The Grad-ftermath, Part II: "White-Girl Drunk"

As many of you know, I don't drink. Really, I don't, and if I do, it is usually on a very special occasion. I drank enough in undergrad to make up for all of you folks who don't drink either, and I can count on one hand how many times I've been tipsy and/or drunk in the past five years, and three or so of those times have been for university-related events.

This being said, Friday night was my graduation night, and I told Daisy (as well as the rest of my friends who would be attending the graduation party) that I had one goal in mind -- that goal was to get absolutely shit-faced, "white-girl drunk."

 

The above screencap from Urban Dictionary pretty much sums up my intentions.

Mind you, without the whole "bra and panties" thing. Or the passing out. But it's close enough.

Ahem. Anyway.

I do not generally enjoy being drunk. Generally is the key word here. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I plan to get drunk, sometimes I plan to party and have a good time. This is on, as you may have guessed again, incredibly rare occasions. Friday night's party was one of them. So, I'll preface the story with that.

We left campus, and in waiting a while to do so, we were able to avoid most of the horrific traffic from graduation and rush hour in Wichita. On the way to the party, we stopped at what turned out to be a pretty seedy gas station, and I bought two overpriced six-packs of beer. Both of them were some sort of Budweiser variety. I can't remember what they were, because after I put them in one of the coolers at the party -- adding my twelve beers to what had to be close to two hundred other bottles and cans of beer -- I never saw any of them again. Whether they were consumed quickly or sank to the bottom of the coolers, who knows. But the fact that there was just that much beer there had to be a horrifically bad sign, and an omen as to how the rest of the evening would play out. But at 6PM? I was more like "woohoo! beer!" than anything else.

The party was great -- there were probably thirty of us there, not counting family members/parents of some of us who were graduating that night. Many of us had brought our significant others (well, those who had them, anyway; I brought Daisy, of course), and we had a great time into the night. What I remember of the night, anyway.

I don't forget things when I get drunk. I really don't. But things do become a bit hazier after pounding beers for hours upon hours. I drank nothing but beer, even though there was (apparently) wine and other hard liquors available. I'm really not a hard liquor person; I'm more of a beer guy. That being said, I can't remember every little detail of the night as we were there, and I was drinking, for a solid eight hours or more outside in the heat and in front of a fire. What I can give you are some highlights of the evening of things that were great (and not so great):

• I stopped counting how many beers I'd had around fifteen or so. Something like that. The majority of them were consumed over the course of the first half of the party, with others spaced out (because I'm not a complete moron) over the second half. I stopped roughly ninety minutes before all of us went home. There is indeed a reason for that, and I'll get to it.
• I played two games of beerpong; there was a tournament going on, and I was partnered with my buddy Ryan's girlfriend. The first game we won, but the first game also took place about three hours after the party had started...when I could still stand up without stumbling or falling over. The second game? That one took place three hours after the first game, and I could barely stand at all. In fact, I fell into the wall of the "beerpong pavilion" building at least twice, knocking an electric weedwacker off its hook both times I did so. I did, however, have the presence of mind to hang it up neatly each time, and apologize. The fact that I could barely stand at this point, ahem, did not help our pong game. I did, however, play because I felt the need to defend my school's honor (I went to West Virginia University for my undergrad, as you may know -- it is frequently ranked, and is again this year, as the #1 party school in the nation). I never did find out who won the tournament, or if it even finished before the party ended.
• There was a bonfire as well as several lit tiki torches spread about the yard. According to Daisy, I nearly fell into one or all of them multiple times. This is not so much of me being drunk as it was me being drunk and walking around in flip-flops in a really, really uneven yard plagued by moles. And while I do believe that she thought I was going to fall into them, I did have enough presence of mind to stay far enough away from the fire to where I wouldn't, even if I was stumbling around. At least I think so, anyhow. Regardless, as I don't have third-degree (or worse) burns all over my body, I think I did remarkably well in avoiding the fire(s).
• I saw several friends who I hadn't seen in many months, as they have either already graduated or are no longer teaching, and it was great to see them. I also met several significant others of some friends whom I have wanted to meet for a long time, but had not had the chance to meet until Friday night. Likewise, all of them met Daisy as well.
• The food was fantastic; some of us brought different dishes (it was, after all, a potluck party) and the food that was cooked there -- burgers, hot dogs, grilled sausages and chicken -- was all great. What of it I had, anyhow. Around a bunch of drunk grad students (current as well as former), food absolutely disappears quickly. I had a burger, a hot dog, some pita chips/hummus, and an ear of corn, but nothing else the entire night. I hadn't eaten anything all day prior to the party either, aside from a can of soda and some crackers in the alumni tent after graduation. This is part of what led to my inevitable downfall.
• The last game of beerpong is what put me over the edge; losing at that and being forced to down several more cups of beer is what made me ill. I had reached my "okay, let's stop drinking now" point, and I had done so. However, those cups of beer from the game, in my team's losing, is what put me over the edge. I threw up twice behind the building (which, apparently, was fair game for puke and pee), and immediately felt much better. The second time was from coming to sit in front of the fire after the first time, which made me too hot and sick again. After that, I rapidly began to completely sober up; even when drunk, even when I am white-girl drunk, my metabolism for alcohol is very fast. I process it and rapidly pass the drunkenness out of my system. 
• I later found out from Daisy that many of my friends highly respect me and look up to me, as she had been told this in conversations with them. This totally surprised me.

We got home roughly around 2:30 or so. Something like that, anyhow. I don't remember exactly what time it was. I just remember that we were both exhausted  (after all, we'd been awake since early that morning). Daisy was a trooper through it all; she took care of me even though I was incredibly drunk all night, a drunkenness that had mostly worn off by the time we left the party and had worn off a lot more by the time we got home, only to be replaced by absolute fatigue and a need to sleep. I drank a lot of water to combat any ill effects of the beer before I went to sleep, though it was overall pretty unnecessary; by the morning, when I woke up around 10 (I let Daisy sleep until noon or so, since she needed it) I was perfectly fine, well-rested, and didn't have a hangover of any sort -- I don't usually get hangovers no matter how much I drink anyhow; it's apparently a gift. We then gathered our things, I showered and prepped the house for our departure, and by around 2PM we left Newton for Omaha...

The rest of the story, my friends, will be told in upcoming posts -- but I will leave you with this hilarious photo, which I found when I did a Google image search for "white girl drunk"...

Well, I thought it was funny.

The Grad-ftermath, Part I: Graduation Day

Well, everything's done and over, and I have officially been a graduate with my Master's degree for almost a week now. What has happened in the past week since, however, is a very long, multi-part story of somewhat epic proportions. So, settle in, 'cause this will take several posts to tell. What I will say before I leap into it is that Daisy and I went to graduation and to the party without incident, then went to Omaha, dodged some horrific storms both here and there (and got caught in one particularly nasty one on Saturday night in Omaha), and then returned here to Newton safe and sound last night to the delight of my three beautiful, very loving kitties. This morning, she left for home so that she can return to work on her normal schedule tonight. And there's also this photo, which I believe is the best one taken of the two of us at graduation:

I should probably start from the beginning, which entails starting when Daisy arrived here last Thursday night around 12:20 or so. We were both tired; I had gone out, as you know, to purchase foods for us so that if she hadn't eaten, we could very quickly make something and go to bed, since we would be getting up very early Friday morning to go to campus. Daisy had already eaten, which saved us the trouble of doing anything, so we basically put stuff away and went to sleep -- and quite quickly, at that; we were in bed and sleeping probably less than an hour after she got here.

On Friday morning, I let Daisy sleep in while I got up and got dressed/nicotined/caffeinated. Daisy is a good sport; even though she barely slept (less than five hours that night, and about three hours or so the day before), she got up around 6 and got dressed/made-up for the day, and we left the house around 6:30 as per the usual.

Note: I never want to leave the house at 6:30 AM, but I do so because of parking on campus. Even though it was the last day of finals week, I also knew that I would have to pack up my office and knew that because of graduation going on that afternoon, many families would be getting to campus early, and that parking lot would fill up fast. I also had other paperwork to do -- as you know, I had to file the grade change form for my student whose grade was incorrect due to an error in my own calculations. I also found when I arrived on campus that a student who had skipped the actual final exam had taken it at disability services, and it was waiting in my mailbox to be graded -- so I had to file another grade change form for her as well, and update my records for her on Blackboard. Said student has not questioned her grade via email or anything like that (at least not that I know of, anyhow), so hopefully that will go through without issue.

As an aside, the student whose grade I miscalculated has sent me no less than fifteen emails over the course of the past week (no, I'm not kidding), even after I told him I filed the form and that they would change his grade, because even now it's not been changed yet. I forwarded one of those emails to the chair of the department because the student was basically freaking out and asking who he should talk to in order to speed up the process. Ultimately I was told to tell him to basically calm the fuck down, since it's a very busy time of year for the registrar/advising offices and that it can sometimes take well over a week for that stuff to be changed -- but it will be done. I feel bad for the guy because it was my error that he's stressing over, but really I've done all I can do at this point and there's really nothing he can do but wait on the registrars to fix it. If it's not fixed in another week, the chair told me that we can file a second form to make sure, but the point is that him freaking out and emailing me about it multiple times per day isn't helping the situation any.

Anyway. Back to the story.

We were able to pack up the rest of my office and get it out to the trunk of Daisy's car without incident -- the English Department office had a dolly that we were able to stack my boxes-o-stuff on and wheel them outside, which made everything easier (as well as made everything a go in one trip). I still have to unpack and sort through those boxes; they're all in my basement right now, stacked next to the washer and dryer, as we left for Omaha on Saturday afternoon and I did not have the time or patience to mess with them before we left. My office (or, I should say, my former office) is completely bare now; everything I had in there was either packed up and brought home or has been given away to friends -- I got rid of my miniature coffee pot, the TIE Fighter I had hanging on my ceiling (gave it to Parker), and the stormtrooper blaster I had in there (gave it to my officemate), as well as a bunch of the books I had but would never need or use again. I still had four full paper-ream boxes of stuff to take home. Over the course of three years, a lot of things get accumulated, apparently. I kept the keys to my office, as the deadline to give them back isn't until July (or something like that) and I may need them once or twice in the interim if I have to go back to campus. I will, eventually, have to go back to campus to pick up my actual diploma anyhow.

So, that afternoon was graduation. Graduation is, by all accounts, a huge pain in the ass. But, it was a pain in the ass that in the end, was worth it (as evidenced by the photo above, and many more that were taken over the course of the day/night).

I'm not a huge fan of gatherings of any sort, which you probably know if you already know me pretty well. I barely leave the house, I don't tend to tolerate crowds well, and noisy or otherwise people-stuffed places make me twitch. I also mentioned before that the only reason I chose to walk and attend graduation at all was because Daisy would be there and would be taking pictures of everything, which she did -- there are a lot of photos she took of all of us, including not only the overall crowd but of our friends and the ceremonial process itself.

The arena was cooler than it was outside (though it was still stuffy, and it was at least 85 outside that day -- totally not the weather to be wearing a long, black gown in), and as we all sat down and listened to the speeches by people none of us had ever met or cared about in the least -- well, I'll take that back -- I have met the dean, who is a pretty cool guy, and the professor who "hooded" all of us is arguably the best literature professor in our department, who is retiring at the end of this semester, and I know him well.  Still, all of us sat on folding chairs in the middle of the arena, crushed together in rows, and it was fairly uncomfortable. They'd arranged all of the graduates of different disciplines to sit in certain rows, and the doctoral students went first; all of them went before us. Then the masters of other disciplines, and finally (we were at the back of the group) the Masters of Fine Arts, which is what we were. We'd all get up by rows, and hand the card reader our card with identifying information as we went across the stage. The reader would read our names and degrees, and then we'd turn to face the audience, kneel down, and we'd be hooded. The hood, as mentioned before, is basically a sash that's placed over the head and shoulders and worn like a dorky cape (you can see it in the above photo; it's the gold-and-white thing around my neck). There's a big processional and procedure about it; you're hooded, you shake the hand of the president, then the dean, and then walk off to the other side of the stage. During the walking, there are no less than four photos taken of you: one of you getting hooded, one of you shaking each higher-up's hands, and one of you in front of a backdrop with you holding the fake diploma scroll that is to serve as the "official" graduation photo of sorts. So all of us got up and crossed the stage and did the ceremonial stuff.

Here's the problem, however -- I have a big head. I also have a lot of hair, long hair, as you can see. The graduation cap is ill-fitting on someone with a head my size and with hair as long and thick as mine is. This means that I had a lot of trouble getting it to stay on my head. This also means that as I was hooded by one of my favorite professors and walked across the stage to shake hands with the dean and president, in full view of everyone, my hat got knocked off not once or twice, but three times. I could not keep it on my head, and I didn't have a choice -- I had to keep moving, walking, shaking hands, going through the processes. They'd already called the name after mine, and I couldn't stop; I had to get off the stage. Add to this that the hood, at the same time, started falling to the side, as it's not like it's clipped to the gown or anything when it's put on.

Do you understand the problem here? I was walking across the stage to shake hands with the higher-ups and get my photo taken, in front of a large crowd of not only friends, Daisy, and fellow graduates, but my regalia from the shoulders up was basically falling apart. I thought for sure that my photos would be absolutely terrible when I received the proofs of them. They weren't -- actually, the "official" photo was quite good -- but I was so flustered and somewhat embarrassed by the cap and hood debacle that I don't even remember taking said photo, nor do I really remember shaking the hands of the president and dean -- all I wanted to do was get the fuck off the stage and back into my seat.

"Well, that was eventful," one of my colleagues told me once we sat back down, in reference to my cap and hood debacle.

"Fucking cap and hood," I said. "I hope [Daisy] got some zoomed-in-photos of me crossing the stage, because I'm sure the other ones will be terrible."

I don't know if she got any photos like that or not, actually; if she did, I have not yet seen them. I know she took wide shots of all of us sitting with the other students, but that's all I've seen thus far other than the ones of us together after everything was over.

Of course, after all of us doctoral/master's students were done, we had to sit there another eighty minutes or so while all of the undergrads got their degrees as well. Two former students of mine graduated in this ceremony -- one I had last summer and another in my first year of teaching. I felt proud. There could've been more that I missed, but I was so bored with sitting there while undergrads' names were called that I almost fell asleep.

"You bring your DS with you?" Jay asked me, as if I did we could've been Pokemon battling throughout the wait.

"Shit, no," I replied. "But now I wish I would have."

After the ceremony was (finally) over, we stood for applause, and then were formally ushered out of the arena, with the crowd following after us. All of us English grads met up with our families and Daisy soon after, and went to the alumni association's tent, which had a ton of free food and drinks for graduates and their families. You know me -- I never pass up free food and drinks. That's where the above photo of us was taken (I think either Rae or Jay took it, or one of their family members). They also had a photo booth set up, and Daisy and I took some really sweet pictures together in it -- a copy of which Daisy put on the refrigerator once we got up to Omaha.

We got some stuff to eat and drink and decompressed a bit; I finally got to take off the sweltering hot cap, gown, and hood after Daisy took enough pictures in it, and we let traffic clear out a bit after the ceremony before heading back over to her car. The plan from here was to follow the GPS to where the graduation party was, stopping on the way for beer (if there was a place we could get it, of course). Mind you, however, this was a Friday night in Wichita, on graduation day, at shortly after 5PM, when it was 85 degrees outside. This is why we stuck around the tent a bit longer than we otherwise would have -- I did not want us to have to fight a buttload of idiot drivers to get us out of the city. That would not have been pleasant at all. Everyone else in our little graduating group left for the party before we did.

The events of that party, however? Well, that will be the next post.

The Time Hath Come

Finals week: day five

My lovely fiancee Daisy is on her way to Kansas as I type this, coming to town for my graduation tomorrow. Her parents, regretfully, cannot attend, and neither can mine. It'll just be the two of us, which works well since there's the graduation party afterwards to attend tomorrow night.

Here's my schedule for the next week, which will go something like this (roughly):

Tomorrow: Graduation. Graduation party. Taking care of the last stuff I need to do at school. Cleaning out the rest of my office. Possibly returning my office keys to the main office (I don't know what the protocols are for this sort of thing).

Saturday: Leave for Omaha around noon-ish. Arrive in Omaha that evening. Possibly go out to dinner that night if we aren't too exhausted.

Sunday: Daisy's sister (the one I have not yet met) visits the family. Daisy works that night on the overnight shift, the only night she has to work for the next week. I will have to find a way to kill some time that night after she goes to work and her sister goes home, which is why I'm bringing my laptop with me (aside from the fact that if I went almost a full week without internet, I'd go fucking insane). Apparently sometime in here I'll be tie-dyeing stuff with Mama, too.

Monday: Daisy sleeps for a bit, then we go out to do stuff and go bowling with her friends, most/all of whom I have not yet met.

Tuesday: Time spent all around Omaha, doing shopping stuff and the like, and probably going to see Star Trek Into Darkness if we have not already done so by this time.

Wednesday: Possible other shopping/exploring-type-stuff in the morning and early afternoon hours before returning to Kansas.

Thursday: Daisy returns home and goes back to work that night.

Last night I went to sleep around...3? ish? I can't really remember. I spent most of my day yesterday cleaning the rest of the house and trying to tidy up what I could. While I'm done now, and have slept and showered, I'm still not completely done because I still need to go to Walmart before Daisy gets here tonight. For one, I would imagine she'll want something (vegan) to eat when she arrives, and for two, I need to pick up some essentials -- though not too many essentials, as I will be gone for the better part of a week. The cats will need extra litter for the second litter pan I'll put out while I'm gone, and I need cigarettes and coffee because I am very close to being out of both. This isn't a big deal; I'm trying to wait a bit to go to Walmart so that I don't get bored waiting for Daisy to arrive tonight (I doubt she'll be here before 10PM or so) and proverbially kill some time; as you folks know if you've paid attention to this blog, Daisy operates on what I call Daisy Standard Time, or DST. This means, basically, "I'll be there when I get there," and also means that I can never get a timeframe out of her, for any event or visit, until zero hour. For anything.

Also, if you know me well, you also know that this is the only aspect of Daisy's personality that absolutely drives me insane, as I am an extremely punctual, time-metered-out-and-set sort of person. I'm the kind of person who is an hour early for everything if I can be, and the kind of person who sets a timeframe on everything and sticks to it. If I leave my house without my watch on, I go similarly insane, as I'm the guy who must be able to know what time it is at any given time. Daisy isn't like this at all; in fact, she's diametrically opposed to this sort of lifestyle (and hates that I'm so ingrained in it). Therefore, when she tells me she'll be here by a certain time, I tend to tack two to three extra hours onto that figure -- it highly irritates me every time, but I get over it quickly, because I love her. Daisy is also the person who doesn't keep a clock in her room; I have three in mine, not counting my watch. Yes, three clocks in one room, all synchronized and set to the second. I've jokingly threatened to buy her a clock to put on the wall of her room, and she very seriously told me no, because it would be a waste of money and she wouldn't use it/would actively put it away.

This is really the only real, true clash our personalities have with one another. Everything else we roll with. And I really do my best not to let it affect me outwardly, even if at times it can drive me nuts.

I really don't want to make the trip to Walmart; I hate going there unless it's the middle of the night, but I can't do that this time around -- tonight in the middle of the night, I must be asleep to be able to wake up at 5AM and get ready to go to campus in the morning. I'm basically going to be doing little but running around for the better part of the next week, as you can see above, so I need to take care of what I can while I can do it.

While Skyping with Daisy this afternoon, we checked the weather for both here and for Omaha during the time I'll be there; there's the potential for severe storms both here and there on Sunday, and the storms are supposed to continue there on Monday. Otherwise it's supposed to be pretty pleasant; I packed my bag for Omaha about two weeks ago, and stuffed into it some comfortable clothing as well as some dressier clothing (if the situation calls for it), while leaving a lot of extra space for anything I find while shopping up there. I can't wait to hit the thrift stores, the discount stores, TJ Maxx, Target, Burlington, etc. It will, hopefully, be a blast. Even if I don't find anything, it's about the adventure -- and it will get me out of this house and this state for a few days. I can't tell you how much I look forward to that.

Because the weather may (read: probably will) turn shitty while I'm gone, tonight when I return home from Walmart, I'm putting the car in the garage, where she shall sit, well-protected, until I get back from Omaha. We're taking Daisy's car tomorrow to graduation and to the party, as it'll be easier and we won't have to worry about it breaking down (like I worry about mine on occasion). Plus, her car actually locks, and as I'll be putting hundreds of dollars worth of electronics and other stuff into it from my office -- such as my computer, stereo, and laser printer -- that's sort of important when it's sitting in the parking lot all day during the graduation ceremony.

Tomorrow during graduation, I will of course be wearing my overpriced gown, but underneath it I will be wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. This is as dressy as I get, folks, and I'm not taking a change of clothes with me to school when there's no point to do so. I also want to be able to be comfortable at the graduation party afterwards, so yes, that factors in as well. Strip off the gown and it's party time.

Wow, that totally sounded different in my head.

On that note, I'm going to Walmart now.


*intermission*



 Update: upon my return, I found that Daisy had texted me that she'd be here in four and a half hours. That puts her arrival at 12:15 in the morning. Again, Daisy Standard Time. This is, of course, adding three hours to her original schedule that she told me this afternoon, of arriving no later than 9 or 10. Daisy. Standard. Time. I really do wish I could put into words just how much this irritates me without offending her or hurting her feelings, but I really don't think I can.

At Walmart I purchased the necessities -- cat litter, coffee, cigarettes, and food for her/us tonight (though if she gets here after midnight, who knows whether or not she'll want to eat). I also got some chips for the road trip on Saturday, as she likes to eat while she drives. Again, hoping she's doing that tonight so that we can actually get some sleep when she gets here. And, of course, I did put the car in the garage. The house is prepped for her arrival; now all she has to do is actually arrive. I'm already tired; the last thing I want to be doing at midnight is cooking.

So, regardless, in the morning it will be time to go to campus and graduate -- and this is the last blog post here that you will see before I am a full-fledged MFA. I will, of course, update you on the events of tomorrow and the weekend/trip to Omaha whenever I can, though that may be a week or so from now. Until then, my friends? Fare thee well.

Fallibility

Finals week: day four

I'm not a perfect person by any stretch of the imagination. I make mistakes -- sometimes big, sometimes little, just like anyone else. Well, over the course of the past two days, I made a big one when it came to one of my students' grades; he got a C- in the class instead of a B-.

This, of course, came down to a computing error, and it was an error that was all mine; he turned in an assignment a few days late because he was out of town, and while I recorded it in my gradebook, I didn't record it on Blackboard, which is what I let add up my points for me. This means, essentially, he had 100 points less in my final calculations as he should have had, which is a full letter grade. No, it didn't keep him from passing or anything like that, but it did cause him to email me no less than four times, text me, and leave a voicemail on my phone (the number of which he got from the department sometime yesterday, apparently).

I, of course, reassured him that it would be fixed, and he was quite appreciative of that (obviously). Fixing it entails me filling out a change of grade form for the registrar's office and delivering it to them on Friday when I go back in there -- it's a pretty simple fix and one that I am completely willing to do ASAP when I get back to campus. But, that being said, I'm glad he noticed and told me, otherwise I never would have known. It's the first time I've ever messed up like that in my grading processes...to my knowledge, anyway. If I have in the past, nobody's ever noticed or corrected me.

I notified the office ladies and CC'ed the chair on the email that said I'd have to change his grade and needed one of the forms to do it, but didn't know if that came from our department (read: if we had any on hand) or if that all had to be done at the office of the registrar. I also didn't know if any supervisor would have to sign off on it before I could take it over there, which is why I CC'ed the chair -- he's basically my direct (read: only) real supervisor/boss figure anymore. Remember, that class is, as he put it, "my baby," and I've been in charge of it all by my lonesome for a year now. I'm sure it won't really be a hassle, and things like this happen all the time, but it still tells me that I do occasionally make mistakes. And this student's a good guy, too -- he tried really hard in my class, and his writing slowly got better and better over the course of the semester. He came to my office hours frequently, he went to the Writing Center for help, etc. He worked hard for his grade in my class; he didn't half-ass anything at all. While I'd make the same immediate grade adjustments for anyone I accidentally entered the wrong grade for, this kid earned my respect more than most, and by accidentally messing up his grade for a few days, I feel like an ass and desperately want to get it fixed ASAP.

This afternoon I received a reply from one of the office ladies, who informed me that she'd put the form in my box and that I'd have to take it next door to the advising center instead of to the registrar's office, because the advising people fix that and send it onward. Okay. Fair enough. No worries, then.

As an aside, I had another student, this one who didn't pass my class by 2%, whining about his grade today via email, and I gave him a point-by-point list why he was failing -- showing him no less than 65 easy points he could have gotten but did not. I was also CC'ing all of my correspondence with him to the chair of the department as well, to give him a heads-up in case said student tried to come up there and start complaining. I'm more than willing to go through the process of changing a grade if I've made an error -- that's on me. But if you feel like making a speech to tell me why you deserve a better grade even after I tell you exactly why you did not pass the course in great detail, citing many examples, that's on you. And I will be a little less kind than my usual self. I have little patience for grade-grubbers and even lesser still for students who try to give me shit. This kid was being as respectful as possible given the circumstances, but I've always remembered two great, all-powerful pieces of advice I was given during my very first week as a GTA:

1. You don't fail your students; they fail themselves

and

2. Don't take shit from your students.

It's highly ironic that -- now that I'm graduating in two more days, after three years of nothing but smooth sailing when it came to my teaching -- I'd run across problems like this. I feel bad failing any student, but I always come back to piece-of-advice #1 in the end. Again, my class is not hard to pass. It's geared toward Engineering students who are either really good writers already, or who can't write a coherent logical sentence. It's well balanced in both regards; I've seen good writers excel in my course, and I've seen bad writers become concise, logical, much better writers in my course. Every semester I have at least two or three students who thank me because they hated English until they took my class, or students who will come up to me in the next semester or the one after to tell me that because of my class, they were able to better focus on their writing in their other classes, and wanted to thank me again for that. Both scenarios of this sort took place again Monday, actually; one of my former students from the fall took what she learned in my class to heart, and has now been accepted fully into the nursing program here, and several students thanked me after the exam, telling me that they really enjoyed my class. One of them, a below-average writer when he entered my class, focused on his work and ended up getting an A. I also wrote him a letter of recommendation for a $200 scholarship, and they gave him $500 instead because of how much the company he'd applied through liked it.

I may not be the best professor in the department; I'm not the biggest hardass, but I'm not the most lenient, either -- but let me tell you, I've always tried to be the best professor I can possibly be. I suppose that's why now, when I make a grading error as I did Monday night for my aforementioned good student, it affects me so much. It's the principle of the thing. I know I'm not infallible, but damn would I like to be sometimes.

Oh well. There's really nothing I can do about it until Friday when I fix it, and I've calmed said student's fears so that he's not worried about it. There are still finals on Friday, so it's not like I'd be submitting the form late, or anything like that. I still hate making mistakes, though.

Anyway.

Yesterday I cleaned the entire downstairs of the house, washed the sheets and blankets, and vacuumed down there. Today I did the same to the upstairs, though that took a little more time, as the upstairs is a bit more difficult to clean. I planned to mow the grass again this morning, as it was somewhat cool and not incredibly sunny, but upon going outside to look at it, the grass itself is fine -- it's all of the dying dandelions that are high and sticking up like sore thumbs, giving the yard an unkempt appearance. I looked around the neighborhood and saw that basically everyone else's yards looked the same as mine, so I shrugged and went back inside. I did, however, trim all of the weeds and overgrowth around the house, retaining wall, and mailbox so that it doesn't look awful while I'm gone to Omaha after Friday. That only took about 25 minutes or so.

The impetus was great to get this done; I read last night before bed that there is the possibility of severe storms from...well, pretty much now throughout the entire weekend and time I'll be gone. Omaha is supposed to get rocked by some storms on Sunday, as well, which is when I'll be up there (and Daisy's one night of work while I'm there). I doubt it'll be cause for concern, but I'm always apprehensive about bad storms/tornadoes/etc happening when I'm away from home. I will, of course, be putting my car in the garage anyway, probably tomorrow after I go out to get some cat supplies (food/litter) and cigarettes for when I'll be away, but that will matter little if a tornado knocks my house off its foundation while I'm six hours away in Nebraska. If the storms come early, they may play hell with graduation and the graduation party on Friday, as well.

I got a letter in the mail yesterday about my diploma; apparently they need me to fill out a form to verify my mailing address and pay them $5 for shipping it to me. My first thought was -- and I'm not kidding -- Seriously? Something else they want me to pay for? I can apparently get five free transcripts between now and September 15th, though, so that's a plus. They want me to include a photocopy of my ID, too, so there's something else I'll have to do on Friday when I'm on campus. The action never stops.

Daisy comes into town sometime tomorrow, but does not yet know when; it will depend heavily on how tired she is after work. If she's awake enough, she's planning to come straight down here after she gets off of her shift. If not, she'll be sleeping and then coming down here after she wakes up in the afternoon. This leaves a window of about twelve hours or so in which she could arrive at any time, and I won't know one way or the other until Thursday morning. I could wake up around noon or 1 with her arriving here, or I could be getting ready to go to bed for the overnight hours with her arriving here. One way or the other, it still doesn't matter -- we still have to leave the house at 6:30 on Friday morning regardless. Parking on campus will fill up fast, even hours before graduation (especially because people's families will be in town), and I have to do a lot of shit at the office -- changing my student's grade being first and foremost, and other stuff including moving all of my office things out to her car. The closer the car is to the building for that, the better (obviously). If I'm lucky, the office might have a dolly somewhere I could borrow for ten minutes or so to get everything out to the car. Otherwise, it's going to suck carrying those heavy-ass boxes out one by one.

It's really hot and stuffy in the house; it got up to 88 here yesterday, and in the low 80s today. In Omaha, where Daisy is, it got up to 100 yesterday, breaking all sorts of records. We're in our first official "heat wave" of the season, thus proving that Kansas really doesn't have a "spring." I'll remind you that on my last teaching day a little over a week ago, it was fucking snowing, and the week before that (give or take a day or two) we got an ice storm. I've had the windows open and my fan running, which is circulating some air through the house, but it's still stuffy upstairs. It's much nicer downstairs, as always. I really hope this isn't a harbinger of the summer to come. The neighbors on the other side of the duplex have been running their air conditioner already for the past two days, and while I'm warm, it's not yet hot enough for me to even turn on the furnace fan to circulate some air through the house, much less turn on the AC. I don't know if I can stand another 110-degrees-every-fucking-day summer here. That could effectively drain any and all energy from me once more over the summer months, and possibly make me even more neurotic than I normally am when it's hot.

Of course, if you know me well, you know that I become, ahem, especially neurotic over the summer if I don't have something to keep me busy. This summer will be spent doing four things, primarily:

1.) Writing.
2.) Submitting to publications.
3.) Job searching.
4.) Spending time with Daisy.

We received the Creative Writing MFA newsletter in our email today, and in it was the list of publications by members of the department, current and former. Many of us grad students have been getting published like crazy over the course of this past year in various journals and lit mags, and I've done nothing -- I haven't been published but once, and that was well over a year ago now. More like a year and a half, really. I haven't submitted anywhere and I haven't really written anything fresh and new in several months, mainly because up until recently I was busied by student work, comps studying, taking care of all of my graduation requirements, etc. I had so many things on my docket to take care of now and right now on deadlines OMG that I couldn't focus on anything else. Once I graduate, go to Omaha for a few days, and come back, I should be relaxed and clear-minded enough to focus on that stuff, and will hopefully be feeling creative again. I'd like to be able to write at least three poems per day this summer; they don't have to be good, and I would imagine they'll be heavily edited over time, but I want to keep writing, keep exploring, keep finding things to write about and places to submit to. I'll never be famous, and I'll never be a "great poet" or write the Great American Novel(tm), but it won't be for lack of effort.

I also need to heavily re-edit and overhaul my book, too, and work on my second one. I'm not going to get anywhere with my MFA if I don't continually churn out writing and attempt to actually use my degree that I paid so much money (and went into student loan debt) for.

A bigger part of it is, well, what else am I going to do with my time?

I've been dealt a unique hand here for the summer; I have free time and enough money to survive on easily for a good six months or so. While I'd rather not run myself out of that money (obviously) it does afford me a good bit of time to pursue professional opportunities and, especially, my writing. I will probably never again get an opportunity like this, not for the rest of my life -- Daisy and I will marry, we will have children, and I will be forced to run a household, go to work, raise kids, pay even more bills, etc. While I am certainly fine with this and expect it, the amount of freedom I have now that I've completed grad school is not only unprecedented, but also gives me a timeframe, a window, to work with -- and it is indeed in the grand scheme of things a rather short window. I've basically got six months to make life happen -- to get a job, to find a teaching position, to start publishing everything and everywhere I can, and to figure out a lot of things. That window may be shortened further if I'm asked to adjunct several sections of classes in the fall at the university, or if the budget changes in July and I can do something more with the Engineering English classes I've been teaching for the past two years, but the overall goal still remains: use that degree and use it hard, and use it as much as I can while I still have the time to do so.

Add to this the wedding planning that Daisy and I will be doing over that time as well, and my hours and days seem just as hectic and task-filled as they would be otherwise. I mentioned before that I have more than likely found my wedding ring already, the tungsten carbide ring -- but there are several other ones I've been looking at which I really like as well, and several that Daisy and I have looked at for her as well. As for the wedding registry or any other planning, neither of us have really had the time to talk about or work on that as of late -- she's been working the past seven days in a row, and I've been finishing up everything school/work-related, in addition to cleaning the house.

I'm not yet done with that, by the way; I still have to scrub the toilet and clean the kitchen, and scrub cat vomit out of the living room carpet in three places (because my cats are little assholes and like to yack for no reason whatsoever). In the overnight hours tonight, I'll probably head to Walmart to get the supplies I need for the next few days and for over the trip to Omaha, but only if it stays nice outside and decides not to storm. Everything else, basically, is prepping for Daisy's arrival tomorrow, whenever that may be. If there's one thing I've learned from Daisy in the last almost-year we've been together, it's that she operates on her own time schedule and on her own frequency -- so, again, she could get here anytime between early afternoon and late-night tomorrow night.

Finals Day, Part II

Finals week: day three

Strap yourselves in, folks, 'cause this is gonna be a long one.

I'll start off by saying that I didn't get home last night until after 9PM, at which point I talked to Daisy for a little bit on Facebook, ate some dinner, and went the fuck to bed, as I'd been awake since 1AM.

Yesterday morning, I arrived on campus at 7:04. I know this because yes, I checked my watch to make sure I had the right time when I saw that, even at 7:04, the entire first four rows of my normal parking lot were full. Yes. At 7:04 AM. I don't know if there are 7:30 finals, or if students were just coming in super-early for their 8AM finals, but I was forced to park several rows further back than normal. On any other day, when I get there at 7AM there are maybe ten other cars in the parking lot -- with some of those being other faculty/staff who always park there because it's closer than the faculty lot. Oh well, I thought. I gathered my stuff and went inside.

Once in my office, I began packing it up. Hardcore. I turned on my radio (as my iPod and its speaker set was taken home about two weeks ago, and took down all of my posters and flyers on the wall that I'd accumulated over the course of my past three years there. I cleaned off my bookshelves and cleaned out my desk drawers, drawers that hadn't been touched and had been continually added to for those three years -- I found class schedules, handbooks, and memorandums from 2010, as well as drafts of student papers and copies of handouts from late 2010 and early 2011, for students whom I remembered their names, but could not for the life of me place their faces in my mind -- all went into the recycle bin. I compiled a copy of every handout, lesson plan, quiz, and/or reading I've ever covered in my Engineering English 102 class, and put it into a big binder, which I delivered to the chair so that they can keep it on file in case the program does eventually continue (with or without me, whoever teaches it will need to know the basics of what the class entails if it gets picked up again).

When I delivered that binder to the chair, I asked him about any news updates on whether or not that program will continue, and he told me they wouldn't know until the new budget was completed...in July. I would love to continue teaching those classes, either as an adjunct or otherwise, but as we won't know anything until then, and as our chair will no longer be our chair after this semester, I will simply have to stay in contact and wait to see what's going on -- while, of course, looking for other gainful employment (teaching or otherwise) in the meantime. There are, of course, many hopes that the program will continue one way or another, and if it does, I wanted to have a binder of materials on file for the next person in line to teach it -- whether that be this fall or several semesters from now. The chair definitely appreciated it. I wanted to do what I could to help, as always.

After a solid two hours of cleaning and packing, everything in my office save for the clock, my calendar, and my desk stuff (laptop/printer, coffee pot, and stereo) were all boxed away and shelved. I gave Parker the TIE Fighter hanging from my ceiling, and will more than likely give one of my officemates the blaster I have in there as well. I don't have any use for 'em, and they'd just sit in my house gathering dust, much like the massive Republic Gunship I have downstairs in the bedroom. I really don't collect toys anymore unless they're mint-on-card or mint-in-box, and I have several large boxes of mint-on-card Star Wars and Gundam figures at home in West Virginia, which have been kept in pristine condition for over fifteen years -- some of them for close to twenty.

Yeah, I was a smart kid. But I digress.

Many of my books and journals I got rid of; I had a stack of old issues of Poetry I was never going to read, as well as most of the novels I'd purchased for my lit classes over the years used from Amazon, which I will never read again (and would, again, end up just being boxed up in the house somewhere). Several friends took those. Several friends helped me clean out my drawer of granola and energy bars, too, since I'll never use those either here at home -- not only do I have a lot of them here at home already, but at home I generally have actual food to eat.

Everything non-essential for my last two days on campus went into the box; all of my pens, notebooks, folders, important (though old) paperwork, my spare set of clothing I kept in the office, and all of my "living" supplies for the office, including my deodorant/body spray, extra toothbrush/toothpaste, medicines, band-aids, combs/hairbrushes, etc. All I left out were the aforementioned items on my desk that I knew I'd need, my glasses, my spare stapler, and my camera. I left the camera out because there are a ton of pictures on it, and I planned to take more (and did) yesterday to compile an "end of graduate school" album on Facebook. That I will more than likely put up next week sometime, once I've returned from Omaha. Most of the pictures on that camera were taken many months ago. I don't even know what's on it until I take out the SD card and look through them.

Slowly, around 10AM or so, people began to filter into the department. Nobody comes in on final exam day until they have to; Parker didn't even get there until after 11. I had, meanwhile, kept busy with cleaning the office, occasionally going downstairs to smoke in the (gorgeous) weather, and talking to the people who were there. Once one of my close friends showed up (and I don't have a name for her in this blog because I've never asked if I could mention her), we decided to go over to the bookstore, finally, and get my graduation gown. She wanted to get extra Blue Books for her students' exams anyhow, because she was certain that they were slackers and that none of them would go pick them up. So, I gathered my cash (sadly) and we went over there.

As mentioned before, there's a loose sort of schedule in the department on finals day. We have the "finals feast" at noon, an hour before the exam (which I've always widely regarded as a "bad move," since when we stuff ourselves with pizza in the hour before the exam, we carb-load and want to crash while we're proctoring it; I always thought it should've been moved up to 10AM or 11AM). We give the final from 1-2:50, and after it's over, we're sort of left to our own devices on how we handle the grading of those finals with our grading partners. As you know, Suri was my grading partner, so I knew that would be taken care of quickly and efficiently (well, as quickly and efficiently as possible, anyhow). Before the finals feast, I usually -- almost always -- help the director of the writing center, who is a good friend of mine, to clean up the place and to help set it up. Usually, it needs it. Yesterday, she told me that not only did it not need it, but it was already basically set up -- and the university catering people were there early as well. This was a good thing on all fronts. So my friend and I went over to the bookstore.

The caps and gowns were pretty centrally-located in the back, and easy to find; they had sections for sizes and for height. I got the XL, 5'9" - 5'11" gown (on any given day my height fluctuates by an inch or two, and this also depends on what shoes I'm wearing as well) which actually seems to be made out of a pretty durable material. They did, however, tell me not to iron it or stick it in the dryer, because if I did, it would melt. Hah! I'm wearing the gown for two hours. I doubt I'll ever need to wash/dry it; it'll be stuck in a gallon Ziploc bag after the ceremony and stowed away for the foreseeable future. Then came the "hood."

Sigh.

What the graduation people call a "hood" is basically a sash that's placed over your shoulders and around your neck by the people during the ceremony. It's like being knighted or something. For those of us who were in the National Honor Society in high school, it's like that embroidered patch shoulder-sash thing that you wear. And depending on what school you're graduating from or what degree you're getting, the hood will be different colors. Traditionally, the fine arts sash has been brown. Like, a dirty-shit-brown of a color. However, here's where the problem comes in. When I got my hood, this is how the conversation went:

"Hi, I'm graduating with my Master's, and I need my hood."

"What's your department?"

"English."

"Creative Writing?"

"Yes."

The lady brought me out a hood that was white. Now, I'd seen Rae's hood earlier yesterday morning, and I knew hers was brown.

"Are you sure that's right?" I asked. "I have friends who are getting the same degree and theirs are brown."

"Hm...let me double-check," she said, and went back over to the stack with the book that detailed all of the colors. "Yes. Master's. English. Creative Writing. White." She showed it to me and pointed at it. Yeah, that's what it said.

I shrugged. "Okay, whatever works."

I paid for everything ($53.36) and went back over to the department. I told Rae I was given a white hood, and that she may have to go back over there and change it.

"Brown is for fine arts," she said. "We're getting Masters of Fine Arts."

"I know that," I replied. "But she gave me a white one, showed me the sheet, and said Creative Writing is supposed to be white."

This is probably where the bookstore, or the sheet has an error -- yes, we're all getting our MFAs. That is fine arts, yes. But, there's also a fine arts department, which is basically Theatre, Dance, etc. The bookstore hears "Master of Fine Arts" and they don't hear what department -- they just run to get the brown hood. Since the lady actually asked me what department and what my degree would be in, specifically asking me "creative writing?" she went to get the white hood. Getting a graduate degree in fine arts such as Theatre is much different than getting it in English. Again, color coding for no real reason.

We asked one of our friends who graduated with a poetry MFA last year and who is an adjunct there now, and she said hers was brown too. Rae responded with "See?"

"I really don't care," I replied. "I'm wearing the damned thing for two hours, and would much rather wear black/white/gold than black/brown anyway, even if it's 'wrong.' It's more elegant and it'll look better in pictures."

"I'm sort of with him," Jay said, motioning to me. "I might go over to exchange mine for white. The brown is ugly."

So do we know definitively what color we're supposed to have? No. And I really, really don't care. I brought my super-expensive gown and hood back to the department and put it on the shelf in my office, where it will sit until I don it on Friday afternoon.

The finals feast was fine, though we only had about half the amount of people we normally do -- and thus had a fuckload of leftovers. I snagged two entire leftover pizzas and put them in the fridge in the back office, planning to take them home later (because if we all don't eat them or take them home, they're just thrown away). I ended up giving one of the pizzas to Rae and Jay to take home, and the other I gave to our new (awesome) Shakespeare professor, telling him to take it home and eat it -- I didn't need it, and didn't want to carry it home. The people who actually ate the pudding I made all loved it, and I left the rest of it there for everyone to have over the course of the rest of the week. Again, I don't need it -- I have a third tub of it in my own fridge here at home that I'll either have to eat over the next two weeks or so or throw in the freezer to eat later.

By the time the exam began at 1, I was really feelin' it. Meaning, I was fucking tired. And not just because of the pizza, either, but because I'd been awake for 12 hours already -- and would still be awake for many more as I graded through all of these exams, mine and Suri's both, then calculated/posted those grades. All but one of my students showed up to the exam. Well, all but two, really, but the other one who didn't show hadn't been in class since early April and had already auto-failed. I tried desperately to stay awake during the exam, and succeeded; sitting in one spot for two hours and barely moving while your students sit there in front of you, silently, and write...let me tell you, it's an absolute and total test of patience when you have zero other things to do. For the past two years or so, during exams, I've always brought my DS with me and played Pokemon while my students took a test. This time around I didn't do that, because (absentmindedly) I'd left my DS under the pillow in my bed. So, really, all I did was sit there and try desperately not to fall asleep.

It was also around this time that I began to get a headache. It started off as a dull ache, more than likely brought on by allergies and my being tired, but as the afternoon progressed, the exam ended, and I began grading through Suri's student exams, it slowly progressed until it was absolutely roaring and would not go away no matter what I did.

Most of my students did fine on their exams; some of them really surprised me, actually, by the quality of their timed writing (especially in comparison to their papers, which they all had a month each to write). As for the student who just didn't show up? I don't know what happened to her; she never emailed me or otherwise got in contact with me, even today. She still passed the class without the exam, but barely. Very, very barely. She's lucky she had bonus points to spare -- I'll put it that way.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I graded through Suri's exams and gave them back to her in less than two hours. I can generally see what a student's exam grade will be in skimming through it; if they don't have a thesis, if they use a ton of cliches or have a ton of spelling/grammar errors, etc., they get a low score and I move on. If the writing is good and they are actually going somewhere with it, I'll give it a higher score and move on. I am as consistent with this as I possibly can be, really. I've probably graded over 1,000 student exams in my three years teaching at the university; I have it down to a fast-moving, hit-these-key-areas-or-fail sort of science.

"I have an appointment this afternoon from 4:30 to 5:30," she told me. "When I get back I'll finish grading all of yours and give them back to you ASAP. You gonna be around?"

"Of course," I said. "I have nothing else to do, and I am not leaving campus tonight until all of my students' exams are graded, buttoned up, and deposited in the office."

This was completely true; regardless of where anyone else was going or what else they were doing, I was going to be glued to my office chair, working until I was done. Daisy comes down on Thursday, and the last thing I wanted to do was be entering grades on Friday morning at school, on the morning of my graduation, while she was there and while we were supposed to be getting shit done (read: packing up the rest of my office, moving it all out to the car, and getting ready for graduation itself). Add to this that putting the grades on the computer system is an exact science that requires concentration; one little letter or decimal point off, and the entire system is screwed for that student. I can't do that with other people around, not even Daisy.

So, while Suri went to her appointment, I busied myself with making sure I had the actual paperwork for the grades filled out and ready, and calculated my students' grades going into the final -- that way, I would know for certain what to add to their grades and what letter grade/percentage they'd have in the class once the final exams were translated to numbers/percentages. It's a complicated process for anyone who's not used to doing it, and I have more students than most of the other GTAs do simply because I teach that Engineering English course; I almost always have full sections. I've had a few students drop this semester, and a few stopped showing up, so I had a total of 44. This 44 was really 39, as one had autofailed, one skipped the final, and three more took early or make-up exams last week or the week before. I also hung out around the department with a few friends for what may be the last time, really -- I may or may not see them at the graduation party on Friday night, and one of them is off to Cincinnati to get his PhD starting this fall. I try not to focus on these realizations in the moment -- it's usually a bad thing if I do, as I'll get all weepy and the like (remember: glass case of emotion).

Once Suri returned, she finished my exams around 6:30 and delivered them back to me. From that point forward, I busied myself with them -- going through them one by one, marking their scores, marking the sheet that held their scores, until I was done. This took me until, approximately, 8PM. I was the only one left in the department aside from the aforementioned Shakespeare professor I gave the pizza to, and aside from my radio on my desk, it was silent. I busted my ass. I just wanted to get everything done. By the time I uploaded my students' grades to Blackboard and Banner, and wrapped up all of the exams for turning them in to the office, it was nearly 8:45. It was dark outside, and my headache had gone from a thin, tinny pounding behind my eyes to a full-on roar of pain, enough to where I had trouble concentrating on finishing all of my work. I put the exams in the office administrator's box, made extra copies of my students' grade tally sheets in case I would need them, and left campus. I was done. Completely done. All I have left to do is to graduate on Friday.

The drive home was peaceful; I forgot what it was like to drive in the late evening hours when it was pleasant outside. My Monte Carlo, as she had sat out in the warm sun all day, fired up quickly and drove smoothly and beautifully, with only a slight bit of squealing in the beginning and then nothing but love for the road. I'm pretty sure, as I mentioned, that my car has allergies to shitty or cold weather, because last night she drove better and more smoothly than she's driven in days, if not weeks. It was 85 and sunny all day yesterday, and she sat out in it and soaked up the weather. I couldn't have been more pleased.

When I got home, my head was still roaring at me, and wouldn't go away no matter what I did. I made a quick dinner and took some sinus/pain pills, as I was sure that part of it was a sinus headache and sinus allergies causing it, and slowly it began to go away -- to be replaced with absolute and total please-go-to-bed-soon fatigue. So, really, that's what I did. I talked to Daisy on Facebook for a bit while she was at work, and then I went downstairs to sleep. It was another one of those nights where I don't really remember going to bed, only that I did. That's how mentally shot and burnt-out I was when I went to sleep. I woke up this morning around 10 or 11, in a daze, and made coffee before starting this post.

So there you have it, folks; I'm done now. Completely done. Today and tomorrow I will be cleaning the house and prepping for Daisy's arrival on Thursday, and then there's graduation Friday and everything that entails before my trip up to Omaha on Saturday. Everyone involved is looking forward to seeing me at the party on Friday night, and for those people who have never met Daisy, they're doubly excited to meet her as well. Apparently we've got about fifteen or twenty of us who are going to the party, so that's a good solid group. And, as a bonus, none of us tend to be troublemakers, either -- all of those people graduated last year. It should be fun.

For now, though? Off I go to clean and do other chores. Woo. But at least I'm done.

Finals Day, Part I

Finals week: day two (day one was Saturday)

I slept from about 7:30PM or so until 1AM, when I woke up with awful heartburn and general stomach discomfort. I don't get heartburn very often, but when I do, it tends to suck -- and suck hard. More often, I get simple acid reflux, which is generally brought on by sleeping in a weird position and/or by allergies or something acidic that I ate. Reflux can sometimes take days to go away, and is more annoying by far, because no matter what I do or what medicines I take, I can't rid myself of it until it's good and ready to settle down.

Daisy thinks I have digestive issues; in reality, I don't think I do. The only time I have digestive issues, actually, is when I eat something really far out of the norm of what I'm used to, or something with a lot of soy/tofu in it. Overall I'm a pretty healthy person, at least physically, despite all of the horrible shit I do to my body (the least of which being how/what I eat).

I tried to go back to sleep. I wanted to go back to sleep, mainly because I didn't want to spend four extra hours awake before my alarm clock was set to go off -- maybe two, at most, which is why I went to bed at 7:30PM when I was tired. Again, though, it's not like I can actually sleep when I want to -- I always want to sleep when I have other shit to do or other shit to worry about. Thankfully, for the time being those days are nearing an end. I sighed and came upstairs; there was no more sleep happening for me, especially since I felt ill.

I remembered that there were things I needed to do last night, but never did -- while I have everything taken care of for school today before my students' exams, there are things around the house that need to be done between now and graduation. For example, today is garbage day. I should have taken the garbage down to the road last night before bed, but I didn't. Both the actual garbage and recyclables need to be taken out, but as it's 5:11 AM, I can't exactly do that without being loud and waking up the neighbors or the whole neighborhood with it. It doubly needs to go out because I won't be here next Monday morning to take it down to the road (as I'll be in Omaha during that time). It'll just have to wait another week downstairs in the cans, I suppose. Can't do a whole lot about that. I did, however, clean out the cat room and their box this morning, a few hours ago. Between now and Thursday, when Daisy comes down, I have to clean the bathroom, vacuum the house and clean the kitchen again, and I need to wash the blankets on the bed -- which haven't been washed in about six weeks (primarily because of the craziness of the semester's wrap-up and because of the drainage issues I had before).

I am, as an aside, happy to report that whatever those drainage issues were -- clogs or otherwise -- they seem to be gone now; I've been doing laundry, dishes, and showering normally for the past three weeks or so with no issue whatsoever. I have, however, been watching the drains every time I run a lot of water, just in case they back up again. So far, so good. I still have 1/3 of a bottle of the Max Gel and the entire bottle of the main line cleaner if I need to use them, but as of right now everything's been fine for a while.

Anyway.

I will be leaving the house this morning at the normal time, even though the finals feast isn't until noon and the exam itself isn't until 1PM -- I have to spend most of my morning packing up my office and getting rid of everything I no longer need. I've collected some boxes for that over the past few weeks, and today I will be filling those boxes and/or tossing out shit that I've had in there for years yet have no real use for. I also have to go over to the bookstore, as mentioned in my previous post, and purchase the ungodly, ludicrously expensive graduation gown for Friday's ceremony. I am not looking forward to that, but again, it seems like I have no real choice in the matter. I don't know who will be in the department or when; most of us tend not to show up until about ten minutes before or after the finals feast, because nobody wants to get up early on a day they don't have to be there until noon. I told Parker that if he was coming in early, I'd be there for coffee and the like, since I'll be packing up. I won't be taking anything big with me today, mind you -- that will be reserved for Friday, when Daisy and I come in during the morning hours and move it all out to her car.

For the finals feast, I have also prepared what I call my "famous vegan Oreo pudding," which involves two boxes of chocolate pudding, two boxes of white chocolate pudding, and half a bag of crushed/pulverized Oreos. I have to remember when I leave the house to actually take it out of the fridge and take it with me, as there are several members of the department who are excited for it. Also, it's vegan because Oreos are vegan, and because I use almond milk instead of real milk for it. I haven't had real milk in the house in almost a year, thanks to Daisy. 

Today will also be the last day for the foreseeable future that I will wheel the Monte Carlo on and off the campus of my university. Hm. That's really interesting to think about, actually. Now watch it break down halfway there, or halfway home tonight. The car's running pretty well, actually; no problems starting, no issues I've noticed over the past few days, etc. She also has a new quart of oil and new coolant in her too, which is good -- it's supposed to be in the 80s today and is projected to hit 90 tomorrow. Yes, she squeals, but no worse than before, and said squeal does go away after she's warmed up and drives a bit. Perhaps I'll take her in to the shop and get some work done on her over the course of the next month or so, provided I have the money to do so. I do need to get an oil/filters change eventually. No use in paying a $300 car insurance bill at the end of June if she's going to die very quickly thereafter, you know?

Because of the way finals are given, and because of our general schedule, I don't know when I'll be home tonight. I told Daisy that I could be home as early as 6 or 7, but I could also be leaving campus as late as 8 or 9, depending on how long it takes to grade through and post everything. I want to get everything done today if at all possible, as I don't want to have anything left over to do on Friday morning when I go back in but to load up everything, get it out to Daisy's car, and then graduate. If I have to do the computer-upload grading at home, I can do that -- but I desperately want everything turned in to the office by the time I leave campus tonight, whether that be at 6 or 7PM or as late as 9 or 10PM. Daisy is working all the way through Thursday morning anyhow; it's not like I'll get to talk to her much tonight anyhow, so if necessary I really could just come home and go directly to bed. I've told her this, and she understands it. Finals day is a pain in the ass for everyone involved; the finals feast only lessens the hurt a bit to make that pain somewhat more tolerable.

Yet, it's the last day where I will be a professor, really. After those exams are turned in to the office and my students' grades have been uploaded to the grading system...it's over. My teaching career, for the foreseeable future, will be over. It is a bittersweet feeling, as you know. It feels strange to know that I won't be teaching a summer class in a few weeks, and that I may not (read: probably not) be teaching somewhere, here or otherwise, in the fall again. It feels strange knowing that I will basically be unemployed again after this week ends, and must strike out on my own to figure out the rest of my life. I'm bad at figuring out my life -- that's why I've spent the last three years in the insular bubble known as graduate school.

It feels strange knowing that a large chunk of my friends are leaving Kansas, never to be seen again after Friday.

Yeah. It's something like that.

I can't do anything about it, really, except keep my chin up, do the last of my work, graduate, and go to the graduation party with Daisy on Friday. At least it's supposed to be nice on Friday, so it shouldn't be rained out or anything like that. If it is? Well, the new Star Trek movie opens on Friday...

Also, I've not yet seen Iron Man 3. I keep hearing mixed reviews of it. Some friends say it's the best of the three (to them, I say to go back and watch the first film again), and others who are pretty hardcore comic nerds like me say that it's terrible -- which worries me. In my opinion, it can't really be any worse than the second one, which to me was a complete fucking trainwreck of a film. But, then again, I was the guy who thought The Avengers was "just okay" and in no way lived up to the hype that everyone had created around it, so perhaps I'm a bit biased. I'm also the guy who thought The Dark Knight Rises was brilliant, but deeply flawed in many places.

For now, though, it is almost time to go to campus. I have made sure to properly caffeinate myself with super-strong coffee (despite the heartburn; screw it, I need my medicine) and I am wearing my Firefly "Keep Calm and Stay Shiny" shirt today in order to properly motivate my students for their exam -- well, I'm also wearing it because it's the last chance I get to "dress nerdy" for those students as well. That's a big part of it.

Off I go.

Mother's Day

I have a poem in my thesis called "Listlessness." It was written in late 2010 (perhaps early 2011), as I was just starting grad school, and it describes a sort of metaphorical fog that the speaker is walking through. At its basest level, the speaker walks into a wall and falls down, because he can't see where he's going in life. Or at least that was what it was supposed to represent, anyway, in its self-admitted pretentiousness. It really reflects what was going on in my life at the time I wrote it; I was just beginning to have major problems with my ex, I was in school for the first time in five years and was swamped by all the work I had to do, etc. I had officially changed my entire life around and had uprooted myself five different times at this point -- first to move to Kansas City, Missouri, then to move around the town of St. Joseph, Missouri (twice), and then to move from there back to KC for three months, and then finally to here, in Kansas. There were many bumps along the way, and I frequently found myself in situations where I didn't like what was going on or what I was doing.

By this time, I'd been in grad school for a bit. I thought, at that point, that my life was just in this loop of doing things I didn't want to do, and was simply forced to do; I knew I wouldn't marry the woman I'd been in a relationship with, as at that point, we'd been together for around five years and she'd told me outright that not only did she never want children, but she didn't know if she ever wanted to get married period. I knew I wouldn't enjoy grad school, but that it was a means to an end, and I knew that I had to keep getting up every day and forging ahead, because I had responsibilities, promises to keep, and work to do -- and all of it felt like I was walking through this unhappy, misery-filled fog that, eventually, I knew I could escape -- but I didn't know via what means or when.

I bring this up because through it all, my mother was always there for me. She never talked to me much about grad school (and, really, never has) but did say that she was proud that I'd been doing something with my life, productive or otherwise, and was always proud of my grades at the end of every semester even though at the time, I was in my late 20s, and will turn 31 this year. She never asked questions, she never discussed my motives about being in grad school, and when it came to my ex and I breaking up, she was supportive of me and never asked any of those difficult questions that I knew must have been on her mind, but she knew I didn't want to answer or talk about. I'll probably eventually tell her the full story, though I would imagine it won't be until long after Daisy and I are married. My mother has been there for me in many ways and for many things throughout my entire life -- she raised me as a single parent, even with some stumbles along the way (I was not the greatest kid during my early teen years, which I will fully admit), she has flown me home multiple times to visit, she has loaned me money when I've been too broke to eat or pay bills (all of which I've paid her back), and she and I are in frequent contact -- several emails or messages per week and a handful of phone calls every few months. My mother has been my rock more than anyone else in my life ever has been, and while I don't tell her every little thing going on in my life, public or private, I know that I could and can. My mother loves me, my mother misses me, and it pains me not to be able to be in her presence today.

When I got up this afternoon (because it's Sunday, and even on holidays there's no way I'm getting up before noon on a Sunday) I called my mother, and she was ironing her clothing for the week ahead.

People still iron their clothing?

Maybe it's just me; I've owned an iron for many years. I've never used it. It's boxed away in the spare room. I've never even ironed clothing before job interviews. Fuck it.


Ahem.

Anyway, she was (of course) happy to hear from me. She told me about her work week ahead, talked about dental appointments and hair appointments (the dog has to get groomed later this week) and asked me about my own week ahead and what my schedule was for the end of the semester and graduation. Pretty standard Mom-talk. When I got off the phone I turned it off (because fuck you, telemarketers who call and leave ten blank voicemails every two weeks) and made coffee/attempted to wake up further. I called Daisy, who will eventually be a mother herself to my own children -- eventually; don't get any ideas -- but who is already a mother of sorts to my kitties, and she snapped this photo of me:

Yep, I think that sums up my day (and my character) pretty well, really. That's also my favorite coffee mug, for obvious reasons -- and ironically, I bought it the last time I was in Omaha with Daisy herself, over the New Year.

This Mother's Day is unique to me because I don't just have one mother anymore; I also have Daisy's mother as well, who (while Daisy and I aren't married yet) I do already see as my mother-in-law, if not a mother figure in general. I mean, she's the mother of my future wife, and the woman most responsible for the person my lovely fiance is today, so I am very, very grateful for her and respect her quite highly.

I do what I can for my parents; for my own mom's Mother's Day gift, I shipped a box of 70 K-cups to her (as well as two reusable filters) for the Keurig machine my parents now make coffee with, because I knew she'd appreciate that and actually use those things -- even though my mother always tells me not to do anything for her for any holidays or the like. I sent that stuff last month, actually. For Daisy's mother (who I already call "Mama" all the time)? I didn't know exactly what to do. Unlike my own mother, I'll see Mama next weekend after my graduation when we go up to Omaha for several days. I'm excited -- but that's a full week away, and a full week after Mother's Day. I needed to do something for her by today -- it doesn't exactly have the same effect if I do something a week late.

I went with my old standby -- oh yes, I went the tie-dye route.

Mind you, I no longer have shirts or dyes for tie-dye; I haven't made a tie-dye shirt since well before Christmas, and the ones I made then were for Christmas presents for both sets of parents. Because, hey, it's really cheap to do and really really fun. However, making one item of clothing wouldn't really be too economical (good luck finding a single plain white shirt that's not part of a multi-pack, and a pack of the dye would be $10 or more itself), so I went the Amazon route, as I frequently do for most things I buy.

Amazon, actually, has a wonderful selection of tie-dyed clothing -- the only problem is that, of course, every tie-dyed shirt is different, regardless of whether or not one uses the same technique to make it. It's a tricky art form. Because of this, you can never be sure that what you'll get will look totally like the picture on the site. However, I've bought a few tie-dyes on there before; one for a costume, one because I liked the design, and another simply because I wanted it, and all of them looked pretty close, if not exactly, like what was pictured. Daisy's mother loves tie-dye; for a long time, I always sent at least one, if not two or three shirts back up to Omaha with Daisy when she would return home from her visits here; Mama's a master seamstress, and alters the shirts as she likes to be able to wear them and be comfortable. This is also why I took great care in the ones I made over Christmas and why I made Daisy's and Mama's shirts V-necks (for easier altering if necessary). I also knew, roughly, what colors of shirts Mama liked based on the ones I'd made and given her in the past.

However, I had some trouble this time around; I was limited to what Amazon had and what I could quickly ship (some places say "orders take an additional 4-5 days from this seller" etc). And I didn't want to get some cheap, simple spiral or rainbow design; I could make that myself if I wanted to. I wanted something a bit different, and something that would be unique. Finally, after a few days of searching, I found this:

Yes, that is the photo directly taken from Amazon's item page for it. I didn't know what to make of it; it was a design I'd never seen before (the company called it "Marble Lime" for its color and design). It was pretty. The shirts I've made/given to Mama in the past have been red/purple/deep blues, though; I didn't know if she'd like a green/blue color scheme. I use green sparingly in my own dyeing because it's hard to get a green dye to look right on anything; it's either too dark (becoming an army green sort of thing) or it's way too bright (think of a highlighter). But, this was a cool design, even if the picture of it was decidedly lo-res. It wasn't a design that I knew how to make myself (and, in fact, I am still curious as to how they did it). So, I ordered it, labeled it as a gift order, and had it shipped to Omaha.

I mentioned before that my friend April had given me an Amazon gift card for graduation; after thanking her profusely, I uploaded the code into my account and hadn't used it for anything. When I ordered Mama's shirt, it applied the gift card balance automatically to it. Neato. I used the rest of the gift card to order my new dehydrator, which I mentioned here before (and have been/will be using over the next several days, extensively). Her shirt arrived on Friday, but she insisted that she wait until today to open the package -- since today, not Friday, was Mother's Day.

By the time I got up this afternoon, Daisy told me that not only did she love it, but she had already taken it to her sewing room to make her alterations to the neck and sleeves on it -- which greatly amused me and made me proud. I know it wasn't much, but I wanted to do something for her. She later thanked me on Facebook and told me she loved me, which I found incredibly sweet.

I did have a plan for the day, really -- I knew when I got up that I would be a) calling my own mother, b) wishing Mama a happy Mother's Day, and c) showering and making my trip over to the Dollar Tree. I needed to make my Dollar Tree trip long ago; I'm out of almost everything I get over there, with the exception of bathroom stuff like soap and shampoo. There's a lot I get there -- laundry detergent, dish soap, toilet paper (occasionally tissues as well), candles, snacks, deodorant, some coffee, sometimes bread, trash bags, etc.

Today's trip sort of sucked, really; I got some stuff I needed for around the house, but a lot of the stuff I normally get was gone or wasn't on the shelves. I did pick up a pack of Thank You notes though to send to anyone who sends me a card/money for graduation, and I got a few energy drinks I don't normally get (they were grape, and I'm totally a sucker for grape things), but really, I usually get about double the amount of stuff I got today when I go over there. I must remind myself in the future not to go to the Dollar Tree on a weekend, but to do it during the week -- as apparently that's when they actually have stuff in stock.

So that was my day. In a bit, I shall cook some dinner and finish watching the movie I started last night (the 25th Anniversary Blu-ray of The Last Starfighter, which holds up incredibly well, actually) before going to bed early. In the morning, I must awaken early and go to campus at my regular time in order to be able to pack up my office and go get my ungodly-expensive graduation gown.

The Grading

Study day

Yesterday, between 11AM and 5PM, I graded through about twenty-ish papers. Yes, they took that long. And that was me grading them quickly, as I told them I would do -- grading for content and effective writing, not so much for any errors. I told them that while they'd lose points for errors, I wasn't going to mark them because, well, it's pointless; they can't fix them or do a rewrite on them anyhow, and if they don't know they're making mistakes at this point after me beating into their heads that they're doing things wrong, and showing them how to not do things wrong over and over, it's not going to help them anyway. It would be a waste of calories, time, and ink in my fabulous red pen of doom. The grades they get are the grades they get.

At the end of the semester, I always try to do something fun with the grading of their final papers; last semester, as you may recall, I played "paper grading bingo" with their papers, and was appalled with how many of them popped up:

This semester, I've taken a different approach -- I've instead made a list of "things I've learned while grading final papers" or something along those lines. At this point it has eleven items on it, and I'm only about halfway done with my grading. Once I'm completely done, I'll make a post out of it here.

I told Daisy earlier that I am already sick of grading, even though most of the papers aren't particularly bad. It's the thought of it, though. Again, I checked out, mentally, from all this shit once I got my passing comps results back. I'm not physically exhausted, just mentally exhausted. Translation: I don't want to do this. I realize that yes, it's the last time I'll have to grade actual papers for the foreseeable future, but still -- I don't want to do it.

People who aren't in the field of academia (and some who are) will be like "Well just give them all A's then!"

I can't tell you how many times I've heard that at this point, really. I wish I could. But my sense of honor, duty, and responsibility won't let me. No, as much of a tightass as it may make me sound, I really have to give them the honest grades they deserve, whether those be A's or F's. I don't care if it's an unpleasant, time-sucking exercise in futility during my last few days as a professor -- I have a responsibility to myself and to the department until all of those final grades are entered into the Banner system and submitted to the department office. And so, because of that, I will be once more slogging through the other half of those papers today, once I get up in the morning.

I say "once I get up in the morning" because I tried to go to bed earlier. I really did. I ate dinner and went downstairs a little after 7PM. I was just dozing off when apparently everyone in every house around me in the neighborhood decided it was time to act like damned fools (again, over the past few months I have been surrounded on three sides by white trash with uncontrollable, screaming children). This ruckus consisted of doors slamming, cars coming in and out honking horns, multiple adult party screams of "wooooooooo!" and a cacophony of laughter and redneck yelling so loud that the cats, who were on the bed with me, began defensively growling, as they do whenever someone knocks on the door or gets too close to the house. What. the everliving. fuck.

By the time it finally died down and stopped around 9:30 or so, I was staring at the ceiling, wide awake, with what I can only assume were bloodshot eyes. Y'know, I used to like this neighborhood. I used to love living here because it was super, incredibly quiet, and I was surrounded by senior citizens instead of white trash with screaming children, the kind who have loud and rowdy visitors all the time, blast their redneck music loudly, and let their kids ride their bikes weaving in and out of the neighborhood traffic. I am not becoming a get-off-my-lawn crotchety old man; I just don't like this kind of people. They severely irritate me. The kids have to be at least eight or nine years old, but apparently they're never in school -- I've seen them running around the neighborhood at all hours of the morning, day, and afternoon when they should be in school.

Anyway, since I could no longer sleep, I came back upstairs for a while. I am now ludicrously tired, but cannot force myself to to to bed because I know I will, again, just lay there. I'm trying to burn myself out; I've been awake since 7AM yesterday, and as all I have to do the rest of the weekend is finish my grading, I've got a bit of time on my hands; I can sleep as long or as late as I want, well into the afternoon if necessary. I have to go cash my tax refund check at some point and get some groceries over the weekend, but that's about it. I also get paid today, so I can now mail out the two bills I have without worrying about any sort of temporary shortage to my bank account (in reality, I've either just been sleeping, grading, or have plain forgotten to write them out, though neither of them is due for almost two more weeks). My dehydrator should arrive today via UPS, as well, at some point, and the Mother's Day present for Daisy's mother should arrive in Omaha today as well.

When I do go take care of my shopping, I'll have to do it either in the daytime (ugh) or early evening, as I need to stop at the Dollar Tree and get some stuff as well -- something I have once more been putting off for several weeks. I normally take Daisy with me when I go to the Dollar Tree because it's really fun, but as we won't have time to do that next weekend when she's here, I need to do it now. I also have to go to Walmart during the day or early evening because I don't think they'll cash a tax refund check in the middle of the night; generally they don't do that sort of stuff after the customer service counter closes down. Right now, though, even the thought of all of this moving around and running errands sounds tiring.

Daisy told me that she got her new schedule tonight at work and that she's scheduled to work during my graduation weekend as per the usual -- which is inaccurate, and something that she's had to readdress with the administration there at least three times at this point.

"So, uh...what does this mean, babe?" I asked.

"I sent an email to [supervisor] to remind him of the days I'm working. It's just frustrating that I have to keep readdressing this point."

Daisy told her company when she was hired that it was a condition of her employment there that she get my graduation weekend off; it was non-negotiable and plans couldn't be changed. They agreed and made a note of it. Well, apparently they didn't make a big enough note of it, as this is at least the third time it's come up that they're expecting her to work those days -- even though she's working for the next seven days straight.

"If something happens and you can't get those days off, love, you need to tell me immediately so that I can cancel my RSVP and plans to walk in the ceremony," I told her. "The only reason I'm walking is because of you."

"Don't you dare," she said. "I will be there."

"I'm just saying, hon. If you can't make it you have to let me know ASAP, because I don't know if there's a cutoff date before I can no longer go back into the system and change my reservation to say that I won't be there."

This is true; I had to "register" a while back to attend graduation; it sets up who they're going to call up to walk across the stage and all that, and I had to confirm how many guests I would have attending the ceremony with me (read: one, Daisy). I don't know if I can go back in and change that, even now, since the ceremony is one week from today.

Fuck, I'm graduating a week from today? A week from today? Wow.

I know a large number of my family members have gotten graduation announcements from me already; my mother told me my grandmother and some of my aunts and uncles had gotten them, but they (meaning, my parents) hadn't yet received theirs in the mail. This is curious, as I sent them out well over a week ago -- actually, probably closer to two weeks now.

Edit: I just checked; I began mailing them on April 27, which is two weeks ago tomorrow.

My parents' announcement was in the last batch of them (as it's not like they don't know I'm graduating), but even with that they should've received it at least a week ago now. I kept track of the dates of when I mailed out the batches of them, obviously -- they went out in three different groups, with the last batch going out on May 2. My grandmother is apparently sending me a card, though she doesn't need to be wasting money on a card for me or anything like that. The woman's on a fixed income, yet she always stuffs money into my hand every time I come visit her for some reason. I have no doubt that she'll put something in the card as well, which is wholly unnecessary. My wealthier relatives, however, who make close to ten times what I make in any given year as a teacher? Let them send as much cash as they choose; believe me, I won't mind.

Of course, this more than likely won't happen. A high school graduation, to country folk, is a big deal. A college graduation -- for some reason -- seemed to be a slightly less-important occurrence to them when I graduated from WVU in 2005. A Master's degree? I'm not even sure half of my extended family, who grew up working on farms, coal mines, or in menial retail/service jobs fully grasp what a Master's degree really is, especially not one like the MFA I'm receiving -- a terminal degree in my field.

Mind you, in most families or circles, the proudness/let's-send-congrats-and-money scale would go up, not down or level off with each next level of degree-dom. As cynical as it sounds (even if it's true), by the third level I think a lot of people in my family stop caring. Oh, Brandon got another degree. That's nice. That may sound peculiar or even a bit cold, but honestly, I've been living out here since 2006, and very few of them have seen me since then. There's a certain level of detachment, of distance and aloofness, that comes with living halfway across the country for the better part of a decade -- and I understand that. It really doesn't bother me if I don't hear back from half or more of my relatives -- I don't necessarily expect to. I've not been a part of their lives since I was, basically, a child. I'll turn 31 this year. Most of my generation has married and/or already have kids (or, conversely, have kids on the way). Aside from only one other cousin I can think of offhand, I'm the only one who hasn't married or had kids yet, actually -- aside from my gay cousin, anyway. Mind you, that's not too far off for me (the marriage and kids, I mean), but still. Living in the midwest away from everyone has sort of made me the de facto black sheep of the family. And really, I'm sort of okay with this.

So that's all I have for this very early morning -- now I'm going to try to go back to sleep, and will sleep until I wake up naturally...or until the neighbors start making all sorts of noise and ruckus again.