I can’t really believe it took me so long to figure this out, but I think I know why academics blog so much, particularly during their busiest times–the academic year. It’s because we get sick of talking only to 18-22 year-olds all day. In addition, talking to these beings all day is often so bewildering and puzzling that we turn to the ether of the internets to look for some sense and guidance.
This semester, I’m teaching 3 first-year courses and one upper-division course. One of these is our first year seminar course, which is only half the semester, so it is almost done for the year. The students are wonderful, but I can’t quite tell how I’m connecting with them. I’m really proud of their end-of-term projects, which–without going into too much detail–they’re really putting a lot of imagination, scholarship, and work into. But all of this 18-year-old energy is draining. They’re nervous, anxious, tired, thrilled with independence, and paralyzed by trying to figure out who exactly they are. It’s exhilarating and maddening all at once. And I have to confess, this semester is the first time where I had that sneaking feeling of: “I wrote 300 pages about literary texts, criticism, and theory so that I could do this all day long?!?!” I’m really missing scholarly engagement right now, particularly since I’m not involved in a writing group here. So most of my scholarly outlet is T., which seems terribly unfair to our relationship. Fortunately, I have a major conference next week, MLA to look forward to, and a course release in the spring so I can put some good work in on my monograph. I really do like teaching; my upper division class is the biggest charge I’ve ever gotten from a job. And it has been really fun and challenging to synthesize on the spot all of the research I did in grad school and all the prep I put into exams.
Of course the other major event going on right now is T’s dissertation. Which he is one week away from finishing. Yip! I swear I’m more excited and proud about his diss and defense than I was about my own. I can’t wait to go back to grad school town and see folks and enjoy the fall—which is sorely, sorely lacking here, where it is still 90 degrees every day. Ugh.
Right now, a good friend of mine is off at a fundraiser, being held in the same town where I grew up, where he will see one of my ex-boyfriends from college, now living in my hometown, although he grew up and went to college in towns about 800 miles away. Life is so weird, and the paths it take us down are so surprising.
I’m sitting across from T at a coffee shop right now. And it’s that time of day that movie directors love because the light is perfect. And T is now laughing and wanting to show me something in a book he is reading about a poet. And our life is a blessing.
