January 31

“Today was one of those days when I know I was born to be a professor. It's either nerdiness or the pedantry.”

1965

I didn't do anything today. (except think about V!)

Comment 2023

If you think today’s entry was awful, just wait. It’s about to get worse. Honestly, I have nothing more to say at this time about my infatuation with V. Saving it for February.

Instead, I have snooped into the future past (past future?) just to see what midwinter brought in other years.

1985: We were negotiating the purchase of our first house. I was re-reading Jane Austen (again. I read all her novels every year.)

2005: I took advantage of an empty morning to do an at-home mini retreat to discern where I wanted to be in May. I wanted to have a couple of articles written (according to my CV, I managed one). I wanted to reflect on my own learning on a regular basis. I wanted to be healthier and more fit (see also: Sisyphus). I wanted to finish an old project (I think I actually started to do this; Pink and Blue was published a few years later).

2015: I was microjournaling on Twitter:

“Today was one of those days when I know I was born to be a professor. It's either nerdiness or the pedantry.”

Comment 2024

It’s definitely both the nerdiness and the pedantry.

1980 (Last semester of graduate school)

Time to reassess my work, my schedule, and my priorities. I have been managing, but am still over-committed. Time to pare down. (a list of projects follows, filling up the page. The biggie: completing my dissertation, plus taking my remaining comprehensive exams.)

Strategy is essential! What has to be done and when? Priorities!!

1985

Still working on the house purchase. We’ve come up to $90,000 (they counter-offered $94,000) and we are even more interested in the house. Both of us have accepted the alteration in our living costs and the possible expenses of the house’s condition. I have been escaping into Jane Austen at every opportunity. This will be a crazy semester.

1987

Nineteen years ago Jim and I went to see Marcel Marceau on found ourselves in love. How far we have traveled since! Quite a trip; marvelous, fascinating, sometimes frustrating, always enlightening. Jim didn’t work today, so we managed to have something like a normal Saturday. Kiddo 2 has been fighting an ear infection and a bad cold for a week, poor thing. But today he was alert and cheerful, despite his runny nose. It’s hard going through this with a 2-month old. Kiddo 1 was quite a bit older when she got her first cold, and it made a difference.

A week after the snow storm, and the start of classes, I am feeling better and more organized. Jim is downstairs tending to Kiddo 2, a job he is much more comfortable with than he was the first time around. He is such a good, loving father. Just think, if we had gotten married the summer after freshman year as we wanted, we could have teenaged kids by now. I think this is fine.

2002

There is a tension within me today, between getting ready for class, getting things done at home, and just taking some time to gather my thoughts. Gathering my thoughts has won. The silence, the candle glow; time to mellow a bit. It is a yoga day. I am going to slow down until 10 a.m., then come back to my desk and plan. It’s a date.

I tend to pitch headline into my day, which works somedays but NOT on days when I don’t teach until nearly dinner time. I need to start slowly, and not get to campus until closer to lunch time. An after class swim might be just the ticket. The family doesn’t need me at home on Thursday anyway. They just go to Taco Bell.

2006

First day of classes for AMST 498J. I am very prepared , and looking forward to it. We have a SUPER group of undergraduate teaching assistants this semester.

I have started an odd writing task - expanding my 1965 diary in a blog. It asked to be done, so I am doing it.

It is raining and I have to walk to campus. Oh, well.

Comment 2024

AMST 498J - Popular Culture and Literacy was the pinnacle of my teaching career. It combined everything I had learned about student engagement, active learning and assessment. In a nutshell: each student signed up for one afternoon a week to provide mentoring and homework help at a local high school or an adult ESOL conversation group. We met as a class once a week to discuss assigned readings and the service experience. The course was team-taught: me, a PhD student from the College of Education, and four to seven undergraduate teaching assistants who supervised the service sessions. The team met once a week at my house for a meal and a planning session. I have kept in touch with many of them. Several - none of them education majors - have become teachers; one just wrote a best-selling book on comedy. Another moved abroad and started a non-profit advocating for migrants. The most frequent UTA - he took the course and then served three more semesters as a mentor - took flight as a teacher, mentor, artist, and entrepreneur.

When I say I miss teaching, this is what I am talking about.