Queen · of · the · Harpies

Oh, Family Day!  What a rip-off.  Not only is this during reading week, making the whole thing null and void as a holiday, but it cuts into the actual reading I have to do because the children are all home.  And will be on Friday since it’s (yet another) PA day.

I’m going into Toronto tomorrow and I demand to have a fantastic time.

"It's going to be so cool!  At the very end, on the last page, it's going to say "'THE END', but there's also going to be a question mark!  So it might not really be the end."  

Rock on, kiddo!

Write the statements of interest for the last two schools.

Send application packages by courier.

Finish reading a novel (1/3 done) for tomorrow’s class.

Send a discussion question on the novel to the professor today.

Do some research for the R.A. job.

Think about the topic for my seminar in two weeks and start research.

Think about the topic for my other seminar in three weeks and start research.

Mark huge, ugly pile of business writing nonsense for my T.A. job

Read for next week’s classes (Book of Negroes, Book 3 of the Locke)

Make a menu for Pancake Tuesday party (30 guests!).

Find and borrow a couple of griddles and an enormous coffee maker for that party.

Notice how hardly anything got done yesterday?  That's because I wasn't including all of the extra stuff:

Return borrowed book to prof. 
Get money out of the bank
Buy birthday gift for my father
Get groceries
Buy shampoo and conditioner to replace the product that Mia filled with water when she had her bath on Monday night
Make dinner
Eat dinner
Wander around the thrift store for an hour
Buy a new pair of Mary Janes and make Ulysses come and buy shoes too (buy one, get one free)

And today I still have to do all of the undone things, but I also have to:

Go to class
Make it home right after to meet the kids (Ulysses is in Toronto today)
Make dinner
Clean up

Pick up the last transcripts from the registrar’s office.

Write the statements of interest for the last two schools.

Send application packages by courier.

Finish reading a novel (1/3 done) for tomorrow’s class.

Send a discussion question on the novel to the professor today.

Do some research for the R.A. job.

Think about the topic for my seminar in two weeks and start research.

Think about the topic for my other seminar in three weeks and start research.

Mark huge, ugly pile of business writing nonsense for my T.A. job.

Read for next week’s classes.

Make a menu for Pancake Tuesday party (30 guests!).

Find and borrow a couple of griddles and an enormous coffee maker for that party.

My sleeping schedule has been all over the place lately.  Amidst freaking out about PhD applications, I stayed up all of Sunday night (I attempted bed three times, tossed about for about an hour each with anxiety, got up, went back, rinse, repeat) and didn’t fall asleep until about six-thirty.  Monday I went to bed at eight.  Last night, freaking out about a presentation, I stayed up working on it until seven. 

The seminar was fast and furious.  Classes started a week ago, so I had to read the primary text, spend the weekend creating statements about grad school, class on Monday, and then do all of the research and writing for this thing yesterday.  Yesterday was also when I looked at the syllabus and discovered that the seminar was worth a full quarter of my grade.  I had in my head that it was “the little one” because it was on contextualizing the reading rather than analyzing.  But both seminars are weighted the same. 

I talked about the Queen’s Bush Settlement – an area really close to here where fugitive slaves from the States once had a prosperous settlement which then basically dissolved.  I explored how it came into being and why it broke up.  The reading was on a group of slave narratives and some of the accounts were from people living in the Queen’s Bush.  Totally fascinating stuff (to me) and I hope I managed to get the across. 

I was a little strung out on my just-morning sleep, but I think it went okay.  Too late now, at any rate.

Oh graduate school:  you are both really fun and really tiring. 

What the hell was 2007 like?  I’m seeing many a good meme around, but I haven’t bothered. 

I’ll say this:  getting into graduate school and then being in grad school was the damn highlight of the decade.  I tend to think of myself as somehow essentially lazy, but it turns out that I like work that I like.  I’m not lazy, apparently: I’m picky.  I’ve especially enjoyed the unexpected bonus of meeting some swell folks.  I went through my undergraduate program out-of-step with most of my fellow students until the very last semester there when I hooked up with an amazing group of people.  I sort of assumed that I wasn’t really the friendly type.  Again, I think I’m not so much unfriendly as really picky.  Also I made a kick-ass patio garden that astounds me even now, under snow.

The lowlights were few – which is itself a highlight – but I did manage to gain some poundage over my summer of slackertude which I haven’t managed (or bothered) to shake off my wee bones.  Dealing with the idiot ex is always irksome and irritating, but maybe in 2007 less immediately bothersome than in some previous years.  I saw a bad class for what it was, but felt it was smarter to stick with it.  I still don’t know if that was the right choice. 

I was grateful for socialized medicine and reproductive choice.  My kids are swell and growing fast.  My boyfriend is the best boyfriend that ever I have seen.  I got straight As.  My office is the homiest in the quad.  All of my family is safe and well.  My nephew turned one.  My sister-in-law got pregnant.  I bought a really great pair of boots.  I went to the east coast and ate lobster in a church basement.  I visited Trixie and was reminded why the internet is a very good thing.  I read a lot.  I wrote a lot.  I learned a lot.  I loved.

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"  -- The Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass

It’s not that everything is bad, but everything is right-this-minute.  And this is the slow semester, the break in the middle that I thought would reenergize me for the last haul in the summer.  Now I’m not so sure.  I am taking only two classes this term, but I have a TA job that seems way peskier than last term’s.  (Example:  so far I’ve attended one of four “mandatory” TA meetings, always held in the evenings – you know, when I normally see my children and all that.  Last term I had zero meetings.)  I’m also right in the middle of PhD applications.  It’s exactly the kind of task I get all fret-y about.  My self-esteem and sense of worth are way, way too caught up in whether or not a given school likes me.  And, you know, there’s the worry about doing it right.  Even the number of applications has to be perfect.  So I’m applying to five.  That should leave me some room to not get in some places and maybe some choice of offers.  Maybe.  It’s all too mysterious and fraught to say anything with reasonable certainty.

On a high note, I was offered a research assistantship.  Interesting work, good connections, and cash every month until August.  (Although, more work.)  And I did manage, this morning, to figure out and hopefully correct why I haven’t received child support for December.  I only had to spend fifty minutes on the phone too.  (That might be interpreted as sarcastic, but the FRO is usually much, much slower and generally requires me to send in some kind of form – often notarized.) 

On the domestic front, we put The Boy in charge of the grocery budget for this week and he did really well.  He had a certain amount of cash to spend and with that he had to come up with a menu plan and grocery list that would feed all of us reasonably well.  Saturday we had fondue, on Sunday roast chicken, Monday chicken soup and dumplings, Tuesday sushi, and last night kraft dinner.  Heh. 

Where will I find the time to learn French in all of this?  I probably shouldn’t leave that up to chance.

I am the queen of pointless multi-tasking.  Yes, here I sit at my computer in a room mostly devoid of its regular furniture.  The apartment is sparkling-clean in anticipation of fifty of our closest friends coming by this evening.  Some food is ordered, some food is made up in the fridge.  There’s beer in the coolers, wine tucked under the kitchen table, and the picking-up of soft-drinks delegated to a most charming friend. 

I am tucked into my robe with my hair in curlers (!) and moisturizing goo all over my face.  It’s both deeply moisturizing and incredibly gooey.  Sometime after dark, I will create some kind of amazing bouffant.  I think.  I’m really just guessing as to how that might be done. 

I sent out my application for U of T and I’ll take notes for the last paper draft this afternoon.  I’ll write it up tomorrow and Sunday and then revise that paper and the other one on Monday morning before I hand them in.  Next week, I’ll mark exams, respond to the great piles of complaints, and submit grades.  Then good-bye term:  I’ll be done with you in less than a week.

I have eight hundred million things to do.  Really.  Actually, I have a lot of end of term stuff to finish up and it’s the regular stuff.  I have to have three papers done.  One is already turned in.  For better or for worse (for worse), it’s in the box.  I have a draft down of another, and there’s another that I’ve barely cracked.  I have marking too.  Big project marking went down this week and next week (hopefully after the remaining two papers are in), I’ll have to mark exams.  Also, sometime between now and Friday, I have to apply to U of T.  They have the only December deadline.  Also, they hate me.  Also, they want me to be crazy. 

So it’s bad enough that I have all of this stuff to do, the majority of it not actually done, but then things come undone.  How unfair!  Actually, that’s exactly the kind of email I’m getting about grades.  How unfair!  I want you to look at this again!  Explain yourself!

So then I do and I still get the back-talking.

This is the first time that email addicted me is not checking that magic inbox all the time because I dread and fear yet another grade complainer. 

Party on Friday though.  Big party.  Lots and lots of people, I believe.  I’m really in the mood to cancel that party because I have eight hundred million things to do. (I arranged it when I thought I’d be all done by now – no self-knowledge really does appear to be my super weakness.)  But then, you know, fuck it.  Come if you’re in the neighbourhood. 

The kids are in bed after a long, comfortable chat about their lives.  They’ve very grown-up, but they’re also still kids, so there’s an interesting mix of “hmmm, interesting” and “aw! you’re so adorable!” (I keep that last one to myself).

The eleven year old says:

“Kids have no power in the world.  We can’t vote and we have no money.  I don’t know whether it’s better to try to band together or try to get parents to get things done for us.”

Too true, kiddo!  I’d give him the vote.  He’s thoughtful and he cares. 

I received a participation grade this week which was satisfying (the grade itself) and disturbing (the comments).  Apparently, while I think I’m extraordinarily easy-going and mild, I was actually being all contradictory.  This was said in the nicest way possible:  “I mean to remark on your intellectual courage in disagreeing so competently and carefully when you disagree with the readings, or our collective interpretation of them” – a pretty typical comment.  (And lest you think this was in regards to some specific thing, “being contradicted so often” also came up.  “So often”!)

Hilarious moments of self-revelation abounded. 

Me:  Wow, my professor got some weird impression of me in that class, she thought I was contradictory!

Fellow student: [blank stare]

Me:  You know, because I’m actually pretty agreeable

Fellow student: [blank stare]

Me:  Take a look at this evaluation!  Isn’t that crazy?

Ulysses:  What do you mean?

Me:  The contradictory thing.

Ulysses: [blank stare]

Me:  Hey kid, isn’t this weird?  My professor thinks I sort of generally disagree with things in class.

The Boy:  I can see that.

Me:  What?  I’m usually so agreeable!

The Boy:  About what?

Me:  About everything.

The Boy:  No, your professor is right.  I mean, I wouldn’t have come out and said it, but you’re definitely a disagreer.  That’s what you do. 

Me:  All the time?

The Boy:  All. The. Time.

Mia:  Yeah!

I am sick.  This sucks.  A lot.

Damn you, head-cold-sinus thing!  Remember our basic agreement?  You stay away until after I write all of my papers and wrap up obligations for the term and then I’m really, really sick for Christmas (or Easter, or Summer Vacation --- pick your term).  That’s the deal!  Just for that I’m only going to have a mild case of you and I refuse to be sick over the vacation.  So there!

Also, you bite!

I had hoped that it wouldn’t come to this, but I’m thinking of giving up going out for the relief of stress.  Since, you know, you can wake up the next day with a whole lot more to be all stressed about.  When I say “you” there, I clearly mean “me”.

So this past Wednesday I was a little crazy.  On Tuesday, I found myself with a paper proposal, an annotated bibliography, and a response paper due the next day.  I asked for an extension on the proposal (because that prof was least likely to disapprove) and set down to work on the other two things.  I was in my school office.  At one-thirty I went home to print the finished work.  The midnight coffee however, kicked in around then and made me look at my work in a new (crazy) way.  I was having intellectual breakthroughs!  I needed to get this stuff down immediately!

At four, I went to bed for real.

The next day I spent my first class being all passionately in opposition to the readings (although I can’t now remember why).  In the second class, I spent the break giving a little speech that went something like, “when I was here before we were all vegetarians, but now no one is.  But we’re all about the organic/fair trade.  But we didn’t know that then – we thought it was about meat.  But now the meat’s okay if it’s from a particular place.  And hey, you know that there’s a tim horton’s in the student centre?  It didn’t used to be there because that’s where the good coffee was, but now the good coffee’s in the basement of the environmental science building and I didn’t even know that place was there. You see?  I’m so tired!”  At which point my prof said that she wasn’t sure she was following and I said, “I know, but that’s just it, you see?  Because what I was saying just now?  What the hell was that?”

So apparently I can’t even fake functioning when I’m tired.  On the other hand, I appear not to need drugs to get entirely fucking high.

I need to write something that doesn’t need MLA-style references. 

We’re on a regimented cleaning schedule around casa saskatchewan.  Everyone has a checklist.  This seems anal (okay, it is anal), but the idea was to get the kids to do the things they need to do every day in a less directly personal way.  Things are tidier and we seem to have less conflict about it, so it seems to be working.  I hate how much work it is just to keep on top of things though.  There are only four people in this apartment and it takes maybe a day and a half to go from okay to disaster.  I estimate that it takes at least three hours a day (includes cooking) on domestic duty to keep the place in check.  In check!  That’s not on a day where I’m, like, mopping floors or something.

Our community share has finally ended for the season and I admit to this being an enormous relief.  With classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, I hated being bombarded with a variety of produce every Tuesday.  It might not have been as annoying if I’d known what was coming, but every time was a (beet-y) surprise. 

It’s also nice to be over the hump of Kid Week with two birthdays and Hallowe’en.  This actually lasts for two weeks, what with the Idiot Ex-Husband visit in the middle.  Two birthday parties, two family birthday dinners, two dinners out for sushi, present buying trips, and the costuming and trick-or-treating extravaganza. . . too tiring.  But it’s over now, just in time for all of my papers to come due.  There are only three more weeks of term (only two classes in some cases) and after that I have marking.

And after that, I need to learn French.

Seriously!

Then the merry-go-round starts up again with the fun of next term, PhD applications, and a whole other class to T.A.. 

I’ve heard this rumour that the first semester of the M.A. is the most difficult and I’m really hoping that’s true.  Probably it is, right?

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that I was unemployed.  Remember that?  And it was for a good, long time too.  Months and months of doing not much at all.  Now that I have to schedule everything (everything!) because I’m so very, very busy, it seems like those unemployed days were a dream.

Yesterday, for example, I had to leave class early to see a doctor.  The appointment was made a month and a half ago and when I tried to reschedule, I was told I’d have to wait another couple of months.  Which would probably put me in the same position since the problem with then was making the appointment before my class schedule was out and that would be the same a couple of months from now.  Whatever. 

How extremely annoying it was to arrive and be told that I had at least an hour wait ahead of me!  A massive amount of shuffling had to happen on my end (kids arrival from school, finding Ulysses, etc., etc.).  The receptionists (there were two) were chatting.  Chatting!  Clearly they knew at some point during the day that things were seriously out of hand.  There were people on extra chairs in the hallway.  Why they couldn’t have phoned some or all of us to shuffle things, I don’t really understand.

To make my three-thirty appointment, I had to leave class (an hour early) at three.  My actual appointment took place at ten to FIVE.  None of this would have been quite as bad if I hadn’t (weirdly) left all of my reading at school. 

School is insane.  It’s delightful and everything, but it’s also completely mad.  It’s the ‘extras’ that seem to drive me over the edge.  I can just (barely) take care of the work for the three classes I’m taking, but the distance ed class I T.A., the scholarship applications, the PhD applications, the extra talks and lectures and whathaveyou – these are the places I’m starting to feel overwhelmed. 

But – again – it’s really, really fun.

I’m thankful – hugely, sincerely thankful – that I have no classes tomorrow, extra time to read some primary texts, and no SSHRC application to worry about this weekend.  The deadline was on Friday and though I seriously grumbled about getting the bloody thing in, I’m so glad not to be working on it anymore.  Some tasks are so unpleasant that the best one can hope for is an early deadline.

Other school work has not been unpleasant.  It’s been rather delightful, in fact.  Going to class is huge, big fun.  The reading is unbelievable though.  I’m a quick reader and I thought it would be fairly easy to just, you know, read stuff.  Boy, howdy was I wrong!  I generally have a primary text or two per week, plus about six articles, and a few chapters of some theory.  That’s got to be something like 2000 pages a week.  If I actually have an assignment, I have to find other books and articles and criticism and then read that stuff too.  Nutty!  My ‘system’ is to read only novels and plays at home and leave everything else at school, where I sit upright in a chair and consider them with my whole brain turned on. 

Mia and The Boy are very into the fact that we’re all students together.  (I’m in “grade 18”.)  Mia especially likes to go to my office with me.  I think she’s having some social issues at school this year.  It’s so unfair because she’s a totally swell and interesting kid, but she is a little odd and there’s something about girls this age and their rigid conformity that Mia’s having some trouble navigating.  I’m no help.  My instinct is to go in and slap the smug off those little girls, but I doubt this would do her much good.  What I really wish I could do is to get her right into university where she’d have a lovely, lovely time and be the belle of the damn ball. 

Ulysses is terrific.  He’s busy and he has about eight-zillion school things to complete in the next two weeks, but he’s qualified to get it done. 

We’re going to a thanksgiving potluck today.  I’m bringing (vegetarian unfriendly) brussels sprouts and bacon.  This is a pretty splendid dish, for those of you who eat bacon.  Soak the washed sprouts in brine to bring out any little bugs, and then soak in two clean water rinses to get out the salt.  In the meantime, fry bacon.  Make the bacon very crispy and crumble it.  Blanche the sprouts.  In a large-ish pot with a thick bottom, dump the sprouts, bacon grease, and crumbled bacon.  Sauté the sprouts until tender.  Add fresh ground pepper and grated parmesan cheese.  (Yes, I did just suggest adding an extra helping of pure fat to what basically amounts to a bacon grease dish.  Oh, bacon fat, what can’t you do?)

We’ve now come to the end of orientation week here in Nerdville.  I feel swamped, overwhelmed, and surprisingly happy.  I feel a lot of anxiety about doing well and working hard.  I didn’t realize, during my tenure at Evil Corp, that there was a great deal of freedom in not really caring about how the work went.  I didn’t want to get fired and I hate for people to be all disappointed in me, so it wasn’t like I didn’t complete tasks or anything – but I felt that the work itself had nothing to do with me in the sense that my ego wasn’t really caught up in it.

Those days are over.

On the other side of that is the sense that it matters.  When I do something right I’ll feel really good about it and not just that I’ve checked off another task.  I also like being surrounded by people I can be basically honest with.  I like that.  And everyone is friendly and they didn’t immediately sense that I don’t really belong there and I don’t really deserve to be doing something that I want to do.  If I can just keep up the façade of legitimacy for twelve months, I’ll be through with no one the wiser.