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05.24.04 - 12:46 a.m.
"what goes around" quiet weekend. can't get over how good i've become at creating get-togethers to look forward to, just enough to balance the relief of time to myself over the weekend with the restlessness of figuring out what to DO with myself, when i'm not beholden to so many other commitments. it finally hit me this friday, really really hit me, that another summer has begun. for once, the library cafe was so quiet i could hear myself think...the baristas were bored, as no longer are lines of students winding almost out to the door, for over-priced overbrewed coffee. and while i'm down to 2 out of 20 papers to give final comments, for those students who requested that i mail their final papers back rather than putting them in the shredder, i finally eased up and allowed myself time to think original thoughts...not just on my dissertation, but where i'd like to be by this time next year. i realized the difference between this year and last is that since i'm not participating in commencement (damn, can't believe i've held a master's degree for an entire year!), i'm not madly orchestrating a family visit up to these parts. i can walk around and just enjoy being a student without the pressures of turning something in, or owing anyone anything. and so, as i like to do, i started planning projects, and scoping out places i'd like to be next year - with a salary hike of almost three times what i'm "making" as a grad student...i went web searching for lucrative post docs - lucrative because of location and $45K - oh the places i could go! uc berkeley, uc santa barbara, northwestern, upenn, howard university - translation - oakland, santa barbara, chicago, philadelphia, d.c. i truly could be free to walk the earth as a PROFESSional in as little as 52 weeks - which means gives a renewed purpose to the next 16... i started planning my syllabus for next fall, looking up new books for this course called 'portraits of the self' - and after my indoctrination into the desires of students for entertainment, bells, whistles, shock, and drag...i'm definitely going to push myself to incorporate multiple genres and medias... lastest ideas include: jeanette winterson's weblog, to read along oranges are not the only fruit (assigned reading for course, will explain later) maybe having class members maintain a weblog all semester might be a recipe for disastrous results, but since the phenomena's spread like wildfire among college campus, might as well use this everyday practice as fodder for course material. the plays "wit" and "how i learned to drive", along with the movie emma thompson's wit... and "the diary of frida kahlo: a self portrait" - i'm most excited to have a visual culture unit - and to read her diary in images, and curl up into kahlo's words in her own mother tongue...i can't believe i've let my spanish reading skills fall by the wayside. saturday's main event: grading a few hours with a__ at a cafe...lots of giggling, but work too...her husband walked after about 2 hours that we were there...it blows my mind sometimes that ppl five years my junior could've already been married for a couple years... i still think of them as roommates that have shacked up for life. sunday's main event: met my beloved friend r__, whose such an eternal pessimist, i just get pleasure out of cheering him up and turning every negative into a positive...even if he doesn't take my silly advice, i just like to make him smile - and he laughs at my jokes, a plus... we met for dinner and drinks, and just strategized about next year and where we'll be - he's determined to finish and then leave academia for good. he's positive i could land a tenure-track position...i think i could, but i also told him, i'm so not willing to go to the middle of nowhere just to hold such a position: recipe for certain misery and death. instead, i'm loving this post-doc option of late...where i can transition my way into professordom... and still not have the pressures of proving myself, or the loneliness of being a single faculty member in a new town, where fraternizing with either grads or other professors is certain material for scandal... damn, i've just witnessed too many spouses get tenure-track jobs at the same institution, then get divorced, and then resent the halls they walk down daily as their jobs force them to be together in awkward intimate situations even if they can't stand each others guts. and besides, how can you not think of that person as used goods even after le divorce, with their ex- still floating around on the faculty to remind you of their former relationship. oh - yeah - by the way, the apartment that my roommate just landed: I was the one who happend to give her that lead. i'm not surprised that it worked out... i'm just hoping, yet again, in my stupid adherence to superstition that what goes around comes around, and if i'm nice enough to help her get a new apartment (even though i admit her departure pains me), then the universe will return that niceness vibe in some fashion, and give my life a break. please, i do deserve a break today.
MUSIC: "the origin of love" (hedwig and the angry inch soundtrack)
READING: this boy's life, tobias wolff
FEELING: hopeful that what goes around...
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