyway. After all, it'll be fun to watch the film afterwards, especially when comparing it to last year's film, when I had a full lumberjack beard and hair down to my shoulders. Yeah, folks -- there's a reason they call me The Wolfman both inside and outside the department.
Next weekend will be spent absolutely immersed in writing -- as mentioned briefly before, my semester-long assignment for my English 681 Editing course is to put together a semester-long mock syllabus and lesson plan for our final (and only) project/grade in the class. While I have started this, including trying to put together an outline/gameplan for it, I have not written up any of the actual coursework for it yet. In essence, I will be designing an entire class from top to bottom over the span of four days so that I can have a "draft" of this plan to give to my professor. As boring as doing that may sound, I find it thrilling and a fun challenge to undertake. For the rest of the semester, aside from any of my other normal work I'll do over the next few weeks, that's the only remaining large task hanging over my head -- so the sooner I get it finished, the better. It'll give me more time to grade, post grades after the final, and get the hell off campus. Counting this coming week, there are only three weeks of classes left. For my students, that means conferences and workshop week, and then the final week of classes where they'll turn in their papers and take the practice exam. Their final is Monday, May 7. This is the first semester I've had where I myself have no final exams, so as soon as I can get their stuff graded and posted on the Banner system, I'm done. As for my own work, as soon as I turn in a completed, more than likely revised lesson plan to said professor, I'll be done as well. That's the other reason I want to get as much of my work out of the way as soon as possible.
So that's about all that's going on right now. Lots of little things to take care of, and life as usual. I'll keep you updated when/if anything else happens.
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