Toluu

The Bitter and the Sweet

Seeking and occasionally finding ...

Schools, Paradigms, and Other Forms Of TortureYesterday

Here’s the problem that I am facing. When I started what is now my book project over a decade ago, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I certainly wasn’t thinking: I am writing a book that needs to have a coherent location in a field of scholarship. I just discovered a topic I was interested in and started working on it.

I started noticing a particular theme in literature, let’s call it: the theme of Short People. I started paying attention to Short People in various works of literature in a certain time period and developed an argument about the representation of Short People and, voila! A dissertation.

Meanwhile, around the same time, a new school of thought was emerging, let’s call it Shortness Studies. So, by the time I finished my dissertation, I needed to be able to situate my study of Short People within Shortness Studies — but Shortness Studies was a fairly new area and it wasn’t that difficult to get a grasp on its main points.

As I continued to tinker away at my study of Short People over the years — sporadically, with various degrees of interest and enthusiasm, and generally distracted by other pressing responsibilities like teaching — I grew rather dissatisfied with my take on Short People. Eventually I noticed that, while I thought I was studying Short People, I was actually studying Short People Who Wear Shoes! Imagine my surprise! But, the introduction of the Shoe Paradigm suddenly gave my book a new and u

Vampire-oramaNovember 19

I like a good vampire story as much as the next person. I even like some bad vampire stories. I read Anne Rice back when she was just a fingerless-lace-glove wearing nut — before she became a “life of Jesus” nut. I watched (and continue to watch) Buffy and Angel. I read some of the soft-core crap that passes as the Anita Blake series. I’ve been watching Trueblood on HBO.

Yet, somehow I missed the whole Twilight thing. Until now.

Now, of course, it is impossible to escape the phenomenon that is Twilight. I watched news coverage about tween girls and their moms camping out overnight at the mall to catch a glimpse of the guy who’s starring in the movie. I heard that the first weekend’s showings of Twilight sold out a week in advance. I saw that some of my favorite bloggers are reading or have already read the series. (That’s you, What Now?, Mean Something and Dr. Crazy.)

So, my curiosity was piqued. I bought Twilight on Sunday and finished it today. I could certainly have finished it sooner if it hadn’t been for, well, all that pesky work that requires doin’. I give Stephenie Meyer credit for writing a fun and engaging story. It’s a pretty riveting, s

Why the first three pages are the hardestNovember 17

Okay, so it might not be three pages for everyone. For some, it’s five pages or seven pages. But, regardless, every academic book has them: the opening pages upon which so much depends. As part of my InDWriMo labor, I have been trying to revise the introduction to my book. This has involved rewriting the opening pages. I labored endlessly over these pages months ago, the first time around. Now, confronting them again, trying once again to hit the mark, I am even more profoundly struck by how much weight they have to bear.

The opening pages of an academic book do so much: There is usually the Opening Anecdote.* You know what I mean: the perfect little story that somehow sets the stage for everything that follows, somehow manages to capture the entire essence of the project in an easily digestible and engaging way. I have encountered opening anecdotes that were the like spun gold, so perfectly balanced and sparkling with wit and insight. Unfortunately, mine is a bit more leaden. It might come with a fabulous illustration (that remains to be seen). With the illustration, I think it’ll be pretty enchanting. Without it, the flaws of my opening anecdote come to the surface.

Once you get past the O.A. stage, you arrive at the: Brief but Compelling Description of the Project. Could there be anything more arduous? You’ve got to describe the project — but not in too much detail because you are about to go into great detail and redundancy is lame. You

InDWriMo Big Push WeekNovember 16

November is flying by at a lightning speed and my goal of 45 hours of revision work is starting to look a little insane. As of today, I’ve got 32 hours to go. Um, yeah. The semester is wrapping up, which means an endless hill of grading on my desk. Thanksgiving is coming, which means a trip to grandma’s house. All in all, events not conducive to the writing process.

But next week, starting tomorrow, things are a little different. Next week marks a variation in my usual schedule — a variation that I cannot describe in too much detail for fear of giving away my Top Secret Identity. Let’s just say, I will not be on my usual routine and I have high hopes that the slight change of pace I will be experiencing will be the impetus for a Big Week of InDWriMo productivity. Frankly, if it’s not next week, it ain’t gonna happen.

The good news is that I am really into my revisions. Three weeks ago I couldn’t bear to even think about my book — I was just nauseous with the stress and unhappiness. But, thanks to InDWriMo, I’ve gotten into a groove working on it. It’s too soon to say that InDWriMo saved my book but I will venture to say: progress has been made.

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Updated to add: My blog seems to have been taken over by some evil trolls who are somehow redirecting folks from sites I have linked to, to sites designed to sell stuff. So, apologies to anyone who’s followed a link from here and ended up on some weird site. I can�

On Not Reading Student EvaluationsNovember 13

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: student evaluations are evil. They are an unreliable measure of whether a teacher is successful and, at least in my experience, have no practical value to the teacher either. I’ve never read any comment in my evals that made me say, “Gee, I should change my pedagogy to address this reasonable concern.” I have, however, been kept up at night stewing over some cheap, mean-spirited, or selfish complaint — the kind of complaint a disgruntled student scrawls off in a moment of pique and then completely forgets about, never knowing that it gets burned into the teacher’s very soul.

(I feel the need to add, in my defense, that this does not mean that I don’t care whether my classes go well, are successful, my students like me, etc. I care deeply about these things — as recent posts have demonstrated — but I don’t believe evals relay anything useful or helpful in this regards.)

I have always thought that one of the perks of having tenure is not having to read student evals any more because, as we all know, they really don’t matter to the those protected by the golden mantle. I had promised myself that, as soon as I got tenure, I would adopt the strategy of so many of my tenured colleagues and friends: toss those evals into a dark, dank corner and forget all about them. Ha ha!

It would seem I have j