Fall semester: day seventy-nine
For anyone who's curious as to what my life is like at the end of any given semester between the last day of teaching and finals week? This video sums it up nicely:
In the meantime, I'll be grading from now until Monday.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
It's (Almost) Over
Fall semester: day seventy-eight
I taught my last classes of my last fall semester as a grad student yesterday morning.
This is a good thing.
On Monday I give them their exams, return their papers to them (which, between now and then, I will be grading like crazy, as the stack is thicker than a large phone book -- not kidding) and I will be done completely by a week from today.
Now begins the slow crawl to the finish line before I can limp over it and finally crash for a few days before I leave to visit West Virginia. I have eliminated most distractions from my life already; I turned my phone off Monday afternoon -- or, rather, I let it die, as the last of the battery's life petered out sometime around then anyhow. I don't really have any minutes on it (nor can I afford them) right now anyway, so eh. It will remain off probably until long after finals week. I never use the damned thing more than once a week anyway. I don't like phones. Never have. I wonder how long I can go without using it for anything at all, especially since I have no minutes. I'm hoping until after my birthday, since I hate getting slews of happy birthday texts and calls. Tell me on Facebook, yo. Better yet, just leave me alone. Or just send me money. That works too.
Today is a weird day for me. Not only are my office hours finished, but my Playwriting class is canceled (as we're done for the semester now). This means that all I have to be on campus for is my hour in the Writing Center, which has been swamped as of late, and the last Surrealism class of the semester at 7. The problem here is that my Writing Center hour is at 1, and my class is at 7. From 2PM to 7PM I have nothing to do but basically sit around my office. While I could take some papers with me to grade, I'm going to be doing that from Thursday forward anyhow. This may be the only on-campus downtime I have from now until spring semester starts, so I plan to spend it with friends who are actually around -- before I come home and go to sleep.
And believe me, when I sleep tonight, it will be the sleep of the dead -- because I've ended my classes and have nothing else going on tomorrow, I will be sleeping in as late as possible in morning. I need to rest up and prepare myself for the grading of all of those papers, and a rested Brandon means that Brandon's students will more than likely get better grades on those papers. As Daisy isn't coming down this weekend (more than likely next weekend instead), I will be burying myself in grading, coffee-drinking, and cigarette-smoking. I'd live-blog said grades, but I'm pretty sure that violates a number of privacy laws. What I will say is that all of my students but one uploaded their papers on SafeAssign, and the only one who didn't was absent from today's class and didn't turn one in. I've not gotten any emails from said student, either -- usually I'll get a panicked "I was sick, please take my paper" email or something like that, but I haven't.
My advisor got back to me with an email saying that I have to file an exception form with the graduate school in order to be approved for the lesser number of hours and not lose any of my financial aid, and those are kept in the office. Said email was also CC'ed to the office administrators of the department, so they know I'll be going down there soon to take care of that. This is a plus; it's one less thing to worry about, once I get it done. Most graduate students, again, have to do this, especially those who get aid. I've also learned that our last paycheck for the fall semester is on January 4th, so there should be very little gap between that check and when my loans drop. This provides a bit of cushion, thankfully, during the break. Translation: it means I'll be able to eat. This is good; I have a ton of bills to pay this month, with most of them needing to be paid over the course of the next week -- water, electric, and my car insurance first and foremost.
I signed up, in June (the last time I paid it) for the "four payments per year" plan of car insurance. This does exist, but they still bill you the full amount every six months -- only 1/4 of your payment is due, though, on the first due date. It's complicated and I don't like it; it's just easier to pay it all at once. My car insurance has actually gone down a bit, really -- it dropped by about six or seven bucks this time around. I believe that only the first quarter of it ($77 or something like that) is due at the end of the month, though I'll probably just put it all on my Citi card again like I did in the summer and pay it off once I get those loans to drop. Doing that builds my credit, too, and it won't create a huge monetary punch to the gut right at the end of the year.
Today, really, is my last day of classes. I just realized this a while ago. Everything else after today is just finals week stuff. It feels like it should be a momentous occasion of some sort, but it's really not. I'm just glad it'll be over. Everything's slowly falling into place at the end of the semester, and this weekend (after I finish grading) I will finally feel quite free. Hopefully.
I say "hopefully" because I have heard nothing back about my big project for Surrealism. Remember, I gave my professor the option -- if he doesn't like said project -- of just doing the standard 5-8 page paper. If he doesn't like it, I'll be forced to churn one of those out between now and next Wednesday night, which is the due date for said paper. He's had a week and a half to read through my project, so hopefully I get it back tonight. I had a dream last night that I got it back and he gave it a B, so maybe my dreams are prophetic.
In the dream I was pissed off that I'd gotten a B, but eh. In real life I'd be slightly miffed, but overall I probably wouldn't care. Yes, it would mean I'd have a B as the final grade in the class, more than likely, but that doesn't really concern me even if it would be the only B I've gotten in grad school. I've busted my ass for that class, on that project, on the presentation in that class, everything. I've earned an A, but I really don't care. As I told Parker last night, after I turned in my project I entered into total "FUCK IT" mode.
On that note, I must gather my things and make my way to campus. I have to be at work in the Writing Center in an hour, and depending on traffic it may take most of that hour to get to school.
Fare thee well, my friends.
I taught my last classes of my last fall semester as a grad student yesterday morning.
This is a good thing.
On Monday I give them their exams, return their papers to them (which, between now and then, I will be grading like crazy, as the stack is thicker than a large phone book -- not kidding) and I will be done completely by a week from today.
Now begins the slow crawl to the finish line before I can limp over it and finally crash for a few days before I leave to visit West Virginia. I have eliminated most distractions from my life already; I turned my phone off Monday afternoon -- or, rather, I let it die, as the last of the battery's life petered out sometime around then anyhow. I don't really have any minutes on it (nor can I afford them) right now anyway, so eh. It will remain off probably until long after finals week. I never use the damned thing more than once a week anyway. I don't like phones. Never have. I wonder how long I can go without using it for anything at all, especially since I have no minutes. I'm hoping until after my birthday, since I hate getting slews of happy birthday texts and calls. Tell me on Facebook, yo. Better yet, just leave me alone. Or just send me money. That works too.
Today is a weird day for me. Not only are my office hours finished, but my Playwriting class is canceled (as we're done for the semester now). This means that all I have to be on campus for is my hour in the Writing Center, which has been swamped as of late, and the last Surrealism class of the semester at 7. The problem here is that my Writing Center hour is at 1, and my class is at 7. From 2PM to 7PM I have nothing to do but basically sit around my office. While I could take some papers with me to grade, I'm going to be doing that from Thursday forward anyhow. This may be the only on-campus downtime I have from now until spring semester starts, so I plan to spend it with friends who are actually around -- before I come home and go to sleep.
And believe me, when I sleep tonight, it will be the sleep of the dead -- because I've ended my classes and have nothing else going on tomorrow, I will be sleeping in as late as possible in morning. I need to rest up and prepare myself for the grading of all of those papers, and a rested Brandon means that Brandon's students will more than likely get better grades on those papers. As Daisy isn't coming down this weekend (more than likely next weekend instead), I will be burying myself in grading, coffee-drinking, and cigarette-smoking. I'd live-blog said grades, but I'm pretty sure that violates a number of privacy laws. What I will say is that all of my students but one uploaded their papers on SafeAssign, and the only one who didn't was absent from today's class and didn't turn one in. I've not gotten any emails from said student, either -- usually I'll get a panicked "I was sick, please take my paper" email or something like that, but I haven't.
My advisor got back to me with an email saying that I have to file an exception form with the graduate school in order to be approved for the lesser number of hours and not lose any of my financial aid, and those are kept in the office. Said email was also CC'ed to the office administrators of the department, so they know I'll be going down there soon to take care of that. This is a plus; it's one less thing to worry about, once I get it done. Most graduate students, again, have to do this, especially those who get aid. I've also learned that our last paycheck for the fall semester is on January 4th, so there should be very little gap between that check and when my loans drop. This provides a bit of cushion, thankfully, during the break. Translation: it means I'll be able to eat. This is good; I have a ton of bills to pay this month, with most of them needing to be paid over the course of the next week -- water, electric, and my car insurance first and foremost.
I signed up, in June (the last time I paid it) for the "four payments per year" plan of car insurance. This does exist, but they still bill you the full amount every six months -- only 1/4 of your payment is due, though, on the first due date. It's complicated and I don't like it; it's just easier to pay it all at once. My car insurance has actually gone down a bit, really -- it dropped by about six or seven bucks this time around. I believe that only the first quarter of it ($77 or something like that) is due at the end of the month, though I'll probably just put it all on my Citi card again like I did in the summer and pay it off once I get those loans to drop. Doing that builds my credit, too, and it won't create a huge monetary punch to the gut right at the end of the year.
Today, really, is my last day of classes. I just realized this a while ago. Everything else after today is just finals week stuff. It feels like it should be a momentous occasion of some sort, but it's really not. I'm just glad it'll be over. Everything's slowly falling into place at the end of the semester, and this weekend (after I finish grading) I will finally feel quite free. Hopefully.
I say "hopefully" because I have heard nothing back about my big project for Surrealism. Remember, I gave my professor the option -- if he doesn't like said project -- of just doing the standard 5-8 page paper. If he doesn't like it, I'll be forced to churn one of those out between now and next Wednesday night, which is the due date for said paper. He's had a week and a half to read through my project, so hopefully I get it back tonight. I had a dream last night that I got it back and he gave it a B, so maybe my dreams are prophetic.
In the dream I was pissed off that I'd gotten a B, but eh. In real life I'd be slightly miffed, but overall I probably wouldn't care. Yes, it would mean I'd have a B as the final grade in the class, more than likely, but that doesn't really concern me even if it would be the only B I've gotten in grad school. I've busted my ass for that class, on that project, on the presentation in that class, everything. I've earned an A, but I really don't care. As I told Parker last night, after I turned in my project I entered into total "FUCK IT" mode.
On that note, I must gather my things and make my way to campus. I have to be at work in the Writing Center in an hour, and depending on traffic it may take most of that hour to get to school.
Fare thee well, my friends.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Dismantling Myths
One of my cousins posted this list of "20 Things a Mother Should Tell Her Son" on Facebook this morning, and as I read through it, I began to disagree heavily with a lot of them, or otherwise had issues with some of the messages being conveyed in them. While in theory, it's certainly a decent list filled with decent ideas, in practice I have a feeling that it would be a bit more difficult to execute -- not every son is the same. Believe me, I know this; I am my mother's son, for better or worse (but mostly better). So, without any further ado, let me dismantle this list in the places that it needs to be dismantled:
FUCK RELIGION. Of all of the things on this list, I disagree with this one the most. Instead of telling your children to blindly pray to whatever God or Gods you worship, instead foster in them the desire to think for themselves, to examine things from a logical, rational, and scientific perspective. Tell them to ask questions. Tell them to question everything and everyone. Tell them that all we really know of life is what's in the physical world, in the here and now, and what came before or what comes after is meaningless. If you do this? Surprise, not only will they develop their own morals and ethics, but they will be strong ones based in reality and logic, not on a book filled with terms like "thee" and "thou" and "smite."
As I was reading down through this list, I was surprised by all the stuff that was left off it -- important stuff that a mother needs to tell her son, including so many things that my mother told me. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I am my mother's son for better or worse, but mostly better -- she really is responsible for shaping the man I am today probably more than anyone else. My mother divorced my father before my fifth birthday, and for most of my childhood she worked hard -- sometimes two jobs -- to raise and take care of me. When I went astray (and, at times, I did) it was she who did everything she could to get me back on track, and she succeeded. It was she who I wanted to make proud, to show that I could be a worthwhile human being, to be successful for. I owe almost everything in my life to my mother, and still do -- I love her and respect her, even though we may not necessarily agree on everything, as highly as any son possibly can -- and words cannot describe how grateful I am to have a mother who was (and is) as good to me as mine is.
That being said, I have created a new list, a list of things that my mother told me as well as things that all mothers should tell their sons:
I will say that a great number of these things my own mother told me while I was growing up, including some of the more controversial ones (such as #4, which I paraphrased and added to a bit), and the rest are things that if I have children, I hope their own mother will tell them -- and if she doesn't, I will. The world's a tough place and life isn't perfect. There are many, many more things I could add to my own list above, but I'm pretty sure I've covered most of the basics.
And so, I'll end this post now. I have a lot to do tonight, including assembling Christmas gifts and taking care of various household chores such as cleaning, laundry, and taking the trash out. I hope you enjoyed.
20 Things a Mother Should Tell Her SonNot necessarily true. At all. In fact, I don't even know what the "don't take something away from her that you can't give back" thing really means, to be honest with you. It's rather cryptic. And, aside from the fact that saying that the male will set the tone for the sexual relationship is highly sexist, it's not been my experience in almost every relationship I've ever been in, to be honest with you. If a relationship progresses to sexual stages, I've found that one can be damned sure it's going to be on the woman's terms, not yours. There's no such thing as "going caveman" on a woman anymore. If you get that reference and what I mean by it, congratulations. Let's hope you're a respectful man who honors his woman's wishes and desires.
1. You will set the tone for the sexual relationship, so don't take something away from her that you can't give back.
This sounds more like advice that a father would give to a son, not a mother. My mother, for instance, did not even become a fan of sports of most sorts until she was about my age; while I did play football off and on in the late 90s, there was no need for my mother to encourage me to do this. I wanted to do it on my own. And there are many other activities that will teach a man to "win honorably, lose gracefully, respect authority, manage your time and stay out of trouble." All of those characteristics in my own life did not come from playing sports -- all of them came from playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends. And I still learned them just as effectively as a sport would have taught them to me.
2. Play a sport. It will teach you how to win honorably, lose gracefully, respect authority, work with others, manage your time and stay out of trouble. And maybe even throw or catch.
Fair enough. I have no issue with this one.
3. Use careful aim when you pee. Somebody's got to clean that up, you know.
I think this advice is applicable to anyone, from anyone, not just from a mother to her son.
4. Save money when you're young because you're going to need it some day.
I requested, even before high school, that my mother show me how to run the washer and dryer so that I could do my own laundry. By the time I was in college, a fair amount of the time I was even buying my own detergent. It's not hard to run an oven or a vacuum (I was vacuuming the house for my mother when I was in elementary school) and as a casually-dressed man, I have no use for an iron. I own one, but I've never plugged it in for use, and I'll probably get rid of it when I move out of this house in the spring. As for the dishwasher in my parents' house, it's a modular one which runs off the sink spigot. I've never used it. But, the one here in my own home I run all the time.
5. Allow me to introduce you to the dishwasher, oven, washing machine, iron, vacuum, mop and broom. Now please go use them.
6. Pray and be a spiritual leader.
FUCK RELIGION. Of all of the things on this list, I disagree with this one the most. Instead of telling your children to blindly pray to whatever God or Gods you worship, instead foster in them the desire to think for themselves, to examine things from a logical, rational, and scientific perspective. Tell them to ask questions. Tell them to question everything and everyone. Tell them that all we really know of life is what's in the physical world, in the here and now, and what came before or what comes after is meaningless. If you do this? Surprise, not only will they develop their own morals and ethics, but they will be strong ones based in reality and logic, not on a book filled with terms like "thee" and "thou" and "smite."
Absolutely. But I would also add this -- if you see someone being violent to (or being unjust to) another, or to you, and they deserve to have the snot beaten out of them? Do it. Some people say that violence is never the answer. Hell, Daisy says that to me all the time (she also hates the fact that I own a gun, many knives, and a sword). I disagree, to a large extent. Sometimes it is. There are many ways to make sure a terrible person will never hurt you or someone you love ever again -- and one of the most effective ways is to beat the living shit out of said person. Sometimes it's deserved. Not often, not even close to often, but sometimes. As mentioned above, there's no proof that the concept of "they'll get what's coming to them" or other forms of afterlife-like-karma exists. We are karma. We are what's coming to them. There's no automatic justice in this world -- sometimes we have to dish it out ourselves, regardless of the consequences, in the name of doing what's right. And sometimes, in extreme situations (like when you see a guy beating his wife or children) I personally think it's absolutely acceptable to take out your baseball bat and go to town on him. My thoughts on this have not changed since I was very young, and will never change. This is also why I absolutely support the death penalty despite being very liberal on almost all other fronts.
7. Don't ever be a bully and don't ever start a fight, but if some idiot clocks you, please defend yourself.
Nobody can take it away from you, but they can make it relatively useless if you let them. Don't let them. Learn everything you can. Study things that you're not necessarily interested in, or things that may appear useless at first glance, to become a smarter, more rounded individual. Don't let anyone make you feel inferior when you're not, and if you are actually inferior to someone else, never let them know. The satisfaction of subtly being better than (or making everyone perceive that you are the better/smarter person) in every sort of knowledge-based or educational situation is a finely-honed and crafted skill that, when perfected, nobody will be able to take away from you either. But don't be smug or arrogant about it; subtlety is key. Trust me, I know. And I also know many arrogant, smug dickwads -- but for every arrogant, smug dickwad I know, I also know someone who is quietly very intelligent and educated, but doesn't hold it over anyone. Be one of those people -- but also don't be afraid to whip out your knowledge and drop science on someone if they're being an asshole.
8. Your knowledge and education is something that nobody can take away from you.
I think the better advice here would be something along the lines of if you're going to invest the time in looking, at least find the right person for you when you're done. Everyone will make mistakes. Both men and women, despite their best intentions, will occasionally treat each other badly or slog through relationships that are flawed and/or unfulfilling. Yes, of course, you should do your best to treat women kindly, but the golden rule applies here as well: treat everyone as you would like to be treated, not just women. Forever is a long time to live alone, yes, but we don't live forever. We do, eventually, die. The focal message here is that you shouldn't waste your time on someone you hate or who hates you, because all you really need in life is yourself. And you can always get a pet if you get lonely and never find anyone who fully "gets you."
9. Treat women kindly. Forever is a long time to live alone and it's even longer to live with somebody who hates your guts.
Sure. Okay. I'll agree with this.
10. Take pride in your appearance.
Okay, again, I agree with this as well. But know when to be strong and when to be tender. Yes, it's okay to cry, even at movies, even at girly movies and rom-coms. And some musicals. ONLY SOME musicals. Yes, it's okay to hug and kiss other men when the situation warrants it. It is not okay to be a cold-hearted prick when you should be strong; being strong means being strong when your strength is needed by those who love you, and I also think it's only fair that those loved ones should be strong for you in times of need as well.
11. Be strong and tender at the same time.
Absolutely true, and I agree with this one probably more than anything else on the list of things a mother should tell her son. Gender equality isn't just a concept, and gender roles are manufactured. Mutual respect is key in any relationship if it's going to last. I'm also sort of stymied as to why this list is so hetero-centric. Hey Moms out there, there's a chance your son(s) will be gay, too. So keep that in mind while you're telling them about equality.
12. A woman can do everything that you can do. This includes her having a successful career and you changing diapers at 3 A.M. Mutual respect is the key to a good relationship.
Yes, yes they do. And I still -- at age thirty -- say both on almost a daily basis.
13. "Yes ma'am" and "yes sir" still go a long way.
Hey. Seriously. Sometimes balls need to be scratched. What a double-standard. If a guy sees a woman scratching her crotch, ass, or boob, we're not going to be offended by it. Things itch. Deal with it. This should be removed from the list.
14. The reason that they're called "private parts" is because they're "private". Please do not scratch them in public.
Peer pressure is only scary if you let it affect you, and some people will never be a leader of anything -- it's not in their nature. Instead, this should be something along the lines of be your own person, and don't do anything you don't want to do.
15. Peer pressure is a scary thing. Be a good leader and others will follow.
Sure it is. Until she asks what you did wrong, you tell her that you didn't do anything wrong and just wanted to get her flowers, she doesn't believe you, and a fight ensues. Trust me, I've been in this situation before. Instead, be nice at all times, be caring, loving, and sweet, and stick to gifts on meaningful occasions only -- making sure never to forget those dates, ever.16. Bringing her flowers for no reason is always a good idea.
Meaningless pap. Needs to be removed from this list. Blind patriotism/nationalism is part of what's crippling and/or otherwise destroying this country. Fight for what you believe in, not for an idea or "-ism." Our country is quickly becoming a very, very frightening place for many who live here -- we have no universal healthcare, our minimum wage is frighteningly low, taxes are high, racism is still shockingly prevalent, and mass discrimination on multiple levels is still forced upon homosexuals and women. I live in Kansas -- quite possibly one of the reddest states in the country -- and I see all of this firsthand on a daily basis. I'm sick of people telling me to "be proud of my country" and "feel lucky that you have it as good as you do." I do feel lucky already -- I realize that my life isn't that bad. But while I am proud of many things my country does, I am just as ashamed of many, many others.17. Be patriotic.
No, it's not. But it is pretty damned funny a lot of the time.18. Potty humor isn't the only thing that's humorous.
No, she won't (and again with the hetero-centric stuff). Ever. Regardless of who one chooses as a spouse, there should never be any sort of "gatekeeper" ideology at play. If you want to see your grandchildren, you get to see your grandchildren -- that's just how it works. I would expect nothing less from my wife, as well; if she wanted her parents to spend time with the kids, I would never be opposed to that. There shouldn't be any "no" or "you're not allowed" in a happy marriage when it comes to the kids spending time with family or their grandparents; if there is, it's probably a sign that the marriage was a bad idea or is otherwise going through problems. Children should never be used as "leverage," and family is family. I can understand if one spouse or the other doesn't like the in-laws, or otherwise doesn't get along with them that well, but that shouldn't be taken out on the kids, and they shouldn't be deprived of the grandparent experience. I only have one grandparent left -- my eighty-five-year-old grandmother, and that woman helped raise me. She is responsible for who I am as a man today as much as my parents and siblings are.
19. Please choose your spouse wisely. My daughter-in-law will be the gatekeeper for me spending time with you and my grandchildren.
Um, yeah, about that. I do call my mother, infrequently, but about once or twice a month on average. I also email back and forth with her at least two or three times a week, so I think that counts as well. I would call much more if I did not have a prepaid phone plan. But yes, I agree, this is very important. For most men in the world, nobody will ever care about them or love them as much as their mothers do.20. Remember to call your mother because I might be missing you.
As I was reading down through this list, I was surprised by all the stuff that was left off it -- important stuff that a mother needs to tell her son, including so many things that my mother told me. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I am my mother's son for better or worse, but mostly better -- she really is responsible for shaping the man I am today probably more than anyone else. My mother divorced my father before my fifth birthday, and for most of my childhood she worked hard -- sometimes two jobs -- to raise and take care of me. When I went astray (and, at times, I did) it was she who did everything she could to get me back on track, and she succeeded. It was she who I wanted to make proud, to show that I could be a worthwhile human being, to be successful for. I owe almost everything in my life to my mother, and still do -- I love her and respect her, even though we may not necessarily agree on everything, as highly as any son possibly can -- and words cannot describe how grateful I am to have a mother who was (and is) as good to me as mine is.
That being said, I have created a new list, a list of things that my mother told me as well as things that all mothers should tell their sons:
- It's okay if you're gay; I will still love you no matter what, so be yourself and be proud of who you are -- I will love and accept anyone who loves you or who you decide to love; love knows no boundaries.
- Life is hard and rarely fair, and you have to work hard for everything you get in it. Nobody's going to hand you anything for free or without conditions, so don't expect that and don't feel entitled to a free ride.
- Don't be a douchebag. No, seriously, that's it. Don't be a douchebag.
- If someone is a douchebag to you, it is perfectly acceptable to tell them to go fuck themselves, or something similar. If that doesn't make them go away, hit them. Hard. Preferably hard enough to where they don't get back up. Use a blunt object if necessary.
- Act like you've got some sense of tact and social graces. There are times and places to be serious, just like there are times and places for fun and goofiness. Know the difference between the two.
- Don't let your vices control you. Any vices.
- Never let anyone belittle you for who you are or what you do with your life; those who do are usually jealous or envious.
- Similarly, cut "poisonous" or otherwise "toxic" people out of your life; those who truly love and care about you will always stand by you, and those who don't are not worthy of your time.
- Do not perpetuate violence, discrimination, or hate towards any one person or any particular group of people. Everyone is equal; whether you like or dislike someone should be based on who they are as a person, not on their race, sexuality, or ideologies.
- Get an education that means something to you and will allow you to enjoy what you do for a living, not simply because it will make you a lot of money. Money is meaningless if you are too miserable to enjoy it.
- Similarly, money cannot buy you happiness, but having it will make your life much more tolerable and less stressful, as it will solve many problems. Therefore, take care of your finances accordingly to the best of your ability.
- Fall in love cautiously and slowly, not quickly or casually. Choose carefully who you form relationships with, because your psychological makeup will be greatly affected by whether those relationships fail or succeed -- and if they fail, you will carry those battle wounds with you subconsciously into every relationship you enter thereafter, whether you think you will or not.
- News flash: most relationships do fail. Pick up the pieces and move on. If someone doesn't love you, falls out of love with you, or leaves you, it's their loss -- not yours.
- Marry, or stay married, only for love -- not for money, not for children, not for sex, not for material possessions. Only love. If anything else comes into the equation, then your marriage will probably not survive.
- Friendships can be as as powerful and as close as family bonds, and interactions with your friends will also help to shape who you are, so choose carefully who you want to associate with or be associated with.
- It is okay to cry, be sensitive, and to let your emotions out when necessary. Don't bottle them up.
- It is also okay to be angry, to yell, to freak out on occasion -- but be sure you have a damned good reason to do so, and make sure it is productive. Don't be a drama queen.
- Take good care of your car and it will take good care of you.
- Just because you drive safely doesn't mean everyone else does. Be on the lookout for idiots, everywhere.
- Foster a unique skillset that will serve you in times of need or as a backup plan if you otherwise fail at life -- for example, learn how to fix a computer. Learn how to build things. Learn how to run a cash register. Learn how to cook. Learn as much as you can in many varied fields so that you can fall back on those skills when, or if, times are tough.
- Be an overachiever. Do everything you can to the best of your ability, and go above and beyond the call of duty, and you will be recognized for your effort -- because most people only do the bare minimum.
- Along those lines, also know when to quit.
- Everyone gets depressed sometimes. Don't let that depression dominate your life, and if you think it's going to, get help for it -- don't suffer through it alone.
- Keep a clean living space. This means vacuum, do your laundry and dishes when you need to, and to pick up after yourself when necessary -- nobody is going to do this for you, and this mentality also will extend to the rest of your life once you get into the habit of it.
- Keep yourself as healthy as possible; this includes things like exercise, eating right, and taking your vitamins -- but don't go overboard. Everything comes in moderation; balance the "good" with the "bad."
- If you can, grow a thick beard. Not only will it make you look older and wiser, but subconsciously, people will respect you more than if you stay prim-and-properly clean shaven.
- Don't let society tell you what is fashionable in regards to your clothing, tastes in music, movies, or other entertainment -- what you like is what you like regardless of whether other people deem it "good" or "bad."
- Still, learn that there is indeed a "good" and "bad" when it comes to these things, and know that you will be judged on your opinions of them whether you want to be or not, so develop a broad spectrum.
- Disregard what most other people think of you or say about you; the world is a vicious place filled with many mentally-disturbed individuals, and in the long run none of it will matter.
- Get a pet before you have children, and possibly even before you enter a serious relationship with someone else -- it will teach you responsibility, compassion, and how to care for another living being.
- Learn how to defend yourself not only with words, but fists/feet and other weapons. Everyone should know how to properly wield a knife and load/shoot/clean a firearm -- learn this on your own, and spend time perfecting these skills by yourself; avoid the military institution at all costs.
- Learn how to live alone and be self-reliant; you will not always have someone to talk to or spend time with, and you will not always have someone to love or otherwise take care of. Learn to be at peace with yourself and who/where you are in life, even if it's not the best of situations.
- Read. Read a lot. Whether you read books, blogs, newspapers, poems, scholarly articles, or anything else, read. You will develop your vocabulary and will be a much more interesting and articulate person. Sometimes you must force yourself to read things you don't necessarily enjoy in order to become this person. As Calvin's dad would say, "it builds character."
- It is perfectly acceptable to not have a religion or spiritual philosophy in life. Nobody truly knows anything about what comes before or after our existence on this planet, but your morals, ethics, and values do not have to come from a book, nor should they -- form them yourself.
- Similarly, if you do have a religion or belief system of any sort, never force it on anyone else. In fact, just shut up about it unless specifically asked. Don't preach or try to convert people to your way of thinking -- remember, those people have made conscious choices just like you have, and if you don't agree with them, at least agree to disagree and leave it at that. There should be no desire to "show someone the error of their ways" when it comes to belief systems or other philosophies -- their ways are just as valid as yours are.
- Don't hold grudges and don't be vindictive. Life's too short and most of the time, it's not worth it.
- When revenge is warranted, however, exact it in such a fashion that its recipient will never know what's coming, and in such a fashion that its effects will be felt in myriad ways for a long time.
- True revenge of this nature is warranted very, very rarely -- maybe once or twice in a lifetime -- so be sure that you use it wisely. Don't be petty.
- When there is a task to be done, do it -- don't procrastinate. Don't let things hang over your head, as they'll create needless stress.
- Get health insurance. You'll eventually need it.
- Get life insurance. Your loved ones will eventually need it.
- Being social is overrated.
- Being single is underrated.
- Sex is vastly overrated.
- Compassion is vastly underrated.
- However, this being said, do experiment with things and people. I mean this in the broadest sense possible, in most of the ways all of you reading this can imagine. This will allow you to experience what you like and dislike, will broaden your mind, and will more than likely provide some good stories to tell later -- but be responsible, and don't go overboard.
- Finally, if you take nothing else from this list, remember this and this alone: all you ever need in life to survive is yourself. You don't need money. You don't need possessions, a car, a job, a religion, someone to love or love you, or anything else. All of those things have been pushed upon you by society and the media to make you feel that you will not be whole without them. You are. You just need yourself. Live your life the way you want to live it. If you can't live your life the way you want to live it, then make the best of the situation and do what you can with it. Nobody can hold you back from anything you desire but yourself. Ever.
I will say that a great number of these things my own mother told me while I was growing up, including some of the more controversial ones (such as #4, which I paraphrased and added to a bit), and the rest are things that if I have children, I hope their own mother will tell them -- and if she doesn't, I will. The world's a tough place and life isn't perfect. There are many, many more things I could add to my own list above, but I'm pretty sure I've covered most of the basics.
And so, I'll end this post now. I have a lot to do tonight, including assembling Christmas gifts and taking care of various household chores such as cleaning, laundry, and taking the trash out. I hope you enjoyed.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Issues, Part I
Fall semester: day seventy-five
There is one week remaining in the actual semester, and thus all of us are wrapping everything up as much as possible. I am not immune to this myself, of course -- I've been trying to finish any and all work I have left as quickly and efficiently as possible, even at the cost of sleep or sacrificing time I would otherwise be spending with Daisy or friends on campus. I didn't think I would have any real work to do this weekend, for example, but I do. I'll be spending many hours grading the stack of rewrites I've received from my students, one by one, so that I can get those papers back to them on Tuesday...which is the last day of my class.
As you know if you read my last blog post here, the month of December is a bit of a nightmare for me on many fronts. While I plotted out a schedule for the month then, it is probably going to change here and there as I juggle everything that must be done. In reality, I really shouldn't be spending my overnight hours writing here -- I should, instead, be doing some of the stuff that needs to be done over the weekend while I am awake and able to do so. I've started some of this already; tonight I vacuumed the downstairs of the house and did all of the laundry I needed to do. I'm waiting on the water tank to refill before I run a load in the dishwasher, as well, as I plan to cook a little this weekend if I can. While I do have to grade student papers, I don't have anything else that's pressing. I have a small bit of breathing space, so to speak. Not a lot, but some. I plan to use it to take care of some of the stuff around the house as much as I can, because I won't get the chance to do said stuff again for another two weeks or so. Also, as I'm working on a limited budget of sorts through the end of the year, it's not like I can go out and spend a lot of money on shopping or anything like that. I've tried to keep my cupboards, fridge, and freezer full of enough food to live on frugally for a while, and for the most part I've been successful with that. I do have a few little things to take care of -- namely getting the last part of Daisy's Christmas gift (yes, there are parts to it), but I can do that at any point over the course of the next few days.
The flights back home to visit over Christmas have been finalized; my mother ordered my plane tickets today, and I am waiting to get an emailed itinerary and ticket number from her travel agent, but they've been booked. As expected, I fly out at 6AM on the 21st, and will be back on the ground in Wichita by around 4:30PM on the 26th. Here's hoping that the weather -- just for those five days -- will cooperate. Let it be miserable and nigh-impossible to drive/travel anywhere for the rest of my winter break, I don't care, but I need those five days to be normal, catastrophe-free days.
Upon learning that the trip is now set and that I will be unable to do anything for my birthday (as I fly out at 6AM the next morning -- meaning I'll leave the house around 3AM), Daisy asked me, "so, when are we doing Christmas?"
It's a really good question. I really don't know. My only real "free time" for the month will come between the 13th and the 20th; that one, solitary week, as mentioned before, I desperately need not only to decompress from the semester, but now to prepare for the trip as much as I can. Yet, there's also a dilemma at play here -- Daisy is supposed to come in on Wednesday night this coming week so that she can attend the department Christmas party with me a week from tonight. A week from now is too early to "do Christmas," let alone give us enough time to actually enjoy it, and after I return from West Virginia, the holiday itself will be over. I will also mention that I will not be done assembling her own Christmas gifts by a week from now, as this coming week is the last week of classes -- almost all of my attention will be focused on wrapping things up. That would leave that one open week the only real time we'd get to do anything before I leave, and the logistics of that are somewhat frightening and still up in the air due to those aforementioned trip preparations that I will now be doing.
It would also mean that she'd be driving down here and back two weekends in a row, or barring that, at least twice over the course of any seven-day period. That's a ton of driving for her, a ton of time spent on the road, and expensive for her when she does not currently have a job. Yes, her car is newer than mine, gets better gas mileage, and has four new tires on it, but the cost of gas alone from Omaha to here and back once, not to mention twice, isn't something she can really afford right now. Although I know it's an afterthought to her, a very small issue at best -- after all, she says, it's worth it to see me -- it's not insignificant, and not something I would ask her to do when she's budgeting just as much as I am right now, if not more.
I will also mention as an aside that I've offered numerous times to fill her car's gas tank for her, yet she's never let me do so. In fact, she outright refuses.
As for my own car, it'll be due for an oil change almost as soon as I get back from West Virginia, and if I have the money at that time I'll also have them fix the loud and rumbly wheel bearing -- something that's not causing any real problems currently, but also something that I really, really can't just let go indefinitely, not when I'm putting 200 miles a week on the car. Again, I have to keep it in the best shape possible so that I can keep it running at least through May. While it's not given me any problems as of late, the clock is ticking.
"Well, here's what we can do," I said. "Next weekend, as you know, you won't be able to stay that long anyway, since I'll be grading everything I have left for my students. I don't really care about the Christmas party, so if you want to wait until the semester's over and then come down to 'do Christmas' before I fly out, we can. It's up to you."
Note: all of this is true. As much as I like the department Christmas party, if I can't make it, it's not a huge concern to me. I didn't go last year, either, but that's mainly because I was so swamped that I didn't even think about it, and I wouldn't have gone alone anyway. I also have a ton of work to do next weekend -- the least of which will be grading every single one of my students' final papers in rapid succession. If Daisy decides not to come down, I won't go this year either -- I am hard-pressed to do anything social without her by my side, especially since it takes me great motivation to leave my house unless I have to anyhow. I gave Daisy the option because, as I said, I don't want her to have to make numerous trips, especially not for something as frivolous as a 2-hour department Christmas party. Yes, we'd get time together as well, but the real justification in asking her to come down this coming week was simply for the party; she was just here the weekend before Thanksgiving.
Also note: this makes me sound like I'm getting tired of seeing her or something, and that could not be farther from the truth. It's a long, long drive for her. Believe me, I love her very much and want to see her every day, but it's just not possible for that to happen right now. She understands that as much as I do, and while we may not like it, it's just how things are.
"It's up to you," she told me. "You choose. I'll do whatever you want."
So we made the decision to skip the Christmas party in favor of me being able to rest up a little more and finish all of my grading next weekend without distraction, social interaction, or errands to run. She'll more than likely come down after the semester is over, in that week I have off between the end of the semester and when I fly out the day after my birthday. That'll also let me get everything all sorted out for Christmas, as well -- while I purchased the last gifts I needed to get for her just a little while ago, everything still needs to be, um, assembled. That's the only way I can put it without giving anything away. And that assembly takes time -- time I don't have until the semester ends.
As mentioned before, I turned in my big final project for surrealism on Monday afternoon. On Wednesday night, my professor told me that he'd received it, but hadn't had the chance to look at it yet. I told him to take his time. As you know, the reason I turned it in to him early is so that if he doesn't like it, I can just produce the standard paper assignment. The standard paper assignment's due date has been pushed up to December 12, which will be my last day on campus anyhow. This gives me a little under two weeks to produce a 5-8 page paper if I have to, though I sincerely hope I don't have to. My friends who have looked at the project in its printed form have found it highly impressive, and clearly demonstrative of not only my understanding of the concepts of the class, but in understanding and utilizing those concepts' practical applications. So yes, obviously, I hope he's impressed with it as well. I will be somewhat (read: very) unhappy if he isn't. I'm guessing he'll look at it over the weekend and that I may have it waiting for me in my box when I return to campus on Monday.
Again, at this point, I'll take a flat B in the class if I have to -- I really, really don't care. It'll irritate me, yes, as it would be the only B I will have received in grad school, but I so don't care. The overall result would be the same -- I will have completed the course requirement, I will have passed, and I can move the hell on. Really, as I enter my last semester in the spring, that's all that's important. The end goal is that piece of expensive paper that says I have my Master's degree. Nothing else matters to me, really, at this point, and each class I complete is simply a means to an end.
There have been other issues that have popped up, as well -- today, I received this email from the graduate school:
Okay. Well, duh. It's my last semester.
However, this is a problem. Because of the way the graduate program for the English department is set up, nobody will ever have a final semester that's a full nine hours unless they've had a semester in the past that wasn't a full nine hours, or conversely, a twelve-hour semester. As of the end of this semester, I have completed 45 of the 48 required credit hours for the degree program, with the remaining three being next semester's other half of my thesis hours. I've never taken a semester of less than nine hours. From Fall 2010 to Fall 2012, I have taken nine hours each semester. 9 x 5 semesters = 45. Were I to take nine hours in my last semester, I would have 54 credit hours when I only need 48, and only 48 will count towards the degree program. As it stands, when I graduate I will have 51 hours "on the clock," so to speak, because I elected to take the visiting writer course in the spring just to stay full time. I was also told that six hours, for a graduate student, is full time, when apparently it's not.
The problem comes in because I've already completed ALL of my course requirements and am taking the extra visiting writer course because I want to, not because I have to. It won't count towards my degree at all. Had I not signed up for that, I would've only had three hours on my schedule for spring.
Like I said, unless you've fucked up and have to repeat something, or have taken extra hours during a semester in the past, nobody has a full-time schedule their last semester on campus as a grad student. For most people this isn't a problem; however, I get student loans because otherwise I can't survive on the absolutely miniscule amount of pay they provide us as GTAs. That money is very, very important. And basically what they're telling me is that they're going to cut it down because I'm not taking nine hours, but six.
I emailed my advisor, the interim director of the MFA program, and asked what can be done about this -- if there's some sort of exception that she/we can file with the graduate school to where they'll realize "hey, this guy is graduating and doesn't need any more hours, but still needs the money" -- otherwise I'm going to be forced to operate on a reduced budget for my entire last semester as a grad student, which will even further throw my life into chaos once I try to move out of here after graduation. I know that some sort of exception or stay like this is possible; my friend Suri got one when she stopped teaching and only took three hours so that she could finish her thesis without having to start paying loans back during that time, or something...which is also something else I'm worried about. I obviously can't start paying loans back while I'm in school -- I can't start paying anything back until after I graduate and find a job. So really, I don't know what the hell's going on, and I'm hoping that something can be set into place to where I can just finish my work and graduate without being forced to be poorer than I already am.
While I'll be okay if I have to operate on a reduced budget, it will not be ideal in the least -- if it wasn't for the spare money I had in September, I wouldn't have been able to fix the car, for example. On a reduced budget, money for very important things like that simply disappears. I'm not independently wealthy -- all the money I have comes from somewhere, and most of it comes from those loans while I'm in graduate school. If I made $20k a year from being a GTA alone, this would not be a problem -- but I don't. I don't make even half that, sad to say. And it's expensive just to survive.
Regardless, there's not a lot I can do about it. I'll either get a stay of execution (so to speak) or I won't, and if I won't there's no use in wringing hands over it, especially not when it's the last two weeks of the semester and I already have enough to do, worry about, and take care of. It's just frustrating. If there's anything I've learned about being in graduate school, it's that nothing is easy and that everything is much more complicated than it should be, especially one's finances. On the plus side, in the spring I will at least get a bit of a boost from my tax returns when I file them and they come in, and I will have some money to work with.
Of course, a good chunk of money between now and then will be spent on getting books I need to read for my comprehensive exams, so...
Anyway. So there's that.
"Are you stressed?" Daisy asked me.
"...no more than usual," I replied after a pause.
"So, yes then."
She knows me so well.
In the midst of everything else going on, I had a stroke of genius on Thursday night. As I knew my parents would finalize the plane tickets, I began thinking of ways that I could actually carry my gifts for them back home. I'll be there for five days, and I have a small backpack. Well, it's not really small, but it's too small to carry much of anything but my clothes in when I travel. I don't own a suitcase because I don't want one, and any suitcase would have to be checked and stowed whenever I do travel, which is quite rare. I don't check bags. Ever. I use the overhead compartment or the under-the-seat storage for my stuff. Not only am I not going to risk losing any bags, but I also don't need much when I go anywhere. A few sets of clothes, a few packs of smokes and my DS/mp3 player, and I'm fine. Everything else, I carry on me -- my wallet, watch, keys, etc. I pack remarkably light when I fly back home, as I do my laundry when I'm there (which eliminates the need for lots of clothing).
This creates a problem, however, when I'll be flying back home for Christmas this year. While I pack lightly, it is a small backpack and will be full. Not too full, but full enough to where I won't be able to fit the gifts I've prepared for my parents into it along with everything else. So, I came up with a plan.
I repurposed one of the boxes I've received from Amazon over the past few months, all of which I save (as I'll need boxes when I eventually move). I took off all the markings, blacked out all the box-printed UPC codes, and readdressed it to myself...at my address at my parents' place back home. Inside it, I stuffed their gifts, and sealed it up. About three or four days before I leave, I will take it to the post office and mail it back home. By the time I arrive on the ground when I get home, it'll be there, and I will have been able to avoid carrying it with me onto the plane. I will then be able to wrap the individual gifts (none of which cost me any money and/or are otherwise of concern) once I get there. Anything else I acquire between now and the trip I will do the same with. The box I have now will probably cost me about five bucks to mail, which is perfectly fine with me. Whatever works, I say.
I'm excited about the trip, of course, though I am a bit apprehensive about it with regards to money and to the weather back home (or here, really). Even though it's during the holidays, it should still do me some good mentally -- provide me with a bit of decompression time and quiet solace. Due to the actual dates of the trip, I doubt I'll be able to see any of my friends while I'm back home (with the exception of Wayne and Jane, who I'll probably be able to see when I fly in), but it will still be good to get out of Kansas for a few days, and it will be the first Christmas I will have spent with my parents since 2005.
This weekend will be spent watching football and grading a stack of my students' rewritten papers. In a sense, I'll basically be doing the same thing this weekend that I'll be doing next weekend to a much greater degree. I'm trying to finish everything I can while I have the time to do it. Granted, I'll have a bit more time this next week to do more work, as Daisy won't be coming down, but I'll also have the itch -- the itch to be goddamned done already. On Monday, I'll only be there for my Playwriting class. My least teaching day is Tuesday; I collect my students' papers and they'll fill out their evaluations for me. On Wednesday, I'll be going in late because I don't have formal office hours (since the class will be over), and I'll be there for Playwriting and for our last Surrealism class (thank CHRIST that class will be over). After that? My semester is really finished, with the exception of finals week. From now until the semester officially ends, I will only make five trips back and forth before everything is finished. I told my students yesterday that next Thursday at our normal class time, since we'll be done, I will be at home in bed dead asleep. And this is true -- I probably will. I'll give my students their final on Monday the 10th, and will return to campus on Wednesday the 12th for our last "meeting" for the Playwriting class at 5:40 that night, but this coming week wraps up everything. And it couldn't come soon enough.
As you folks know (because I've written about it here many times), fall semester sucks on all levels. To have the last one of my graduate school career coming to an end is nothing short of wonderful. There are many things (and people) that have gotten me through it. Daisy being by my side has been a huge help. But now, it's almost over. Finally, finally almost over.
There is one week remaining in the actual semester, and thus all of us are wrapping everything up as much as possible. I am not immune to this myself, of course -- I've been trying to finish any and all work I have left as quickly and efficiently as possible, even at the cost of sleep or sacrificing time I would otherwise be spending with Daisy or friends on campus. I didn't think I would have any real work to do this weekend, for example, but I do. I'll be spending many hours grading the stack of rewrites I've received from my students, one by one, so that I can get those papers back to them on Tuesday...which is the last day of my class.
As you know if you read my last blog post here, the month of December is a bit of a nightmare for me on many fronts. While I plotted out a schedule for the month then, it is probably going to change here and there as I juggle everything that must be done. In reality, I really shouldn't be spending my overnight hours writing here -- I should, instead, be doing some of the stuff that needs to be done over the weekend while I am awake and able to do so. I've started some of this already; tonight I vacuumed the downstairs of the house and did all of the laundry I needed to do. I'm waiting on the water tank to refill before I run a load in the dishwasher, as well, as I plan to cook a little this weekend if I can. While I do have to grade student papers, I don't have anything else that's pressing. I have a small bit of breathing space, so to speak. Not a lot, but some. I plan to use it to take care of some of the stuff around the house as much as I can, because I won't get the chance to do said stuff again for another two weeks or so. Also, as I'm working on a limited budget of sorts through the end of the year, it's not like I can go out and spend a lot of money on shopping or anything like that. I've tried to keep my cupboards, fridge, and freezer full of enough food to live on frugally for a while, and for the most part I've been successful with that. I do have a few little things to take care of -- namely getting the last part of Daisy's Christmas gift (yes, there are parts to it), but I can do that at any point over the course of the next few days.
The flights back home to visit over Christmas have been finalized; my mother ordered my plane tickets today, and I am waiting to get an emailed itinerary and ticket number from her travel agent, but they've been booked. As expected, I fly out at 6AM on the 21st, and will be back on the ground in Wichita by around 4:30PM on the 26th. Here's hoping that the weather -- just for those five days -- will cooperate. Let it be miserable and nigh-impossible to drive/travel anywhere for the rest of my winter break, I don't care, but I need those five days to be normal, catastrophe-free days.
Upon learning that the trip is now set and that I will be unable to do anything for my birthday (as I fly out at 6AM the next morning -- meaning I'll leave the house around 3AM), Daisy asked me, "so, when are we doing Christmas?"
It's a really good question. I really don't know. My only real "free time" for the month will come between the 13th and the 20th; that one, solitary week, as mentioned before, I desperately need not only to decompress from the semester, but now to prepare for the trip as much as I can. Yet, there's also a dilemma at play here -- Daisy is supposed to come in on Wednesday night this coming week so that she can attend the department Christmas party with me a week from tonight. A week from now is too early to "do Christmas," let alone give us enough time to actually enjoy it, and after I return from West Virginia, the holiday itself will be over. I will also mention that I will not be done assembling her own Christmas gifts by a week from now, as this coming week is the last week of classes -- almost all of my attention will be focused on wrapping things up. That would leave that one open week the only real time we'd get to do anything before I leave, and the logistics of that are somewhat frightening and still up in the air due to those aforementioned trip preparations that I will now be doing.
It would also mean that she'd be driving down here and back two weekends in a row, or barring that, at least twice over the course of any seven-day period. That's a ton of driving for her, a ton of time spent on the road, and expensive for her when she does not currently have a job. Yes, her car is newer than mine, gets better gas mileage, and has four new tires on it, but the cost of gas alone from Omaha to here and back once, not to mention twice, isn't something she can really afford right now. Although I know it's an afterthought to her, a very small issue at best -- after all, she says, it's worth it to see me -- it's not insignificant, and not something I would ask her to do when she's budgeting just as much as I am right now, if not more.
I will also mention as an aside that I've offered numerous times to fill her car's gas tank for her, yet she's never let me do so. In fact, she outright refuses.
As for my own car, it'll be due for an oil change almost as soon as I get back from West Virginia, and if I have the money at that time I'll also have them fix the loud and rumbly wheel bearing -- something that's not causing any real problems currently, but also something that I really, really can't just let go indefinitely, not when I'm putting 200 miles a week on the car. Again, I have to keep it in the best shape possible so that I can keep it running at least through May. While it's not given me any problems as of late, the clock is ticking.
"Well, here's what we can do," I said. "Next weekend, as you know, you won't be able to stay that long anyway, since I'll be grading everything I have left for my students. I don't really care about the Christmas party, so if you want to wait until the semester's over and then come down to 'do Christmas' before I fly out, we can. It's up to you."
Note: all of this is true. As much as I like the department Christmas party, if I can't make it, it's not a huge concern to me. I didn't go last year, either, but that's mainly because I was so swamped that I didn't even think about it, and I wouldn't have gone alone anyway. I also have a ton of work to do next weekend -- the least of which will be grading every single one of my students' final papers in rapid succession. If Daisy decides not to come down, I won't go this year either -- I am hard-pressed to do anything social without her by my side, especially since it takes me great motivation to leave my house unless I have to anyhow. I gave Daisy the option because, as I said, I don't want her to have to make numerous trips, especially not for something as frivolous as a 2-hour department Christmas party. Yes, we'd get time together as well, but the real justification in asking her to come down this coming week was simply for the party; she was just here the weekend before Thanksgiving.
Also note: this makes me sound like I'm getting tired of seeing her or something, and that could not be farther from the truth. It's a long, long drive for her. Believe me, I love her very much and want to see her every day, but it's just not possible for that to happen right now. She understands that as much as I do, and while we may not like it, it's just how things are.
"It's up to you," she told me. "You choose. I'll do whatever you want."
So we made the decision to skip the Christmas party in favor of me being able to rest up a little more and finish all of my grading next weekend without distraction, social interaction, or errands to run. She'll more than likely come down after the semester is over, in that week I have off between the end of the semester and when I fly out the day after my birthday. That'll also let me get everything all sorted out for Christmas, as well -- while I purchased the last gifts I needed to get for her just a little while ago, everything still needs to be, um, assembled. That's the only way I can put it without giving anything away. And that assembly takes time -- time I don't have until the semester ends.
As mentioned before, I turned in my big final project for surrealism on Monday afternoon. On Wednesday night, my professor told me that he'd received it, but hadn't had the chance to look at it yet. I told him to take his time. As you know, the reason I turned it in to him early is so that if he doesn't like it, I can just produce the standard paper assignment. The standard paper assignment's due date has been pushed up to December 12, which will be my last day on campus anyhow. This gives me a little under two weeks to produce a 5-8 page paper if I have to, though I sincerely hope I don't have to. My friends who have looked at the project in its printed form have found it highly impressive, and clearly demonstrative of not only my understanding of the concepts of the class, but in understanding and utilizing those concepts' practical applications. So yes, obviously, I hope he's impressed with it as well. I will be somewhat (read: very) unhappy if he isn't. I'm guessing he'll look at it over the weekend and that I may have it waiting for me in my box when I return to campus on Monday.
Again, at this point, I'll take a flat B in the class if I have to -- I really, really don't care. It'll irritate me, yes, as it would be the only B I will have received in grad school, but I so don't care. The overall result would be the same -- I will have completed the course requirement, I will have passed, and I can move the hell on. Really, as I enter my last semester in the spring, that's all that's important. The end goal is that piece of expensive paper that says I have my Master's degree. Nothing else matters to me, really, at this point, and each class I complete is simply a means to an end.
There have been other issues that have popped up, as well -- today, I received this email from the graduate school:
The level of enrollment used to calculate your 2012-2013 Cost of Attendance and financial aid was based upon being a full time student (12 credit hours undergraduate, 9 credit hours graduate). If the level of enrollment used in determining your financial aid awards is not maintained, the Cost of Attendance may change and this could impact your financial aid eligibility.At the time of this email, your enrollment for the upcoming Spring 2013 term is less than full time. If you remain enrolled as a less than full time student by January 2nd, the Office of Financial Aid will adjust your Cost of Attendance and financial aid assistance accordingly.
Okay. Well, duh. It's my last semester.
However, this is a problem. Because of the way the graduate program for the English department is set up, nobody will ever have a final semester that's a full nine hours unless they've had a semester in the past that wasn't a full nine hours, or conversely, a twelve-hour semester. As of the end of this semester, I have completed 45 of the 48 required credit hours for the degree program, with the remaining three being next semester's other half of my thesis hours. I've never taken a semester of less than nine hours. From Fall 2010 to Fall 2012, I have taken nine hours each semester. 9 x 5 semesters = 45. Were I to take nine hours in my last semester, I would have 54 credit hours when I only need 48, and only 48 will count towards the degree program. As it stands, when I graduate I will have 51 hours "on the clock," so to speak, because I elected to take the visiting writer course in the spring just to stay full time. I was also told that six hours, for a graduate student, is full time, when apparently it's not.
The problem comes in because I've already completed ALL of my course requirements and am taking the extra visiting writer course because I want to, not because I have to. It won't count towards my degree at all. Had I not signed up for that, I would've only had three hours on my schedule for spring.
Like I said, unless you've fucked up and have to repeat something, or have taken extra hours during a semester in the past, nobody has a full-time schedule their last semester on campus as a grad student. For most people this isn't a problem; however, I get student loans because otherwise I can't survive on the absolutely miniscule amount of pay they provide us as GTAs. That money is very, very important. And basically what they're telling me is that they're going to cut it down because I'm not taking nine hours, but six.
I emailed my advisor, the interim director of the MFA program, and asked what can be done about this -- if there's some sort of exception that she/we can file with the graduate school to where they'll realize "hey, this guy is graduating and doesn't need any more hours, but still needs the money" -- otherwise I'm going to be forced to operate on a reduced budget for my entire last semester as a grad student, which will even further throw my life into chaos once I try to move out of here after graduation. I know that some sort of exception or stay like this is possible; my friend Suri got one when she stopped teaching and only took three hours so that she could finish her thesis without having to start paying loans back during that time, or something...which is also something else I'm worried about. I obviously can't start paying loans back while I'm in school -- I can't start paying anything back until after I graduate and find a job. So really, I don't know what the hell's going on, and I'm hoping that something can be set into place to where I can just finish my work and graduate without being forced to be poorer than I already am.
While I'll be okay if I have to operate on a reduced budget, it will not be ideal in the least -- if it wasn't for the spare money I had in September, I wouldn't have been able to fix the car, for example. On a reduced budget, money for very important things like that simply disappears. I'm not independently wealthy -- all the money I have comes from somewhere, and most of it comes from those loans while I'm in graduate school. If I made $20k a year from being a GTA alone, this would not be a problem -- but I don't. I don't make even half that, sad to say. And it's expensive just to survive.
Regardless, there's not a lot I can do about it. I'll either get a stay of execution (so to speak) or I won't, and if I won't there's no use in wringing hands over it, especially not when it's the last two weeks of the semester and I already have enough to do, worry about, and take care of. It's just frustrating. If there's anything I've learned about being in graduate school, it's that nothing is easy and that everything is much more complicated than it should be, especially one's finances. On the plus side, in the spring I will at least get a bit of a boost from my tax returns when I file them and they come in, and I will have some money to work with.
Of course, a good chunk of money between now and then will be spent on getting books I need to read for my comprehensive exams, so...
Anyway. So there's that.
"Are you stressed?" Daisy asked me.
"...no more than usual," I replied after a pause.
"So, yes then."
She knows me so well.
In the midst of everything else going on, I had a stroke of genius on Thursday night. As I knew my parents would finalize the plane tickets, I began thinking of ways that I could actually carry my gifts for them back home. I'll be there for five days, and I have a small backpack. Well, it's not really small, but it's too small to carry much of anything but my clothes in when I travel. I don't own a suitcase because I don't want one, and any suitcase would have to be checked and stowed whenever I do travel, which is quite rare. I don't check bags. Ever. I use the overhead compartment or the under-the-seat storage for my stuff. Not only am I not going to risk losing any bags, but I also don't need much when I go anywhere. A few sets of clothes, a few packs of smokes and my DS/mp3 player, and I'm fine. Everything else, I carry on me -- my wallet, watch, keys, etc. I pack remarkably light when I fly back home, as I do my laundry when I'm there (which eliminates the need for lots of clothing).
This creates a problem, however, when I'll be flying back home for Christmas this year. While I pack lightly, it is a small backpack and will be full. Not too full, but full enough to where I won't be able to fit the gifts I've prepared for my parents into it along with everything else. So, I came up with a plan.
I repurposed one of the boxes I've received from Amazon over the past few months, all of which I save (as I'll need boxes when I eventually move). I took off all the markings, blacked out all the box-printed UPC codes, and readdressed it to myself...at my address at my parents' place back home. Inside it, I stuffed their gifts, and sealed it up. About three or four days before I leave, I will take it to the post office and mail it back home. By the time I arrive on the ground when I get home, it'll be there, and I will have been able to avoid carrying it with me onto the plane. I will then be able to wrap the individual gifts (none of which cost me any money and/or are otherwise of concern) once I get there. Anything else I acquire between now and the trip I will do the same with. The box I have now will probably cost me about five bucks to mail, which is perfectly fine with me. Whatever works, I say.
I'm excited about the trip, of course, though I am a bit apprehensive about it with regards to money and to the weather back home (or here, really). Even though it's during the holidays, it should still do me some good mentally -- provide me with a bit of decompression time and quiet solace. Due to the actual dates of the trip, I doubt I'll be able to see any of my friends while I'm back home (with the exception of Wayne and Jane, who I'll probably be able to see when I fly in), but it will still be good to get out of Kansas for a few days, and it will be the first Christmas I will have spent with my parents since 2005.
This weekend will be spent watching football and grading a stack of my students' rewritten papers. In a sense, I'll basically be doing the same thing this weekend that I'll be doing next weekend to a much greater degree. I'm trying to finish everything I can while I have the time to do it. Granted, I'll have a bit more time this next week to do more work, as Daisy won't be coming down, but I'll also have the itch -- the itch to be goddamned done already. On Monday, I'll only be there for my Playwriting class. My least teaching day is Tuesday; I collect my students' papers and they'll fill out their evaluations for me. On Wednesday, I'll be going in late because I don't have formal office hours (since the class will be over), and I'll be there for Playwriting and for our last Surrealism class (thank CHRIST that class will be over). After that? My semester is really finished, with the exception of finals week. From now until the semester officially ends, I will only make five trips back and forth before everything is finished. I told my students yesterday that next Thursday at our normal class time, since we'll be done, I will be at home in bed dead asleep. And this is true -- I probably will. I'll give my students their final on Monday the 10th, and will return to campus on Wednesday the 12th for our last "meeting" for the Playwriting class at 5:40 that night, but this coming week wraps up everything. And it couldn't come soon enough.
As you folks know (because I've written about it here many times), fall semester sucks on all levels. To have the last one of my graduate school career coming to an end is nothing short of wonderful. There are many things (and people) that have gotten me through it. Daisy being by my side has been a huge help. But now, it's almost over. Finally, finally almost over.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Endings, Part II
Fall semester: day seventy-three
It's cold.
I don't like the cold. At all.
Yesterday morning when I got up, it was 21 degrees in Newton. I was not expecting this. There was no wind, but it was still super-cold. The Monte Carlo does well in the cold, most of the time. She rattles and shakes a little more than usual, but other than that she gets along fine in the cold. I do think she tends to burn a little more oil in the cold, though. I don't know why.
By the time I got to campus yesterday morning (at 7:10 AM, mind you) the temperature had dropped by five degrees. It was 16. So far, yesterday was the coldest day I've had to deal with probably all year thus far -- last winter, especially in the spring semester, it was fairly warm. Most of the time, the temperatures barely dipped below 25. Yes, that's cold, but it's not the extreme crazy cold that Kansas winters are known for. My first year of grad school, in 2010-11, was a horrific winter (for Kansas, anyway). We had multiple ice storms/snowstorms, and sometimes the high temperatures would be, oh, five degrees...with a constant 25mph wind. Taking that into perspective, I shouldn't complain too much. Around this time last year, we had a mild ice storm that I got caught in driving home after my poetry workshop class one night, which turned a normally 25-minute drive into an hour-long crawl back north through the tundra. That, luckily, I have not yet had to deal with. Most of the time now, the temperature here has been relatively pleasant -- last winter we got one "snowstorm," and that gave us about three inches or so...that melted off the next day.
In emailing back and forth with my mother, however, on the mountain back home in West Virginia, not only did they get that crippling storm last month that knocked out power for a week or so, but apparently the snow and other shitty weather really hasn't stopped there too much. My parents went out Christmas shopping on Saturday and almost had an accident, as apparently it's been snowing there like they're already in the dead of winter.
Meanwhile, tomorrow it's supposed to hit 70 again here. Welcome to Kansas.
Still, the weather back home doesn't exactly fill me with hope or giddiness when it comes to the trip I'll more than likely be making out there over Christmas. As I've mentioned here before numerous times, my biggest fear is that I will get stuck there because of weather, missing my flight back and leaving the cats here with a more rapidly-dwindling food and water supply until I can get home. That is a big, big-time nightmare for me; I don't like to leave the cats alone anyway, but I absolutely hate leaving them alone any longer than I have to. It makes me go nuts. My other fear is that my flight from one place or another will be delayed, and I'll miss my connection back to Kansas (or miss my connection to Pittsburgh). This is why I don't like traveling during the holidays, and especially why I don't like traveling during the winter. At all. It fills me with apprehension, and (ironically) none of it has to do with actually flying. Hah.
As an aside, I love to fly. The flights themselves may be cramped or otherwise on small planes, but the actual time I spend in the air is only about three hours. I've made the trip back home several times, and it's a little over an hour's flight to Chicago O'Hare (an airport that I despise, but oh well) and a little under two hours from there to Pittsburgh. I usually leave Wichita's airport at around 6AM -- I request that my mother get me the earliest flight possible, which is usually a 6AM flight -- and arrive on the ground in Pittsburgh shortly before or shortly after noon, barring any delays.
My mother is still looking into tickets; the plan, which is pretty finalized at this point, is that I'll fly into Pittsburgh on the 21st and will return home on the 26th. I'm not exactly sure of how the logistics of this will work, but eh. My mother and her travel agent (because yes, she still uses a travel agent) work all that stuff out; I've always flown through her travel agent, who my mother has known for almost as long as I've been alive. I trust the woman, she gets my mother good deals on things, etc. Once the trip has been finalized, my mother will run it by me and I'll give her the go-ahead to order the tickets, which she will. I know the drill at this point; I've been through it many times before.
However, as I mentioned in my last post here, this throws a wrench into any holiday plans I would have had with Daisy simply because of the way the days fall on the calendar. If I'm flying out on the 21st, that's the day after my birthday. That means I'll leave the house at about 3AM on the night of my birthday to get to the airport and get through security with no issues, and means that Daisy won't get to celebrate my birthday with me (and no one else will, either, because of the schedule). Being in West Virginia over Christmas also means, obviously, that I won't be able to spend the holiday with her, or do anything holiday-related, until at least the 27th -- as I'll fly back home on the 26th. I know this sort of upsets her to an extent, even if she doesn't show it or otherwise say anything about it, but not much can be done.
My schedule for December, for the most part, is a logistical nightmare of things that I have to do or otherwise must be done on or by certain dates. Here's a brief rundown of everything I can think of off the top of my head:
Tuesday, December 4: The last day of classes for my students; I collect their papers and send them on their way for nearly a week before their final exam.
Wednesday, December 5: The last day of classes for me. Daisy should come into town that night, hopefully, and will probably get here by the time I get home. This is a week from today.
Friday, December 7: The Department Christmas Party, which Daisy and I plan to attend (barring any unforeseen circumstances, of course). Also, payday.
Saturday, December 8: Daisy will have to go home in the morning, as the rest of the day and the next day, I will be grading ALL of my students' papers to return to them at the final exam.
Sunday, December 9: OH GODS TONS OF GRADING FROM DAWN UNTIL MIDNIGHT OR LATER
Monday, December 10: "Finals feast" at noon in the Writing Center, followed by proctoring our students' final exams from 1 to 2:50PM, which will then be followed by grading of the finals and calculating final class grades for said students. My grading partner is the director of the 102 Comp program, which I specifically requested, so my actual grading should go rather quickly.
Tuesday, December 11th: Finally, a day where I really don't have to do anything, unless there's an unforeseen complication with my students' final exams. If not, and everything's done, I plan to sleep most of this day.
Wednesday, December 12: My final day on campus for the semester; our Playwriting class is meeting at 5:40PM to get our final copies of our plays back, and we're being given information on how to submit our plays to contests and the like. If there are any complications with student finals or final grades, they will also be resolved by this day, because I want to get the hell off campus and be done.
Thursday, December 13 to Thursday, December 20: A full week of rest, which I will sorely need. Most of my friends are leaving town for home during this time, if not beforehand. I plan -- yes, specifically plan -- to not. do. anything. I don't want to leave the house unless I have to, I don't want to have to spend any money, I don't want to see anyone, go anywhere, or do anything at all. I need this decompression time. It's the only week I will have had since early August where I will have no true responsibilities, social obligations, or any other tasks or errands required of me. Therefore, I plan to sleep a lot, watch movies, and finally play my Xbox a bit, which hasn't been touched since early May. I have been looking forward to this week of responsibility-free solitude for months, my friends. Months. And the fact that said week ends with my birthday is the icing on the proverbial cake.
Friday, December 21 to Wednesday, December 26: My probable trip home to West Virginia. December 21 is also payday.
Thursday, December 27 onward: unplanned. Probable re-revision of my thesis and ordering books for comps. Paying the rent, bills, and my car insurance, and after that, who knows -- as I am not sure I will have money afterwards to go anywhere or do anything substantial aside from minimal grocery shopping and the like.
Daisy has always called me a "planner," as you know; I cannot function without a day-to-day "to-do list" or some sort of structure that I've planned out for myself to go about. If I don't have this structure, not only do I feel somewhat listless and lost, but I also won't do anything at all; I'll sleep for fourteen hours a day, get up, eat, dick around on the computer, and go back to bed having accomplished nothing. I have to create a set schedule for myself to do things on a daily basis, otherwise I have no motivation to do said things. I am a driven person when things have to be done and I know they have to be done on a certain schedule, but if they don't? I have no motivation whatsoever. I've always been the guy who just wants to do as little as possible and reap the biggest rewards from that. Obviously that demeanor changes during the semester, when I have a set list of tasks to accomplish, but if I'm given an open schedule and free reign to do whatever I want with it? I procrastinate, I waste tons of time, I laze about and accomplish little, if anything.
This is going to be a problem next semester; I already foresee it.
I have little actual responsibility next semester, and a very open schedule. As it's my last semester before I graduate, one would think that it would be filled with deadlines and things that I absolutely must do ASAP OMG, but really, it's not. I have to turn in a copy of my thesis sometime in February, I have to read and study for comps, and I have to teach my students. That's it. I'm not taking any actual classes ("Visiting Writer," at one hour per week for a month, barely counts as a class), and the only days I'll have to be on campus are Tuesdays and Thursdays, as the schedule for my Engineering English 102 classes never change. As a result, I'll be at home in quiet and solitude a lot more, and five of the seven days of the week, I won't have to wake up before noon if I don't want to. I'll still have to keep office hours and will still have to work in the Writing Center on campus an hour per week, but I will schedule those hours right after I teach to maximize my free time.
Free time in grad school is such a luxury. To finally have a ton of it, in my very last semester at that, will be amazing. Of course, a lot of that time will be spent on reading and studying for comps, and on grading my students' papers, but for the most part I'll be on autopilot. I've refined my class's lesson plans to the point where I don't need anything to change or be changed from this point forward, and likewise I'll be teaching the same class I've taught for the past two years. My thesis, if I wanted to turn it in now, I could do so and call it done. However, I'm not going to slack on that, and will be reworking or completely rewriting some (if not most) of the poems within it. No, most of this free time I'll have will be spent fairly constructively, despite all desires to slack off. I'll be sending out numerous submissions to publications one after another, going back to my list of places to send work, and I will also be, ahem, looking for a job.
I've mentioned before that I don't have a clue where I'm headed after May, and that still remains true. The job market for MFAs is super-dismal right now, and has been for a few years. I'm too far in debt from student loans to go somewhere else for a PhD, and doing so would only prolong the inevitable entrance to "real life" anyhow. While I'd like to find some place and job in Omaha, where Daisy is, I may not be able to, and I'm not going to bank everything on that simply because my girlfriend lives there. If I've learned anything from my friends' and colleagues' experiences over the years, it's that if you're offered a job somewhere, anywhere, and it pays well and you can do it? You take it. You take it because there may not be another offer waiting around the corner. You take it because even if it's not ideal, you still have to live, work, eat, and pay bills. You take it because, if you're like me, you can't wait on things to fall into your lap, because the time will be ticking until student loans have to start being paid back. Take it, take it, take it. If I find something in or around the area? Great. If I find something in Omaha? Even better. But if I'm offered a job somewhere like Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, etc? I'm still taking it. I can only be choosy to a certain degree, and while I may have to work a menial job in the meantime (or adjunct for a semester or so at Flat State University if I'm really desperate), as soon as I find something worthwhile, I'm not passing it up. If it's somewhere far away, I can only hope that Daisy will join me in the move (and I hope I have the money and means to actually get there).
Note: I realize that this makes me sound really self-serving and somewhat callous to an extent. I do. I also can't default on my student loans, and I also have to be able to support myself somehow. It will be a scary time, and it will certainly be a look out for number one situation. Everything else simply must come secondary to that, whether I want to or not. I am a writer, a poet. While my MFA is a terminal degree, it is not a very marketable one, and I know this. It's a very sobering thought. Most people getting a Master's degree know where they're headed in life, at least to a certain extent; I, however, do not. I have not looked for a job of any sort for the past four years, because I haven't needed to. I lucked into the job at the newspaper, and then I got into grad school and became an instructor. In those four years, the job market has changed drastically. There's no guarantees of anything, not that there ever was, and especially for people in my field, opportunities are hard to come by. I also refuse to flounder joblessly like I did after I graduated from WVU in 2005; I will find something. I just may have to make some sacrifices and a lengthy move somewhere along the way.
On that note, it is now time for me to gather my things and make my way to campus for my customary fifteen-hour Wednesday. It does give me comfort, however, that it's the last fifteen-hour Wednesday I should ever have to spend on that campus -- next week, I won't be holding office hours (as my classes will be over) and I will be able to sleep in a bit and roll onto campus around 1PM.
It's cold.
I don't like the cold. At all.
Yesterday morning when I got up, it was 21 degrees in Newton. I was not expecting this. There was no wind, but it was still super-cold. The Monte Carlo does well in the cold, most of the time. She rattles and shakes a little more than usual, but other than that she gets along fine in the cold. I do think she tends to burn a little more oil in the cold, though. I don't know why.
By the time I got to campus yesterday morning (at 7:10 AM, mind you) the temperature had dropped by five degrees. It was 16. So far, yesterday was the coldest day I've had to deal with probably all year thus far -- last winter, especially in the spring semester, it was fairly warm. Most of the time, the temperatures barely dipped below 25. Yes, that's cold, but it's not the extreme crazy cold that Kansas winters are known for. My first year of grad school, in 2010-11, was a horrific winter (for Kansas, anyway). We had multiple ice storms/snowstorms, and sometimes the high temperatures would be, oh, five degrees...with a constant 25mph wind. Taking that into perspective, I shouldn't complain too much. Around this time last year, we had a mild ice storm that I got caught in driving home after my poetry workshop class one night, which turned a normally 25-minute drive into an hour-long crawl back north through the tundra. That, luckily, I have not yet had to deal with. Most of the time now, the temperature here has been relatively pleasant -- last winter we got one "snowstorm," and that gave us about three inches or so...that melted off the next day.
In emailing back and forth with my mother, however, on the mountain back home in West Virginia, not only did they get that crippling storm last month that knocked out power for a week or so, but apparently the snow and other shitty weather really hasn't stopped there too much. My parents went out Christmas shopping on Saturday and almost had an accident, as apparently it's been snowing there like they're already in the dead of winter.
Meanwhile, tomorrow it's supposed to hit 70 again here. Welcome to Kansas.
Still, the weather back home doesn't exactly fill me with hope or giddiness when it comes to the trip I'll more than likely be making out there over Christmas. As I've mentioned here before numerous times, my biggest fear is that I will get stuck there because of weather, missing my flight back and leaving the cats here with a more rapidly-dwindling food and water supply until I can get home. That is a big, big-time nightmare for me; I don't like to leave the cats alone anyway, but I absolutely hate leaving them alone any longer than I have to. It makes me go nuts. My other fear is that my flight from one place or another will be delayed, and I'll miss my connection back to Kansas (or miss my connection to Pittsburgh). This is why I don't like traveling during the holidays, and especially why I don't like traveling during the winter. At all. It fills me with apprehension, and (ironically) none of it has to do with actually flying. Hah.
As an aside, I love to fly. The flights themselves may be cramped or otherwise on small planes, but the actual time I spend in the air is only about three hours. I've made the trip back home several times, and it's a little over an hour's flight to Chicago O'Hare (an airport that I despise, but oh well) and a little under two hours from there to Pittsburgh. I usually leave Wichita's airport at around 6AM -- I request that my mother get me the earliest flight possible, which is usually a 6AM flight -- and arrive on the ground in Pittsburgh shortly before or shortly after noon, barring any delays.
My mother is still looking into tickets; the plan, which is pretty finalized at this point, is that I'll fly into Pittsburgh on the 21st and will return home on the 26th. I'm not exactly sure of how the logistics of this will work, but eh. My mother and her travel agent (because yes, she still uses a travel agent) work all that stuff out; I've always flown through her travel agent, who my mother has known for almost as long as I've been alive. I trust the woman, she gets my mother good deals on things, etc. Once the trip has been finalized, my mother will run it by me and I'll give her the go-ahead to order the tickets, which she will. I know the drill at this point; I've been through it many times before.
However, as I mentioned in my last post here, this throws a wrench into any holiday plans I would have had with Daisy simply because of the way the days fall on the calendar. If I'm flying out on the 21st, that's the day after my birthday. That means I'll leave the house at about 3AM on the night of my birthday to get to the airport and get through security with no issues, and means that Daisy won't get to celebrate my birthday with me (and no one else will, either, because of the schedule). Being in West Virginia over Christmas also means, obviously, that I won't be able to spend the holiday with her, or do anything holiday-related, until at least the 27th -- as I'll fly back home on the 26th. I know this sort of upsets her to an extent, even if she doesn't show it or otherwise say anything about it, but not much can be done.
My schedule for December, for the most part, is a logistical nightmare of things that I have to do or otherwise must be done on or by certain dates. Here's a brief rundown of everything I can think of off the top of my head:
Tuesday, December 4: The last day of classes for my students; I collect their papers and send them on their way for nearly a week before their final exam.
Wednesday, December 5: The last day of classes for me. Daisy should come into town that night, hopefully, and will probably get here by the time I get home. This is a week from today.
Friday, December 7: The Department Christmas Party, which Daisy and I plan to attend (barring any unforeseen circumstances, of course). Also, payday.
Saturday, December 8: Daisy will have to go home in the morning, as the rest of the day and the next day, I will be grading ALL of my students' papers to return to them at the final exam.
Sunday, December 9: OH GODS TONS OF GRADING FROM DAWN UNTIL MIDNIGHT OR LATER
Monday, December 10: "Finals feast" at noon in the Writing Center, followed by proctoring our students' final exams from 1 to 2:50PM, which will then be followed by grading of the finals and calculating final class grades for said students. My grading partner is the director of the 102 Comp program, which I specifically requested, so my actual grading should go rather quickly.
Tuesday, December 11th: Finally, a day where I really don't have to do anything, unless there's an unforeseen complication with my students' final exams. If not, and everything's done, I plan to sleep most of this day.
Wednesday, December 12: My final day on campus for the semester; our Playwriting class is meeting at 5:40PM to get our final copies of our plays back, and we're being given information on how to submit our plays to contests and the like. If there are any complications with student finals or final grades, they will also be resolved by this day, because I want to get the hell off campus and be done.
Thursday, December 13 to Thursday, December 20: A full week of rest, which I will sorely need. Most of my friends are leaving town for home during this time, if not beforehand. I plan -- yes, specifically plan -- to not. do. anything. I don't want to leave the house unless I have to, I don't want to have to spend any money, I don't want to see anyone, go anywhere, or do anything at all. I need this decompression time. It's the only week I will have had since early August where I will have no true responsibilities, social obligations, or any other tasks or errands required of me. Therefore, I plan to sleep a lot, watch movies, and finally play my Xbox a bit, which hasn't been touched since early May. I have been looking forward to this week of responsibility-free solitude for months, my friends. Months. And the fact that said week ends with my birthday is the icing on the proverbial cake.
Friday, December 21 to Wednesday, December 26: My probable trip home to West Virginia. December 21 is also payday.
Thursday, December 27 onward: unplanned. Probable re-revision of my thesis and ordering books for comps. Paying the rent, bills, and my car insurance, and after that, who knows -- as I am not sure I will have money afterwards to go anywhere or do anything substantial aside from minimal grocery shopping and the like.
Daisy has always called me a "planner," as you know; I cannot function without a day-to-day "to-do list" or some sort of structure that I've planned out for myself to go about. If I don't have this structure, not only do I feel somewhat listless and lost, but I also won't do anything at all; I'll sleep for fourteen hours a day, get up, eat, dick around on the computer, and go back to bed having accomplished nothing. I have to create a set schedule for myself to do things on a daily basis, otherwise I have no motivation to do said things. I am a driven person when things have to be done and I know they have to be done on a certain schedule, but if they don't? I have no motivation whatsoever. I've always been the guy who just wants to do as little as possible and reap the biggest rewards from that. Obviously that demeanor changes during the semester, when I have a set list of tasks to accomplish, but if I'm given an open schedule and free reign to do whatever I want with it? I procrastinate, I waste tons of time, I laze about and accomplish little, if anything.
This is going to be a problem next semester; I already foresee it.
I have little actual responsibility next semester, and a very open schedule. As it's my last semester before I graduate, one would think that it would be filled with deadlines and things that I absolutely must do ASAP OMG, but really, it's not. I have to turn in a copy of my thesis sometime in February, I have to read and study for comps, and I have to teach my students. That's it. I'm not taking any actual classes ("Visiting Writer," at one hour per week for a month, barely counts as a class), and the only days I'll have to be on campus are Tuesdays and Thursdays, as the schedule for my Engineering English 102 classes never change. As a result, I'll be at home in quiet and solitude a lot more, and five of the seven days of the week, I won't have to wake up before noon if I don't want to. I'll still have to keep office hours and will still have to work in the Writing Center on campus an hour per week, but I will schedule those hours right after I teach to maximize my free time.
Free time in grad school is such a luxury. To finally have a ton of it, in my very last semester at that, will be amazing. Of course, a lot of that time will be spent on reading and studying for comps, and on grading my students' papers, but for the most part I'll be on autopilot. I've refined my class's lesson plans to the point where I don't need anything to change or be changed from this point forward, and likewise I'll be teaching the same class I've taught for the past two years. My thesis, if I wanted to turn it in now, I could do so and call it done. However, I'm not going to slack on that, and will be reworking or completely rewriting some (if not most) of the poems within it. No, most of this free time I'll have will be spent fairly constructively, despite all desires to slack off. I'll be sending out numerous submissions to publications one after another, going back to my list of places to send work, and I will also be, ahem, looking for a job.
I've mentioned before that I don't have a clue where I'm headed after May, and that still remains true. The job market for MFAs is super-dismal right now, and has been for a few years. I'm too far in debt from student loans to go somewhere else for a PhD, and doing so would only prolong the inevitable entrance to "real life" anyhow. While I'd like to find some place and job in Omaha, where Daisy is, I may not be able to, and I'm not going to bank everything on that simply because my girlfriend lives there. If I've learned anything from my friends' and colleagues' experiences over the years, it's that if you're offered a job somewhere, anywhere, and it pays well and you can do it? You take it. You take it because there may not be another offer waiting around the corner. You take it because even if it's not ideal, you still have to live, work, eat, and pay bills. You take it because, if you're like me, you can't wait on things to fall into your lap, because the time will be ticking until student loans have to start being paid back. Take it, take it, take it. If I find something in or around the area? Great. If I find something in Omaha? Even better. But if I'm offered a job somewhere like Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, etc? I'm still taking it. I can only be choosy to a certain degree, and while I may have to work a menial job in the meantime (or adjunct for a semester or so at Flat State University if I'm really desperate), as soon as I find something worthwhile, I'm not passing it up. If it's somewhere far away, I can only hope that Daisy will join me in the move (and I hope I have the money and means to actually get there).
Note: I realize that this makes me sound really self-serving and somewhat callous to an extent. I do. I also can't default on my student loans, and I also have to be able to support myself somehow. It will be a scary time, and it will certainly be a look out for number one situation. Everything else simply must come secondary to that, whether I want to or not. I am a writer, a poet. While my MFA is a terminal degree, it is not a very marketable one, and I know this. It's a very sobering thought. Most people getting a Master's degree know where they're headed in life, at least to a certain extent; I, however, do not. I have not looked for a job of any sort for the past four years, because I haven't needed to. I lucked into the job at the newspaper, and then I got into grad school and became an instructor. In those four years, the job market has changed drastically. There's no guarantees of anything, not that there ever was, and especially for people in my field, opportunities are hard to come by. I also refuse to flounder joblessly like I did after I graduated from WVU in 2005; I will find something. I just may have to make some sacrifices and a lengthy move somewhere along the way.
On that note, it is now time for me to gather my things and make my way to campus for my customary fifteen-hour Wednesday. It does give me comfort, however, that it's the last fifteen-hour Wednesday I should ever have to spend on that campus -- next week, I won't be holding office hours (as my classes will be over) and I will be able to sleep in a bit and roll onto campus around 1PM.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Endings
Fall semester: day seventy-one
With the end of the Thanksgiving break upon us, and with nine days left in the actual semester, so many things are going on and coming to a head, coming due, and wrapping up. With the finishing of my project that I live-blogged in my last post here, I have finished a large chunk of my work for the remainder of the semester. All I really have left, at this point, is stuff for my students -- and while there is a considerable amount of that, it doesn't hang over my head like my own work tends to. I can cover student stuff at a more even pace most of the time, more slowly, spacing it out and going through it on a more even keel.
I have printed out the 22-page project, and will be sticking it in my professor's box this afternoon with a note attached saying that if it doesn't satisfy him to let me know, and between now and the due date I will produce a standard paper assignment just like everyone else is doing. Mind you, I don't think I'll have to do this, but by getting it to him now I will have time to do so if he doesn't think the work is up to par. Everyone I've spoken to about the project and given details to about it thinks that it's a wonderful assignment and a fantastic idea, and they haven't even read it. However, I do know how critical this professor is of student work, so we'll see. Again, the project is 22 pages. The required length for the rest of the class's simple research argument paper was a mere 5-8 pages, so I've gone above and beyond the call of duty for something that I didn't necessarily have to do. The other reason I'm giving it to him tomorrow is precisely because it is so long and detailed -- he'll need time to read it.
With the end of Thanksgiving week also comes the end of the month, and at the end of the month many bills come due. I have paid all the bills I've received with the exception of my electric bill, which isn't due until shortly before Christmas, and I have paid the rent. My budget between now and the new year is going to be a little tighter than I expected it to be, but I should get be okay until my student loans drop shortly after the turn of the year, as long as there are no major unforeseen expenses, such as the car blowing up or something like that. I have one Christmas gift left to get Daisy, and it is fairly inexpensive and something I will pick up within the next week or so the next time I go shopping. Other than that, I'm basically done for her. If I play my cards right, I will be able to finish everything for not only Daisy, but her family and my own family in one fell swoop -- inexpensively, at that.
It feels weird to have someone to buy gifts for again. I haven't been in the holiday spirit for two years now, because last year I was single at this time (and cripplingly depressed), and even though the holidays are upon us this year, I'm still not particularly in the spirit of things. I hate the soulless commercialism of Christmas. To me, the holidays have always been a time to spend with family and friends, and while I do have some friends out here, they don't stick around town for Christmas (they have their own families that they return to), and I don't have any family out here. I've not been back home for Christmas since 2005, and until 2010, the ex and I went to spend Christmas with her family in Kansas City -- which, most of the time, was a miserable experience for me after, say, day two of being trapped there. Her family liked me well enough, I suppose, but I would've much rather stayed home. Last year, I barely remember Christmas -- I believe I sat on my old couch in the living room and watched Arrested Development most of the day, which is something that's rather bittersweet now as it was given to me as a birthday gift by Andrea, and she and I are no longer friends; we haven't been on speaking terms since, oh, June or so.
This year, as you know, my parents (my mother especially) are dead set on flying me out to visit over Christmas. I think this is partially because they want to see me, and partially because they don't want me to spend the holiday alone again. I really don't particularly care if I spend the holiday alone; I'm not religious. I am, in fact, a hardcore atheist, and have been for many years. Therefore, Christmas is just another winter day for me. The only reason I celebrate it at all is because most of the people in my life celebrate it in one way or another. And I like getting presents. I feel guilty about that, but I do like getting presents.
I've not asked for anything this year from my parents; my mother sent me an email over the weekend, saying that since I'll probably be there on Christmas morning, she wants to know what I want so that she can get it for me and I can open gifts with her and my dad.
Um...
Okay.
Really, there's nothing that I need. I need money, but that's about it. Money isn't fun to open in a wrapped box with the family, and my parents have given me enough money over the past year in one form or another. I really have no need or want for anything else, really. The only other thing I need is a new laptop, as the one I have at school is about to die on me and is so slow and old that I can barely do any real work on it anymore when I'm on campus -- and I'm pretty sure Daisy got me one of those already during Black Friday sales, as she's terrible at keeping surprises under wraps and desperately wants to tell me, but I won't let her.
I replied to my mother's email and told her that she didn't have to worry about getting anything for me, that me visiting was enough. I also told her what I really needed, through no fault of her own, she couldn't get me. I'll need a high-paying job in about six months, for example. I'll need a new car when the Monte Carlo finally decides to die on me, whenever that may be. Anything else I might want would be just that -- a want -- and not a need. I want an Xbox 360. I want a new T-Mobile cell phone that's not horribly obsolete. But I don't need either of those things at all. In addition, I reminded her that anything they did end up getting me would have to be small enough to take back home on the plane in carry-on, otherwise they'd have to pay extra to ship it out here to me once I flew home. I don't check bags when I visit my folks; I don't need to. I take a backpack with me with about three outfits in it, my DS, and my mp3 player, and that's all I ever bring with me -- because that's all my backpack has room for and because it's all I need. To additionally ship something to me later makes getting me anything wholly inconvenient. I did tell her, however, that if she must get me something, to take me shopping while I'm there and I'll point out a few things to her, because I have a feeling that I'm not getting off the hook about this.
She's looking into plane tickets today, for a trip from the 21st to the 26th or so. That is about the maximum amount of time I can be gone anyhow with the cats left here and with the unpredictable winter weather both here and back home. Also, the five-day round trips are apparently cheaper than the three or four-day round trips, so if it saves her money I'm all for it. It's not cheap for me to fly back home to visit -- I believe my trip out there over Spring Break was about $400. That's the other reason I don't want my parents spending any more money on me for Christmas -- the trip itself is expensive enough.
Another part of it is that I'll be thirty years old; I no longer need my parents to get me anything for Christmas because I'm a grown, independent man. I'm not saying that to be prideful, but it's true. On some level, while I do enjoy getting presents, I am very aw shucks, you don't have to do anything for lil' ol' me about it. There's a feeling of guilt there, probably due to low self-esteem of some sort. Mind you, I always say I have high self-esteem, and for the most part I do, but I'm also much more critical of myself as a person, good or bad, than I am of other people, or compared to how other people think of me.
There's also the question of, if I'm going to be at my parents' for Christmas, when I'm going to spend time with Daisy and her own family over the holidays. This is very important, actually; I wasn't able to go to Omaha over Thanksgiving due to the sheer amount of work I had to do between that project and work for my students, and I've had an open invitation to come up and visit ever since Daisy and I first got together way back in July. Daisy's mother really wants to see me, and I adore her mother because she's always been incredibly sweet to me, but it seems like I keep blowing her family off -- which I'm not, of course, and that is totally not my intention at all -- it's just that every time I'm invited up for an event, something comes up or I am too busy to go. This does, of course, make me feel like an asshole -- especially when Daisy herself makes the drive down here at least twice a month, and sometimes more. It's as frustrating to me as it is to all of them, and it makes me seem like I don't want to meet them or spend time with them when that's anything but the truth. I do. Really I do. The trip out to my parents', though, if it happens, will more than likely take place over the actual holidays. This means I can see them before (which I'm not sure will be possible, based on the as-of-yet-unreleased final exam schedule, and the fact that I have my last class of the semester on the night of the 14th), or I can see them after -- when the holidays have all already passed. Neither option is incredibly ideal, but I'm sure Daisy and I will figure something out.
Speaking of that unreleased final exam schedule, I still haven't a clue when or where my students' exams will take place. Somebody told me that it was released last week sometime, but I haven't gotten any emails about it, and no one else has given me word one about any of it. I also haven't been in the department for a week because of the break, but usually the schedule of rooms/date/time is emailed to us at least twice. I haven't gotten that email (believe me, I check my gmail as well as my student email at least twice a day), so if it has been announced, I haven't heard anything about it. I already have my students asking me when and where it is, so hopefully I can find out today upon my return to campus this afternoon. On the plus side, I don't have any exams of my own this semester -- the Playwriting class doesn't have one, and the Surrealism class's last grade is the project I did this week. Next semester I won't have any final exams either, but I will have my comps to take in April so that I can graduate.
In other news, I turn 30 on December 20.
Most of you already know this; those of you close enough to me to read this blog on a regular basis already know how old I am and how little importance I usually put on birthdays, but this is a big one to me for some reason. I'm not sure why. I have no plans for my birthday and really don't want to have any -- especially if I'm flying out the next day to visit home. This year, my birthday comes almost a full week after the end of the semester, which means I'll have a bit of downtime to relax and to catch up on sleep before I make that trip home, if it happens. I made the joke to a few friends that all I want for my birthday is to go to Chuck E. Cheese's in a big group, get staggeringly drunk on the cheap beers they sell there, and eat pizza and play video games all night, but as fun as that would be, I don't think that'll happen. I also (obviously) can't spend my birthday with Daisy if I'm flying out early the next morning -- my mother always books me for the 6AM flights because it means I get to Pittsburgh around noon, and I like and want that -- so it looks like I'll be here at the house doing nothing on my birthday just because of how the days fall on the calendar.
For some reason, though, it's important to me. I've mentioned before that age 30 is the age where -- inexplicable to me -- I feel like I should be a man. Mind you, I've been a completely independent man with a house, a car, and a steady job for quite some time. I've had a variety of careers over the past several years, from lab technician to cashier to newspaper reporter to college instructor. I pay my own rent and bills, I pay for my own car repairs, maintenance, and insurance. I have two credit cards, which I pay off whenever I can. I can grow a hell of a beard. I am in a healthy, loving relationship with a fantastic woman who makes me feel very, very lucky. In almost every way, I've taken what I've been given in life and have "made do" with it. Yet, do I feel like the hypothetical, grown-up, 30-year-old man? Not really. Not even when Daisy calls me "old man" or "papi" because I have a rapidly receding hairline and occasionally get crotchety or cranky.
I've written here before that despite my age, I don't think I'll ever truly "grow up." It's not in my nature. I still have the sense of humor of a teenager, and will readily laugh at (and make) dick jokes. I still collect comic books and love them. Hell, as I write this, I'm wearing a vintage 20-year-old Batman Returns t-shirt. I still play Pokemon and am not ashamed about doing so (it's my one video game vice). Part of it isn't in my nature, and part of it is because of how I grew up -- my dad, for example, has been a rock musician his entire life, and still plays gigs even at the age of 62. My brother -- twelve years older than me and covered in tattoos -- does the same thing, and he has a wife and three kids. Both of them are also huge nerds, and are into the same things I'm into. My mother, while not exactly nerdy, has a deep (if hidden in recent years) appreciation for Star Trek, as she was the one who introduced me to the original series and TNG in the late 80s...and gave me my middle name, which we will not discuss here. If it wasn't for my mother, I would never have come to appreciate such series as The X-Files and Sliders, either. I am definitely a product of how I was raised and who was around me as I grew up -- and all of the important men in my life got older, yes, but none of them ever "grew up" either, at least not on the inside. Therefore, I don't think I ever will either. I am steadfast in carrying on the nerdy, never-grow-up tradition with my own children, when and if I have any, and while some of you may shudder at the thought of little Brandons running around, I can think of few things which would be more awesome.
With the end of the Thanksgiving break upon us, and with nine days left in the actual semester, so many things are going on and coming to a head, coming due, and wrapping up. With the finishing of my project that I live-blogged in my last post here, I have finished a large chunk of my work for the remainder of the semester. All I really have left, at this point, is stuff for my students -- and while there is a considerable amount of that, it doesn't hang over my head like my own work tends to. I can cover student stuff at a more even pace most of the time, more slowly, spacing it out and going through it on a more even keel.
I have printed out the 22-page project, and will be sticking it in my professor's box this afternoon with a note attached saying that if it doesn't satisfy him to let me know, and between now and the due date I will produce a standard paper assignment just like everyone else is doing. Mind you, I don't think I'll have to do this, but by getting it to him now I will have time to do so if he doesn't think the work is up to par. Everyone I've spoken to about the project and given details to about it thinks that it's a wonderful assignment and a fantastic idea, and they haven't even read it. However, I do know how critical this professor is of student work, so we'll see. Again, the project is 22 pages. The required length for the rest of the class's simple research argument paper was a mere 5-8 pages, so I've gone above and beyond the call of duty for something that I didn't necessarily have to do. The other reason I'm giving it to him tomorrow is precisely because it is so long and detailed -- he'll need time to read it.
With the end of Thanksgiving week also comes the end of the month, and at the end of the month many bills come due. I have paid all the bills I've received with the exception of my electric bill, which isn't due until shortly before Christmas, and I have paid the rent. My budget between now and the new year is going to be a little tighter than I expected it to be, but I should get be okay until my student loans drop shortly after the turn of the year, as long as there are no major unforeseen expenses, such as the car blowing up or something like that. I have one Christmas gift left to get Daisy, and it is fairly inexpensive and something I will pick up within the next week or so the next time I go shopping. Other than that, I'm basically done for her. If I play my cards right, I will be able to finish everything for not only Daisy, but her family and my own family in one fell swoop -- inexpensively, at that.
It feels weird to have someone to buy gifts for again. I haven't been in the holiday spirit for two years now, because last year I was single at this time (and cripplingly depressed), and even though the holidays are upon us this year, I'm still not particularly in the spirit of things. I hate the soulless commercialism of Christmas. To me, the holidays have always been a time to spend with family and friends, and while I do have some friends out here, they don't stick around town for Christmas (they have their own families that they return to), and I don't have any family out here. I've not been back home for Christmas since 2005, and until 2010, the ex and I went to spend Christmas with her family in Kansas City -- which, most of the time, was a miserable experience for me after, say, day two of being trapped there. Her family liked me well enough, I suppose, but I would've much rather stayed home. Last year, I barely remember Christmas -- I believe I sat on my old couch in the living room and watched Arrested Development most of the day, which is something that's rather bittersweet now as it was given to me as a birthday gift by Andrea, and she and I are no longer friends; we haven't been on speaking terms since, oh, June or so.
This year, as you know, my parents (my mother especially) are dead set on flying me out to visit over Christmas. I think this is partially because they want to see me, and partially because they don't want me to spend the holiday alone again. I really don't particularly care if I spend the holiday alone; I'm not religious. I am, in fact, a hardcore atheist, and have been for many years. Therefore, Christmas is just another winter day for me. The only reason I celebrate it at all is because most of the people in my life celebrate it in one way or another. And I like getting presents. I feel guilty about that, but I do like getting presents.
I've not asked for anything this year from my parents; my mother sent me an email over the weekend, saying that since I'll probably be there on Christmas morning, she wants to know what I want so that she can get it for me and I can open gifts with her and my dad.
Um...
Okay.
Really, there's nothing that I need. I need money, but that's about it. Money isn't fun to open in a wrapped box with the family, and my parents have given me enough money over the past year in one form or another. I really have no need or want for anything else, really. The only other thing I need is a new laptop, as the one I have at school is about to die on me and is so slow and old that I can barely do any real work on it anymore when I'm on campus -- and I'm pretty sure Daisy got me one of those already during Black Friday sales, as she's terrible at keeping surprises under wraps and desperately wants to tell me, but I won't let her.
I replied to my mother's email and told her that she didn't have to worry about getting anything for me, that me visiting was enough. I also told her what I really needed, through no fault of her own, she couldn't get me. I'll need a high-paying job in about six months, for example. I'll need a new car when the Monte Carlo finally decides to die on me, whenever that may be. Anything else I might want would be just that -- a want -- and not a need. I want an Xbox 360. I want a new T-Mobile cell phone that's not horribly obsolete. But I don't need either of those things at all. In addition, I reminded her that anything they did end up getting me would have to be small enough to take back home on the plane in carry-on, otherwise they'd have to pay extra to ship it out here to me once I flew home. I don't check bags when I visit my folks; I don't need to. I take a backpack with me with about three outfits in it, my DS, and my mp3 player, and that's all I ever bring with me -- because that's all my backpack has room for and because it's all I need. To additionally ship something to me later makes getting me anything wholly inconvenient. I did tell her, however, that if she must get me something, to take me shopping while I'm there and I'll point out a few things to her, because I have a feeling that I'm not getting off the hook about this.
She's looking into plane tickets today, for a trip from the 21st to the 26th or so. That is about the maximum amount of time I can be gone anyhow with the cats left here and with the unpredictable winter weather both here and back home. Also, the five-day round trips are apparently cheaper than the three or four-day round trips, so if it saves her money I'm all for it. It's not cheap for me to fly back home to visit -- I believe my trip out there over Spring Break was about $400. That's the other reason I don't want my parents spending any more money on me for Christmas -- the trip itself is expensive enough.
Another part of it is that I'll be thirty years old; I no longer need my parents to get me anything for Christmas because I'm a grown, independent man. I'm not saying that to be prideful, but it's true. On some level, while I do enjoy getting presents, I am very aw shucks, you don't have to do anything for lil' ol' me about it. There's a feeling of guilt there, probably due to low self-esteem of some sort. Mind you, I always say I have high self-esteem, and for the most part I do, but I'm also much more critical of myself as a person, good or bad, than I am of other people, or compared to how other people think of me.
There's also the question of, if I'm going to be at my parents' for Christmas, when I'm going to spend time with Daisy and her own family over the holidays. This is very important, actually; I wasn't able to go to Omaha over Thanksgiving due to the sheer amount of work I had to do between that project and work for my students, and I've had an open invitation to come up and visit ever since Daisy and I first got together way back in July. Daisy's mother really wants to see me, and I adore her mother because she's always been incredibly sweet to me, but it seems like I keep blowing her family off -- which I'm not, of course, and that is totally not my intention at all -- it's just that every time I'm invited up for an event, something comes up or I am too busy to go. This does, of course, make me feel like an asshole -- especially when Daisy herself makes the drive down here at least twice a month, and sometimes more. It's as frustrating to me as it is to all of them, and it makes me seem like I don't want to meet them or spend time with them when that's anything but the truth. I do. Really I do. The trip out to my parents', though, if it happens, will more than likely take place over the actual holidays. This means I can see them before (which I'm not sure will be possible, based on the as-of-yet-unreleased final exam schedule, and the fact that I have my last class of the semester on the night of the 14th), or I can see them after -- when the holidays have all already passed. Neither option is incredibly ideal, but I'm sure Daisy and I will figure something out.
Speaking of that unreleased final exam schedule, I still haven't a clue when or where my students' exams will take place. Somebody told me that it was released last week sometime, but I haven't gotten any emails about it, and no one else has given me word one about any of it. I also haven't been in the department for a week because of the break, but usually the schedule of rooms/date/time is emailed to us at least twice. I haven't gotten that email (believe me, I check my gmail as well as my student email at least twice a day), so if it has been announced, I haven't heard anything about it. I already have my students asking me when and where it is, so hopefully I can find out today upon my return to campus this afternoon. On the plus side, I don't have any exams of my own this semester -- the Playwriting class doesn't have one, and the Surrealism class's last grade is the project I did this week. Next semester I won't have any final exams either, but I will have my comps to take in April so that I can graduate.
In other news, I turn 30 on December 20.
Most of you already know this; those of you close enough to me to read this blog on a regular basis already know how old I am and how little importance I usually put on birthdays, but this is a big one to me for some reason. I'm not sure why. I have no plans for my birthday and really don't want to have any -- especially if I'm flying out the next day to visit home. This year, my birthday comes almost a full week after the end of the semester, which means I'll have a bit of downtime to relax and to catch up on sleep before I make that trip home, if it happens. I made the joke to a few friends that all I want for my birthday is to go to Chuck E. Cheese's in a big group, get staggeringly drunk on the cheap beers they sell there, and eat pizza and play video games all night, but as fun as that would be, I don't think that'll happen. I also (obviously) can't spend my birthday with Daisy if I'm flying out early the next morning -- my mother always books me for the 6AM flights because it means I get to Pittsburgh around noon, and I like and want that -- so it looks like I'll be here at the house doing nothing on my birthday just because of how the days fall on the calendar.
For some reason, though, it's important to me. I've mentioned before that age 30 is the age where -- inexplicable to me -- I feel like I should be a man. Mind you, I've been a completely independent man with a house, a car, and a steady job for quite some time. I've had a variety of careers over the past several years, from lab technician to cashier to newspaper reporter to college instructor. I pay my own rent and bills, I pay for my own car repairs, maintenance, and insurance. I have two credit cards, which I pay off whenever I can. I can grow a hell of a beard. I am in a healthy, loving relationship with a fantastic woman who makes me feel very, very lucky. In almost every way, I've taken what I've been given in life and have "made do" with it. Yet, do I feel like the hypothetical, grown-up, 30-year-old man? Not really. Not even when Daisy calls me "old man" or "papi" because I have a rapidly receding hairline and occasionally get crotchety or cranky.
I've written here before that despite my age, I don't think I'll ever truly "grow up." It's not in my nature. I still have the sense of humor of a teenager, and will readily laugh at (and make) dick jokes. I still collect comic books and love them. Hell, as I write this, I'm wearing a vintage 20-year-old Batman Returns t-shirt. I still play Pokemon and am not ashamed about doing so (it's my one video game vice). Part of it isn't in my nature, and part of it is because of how I grew up -- my dad, for example, has been a rock musician his entire life, and still plays gigs even at the age of 62. My brother -- twelve years older than me and covered in tattoos -- does the same thing, and he has a wife and three kids. Both of them are also huge nerds, and are into the same things I'm into. My mother, while not exactly nerdy, has a deep (if hidden in recent years) appreciation for Star Trek, as she was the one who introduced me to the original series and TNG in the late 80s...and gave me my middle name, which we will not discuss here. If it wasn't for my mother, I would never have come to appreciate such series as The X-Files and Sliders, either. I am definitely a product of how I was raised and who was around me as I grew up -- and all of the important men in my life got older, yes, but none of them ever "grew up" either, at least not on the inside. Therefore, I don't think I ever will either. I am steadfast in carrying on the nerdy, never-grow-up tradition with my own children, when and if I have any, and while some of you may shudder at the thought of little Brandons running around, I can think of few things which would be more awesome.
Friday, November 23, 2012
Live-Blogging My Surrealism Project
Fall semester: day seventy
In order to keep myself from going completely insane, I have decided to once more live-blog another one of my assignments. You may remember that I did this last year for another class, as well. This one is my large final project for my Surrealism in Poetry class.
I've talked about this a bit before, but I requested from our instructor (also my thesis director) that I be allowed to exercise the "creative option" for the final project instead of a simple paper, as was originally offered to us upon registration for this course last spring. To make a long and involved story about this as short as possible (as this post will be long enough as-is), I discussed this with my instructor after class last week on the 14th, and followed it up with a detailed proposal of not one, but two different types of creative project I could do for this Surrealism class, and I have copied them both below:
Why, you may ask, was I willing to do this much work? That is a complex question to answer. At Flat State University, we don't have a "craft" class (though two have been created now, and are going to be added to the schedule next fall, after I graduate). My education when it comes to writing has been largely limited to workshop experiences and lit courses in one form or another -- this Surrealism course, a 500-level course, has the reading workload of an 800-level course, and with a few notable exceptions, most of what we're covering in it is the standard lit fare of dead white men (or, conversely, nearly-dead white men). We've read less than five women the entire semester, and of the entire course's vast extensive curriculum, maybe ten (total!) of the authors we've read have been anything other than white or male. This doesn't necessarily bother me; I'm used to lit courses. But this was the last lit course I had to take during my tenure at Flat State University, and I signed up for it not only at my advisor's insistence, but because in the Spring upon registration week, we were told by our professor that, especially for the MFAs in the class, he would be open to a "creative option" for the final project instead of a final paper. Instead of. This is important, so keep this in mind. I have the email he sent all of us about it; I printed it out at work. Anyway, because that option was offered, I signed up for the class. I could've chosen any of the lit classes available, either for this semester or next semester, to fulfill my last lit requirement. I chose this one specifically for that option.
When the class started (four months after registration, mind you), a few weeks into it we were told that the final assignment would be a 5-8 page research argument paper -- no ifs, ands, or buts. I brought up the creative option that night in class as a subtle reminder of what he'd told us, and was firmly shot down.
This, of course, I did not appreciate.
The class was sold to us, us MFAs specifically, as a lit course that was almost an alternative to a lit course, a lecture-based course with creative components, which is generally something along the lines of the "craft course" I mentioned before -- lighthearted discussion and analysis with an opportunity to further/better our own work -- basically, a workshop course with more reading and a little less of the "workshop environment." To see that we were basically lied to, that the course had been turned into a hardcore lit survey course with a reading load was more comparable to an 800-level special topics course (instead of the simple 500-level "Studies in Poetry" course that it was designed to be) was incredibly disheartening.
So I began searching for the email he'd sent us in the spring. We had it in writing that a creative option for the final project would be offered as an alternative to the paper, and were encouraged to register for the class because of that. Through lots of finagling, I finally got that email, and printed it out. I was right -- there it was, clear as day. I highlighted that section in case I needed to use it later.
Don't think I don't plan ahead for everything, folks.
After class on the 14th, I talked to him about this "creative option" for the final project. This time, he seemed cautiously open to it, which led to me giving a brief rundown of what I'd like to do (most of option 1, above) and telling him I'd shoot him an email of a full proposal for it. He agreed, so that's what I did after Daisy went home on Sunday -- I typed out a long email detailing those two different proposals above. I also gave him an "out," so to speak, by saying that if he did not like either idea and/or would prefer that I just do the standard 5-8 page paper, I would do so -- it was up to him. And I waited.
As for giving him the "out," the man is also my thesis director; I'm not going to proverbially back him into a corner over anything, especially not when I need him to keep cooperating with me in order to graduate in five months. Those proposals were basically a way of me saying not only "hey, keep your word" but "hey, I'm willing to do way more work for you, for this class, if it helps better my writing as a whole." Being an overachiever has its perks.
He emailed me back shortly before I left for campus on Monday afternoon and asked if I could meet with him about it on Tuesday at 4PM. I told him I couldn't, sadly, that I would be out of town for the week and had canceled my classes on Tuesday. All of this is true, by the way -- I canceled classes for Tuesday by the end of August, and told all of my students even then that there's no way we'd be in class on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It's pointless; WVU, when I was an undergrad there, gave its students the entire week off for Thanksgiving. Flat State University gives them three days (Wed/Thu/Fri) and makes up for it earlier in the semester with "Fall Break." I'd rather just have the whole week off at once.
But I digress.
I told him that I wouldn't be in on Tuesday, but also told him that I would be on campus that afternoon (I emailed him back, in a reply, less than 20 minutes after he sent the first email) until 4PM, and I had my Playwriting class after that, but until then I would be more than happy to meet with him. That gave him a window of about three hours that he could be there to meet with me and talk about the project. He doesn't live far from campus; I've been to the man's house, ironically enough. And he was obviously available if he'd emailed me 20 minutes before. But I went to campus and 4PM came and went, with no replies and him not coming to meet me. Oh well.
As a further aside, it's not like my project proposal required a meeting at all -- I was asking a three-pronged, easy-to-answer question: Should I do option 1, option 2, or just write a paper? This does not require a discussion; it required a one-line response so that I could get to work, which is what I told him -- I wanted to get this project done over the break if at all possible so that I had time during the rest of the semester to work on my other responsibilities, namely as an instructor myself.
So, after I got home on Monday night, my break "started," of sorts. Tuesday at 4PM, when I was supposed to meet with him, came and went with no reply to my email. I considered calling him, as I do have his number and he has mine, but I considered that to be going out of my way even more than I already had. Finally, at around 11PM Tuesday night, I got a reply. I won't quote from it; but I'll paraphrase. He told me that the short answer to my proposal was that any creative project would still have to be accompanied by a 3-5 page, "informal academic" paper, but that he liked option one quite a bit.
I read the email over and over. So, basically, instead of doing a final paper for this class that's 5-8 pages, I thought, my project will still have to include a 3-5 page paper anyhow?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the entire point of doing a creative project in the first place was in order to replace any paper I would have to write for the class. That was not only what my proposal was, but what he himself told us in the spring upon enrollment into the course. While his compromise (of sorts) with me was a shorter paper attached to the project, the fact that he was trying to include a paper at all sort of negated the entire point of a creative project in the first place. If he wanted me to do a simple paper instead, of course, he knew I was open to that -- these were just proposals; I would've happily written a shorter paper and gone on with my life.
I mulled this over for a bit, and at a friend's advice, decided to sleep on it before I replied or started any work. On Wednesday morning, I emailed him back and said that was fine, that I would do option 1 with a paper attached, and asked him if there was anyone (or any of my poems in particular) that he would like me to focus on a little more deeply for it. It is now Friday afternoon as I write this, the project is done, and he's still never replied. After I told him my plan in that email, however, I started the project on Wednesday afternoon. What follows is the step-by-step live-blogging of the project from inception to completion. I hope you enjoy.
2:04 PM Wednesday: I tell Daisy goodbye after talking to her for a while, and begin writing in earnest on my project. I give it the title of "Surreal Incorporation and Metamorphosis: Utilizing Surrealist Techniques and Ideology to Transform and Reinterpret Poetic Voice." I'm good with titles. It sounds a hell of a lot more intelligent than it will probably end up being.
4:21 PM: I have completed the first page of writing, covering Breton's concepts of surrealism and bringing in one other author who wrote on Breton and Surrealism to back up those points. I take a break and shower.
5:12 PM: I resume working. I also bring in an interview with Allen Ginsberg on his "first thought, best thought" style of writing, and tie it in with Surrealists' automatic writing, before moving onward.
6:53 PM: With five sources and at the bottom of page two, I take a break to make a bowl of cereal and some peanut butter waffles for dinner -- with intentions to cook something more substantial later. I begin to inwardly weep as I read friends' status updates about making turkeys and stuffing and spending time with their families as Thanksgiving approaches. Nope, not in this house. Grad school attacks! It's super-effective!
7:12 PM: I resume working once more, shutting off Pandora and Facebook because both are too distracting. I set the goal of getting the "essay" section done by 9PM.
7:14 PM: I contemplate suicide for the first time during the writing of this paper. I'm surprised that it took me this long.
7:18 PM: A reference to W.S. Merwin and the "deep image," as well as the "dream state," enters the paper. I tie it back into Breton talking about the unconscious, and keep moving forward.
7:26 PM: Oy. Maybe I'll get the essay section of this project done by 9PM. I will again remind you that the entire point of doing an alternative, creative-based project was to avoid writing an essay or paper altogether -- not to include a shorter version of one within the project itself.
7:44 PM: Bottom of page three. Two more citations added, one for Larry Levis's "Sensationalism" and another for the S+7, or "Oulipo" exercise. I am wrapping up the academic section of the paper and am getting ready to move on into my explanation of what I plan to do.
7:53 PM: I realize that I will have to come back to this original essay section and revise it rather heavily after the project is done.
7:58 PM: Fuck, I'm tired. I so don't want to be working on this damned thing anymore. The essay component itself has sucked out any optimism and goodwill I had towards the project and my idea for it. I begin double-fisting coffee and cigarettes in an attempt to reinvigorate myself.
8:09 PM: I post the WKRP Thanksgiving video to Facebook. No matter how many times I watch it, I still laugh my ass off.
8:19 PM: GOOD GOD SHOOT ME I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE
8:32 PM: I plug my iPod into the speaker system in my room, and put it on "shuffle." Iron Maiden starts playing. I am suddenly re-energized for four minutes. AAAAAAAACES HIIIIIIIGH
9:31 PM: Having finished the essay portion of the paper for the moment (which, again, I will return to later), I have now completed the first poem transformation of the actual project -- a modified S+7 version of my own poem "floor." Jackyl's "The Lumberjack Song" comes on my iPod. I pause to rock out before continuing.
9:50 PM: At over six pages, four of that being the introductory/explanatory essay, I have now surpassed the 5-8 minimum page requirement for the assignment. I'm not even halfway done. I'm maybe 25% done, at the most, and that includes the essay section. Grateful Dead's "Hell in a Bucket" comes on my iPod. The song feels strangely accurate at this point.
10:04 PM: Lightning strikes the clock tower, sending the required 1.21 Jiggawatts of electricity directly into the flux capaci....wait, that's not going to fit into this paper...DELETE! DELETE!
10:14 PM: I go downstairs after messaging Daisy a few times, in order to fold up the load of laundry I put in the dryer earlier during my dinner break. I need to step away from the computer for a few minutes and breathe, to reformulate my thoughts. Even though I'm in the creative stages of the project now, too much focus will burn me out.
10:32 PM: I return to my room. My iPod is playing Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Mak'er," and Daisy, after reading my live-blog of last year's paper on Mrs Dalloway, has called me "cray cray." I put on a flannel bathrobe and pajama pants, as it has gotten colder over the past few hours. I begin the second poem transformation.
10:44 PM: I tell my friend Parker that I am live-blogging the process of creating this project. He immediately becomes incredibly excited to read it once it's posted, as he is in the class with me as well.
11PM: I have finished the second poem's metamorphosis, changing my poem "Midwestern Paradise" into a wholly different animal via various electronic translations through eight different languages and back.
11:15 PM: I have now been working on this project for over nine hours, counting the breaks I've taken as well. I pause for a moment so that I can hit the bathroom and make more coffee.
11:31 PM: I have completely finished the second poem's section, including the explanations of my edits and discussion of the various translations, and move on to poem three. I estimate that at this point, I am about 35% done with the project. I am on page seven.
11:56 PM: I have finished the third poem's section -- it is an automatic writing exercise of my poem "Vacation." I took the title, and with the title in mind only, began writing, only keeping the same number of lines and same number of stanzas. Four minutes later, I had a completely new poem with an entirely new theme and tone, a poem that...surprisingly, I was incredibly proud of. I immediately showed it to Daisy and Parker. Daisy said that it reminded her of a disoriented person. Success! THAT is surrealism, folks!
12:09 AM Thursday: Daisy goes to bed for the night.
12:12 AM: Now after midnight, I move on to my fourth poem section. I now estimate that I am close to halfway done with the project. Happy Thanksgiving. I'm sitting here in a bathrobe writing about Breton, because my instructor has a hard-on for him. Heeey...."Hard-on for Breton" would be a great title for this project. Nahhh, too easy.
12:34 AM: I smoke my last cigarette of the pack I opened upon starting this project, and open another pack. There's a full pot of coffee in front of me, and, to borrow a Robert Frost-ism, miles to go before I sleep. ZZ Top comes on my iPod. I rock out.
12:59 AM: Halfway through the fourth of five poems of mine that I'm going to present within the project, and I'm beginning to get tired. I swear to myself that I will at least get a full draft of this project done tonight before bed, and begin drinking coffee more quickly. My stomach starts rolling. Sigh.
1:01 AM: I promise myself that if I can finish a full draft in the next two hours or so, I'll be able to play a game of Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds Clone Campaigns before bed. Suddenly my motivation increases, and I dive back into my work. It is at this point that I have officially given up on being awake before noon tomorrow, which means I will miss the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Oh well.
1:27 AM: I am on a roll. I am creating, via surrealist techniques, three different versions of the same poem. Something has clicked inside my mind, and I have somehow finally gotten into some sort of creative groove that I didn't know was inside me. The work I'm producing is good. My interpretations of surrealism feel stellar, they feel like I'm doing something productive with my time. I drink more hot, strong coffee, and continue.
1:53 AM: I breach page ten.
2:04 AM: I have officially been working on the project for twelve hours. I stop for a moment to assess my progress. I have two more poems to "surrealize" and expand upon, neither of which are my own. I estimate that the project draft, at this point, is about 70% done.
2:11 AM: I realize, finally, that the reason my stomach is feeling weird is because I never did go cook a proper dinner as I had planned; I haven't put anything on my stomach but coffee since shortly before 7PM. Being deep in "the zone" means that I can't stop now; I fetch some rice cakes from the kitchen pantry and slowly munch on them one by one as I continue my work. I am still wanting to have a finished draft of the project done by around 3AM or so. The phrase oy vey, the things I do for my education wanders through my brain.
2:20 AM: Spinal Tap's "Break Like the Wind" comes on my iPod. I almost choke on my rice cake while rocking out to it. Oh well.
2:31 AM: My cigarette lighter stops working. Fuck. I switch over to matches.
3:39 AM: There's no way I'm finishing a full draft of this project tonight. I make the decision to finish the poem I'm working on surrealizing, David St. John's "Peach Fires," and call it a night, just going to bed.
***intermission***
2:13 PM: After nine hours of sleep, I come upstairs, go through my wake-up routine for a bit, read a slew of "Happy Thanksgiving" messages from friends (but no family, interesting enough) and begin work once more on the project. At this point, I re-estimate it to be about 65% complete.
2:21 PM: I finish the David St. John section and move on to the last poem I will work on for the project, Pablo Neruda's "Walking Around."
2:32 PM: After sending a few messages back and forth with Daisy, I turn off Facebook. It's too distracting, and I can't get anything done with it on. For background noise, I once more boot up the iPod -- if I turn on football, I will become even more distracted.
2:38 PM: Hootie and the Blowfish comes on my iPod. Why, for fuck's sake, do I have Hootie and the Blowfish on my iPod?
2:54 PM: I go back into the St. John poem again, because working on it is endlessly fascinating, and produce another version without adjectives or adverbs. The poem is now completely changed -- and more surreal -- from its original version.
3:11 PM: Our Lady Peace's "Superman's Dead" comes on my iPod. I rock out to it as I drink more coffee and finish the St. John section for good.
3:27 PM: My final section of the project, on Neruda's "Walking Around," is going to be much larger than I originally thought it would be. I am on page 14 now, before I go back and add more to the essay component of the project to finish it up, and with comparisons between the different versions and translations of the Neruda poem -- as well as the exercises I will do with it myself -- I expect this project to be about twenty pages total. This is twelve pages longer than the maximum required length of the standard paper project he asked of the class. I remind myself that it was I who campaigned for a more creative option for the final assignment, and press onward.
3:33 PM: I send a message to Rae and Jay: "I'm on page 14. He had BETTER FUCKING LIKE THIS. It'll be about 20 by the time it's done."
3:36 PM: I realize that most normal people are probably having Thanksgiving dinner while watching football, while I'm here working on a massive project because I a) have no life, b) have no family out here, and c) have nothing "Thanksgivingish" to make for dinner aside from potatoes and stuffing. I have also eaten nothing whatsoever since last night's rice cakes. I consider switching from coffee to beer as I write, but realize that would be a horrific idea and press onward.
3:38 PM: I receive an email from Lady: "Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you're celebrating, somehow. Happy Holiday!" This is really sweet of her.
3:40 PM: I smoke the last cigarette of the pack I opened last night while working on this paper. I take a break for a few moments to open another pack and decompress a bit. You're almost there, Brandon. Almost there. I estimate that I have about two hours more of work to do before I have what I can call a "finished draft" of the project. I send a message to Parker telling him I have 14 pages written.
4PM: I become stuck in a rut of sorts -- I know that if I fully perform a set of re-translation exercises on this Neruda poem, I'll add about six more pages to the paper, easily. I already plan to add another three or four pages to the end in another shorter essay describing what the processes of surrealism have done to my work and can do to others' works, so it is possible that this paper may balloon to three times the required length. I'm not sure what my professor will think of this.
4:10 PM: Just like last year, the kids of the neighborhood are outside running around and screaming bloody murder again. I like children, I do, but please shut the fuck up. It's so loud that I can hear it back here in my Man Cave, on the opposite side of the house, with my iPod on at almost full volume.
4:18 PM: My Thanksgiving dinner: honey mustard pretzels Daisy brought down here over last weekend. Yep. They settle my growling stomach for the moment. I follow this with a handful of peanuts and a handful of Skittles, and promise myself that I will actually cook something tonight.
4:26 PM: The same Hootie and the Blowfish song plays again on my iPod, less than two hours later. WTF.
4:30 PM: The kids are still screaming. Louder than before. I begin seriously pondering getting a vasectomy.
4:47 PM: My translation exercise with Neruda is a success; I have created a fully surreal version of his poem, which when compared with two English translations, allowed the element of chance to spring forth, creating an electronically-produced style of surrealist "automatic writing." I begin wrapping up the Neruda section.
4:55 PM: I realize I've left the "auto spin" function on in the casino slots game I play on Facebook while I've been writing. I've lost $1M from letting it spin nonstop for an hour. I turn it off, and close out of Facebook. I also close out of Twitter; it's too distracting and makes me not want to keep working. Actually, I really want to get out of the house -- and then I realized that Black Friday sales start in about three hours. I shudder inwardly and bury myself back in my work.
5:04 PM: I decide to say FUCK IT for half an hour and take a shower.
5:39 PM: I return to my desk. It's dark outside; the kids' screaming has stopped. Most people, again, are probably watching football or eating dinner. I am stuck at my desk, working on this fucking project until I can call it a "finished draft."
6:20 PM: I give Parker the complete rundown of my project. He's impressed. It's hard to impress Parker -- he's probably the most intelligent student in the class, if not the department. I am very close to wrapping it up -- just another few pages to go.
6:33 PM: I go back to the beginning essay section of the paper and add more to it, clean it up, and retool it to better suit the project's outcome. By the time I've finished, I've added another page to it, bringing the total page count up to 19.
6:52 PM: Daisy posts a status update on Facebook that says "Controversial status alert: how do I find out about Black Friday sales?" I responded with this photo:
She was serious. Which made the above image even funnier. I directed her to various store websites to see their Black Friday ads. I assume she's going to go out shopping (which, knowing Daisy and her dislike of crowds, is beyond me), so I tell her that Walmart has a laptop on sale for $179 during their Black Friday sale and that it's the only thing I desperately need, as my one at school is about to die on me. She calls me a "silly man" and says that she already has my Christmas gift planned.
7:08 PM: I send this message to my friend Bronnie, who is also working on her Surrealism paper this week: "Ten sources for [Professor's] thing. Nineteen pages, twelve of which are part of the creative project I cleared with him. And that's just the draft. Yeah, turkey? Football? family? What's that? I'm all alone in Kansas and this is how I spend my Thanksgiving -- writing, smoking, drinking coffee, and eating rice cakes with my FUCKING CATS ALL ALONE. I hate the holidays." It is a completely, brutally honest message.
7:18 PM: I have added almost two full pages to the introductory essay section of the paper in an attempt to pull everything together a bit tighter.
7:20 PM: I think I've pissed Daisy off; she has stopped replying to my messages about Christmas stuff. I apologize and dive back into the paper. She doesn't respond.
7:33 PM: I remind myself that as soon as I finish this damned thing, I can cook an actual dinner and decompress a bit. That furthers my resolve to get it done as soon as possible.
7:48 PM: I completely finish the rewritten introductory essay section. Now all that remains is to rework the end of the Neruda section and to write my wrap-up. I re-estimate that the project is about 90% done.
7:53 PM: I give the entire project a read-through from start to near-finish. It sounds good, surprisingly.
8:23 PM: Daisy tells me that she's sleepy and probably isn't going out shopping tonight, but to let her know when I finish the project. I tell her not to worry about me, that I'll finish it tonight and will probably just cook dinner and go to bed. I cannot wait to cook dinner. I need food badly, as my stomach feels like it's eating itself. However, I cannot stop until I am done, otherwise I'll lose my train of thought and will be unable to finish because eating makes me sleepy -- especially when I haven't eaten anything all day.
8:33 PM: I begin page 20. This is the conclusion section which will wrap it all up, consisting of my thoughts on the project as a whole. The project is, at this point, 95% (or more) complete.
8:56 PM: With half a page to go on the conclusion section (at most) before I attach my Works Cited page and call it done, I begin heating the pan in the kitchen for cooking cheeseburgers. Because I've earned cheeseburgers, goddammit. I also decide that I've earned a movie and begin brainstorming with the other half of my head what I'd like to watch.
9:05 PM: I breach page 21. I throw the first burger in the pan, on low heat. I find out, via a status update, that Daisy has gone out Black Friday shopping.
9:19 PM: At 22 total pages, the project is done. I immediately give it another read-through, make sure that it is completely saved and locked down, and import a copy of it to PDF for safekeeping. I also email a copy of it to myself in case of catastrophic computer failure. My SchoolDrive (the flash drive I back up all of my schoolwork on) is currently in my desk at work -- emailing myself a copy was the next best option.
So, there you have it. That is the entirety of my project, from start to finish. Now, finally, I can get on with my life and...grade through a stack of student papers over the course of the rest of the weekend. Sigh. Life moves forward.
In order to keep myself from going completely insane, I have decided to once more live-blog another one of my assignments. You may remember that I did this last year for another class, as well. This one is my large final project for my Surrealism in Poetry class.
I've talked about this a bit before, but I requested from our instructor (also my thesis director) that I be allowed to exercise the "creative option" for the final project instead of a simple paper, as was originally offered to us upon registration for this course last spring. To make a long and involved story about this as short as possible (as this post will be long enough as-is), I discussed this with my instructor after class last week on the 14th, and followed it up with a detailed proposal of not one, but two different types of creative project I could do for this Surrealism class, and I have copied them both below:
Idea 1:
Taking some of my own works, specifically the more straightforward or prose-like pieces, and "surrealizing" them via various means. This
would detail setting up each page of the project in a two-column
format, with the original poem on one side and the modified version on the other. I would employ various techniques with them, including
automatic writing, "first thought, best thought," and the S+7
technique (or variations thereof). This would not only be beneficial
to my writing as a whole, but would serve the dual purpose of allowing
me to radically revise some of the poetry that may end up in my
thesis, making those poems stronger. After each modification, I would
also provide about a page of explanation and/or details of my process
for each one, including anything that had been revised before, during,
or after the surrealization. These poems would be drastically changed
from the originals -- sometimes, especially with the automatic writing
ones, I'd simply take the overall theme of one of the poems and redo
it from the ground up, for example. Ideally, I'd like to do this for
around 8-10 of my own poems (of varying lengths), and as a bonus would like to do it for a few poets I've been reading as of late as well
(people like David St. John or Sharon Olds, perhaps, or maybe with
some of the poets we've read in the class -- Lorca and WCW spring to mind), with the same sort of explanations as well. I'd also be
open to not using any of my own poetry at all, if you'd prefer, and
doing these surrealization exercises exclusively with poets I've been
reading or poets who we've covered in class. The total length of this
project would probably be around 15 pages, which yes, is more work,
but it's work which I feel would be more interesting and fulfilling
than a 5-8 page research paper on one or two poets' styles or works,
regardless of which route you would allow me to take on a project such as this.
Idea 2:
I produce a "Howl"-like poem from scratch, utilizing the techniques
that Ginsberg used in his own writing -- this includes multiple full
drafts, edits, and explanations of each draft, not only with my own
handwritten notes and revisions but revised pages in-between, similar
to the multiple versions of "Howl" we read in class this semester. I
would be, in essence, diving into Ginsberg's style and trying to get
into his headspace, and producing a poem of about the same length and with the same qualities of his works. I would not, however, be
attempting to emulate his style; I would instead be focusing more on
the craft of the poem itself, and detailing the step-by-step process
of its creation, revision, rewording, and my stylistic choices along
the way. I'd produce no less than three drafts, which (with
explanations and hand-edited pages) would create a project of about
10-15 pages -- similar length to the one above.
Why, you may ask, was I willing to do this much work? That is a complex question to answer. At Flat State University, we don't have a "craft" class (though two have been created now, and are going to be added to the schedule next fall, after I graduate). My education when it comes to writing has been largely limited to workshop experiences and lit courses in one form or another -- this Surrealism course, a 500-level course, has the reading workload of an 800-level course, and with a few notable exceptions, most of what we're covering in it is the standard lit fare of dead white men (or, conversely, nearly-dead white men). We've read less than five women the entire semester, and of the entire course's vast extensive curriculum, maybe ten (total!) of the authors we've read have been anything other than white or male. This doesn't necessarily bother me; I'm used to lit courses. But this was the last lit course I had to take during my tenure at Flat State University, and I signed up for it not only at my advisor's insistence, but because in the Spring upon registration week, we were told by our professor that, especially for the MFAs in the class, he would be open to a "creative option" for the final project instead of a final paper. Instead of. This is important, so keep this in mind. I have the email he sent all of us about it; I printed it out at work. Anyway, because that option was offered, I signed up for the class. I could've chosen any of the lit classes available, either for this semester or next semester, to fulfill my last lit requirement. I chose this one specifically for that option.
When the class started (four months after registration, mind you), a few weeks into it we were told that the final assignment would be a 5-8 page research argument paper -- no ifs, ands, or buts. I brought up the creative option that night in class as a subtle reminder of what he'd told us, and was firmly shot down.
This, of course, I did not appreciate.
The class was sold to us, us MFAs specifically, as a lit course that was almost an alternative to a lit course, a lecture-based course with creative components, which is generally something along the lines of the "craft course" I mentioned before -- lighthearted discussion and analysis with an opportunity to further/better our own work -- basically, a workshop course with more reading and a little less of the "workshop environment." To see that we were basically lied to, that the course had been turned into a hardcore lit survey course with a reading load was more comparable to an 800-level special topics course (instead of the simple 500-level "Studies in Poetry" course that it was designed to be) was incredibly disheartening.
So I began searching for the email he'd sent us in the spring. We had it in writing that a creative option for the final project would be offered as an alternative to the paper, and were encouraged to register for the class because of that. Through lots of finagling, I finally got that email, and printed it out. I was right -- there it was, clear as day. I highlighted that section in case I needed to use it later.
Don't think I don't plan ahead for everything, folks.
After class on the 14th, I talked to him about this "creative option" for the final project. This time, he seemed cautiously open to it, which led to me giving a brief rundown of what I'd like to do (most of option 1, above) and telling him I'd shoot him an email of a full proposal for it. He agreed, so that's what I did after Daisy went home on Sunday -- I typed out a long email detailing those two different proposals above. I also gave him an "out," so to speak, by saying that if he did not like either idea and/or would prefer that I just do the standard 5-8 page paper, I would do so -- it was up to him. And I waited.
As for giving him the "out," the man is also my thesis director; I'm not going to proverbially back him into a corner over anything, especially not when I need him to keep cooperating with me in order to graduate in five months. Those proposals were basically a way of me saying not only "hey, keep your word" but "hey, I'm willing to do way more work for you, for this class, if it helps better my writing as a whole." Being an overachiever has its perks.
He emailed me back shortly before I left for campus on Monday afternoon and asked if I could meet with him about it on Tuesday at 4PM. I told him I couldn't, sadly, that I would be out of town for the week and had canceled my classes on Tuesday. All of this is true, by the way -- I canceled classes for Tuesday by the end of August, and told all of my students even then that there's no way we'd be in class on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It's pointless; WVU, when I was an undergrad there, gave its students the entire week off for Thanksgiving. Flat State University gives them three days (Wed/Thu/Fri) and makes up for it earlier in the semester with "Fall Break." I'd rather just have the whole week off at once.
But I digress.
I told him that I wouldn't be in on Tuesday, but also told him that I would be on campus that afternoon (I emailed him back, in a reply, less than 20 minutes after he sent the first email) until 4PM, and I had my Playwriting class after that, but until then I would be more than happy to meet with him. That gave him a window of about three hours that he could be there to meet with me and talk about the project. He doesn't live far from campus; I've been to the man's house, ironically enough. And he was obviously available if he'd emailed me 20 minutes before. But I went to campus and 4PM came and went, with no replies and him not coming to meet me. Oh well.
As a further aside, it's not like my project proposal required a meeting at all -- I was asking a three-pronged, easy-to-answer question: Should I do option 1, option 2, or just write a paper? This does not require a discussion; it required a one-line response so that I could get to work, which is what I told him -- I wanted to get this project done over the break if at all possible so that I had time during the rest of the semester to work on my other responsibilities, namely as an instructor myself.
So, after I got home on Monday night, my break "started," of sorts. Tuesday at 4PM, when I was supposed to meet with him, came and went with no reply to my email. I considered calling him, as I do have his number and he has mine, but I considered that to be going out of my way even more than I already had. Finally, at around 11PM Tuesday night, I got a reply. I won't quote from it; but I'll paraphrase. He told me that the short answer to my proposal was that any creative project would still have to be accompanied by a 3-5 page, "informal academic" paper, but that he liked option one quite a bit.
I read the email over and over. So, basically, instead of doing a final paper for this class that's 5-8 pages, I thought, my project will still have to include a 3-5 page paper anyhow?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the entire point of doing a creative project in the first place was in order to replace any paper I would have to write for the class. That was not only what my proposal was, but what he himself told us in the spring upon enrollment into the course. While his compromise (of sorts) with me was a shorter paper attached to the project, the fact that he was trying to include a paper at all sort of negated the entire point of a creative project in the first place. If he wanted me to do a simple paper instead, of course, he knew I was open to that -- these were just proposals; I would've happily written a shorter paper and gone on with my life.
I mulled this over for a bit, and at a friend's advice, decided to sleep on it before I replied or started any work. On Wednesday morning, I emailed him back and said that was fine, that I would do option 1 with a paper attached, and asked him if there was anyone (or any of my poems in particular) that he would like me to focus on a little more deeply for it. It is now Friday afternoon as I write this, the project is done, and he's still never replied. After I told him my plan in that email, however, I started the project on Wednesday afternoon. What follows is the step-by-step live-blogging of the project from inception to completion. I hope you enjoy.
2:04 PM Wednesday: I tell Daisy goodbye after talking to her for a while, and begin writing in earnest on my project. I give it the title of "Surreal Incorporation and Metamorphosis: Utilizing Surrealist Techniques and Ideology to Transform and Reinterpret Poetic Voice." I'm good with titles. It sounds a hell of a lot more intelligent than it will probably end up being.
4:21 PM: I have completed the first page of writing, covering Breton's concepts of surrealism and bringing in one other author who wrote on Breton and Surrealism to back up those points. I take a break and shower.
5:12 PM: I resume working. I also bring in an interview with Allen Ginsberg on his "first thought, best thought" style of writing, and tie it in with Surrealists' automatic writing, before moving onward.
6:53 PM: With five sources and at the bottom of page two, I take a break to make a bowl of cereal and some peanut butter waffles for dinner -- with intentions to cook something more substantial later. I begin to inwardly weep as I read friends' status updates about making turkeys and stuffing and spending time with their families as Thanksgiving approaches. Nope, not in this house. Grad school attacks! It's super-effective!
7:12 PM: I resume working once more, shutting off Pandora and Facebook because both are too distracting. I set the goal of getting the "essay" section done by 9PM.
7:14 PM: I contemplate suicide for the first time during the writing of this paper. I'm surprised that it took me this long.
7:18 PM: A reference to W.S. Merwin and the "deep image," as well as the "dream state," enters the paper. I tie it back into Breton talking about the unconscious, and keep moving forward.
7:26 PM: Oy. Maybe I'll get the essay section of this project done by 9PM. I will again remind you that the entire point of doing an alternative, creative-based project was to avoid writing an essay or paper altogether -- not to include a shorter version of one within the project itself.
7:44 PM: Bottom of page three. Two more citations added, one for Larry Levis's "Sensationalism" and another for the S+7, or "Oulipo" exercise. I am wrapping up the academic section of the paper and am getting ready to move on into my explanation of what I plan to do.
7:53 PM: I realize that I will have to come back to this original essay section and revise it rather heavily after the project is done.
7:58 PM: Fuck, I'm tired. I so don't want to be working on this damned thing anymore. The essay component itself has sucked out any optimism and goodwill I had towards the project and my idea for it. I begin double-fisting coffee and cigarettes in an attempt to reinvigorate myself.
8:09 PM: I post the WKRP Thanksgiving video to Facebook. No matter how many times I watch it, I still laugh my ass off.
8:19 PM: GOOD GOD SHOOT ME I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE
8:32 PM: I plug my iPod into the speaker system in my room, and put it on "shuffle." Iron Maiden starts playing. I am suddenly re-energized for four minutes. AAAAAAAACES HIIIIIIIGH
9:31 PM: Having finished the essay portion of the paper for the moment (which, again, I will return to later), I have now completed the first poem transformation of the actual project -- a modified S+7 version of my own poem "floor." Jackyl's "The Lumberjack Song" comes on my iPod. I pause to rock out before continuing.
9:50 PM: At over six pages, four of that being the introductory/explanatory essay, I have now surpassed the 5-8 minimum page requirement for the assignment. I'm not even halfway done. I'm maybe 25% done, at the most, and that includes the essay section. Grateful Dead's "Hell in a Bucket" comes on my iPod. The song feels strangely accurate at this point.
10:04 PM: Lightning strikes the clock tower, sending the required 1.21 Jiggawatts of electricity directly into the flux capaci....wait, that's not going to fit into this paper...DELETE! DELETE!
10:14 PM: I go downstairs after messaging Daisy a few times, in order to fold up the load of laundry I put in the dryer earlier during my dinner break. I need to step away from the computer for a few minutes and breathe, to reformulate my thoughts. Even though I'm in the creative stages of the project now, too much focus will burn me out.
10:32 PM: I return to my room. My iPod is playing Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Mak'er," and Daisy, after reading my live-blog of last year's paper on Mrs Dalloway, has called me "cray cray." I put on a flannel bathrobe and pajama pants, as it has gotten colder over the past few hours. I begin the second poem transformation.
10:44 PM: I tell my friend Parker that I am live-blogging the process of creating this project. He immediately becomes incredibly excited to read it once it's posted, as he is in the class with me as well.
11PM: I have finished the second poem's metamorphosis, changing my poem "Midwestern Paradise" into a wholly different animal via various electronic translations through eight different languages and back.
11:15 PM: I have now been working on this project for over nine hours, counting the breaks I've taken as well. I pause for a moment so that I can hit the bathroom and make more coffee.
11:31 PM: I have completely finished the second poem's section, including the explanations of my edits and discussion of the various translations, and move on to poem three. I estimate that at this point, I am about 35% done with the project. I am on page seven.
11:56 PM: I have finished the third poem's section -- it is an automatic writing exercise of my poem "Vacation." I took the title, and with the title in mind only, began writing, only keeping the same number of lines and same number of stanzas. Four minutes later, I had a completely new poem with an entirely new theme and tone, a poem that...surprisingly, I was incredibly proud of. I immediately showed it to Daisy and Parker. Daisy said that it reminded her of a disoriented person. Success! THAT is surrealism, folks!
12:09 AM Thursday: Daisy goes to bed for the night.
12:12 AM: Now after midnight, I move on to my fourth poem section. I now estimate that I am close to halfway done with the project. Happy Thanksgiving. I'm sitting here in a bathrobe writing about Breton, because my instructor has a hard-on for him. Heeey...."Hard-on for Breton" would be a great title for this project. Nahhh, too easy.
12:34 AM: I smoke my last cigarette of the pack I opened upon starting this project, and open another pack. There's a full pot of coffee in front of me, and, to borrow a Robert Frost-ism, miles to go before I sleep. ZZ Top comes on my iPod. I rock out.
12:59 AM: Halfway through the fourth of five poems of mine that I'm going to present within the project, and I'm beginning to get tired. I swear to myself that I will at least get a full draft of this project done tonight before bed, and begin drinking coffee more quickly. My stomach starts rolling. Sigh.
1:01 AM: I promise myself that if I can finish a full draft in the next two hours or so, I'll be able to play a game of Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds Clone Campaigns before bed. Suddenly my motivation increases, and I dive back into my work. It is at this point that I have officially given up on being awake before noon tomorrow, which means I will miss the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Oh well.
1:27 AM: I am on a roll. I am creating, via surrealist techniques, three different versions of the same poem. Something has clicked inside my mind, and I have somehow finally gotten into some sort of creative groove that I didn't know was inside me. The work I'm producing is good. My interpretations of surrealism feel stellar, they feel like I'm doing something productive with my time. I drink more hot, strong coffee, and continue.
1:53 AM: I breach page ten.
2:04 AM: I have officially been working on the project for twelve hours. I stop for a moment to assess my progress. I have two more poems to "surrealize" and expand upon, neither of which are my own. I estimate that the project draft, at this point, is about 70% done.
2:11 AM: I realize, finally, that the reason my stomach is feeling weird is because I never did go cook a proper dinner as I had planned; I haven't put anything on my stomach but coffee since shortly before 7PM. Being deep in "the zone" means that I can't stop now; I fetch some rice cakes from the kitchen pantry and slowly munch on them one by one as I continue my work. I am still wanting to have a finished draft of the project done by around 3AM or so. The phrase oy vey, the things I do for my education wanders through my brain.
2:20 AM: Spinal Tap's "Break Like the Wind" comes on my iPod. I almost choke on my rice cake while rocking out to it. Oh well.
2:31 AM: My cigarette lighter stops working. Fuck. I switch over to matches.
3:39 AM: There's no way I'm finishing a full draft of this project tonight. I make the decision to finish the poem I'm working on surrealizing, David St. John's "Peach Fires," and call it a night, just going to bed.
***intermission***
2:13 PM: After nine hours of sleep, I come upstairs, go through my wake-up routine for a bit, read a slew of "Happy Thanksgiving" messages from friends (but no family, interesting enough) and begin work once more on the project. At this point, I re-estimate it to be about 65% complete.
2:21 PM: I finish the David St. John section and move on to the last poem I will work on for the project, Pablo Neruda's "Walking Around."
2:32 PM: After sending a few messages back and forth with Daisy, I turn off Facebook. It's too distracting, and I can't get anything done with it on. For background noise, I once more boot up the iPod -- if I turn on football, I will become even more distracted.
2:38 PM: Hootie and the Blowfish comes on my iPod. Why, for fuck's sake, do I have Hootie and the Blowfish on my iPod?
2:54 PM: I go back into the St. John poem again, because working on it is endlessly fascinating, and produce another version without adjectives or adverbs. The poem is now completely changed -- and more surreal -- from its original version.
3:11 PM: Our Lady Peace's "Superman's Dead" comes on my iPod. I rock out to it as I drink more coffee and finish the St. John section for good.
3:27 PM: My final section of the project, on Neruda's "Walking Around," is going to be much larger than I originally thought it would be. I am on page 14 now, before I go back and add more to the essay component of the project to finish it up, and with comparisons between the different versions and translations of the Neruda poem -- as well as the exercises I will do with it myself -- I expect this project to be about twenty pages total. This is twelve pages longer than the maximum required length of the standard paper project he asked of the class. I remind myself that it was I who campaigned for a more creative option for the final assignment, and press onward.
3:33 PM: I send a message to Rae and Jay: "I'm on page 14. He had BETTER FUCKING LIKE THIS. It'll be about 20 by the time it's done."
3:36 PM: I realize that most normal people are probably having Thanksgiving dinner while watching football, while I'm here working on a massive project because I a) have no life, b) have no family out here, and c) have nothing "Thanksgivingish" to make for dinner aside from potatoes and stuffing. I have also eaten nothing whatsoever since last night's rice cakes. I consider switching from coffee to beer as I write, but realize that would be a horrific idea and press onward.
3:38 PM: I receive an email from Lady: "Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you're celebrating, somehow. Happy Holiday!" This is really sweet of her.
3:40 PM: I smoke the last cigarette of the pack I opened last night while working on this paper. I take a break for a few moments to open another pack and decompress a bit. You're almost there, Brandon. Almost there. I estimate that I have about two hours more of work to do before I have what I can call a "finished draft" of the project. I send a message to Parker telling him I have 14 pages written.
4PM: I become stuck in a rut of sorts -- I know that if I fully perform a set of re-translation exercises on this Neruda poem, I'll add about six more pages to the paper, easily. I already plan to add another three or four pages to the end in another shorter essay describing what the processes of surrealism have done to my work and can do to others' works, so it is possible that this paper may balloon to three times the required length. I'm not sure what my professor will think of this.
4:10 PM: Just like last year, the kids of the neighborhood are outside running around and screaming bloody murder again. I like children, I do, but please shut the fuck up. It's so loud that I can hear it back here in my Man Cave, on the opposite side of the house, with my iPod on at almost full volume.
4:18 PM: My Thanksgiving dinner: honey mustard pretzels Daisy brought down here over last weekend. Yep. They settle my growling stomach for the moment. I follow this with a handful of peanuts and a handful of Skittles, and promise myself that I will actually cook something tonight.
4:26 PM: The same Hootie and the Blowfish song plays again on my iPod, less than two hours later. WTF.
4:30 PM: The kids are still screaming. Louder than before. I begin seriously pondering getting a vasectomy.
4:47 PM: My translation exercise with Neruda is a success; I have created a fully surreal version of his poem, which when compared with two English translations, allowed the element of chance to spring forth, creating an electronically-produced style of surrealist "automatic writing." I begin wrapping up the Neruda section.
4:55 PM: I realize I've left the "auto spin" function on in the casino slots game I play on Facebook while I've been writing. I've lost $1M from letting it spin nonstop for an hour. I turn it off, and close out of Facebook. I also close out of Twitter; it's too distracting and makes me not want to keep working. Actually, I really want to get out of the house -- and then I realized that Black Friday sales start in about three hours. I shudder inwardly and bury myself back in my work.
5:04 PM: I decide to say FUCK IT for half an hour and take a shower.
5:39 PM: I return to my desk. It's dark outside; the kids' screaming has stopped. Most people, again, are probably watching football or eating dinner. I am stuck at my desk, working on this fucking project until I can call it a "finished draft."
6:20 PM: I give Parker the complete rundown of my project. He's impressed. It's hard to impress Parker -- he's probably the most intelligent student in the class, if not the department. I am very close to wrapping it up -- just another few pages to go.
6:33 PM: I go back to the beginning essay section of the paper and add more to it, clean it up, and retool it to better suit the project's outcome. By the time I've finished, I've added another page to it, bringing the total page count up to 19.
6:52 PM: Daisy posts a status update on Facebook that says "Controversial status alert: how do I find out about Black Friday sales?" I responded with this photo:
She was serious. Which made the above image even funnier. I directed her to various store websites to see their Black Friday ads. I assume she's going to go out shopping (which, knowing Daisy and her dislike of crowds, is beyond me), so I tell her that Walmart has a laptop on sale for $179 during their Black Friday sale and that it's the only thing I desperately need, as my one at school is about to die on me. She calls me a "silly man" and says that she already has my Christmas gift planned.
7:08 PM: I send this message to my friend Bronnie, who is also working on her Surrealism paper this week: "Ten sources for [Professor's] thing. Nineteen pages, twelve of which are part of the creative project I cleared with him. And that's just the draft. Yeah, turkey? Football? family? What's that? I'm all alone in Kansas and this is how I spend my Thanksgiving -- writing, smoking, drinking coffee, and eating rice cakes with my FUCKING CATS ALL ALONE. I hate the holidays." It is a completely, brutally honest message.
7:18 PM: I have added almost two full pages to the introductory essay section of the paper in an attempt to pull everything together a bit tighter.
7:20 PM: I think I've pissed Daisy off; she has stopped replying to my messages about Christmas stuff. I apologize and dive back into the paper. She doesn't respond.
7:33 PM: I remind myself that as soon as I finish this damned thing, I can cook an actual dinner and decompress a bit. That furthers my resolve to get it done as soon as possible.
7:48 PM: I completely finish the rewritten introductory essay section. Now all that remains is to rework the end of the Neruda section and to write my wrap-up. I re-estimate that the project is about 90% done.
7:53 PM: I give the entire project a read-through from start to near-finish. It sounds good, surprisingly.
8:23 PM: Daisy tells me that she's sleepy and probably isn't going out shopping tonight, but to let her know when I finish the project. I tell her not to worry about me, that I'll finish it tonight and will probably just cook dinner and go to bed. I cannot wait to cook dinner. I need food badly, as my stomach feels like it's eating itself. However, I cannot stop until I am done, otherwise I'll lose my train of thought and will be unable to finish because eating makes me sleepy -- especially when I haven't eaten anything all day.
8:33 PM: I begin page 20. This is the conclusion section which will wrap it all up, consisting of my thoughts on the project as a whole. The project is, at this point, 95% (or more) complete.
8:56 PM: With half a page to go on the conclusion section (at most) before I attach my Works Cited page and call it done, I begin heating the pan in the kitchen for cooking cheeseburgers. Because I've earned cheeseburgers, goddammit. I also decide that I've earned a movie and begin brainstorming with the other half of my head what I'd like to watch.
9:05 PM: I breach page 21. I throw the first burger in the pan, on low heat. I find out, via a status update, that Daisy has gone out Black Friday shopping.
9:19 PM: At 22 total pages, the project is done. I immediately give it another read-through, make sure that it is completely saved and locked down, and import a copy of it to PDF for safekeeping. I also email a copy of it to myself in case of catastrophic computer failure. My SchoolDrive (the flash drive I back up all of my schoolwork on) is currently in my desk at work -- emailing myself a copy was the next best option.
So, there you have it. That is the entirety of my project, from start to finish. Now, finally, I can get on with my life and...grade through a stack of student papers over the course of the rest of the weekend. Sigh. Life moves forward.
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