life academic life update

Hiya, friends! So, I know posting has been pretty sparse this week, but it’s spring break so I’ve been doing a lot of napping and thrift shopping (my new collection of vintage dresses, guys: it will stun you) and movie watching and crafting and tea drinking and book reading and generally everything except getting up and getting dressed and getting to the office the way I ought to have.

But, I have had one pretty big lifestyle change occur this week, so I’m putting it out there to all of you smart, savvy folks and am hoping that someone will have some advice. Here’s the thing: it turns out I am allergic to pretty much everything… okay, that’s a gross exaggeration, but it’s a pretty accurate explanation of how it feels right now. In truth, I’ve just found out that I’m allergic to dairy, eggs, rice, beef, almonds, pineapples, and avocados. Quite the ticket, huh? This all means that with some changes to my diet, I’ll probably feel a whole lot better soon (I’ve apparently been very sick for a good long while without much noticing it), but it also means that I have a lot of changes to implement.

Right now, finding ways to eat while avoiding dairy, eggs, and rice is throwing me for a loop. Up until this morning, almost everything in my kitchen had dairy or eggs in it, and since my allergy isn’t lactose intolerance, I can’t have any milk products at all, regardless of how many magical lactase pills there are in the world. So I needed an entire kitchen and pantry overhaul, which I’ve now done, but I also need a mental overhaul. How do I bake? What do I do when I eat at restaurants? This is all very new to me. And it’s not just dairy, you know? Eggs and the rice are everywhere, too; buying bread, cereal, and even crackers just got a lot more difficult!

Anyhow, I’m putting this all out here not just to whine (although I do love that), but because I’m hoping that some of you have some experience with this sort of thing. On the off-chance that you do, here are my questions: Do any of you have major allergies like this and, if so, what’s it like for you? Have any of you ever made huge changes in your diet in this way and, if so, was there anything you found that helped ease the transition? Anyone know any good books or websites that might have advice, recipes, or the like? Truly, my friends, any advice you have would be warmly received!

daily dose: props

Tasks
1. register for winter courses — these things never go smoothly, do they? but oh well, after all the minor disasters, I’m all signed up for all the courses I want to take!
2. work work work
3. teach

Trappings

skirt — thrifted blouse — Loft, thrifted sweater — vintage boots — Civico 10 tights — Target

Tales

I didn’t really need a prop for these pictures, but I didn’t want to let me coffee cup go…

In other news, potential / beginner grad students, let me say this: make friends, as soon as you can, with your department’s graduate secretary. These underappreciated lynchpins can literally be lifesavers and sanity savers. Case in point: this morning I registered for winter term courses. My PhD is in English with an emphasis in Folklore, so I am allowed to take courses in the English department and the Folklore department. And yet, the computer has a hard time remembering this. So when I woke up this morning and dutifully entered the course registration numbers, the system wouldn’t let me register. Le sigh. Away I went to my email, shooting off a message to the graduate secretary who got back to me within minutes and fixed the problem. The moral of the story: I tried to register, couldn’t register, and was saved by the secretary — all before 9 am. Blamo! So props to you, Mike my Grad Secretary! You made my whole week better.

the weekender: they’re on to me

So yesterday, right before class was to start, one of my students and I had the following encounter:

She: You know, you always wear a belt around your waist when you’re in class, but you don’t dress that way when I see you in your office.
Me: Yeah, I know. Tuesdays and Thursdays when I don’t teach are my casual days.
She: You could dress like that in here, too. You don’t have to dress up for us or anything.
Me: … Well, yeah. I know. But I’ve got a lot of rule that I like to abide by for classroom attire.
She: Wait, like your own rules or someone else’s rules?
Me: Oh, well, they’re my rules. It’s a costume, you know? I feel like it’s important to dress professionally and it makes me feel more authoritative.
She and Me: (awkward laughter)

What! How did they figure this stuff out? Am I that obvious? Anyhow, it makes me want to change up my look a little, find some sort of middle ground between the casual and the overly formal. All this is compounded by the fact that I’ve just gotten word that my teaching schedule next term, in the winter, is less than ideal; I’m teaching from 7-8:20 in the evening, two days a week. And those two days? The same days I’m taking a 9 a.m. seminar. So those teaching days are really going to suck a little bit. Therefore, I’ve got some things I’ve been thinking about changing in my wardrobe and some inspiration from my pinterest that I’m drawing from.

The palettes are all pretty similar to each other, so obviously I have a look in mind, and the shapes are pretty familiar to what I know, so it’s not too much of a change. But I think these looks have a little bit of a casual polish that I’m struggling to find: not too fussy or formal, but also not sloppy or personality-less.

But let’s crowd-source this: what do you all think? Will this kind of look work for the classroom?

p.s. the outfits are all stolen from and linked to my pinterest boards and the color palettes were made here.

the weekender: slowing down

The past few weeks were pretty much spent at a breakneck speed as I dashed from here to there to the next place, from grading to three (!) separate presentations for my two seminars to midterm papers to troublesome students to my birthday to all out exhaustion. And the days were getting darker and greyer and colder and when my alarm went off in the morning, it was pitch black and icy outside. This does not a happy Martina make.

But then: daylight savings for us folks in the states ended and this morning we got an extra hour of sleep. And I spent yesterday running errands with El Boyfriend and my office mate (La Office Wife, if you will). And today I’m going to a birthday party for La Office Wife’s 8 year old son, whom I love dearly. And I have decided to spend the weekend eating and cooking and watching old TV shows and knitting and doing the laundry. And it is good.

All of this means, for me, that this weekend is like an island in the midst of a stormy sea and I’m going to try hard to take refuge on it before I dive back in to the roiling waters. Before I know it, I’ll have more papers to grade and more papers to write and Thanksgiving guests who probably want a clean house to stay in and end of term grading to worry over and and and and for now I’d like to just knit and drink coffee and think about how pretty dark clouds sometimes look.

As a PhD student, my daily life is pretty high stress in a pretty silly way. I’m not training to be a medical doctor or anything, so I’m always aware that the stress of my job training is not really as high stakes as it feels — I mean, no one’s life is ever in my hands, so why does everything feel like it’s life-or-death? Somehow, that knowledge seems to make things worse at times for me at times. “Quick!” my brain yells at me, “think brilliant and novel things about that book before you fail at everything!” This is not a good way to get things done: it turns out that blind panic and internal hectoring do not always spur creativity and insight. So I’m trying to make some changes in how I regulate my stress, manage my workload, and nurture my intellect. I’m trying, in essence, to prevent the thing that makes me come alive from killing me. What a conundrum.

So this is my plan for helping myself continue to come alive:

I found this advice to be super helpful. Just reading it made me feel better about life, so I think I’ll be printing it out and referencing it regularly.

I also find it very relaxing to spend a few minutes every day looking at this (or, if I’m lucky, looking at the real thing).

I take a few baths a week for their relaxing, headache-curing, and cold-feet-warming properties and I really like using these wonderfully scented relaxation bubbles and some epsom salts so that the bath is really a detoxifying experience.

When I know I need to take a night off, sometimes I get nervous and jittery because I feel like I ought to be working; knitting and crafting is the only cure for these jitters and I find the satisfaction of making something pretty out of all my nervous energy to be very pleasing.

I’ve been trying to read for pleasure even when I have reading for school. Somehow, spending five minutes in bed before the light goes out with a chapter from this (or this or this or this or this or everything else on my winter break read-for-fun list) has helped me differentiate between work-time and sleep-time.

Finally, I bought a lovely little journal in which I’m trying to write down daily gratitude, daily worries, and daily accomplishments; I guess I just like lists and journals and nice colored pens and the idea that when I write something down, I can’t ever lose it.

Now it’s your turn: what tricks of the trade do you wonderful folks have for destroying the stress monster and restoring your brain?

friendly friday: bookworm

Once a week, Katy Rose over at Modly Chic asks the members of the Fashion and Beauty Friend group to mull over some questions. This week’s topic threw me into a tizzy:

Top 5 Favorite Books of All Time — this is a tough question for this kid! So here are the books I come back to, again and again, and always find a new wealth of meaning in:

1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy. As many of you know, I’m a PhD student in literature. What you might not know is that my specialty is American novels and folklore, and my sub-specialty, my particular area of interest, is in literary representations of the postapocalypse. I write extensively on The Road and credit it with changing my opinion of how contemporary fiction works and what it can do. I love this dark, twisted, fiercely loving book and though I don’t always recommend it to people (you know, my grandma might not need to read about cannibals and catamites), I will always defend it as a stunning piece of fiction.
2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It’s spectacular and there’s a reason it’s a classic. Just read it and allow your mind to be blown.
3. American Gods by Neil Gaiman. As someone who is very interested in the way myth and folklore shape belief and shape identity, this hilarious and insightful story about American belief and American religion is just this side of perfect. Plus, did I mention funny? It’s funny. Really funny. But also sad, sweet, kind, egalitarian, wise, and kaleidoscopic.
4. Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams. Sometimes, the bleakest quests require some humor, levity, and grace to break down our self-protective impulses. I didn’t want to read about the world’s most endangered animals. I didn’t want to see the ways we’re destroying our world. But Adams’ humor broke down my walls and made me laugh as I learned, made me pay attention to something I would otherwise turn away from in fear, shame, and disgust.
5. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I know: you read it in high school, you hated the language, and you filed it away in the “check that off the list of 100 best books of all time” zone of your brain. Or maybe you, too, loved it. I hope so! Because it’s funny — so so funny — and has a beautiful heart, a thrilling mystery, and endearing, enduring characters. I hope you don’t know the twist surprise before you read it, because my first time through, I actually gasped when Pip’s secret was revealed to him. And that, friends, is an accomplishment.

Top 5 Most Recent Books I’ve Read and Loved — just a smattering of some recent best of:

1. Okay, I’ve talked about America Pacifica by Anna North in this space before, but my love for this book grows every time I think about it. Serisouly, just do yourself a favor and read it; you won’t see the world in the same way any more, but you’ll be glad of the change.
2. Stuff by Randy O Frost and Gail Steketee. Really? A book about compulsive hoarding and the psychological research into our connection with things? That’s going to be a good read? Yes, skeptical brain that almost made me pass on this, it will be an amazing read.
3. Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh. This one surprised me. It’s not always perfect and there are times when I didn’t really care about the romantic angle that McIntosh took. But in all, the book’s focus on the personal lives of people undergoing radical change and radically undermined expectations while the world around them collapses in a “soft” apocalypse is a unique and compelling perspective on the postapocalyptic genre (do you see a theme in the books I like?).
4. Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos. You will not expect to like this book. You will. Or, who knows — maybe you won’t. This book doesn’t care, because it seeks to recreate the alienation of modernity via narrative experimentation. But if you’re like me, you’ll yearn to find your way through that alienation to real human connections that seem at times to be so futile, so impossible.
5. Not that recent of a read, but still: I lovedlovedloved Mary Roach’s Bonk. I’ve in fact loved everything she’s written, but this one is my favorite. Why? Well, I think the subtitle says it all: “the curious coupling of science and sex.” No matter what your comfort level with issues of sex and sexuality is, the occasional TMI moment is well worth the uncomfortable laughter and wide-mouthed shock this book will give you.

Okay, friends, your turn: what should I read over winter break?

daily dose: in which I run out of steam

Tasks
1. work
2. afternoon meeting with a student
3. teach
4. at sundown, I start my Yom Kippur fast — wish me luck!

Trappings

skirt — Loft, thrifted sweater — Target blouse — ancient belt — thrifted necklace — vintage tights — H&M boots — Civico 10

Tales

So this morning, my alarm went off as usual at 7 and I had a moment of absolute confusion. Why would the alarm be going off? It’s still the middle of the night and El Boyfriend is still asleep right there and it’s pitch black outside — it can’t be time to get up! Nope. It was time. El B was just sleeping in a little and I’d forgotten how hard it is to wake up when Oregon is doing that horrible gray thing that it does most of the year. Oh well.

Anyhow, this morning’s exhaustafusion (please note that this is a new word I just made up, which means exhausted confusion and the moment when exhaustion fuses your brain shut and confuses the crap out of you) made me throw caution to the wind and wear this skirt. What? Yes, I purchased a skirt that I didn’t know how to wear. Whatever, we’ve all done it. I got this Loft skirt a few weeks ago when my favorite thrift shop had one of its 50% off sales. I love the shape and the fabric and never like to pass up a good Loft skirt that I can teach in, but I was not totally sold on the color combo. I mean, I’m not much of a pink-and-purple gal. Would I look (gulp) girly when I wore it? The horror. But this morning I just went for it. I’m hoping that the brown and the leather and the touch of toughness that the studded belt adds resolves my concerns over girliness, but we’ll see how I feel when the day ends. I mean… girly. Oy. Feminine, I can do; womanly I embrace; but girly… it gives me pause.

What do you all think? Too girly or just girly enough? I fear the girly moniker, as I feel it diminishes my authority in the classroom and makes me feel like I ought to be acting deferential and shy, but I’m curious about how you smart, sassy folks toe this line — do you ever embrace a girly look, even when you need to be professional? Is there a disconnect between girly and authoritative? What on earth can be done to make pink and purple patterned tweed look polished?

get on up, it’s a giveaway!

Hi, my darlings! So as I mentioned yesterday, the beginning of my year is September and so I am just starting out on a whole new school year and a whole new stage of this journey. I have a lot of plans and thoughts for the new year and, at the same time, I know that I’ll have a lot less time to devote to this blog. However, I have found the experience of blogging to be so helpful and such a powerful force in my life and to my sense of self and to my personal style and for my readiness to go into the classroom in a few weeks as a confident teacher. Therefore, I will make time and will continue to value this space and this community and make room for it in my life.

Anyhow, enough about me and my intentions and blah blah blah and more about YOU. The truth is, I love you guys a lot and love the community aspect of the blogging world and have so valued your input into my life. SO! I’d like to get some feedback from you and to give back a little gift to you guys who have given so much to me. I picked up two Out of Print Clothing tee shirts for two lucky readers!

Yep, two lucky readers will get a shirt. One will get the Moby Dick shirt (a women’s large) and one will get the Slaughterhouse-Five (a men’s large).

But wait! The amazing and sweet folks and amazingly sweet folks at Out of Print are also offering a 20% off code for use all — just enter “BACKTOSCHOOL” at checkout. This is only good today and tomorrow (9/3 and 9/4), though, so snap it up now!

The Rules:

Follow me through either Google Reader or Bloglovin’
Leave me a comment here introducing yourself to me if we don’t already know each other. Who are you? What makes you read my blog and what do you get out of it? What’s your favorite showtune? Do you like puppies with soft little faces (full disclosure: I do)?

Extra Entries (please leave a separate comment for each):
Tweet this: Just entered @thelifeacademic ‘s giveaway for two Out of Print tee shirts — representing the geek chic look in style! http://wp.me/p1lLdT-qH
Blog about the giveaway
Figure out a way to get all my books into my new office a la Merlin’s packing scene in The Sword and the Stone (how’s that for an outdated reference?)

I’ll pick the winner at the end of the month, so vote early and often (or something like that).

Moreover! If you’d like to leave me some feedback, I’d really appreciate it. If you have thoughts about what you’d like to see incorporated into this space over the next year, please let me know. Here are some changes, additions, and thoughts I’ve been mulling over:

1. More guest posts from other academics and teachers about fashion and academia
2. More outdated pop culture references
3. More academic discussions — conversations about the how and what and why of academia, feminism, teaching, etc.
4. More book reviews
5. A greater presence of the Academia and Fashion community and more inter-blog interactions with those brilliant academics
6. A significant increase in the number of bad puns in each post

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, critiques, advice, etc., I would welcome it. I’d really love to meet you all, so leave me a note and let’s be friends. If you’re a blogger, make sure to leave me your url so that I can go see your amazing work!

blouse — Gap, thrifted jeans — Loft, thrifted and refashioned flats — Old Navy

advice request: office decor

So, my dears, as the summer speeds to a close (seriously, it’s August?), I’ve started thinking ahead to the new school year, which starts in late September. There are many things I’m thinking and fretting about, plenty of stuff to plan and worry over: new classes, my first term teaching, applying to and (hopefully) presenting at a conference in the Fall, finishing a conference paper that I’m presenting at the MLA in January, and etc. Heady, right?

But you know what I’m fixating on? My office. At my uni, first year Ph.D. students don’t get our own offices because we work as TAs instead of teaching our own classes. So sometime this summer I will get the keys to my office, officially marking me as a second year student and a soon-to-be instructor of my very own class. And yep, that means that I’m thinking about how to decorate my office. Recently, I’ve been pinning some images, products, and crafts for my future office and here’s my request: will you all tell me what you think looks like something an adult would have in her office and what you think looks too childish or unprofessional? Because that right there is what I’ve been frightened of. You know, like a reasonable adult human.

This mobile, with it’s lovely color scheme, would be so easy to make and I think it would add a nice jolt of color and movement to the window. But: does it look too much like it belongs over a crib?

This office organizer is made out of old shipping boxes, of which I have hundreds, and could be so useful. If I used a more professional color scheme, would it work?

Same story with these old cereal boxes turned into file folders for the desktop. With the right paper, it could work, right?

I love vases and planters and succulents, so I’m planning on having a few of those, but wouldn’t it be fun to have them wrapped in cork? It would be like having a bulletin board on everything. I’m seriously thinking about this.

I also like the idea of making planters on the windowsill out of old cans. I have a lot of old tea cans lying around and am a big tea drinker, so this seems fun, too. Or…

… in old teacups! Or…

… in animals, dinosaurs, etc. Fun, right? Or too much? You tell me: what will work?