Tasks
1. farmers’ market
2. mow the lawn
3. bask in sunshine
4. read read read on the porch swing
Trappings
Tales
I’m pretending it’s summer today. Shh… don’t tell on me or we’ll scare this beautiful weather away and I’ll awake from my revery to find that I have hundreds of pages to read and dozens of papers to grade and too little time in which to do too many things. Shh. It’s faux-summer.
Tasks
1. grade fest, part 1
2. oh, you know: study and read and write and plan
3. Friday night doggy-date
4. Birthday party shenanigans for a friend
Trappings
Tales
It’s Friday, friends. I’m not sure if that even means anything to me any more, but I’ll say this: I would really rather be napping. So my plan is to listen to some damn-fine music, to take lots of little breaks from grading to read Mrs. Dalloway, and to treat myself to something delicious for lunch. Good, right?
Tasks
1. put the final touches on a big paper
2. put the final touches on a big presentation
3. present on and turn in big paper
4. present big presentation
Trappings
Tales
It’s been a loooong day, pals. Usually, I take photos in the morning when I’m fresh and energetic and unwrinkled. But today was just a whirlwind of last minute thinking before turning in these two, unrelated big projects. However, as much as I could (and will!) complain about being tired and overworked and behind in everything, about how I wish I had time to think about all of these very interesting things separately and with the kind of individual attention they all deserve, I’ll say this: today was one of those grad-school days that reminded me that (a) I like doing this, (b) I might actually be pretty good at this, and (c) I’m going to be successful at doing all of it in the long run. That fills me to the brim with gladness.
It does not, however, fill me to the brim with energy or vitality, so this is about to be a pretty pathetic bike-ride home…
Tasks
1. morning meeting
2. teach
3. afternoon grade-stravaganza / presentation preparation fest
4. evening dinner with an old friend / psuedo-sister who’s blowing through town for a night
Trappings
Tales
So I’m a nicknamer. It’s a thing. I really enjoy the giving of nicknames, and the less practical, the better. I particularly like nicknaming my students, as I think it expresses the attitude of light-hearted-fun-lovingness that I hope to create in my classroom. This term, I’ve had some truly funny students who have put up with a lot in terms of my nicknaming. To wit: Travis James [last name redacted] has become: Travjam, T-Jimpsers, T-Jimmity, Trav-Jambo, TJ Hooker, Jim Travers, and JamTime. I’d share more of them with you, but most are first-and-last-name combos, which means I can’t reveal them without violating FERPA.
However, I can share with you my new favorite thing: when students nickname me. You see, since I’m such an enthusiastic nicknamer, I told them they could, if they wished, also nickname me. So far, I’ve gotten:
M-Tinsters
M-Beezy
Milesy Cyrus (which is a pretty hilarious play on my last name, though I don’t share my last name in this forum)
M&Ms
Yo Teach
Future-Friend
Martanimal
Aren’t my little jerks the most amazing and hilarious students around? I’m a little bit in love with my job right now. And with their brains. I’m hoping for more good nicknames soon.
Tasks
1. brave the hoards: I have long office hours today
2. independent study discussion time — anyone else deeply interested in talking about Gertrude Stein’s Lifting Belly? Because I am all over that business!
3. grade in preparation of … more grading later in the week
Trappings
Tales
There are days as an instructor when I feel like I need to batten down the hatches, draw in the anchor, and prepare myself for the onslaught of students. It’s not that they’re really the villainous pirates my metaphor calls them, nor that I’m somehow unable to be helpful when they come. It’s not that I don’t have the answers or that I don’t know how to do this part of my job. It’s not even that I’m too tired and bogged down in my own work to feel like an effective teacher (though hey, that’s pretty close to the truth a lot of the time). No, the feeling of “they’re upon me!” comes mostly on days like today: they have the final, graded version of their first paper due tomorrow, so the ones who are coming to see me today either (a) put off their work until the last minute, or (b) are the high achievers who really want to do their best.
So what’s difficult about the conversations I’m undoubtedly going to have all morning is that what I’m being asked to do is add that magic element they think they’re missing. For the ones who didn’t try hard enough, they want me to sprinkle some magic fix-it spell on their rough work that will polish it and turn it into a successful paper. For the ones who have tried really hard, they want me to bless their papers with the mark of a sure-fire A so that they can stop worrying about all the things they don’t know how to fix yet.
I don’t have either of those magic spells at hand. For the first group, the last-minute parade, the difficulty of our conversations will come from my own frustration — why didn’t you start this earlier? Why are you setting yourself up for failure? This is gnawing and grating, but not personally upsetting. It’s the second group, the try-hard-then-try-harder posse, that truly make me sad. Because sometimes, no matter how hard they’ve tried and how badly they want the A, their work just isn’t there yet and won’t get there yet. It takes practice to achieve mastery, you know? And they try so hard that they want that effort to show immediately. When I can’t give them that, I ache for them; I can just see younger-Martina in those same conferences, trying to figure out what the missing element is. She couldn’t understand then, and they won’t understand now, that sometimes, the missing element is just time and practice and the endless process of continuing to move forward.
Hey, when did this become not about teaching but about life?
Tasks
1. ride my bike (to work)
2. all day writing circle meetings with my students
Trappings
Tales
Freddy Mercury, you’ve never steered me wrong: I do want to ride ride my bicycle. Seriously, now that it’s not constantly pouring slopping dripping sloshing rain outside and I get to ride to work, my life is just better. I mean, my hands are occasionally covered in chain grease and I have some exciting new bruises on my legs (I got attacked by a hose this morning!) and my allergies are simply spectacular, but I get a little exercise endorphin rush before I start sitting in my office all day, and that is just unbeatable.
Tasks
1. fail at everything — it was a real unsuccessful morning, y’all!
2. office hours
3. class — performance studies is the greatest thing to happen to me in a long time
Trappings
Tales
Nope, I didn’t get to bed early like I’d wanted.
Nope, I didn’t get up and dressed as early as I’d wanted.
Nope, the weather didn’t cooperate with the outfit I wanted to wear.
Nope, the bus driver didn’t wait for me as I waited at the interminably long streetlight even though I was waving at him frantically.
But you know what? Yep, I did spend a few hours last night helping my students via email and even though I should have spent that time doing reading for class, I felt pretty good about it. And yep, I did discover how to make vegan mashed potatoes that rival in deliciousness any butter-filled side dish I’ve ever eaten. And yep, I did have a series of really nice dreams about summer. So I’d say the day’s a wash, you know?
Tasks
1. work
2. office hours
3. independent study with my favorite professor
Trappings
Tales
Monday just snuck right on up, didn’t she? So here’s my plan (and bear with me, I think it’s a doozy): Let’s not have to wake up to what should be a beautiful spring day but is instead a gray and rainy and sad Oregon day. Let’s not catch up on grading. Let’s not spend the day sitting at a desk. Instead, let’s read more good books and put our feet under the covers and take a mid-afternoon nap and make something spectacular for lunch and be lazy and listen to perfect music and drink icy-cold white wine straight from the bottle. How about that? Summer, we need to have a date soon…
Okay, fine. I’ll be a responsible adult and do my job. But I’m still putting some really good music on and I’m taking off my shoes and I’m going to drink all the coffee and buzz around my office like a hummingbird.
Tasks
1. morning staff meeting
2. oh my goodness just do allll the work, okay brain?
Trappings
skirt: American Apparel (ancient) cardigan: Gap belt: vintage boots: Civico 10 tights: Target
Tales
In my class, I like to make a lot of jokes about bears. Since I spend a good amount of time in class discussing potential arguments and theses, I like to give a lot of examples and when I’m coming up with an example on the fly, it usually ends up being about bears. What can I say: I have a great appreciation for the ursine. Anyhow, yesterday, I was trying to explain why it’s so important for a paper to stay on topic and only give evidence that supports its claim. In order to illustrate how making arguments about similar-but-unrelated claims can detract from a paper’s argumentative success, I made the following example:
“Say my paper is making the argument that in a fight between a bear and a shark, the bear will win. So I’m giving examples about how that fight would go down, why the bear possesses the skills necessary to take down the shark, why the shark can’t win, etc. And then I have a paragraph where I explain who would win in a fight between a bear and a narwhal. What does that do? It might be a great illustration of bear-power, but it’s not supporting my bear v. shark claim!”
We all had a good chuckle, and then we moved on. But today, I got the best response from any student about one of my bear-related tangents that I’ve ever gotten. Here’s how it went down: the student was one of the day’s designated note-takers (which is a tactic I deploy during some discussions so that I don’t have to remember what we talked about in class), so she was tasked with telling me what we’d discussed that day. When I opened up her notes to peruse this morning, here’s what I found (and this, my friends, is verbatim):
“A fun fact about narwhals: their ‘horn’ tends to spiral out of the left nostril. Sometimes, it grows from the right, but when it does, usually the left one is there, too. This leaves the narwhal with 2 crossed horns. Poor things.”
How adorable is that postscript? “Poor things.” I love it! Needless to say (I’ll say it anyway), this little note from the student absolutely perked up my Friday. I cut it out and put it up on my bulletin board.
Happy weekend, all!
Tasks
1. lesson plan — why do I always do this in the hour before I teach? Or, perhaps a more accurate question: why are the lesson plans I generate in the hour before I teach always so much better than the ones I spend weeks on?
2. teach!
3. afternoon pedagogy seminar during which I tried not to spill my lunch all over myself — nothing but classiness over here!
Trappings
dress: vintage (the tags are illustrated — they make me so happy!) belt: vintage boots: Civico 10 tights: Target
Tales
Usually, I take my outfit picture early in the day, before I’ve been haggard and wind-blown and wrinkled and chalk-dusted by the day. Not today! Today I arrived at campus to find that my password had expired and I needed to create a new one; no big deal, right? Nope! I created a new one, but then everything fell apart and I couldn’t access our department printing privileges, etc. Needless to say, I didn’t have my act together before class started. But I prevailed, and held an awesome discussion of language and politics with my kiddos. And only once did I realize that the lowest button on this here shirt-dress had come unbuttoned, possibly revealing more leg to my students than I had intended! Success all around.
