For the next two days

I will be imprisoned in grading jail.

When I emerge, I hope to be able to declare this hideous term over.

In the meantime, feel free to send cheerful thoughts, and/or treats.

A small comment about the Democratic primary

Updated to add: I agree with Anastasia's comment below about the pro-Obamaians. A good parody of the "Obama effect" can be found here. (Seen at The Daily Dish.)

*

Here at professorial confessions, I've made no secret about who my preferred candidate is.

However, I would also like to point out that I was pretty much thrilled by the strong Democratic field generally early on. I liked Clinton, even if I wasn't a huge fan of her husband's during the 90s. I also like Richardson; I have some family in New Mexico and so I've been following him for a little while. Hell, half the time Dennis Kucinich makes good sense to me, when he's not going on about the UFOs.

Which is why I don't understand how anyone* could seriously consider voting for a Republican if his or her preferred candidate doesn't get the nomination. I didn't get it from the Obama folks when he had a bad stretch there and I don't get it from the Hillary folks now. I mean, I will be disappointed if Obama isn't the nominee, but I'm not going to stay home in November! I'm not going to vote for McCain! Good Lord, people! Talk about not seeing the forest through the trees!

Note to whoever these people are: If you feel this passionately about "your" candidate that you would rather stay home than vote Democratic, you need to take a step back and get some MAJOR perspective on this process. Sit down, make yourself a drink, and watch a recording of one of Bush's State of the Union addresses, and then quickly follow that up with the movie "Control Room" (or "Standard Operating Procedure").

And then tell me that all of this Democratic primary drama is really more important than that. Seriously. I freaking dare you.



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* I would link to a couple of these fanatical pro-Hillary sites**, but I don't want to give them any more business. Suffice to say, I have never read more depressing political commentary in my life: talk about boycotting the election rather than vote for Obama, joking about bombs at Obama rallies... Are you freaking kidding me?! Who ARE these people? (Sadly, I don't think the majority of them are Republicans in disguise, as some have posited.)

** There must be equally vitriolic pro-Obama sites out there, but I haven't seen any. But I am sure they exist. I wouldn't link to them either.

Things that were good about this weekend

* The Farmers' Market. My favorite summer activity is to go every Saturday morning and shop for veggies (although this time I even bought some grass-fed, organic steaks for the grill!). I take my dog, who visits with all the other pups. I chat with the vendors, most of whom are hippies, young and old. I usually see at least a few people from school there. I enjoy the musicians who play and the jugglers who juggle and the wind off the river and the happy sight of a truly diverse crowd. The Farmers Market renews my faith in humanity every week.

* Lots and lots of sun. No humidity. Planting things. Weeding.

* Cooking. The aforementioned steaks on the grill, with asparagus with lemon and blue cheese. A rhubarb and strawberry crumble. Tonight is a homemade pizza, with basil and ricotta and roasted red peppers and organic sausage. Tomorrow will be lemon-rosemary chicken on the grill. Ah, summer.

* Target box wine. I'm serious! The pinot grigio is quite tasty, and who doesn't love re-filling her glass with a little push-button spigot?

* Not grading nearly enough, but realizing that It. Will. Get. Done. I have a week. I'll use it-- and maintain my sanity.

* Watching this movie with my husband and laughing hysterically.

* Getting four emails from the D: 1 professional email, 3 little personal things. He's trying to repair, I think. And I want it to be repaired. I'm trying to learn how to deal with conflicts in long-term working relationships (i.e., situations where it is simply impossible to walk away and/or quit). I'm trying to learn how to negotiate my friendship and my professional relationship with him, particularly. There's another post in this, probably, but suffice to say I am not terribly adept at either: my MO for most conflicts is to win or leave. That's not, um, very healthy.

Grievous Wrong update

So, the uproar over the Grievous Wrong has passed. The gist of the outcome is this: my Grievously Wronged Colleague was able to get a better deal from the school than the administration initially offered... but I would not at all say that the wrong has been righted. He was able to procure for himself (partly with our help, I think) a softer landing from a difficult place. That's all.

In part it's over because my GWC wants it to be over. And I can empathize; if this has been time consuming for me, it's been life-consuming for him. He wants it done. He wants to move on. I don't blame him. And so the proverbial dogs (such as they are) have been called off. There wasn't much more to be done (by us) anyway at this point; anything else would have had to have been legal. And my GWC did not want that either.

*

It's taken a toll on my friendship with the D, I can see that. I was shocked and appalled that he could've made this decision. For his part, I think he was shocked and appalled that I reacted so strongly to it. Sometimes I think he thinks I'm just like him: able to compartmentalize everything, put every bit of my life into separate little boxes. He's disturbingly good at this... to the point where it's almost kind of creepy. I'm ridiculously bad at it.

So I can tell it's freaked him out a little bit, because he's giving me the same looks I'm giving him these days: a lot of wariness, and not a lot of warmth. This makes me sad. I don't know how to make it better.

*

Had some more amazing student experiences today, though. One was an honors assembly, where the best and the brightest get rewarded for their years of hard work. A number of my favorite students were there, and when I presented a group of them with this one award, they all spontaneously ran up to me on stage and hugged me. That was unexpected, and charming.

And then I had my last class today with my upper-level subfield group. That class was so freaking impressive... I would say that fully 1/2 of my graduate school seminars (if not more) were not as good as this class. The class roster was like a list of SLAC All-Star Students. So we had this incredibly nuanced, gorgeous discussion today, with them asking these questions, and getting --really getting-- why these questions are so important.

*

One more teaching day, tomorrow. About a thousand papers more to grade. And I'm exhausted.

Clinging

... to sanity during the last days of this term. I have to focus on the good stuff.

Today the good stuff came (as it often does) in the form of a student: a junior this year, and an international student, and about the most earnest, delightful human being I've ever met. I've known him since he was a freshman, when his then-adviser told him to sign up for my first year seminar. He did, and has been a regular in my classes ever since, and is now my favorite advisee.

In fact, he's planning to go to graduate school in my subfield (he's junior now). He's absolutely talented and capable enough to do it. He just won a major competitive grant to do summer research with me. (And just last week he asked me, "So, Dr. Maggie, I've now got four languages [i.e., he's fluent in four languages]... do you think that's enough?" Um, yeah...)

So I ran into his first college adviser today at a meeting. "[Student] came to see me yesterday," his ex-adviser told me.

"Isn't he wonderful?" I asked. (Which is what I always say about [Student.].)

His ex-adviser smiled at me. "Actually, [Student] gave me a big hug, and told me, 'Thank you for encouraging me to sign up for Dr. Maggie's seminar three years ago. It changed my life. She changed my life.'"

*

This makes up, I suppose, for the ridiculous number of papers I have to grade tonight.

Grim.

I have so much fucking grading to do between now and when finals end (a week from now) that I am experiencing a near panic attack. Sweet Christ on a bicycle, how in the hell am I going to get this all finished?

She bangs (limited time only)

OK, by popular demand (such as it is) here are The Bangs!

I am so far loving my new 'do. Things about it that I love include:

(1) It is just a tiny bit rock n roll, as a style. When I get it colored (in two weeks-- I haven't had any color in it in FOREVER) it will be even more so. I can make it piece-y and texture-y without barely any effort at all.

(2) It now takes me a grand total of 15 minutes total to do my hair AND my makeup, on a slow day.

(3) It works well with the natural quality of my hair, which is stick straight. As someone who has spent the better part of her 30+ years on the planet actively fighting AGAINST my hair's natural quality, this is something of a revelation.

(4) It requires next to no product to do (see (3) ).

(5) The world looks different as seen from out under bangs!

Spring, finally

So far, The Bangs have received good reviews all around: my Euro-hipster student liked them, as did my administrative assistant, who is a nun. My class today spent the first two minutes talking about my hair, which made me incredibly embarrassed (but it was also funny).

I'll try to post pictures of The Bangs this weekend. For now, let me post some of the pleasantness that has been happening around here (not that you'd know it from my gloomy blog).

The redbud in our yard:



The grapevines along our fence (just for scale: these grape bunches are about the size of my little finger now):



The kitty gets to hang out in the window again:



Mostly she watches these guys:



He was ready for his close up:



Six more teaching days and then finals! Wahoo!

Desperate times, desperate measures

For the first time since roughly 1997, I am now sporting a set of hardcore BANGS.

Whoa.

World-weariness, etc.

So the fall out of this political crap is kind of ...devastating. The more I learn about it (and I learn more about it every day), the worse it is. It's a decision that has an absolutely startling level of inhumanity to it. I am really still struggling to figure out how to live with it.

On the up side: I am proud of how I have conducted myself through this. By and large I've been the very definition of calm and rational (in public, anyway). I've argued (convincingly) against rash actions because I don't believe they'll actually help the colleague involved, who is in danger of being made into a political football. I've earned the respect of some pretty tough guys, including a few that have vehemently disagreed with me in the past. That feels good, and like I am maybe growing into an adult in some ways, anyway.

On the downside: All of this has left me incredibly depressed. I am, at some deep level, profoundly saddened to be a part of an institution where this could happen. (And I am really, really sorry that I can't be more specific... as it is, I am probably doing my school a disservice by even putting this much out there.) I know -- and I frequently tell people-- that institutions are NOT your friends, but in part that's because I know I have a tendency to get overly romantic about them, overly attached to them. I've read enough Marx to know that faculty interests and administrators' interests are never going to be perfectly (or even more than occasionally) aligned, but it still smarts to see them diverge in quite this way.

I wish I was the kind of faculty member who doesn't pay attention to the Big Picture at her campus. You know the one: she keeps her head down (and her eyes closed) and quietly plugs along doing her research, teaching her classes, and relaxing in the evenings walking her dog. She doesn't show up at, much less voice an opinion at, contentious faculty meetings. She responds to even direct questions noncommittally, because in some sense she really doesn't care.*

I wish I could be that person, for a month, for a year, for a career. Can I put a moratorium on Taking Up Lost Causes? Can I categorically refuse to give my two cents about Contentious Campus Issues? Can I say a loud and empathic "NO" to the next person who asks me to take on something that is way above my pay grade?

Because this sucks.

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* Can I just say that one of my least favorite cliches about academic life is that "the stakes are so small?" In some (banal) sense that's true; none of us (at least at small liberal arts schools) are going to Change the World with any of these decisions. But I am enough of a small-d democrat and a humanist to believe that the way that we treat people --and how we translate those decisions into policies-- matters a lot. How we mentor (or don't) untenured faculty, how we provide (or don't) for adjuncts, how we help (or don't) our gay and lesbian colleagues with spousal benefits, how we will (or won't) work to accommodate students of varying abilities, what kinds of rewards we give (or don't) to good teachers and advisers... all of that stuff matters to changing the little worlds that campuses in fact are. So please don't tell me that the stakes are "small," because I may actually slap you.

The meeting

I was pretty nervous all last night and earlier this morning about this meeting...in part because I was somewhat conflicted about what my aim in the meeting should be: to listen (after all, the Prez is the one who asked for this meeting between me and the D), or take this last opportunity to argue what I think is the best case for my side of the argument. I could see good reasons for doing either one; mainly I just didn't want the conversation to go like my last substantive conversation with the D on this matter went, when I ended up just frustrated and angry.

The end result is that I didn't really have to make the decision, because one of the Big Boys showed up (unexpected by both me and the D) at the meeting. I'd told him when my meeting was, and he just... showed up.

While I was initially annoyed by this (rather surprising) turn of events, it worked out perfectly, I think. It wasn't "good cop, bad cop", but the dynamic between us worked well in the context of the meeting. This Big Boy is much more serious than I am, much fuller of Moral Gravity, and that allowed me to take a much more pragmatic approach (which is really my forte anyway).

The important thing is that we sketched out options for the D, and asked pointed questions about the constraints preventing him from pursuing these options.* (We didn't necessarily get answers, but I think that we helped him think more clearly about these things.) We also made --between the two of us-- a powerful argument for pursuing what we feel is the best option. We (especially I) told him a variety of ways that I could help him make it happen. We (especially I) made clear that we knew this was a difficult situation, a difficult set of choices, and also that we knew it might now work out in the way we'd outlined.

But the important thing is -- and Big Boy and I agreed about this after the meeting -- we stood up for what is undoubtedly the Right Thing to Do, without it devolving into an argument or a fight or just hardheadedness. Importantly to me, we also did this in a way that was focused and mature and pragmatic, rather than sloppy and idealistic.

I feel like I am getting better at these sorts of things, slowly (too slowly, probably), but surely. I'm still too much of a hothead, and need to get better at thinking before I speak (or, ahem, email). But whatever the outcome of this particular situation, I feel like I did the best I possibly could under the circumstances to help right a wrong. I've made my best case, and offered all the help I know how to.

And that means I can --I hope-- sleep well tonight.

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Just FYI: I am going to the show... but not with the D. Turns out that Big Time had an extra ticket (his daughter canceled), and he asked me directly, so I am going with him. I think it's sort of charming that I'm going in place of Big Time's daughter, considering what a quasi-father figure he's been to me since I got here. We're going out out to dinner first, and for drinks after. He'll want to hear all about my meeting today. I'll tell him.


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* This post should include a big thank you to Dean Dad, for his stellar off-blog advice about approaching meetings like this. Thank you, DD, for helping me to think through this stuff, I truly value (and made use of) your hard-earned wisdom here.


And a quick and bizarre update: In what was very nearly the perfectly surreal end to a perfectly surreal week, Big Time's seats to this show? Were right next to the D's. Neither of them had realized this before we all sat down in row C, center. So I spent the concert, in fact, a mere one seat away from the D. The show, btw, was awesome and, in a detail that will surprise exactly no one, it turns out that the D and I share a favorite song by this guy: at the exact same moment as the song started, he turned to his friend, and I turned to Big Time, and we both exclaimed, "I love this song!" Yes, it was a tiny bit freaky.