Over the past few years, my blogging rate has fallen considerably, from two or three posts per month to more like once per month. There are a number of reasons for this tapering-off (including, but not limited to, "being a grown-up" and having neither the time nor the inclination to blab to the Internet as much as I did when I was seventeen). But if we're talking about the most recent period, from 2013 'til now, there's a more specific thing contributing to my blogging drought: my posts are typically inspired by day-to-day goings-on that I find interesting or discussable, and for the last two years the most interesting and discussable things in my life have been my students and my teaching. And as it happens, talking about students and teaching on the Internet is the kind of thing that can threaten your very livelihood and professional future.
That sounds dramatic, but the career-ending, worst-case scenarios associated with Being a Teacher on Social Media do tend to make headlines. In February, there was a widely publicized story about a Marquette University professor who lost his job over his [admittedly awful] blog, where he regularly criticized students and colleagues by name. In that case, the professor was fired after he posted a characteristically biased and outraged blog post, in which he railed against a graduate student whom he felt had handled a departmental issue incorrectly. This prompted his [surprisingly large horde of] angry readers to send the poor grad student threats and hate mail. The student had to withdraw from the university, and the department offered the professor a pink slip.
Granted, in this instance, the professor in question seems like the kind of jerk who would've gotten caught for something eventually. The Atlantic article I link to above notes that the prof was warned multiple times against keeping such an incendiary blog. Conceivably, as long as you're not obnoxiously stupid about your social media posting (say, don't use the names of your students, don't make overtly inflammatory remarks, etc.), there's really not much to worry about. It's perfectly safe to complain about a frustrating student, disappointing class, or departmental nonsense as long as you do so responsibly, without levying threats or naming names. There's even a whole subsection hosted by the Chronicle of Higher Education website (called "Dear Student") dedicated to this kind of "responsible" griping about students on the Internet.
As a current graduate student, though, (and thus in that messy space where I'm both technically a student and a teacher), I'm not keen on taking any risks. As far as I'm concerned, I should keep my mouth (or blogging-fingers) shut about my school, department, or students, lest it hurt my ability to get a job in the future with an employer who doesn't want someone with a record of being a little blabby. The job market is overflowing with excellent, qualified candidates, and I don't want someone to avoid hiring me because on Blogger I once mocked a student who couldn't distinguish there/their/they're.
Then again, I'm a risk-averse person. Maybe that level of caution seems overly paranoid to others. My blog isn't searchable, and it's not like I have a huge number of followers ready to publicize my opinions. There's probably no logical reason for me to avoid "reasonable" posting.
So let's set aside the Tin Foil Hat rationale for not posting about your teaching or students. For me, there's still an icky factor.
Just to be clear, the temptation for posting stories about students here or on Facebook is extremely high. Students regularly do and say the kind of off-the-wall things (example: arguing vehemently about the existence of mythical creatures) that make for excellent blog posts. My close friends and family members can attest that I frequently vent about my classes on the phone. And it can be especially satisfying to share these stories online, where you can elicit reactions and garner sympathies from fellow teachers who have been through similar ordeals. It's the same impulse that prompts my server friends to take to Facebook to gripe about the customer who made a scene about the plated presentation of her salmon filet and then left a giant handful of pennies as her tip on a $50 tab.
In other words, the core impulse to say, "Everyone! Please validate my feelings of injustice/bemusement/anger/pride!" is basically universal -- but not all situations carry the same stakes. The difference between students and restaurant customers is that (unlike restaurant-goers) the students in my class are in an unusually vulnerable position: they're there because they want to learn and are willing to go through the often embarrassing process of learning, in front of me, while I evaluate their progress. As a student in college, I was horrified enough to learn in my junior year that my professors would sometimes discuss their students amongst themselves. To learn that a teacher was posting online about my errors or deficiencies, even in an anonymized fashion, would feel like an immense betrayal of trust. As a teacher, I may inwardly seethe or laugh at a student or class, but it's my job to push those feelings away and outwardly root for my students and treat them with equanimity, particularly on a public forum like Facebook or a blog.
Due to this stance, I probably wound up blogging a bit less over the past two years. Somewhere, a very tiny violin wails.
On the bright side, in exactly two weeks this issue will remove itself, as I will finish with my program's teaching obligations and transition into a full year of unstructured dissertation-writing time. The downside is that dissertation writing doesn't provide many stories beyond the experience of slowly eroding eyesight or carpel tunnel syndrome.
I suppose I can always blog about wedding planning.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Thursday, March 5, 2015
I still only travel by foot, and by foot it's a slow climb
This is old news, but I don't really get tired of announcing it: GR and I got engaged over the holidays(!). At the time, it was both a surprise and not-a-surprise. Romantics that we are, GR and I have been talking about marriage for a long while, and over the course of several discussions, we'd developed a rough timeline for when we wanted to spiritually and legally unite our lives. For various reasons, though, we abided tradition and left the proposal to him, leaving me in the dark as to when our official engagement would begin. A few days before Christmas I was still under the impression that we wouldn't be engaged for another several months, and so I was almost comically surprised by GR's proposal, which he had planned with a level of detail and subterfuge that I will never not find impressive.
I tend towards the cynical when it comes to the silly, expensive, gendered norms associated with weddings. This has become doubly apparent to me now that I'm skimming through bridal magazines and wedding websites and my dominant emotion is a sort of vague hostility. (Uplighting? Make-up trials? What is a trumpet-style dress? All of this is nonsense.) Even within the context of engagements -- a time when you shouldn't be mired in wedding drama, when you're really just kicking the whole thing off -- there are a lot of things I find frustrating or flawed: the obsession with diamonds despite their bloody mining history and artificial scarcity, the convention that men have the be the ones to propose, the expectation that proposals be surprising, etc.
That said, I've always loved engagement stories. They're fun. Any time there's a proposal, underneath all the silly trappings, there's a sweet narrative that doesn't change: two people agree to get married. I love the infinite variations of how that agreement is reached. Public or private, planned or spontaneous, spoken or written, alone or with family, extravagant or simple, practical or whimsical -- the story of a proposal can't avoid being adorable. Plus, engagement stories give you some insight into relationships; accumulated stories encourage you to keep broadening your understanding of how people choose to love and express their love to each other.
Engagements appeal to me, too, because they're sort of weird events. It's obvious why proposals are important to the couple at the center of it, but for your friends, family, and anyone else in the general public, all you're really doing when you announce an engagement is letting people know that you're planning on doing something in the future, which under normal circumstances should produce nothing more in the way of a response than a mildly interested, "Neat." (You don't, for example, throw a huge party or expect friends to gather in ecstatic anticipation or learn a choreographed dance routine to celebrate your intention to buy a house within a year or so.) At the same time, it's precisely that notion of intention that makes engagements special, equal to or perhaps surpassing the specialness of the wedding itself. A marriage, after all, is a lived agreement. The wedding is where everyone watches you make the promises binding you to that agreement. But the engagement is the moment when you first, freely and happily, make the agreement.
It's a sweet thing, and it's a sweet notion to hold on to as you move forward into planning a wedding and preparing for a marriage. You've already said yes; everything that comes next is living it out.
I tend towards the cynical when it comes to the silly, expensive, gendered norms associated with weddings. This has become doubly apparent to me now that I'm skimming through bridal magazines and wedding websites and my dominant emotion is a sort of vague hostility. (Uplighting? Make-up trials? What is a trumpet-style dress? All of this is nonsense.) Even within the context of engagements -- a time when you shouldn't be mired in wedding drama, when you're really just kicking the whole thing off -- there are a lot of things I find frustrating or flawed: the obsession with diamonds despite their bloody mining history and artificial scarcity, the convention that men have the be the ones to propose, the expectation that proposals be surprising, etc.
That said, I've always loved engagement stories. They're fun. Any time there's a proposal, underneath all the silly trappings, there's a sweet narrative that doesn't change: two people agree to get married. I love the infinite variations of how that agreement is reached. Public or private, planned or spontaneous, spoken or written, alone or with family, extravagant or simple, practical or whimsical -- the story of a proposal can't avoid being adorable. Plus, engagement stories give you some insight into relationships; accumulated stories encourage you to keep broadening your understanding of how people choose to love and express their love to each other.
Engagements appeal to me, too, because they're sort of weird events. It's obvious why proposals are important to the couple at the center of it, but for your friends, family, and anyone else in the general public, all you're really doing when you announce an engagement is letting people know that you're planning on doing something in the future, which under normal circumstances should produce nothing more in the way of a response than a mildly interested, "Neat." (You don't, for example, throw a huge party or expect friends to gather in ecstatic anticipation or learn a choreographed dance routine to celebrate your intention to buy a house within a year or so.) At the same time, it's precisely that notion of intention that makes engagements special, equal to or perhaps surpassing the specialness of the wedding itself. A marriage, after all, is a lived agreement. The wedding is where everyone watches you make the promises binding you to that agreement. But the engagement is the moment when you first, freely and happily, make the agreement.
It's a sweet thing, and it's a sweet notion to hold on to as you move forward into planning a wedding and preparing for a marriage. You've already said yes; everything that comes next is living it out.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Got friends locked in boxes
Back in ye olde days of Facebook -- back when it was still mostly a place for college students to meet friends and find dates, rather than a place to get bombarded with Buzzfeed quizzes and political arguments -- the "About Me" section of your profile was a crucial part of your page. These days, you can still find the About Me section buried deep in the "About" tab, under "Details about You," but it used to be the crown jewel of your Facebook wall. Most of my friends carefully crafted their About Me sections, or else deliberately and defiantly kept them sparse, like my good friend and future bridesmaid whose About Me unchangingly and accurately stated simply: "Really big feet."
(Incidentally, I encourage everyone who's had a Facebook for six or more years to dig deep into their profiles to see what their About Me sections look like these days. I'd bet most of us forgot about the existence of About Mes four or more years ago.)
In typical Linda fashion, when I was in college I put a lot of thought into my About Me and cultivated it according to my own weird set of rules. For years, my About Me was a series of factual statements about myself that 1) people wouldn't be likely to know, 2) my friends might find mildly interesting, and 3) didn't give away anything I wasn't willing to share. To keep it fresh, I'd put out a new About Me section every few months. Also in typical Linda fashion, every time I created a new About Me section, I'd save and archive the old sections in a gmail draft (for posterity, but mostly to ensure that I wouldn't repeat any fun facts as I went along, like some kind of hack who wasn't awesome at About Me sections).
I completely forgot about my About Me archive (and about About Mes in general) until today, when I was deleting obsolete email drafts from my gmail account and ran across it.
Obviously, I've decided to copy and paste all of my historical About Me sections below. Surveying the lot, I'm simultaneously amused and a little flabbergasted by the sheer volume of writing that I managed to accumulate. While I didn't keep timestamps, I estimate that these About Mes date from roughly 2007, while the last draft I saved was from June 2011.
-----
My name is Linda. I recycle. I don't like Trivial Pursuit because I'm terrible at it. My music taste has, on average, changed significantly every three years or so. It's easy for me to mentally mix up conversations that I don't have in person. Turtlenecks look ridiculous on me. I wish I could get by on a smaller amount of sleep. It's hard for other people to tell when I'm excited about something. Working at the Dress Barn made me fear middle age but look forward to being elderly. My dream job will never be a real job unless I figure out how to pursue three different careers at once. I've been asked a surprising amount of times if "Linda" is short for anything. It's not.
My name is Linda. I constantly feel like I need to buy another pair of jeans. People tell me I have really small feet. Figuring out what time it is when it's presented in military/European-style takes me way longer than it should. I refuse to buy wide ruled notebooks. The snow scenes in Calvin and Hobbes always falsely get me excited for making snow sculptures that are far beyond what I'm actually capable of. I don't like the new food pyramid. No matter how I dye my hair, it always fades back to the exact same shade of Not My Real Color. I haven't had stereotypical fast food in over a year. I have no idea how zippers work. My backpack is about ten years old. The punch-buggy car fad was the worst thing that ever happened to my elementary school bus riding days.
My name is Linda. For some reason I still remember the fight songs for my high school, middle school, and elementary school. I've had about seven or eight "serious" injuries and more than half of them were due to me tripping over something/myself. I have seven step-nieces and nephews. If I discover a Law and Order marathon on TV, the rest of my day will be wasted. My computer is six years old. Usually I have weirdly realistic dreams. I think baseball is deliriously boring but since you asked: Cubs. I've never used a lawn mower. I compulsively crack my knuckles but not my back or my neck out of fear that somehow I'd turn the wrong way and paralyze myself. I think airports are cool. After watching a few home movies from around 1990, my sister and I discovered that we have video documentation of her halfheartedly trying to kill or injure me on like six separate occasions.
My name is Linda. I've learned and promptly forgotten the rules of football at least three times. I'll only join Facebook groups that have properly capitalized titles. Giant Drop is my favorite Six Flags ride despite the fact that it murders people. In Mario Kart, I'm Toad. I stopped dyeing my hair after doing so regularly for 7 years, to find that my real hair color isn't really close to what I thought it was. I'm inconsistently both a great and a terrible driver. Recently I've become as addict of both The Office and The West Wing DVD sets. I think movie sequels are cop-outs, no matter how good they are. One of my life goals is to ride in a hot air balloon. I never went through a brooding angsty stage as a teenager, so at this point I'm really hoping it happens completely inappropriately when I'm around 45.
My name is Linda. I always wish I had mint gum with me but I never get around to buying any. I'll remember practically anything once I write it down. Slow circulation has rendered me incapable of giving blood, but I always feel guilty about passing the booths. I store bread in the freezer for no other reason than "that's the way my mom does it." Despite consuming it regularly, caffeine has never become an addiction for me. I crack my knuckles. The recent cicada infestation of IWU has made me paranoid and spazzy when walking outside. As far as I know, I'm not really allergic to anything. I would consider giving up my own personality if it meant I could take Tina Fey's. When buying used books, I retroactively judge the person who owned the book before me based on the highlighting/comments he/she made in it.
My name is Linda. I've seen every single episode of Boy Meets World, Growing Pains, and Gilmore Girls. I don't like shopping for shoes. When I meet people, I unconsciously tend to assume that their parents are divorced until they tell me otherwise. I have a horrible sense of direction but I'm good at reading maps. Despite working in food service for three years now, I don't really know how to cook. Before I die I want to become fluent in French and Polish. I've never had a cavity. When I have big projects or assignments I tackle them right away and get done early, but for everyday or simple tasks I procrastinate horribly. I named my car Phoebe. When I was a year old, my mom let me choose my first Christmas tree ornament myself, and I picked a ceramic cow.
My name is Linda. I haven't bought new notebooks for over a year. I can't sleep when my pillow is too fluffy, but I sleep perfectly fine without one at all. For no real reason other than habit and upbringing, I barely ever use any swear words. I don't like skipping class. Thanks to this horrendous winter I've become physically and emotionally dependent on hand lotion. I don't eat hot, prepared meals very often. I'm not a sports fan, but if I happen to be paying attention to a game I'm capable of getting surprisingly invested in it. I'm the only person from my high school graduating class who came to IWU. I have a hard time remembering sequences of numbers for more than 10 seconds.
My name is Linda. I have a weird aversion to using forks. I like jobs that involve some sort of manual labor. Thanks to inconsistent reports at the doctor's office, I'm really not sure how tall I am. I sing in the car but not in the shower. I've more or less stopped using AIM, which would have been inconceivable to 15-year-old me. I don't really understand why going to the movies is considered a social activity. I went to prom as a sophomore, but not as a junior or senior. Because I do it so rarely, I think I look really strange and out of place in dressy clothing and always wonder if other people think so too. When I was in fourth grade a kid made fun of me for smiling too much. If I'd been alive before 1920, I wouldn't have been classified as white.
My name is Linda. I really need a haircut. I love browsing through the housewares section of department stores, which makes me feel like I must be nearing adulthood. I can identify a surprising number of dog breeds. I've never solved a Rubik's cube, though I've never been patient enough to really try. I'm a non-smoker. Tornadoes don't scare me as much as they probably should. My face, like my sister's, tends to unconsciously express whatever I'm thinking, which I take to mean we should never play poker. I think IQ tests are silly and misleading. Every time I have to travel by airplane, I'm always a little let down by the dramatic difference between how cool the concept of airplanes is compared to how cramped and boring flights actually are.
My name is Linda. I regularly confuse the words "cavalry" and "Calvary" when I say them aloud. Relative to most people I know of both sexes, I don't own very many pairs of shoes. I have an unhealthy love for Velveeta cheese. For the first 10-13 years of my life, if you asked, I would have identified myself as blonde. I'm aware of having dreams almost every night, and I usually remember them upon waking. My favorite trees are ginkgoes. Minimum wage has gone up $2.75 since I started working. I'm not addicted to caffeine despite my dubiously frequent coffee consumption. A lot of cosmetics products kind of scare me. I really want to be friends with Emma Thompson, even though she's middle-aged, famous, and in England. There's a consensus among my friends that I wouldn't look half bad with a shaved head.
My name is Linda. I've never lost my cell phone. Every new year I feel like it's really important for me to buy a pocket calendar/planner, and every year I wind up barely using it. I love cornbread. If I'm sleepy during the day, it's probably because I got too much sleep the night before rather than too little. I'm excited for summer so I can finally stop wearing closed-toed shoes or shirts with sleeves. Samus is my Super Smash Bros character of choice. No matter the chair I'm in, I'm probably sitting cross-legged. I'm better at saving money than I am at spending it. I don't understand why anyone would ever buy a cappuccino. Given that I have accepted the fact that I'm a generally klutzy person, I feel a little grateful every day I come back from my waitressing job without spilling lemonade or cajun chicken pasta on a guest.
My name is Linda. I like talking to people on the phone, but it takes forever for me to stop being lazy and dial a number. I think reading from hardcover books is awkward and annoying. The other night I had a dream that my car rolled into a lake. I don't understand why knuckle-cracking bothers some people so much. My handwriting has gotten noticeably worse since I graduated college. I love solving jigsaw puzzles but for some reason I view word searches as a huge waste of time. Generally, I give my hair fairly little time and attention. I sustain injuries without much complaint, but I get motion sick at the drop of a hat. I knew that I finally attained a "real" job when my nails were able to grow out without being broken by relentless dishwater and turning chairs over at the end of the night.
My name is Linda. I don't own a smart phone. I sporadically whiten my teeth with those gross, over-the-counter strips. My feet are unusually wide. I feel like I should actually learn how to spell Massachusetts before I move there. According to my mom, I was very nearly named Madeline. When I sign my name in cursive, none of the letters dip below the signature line. If my name were Madeline, that would still hold true. I'm not really sure why anyone puts china dishware on their wedding registries anymore. I think most TV shows go downhill after season 5, except for Law and Order, which is immortal. I hold pretty strong opinions, overall, which is offset by the fact that I'm also pretty accommodating, overall. I'm regularly horrified by fashion, particularly women's shoes.
------
For the record, I now love Trivial Pursuit, but almost everything else in here is still pretty solid.
(Incidentally, I encourage everyone who's had a Facebook for six or more years to dig deep into their profiles to see what their About Me sections look like these days. I'd bet most of us forgot about the existence of About Mes four or more years ago.)
In typical Linda fashion, when I was in college I put a lot of thought into my About Me and cultivated it according to my own weird set of rules. For years, my About Me was a series of factual statements about myself that 1) people wouldn't be likely to know, 2) my friends might find mildly interesting, and 3) didn't give away anything I wasn't willing to share. To keep it fresh, I'd put out a new About Me section every few months. Also in typical Linda fashion, every time I created a new About Me section, I'd save and archive the old sections in a gmail draft (for posterity, but mostly to ensure that I wouldn't repeat any fun facts as I went along, like some kind of hack who wasn't awesome at About Me sections).
I completely forgot about my About Me archive (and about About Mes in general) until today, when I was deleting obsolete email drafts from my gmail account and ran across it.
Obviously, I've decided to copy and paste all of my historical About Me sections below. Surveying the lot, I'm simultaneously amused and a little flabbergasted by the sheer volume of writing that I managed to accumulate. While I didn't keep timestamps, I estimate that these About Mes date from roughly 2007, while the last draft I saved was from June 2011.
-----
My name is Linda. I recycle. I don't like Trivial Pursuit because I'm terrible at it. My music taste has, on average, changed significantly every three years or so. It's easy for me to mentally mix up conversations that I don't have in person. Turtlenecks look ridiculous on me. I wish I could get by on a smaller amount of sleep. It's hard for other people to tell when I'm excited about something. Working at the Dress Barn made me fear middle age but look forward to being elderly. My dream job will never be a real job unless I figure out how to pursue three different careers at once. I've been asked a surprising amount of times if "Linda" is short for anything. It's not.
My name is Linda. I constantly feel like I need to buy another pair of jeans. People tell me I have really small feet. Figuring out what time it is when it's presented in military/European-style takes me way longer than it should. I refuse to buy wide ruled notebooks. The snow scenes in Calvin and Hobbes always falsely get me excited for making snow sculptures that are far beyond what I'm actually capable of. I don't like the new food pyramid. No matter how I dye my hair, it always fades back to the exact same shade of Not My Real Color. I haven't had stereotypical fast food in over a year. I have no idea how zippers work. My backpack is about ten years old. The punch-buggy car fad was the worst thing that ever happened to my elementary school bus riding days.
My name is Linda. For some reason I still remember the fight songs for my high school, middle school, and elementary school. I've had about seven or eight "serious" injuries and more than half of them were due to me tripping over something/myself. I have seven step-nieces and nephews. If I discover a Law and Order marathon on TV, the rest of my day will be wasted. My computer is six years old. Usually I have weirdly realistic dreams. I think baseball is deliriously boring but since you asked: Cubs. I've never used a lawn mower. I compulsively crack my knuckles but not my back or my neck out of fear that somehow I'd turn the wrong way and paralyze myself. I think airports are cool. After watching a few home movies from around 1990, my sister and I discovered that we have video documentation of her halfheartedly trying to kill or injure me on like six separate occasions.
My name is Linda. I've learned and promptly forgotten the rules of football at least three times. I'll only join Facebook groups that have properly capitalized titles. Giant Drop is my favorite Six Flags ride despite the fact that it murders people. In Mario Kart, I'm Toad. I stopped dyeing my hair after doing so regularly for 7 years, to find that my real hair color isn't really close to what I thought it was. I'm inconsistently both a great and a terrible driver. Recently I've become as addict of both The Office and The West Wing DVD sets. I think movie sequels are cop-outs, no matter how good they are. One of my life goals is to ride in a hot air balloon. I never went through a brooding angsty stage as a teenager, so at this point I'm really hoping it happens completely inappropriately when I'm around 45.
My name is Linda. I always wish I had mint gum with me but I never get around to buying any. I'll remember practically anything once I write it down. Slow circulation has rendered me incapable of giving blood, but I always feel guilty about passing the booths. I store bread in the freezer for no other reason than "that's the way my mom does it." Despite consuming it regularly, caffeine has never become an addiction for me. I crack my knuckles. The recent cicada infestation of IWU has made me paranoid and spazzy when walking outside. As far as I know, I'm not really allergic to anything. I would consider giving up my own personality if it meant I could take Tina Fey's. When buying used books, I retroactively judge the person who owned the book before me based on the highlighting/comments he/she made in it.
My name is Linda. I've seen every single episode of Boy Meets World, Growing Pains, and Gilmore Girls. I don't like shopping for shoes. When I meet people, I unconsciously tend to assume that their parents are divorced until they tell me otherwise. I have a horrible sense of direction but I'm good at reading maps. Despite working in food service for three years now, I don't really know how to cook. Before I die I want to become fluent in French and Polish. I've never had a cavity. When I have big projects or assignments I tackle them right away and get done early, but for everyday or simple tasks I procrastinate horribly. I named my car Phoebe. When I was a year old, my mom let me choose my first Christmas tree ornament myself, and I picked a ceramic cow.
My name is Linda. I haven't bought new notebooks for over a year. I can't sleep when my pillow is too fluffy, but I sleep perfectly fine without one at all. For no real reason other than habit and upbringing, I barely ever use any swear words. I don't like skipping class. Thanks to this horrendous winter I've become physically and emotionally dependent on hand lotion. I don't eat hot, prepared meals very often. I'm not a sports fan, but if I happen to be paying attention to a game I'm capable of getting surprisingly invested in it. I'm the only person from my high school graduating class who came to IWU. I have a hard time remembering sequences of numbers for more than 10 seconds.
My name is Linda. I have a weird aversion to using forks. I like jobs that involve some sort of manual labor. Thanks to inconsistent reports at the doctor's office, I'm really not sure how tall I am. I sing in the car but not in the shower. I've more or less stopped using AIM, which would have been inconceivable to 15-year-old me. I don't really understand why going to the movies is considered a social activity. I went to prom as a sophomore, but not as a junior or senior. Because I do it so rarely, I think I look really strange and out of place in dressy clothing and always wonder if other people think so too. When I was in fourth grade a kid made fun of me for smiling too much. If I'd been alive before 1920, I wouldn't have been classified as white.
My name is Linda. I really need a haircut. I love browsing through the housewares section of department stores, which makes me feel like I must be nearing adulthood. I can identify a surprising number of dog breeds. I've never solved a Rubik's cube, though I've never been patient enough to really try. I'm a non-smoker. Tornadoes don't scare me as much as they probably should. My face, like my sister's, tends to unconsciously express whatever I'm thinking, which I take to mean we should never play poker. I think IQ tests are silly and misleading. Every time I have to travel by airplane, I'm always a little let down by the dramatic difference between how cool the concept of airplanes is compared to how cramped and boring flights actually are.
My name is Linda. I regularly confuse the words "cavalry" and "Calvary" when I say them aloud. Relative to most people I know of both sexes, I don't own very many pairs of shoes. I have an unhealthy love for Velveeta cheese. For the first 10-13 years of my life, if you asked, I would have identified myself as blonde. I'm aware of having dreams almost every night, and I usually remember them upon waking. My favorite trees are ginkgoes. Minimum wage has gone up $2.75 since I started working. I'm not addicted to caffeine despite my dubiously frequent coffee consumption. A lot of cosmetics products kind of scare me. I really want to be friends with Emma Thompson, even though she's middle-aged, famous, and in England. There's a consensus among my friends that I wouldn't look half bad with a shaved head.
My name is Linda. I've never lost my cell phone. Every new year I feel like it's really important for me to buy a pocket calendar/planner, and every year I wind up barely using it. I love cornbread. If I'm sleepy during the day, it's probably because I got too much sleep the night before rather than too little. I'm excited for summer so I can finally stop wearing closed-toed shoes or shirts with sleeves. Samus is my Super Smash Bros character of choice. No matter the chair I'm in, I'm probably sitting cross-legged. I'm better at saving money than I am at spending it. I don't understand why anyone would ever buy a cappuccino. Given that I have accepted the fact that I'm a generally klutzy person, I feel a little grateful every day I come back from my waitressing job without spilling lemonade or cajun chicken pasta on a guest.
My name is Linda. I like talking to people on the phone, but it takes forever for me to stop being lazy and dial a number. I think reading from hardcover books is awkward and annoying. The other night I had a dream that my car rolled into a lake. I don't understand why knuckle-cracking bothers some people so much. My handwriting has gotten noticeably worse since I graduated college. I love solving jigsaw puzzles but for some reason I view word searches as a huge waste of time. Generally, I give my hair fairly little time and attention. I sustain injuries without much complaint, but I get motion sick at the drop of a hat. I knew that I finally attained a "real" job when my nails were able to grow out without being broken by relentless dishwater and turning chairs over at the end of the night.
My name is Linda. I don't own a smart phone. I sporadically whiten my teeth with those gross, over-the-counter strips. My feet are unusually wide. I feel like I should actually learn how to spell Massachusetts before I move there. According to my mom, I was very nearly named Madeline. When I sign my name in cursive, none of the letters dip below the signature line. If my name were Madeline, that would still hold true. I'm not really sure why anyone puts china dishware on their wedding registries anymore. I think most TV shows go downhill after season 5, except for Law and Order, which is immortal. I hold pretty strong opinions, overall, which is offset by the fact that I'm also pretty accommodating, overall. I'm regularly horrified by fashion, particularly women's shoes.
------
For the record, I now love Trivial Pursuit, but almost everything else in here is still pretty solid.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Some distance makes everything seem small
Come each New Years, my annual tradition in this blog is to forgo resolutions and instead make Predictions of Varying Certainty for the coming year. During the year, I take pains to avoid re-reading my most recent New Years blog so that I'm maximally surprised/amused when I revisit the list 365-ish days later.
This little game is more fun when the predictions are riskier, but over the years, as my life has settled into increasingly familiar patterns, it's become more difficult to make predictions that fall into the sweet spot of "plausible but not boring" while still maintaining a positive and hopeful outlook fitting for a new year. (For example, at this point, predicting that a friend will get married is a boring certainty. Predicting that someone will get divorced is a more interesting but decidedly more assholish list item.) Still, the mental work of compiling a list of happy things that I can feel reasonably optimistic about coming to pass is a pleasant way to kick off a new calendar.
Predictions of Varying Certainty for 2014:
- I will pass my major exam and come up with a[n undoubtedly preliminary] dissertation topic.
- GR will teach me how to drive manual transmission cars, for real this time.
- I will hold a baby. (You guys, I've never held a baby before.)
- I will attend at least one baseball game at either Wrigley or Fenway.
- At least three close friends (i.e., Facebook acquaintances don't count) will buy houses.
- I will continue to work my part-time/remote job, even though I will also continue to find it incrementally more frustrating to balance it all with my teaching and grad work.
- I will find teaching a literature class more fun than teaching a writing class.
- I will visit at least one new state.
How Prescient I Actually Was:
- Success! I'll be writing a draft of my dissertation prospectus in the coming weeks.
- Failure. GR and I had one stick-shift driving lesson over the summer, and we've since agreed that no reasonable person can expect to competently learn to drive stick in the city of Boston, what with the hills and the tiny streets and the daredevil pedestrians.
- Failure. You guys, I've still never held a baby.
- Yep! A trip to Fenway was how GR and I celebrated our fifth anniversary. BONUS SPORTS: We also went to a Hawks game a couple weeks ago.
- I cheated a bit on this one; I knew at least a couple friends who were actively house-hunting when I made my prediction list, so this unsurprisingly came to pass. The more interesting tidbit here is that all three couples coincidentally bought their houses within a month of each other.
- Truthish. My job actually doesn't feel any more stressful now than it did a year ago. Fingers crossed that I'll be able to keep this comfortable and steady source of income for the foreseeable future.
- Truth. This year I taught an intro literature course and an upper-level elective course in my particular area of expertise, and both classes were a blast to teach. While I'm looking forward to my year of pure, uninterrupted dissertation work (coming in May 2015!), now that I've gotten a taste of teaching it's going to be hard to leave it behind.
- Success! GR and I took a weekend trip to Maine over the summer. We concluded that Maine is the Wisconsin of the east coast.
I suppose it's worth noting that I didn't foresee getting engaged in 2014, so my overall level of assessed prescience should probably take a hit for that.
Predictions of Varying Certainty for 2015:
- For the first time, I will sign up for and run a 5K or 10K race. I'll find it fun but not worth doing on the regular.
- At least one close friend will have a baby. I will hold that baby.
- GR and I will plan our wedding, and in defiance of everyone who insists otherwise, we will find the process to be relatively simple and stress-free.
- I will write at least one chapter of my dissertation.
- I will seriously entertain the idea of visiting the British Isles but will ultimately defer my trip to 2016 and not leave the country at all.
- I will attend at least one concert and/or theatrical performance.
- At least five close friends/family members will come visit me and GR in Boston.
This little game is more fun when the predictions are riskier, but over the years, as my life has settled into increasingly familiar patterns, it's become more difficult to make predictions that fall into the sweet spot of "plausible but not boring" while still maintaining a positive and hopeful outlook fitting for a new year. (For example, at this point, predicting that a friend will get married is a boring certainty. Predicting that someone will get divorced is a more interesting but decidedly more assholish list item.) Still, the mental work of compiling a list of happy things that I can feel reasonably optimistic about coming to pass is a pleasant way to kick off a new calendar.
Predictions of Varying Certainty for 2014:
- I will pass my major exam and come up with a[n undoubtedly preliminary] dissertation topic.
- GR will teach me how to drive manual transmission cars, for real this time.
- I will hold a baby. (You guys, I've never held a baby before.)
- I will attend at least one baseball game at either Wrigley or Fenway.
- At least three close friends (i.e., Facebook acquaintances don't count) will buy houses.
- I will continue to work my part-time/remote job, even though I will also continue to find it incrementally more frustrating to balance it all with my teaching and grad work.
- I will find teaching a literature class more fun than teaching a writing class.
- I will visit at least one new state.
How Prescient I Actually Was:
- Success! I'll be writing a draft of my dissertation prospectus in the coming weeks.
- Failure. GR and I had one stick-shift driving lesson over the summer, and we've since agreed that no reasonable person can expect to competently learn to drive stick in the city of Boston, what with the hills and the tiny streets and the daredevil pedestrians.
- Failure. You guys, I've still never held a baby.
- Yep! A trip to Fenway was how GR and I celebrated our fifth anniversary. BONUS SPORTS: We also went to a Hawks game a couple weeks ago.
- I cheated a bit on this one; I knew at least a couple friends who were actively house-hunting when I made my prediction list, so this unsurprisingly came to pass. The more interesting tidbit here is that all three couples coincidentally bought their houses within a month of each other.
- Truthish. My job actually doesn't feel any more stressful now than it did a year ago. Fingers crossed that I'll be able to keep this comfortable and steady source of income for the foreseeable future.
- Truth. This year I taught an intro literature course and an upper-level elective course in my particular area of expertise, and both classes were a blast to teach. While I'm looking forward to my year of pure, uninterrupted dissertation work (coming in May 2015!), now that I've gotten a taste of teaching it's going to be hard to leave it behind.
- Success! GR and I took a weekend trip to Maine over the summer. We concluded that Maine is the Wisconsin of the east coast.
I suppose it's worth noting that I didn't foresee getting engaged in 2014, so my overall level of assessed prescience should probably take a hit for that.
Predictions of Varying Certainty for 2015:
- For the first time, I will sign up for and run a 5K or 10K race. I'll find it fun but not worth doing on the regular.
- At least one close friend will have a baby. I will hold that baby.
- GR and I will plan our wedding, and in defiance of everyone who insists otherwise, we will find the process to be relatively simple and stress-free.
- I will write at least one chapter of my dissertation.
- I will seriously entertain the idea of visiting the British Isles but will ultimately defer my trip to 2016 and not leave the country at all.
- I will attend at least one concert and/or theatrical performance.
- At least five close friends/family members will come visit me and GR in Boston.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)