holidaze

Finally back home from visiting the family. Everything went well. No conflicts. RB was (mostly) angelic. Now we have PILES of toys in the living room. Next purchase: toy box.

I have a lot of work to do before school starts and before my next meeting with my advisor. I am embarrased by the lack of progress I have made on the dissertation front. It's not that I haven't been working--it's that I haven't been working on that. And it has to change. But I can't work yet because RB's preschool is closed until Thursday. That means a few more days to try to get the house back in some kind of manageable order. I don't know how people work with kids at home. I can't do it. I can steal a little time during the afternoon nap, but by the time she goes to bed for the night, six-month-pregnant Sarah is pretty much worthless.

So now I'm going to put away the clothes from our suitcases (the husband, of course, is back at work) while watching the Ace of Cakes marathon on Food Network.

P.S. I haven't been on a date with my husband since our anniversary in July.

lactation room

My university just established a lactation room in my building. It's certainly not convenient for everyone in the (very very large) university, but it's a start. And not a bad place to start--the English department has been producing babies at an astounding rate lately.

Person of the Year; Thank you very much :)

Time magazine's decision to name me--and you, who are participating with me in the user-generated web universe--Person of the Year was like a big ol' Christmas present just for me. This is SOOOO what I'm teaching next semester. It raises so many questions of composition, authorship, audience, identity, and community--very exciting for advanced comp. I am on a teaching high already and I'm just writing the syllabus. After a disappointing semester with technical writing (well, not so much disappointing as just plain boring), I am looking forward to a new course with an exciting topic and a new batch of students. And perhaps I will write a dissertation, too.

Bart Simpson Makes Fun Of Grad Students

Enjoy!

For those who like a carnival

Cotton candy and funnel cake are currently being served at The Carnival of GRADual Progress.

grading participation

My head is already in next semester, and I wanted to throw a question out to the blog world: How do you grade participation?

I am torn about whether to include participation as part of a course grade. Including it in the grade communicates to the students that their preparation for and participation in class activities (which will include class meetings and an online component in my case) is essential, but it also ends up being difficult to quantify. How do you make a participation grade more than simply an attendence grade? And how do you keep it from inflating grades?

400 words=awesome writing assignment

I have found a new writing assignment for advanced composition next semester, thanks to a Newsweek story about a literary magazine called 400 Words. The magazine publishes autobiographical nonfiction pieces with a 400-word limit. The theme of my course is Identity and Community, and what better way to wrap up the semester than with this exercise in clear, concise writing? And they will have the option then to submit it for publication. And ending the semester with such a short assignment means less grading stress--especially important since I will have a newborn by then. That's right--teaching next semester and giving birth in April. Can I do it? I sort of have to. I have it all planned out--hopefully Little Bit will respect the schedule.

Dear Students,

Semester is over. Grades are turned in. No, you cannot do extra credit. Yes, that is your final grade. I realize that it is of the utmost importance that you get an A. I am sorry that life as you know it will end when your grade is posted. But it is a little late in the game to do anything about it. Ship has sailed. Fat lady has sung. Insert your cliche of choice. I know you hate me, and I am comfortable with that.

Sincerely,
Your Teacher

overcoming writer's block and new experiences in literary criticism

I got over the writing hump, and things are now progressing. I moved past this last block in the way I often do--by starting in the middle. I am very comfortable with close reading. It is really just fun. I love it, and I think I'm good at it. So I skipped the sort of set-up that has to happen to introduce my argument and methods, jumped right into the stories, and I've filled up lots of pages quickly. I'm not finished with that stage yet, but as I have written it I feel like I have a better grasp on what I need to write in my introductory pages. So, good.

I've also had an interesting experience while writing this essay. I don't think I've ever written two essays on the same text before. There aren't a lot of opportunities for that in grad school because most of your papers have to be on a course topic. I think this is also the first time that I have produced a whole piece independent of a class. It's kind of exciting. I described this project a bit in my previous post--it's on a text that I've written about before and it's making an argument that is close to but not the same as the argument I made in a previous paper. I kind of thought that I would be able to draw large pieces from my previous essay, but that is not happening. This may sound a little simple-minded and unsophisticated, but I am really excited by the fact that I am analyzing the same stories, I have not changed my mind about what the stories mean, yet I am writing two completely separate readings. They are totally complementary and work together in interesting ways, and of course, I've read essays that work together like that before, but I've never written them. It's fun. And it's nice to have fun while working.

Another clear benefit to this, even though it's not saving me time now, is that my other essay will remain something very different from this one, so I can hopefully get both of them published without worrying about one looking like a revised version of the other. I really think that first one deserves to be published, and I'd like to send it out soon. This one is turning out to be quite good, I think, but I am not as confident. I have a fear that my essay will be cut from the collection in the end, and all of this will be for naught. But maybe I could find a home for it somewhere else if that happens. We'll see.

And now I must work. I don't want to push my luck and piss off the editor by not getting my submission in on time.

words not coming

I finished my paper last week with a grand sprint to the end, and I was pleased with it. But I still have an essay for a collection due December 15, and I can't seem to get it done. It's not so much writer's block as a complete disinterest in the task. I have already written an essay that is very close to this topic, but it does not fit the topic of the collection. So I proposed a new essay that does fit in with the collection but does not require more extensive research. The paper has to be different because I am making a completely separate argument--it's not just a revision of the other paper. And I like this argument--I think it's smart and interesting and right, and my advisor does, too. As does the editor of the collection, apparently. So why is it that I don't want to write the essay? I think what is missing here is the excitement of delving so deeply into the text and discovering things there and developing my interpretation--I feel like I've already done all that. I know exactly what I'm going to say and exactly what evidence I'm going to use because I have spent a great deal of time with this text working on the other paper and this argument is sort of adjacent to that one. It seems like I should be able to spit out this essay in record time. I'm just not into it right now. And I'm not sure how I'm going to force myself over this hump.

nuts and bolts

I made the switch to Blogger Beta, but I'm still a bit nervous about what kinds of kinks it might have. Please let me know if this has screwed up your feed subscriptions or anything. I like the labels, and I am tempted now to go back and tag all of my posts and get rid of the tag cloud I've got down there.

New Mama on the block

Welcome to our bloggy world, AcadeMama.

fathering

Supadiscomama has a nice post on fatherhood, which has inspired yet another post on work-family conflict. I certainly do not disagree with Supadiscomama. Yes, I think that we need to change our assumption that mothers are better at parenting than fathers in order to get away from the expectation that women are the primary caregivers. Something revolutionary needs to happen in the realm of men's work before this can be possible.

My friends can attest to an equitable division of home labor in their families, but they are lucky women, indeed. Such is not the case in my home, and it is not because my husband and I ascribe to old ideals about gendered work. It is because the world around us still holds those ideals. Men, including fathers, are expected to perform as ideal workers more than women. There is much less tolerance for men taking paternity leave or going home early to be with family or taking off work to care for sick children. My husband has one of those jobs that depends on my availability to do most of the work at home, including child care. He's not a high-powered executive chasing the almighty dollar. He's a restaurant manager. At all income levels, those jobs are the norm, not the exception.

Here is where choice rhetoric comes in--he has chosen that career and he could choose one that is more family friendly. But, of course, it's not nearly so simple to drop everything and start over in a new career with no experience. And he has paid a "daddy tax" by acting out of that ideal worker norm. When he chose to relocate so I could go to school, he lost a promotion and all his seniority, which means he has been in the same position for years and has lost some long-term income potential. And it will happen again after I graduate and ask him, once again, to quit his job in favor of mine.

My husband wants to care for our child, and I have left her alone with him while I have gone to conferences (but admittedly, I am nervous when I do). He is a good father, and he is involved with our child's life. And he cleans the house and does the dishes from time to time (someone has to--I am not a good housekeeper). But I am the one in charge of managing our home, making sure all the bills are paid and the clothes are washed and the groceries are bought. And I am RB's primary caregiver. It's not the way we would choose it to be if it were really our choice. It's the way that his job demands his time and mine allows for much more flexibility.

academics with children

Bitch, Ph.D. recently responded to a reader’s question about the feasibility of getting a Ph.D. while raising three children—LOTS of discussion there. Academom and Geeky Mom have also responded on their own blogs.

To add my two cents, of course it’s hard to get a graduate degree and raise children. It’s hard to have any career and raise children. Some people will succeed as if they don’t even have children while others will not finish their degrees. That happens among people who don’t have children, too. I do think that in some places women can be taken less seriously if they have children, but I have not experienced that in my department.

The problem is not just with academia but with the general expectation in most careers that employees will be ideal workers who can devote almost unlimited time to their jobs without interference from family responsibilities (read Joan Williams’s Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to do About It). If you’re a mother who performs as an ideal worker, then you must be neglecting your children. If your family responsibilities interfere with your work because you have to take off when kids are sick or you can’t work after five because you have to be home, then you are not committed to your career and you don’t deserve rewards like promotions or fellowships. Some of these considerations come into play in grad school, with course work and deadlines, others come up in the job search (who has time to publish when you’re doing all you can to meet your degree requirements?), but I think it is even more intensified on the tenure track (but I can’t personally attest to this yet).

I think that I have done well raising one child while in grad school—we’ll soon see how I do with two. It is doable. But I expect that my responsibilities as a mother will effect my career in the long-term. I am on a race to finish my dissertation before my funding runs out, hopefully publishing something along the way. But I’m certain that I will take a year longer than I would have without kids. And when I look for a job, I am not hoping to end up at a major research university, especially if that means moving multiple times to get there. I don’t want to the intense pressure of two books for tenure because I don’t want to put in the hours for it. I want to be with my family and I want to be happy when I’m with them, not worried about my job. That is my choice, you say? Well, maybe, but what kind of choice is that? My career OR my kids? I have adapted my notion of success in this career to something that allows me to teach and do my work and have plenty of time for my family. I don’t believe I can find this ideal at an elite university, so I do not aspire to work at an elite university. I know that you can probably name me some people who have done it all, but I don’t see that in my life. So I intend to accept the glass-mommy-ceiling, but that doesn’t mean I’m always happy about it.

For more on the effect of motherhood on academic careers, see Mary Ann Mason’s Do Babies Matter? project.

More on evangelicals and politics

Harrogate has accepted my invitation and responded to my post about the Christian Coalition. And I have responded on his blog. Go see it if you're interested in this topic.

Teaching carnival

Here.

Shopping

I just marked 13 people off my Christmas shopping list. I heart Amazon.com.