finished semester but no break in sight

Blame the light blogging on too much work, too little sleep, and not enough hands. I finished grading in record time because the papers were very short. I may drop this assignment for the summer because it's the summer and it will give me time to think about whether I want to continue it in the fall. Perhaps the deliberations on the value of this assignment deserve a separate post, but not today. I'm considering dropping it only because it is autobiographical, and those are so hard to grade. How do you give someone a bad grade on a paper about their parents' divorce or their best friend's suicide, no matter how badly written it is? So the question is not if this assignment is valuable--I think it is--but if I can use it responsibly. Good news is that despite some unusually high grades on the last paper, the final grades turned out exactly as I thought they should. It's nice when you get to the end of the semester, look at how it all turned out in the end, and agree with the outcome. It's not fun when you get to the end and wonder, how did this person not get an A? Or how did this guy manage to pass?

So now I have to finish revising my essay that is being published. I have signed a contract for it, but I still have a fear that in the end it will be thrown out. I won't believe it until I see it in print. I think my insecurity about it is based on my current, less-than-ideal working situation--sleep-deprived, hormonal, and stealing bits of time here and there to work on it. But I did a whole year of coursework in that state, and it worked out alright. By the time I finish the article, it will be time to start summer school, and somewhere in the midst of that, I'll be moving somewhere. Still don't know where or when. I'm just teaching one class in the summer, so I won't be too overworked. And so far it looks like a very small class, so maybe I won't have massive amounts of grading to do. I do have some preparation to do for this because even though I'm teaching the same class with the same book, it's in the summer and totally online, so there's some adapting to do.

Enough rambling. This post has bored even me.

And the to-do list grows

I had whittled down my to-do list to three major items: apply for teaching award, finish final revisions of proposal and file it, apply for funding with April deadline. Of course, teaching fits in there, too, but next week is Spring Break and my next student papers don't come in until after that. So today I got an email from the editor of the book collection that I submitted to. My essay has been accepted with revisions. And don't you think you should add some Irigaray? And have it in by May 15. Aack! So add another major project to the to-do list, and it's just not getting done before the baby comes. Focus on the good news--I can now add it to my CV as a forthcoming publication. That's nice since this thing has been drawn out over a year (I'm sure that's normal, but it still feels like a long time to wait). So now I must put my nose to the grindstone.

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.

A nonexistent essay that I will not be publishing

I just turned down a publication opportunity because I have too much on my plate that is more important, the paper is not written, the due date is early August, it's a collection of essays and not a major journal, and the topic--the religious and social implications of Bobble Head Jesus, which I saw on the local news being sold at the local major league baseball team's Christian Day--so much to work with there!--is at best tangential to what I'm working on. I think that I can find a home for Bobble Head Jesus later. Or maybe the blog is the best home for him. The editor was interested enough based on our correspondence to include my essay in the proposal for the book without confirming with me that I actually would write the essay and to create a title for my project without telling me. Incidentally, the title was decidedly not what the essay would have been about had the essay come into existence. And the proposed cover image for the book made me sicker to my stomach than--well, than Bobble Head Jesus made me. I may go to hell just for having seen it. But I think that was the point.

Hey--I think I just wrote my first potentially professionally dangerous post. But I highly doubt that the editor will see it or that he will have any sort of impact on my professional life. But I would like to add that I have the utmost respect for him and his project and that my only real complaint is a drastic difference in taste. And to be perfectly fair, he offered me the chance to read the proposal and, I assume, approve or change the title. I was just surprised that it had a title!

So this leads me to the topic of grad student publishing. I am certainly not being snobbish here in declining this opportunity. If the timing were better, I would jump on it. I know that a collection of essays is better than nothing and that if the publisher is reputable, then a collection of essays is great. I don't know if I should have turned it down or just sucked it up and churned the thing out--it's another issue of prioritizing, and I don't know what is more important--focusing on my dissertation or publishing an article so I might get a job later. I do have an article not on my diss topic that I hope to submit this fall and then I hope to have another one in good shape by the end of the fall before the baby comes (BTW, due date is Christmas Day). I really am not sure where publication should fit into my priorities--which is a question for the Absent Advisor who will soon be present again.