Undergrad Marriage

Today was wonderful for 3 reasons. First, my Gender class was canceled for no apparent reason. The professor said that no one had posted on the forum so we will “postpone” class until next week. We never post until the last minute, so I really don’t understand what happened. I suspect that the prof was the one who wasn’t prepared or maybe had a pressing deadline. I’m not going to overthink it because I randomly got a day off in the middle of the week. It feels like a snow day!

Except it is actually really warm and nice outside for November which brings me to the second reason that today was wonderful. I love this comfortable Fall weather. I wish it would stay like this for the rest of winter. The time change has really bummed me out this year for some reason. Usually, I barely notice but lately it really bothers me that it gets dark by 6pm. So, these sunshiney days that only require a light jacket or sweater are making me feel better about the whole situation.

The third reason is that I had lunch with one of my former undergrad assistants. She’s such a nice person, and a very bright student. It was really fun to catch up with her, and I realized that I do want to be friends with some of my (former) students. I think it is tricky when they are in your class, but after the grades are submitted, why can’t we be friends? I had a student send me a friend request on facebook, and I feel a little ambivalent about that. I ultimately decided that facebook has to be thought of as a public space and it is not just for my personal friends from college and high school anymore. Now, I am friends with both my professors and my students, so I need to adjust my online presence to recognize this. I certainly will not send friend requests to my students, but I will accept them if they request me (and I like them).

Anyway, back to my lunch with my former assistant. She told me that her boyfriend proposed to her this past summer and they will be getting married in June (she graduates in May). Now, maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, but I was genuinely happy and excited for her. Usually, I think that it is a mistake for people to get married really young, and right out of college seems very young to me. But she seems like a very reasonable and mature person, so I didn’t even feel a little judgmental about her rush into marriage and postponing her own education and career plans for him. In fact, the only judgment that I had was marveling at my own lack of judgment. I think that in general most people would be better off waiting until they are older and more settled  in who they are and what they are doing in life before getting married, but there are certainly exceptions to this. I think that she is one.  And she was just so darn happy that I couldn’t help but get caught up in it.

It does make me chuckle a bit to myself that my students are surpassing me in adultness. Oh, well. For me, 30 is the best age to get married and I don’t plan on tackling grown up-ness until then.

Academic Destiny and The Men Who Stare at Goats

This weekend, I went to see the new movie, The Men Who Stare At Goats.

It was weird. Really effing weird.

But I knew that going in, and I laughed a bit, so no real harm done. It’s basically about a unit of the army that was commissioned to develop psychic warfare methods. Apparently, more of it is true than you would believe. At least, that is what the movie tells you at the beginning. I totally believe in all of it, and even though the movie portrayed the people as over the top wack-a-doodles, I also think that there might be some legitimate uses for outside of the box thinking in the army. But then again, I am a pacifist so I probably shouldn’t want harm done by either brute force or mental will.

There was one really hilarious line in the movie about Anne Frank. I don’t remember it exactly, but it went something along the lines of saying that we all have a destiny and we can’t fight it. If Anne Frank wanted to be a high school teacher, tough titties, she’s instead going to write something that will be read by millions.

First, you don’t hear too many Anne Frank jokes these days, so that is notable.

Second, even though it was a stupid movie and a joke in questionable taste, I did start thinking about whether I am fighting my destiny. How do you know that you are doing the right thing with your life? What if there is something bigger and better that I could be doing? How much positive reinforcement does one need to know that he or she is on the right track?

Grad school has a way of making you feel small and insignificant. The only thing that makes me feel that what I am doing has a positive impact and is worthwhile is teaching. I love my students, and I am pretty sure that most of them really like me. Lately, they have been really engaged and interested, and this makes me feel like I have an important platform to get them to think about life differently.

At the same time, I want to to do that on a bigger scale. I want a broader audience than just my students. I just don’t know what that is yet. I also suffer from a lack of overarching passion for one topic. There is nothing that I fight for, nothing that gets me out of the bed in the morning and drives me. Sometimes, I wonder if I would feel better about my purpose if my life was more centered around activism. But what activates me? I haven’t found it yet, and I worry that I never will.

On the other hand, maybe I am just not an activist type person. On top of that, I still feel like I am not on the top of my research game. I don’t put enough time and effort into that, either. Teaching comes so easily, but writing is so very hard. The drive to be a great researcher and to get published is based on feeling not good enough, like I need to prove myself.  I think  I feel that way because my program is competitive and some people are very successful at getting published as grad students. One thing that I have noticed from taking classes in another department for my minor is that the expectations for grad student publications and professionalization activities are much, much lower there. They expect students to focus on their dissertation. That’s it. I am really looking forward to my doing my dissertation, and I hope that it will be the breakthrough for me. I don’t expect it to be some blockbuster type thing, but I hope that I will feel as good about that as I do about teaching. I want to be excellent at both teaching and research. It’s scary how invested I am in academia and yet I wonder if maybe I would have been even more successful and things would have come easier had I done something else. Since that is very speculative and hypothetical, I’m going to say No. In fact, I’d probably be far worse at any other type of job. So, here I am,  stuck in the middle with grad school.

Pregnancy Dreams

I have been plagued by pregnancy/having children dreams for the past few weeks.

It started with a really vivid dream where I discovered that I was 5 months pregnant while treading in the deep end of a pool. The weightlessness of the water masked the pregnancy until I looked down and saw my very pregnant stomach which led me to surmise that I was indeed pregnant. When I pointed this out to my friend who was also in the pool, she confirmed nonchalantly, “Yes,  you are.” The next scene of the dream was a conversation with my mother and we were trying to calculate when my due date would fall and whether it would interfere with the semester and my teaching schedule. The final scene of the dream was my discovery of the father of the baby (a male from my past) and a feeling of relief. “Oh, it’s you.”

I told my Spiritual Guru about this dream, and she was very intrigued. She spent a lot of time trying to map the timing of my dream pregnancy onto my real life. If I was dream-5 months pregnant, then what was going on in my life 5 months ago? And what will happen in 4 months when I am supposed to give birth to whatever?  According to Spiritual Guru, everything in your dreams is some aspect of you. For example, if someone in my dream had been resisting my pregnancy in some way, that would show that I am at odds with myself over something. In the actual dream, everyone was very accepting, and my only concern was logistical (and I suppose being somewhat surprised that I was so far along without having known it).

I’m not sure if Spiritual Guru is right on this one. I don’t know if the timing means anything. I think she wanted me to see things like this: Five months ago, I was deeply unhappy. In February, I will give birth to happiness. But that seems pretty silly to me.

I have a far more literal interpretation of this dream and the others that I have had recently. And my dramatic conclusion is:  I want to have kids. Ok, so it’s not a spiritually groundbreaking assessment, but I think there is something to it. I have had dreams about pregnancy, adopting children, and babysitting children several times a week for the past few weeks. I think my biological clock is firmly seated in my subconscious.

I am still strongly convinced that a pregnancy right now would be inconvenient and undesirable in my waking life, but try telling that to my dreams.

 

 

Three Years Later

It’s been three years, and I am still blogging. Granted, there have been gaps in those 3 years (July-Dec 08 and April-June 09). Looking back, I regret stopping that first time. I had a good amount of traffic, but I started to feel self-conscious. Since my return this past summer, the numbers of visitors are fewer, and I feel like I know most of the people who read so it doesn’t matter. I think the problem before was being unsure whether I wanted this to be my personal blog where I write about stupid things or if I wanted it to be a more general interest type thing  where I write about politics and current events and draw in a broader audience. Ultimately, I opted for stupid.

I like the idea that this blog will chronicle my entire grad school experience. I started on November 5th of my first year, and I will probably end it in a couple years when I go on the job market. Three years already feels like a long time – it’s hard to believe that it’s only the midway point of this blog and this journey!

Happy 3rd Anniversary, Biscotti!!!

 

Weekend Cooking

This fall, I have been trying to do more cooking on the weekends. I haven’t been able to do it every week, but I was really motivated to do so yesterday because I had to eat out too much this past week. I spent all of Saturday grocery shopping and then cooking these two recipes. I plan to freeze half of the lasagna to eat in the future because it is a TON of food. I could barely lift the casserole pan because it was so heavy!

This is the Cheesy Vegetable Lasagna that I made. Vegetable lasagna is one of my favorite dishes. The thing that I like about this recipe is that it includes a lot of veggies (I also added mushrooms) and the parmesan cheese on top really adds a strong, salty bite to it.

I also made this Roasted Sweet Potato Corn Chowder.  I can’t say enough how unbelievable  this soup is!  It is the perfect fall comfort food and I love the sweet potatoes in it.  I will definitely make this soup again. The only thing that I might add next time is a dash or two of hot sauce to add a little spice.

Manners

The NYT has a column on “One Hundred Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do,” and I agree with nearly everything on the list (the only exception: as an indecisive eater, I like it when someone tells me what their favorite dish is). In terms of of pet peeves while dining my #1 complaint is

17. Do not take an empty plate from one guest while others are still eating the same course. Wait, wait, wait.

I am a slow eater, usually because if I am out to eat with people, I do a lot of talking. It makes me feel self-conscious and rushed if my plate is the only one left on the table. A table is either clear or it’s not. If some are not done eating, just leave the table uncleared until everyone is.

I also found these two to be quite interesting:

42. Do not compliment a guest’s attire or hairdo or makeup. You are insulting someone else.

46. Never acknowledge any one guest over and above any other. All guests are equal.

These speak to the situation that I was in during my flight when the flight attendant called me “sweetie.” People don’t realize how insulting compliments can be to the surrounding uncomplimented. I don’t know what the answer is to this problem because compliments are mostly nice, polite things that make the receiver feel good, but they can also lead to feelings of exclusion or inadequacy if you are the one who goes unnoticed and unappreciated. Very interesting that not complimenting is seen as polite in the service industry. I wish that it would extend to other areas of life, too.

 

My New Favorite Emo Boyfriend

This is Conor Oberst. He is my new favorite emo boyfriend.

I have never actually dated an emo guy, but I fantasize about it.

A LOT.

Especially when I get an emo waiter at a local establishment.

Anyway, I like Conor’s music, and  I think it is meant to be because he already has a song about me. The lyrics go like this, but you  have to imagine that he is on the verge of tears/trembly voice all on your own:

and laura’s asleep in my bed
as I’m leaving she wakes up and says
“I dreamed you were carried away on the crest of a wave
baby don’t go away, come here”

I am particularly obsessed with the song “First Day of My Life”  from his band Bright Eyes. I’ve been listening to their album (I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning) quite a bit lately. In fact, on Saturday, I organized all of my filing cabinets and shredded old papers while blaring his emo stylings.

Don’t be jealous. Your life could be cool like that, too.

Midterm Blunder

I made a big teaching mistake this week. Instead of giving 3 exams like I have in the past, I decided to just have a midterm and final this semester. I also wanted to write more creative and challenging questions. All of this contributed to the test being longer and more difficult than what some of the students could do in 75 minutes.

I gave a curve, and the distribution turned out pretty well for most students. My best students were able to complete it in an hour, and most of the poor students were nowhere close to being done (and I don’t think that extra time would have helped the quality of their responses). But there were a few students who were good or average students who might have benefited from extra time, and this makes me feel like I was being unfair to the students who just happen to be slow test-takers and rewarding students who are faster. The general rule of thumb that I abide by is that prepared students will be faster, but I know that I would be frustrated if I actually knew the material but simply was unable to write it down because of time.

This has been a big lesson for me when I write future exams. I don’t think that college students in a 300-level class should expect 30 minute or less exams, but it is also unfair of me to write a 90 minute exam and make them take it in 75. I feel terrible, but I guess that these teaching mistakes happen to the best of us. I’ll do better in the future!

My New Favorite Sitcom

If you are not watching “Modern Family,” you are missing out! It is the best new sitcom in years, and one of the few shows that makes me literally laugh out loud. Not just amused, not just entertained, not just liking the characters, but actually laughter-inducing. The last show that I liked this much and made me giggle was How I Met Your Mother.  I still love HIMYM even though it is less funny than it was during the first two seasons – which is why I want to encourage you to catch up/start watching Modern Family before it’s too late and it gets unfunny. I have a feeling that it might go stale by next season, but for now, it is the best sitcom on TV. I am one of those people who can usually anticipate dialogue (if one character says something, I just know how the other will respond) and can predict “surprise” endings (of course it was George who got hit by the bus!), but what I like about Modern Family is that I can’t do that (yet). And if you don’t want to commit to the series, I  recommend that you watch the pilot. I still laugh when I think about a couple of those scenes, and I saved it in my DVR in case I ever need a guaranteed pick me up.

My New Favorite Dish

One of the things that I like about reading other people’s blogs is getting recommendations and inspiration for food, clothing, projects, and entertainment. Over the past few weeks, I have been thinking about all of the new discoveries that I absolutely love, and I am going to make it a point to share them with all of you.

First up, Kashi’s Mayan Harvest Bake. As most of you know, I don’t really cook much, but I do microwave. This Kashi entree is so freaking outstanding that when it went on sale at the grocery store, I bought 10 boxes. I like to eat it for breakfast because the creamy polenta is like oatmeal and the plantains provide that fruity morning kick. I love how unique the flavor is, and I find that it is a satisfying meal. I have tried other Kashi dinners, and I don’t like them at all. This one is quite exceptional. Go out and buy it, yum!!!