The Iceman Cometh, Part I

Spring semester: day twenty

I went to my meeting with the visiting writer this afternoon (more on that in a bit) and came home to this message:

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN WICHITA HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WATCH... WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM WEDNESDAY EVENING THROUGH THURSDAY MORNING.

* TIMING... THE WINTRY PRECIPITATION IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP LATE WEDNESDAY AND CONTINUE INTO THURSDAY MORNING.

* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS... OF 4 TO 9 INCHES WILL BE POSSIBLE IN CENTRAL KANSAS... WITH A TRACE UP TO AN INCH OR TWO IN THE SOUTH.

That's just an excerpt, of course, but you get the idea. It appears that Kansas is not out of the woods yet when it comes to winter.

I will also remind you, yet again, that it was 70 degrees outside yesterday. Yes. 70. Seventy. As in, warm and wonderful and my favorite weather ever.

I've heard varying reports about the weather -- what you see above is the official NWS bulletin. Some have said that they don't know if the storm is actually going to fully form this way; others have said that it could start as early as Wednesday morning. It's all up in the air, literally. What I do know is that Newton, the small town in which I live, will more than likely get more than Wichita proper will, as it's a little southeast of being dead-center of the state. And, obviously, that's a bad thing when on Thursdays I make a 50-mile round trip to teach my classes.

I've already decided that if it gets bad, I'm not risking the drive down there -- my car may be a massive landboat of a vehicle with big tires and a low center of gravity, but there's no way I'd drive to campus in a snowstorm/possible ice storm for a 50-mile round trip with the way Kansas people drive on the interstate when the weather is awful. This means that by Wednesday night, I've gotta make a decision to hold or cancel my Thursday classes.

I don't cancel classes needlessly. In fact, aside from days where I've specifically scheduled days off of my classes, I've canceled a class due to illness or other issues maybe three times over the entire course of my teaching career -- once last spring when the serpentine belt and belt tensioner blew on the Monte Carlo, once in the first fall I was a GTA when I was really sick, and once about two years ago when I was flying to a conference to present a paper in San Antonio. But really, that's it.  While my teaching schedule is flexible, I try my best to avoid canceling classes because it usually throws my lesson plans into upheaval for a week or so afterwards. For example, if I have to cancel on Thursday, it means that my students will have to wait until Tuesday to give me their workshop copies for their first paper, and it will end up straddling the workshop over two separate weeks -- Thursday and the Tuesday after, with the paper being due a day and a half after the last workshop ends. That is far from ideal, but I do my best to keep the schedule as flexible as possible for issues like this. In the spring, anything weather-related can happen, from snow and ice storms to tornadoes that destroy towns. This is Kansas. This state is cray-cray (to borrow a term Daisy uses frequently). These sorts of issues don't generally pop up in the fall semester, where the first half of the semester is 80-95 degrees and the second half usually has maybe one or two dustings of snowy, cold days, if any. In Spring? Anything goes. It's open season. I've been forced to take shelter in the basement of my building twice because of tornado sirens during class hours, for example. Again, cray-cray.

What makes matters worse is that looking ahead, I may have to rearrange the workshop days for my students' second paper as well, as said days fall right around the time I'm scheduled to take my comps (in fact, April 4 is supposed to be their second workshop day, and I could be in comps all day that day depending on how they schedule me). It's a toss-up either way. Hopefully, however, I can redistribute the days nicely enough to make their second unit go smoothly, especially if I end up having to cancel class on Thursday. That'll push everything on the docket ahead by a day.

To a certain extent, it's exciting -- as collegiate instructors, "snow days" are few and far between. We've had two official ones, where the university canceled classes, since I've been a grad student -- both at the beginning of spring 2011...which was the last time we got a really significant snowfall that didn't melt off within 24 hours. We got about a little more than a foot or so then. Last winter, the temperature barely went below 30 degrees most of the time. While I'm fairly certain the university won't cancel classes for a few inches of snow, I still can. That freedom actually makes me feel like I have some sort of crazy superpower, even if it's a superpower I never use.

Anyway, so there's that. I'll be making a decision on Wednesday night before I go to bed, and will be emailing my students beforehand. I'll also tell them tomorrow to be watching for whether I cancel or not. It could, after all, all blow by us and not amount to anything, or as Parker says, "fizzle out."

Still, if it does roll in, I'm looking forward to an extra day of weekend and sleeping in until noon on Thursday if at all possible. It's a safety issue, really; no reason to risk my life and/or my students' lives by making them come to my class when it's awful outside.

So, in other news...

This morning I got up, showered, and dressed myself. It was (and still is) really windy, so I put on my thick leather biker jacket and fleece-lined pants, wearing my new glasses to campus so I could leave a spare pair there in my desk (my old pair broke, sadly, and I had to order replacements), and drove to campus. I got out of my car and started to make my walk to my office across the parking lot when I realized ow, my feet hurt. Why do my feet hurt so much?

I looked down and saw that, despite everything else, I'd worn my slippers to campus. In front of God and everybody. Dammit.

Luckily, they weren't my pink fuzzy slippers (yes, I do own a pair of pink fuzzy slippers), but a pair of new ones I'd gotten over the weekend when Daisy and I went out shopping. Respectable, new slippers, not old ratty ones. The fact remains, however, that I was absentminded enough to wear my slippers to school. There's something wrong with me, I'm sure of it.

My first meeting with the visiting writer went well; she had us introduce ourselves and talk a bit about who we've been reading, who we admire and "want to write like," and other general sorts of stuff like that. I set up my meeting time with her to be 1PM on Tuesdays, right after I finish teaching, so that I can blend said meetings with my office hours before I leave campus in the afternoon. That means I meet with her tomorrow. I've been instructed to bring 1-3 poems for her to examine as well as a poem that I'd like to learn how to memorize. Yes, memorize. Apparently that's a big thing for her and something that she'd like to teach us how to do. Okay. Fair enough. I can find something along those lines, I suppose. It'll be short, because I have enough on my mind and proverbial plate right now, but I can do that.

I did, by the way, come to campus this afternoon to a flurry of assorted folk (those of us who were there, anyhow) congratulating me on my engagement to Daisy, as well as several of them being very surprised that I was able to keep my proposal plans so secret for so long. I even had a congratulatory card in my mailbox from a dear friend, complete with glitter and everything. Most of my close(r) friends in the department have met Daisy at least once and really like her -- and even those who haven't met her not only want to, but totally support us and have offered their heartfelt congratulatory wishes, which means a lot to both of us. I tried to call my grandmother yesterday to tell her, but her line was busy. My mother said she'll call her to tell her later this week. I also got a lovely email from my aunt and uncle today to congratulate me, and both of us still have congratulations trickling in over Facebook for those who came to the party late, so to speak.

I told Daisy that I really just want to turn to a group of my gathered friends and scream "HOLY SHIT, I'M GETTING MARRIED! ME! BRANDON! SERIOUSLY!" or something to that effect. That's how happy I am, how excited I am. No, there's not a date, no, there aren't any plans yet, but still. I'm not sure the entire "life-changing situation" thing has totally sunk in yet. It's working its ways, though. I'm thrilled to be able to call Daisy mine for the rest of my life. This is just the first step of many.

Today one of my friends finally asked me the "So, when's she due?" question, by the way. I assured said friend that Daisy is not pregnant, but thanked her for being the first one to ask, since I'd been expecting that from someone, anyone, since the announcement of our engagement.

On that note, I'm going to get something to eat and go to bed early to catch up on some sleep -- since I had to get up early-ish this morning to go to campus, I didn't get to sleep in until after noon as I usually do on Mondays. That means that getting up at 5AM tomorrow is going to be a huge pain in the ass, but -- if this snowstorm hits as hard as is predicted -- it'll be the last day I have to get up early for a week. After sleeping strange hours with Daisy here this weekend, and all of the exciting things that happened involving Valentine's Day, our engagement, and the visit from Rae and Jay in the interim, an extended slumber in my bed sounds very, very nice right about now. Daisy is visiting one of her sisters today and tomorrow, so communication between us while she's out of town is sporadic at best (plus, while she's there, she won't be waiting on me or worrying about me if I'm not around tonight and tomorrow due to sleep and teaching).

I will, of course, update you on the weather situation (y'know, since this is a "part I" and all), especially because I'm really hoping Daisy gets back home to Omaha from her sister's place before it all sweeps in.

A Whole Lot More Exciting

So. Hrm. This is going to be an interesting post. I'm not exactly sure where I should begin, as it details probably the most life-altering circumstances I will have written about here once it's finished. Because of that, I really don't know exactly how to start.

Oh, hell. I might as well come out and say it, and then fill you folks in on the backstory.

On Thursday night -- Valentine's Day, for those of you keeping track -- I produced a gorgeous ring (shipped to me from Shanghai), and, in my kitchen, proposed to Daisy. She said yes. Yep. I'm engaged. She's engaged to me. We're getting married. Eventually, anyhow.

I'll let that sink in a moment before I continue with the details.

It was very, very, super incredibly hard to keep this plan a secret from my family and friends. Very few people knew that I'd purchased the ring -- only two of my friends in the department, Parker being one of them -- and the plan, which I had been formulating slowly since shortly after Christmas, took a while to completely come together. I knew that Daisy would want to be here for Valentine's Day if at all possible, but if she hadn't been able to come (say, if she'd been hired for one of the jobs she'd applied and/or interviewed for), then I knew I would've had to change around some things. When I ordered the ring from Amazon and saw that the shipping could take until around Spring Break (for that was the item that had been "Shanghai'd" as per my blog post about two weeks ago), I began to panic a bit. When it arrived in about a week, I was able to relax and continue forward with my plans.

I told Parker about the plans for the ring and the story behind its shipping, and he was impressed. Having met Daisy before once or twice, he was all for it. He did not know, however, that I actually planned to propose with it.

"When you give it to her," he asked a few weeks ago, "what if she thinks you're proposing to her?"

I hemmed, hawwed, and deftly changed the subject to something else to avoid blowing my cover there. I didn't want anyone to know my plans, otherwise it wouldn't be a surprise to my friends and family if it got out -- as juicy gossip usually does -- and circulated around the department and Facebook. Daisy and I share a large number of friends; it wouldn't have taken long to get back to her, and the entire plan would have been ruined.

Again, it was very hard not to tell anyone. While a few friends knew some snippets of my Valentine's Day plans, none of them knew I was planning to propose -- as cliche as that is to do on Valentine's Day. At the very least, I knew it meant that I'd never forget the proposal day, as my memory is not what it once was when I'm bombarded on a daily basis with deadlines, stuff to do for my students, and stuff to do for school. Yes, I have a twenty-item to-do list, and I couldn't name any of the things on it without looking at it.

Anyway, let's not get too off-track.

I had some general plans, of course (read: "give her the ring" was about as far as I'd gone in my head up until last week) but as with everything else in life, I decided mainly to wing it. I had done a few other things for her as well, but nothing major -- I bought her a pretty rose gold necklace -- she likes rose gold, though I'm not a fan of it myself -- and I'd bought her a new bra at Walmart previously, as she told me she can always use new bras. I didn't want her to think that I had hedged everything on one little thing, and most importantly, I didn't want her to see what was coming.

On Wednesday, my day off, I went over to the grocery store on a mission -- I needed flowers. I never buy flowers; it's been several years since I've purchased flowers of any sort for anyone, and I've never gotten any for Daisy before. The object here was to do something innocuous, something sweet. And, perhaps to drive the point home, I wanted a certain kind of flowers -- I wanted daisies. For, ahem, the obvious reason that I gave her that nickname here in the blog.

Here's a news flash, folks -- daisies are nearly impossible to find the day before Valentine's Day. Everyone wants roses, so that's what stores stock. I did, luckily, find a bundle of daisies, but they weren't the normal white ones -- they were tinged purplish-maroon. Screw it, I thought, close enough. It wasn't so much about the flowers themselves as what I was going to do with them. I purchased them and drove home.

Once home, I stripped the flowers from their plastic wrapping, trimmed the stems to manageable lengths, and stripped all of the excess leaves from said stems. I then put them in a blue plastic vase, and to hold them all together, I added the finishing touch -- I slipped the engagement ring up over them to hold them in a tight bundle. The idea here was to see if she'd notice once I gave them to her. I then put the flowers and her other gifts into a basket I had sitting around the house (who knows for what reason; it was just in the spare room) and waited. I went to campus on Thursday to teach and then came home; Daisy was scheduled to arrive sometime in the afternoon or evening. At 3:30 PM or so, she messaged me and told me she was just then leaving the house -- this was fine, as it would give me time to take a nap and catch up on a bit of sleep before she arrived.

The next thing I knew, I awoke on the couch in a daze, not knowing how long I'd been asleep, but knowing that it was getting dark. I looked at the clock and it was almost 7. That meant she'd be here in about two hours. I hadn't showered or finished cleaning -- I'd simply eaten a lunch and had passed out, with the TV still on. I rushed around to get everything left done, including making sure the bed was made, taking a shower, and cleaning the counters and stove. I like the house and myself to be as clean as possible when Daisy visits. Even though I know she really doesn't care that much, it's important to me. I couldn't really tell you why, honestly.

Now, mind you, Daisy had been asking me for weeks what I'd gotten her for Valentine's Day, and specifically what I'd ordered for her that had to be shipped from Shanghai. I told her nothing, except that it was important that it remain a surprise. Like, really important. She later told me that's what gave it away, but I somehow doubt it -- because I know she's really smart, she also can guess most anything I want to keep a surprise from her, so I now label even the unimportant stuff as "really, really important" to throw her off track. Cunning woman, she is.

Anyway. When she arrived, she had gifts of her own for me -- including a ton of vegan food (as always, no matter how much I tell her she doesn't have to bring anything, she always brings a lot). One of her own Valentine gifts for me, I already knew what it was: a real, brand-name, honest-to-god Fleshlight.

If you don't know what that is, I'm so not going to tell you. Google it on your own time, and don't do so at work, trust me. Needless to say I found this incredibly amusing -- I've been joking with not only her but all of my friends for the past year or so that I've wanted one. Well, Daisy took the initiative, and got me one for Valentine's Day with some of her tax refund money.

I've still yet to do my taxes, something else that got pushed back yet another weekend because of Daisy's visit, but I digress.

She also made a beautiful photo frame collage of photos of the two of us together since we've been a couple -- spanning from the first photo we ever took together last summer to the latest ones from last month and from the New Year's visit to Omaha. It's easily three or four feet wide, and is fairly heavy, adorned with a big cursive "Love" at the top of it. To hang it, I'll have to use nails, but thankfully it already has hanging hooks on the back of it. This is, quite possibly, the most thoughtful gift I'd ever received...until I opened the bag she brought.

Months ago, I mentioned that I used to have a stuffed Fozzie Bear, from the Muppets. It was a McDonald's Christmas special thing; in 1988, they sold little stuffed Muppets decked out in Christmas attire (hats, scarves, etc.). I had Fozzie. I loved my Fozzie. And over the years, as I grew up, it fell apart, lost its scarf and hat, and eventually I don't know what happened to said bear -- he eventually became lost. I don't know how we got on the topic, but I told Daisy this story one night, and then later forgot about it.

Sometime between then and now, she went online, found a brand new one in mint condition with the tags still on him, and bought him for me. She presented him to me for Valentine's Day and I almost goddamned cried. Yep. Seriously. I told her I "needed a minute" to compose myself. That little stuffed bear brought back a ton of memories from my childhood. I don't know where she found him, I don't know how much she paid for him, and I don't necessarily want to know -- the fact that she'd remembered that conversation and had not only found, but had ordered a teddy bear for me which was quite literally as old as she is...yeah, that made me emotional a little bit.

She also got me a stuffed penguin, because, as she told me, "penguins mate for life, and I'm her penguin." Fair enough. I definitely appreciate that sentiment as well. It was sweet of her.

I then gave her her gifts one by one -- first starting with the bra, which she liked but didn't know if it would fit (it does, though she needs to use her extender with it), then her second gift, which was the rose gold pendant necklace. The big heart with key pendant I'd gotten her a few months ago had broken at the piece which holds it onto her chain, and she'd almost lost it while she was in Chicago last month (luckily, it fell into her shirt/bra/what-have-you when it broke, or she would have lost it). I still wear my key, but until she gets the other one fixed -- if she does or can -- I wanted to get her something else to wear. She loved it.

And then I gave her the flowers last. Interestingly enough, she did not ask about her Shanghai'd gift. And she didn't notice the ring holding them together. I tried to get her to look at them a little closer, nudging her in subtle ways to get her to examine what was holding them together, but eventually (after a few minutes) just gave up and said something along the lines of "honey, what's holding the flowers together?"

Only then did she look. And gasped. And was excited. We had to take the flowers into the kitchen to get the ring off of them, as they were spilling water and dropping petals all over the place. It was there where I finally pulled the ring off and slipped it onto her finger.

"You know what this means, don't you?" I asked.

"No," she said, feigning innocence. "What does it mean?"

"It means you're mine forever," I said.

"And?"

"Oh hell, you're really going to make me say it, aren't you?"

"YES."

"Will you marry me?"

"YES."

And the rest is history. We kissed. We were engaged.

"Okay," she said a few minutes later. "I have to call and text everyone now. There's a specific order."

"...what?!"

"No, seriously, I planned for this. There's a specific order I had in mind, because I was pretty sure you were going to ask. First the parents, then my sisters, then my friends--"

"...wait, what? You mean you knew? Am I that transparent in my actions?"

"I had a pretty good idea," she said. "You told me your gift was 'really, really important' and I sort of figured that's what it was."

"...but I say that about everything!"

And she claims that she's not a planner.

She would also later tell me that I accidentally let a hint slip earlier this month, something about how she said she'd keep me, and how i replied that especially after Valentine's Day, I'd hope so. I do not remember saying this at all. but it's possible that I did, especially since I'm almost constantly fatigued and running myself ragged -- and therefore don't always remember when I say things.

Shortly thereafter, this picture was taken of the two of us in celebration:

Yes, I did ask Daisy to marry me while wearing a Fantastic Four t-shirt. Because, yes, I am that nerdy, folks.

She did indeed call her parents first, and they were extraordinarily happy. Well, as happy as they could be at 11PM on a weeknight, anyway. I'm surprised they were still awake. Daisy's mother is a teacher, and therefore has to be awake really early in the morning most of the time, so she goes to bed early. She then called her oldest sister, whom I'd met in Omaha over New Year's. I could hear her squeal in delight on the phone from across the room. She told her nephew on the phone as well, and then called her other sister to tell her the news, also telling her niece (whom I've met and talked to over Skype only) as well.

Both of Daisy's sisters are pregnant right now, actually -- total coincidence, I assure you. I told Daisy that I was incredibly surprised that nobody, not even my more uncouth friends, had asked "so when's she due?"

She's not pregnant, by the way, but still, I was surprised nobody asked.

Anyway, she spent a good chunk of time on her phone, texting and calling everyone to tell them the good news. As it was after midnight back home in West Virginia, I wasn't going to call my parents to wake them up. Instead, I wrote about it on Facebook to let everyone know, shortly after we both changed our relationship statuses to "engaged":

So, um, uh...guess who has two thumbs and is getting married?

THISSSSSSSS GUYYYYYY.

Don't tell my parents yet. They don't yet know and it's too late to call them.

That post currently has sixty comments of well-wishes and fifty-eight likes. About fifteen or twenty came on Thursday night. The rest came flooding in over the course of Friday and yesterday. It was overwhelming, to say the least. What was even more overwhelming was the number of friends and colleagues (most of whom have met Daisy at some point) who said something along the lines of "yeah, saw this coming" or "yep, CALLED IT."

Again, dammit, I'm sure I'm not that transparent. I can keep secrets well.

The first people I told personally were Rae, Zedral, and Parker. I would later send out a few more personal messages to those friends who don't often check Facebook, but over the course of the past few days, anyone I talk to on a regular basis or anyone in the department at the university who hasn't been buried under a rock for the course of the weekend knows by now. Again, word travels fast around the department. As I have to be on campus for a good chunk of the day tomorrow for my first meeting with the visiting writer, I figure I will arrive to a lot more in-person congratulations and well-wishes.

I emailed my parents to let me know when they were awake in the morning, as I had good news to share with them, and to stay away from Facebook, lest it ruin my surprise. We then went to Walmart, where we purchased a few things and wandered the store for a while, before coming home and going to bed around 2AM.

Friday morning was interesting. I woke up around 10 and tried to call my parents first thing, but couldn't get anyone to answer. Hm, that's odd, I thought, especially since my dad had emailed me about two hours prior to that saying that they were awake. I kept calling, and couldn't get an answer, so I called both of my mother's cell phones. I finally got her to answer on her old cell phone -- they were in the car on the way to go see a movie, as they'd taken the day off for a late Valentine's celebration.

"You know, it's really hard to tell you two good news if you up and leave the house, making you unable to answer the phone there."

"What news? Good news?" Mom asked.

"I sent you two an email last night."

"Well, we haven't checked our email this morning," she replied.

"Well, [dad] has, since he replied and told me you were awake and that I could call."

"Okay, well, what is it then?"

"Well, you're going to have a daughter-in-law..."

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone.

"Get out," Mom said. "You're kidding me."

"Nope," I said. "I proposed to [Daisy] last night, and she said yes."

Needless to say, my parents were thrilled. Mom asked me a bunch of questions about the ring, and about if we had plans/a date/etc yet (we don't).

"Well now we have to meet her," Mom said. "We have to 'approve' of her," she added, laughing.

"Well, there's an easy way to do that," I said, "if at least one of you shows up to my graduation in May..."

They still don't know if they can do that, by the way.

Saturday was spent with Rae and Jay as a sort of celebratory visit to my place to hang out for a few hours. Daisy made soup, bruschetta, and pudding, and they brought a congratulatory bottle of wine (which we never opened, actually). This morning, Daisy went back home to Omaha.

So, to answer some questions that some of you undoubtedly have:

1. No, we have not set a date/month/year/etc. Both of us are poor. I'm still in grad school for another three months. Daisy is unemployed. We're not making any set-in-stone plans right now, as to do so before I know where I'm going to be and what I'm going to be doing after May would be meaningless -- it would be spinning our figurative wheels for no good reason. For now, nothing has changed aside from the fact that we're engaged and Daisy has a very pretty ring on her finger. We're only talking about the barest of date projections right now, but even the nearest one is well over a year away.

2. No, I did not bankrupt myself getting the ring. While she loves it, and while everyone who's seen it thinks it's absolutely gorgeous, I have told her (and her alone) the price of it, and if something happens to it -- say, if it gets lost or broken somehow -- I can get another one easily without breaking the bank.

3. Oh, so you want to see the ring? Okay.

That's a close-up of the actual ring on her actual finger. She'll have to get it resized a little, as it's a bit snug on her finger, but she loves it. It's 18k white gold with Russian Swarovski crystals, not diamonds -- she told me long ago she didn't want diamonds because of the whole "blood diamond" thing, and that crystals or cubic zirconias were much more appropriate and environmentally/socially conscious. Oh yes, my friends, I put a lot of thought into this ring. Ironically, long before I picked this ring, she'd picked out one herself that looked almost exactly like it, down to the cut of the stone and the stones on the side arches. I apparently can read her mind about these things.

4. No, she's not pregnant. Again, for clarification.

5. No, I'm not pregnant either. Just so you know.

6. Yes, we're planning our own wedding, and we're going to try to do it as inexpensively as possible. We've always said that we'd be happy with a simple courthouse-at-lunch-hour wedding, but for the sake of family and friends we will be a bit more extravagant than that. I offered a Vegas wedding, complete with an Elvis impersonator officiating, but she shot that idea down as well. It is going to rely heavily on how much money and time we have available whenever we plan to have the ceremony, but I've also already stated that I would probably burst into flame were it to be done in a church of any sort (read: no way, no how). Again, we're not even thinking about any of this stuff yet, and we're not going the traditional route of the parents on both sides paying for everything, because we are far from traditional people and it's not their responsibility.

7. Yes, both of our families have accepted us with open arms and fully support us. Daisy's parents adore me, and I adore them. My parents have talked to Daisy on Skype but have never met her in person yet, though my mother said that she welcomes her as a daughter wholeheartedly, and I've received similar messages from other family members (my older brother and younger sister, respectively, amongst a few others).

8. No, Daisy has no idea of the amount of sheer nerdery and awkwardness she's in for now that she's planning to become my bride. I told her this morning, for example, that I will sit her down and make her watch all of the Star Wars films, because she'll probably want to know why I'll be decorating our future childrens' rooms with lightsabers and blasters. She has already watched all of Firefly and Serenity with me, at least, so that's a good start. She may think she has some idea, but now that we're engaged, I'm so ramping up the geekery for the foreseeable future.

9. No, just because we're getting married does not mean I'm going completely vegan, nor does it mean that she's all of a sudden going to start eating meat and dairy again. We respect each other's choices, diets, and ethical reasons for both. I have been eating a lot healthier than I did previously, but I'm not going to become completely vegan, and she'd never ask me to, for the same reasons that I would never ask her to start eating meat and dairy again -- it would not be respectful of one another's choices and wishes. Surprisingly enough, our dietary differences is a minor concern at best within our relationship, and most of the time it doesn't come up at all anymore.

So, there you have it. That's all I can think of right now. That's the story of our engagement. It's been a really amazing weekend, and one that will shortly come to an end -- as mentioned before, she's back in Omaha now, and tomorrow I have to make an extra trip to campus to visit with the visiting writer for the first time. Life somewhat returns to normal, with the exception that we're both engaged now. For the next several weeks I will be burying myself into my schoolwork and my studying for comps, and she'll be burying herself into her never-ending job hunt. But I will say this -- life's about to get a lot more interesting, and a whole lot more exciting.

Stark Raving Mad

Spring semester: day fifteen

While the weeks fly by, the weekends seem to do so even more quickly. This weekend I did little else but clean, do laundry, and grade papers. And there was a lot of each one of those tasks to do.


No, let me correct myself -- I also paid all of my bills, bought Daisy another (spur-of-the-moment) Valentine's Day gift, did some minor grocery shopping, and made a big pot of chicken noodle soup. Today I plan to try to relax somewhat -- I've been doing nothing but work, really, ever since I got home from campus on Thursday night, and since my relaxation time is at a premium as the semester ramps up (I spent a good twelve or fourteen hours this weekend grading those aforementioned papers).

Any relaxation time is going to be short-lived; Daisy is planning to come down on Thursday for the Valentine's Day weekend, which means that on Wednesday not only do I need to clean the rest of the house while I'm off, but I must get the last component of her special present, which can't be retrieved until Wednesday at the earliest (trust me, it's complicated, but all will be revealed eventually). I still teach on Tuesday and Thursday as well -- I'm covering the other two important readings of Unit 1 in my classes, sorting them into workshop groups, and assigning them their first big, important paper.

I thought about getting one of those kids' boxes of valentines -- you know, the ones that kids give out to classmates in elementary school -- and filling some out for my close friends in the department as a joke, sticking them in their mailboxes, etc. I didn't get any, though. Don't want to give anyone the wrong idea or anything, even if on most of them (even for the guys) I'd write something like yo bitch, you is fine or an equivalent phrase. I will also admit that the other reason I didn't do this is because my mind completely blanked and I forgot to even go through the valentine section when I did my late-night shopping at Walmart last night. Oh well. Over the past few years, usually someone in the department has thrown a "valentine-making party" at one of their homes to handcraft paper valentines for friends and colleagues -- though I've not heard anything about that this year. I guess since we're all trying to graduate and/or have already graduated since the last time that happened, it sort of falls to the wayside when other things take precedence.

I will also note that nobody ever made one for me anyway, even when I was single (read: this time last year). Of those of us who are there on a regular, almost-daily basis anyhow, I'm one of the black sheep of the department -- I generally only associate with a handful of people, and of those people, only about half of them are fellow graduate students (the rest are my bosses, in case you're wondering). I see relatively few of my friends on any given day this semester; most of them have schedules opposite of mine, or if they don't, they're teaching at the same time I am or are otherwise not around when I am. Parker, Rae, and sometimes Jay are around when I am, but I have many friends in the department I haven't seen at all this semester, or have seen once or twice in a brief hallway pass. This spring has been different than any other semester I've ever been a graduate student, that's for sure.

There's also been some confusion and misinformation here and there when it comes to graduation stuff; according to the chair and my thesis director, starting this semester the Department of English voted to abolish the "third reader" requirement for theses. I learned this last week when I asked the chair -- my "big boss," so to speak, if he'd like to be my third reader. He told me that while he'd love to, it was no longer required. This was confirmed to me by my thesis director on Thursday as well, so I thought to myself well, that's good; one less thing to worry about. Apparently, however, this is not the case -- while this change has been approved by the English Department, it has not yet gone through all of the processes required by the graduate school itself for this semester. I double-checked on this, as did our graduate advisor, as I brought up this concern with her. Yes, for this semester at least, we are required to have a third reader for our projects/theses. I relayed this back to our chair, who once more confirmed that he would be my third reader and apologized for any confusion.

It happens, really; I'm not too concerned by it, as the chair of the department and I get along exceedingly well, and I've done everything I can to help the department over my tenure as a GTA there. In fact, I'm one of the few "big fans," so to speak, of the department, university, and program I'm in. Over the past three years I've felt privileged and honored to be a part of it. My experiences haven't always been pleasant, but that comes in any line of work. You folks already know my thoughts on teaching and what my goals are there -- I'll spare you the unnecessary recap.

There are many little administrative things I have to do over the course of the next week or so, both at home and at work; I've been meaning to file my taxes for the past two weeks, for example, but have been too busy working on other stuff to sit down and do so.

"You know when I'll finally be able to file my taxes?" I asked Daisy tonight. "It'll be about three days before they're due, after comps are over."

Pass or fail, the comps are my main, if not only, academic focus over the course of the next two months. After April 5, while there's still a month of classes remaining in the semester, my focus will solely be on my students -- all of my work will be done and fully complete. The problem, however, is finding something to do after May in such a short time between then and graduation. While I could try to tackle everything all at once -- student work, lesson plans, grading, doing my taxes, comps reading/studying, visiting writer sessions, job searching, and household stuff -- if I did, I'd probably have an aneurysm. At the very least, I would never, ever sleep more than an hour or two per night, which would probably induce some sort of psychotic episode after about two weeks. As that wouldn't be productive and may get me thrown into a nuthouse, I'd prefer not to go stark raving mad and to take care of my tasks one at a time.

"How early do I have to let you folks know that I'd like to adjunct in the fall?" I asked the chair last week when I was talking to him about the third reader stuff. "I don't know that it will be necessary to do so -- I don't know where I'll be or what I'll be doing after May -- but if I can't find anything else, I want to be able to line something up here at the university if at all possible."

This is a legitimate question. Job-searching is all well and good, but if I can't find something between now and May, I'm going to be shit out of luck, again, when it comes to being able to pay my bills after, say, the end of June or so. Simple adjuncts don't teach summer classes, either, which means I wouldn't be able to secure a summer position without some major begging and/or finagling, and probably not even then. This means that if I can't secure a good position somewhere before graduation, or at least before mid-June or so, I have to bite the proverbial bullet, work some low-wage job around the area for the rest of the summer, and try my damnedest to secure an adjunct position for the fall. I'll teach as many classes as they want; the more I teach, the more money I make (that's how adjuncting works here). It may run me ragged, but it won't run me any more ragged than graduate school itself ever did. Screw it, I'll do what it takes.

Mind you, it's not like this is my only option, but if time starts running out and I've got nothing, I have to plan for the scenario that I'll be here in Kansas for a bit longer than expected. If I can secure employment for the fall, even if I don't end up needing it, it's better than nothing and it will buy me some time -- enough time, perhaps, to find something to do with my life.

A certain part of me, actually, doesn't really want to leave the university environment, doesn't want to leave this house, town, or state. It's a small part, but it's there nonetheless -- I think it's because I dread and fear the concept of change, and abhor changes to my daily routine and living situation. As much as I may whine about it at times, it's mostly meaningless whining -- what I have works for me. It may not be ideal, but I've survived on relatively little for the past three years and have worked long academic hours on pretty low GTA pay and loans. As an adjunct, depending on how many classes I teach per semester, I'd get roughly the same amount, if not a bit more. I'd still survive. But, it would be treading water, building experience, and biding time until I find someplace else to go, something else to do. The department likes me, though -- I have allies and friends there. A much larger part of me, however, wants to spread my proverbial wings and start over somewhere new, using my newly-gotten degree as the stepping stone to a lifelong career in that real world everyone talks about.

"You'll have to talk to [office administrator] about all of that stuff," the chair told me. "She's the one who makes the schedules and plans for the semester's classes in advance, and can estimate roughly what and who we'll need. I will say, though, don't count on that, don't set anything in stone or anything along those lines -- adjuncting positions are based on enrollment and projected enrollment numbers. Sometimes we get a higher enrollment than expected, others we get much lower. It's really a roll of the dice."

A roll of the dice, in my mind, is better than no roll at all. If I find something in the meantime, I can always be removed from the adjuncts list quite easily. After graduation, I'm rushing into the future headlong with no controls, no game plan, no brakes. Again, my mind focuses on the simplicity of survival, of how much I'll need to budget for food and bills, and how much more future work and maintenance I'll have to put into the Monte Carlo to keep it running as long as I need it to with the 226,000 miles it already has on it now.

The car has been running and performing remarkably well over the course of the past several months, actually -- I've not had to put any more oil into it since Christmas, and its gas mileage has been great. As it's not been ass-chillingly cold this winter thus far (the lowest temperature we've had has been around 10 degrees or so) and I'm driving her only half as much per week as I used to, she's been firing up without fail and has been incredibly reliable (knock on wood). I'll still do a little "preventative maintenance" here and there, keeping her full of oil/coolant and occasionally pouring a bit of Marvel Mystery Oil down her gullet, as that definitely helps things, but I'm hoping that I don't need to take said car into the shop for any major repairs anytime soon. I'm looking to get another oil change and stuff along those lines sometime around or shortly after Spring Break and comps (since, while I am not yet due for an oil change due to the fact I've not driven her an incredible amount, I will be due or a bit overdue by that time).  I only put about 100 miles a week on the car now.

Tomorrow is a really, really iffy day -- I found out this evening that there's a winter weather advisory here for all of tomorrow, starting late tonight. Yes, out of the blue. This is a bad thing; tomorrow, as you may know, is my only long day on campus. I get there around 7AM, and go home at around 5PM. We're supposed to get a rain/snow mix starting in the afternoon. While my car goes well in the snow, again, it's one of those situations similar to last week with the rain -- people here in Kansas drive like idiots when the weather is bad. Add to that the 5PM traffic and you have a dangerous, shitty situation that I totally want no part of whatsoever. I may see if I can get out of my Writing Center hour a bit early tomorrow afternoon, if not do it at a different hour entirely, just to see if I can get out of town as early as possible -- especially if the weather's getting progressively worse. I'm not concerned about the weather as much as I am everyone else in it, as you probably could have guessed. Especially since I don't have to go to campus on Wednesday.

"I just want you to be able to get home safely," Daisy told me earlier.

"Me too," I said. "Getting out of town at 5PM is bad enough. Getting out of town at 5PM during a winter storm, however mild, is a nightmare."

We'll have to see what happens, I suppose.

Grey Areas, Part II

Spring semester: day thirteen

It's really surprising how quickly any given week flies by -- one of my colleagues told me this morning that even though he's only halfway through his graduate school career, this semester is going very, very quickly thus far, and I agreed. As I mentioned in my last post, this is a bad thing, as time is quickly burning by for me to buckle down and read/study heavily for my comprehensive exams.

This morning, so that I could say I had done some previous preparation of sorts before my meeting with my thesis director, I went out and downloaded PDFs of several authors' complete works, as they're in the public domain -- T.S. Eliot, William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Walt Whitman, for starters -- and felt rather proud of myself. Suddenly, I had a ton of literature on my reading list at my disposal in electronic form.

And then I looked at the Whitman PDF.

Anyone have any clue how much Walt Whitman wrote? Anyone?

Apparently 567 pages, poems alone.

Fuck.



In undergrad, I always hated Walt Whitman, yet today a lot of my own poetry -- at least its overall themes and relative wordiness at times -- owes a lot to him, if subconsciously. Truthfully, there's not a whole lot of poets on my reading list who have inspired me, so to speak, over the years. I have poets I like on there, but few who have really inspired me. I like Emily Dickinson, but I write nothing like her. And here's a nice bit of party trivia for you -- every one of her poems can be sang to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song.

Don't believe me? Try it yourself:

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
      The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
      Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
      And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
      Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
      What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
      There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
      Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
      I could not see to see.

Now try to read any other Dickinson poem without singing it to that tune. You can't. Believe me, I've tried. What has been learned cannot be unlearned.

That was actually one of the major points of the lecture I gave my students today, to be honest with you -- how what we learn can never be unlearned. We covered an article in which a proposed relinquishment of certain technologies (genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and high-level robotics) would be a feasible solution to the possible future problem of impending technology-driven doom for the human species.

Because, yeah, that's the class I teach. No, I'm not kidding. See why I like it so much now?

The answer, by the way, is that there's really no right answer. The knowledge we have now cannot be unlearned, and what we uncover via research tomorrow will be the same, good or bad. There's also the problem that if we as a society decide to relinquish development of certain technologies for a heretofore undefined "greater good," there will always be a faction of outsiders who will choose to continue to develop it for possible, and/or probable, sinister uses. Those sinister goals may be overt, or they may end up being unseen or accidental, so what we have in regards to certain technologies right now is really a double-edged sword.

Again, yeah, totally love my job.

I digress, however.

The rest of the day was mainly treading water of sorts, killing time until I could have my meeting with my thesis director at 3:30. I wasn't in the best of moods; the storms from last night hit right around the time I was actually falling asleep (which, of course, I expected/predicted here in my last post), and subsided after about an hour or so. I slept fitfully again -- it's hard for me to go to sleep these days knowing that I have to get up at a certain hour for a certain function, in this case being that I need to awaken in order to drive to campus and teach. That doesn't mesh well with my circadian rhythms. I know, for example, that I probably won't wake up until around noon tomorrow -- and you know what? I'm so totally perfectly fine with that.

I was also treading water today in a literal sense as well -- around 6AM, half an hour before I leave the house in the morning, it began pouring rain. Like, heavy rain, for an extended period of time. Those of you who know me well know that I absolutely love rainy weather, especially the kind of rainy weather we had this morning (because it was warm, muggy, and comfortable). However, rainy weather -- especially during morning "rush hour" traffic in the Wichita area, is a bad, bad thing. People in Kansas can't drive. I've mentioned this many times here in the blog, but they can't. Kansans have a mentality of "I'm the only one on the road, and therefore you need to get out of my way" quite a bit. They're arrogant and reckless, and in rain that mentality amplifies with dangerous results. In the dark, in the rain, in heavy traffic, you can't see more than a few car lengths in front of you, especially if it's foggy. My car doesn't have the best headlights in the world -- it's seventeen years old. I don't have those newfangled halogen lights or blue lights you see on cars now. I have plain old whitish-yellow headlamps, and my wiper blades are the four-dollar Walmart special. My car is also a very heavy, cumbersome bucket of bolts similar to the Millennium Falcon, on which anything could go wrong at any given time.

Hear me, baby? Hold together.

Therefore, aside from an ice storm, there is no worse weather for me to drive through than pouring rain in heavy morning traffic. It's not me, and it's not my nerves -- I'm safe, I'm a good driver, and I go below the speed limit when it's raining hard -- it's everyone else who I have to look out for, because they're stupid. I must reiterate again that this is not an exaggeration. Kansas has the worst drivers of any state I've lived or driven in, period. There was one fairly bad accident I saw this morning on my way to campus, one that backed up the interstate for about 1/4 mile or so while the tow truck pulled the mangled SUV involved off to the side of the road.

The rain screwed up my hair as well; when my hair is long, it gets wavy and feathered. It does this on its own, naturally, giving me a Leif Garrett-like look once it gets to a certain length.



I keep it well-conditioned and properly styled -- after all, I don't want to look like a hobo, and I do have a professional image to uphold as a college instructor. When it gets wet, though, I am unable to do much with it but comb it straight back to slick it down, or otherwise as it dries I will get weird, goofy-looking curls that will pop out from the back and sides for no apparent reason. As my hair is also naturally a bit oily as well, I end up looking like an extra from Grease or like a mob hitman. With a big, burly beard. Trust me, it's not a good look on me. I don't like the "constantly looks like he just got out of the shower" look.

Daisy likes it. "You look very nice," she told me earlier. "It looks clean."

"It's not," I said. "It's because I got caught in the rain and it stayed combed back in that position all day because I have naturally oily hair and it's all I can do. I hate it."

Mind you, it's fine once it gets long enough to tie back into a ponytail, but I doubt it'll be that long again unless I let it grow for another six or seven months. It has to grow for more than a full year before I can tie it back without looking ridiculous -- yet another reason why I continuously, meticulously condition it. Otherwise it looks like hell.

Anyway. I've spent too much time writing about my hair. Let's get on with my day.

I met with my thesis director at 3:30 as planned. He just won a big award for some of his poetry -- one that apparently doesn't carry a lot of status, but one which he implied involved a rather nice cash prize. Any extra money is good for those of us working in academia; I get the impression that we GTAs aren't the only ones who are paid but a pittance for the work we do.

My thesis itself, while it could be done now as-is, I really see as about 90% done. I want to make some final cuts, edits, and additions between now and March 15, which is the cutoff date by which I must get my copy of it to him. After that, I have until April 15 to get two copies of it on acid-free paper (which I'll probably have to special-order myself) to the library for binding. One of the bound copies stays in the library, and the other goes back to the department for archival purposes. I do take pride, on some level, that future students -- if they decide to, of course -- will be able to go to the library and pick up a book of my collected poems.  But, after all, it's not the project itself that I'm worried about -- it's the comps.

"I need to know what I should be focusing on the most," I told him. "You write the questions. I have some idea of what you like and how these poets' works flow into one another and influence not only one another, but some of the others on the list. Basically, I need to know what you'll be looking for -- obviously I'm not asking you 'hey, what are my comps questions going to be,' but I'm looking for a path to follow when it comes to my studying."

This is, I think, a completely valid way of -- in a roundabout way -- actually asking hey, what are my comps questions going to be?

I never said I wasn't a sneaky bastard.


I was given several different areas to focus on, based around groups of poets on the list. It was also implied that because some poets on the reading list are so different than some of the others that there's no way they can possibly be incorporated into any of the questions he'll come up with. Which, if you may recall, is precisely the reason I included some of said poets -- it narrows my focus. It saves me work. It is a sneaky, somewhat underhanded way of saving me work, but in the end it does save me work. I was also told that I really don't have to worry about the "critical" texts on the reading list, aside from a sweeping overall viewpoint that may or may not be very lightly incorporated into one question. This is slightly ironic as the critical texts are the only ones I've actually purchased and read through a few sections of at this point.

The meeting lasted about an hour, and was probably the best one we've had thus far -- I was able to exit it with a "plan of attack," so to speak, and know beyond a shadow of a doubt the gist of most of what the questions will entail. This was furthered later when I received an email from our MFA advisor detailing the processes for comps questions, and it goes like this:

1. There are three questions.
2. We have an "A" and a "B" option for each one.
3. We have ninety minutes to write an essay response for each question. Only ninety.
4. We have to answer all three questions. It's not a "three questions, pick two" thing.
5. It can be handwritten or typed; for a typed exam you need director permission.
6. The exam is either given on April 4 or April 5; you're assigned a date based on availability of times. The 4th is a Thursday, the 5th a Friday.

It all sounds so deceptively simple. Show up, bang out a few essays, go home. I've had friends take comps who freaked out over them in the weeks and days leading up to them only to be surprised how "easy" they were, and I've also had friends who didn't put enough time or effort into preparation who were overwhelmed with them. It's a flip of the coin, really. I already know mine will be relatively difficult -- even though I have a baseline idea of what'll be on it, I also know that I picked the more difficult (from what I've heard) choice for my thesis director, and it's he who writes the questions. That leaves little left but to read and study, and to soak in some of the themes and concepts of the poets I'll be working with.

Honestly, though, I think the entire concept of comprehensive exams is a bit outdated. There's no need for them. All of us, whether MA or MFA, prove to the department and the graduate school that we are competent enough to earn our degrees simply with the grades we receive in the graduate-level classes we take. When I filled out my plan of study about two weeks ago, I had straight A's (two of those were A-minuses, but that still counts as A's in my book). Most other colleagues of mine are in the same situation -- nary a B or C to be found, anywhere. In grad school, a B is a black mark, and a C even blacker. Most people who get a C as a final grade in a class in graduate school are checked to see if they have a pulse after the final grades are tallied. You have to try to get a C in graduate school, at least in my experience. So, since all of us are proving we are competent, intelligent, and have pulses, there's no real reason for comps anymore. At the very least, if you have above, say, a 3.80 GPA, you should be exempted from them. That's not too much leeway, I don't think. My GPA is a 3.86, 3.88, something like that, only because I've had those two A-minuses.

I don't have to be perfect, just mostly perfect.

Yes, I realize "mostly perfect" is an oxymoron. Shudduppa yo mouth.

It's still frustrating. I can at least understand comps for MA students, as they're getting what amounts to a literature degree, but they also have an actual thesis and oral defense to complete as well.

So, really, my week is over now. This weekend will be spent grading near-incessantly; I say this because I've already started, and it took me four hours to get through twelve papers. Take from that what you will, but that's only about a quarter of my total number of students this semester. My "spring cleaning" also continues; I've now boxed up two small boxes of extra kitchen utensils and silverware that I never use, have cleaned out the drawers in the kitchen, and have packed away my old crock pot that my ex left here (since my parents got me a new one for Christmas, which I should get in the mail soon). I still have to go through the lower kitchen cabinets and the bathroom cabinet upstairs before this part of the house is done, and one thing has become abundantly clear in my cleaning and packing -- I'm going to need a fuckload more boxes. And big ones, too. Or tubs, or totes, or something along those lines. I am rapidly running out of boxes and box-like things, to the point where once I do, my productivity will come screeching to a halt.

On that note, my weekend begins.

Grey Areas

Spring semester: day twelve


It's an overcast, dark Wednesday afternoon, and I'm sitting in my room on my computer wearing a Star Trek t-shirt and longjohns that are tie-dyed orange and yellow, but which Daisy claims are "pink."

They're totally not pink.

Ahem. Anyway.

It is a huge relief to not have to go to campus on Wednesdays anymore. It feels really nice, actually, knowing that I only have to get up at 5AM two days a week. However, being home a lot makes the weeks go by faster, which is a bad thing this semester -- time going more quickly means that I have less time to prepare for my comps. Normally, it would be a relief that the semester is flying by; I usually have a get in, get out, just survive mentality when it comes to graduate school. But last semester, really, was the last semester I could think that way. This semester it's a long, headlong race into the proverbial wild blue yonder after graduation, and I have a few big hurdles I have to overcome before I can even get there.

Yesterday was fairly productive, at least; I taught my students two short lessons (thereby wrapping up all of the fairly uninteresting, workbook-related directions and discussions for them) and had office hours. I also had a fair amount of downtime in which Parker and I were able to throw the football back and forth outside due to the simply glorious weather; it was easily 65-70 degrees yesterday, warm enough to where I took off my sweatshirt and turtleneck I'd worn to campus and replaced it with a spare t-shirt I keep in my desk drawer. Tomorrow, I would normally teach and come straight home, but I can't -- I'll be stuck on campus at least an extra four hours or so in the afternoon to meet with my thesis director, as I mentioned in my last post. I expect that meeting to go fairly quickly (hopefully), but who knows. I'm also giving my first really long, intense lecture (of many) to my students on their first important reading assignment of the unit. Tomorrow it's also supposed to rain, so it may be another fairly dreary, uninteresting sort of "blah" day.

It's getting to be that time of year where it's 25 in the mornings and in the 60s by the afternoon, which means it's impossible to dress appropriately for the entire day without being too hot or too cold at some point. I, for one, really want the warming trend to continue -- I'm itching to break out my short-sleeve shirts, flip-flops, and board shorts again. Because it's been so cold for the past few weeks, I've been forced to dress fairly conservatively, as most of my heavier clothing (which keeps me warm) is somewhat dressy -- sweaters, pullovers, turtlenecks, cardigans, button-ups, etc. I don't dress nearly as nicely as many of the other GTAs in the department do, though; I have friends who wear suit jackets, collared shirts, and ties to teach in every day. This is impressive to me, though a bit of "overkill," so to speak. At least, in my opinion. I'm not a dressy guy; I never have been. I'm thirty and am wearing a Star Trek t-shirt right now, for fuck's sake. And yes, I have taught in this shirt before. That's just my mentality. I've mentioned before that there are different approaches to attire in academia; there's no set-in-stone dress code for GTAs other than that we make ourselves look somewhat presentable (i.e. no low-cut shirts or super-short skirts for the ladies, no tank tops, ripped jeans or the like for guys). Some people can get away with a bit more than others, and vice versa. It's all about perspective. I tend to balance things whenever possible -- yes, I'll wear business casual sorts of clothing at times, as I've been doing for the semester thus far, but when the weather warms up, I do teach in shorts, t-shirts, and sandals. When I say there are different approaches to attire, I mean more than anything else different mindsets for the classroom environment, and levels of respect. I have colleagues, for example, who dress very nicely every day, as I said before. That sort of attire, usually coupled with a firm, strong teaching style, commands a lot of (sometimes unspoken or unconscious) professional respect from one's students -- something that is desperately needed in the wild-west-esque classrooms of normal English 101 and 102, or any of the other non-specific English classes the department offers.

In my teaching and in my own classrooms, however, I've learned a few things over the years:

1. The beard helps. Immensely. Students both male and female still subconsciously respect the beard as a sign of age and wisdom. This is one of the main reasons I grow and maintain one at almost all times. In its own way, the beard commands a certain baseline level of respect, and few other GTAs or full professors in the department have beards (I can think of only three offhand).

2. I teach Engineering students exclusively, and teach them writing at that. This means that I have an incredibly different classroom environment than most other classes at the university, because A) I'm a GTA, not a full professor teaching an Engineering-oriented class, so it is already assumed that I know my shit, B) the students in my class actually want to be in there, and C) I generally have a much, much nerdier set of students than the average class.

Because I know these things and because my bosses/supervisors have done nothing but heap praise on me and my teaching effectiveness over the years (I'm not bragging here, that's just a fact), I get a bit more leeway when it comes to how I dress to teach. I've been told before by the director of the composition program that my The Empire Strikes Back t-shirt was not only acceptable to teach in, but knowing my students, it would probably be inspirational. This was basically one of my bosses giving me the "yeah, you know what you're doing, you know what your students respond to, you're cool" sort of go-ahead to do whatever I wanted.

And this is the truth -- my students are nerdy. Of all the classes I've taught, only the Engineering students tend to get my nerdy references to comic books or sci-fi-related stuff. While they respect me inherently as their instructor, I also get respect from them on that level as well as by fostering the mentality that I'm not so different from them. I take that route when it comes to teaching.  

Look, folks, I've been where you are. I understand that you have a lot of work to do. I'm not heartless. I'm a student as well, and as I'm making my way through academia just as you are, it is my job to help you by teaching this class and passing down some of what I know to help benefit you throughout your college career.

I say some version of the above at some point to every class I've ever taught, and you know what? It works. My students respect me because they see what I am, where I am, what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, and they rise to meet the challenge. They realize that we're all in the same boat. They realize that I'm not out to get them, but rather to help them succeed. I keep a rather laid-back classroom environment because that's what these particular students need -- they need a class they can look forward to coming to, a class that's fun and interesting and gives them hope that their entire chosen major and career path won't just be graphs and charts, equations and formulas. I don't know how many times I've been told by students, both in person and via the anonymous evaluations at the end of the semester, that before my class they hated English and hated writing, and afterwards found a new appreciation for it. I also don't know how many times I've been told that my class was the only one a student looked forward to, as the rest of their schedule was comprised of physics, calculus, chemistry, any of their Engineering courses, etc. An Engineering major is a rough road filled with difficult classes and monotoned, impersonal instructors. To be able to be a bright spot in someone's academic career, to be able to give a student a fun class in which they actually learn something useful? I can't tell you how immensely fulfilling that is to me as an instructor.

But, getting back on track, that's why I can get away with wearing, basically, whatever the hell I want to teach in. I do tend to stay away from the more, ahem, offensive shirts I own -- I have a Johnny Cash t-shirt where he's giving the crowd the finger, for example, which I don't teach in -- but most other stuff I own, including a large portion of the tie-dye I've made over the years? It's all fair game. Flip-flops/sandals? Fair game for me. Shorts? Fair game for me. It also helps that I'm in my last semester, of course. I don't necessarily have to worry about my students not taking me seriously; they already do, and my choice of clothing does little more than foster a bit more "nerd cred" with them -- especially when it gets warmer. Tomorrow, even though it's supposed to rain, it's also supposed to be in the mid-50s again, and I'll be wearing my Abbey Road t-shirt that Daisy bought me for Christmas. It'll be the first non-dressy shirt I teach in this semester. I have a Let It Be shirt I'll break out in a few weeks as well, along with some others that I've collected over the past several months but have not yet been able to wear due to the cold weather.

In other news, Daisy's Shanghai'd Valentine's Day present arrived in my mailbox yesterday. I made sure I gave a glowingly positive review to the seller, as less than a week to ship me a package from China is pretty damned fast. I hope she likes it, and I've stuffed it away for safekeeping until the holiday itself (or until she next comes down here, whatever comes first). I told Parker about it yesterday, as well as about the entire shipping debacle surrounding it. He thought my plans for it were a great idea. I still don't have definitive plans for that weekend -- Daisy is in "job interview limbo" right now, and is waiting to hear back from a company she interviewed with yesterday (an interview that, I might add, she said was wonderful until the last five minutes). She's pessimistic and thinks that because of those last five minutes, a sit-down interview with the company's so-called "head honcho," that she won't get the job. I told her that HR and hiring processes are a bit more complicated than that, really. She's really frustrated with her employment ventures right now; everything but this position she interviewed for has fallen through.

"On the plus side, honey, look at it this way -- there's a Whole Foods about five minutes from your house, and you love that place."

She gave me a long, hard look before replying, bitterly, "I didn't go to school for years and work my ass off to get a menial job making much less money than I deserve."

"Neither did I," I replied flatly, "but I worked in grocery stores for five years. Sometimes you do what you have to do, whether you went to school for it or not and whether you like it or not. Bills still have to be paid."

It's a hard truth that I hate to break to Daisy, but it is truth. I've told her before that she needs to keep her options open and not only look for jobs that are comparable work to her last position and last salary, but to spread it out, and not to discount anything based on what it is, how much it pays off the bat, or necessarily what she'd be doing. The economy is terrible. Yes, Daisy has a degree and experience in a number of marketable fields, but those fields are also highly competitive ones. It's similar to my situation about four years ago before I entered graduate school, right after I moved to Kansas. I worked in the Dillon's store here and positively hated it, but I made enough money to pay the bills while I worked there so that I wouldn't starve. I was a reporter and webmaster for the newspaper here in town for about a year, as well. No, it didn't pay incredibly well, but it got me another level of experience and yes, still let me pay my bills and have a bit of spending money, and it paid better than being a GTA pays right now. The only reason I left that job was so I could go back to school and get a higher degree -- and after May, it's possible I could once more be in a work-in-a-grocery-store situation for a while. The difference with me is that while I don't want to have to resort to that, I'm okay with it, because I know it would be temporary until I found something better. Daisy, on the other hand, wants to skip over that step and go right to the "something better" part of the equation, and while I admire her for her drive to succeed, that's not always how it works. You can't go job-hunting with an inflated sense of entitlement, and snub stuff you deem "beneath you." Believe me, I've been unemployed several times over the past ten years -- when you're unemployed, there's not really anything "beneath you" when it comes to being able to eat and pay the bills. Come May, I'll be unemployed again, at least for a little while -- and I'll dive into whatever I can in order to make ends meet, knowing that yes, it's temporary. Therefore, me telling Daisy to apply somewhere like Whole Foods for the time being, yes, while she continues to look for other positions like the one she just interviewed for, is a completely valid suggestion. Especially since it may take a while for them to pull her application and give her a call.

Daisy has brought up the concern in the past that wherever I end up going after graduation, whether that be Omaha or somewhere else, she worries that she'll be able to find work there. I never understood this. Money is money, a job is a job. It doesn't have to be something you love, but it can and should always be a stopgap measure until you can find something you love, something better. We don't necessarily have a problem with jobs in this country, we have a problem with a sense of entitlement and jobs people are willing to do. Don't like flipping burgers, making lattes, or scanning groceries for a living? Nobody does. Does it pay the bills and keep the lights on in your house? Yes. It's not going to kill anyone to work that sort of job until they can find something better. And yes, people in that position are only resigned to their fate if they decide to be; one should never stop looking for something better until they find it. Same goes for me when I worked in those grocery stores. I was never truly resigned to my fate there -- I was getting up every day applying for other jobs, sending out resumes, and interviewing for other positions at banks, department stores, churches (yes, churches), and the like. No work is demeaning or unsatisfying unless you allow yourself to think it is. Daisy likes to quote Eleanor Roosevelt all the time when she said "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Even when working menial, bullshit jobs I never felt inferior to anyone else. I was doing what I needed to do in order to survive. It wasn't nice; it wasn't a pleasant or comfortable experience, but it was work, and it was money.

And, perhaps the most important part, it didn't last forever because I didn't let it.

I just worry about Daisy, that's all. I know she's struggling right now, and has been since November. She downplays it a lot more than she should -- I'm sure this is because she doesn't want to sound whiny or annoying about it, and because she likes to stay positive about everything. Her positivity and optimism is one of her strengths, but it is also one of her greatest weaknesses -- it blinds her to stone-cold, here-and-now reality sometimes, at least to a certain extent. As I love her very much, I don't want to verbally smack her with the reality stick any more than I have to, but at the same time, well...

"I don't need to get a crappy job right now," she told me. "Not until my unemployment comes down to its last month."

"Honey, you told me yesterday that you spent your last fifty dollars replacing the windshield on your car."

Her windshield at some point recently developed a long crack in it, and not the kind that can be repaired with epoxy at an auto-glass place; it required a full replacement. The insurance copay for it was $50.

"I did," she replied, "but I'll get more unemployment to drop too; it's not like I'm broke or anything."

Daisy is not destitute; she does live with her parents, and therefore doesn't have to pay rent or utilities. However, she does have several credit cards, tries to buy her own vegan food most of the time if she can, and has a regular monthly car insurance/car payment to make. Her situation is indeed incredibly different from mine -- I don't have a car payment, my car insurance only comes due every six months, and I keep my credit card expenses to a bare minimum (unless there's an emergency or other financial hardship in which I need to use them). Then again, I do have rent and utilities to worry about, so I'm guessing our monthly expenses are about the same. Therefore, I worry about her because I know that when her unemployment runs out, she'll be in much the same situation I was last summer when I was very underemployed and had to sell things to eat and pay bills.

"If I get some crap job now, it will make better jobs want to hire me less," she reasoned.

"...why?" I asked. Because, really, that doesn't make sense to me.

"Because they'll see that I have the degree I have and that I took a job working in a grocery store or someplace like that. It makes it look like nobody wants to hire me, or that I'm otherwise unhire-able."

"So don't put it on your resume. I don't put my grocery store jobs on my resume."

This is true, I don't -- not unless I'm trying to find another retail-oriented position someplace. Then it helps. Otherwise, listing it would give the same effect that Daisy just mentioned. I've always been told over the years, many times, to customize your resume for the position you're applying for. Therefore I have a "retail resume," a "teaching resume," and a "writing resume," complete with different references on each.

"So how am I supposed to answer them when they ask what I've been doing for the past few months?"

"...tell them you've been looking for work, honey." Duh.

"That's not going to work when they run a background check and credit check on me and see that I've been working somewhere else."

I've never worked a job, with the exception of my current position as a GTA, where a background check was necessary. Drug tests, yes. Background checks? Not that I know of. And who cares anyhow? I'm pretty sure a background check isn't going to say "Hey, this person is currently working a crap job across town! Sound the alarms!" It's not like Daisy's a criminal or anything anyhow. Yes, while there are jobs that will require background and/or credit checks, they're not going to pull up pay records for anything like that, because those things are classified within most companies. However, they may see that she's been on unemployment, which would corroborate with her story -- because it's true. Again, duh.


"Tell them you've worked freelance or something," I said, "if you must tell them something. Freelance writer, etc."

"...no," she replied.

Daisy has an Achilles heel for absolute honesty. She won't lie in a job interview or on an application. She won't have others lie for her, either, and she won't lie for friends if they list her as a reference on their own applications. This is one of those very few life situations where honesty isn't always the best policy, in my opinion. If you need a job, and it comes down between you answering a question completely honestly and not getting it, or lying and being able to eat and pay one's bills, lie. Lie your fucking ass off. Lie until you're blue in the face and your nose has grown six inches. Principles are one thing. Survival, however, is quite another.

Anyway, the point of this several-paragraph digression/tirade is that she doesn't know about the job she just interviewed for but suspects she won't get it and is thus back to square one, and she doesn't want to work a "crap job" (as she calls it) unless it's an absolute last resort. I can understand that, at least. I may not necessarily completely agree with it, but I do understand it. And later she told me that she got her tax refund direct-deposited today, so she has some more money to work with for the time being.

In other news, we're supposed to get some storms tonight. Thunderstorms, anyway. Apparently nothing major, which is good -- if I were to try to put my car in the garage (in case of hail), when I leave the house at 6:30 AM I'd barely be able to see to get it back out. The outside light bulb burned out several weeks ago and I haven't replaced it yet, and I no longer have a working light in the garage itself except in the very corner where I keep the mower (the wiring burned out and/or otherwise stopped working on the one by the doors well over a year ago). I have a spare lamp I may dig out and hook up down there just so that I can see when I need to be in the garage at night or in the early morning hours. After years of daily computer use, I have very, very poor vision in the dark. And thunder won't really help me sleep any -- on Monday night I slept quite poorly, waking up every half-hour or so and tossing and turning. I've become very quickly addicted to Words With Friends, and have been having dreams and/or mild nightmares about running out of letters on the board.

Yep, folks, this is my life. Exciting, no?

Shanghai'd!

Spring semester: day ten


Last week went quickly, and for the most part, all is as it should be.

Not a whole lot happens when things are going well. "Well" is a relative term anyway. Suffice it to say that the semester has now slowly begun to hit its groove, so to speak, and I'm settling into it relatively normally.

As I mentioned in my last post, the battle with financial aid and the graduate school is over; my loan dropped into my student account a week ago today, which meant that it covered my student fees and I didn't have to pay them myself. By Tuesday evening, the refund had been processed and the remaining large chunk had been dropped into my actual bank account, meaning I could breathe a huge sigh of relief. Since then, my stress levels have dropped considerably, and I have been able to focus on the more important parts of my day-to-day life. In addition to that, I got paid for the first time this semester on Friday, so I have a bit more of a cushion as well.

However, even though I no longer have to worry about financial troubles for the time being, I've not been doing a whole lot other than schoolwork and sleeping. I am on campus this semester for a grand total of about sixteen hours a week -- from 7AM to 5PM on Tuesdays, and from 7AM to around 1PM on Thursdays (and that's a liberal estimate for Thursdays). Six of those hours are spent teaching my students, and the remaining hours are spent in office hours, the Writing Center, or attempting to be social with the handful of close friends I have left in the department who have not yet graduated -- Rae, Jay, Parker, Ryan, etc. When I spend five of the seven days of the week at home or running errands, social time is at a premium -- especially with everything else I have to do on any given day/week.

I always thought that in my last semester, my students would get lots and lots of attention to detail on their classes -- I thought I'd have the time to spend hours making lesson plans, grading papers, working with them on a one-on-one level if necessary, but I have now realized that won't necessarily be the case -- at least not until mid-April, anyhow, once my comps have been taken and my thesis has been turned in to my readers. At that point I'll barely have three weeks left of classes and teaching before I graduate and it's all over. And then I have to go back into the "real world."

For all of the worrying and hand-wringing I did about my finances, now that I've had those problems solved, I've done relatively little with the money I have. What I have done is pay all of my bills, from my rent to the electric, water/trash, and credit cards. I wrote my bi-yearly donation check ($40) to the DAV, the only charity I donate to, and did some minor shopping for some essentials -- last night I made a trip to Walmart in the overnight hours to get a lot of the rest of the stuff I needed for around the house, and covered most of the proverbial bases. This afternoon or evening at some point, I plan to venture over to the Dollar Tree and pick up the remaining stuff I can get cheaper there. I am happy to say, though, that my fridge is (mostly) stocked, as is my pantry.

I also ordered some incense off Amazon and ordered one of Daisy's Valentine's Day presents. I figured that ordering it early, at what was then the end of January, would give it plenty of time to get here.

Ahem, I thought wrong.

Once it shipped, I looked at the estimated arrival date (as I always want to be home whenever one of my packages arrives, if possible). It said between February 26 and March 14.

...what?

Mind you, I have Amazon Prime. This means I get free two-day shipping on anything I purchase from Amazon itself. This does not, however, extend to items purchased from independent sellers on Amazon, which this apparently was. I suppose that for this item, I overlooked that. Still, there's also no reason for any package to take a month (or, by the latest estimate, a month and a half) to get to me. Ever. As this seller enabled tracking, I looked at the shipping progress.

Latest event: SHANGHAI.

Fucking Shanghai? Seriously? My present for Daisy is getting shipped to me from the coast of goddamned China.

I...yeah, I really don't have the words here. What I got her is very nice, but I didn't know it was in China. China. What the hell, man? Shouldn't the site say that before you order, or something? "Ships from China" would be really helpful.

I told her I would've canceled the order if it had not already shipped. Now, since it already has, it would be more trouble than it's worth to send it back and get the refund for it. Fuck it; when it gets here, it gets here. Who knows, it may arrive well before Valentine's Day. Or it may arrive around Spring Break. So, really, it's anyone's guess, and at this point I'm back to square one on things to get her.

"You don't have to get me anything, baby," she told me again. "A simple 'I love you' would be wonderful."

Again, trapppp. Trap. I know Daisy isn't materialistic (not in the least, actually) but I have been in enough relationships to where I know that not doing something for Valentine's Day is widely regarded as a bad move. She doesn't want me to feel obligated to get something for her, and I don't -- but it's a personal thing for me. I haven't had a Valentine in a long time. I haven't had anyone to be romantic with on that day. I know it's a stupid day, yes -- for years I called it "Black _______" where the blank was replaced with whatever day of the week Valentine's Day fell on. I'm not a big fan of it in general, yet, there's something inside me that always wants to do something for Daisy whenever I have the opportunity to do so. Call it pride, call it false (or otherwise misleading) chivalry, but it's important to me to do something for her -- it's not because I feel forced to, because I don't.

"Tell me what it is!" she said earlier.

"I can't do that, love," I replied. "I mean, it will get here eventually."

"Well tell me something about it then!"

Nooooope.

As a bit of an addendum to this story, I re-checked the tracking on it this morning, and it's currently in Chicago. Who knows what that means, however. While Chicago is about ten hours away from here, depending on land shipping speed it could get here in a week or a month. On the plus side, the incense I ordered at the same time should arrive in my mailbox this afternoon, shipped USPS. I'm waiting until Thursday or so, tracking it every day for an estimated arrival, and if it appears to be taking a long time, I'll come up with a backup plan for Daisy's Valentine gift.

Of course, we don't yet know when or if she'll even be able to make it down here in a week and a half anyhow.

Over the course of the past week or so, Daisy has been vetted by several different jobs -- finally, her applications and follow-ups are paying off -- and tomorrow morning while I'm teaching, she'll be in an important one-on-one interview for a position that she's moderately excited for. If she gets it, her financial woes from being unemployed for three months will subside, but it will also mean that she will be able to visit less, and we'll have less time together to talk and decompress. It would be wonderful were she to get the job, but it may end up skewing our Valentine's Day plans if she has to work that weekend. Luckily we still have enough time to plan around that if something happens or changes.

In the meantime, I'm trying to get a lot of stuff done in my own life in regards to my students and my own work. I have my first meeting of the semester with my thesis director on Thursday at 3:30, a time that's not exactly convenient for me (I'd usually be home for about three hours on Thursdays at that time), but eh. Tomorrow morning when I get to campus, I'm sticking a full draft copy of my thesis in his mailbox, and Thursday's meeting is going to be me asking, primarily, "Hey, you have my reading list. This is what's on it. What do I need to focus on the most?" My reading list for comps covers thirty poets. The comprehensive exams, from what I've heard, are less than five questions, all essay. Therefore, there's no way that everything on one's reading list can possibly be used on a comprehensive exam. As my thesis director is the one who writes the questions, and as it's his job to advise me on such things, I need to know what I should be laser-focusing on so that I can read and study those selected texts quite closely (and order the ones I don't already have from Amazon). I can already guess what about half of my comps questions will cover, as I know my director's likes and dislikes -- however, I'm sure there will be a curve ball thrown in there, and I want to know, roughly, what to expect. I take the exam on either April 4 or April 5, which means that within the next several weeks, those questions will be written if they haven't been already. This means I have exactly two months to prepare myself as much as possible -- and the start of that is finding out what the hell I need to focus on more than anything else. I have a few books already, but the majority of the rest I will either need to find in public domain PDF form, or order from Amazon rather quickly. As mentioned before, during this time while I'm preparing for comps, don't expect to hear a lot from me here on the blog -- I won't have a lot of free time at all for anything internet-related, and updated will come seldomly, in spurts.

Tomorrow, I collect my students' first "papers" of the semester -- a 20-point homework assignment that is assigned for me to gauge where everyone is when it comes to collegiate writing, formatting, MLA citation, and grammar. Some students do well on it, others do very poorly on it -- same as pretty much any other paper in the class -- but it lets me see the skill level I'm working with, and allows me to tailor my lessons on those core writing concepts over the course of the rest of the semester. It also serves the dual purpose of scaring off those students who can't write a coherent sentence, as the more timid ones will see me dump half a pen's worth of red ink on the page marking their mistakes, and they'll drop the class in the time between now and early March, when their first big paper of the semester is due. Some wait until after that paper to make a decision, as well. It's all about perspective. Again, as this is my last semester teaching and I have my own work to worry about/finish, I'd like to have as few students as possible -- and right now my sections are nearly completely full. In comparison, several colleagues of mine have classes of only five to ten students at most -- which I would absolutely adore, as it would totally free up a lot of my time. Yes, in case you hadn't guessed, I'm extremely envious of those folks. Since my Engineering English class is in high demand, and we're in the last semester of its existence for the foreseeable future, it's unlikely that I'll have a lot of people drop it, grades be damned. That's just how students are. I've had students on my roster in the past several semesters who have never shown up to a single class -- they're not enrolled to take the class, usually, but because they need full-time for financial aid, more than likely, and said class is just a placeholder for those credit hours.

I've also been keeping busy around the house, doing a form of, ahem, spring cleaning, so to speak. My house has a ton of junk in it, mostly left by my ex when she moved out a year and a half ago. I'm slowly getting rid of the stuff I don't need week-by-week, trashing it or recycling it, and keeping/boxing up what I do need and want to keep. For the past year or so, I've saved every large-ish (or otherwise useful) box I've gotten when I've ordered something from Amazon, and have a collection of decent-sized boxes now in my spare room. I've used those boxes to go through a lot of my excess stuff, have figured out what I want to keep but won't use over the course of the next year or so, and have been slowly packing it away about a box or two every week. Yesterday, for example, I cleaned out my upper cabinets in the kitchen, which were filled with plasticware and glassware that hasn't been used in several years. I recycled a lot of the plastic and glass stuff I'll never use, and the glasses and the like I want to keep (champagne flutes, martini glasses, margarita glasses, etc), I stuck in the dishwasher to get all the cabinet dirt/dust off of them before I pack them away. If I use them eventually (like, four or five years from now), good. If not, I'll donate them to Goodwill or the DAV. Processes like this require me to look ahead a bit and be semi-omniscient -- thinking things like is there any conceivable situation in which I will possibly use this anytime before I move out of this house? And, if the answer is no, box it up. It'll save me packing time later, especially if I acquire an out-of-state job or teaching position shortly after graduation in May. There's something incredibly cleansing, calming even, about getting rid of or boxing away a lot of this stuff. I may have a room full of boxes when I'm done, but they'll be boxes I won't have to mess with until I leave this place, and when it comes to the stuff I trash or recycle, at least I'm getting my money's worth from the city trash and recycling service, for once. Usually, on my own I barely make enough trash to take the cans to the curb more than once or twice a month. Now I'll have a reason to take them down there every week.

Finally, to close this post, I'd like to mention that it is 55 degrees here today without a cloud in the sky. I mention this solely because, back home in West Virginia, my parents have two feet of snow, with nearly another foot coming tonight. My hometown of Morgantown, as well as on top of the mountain where my parents live, is like a war zone. All of the schools (and a few of the colleges/universities) are closed, there are accidents everywhere, and roads are being shut down. According to my mother, it's horrible there. Yet both of my parents got up this morning and went to work just fine. For those of you who live here, keep that in mind the next time it snows an inch or two here in Kansas and everyone overreacts, panics, and acts like idiots. I was tempered in snow. My county's school buses had huge chains on their wheels. My bus stop was at the end of my country road, almost a half-mile from my front door, and even when it was -10 outside with a foot of snow on the ground and one-lane mountain roads due to snowdrifts, we still had school.

That being said, I'm very glad it's 55 degrees here right now, with that temperature not expected to waver too much over the course of the next week or so.