group "dissertating" on the pease house porch. take a good look, this one's going to get a job in 6 to 9 months.

my spartan summer office.

The academic placement gods seem to have been with me this summer. After feeling miserable about writing for months now, I show up at Andover, meet my 14 students from 10 countries, and soon realize that they are universally eager, excited, and ready to participate. Today the fairly shy, taciturn Nick from Indonesia was whispering his ideas while Long Island Tawana and Athens Alexia were loudly duking it out about whether or not Gregor in Kafka's Metamorphosis understands more about his transformation than we, as readers, do. No one would have heard Nick, but Nigerian Anthony politely interrupted, turned to the class and commanded: "Yo guys, Nick here has somethin' to say. Let him talk." Nick, in at a nearly imperceptible volume proceeded to explain that Kafka makes Gregor's transformation vague (is he vermin? a bug? a beetle? a rat?) such that as readers we are in the same state of confusion as Gregor. As he's trying to figure himself out physically, we gain measured insights as he does. No dramatic irony. No privileged position. Equality between vermin and reader. I then asked one more question about pronouns and the class managed a 30-minute discussion with no prompting, no clues, no disclosures. As I've said to others recently, I think I'm beginning to accept the fact that creating such a class has very little to do with my actions and so much to do with enabling a critical mass of students to develop this sense that engaging fully is a really very cool thing to do. They, of course, have to feel like it was their idea to feel that way as well. You know something extraordinary is happening when they stay after class today just to tell you how much they enjoyed the poetry explication.

Can someone please remind me why I would ever take a 4-4 at the University of No Man's Land at No Mansville? A life of this would be just dandy, if you ask me...

that's me fanning myself. it's 96 degrees and no air conditioning here.

i apologize to the hoards of faithful readers (all 4 of you) that i've been so remiss in updating this. after a rather disheartening writing group meeting, i drove to andover to begin my 7th year of summer teaching. as this place usually gives rise to new thoughts about teaching, pedagogical experiments, and inevitable insights about the possibilities inherent in teaching in small classes with long periods, i hope to shift my discussions from self-loathing complaints about my writing to brief discussions about summer pedagogy. all the while i'll continue trying to restart the alcott chapter, but i'm hoping to have some good teaching experiences to get my spirits up.

i promise no more extended vacations -- at least not this week.

minor accomplishment take #1: submitted the "complete" (a.k.a. inchoate and incoherent) draft of the alcott chapter to my americanists writing group. that's something, right?

my friends tasha and geoff just left after a lovely weekend visit. they're both incredible and incredibly gifted at telling it the way it really is. tasha (who is herself writing a dissertation -- on 20th af.-am. pulp fiction -- and will certainly have a completely bad-ass job at this time next year) listened as i mocked my own efforts and seemed sympathetic when i bemoaned what seems like my innate inability to write a dissertation at any kind of reasonable pace. but then she looked me in the eye and commanded: "get in the game bruder! i mean you gotta GET IN THE GAME." and then instead of leaving it at that, she kindly read my alcott mess and politely told me to get over myself and get it in the bag. for the first time in months, i feel like getting in the game again. thanks tasha (and thank you geoff for understanding what it would mean to drop out now). this is why i love my friends.

rats, i missed my deadline yesterday. that's me snapping in frustration. but the upshot is that i'm working fairly productively today. it helps that it's 225 degrees outside and i have no desire to partake in my usual outdoor distractions. after all, yesterday i was out walking with arlo in the afternoon and got yelled at for abusing my dog by taking him out in the heat. i tried to suggest that dogs need to go outside to use the facilities even in the summer and that after ten year with arlo i have a pretty good sense of his desires and limitations, but she was having none of it. i kept wondering if she would have stopped me had i been out with a child...

When it feels like there’s no way to break through the endless amounts of horrible writing and get down to the essence of your argument, I highly encourage the use of a little peer pressure. Last night I made a deal with the devil – actually just my very smart and very altruistic friend Katherine – that I would send her what I have at 5 pm today. In fear of utter humiliation, I finally feel eager to figure this chapter out. I figure that after eight years (wow, that’s gone by quickly) of friendship, she’d be pretty lame to bail on me because I can’t seem to get it right with this piece. Hint, hint….

a new simple idea: think less, write more.

yes, it's one of those working-from-bed kind of days: oppressively hot and anxiety-ridden. i'm generally feeling blue about the project. i should be feeling better because mr. mouse is no more (see aaron's brilliant comment on the last post), arlo is happily sleeping, and my adviser thinks the new introduction is better. but instead, i'm feeling that old, antsy sense that i should be doing something (curses on my love for jane addams who did change everything for me). whenever i start to feel this way, i cruise the net for educational think-tank type organizations and then inevitably feel lousy either because there doesn't seem to be anything out there that seems really promising or i realize that i'm unqualified to do anything. but today i discovered education sector. they seem to be doing the kind of research and writing that i really admire. think maybe i should have been a summer intern?

for me, one of the biggest struggles in dissertating is my inclination toward distraction. with this huge, amorphous thing to be done, i'm much more inclined to think about sewing summer skirts, watering the flowers, finalizing my summer syllabus (off to andover in three weeks), and now something else to compete for space in my mind: a mouse! this little dickens (my grandfather's favorite mock insult) has out-witted me. he 1) ate all of the peanut butter off of the trap without getting caught 2) scandalized arlo by eating out of his bowl, and 3) had the audacity to sleep in my bed last night. mouse droppings prove it all. so now what do i do? elena suggested trying that sticky stuff, but she's not here to help deal with the horror of finding a living mouse glued to the kitchen counter. any other ideas? if i don't get rid of this little guy, i fear nothing else will get done. argh. double argh.