What are you good at?

In the past several months, I've been doing a lot of reading of other people's work, and of my own, and it got me thinking of how, while all academics do similar things, we all have a certain thing that we're very good at. I first noticed this in grad school seminars. There was that guy who could remember the arguments of seemingly every book he'd ever read. My best friend in grad school, Piper Ph.D., could immediately zero in on the logical flaw in any argument she read. Others could write beautifully, seemingly with very little effort. My dear ID can crank out ridiculous amounts of work in a very short time -- in the last stage of his dissertation writing, he managed to write 1,000 words a day, every day, for well over a month.

I am at times envious of all these people, and wouldn't we love to be the person who could do all of these things? But lately I've realized that my own skill area lies in pattern recognition -- I look at a draft of a writing project and I can see where the main argument should be, and how everything else should be organized. That is to say, I'm not the best writer, but I'm a fantastic re-writer, and it's a skill that has gotten better over time. I always love that Aha! moment when I see it.

So I thought I'd put this out there, and give people a chance to take a break from the feelings of inadequacy that too often plague us when it comes to our own work: What are you good at?

Back to Work

The election is over. ID is at a conference this weekend. I have some grading, but it just came in today, and it's a small stack. All this has coincided with the fact that my university has given us Veteran's day off. Combine that with a Tuesday-Thursday teaching schedule (I know, I'm lucky), and I've got SIX WHOLE DAYS TO DO NOTHING BUT MY OWN RESEARCH. For the first time in months. Plus, almost all the books and articles I ordered a week ago have come in.

InAdWriMo, here I come.

History

Today in my afternoon class, when everyone was jumpy for the earliest poll returns, I took ten minutes at the beginning of class to ask my students what their earliest political memory was. I got everything from Vietnam to Reagan being shot to 9/11.

Tonight, while listening to Obama's acceptance speech (including all those MLK echoes), I had to think that this is going to be that first political memory for many very young people around the country. And a watershed moment for us all, I hope.

That's it. I'm proud, I'm excited, I'm emotionally overwhelmed, but most of all, I'm hopeful.


(photo: NY Times)

Civic Duty

I've voted. For the good guys, of course. And against the bad ballot measures.** Had to wait 20 minutes, for the first time ever. Tonight I'm going to sit home in my TV-less apartment (the one time that I really miss it!) and listen to the returns on NPR.

Butterflies in my stomach already. This is going to be a long day. Glad I'm teaching through 5 pm, or else I'd be obsessing on polls & stuff all day. But if you want something to distract you, go and check out Clio's Disciple's nice post on "Voting, Medieval Style."


**I'm having this vague memory of someone doing a series of three generic poems, one of which was "generic poem number three: socially conscious generic poem" that had the line "Rise up, good people! Overthrow the bad people!" And now I'm going crazy trying to remember who did this. If this rings any bells, please let me know!

Excused Absences

In the last three hours, I've gotten three e-mails from students telling me they won't be in class tomorrow, for election-related reasons.

Undoubtedly one or more of them are scamming me (I am, after all, the one who kept bringing voter-registration cards to class, and the one who has been haranguing them at least once a week since then to vote). But I'm just going to accept that, and give them my cheerful blessing.

Election-Related, with two videos

This is an academic blog. But sometimes you gotta do something different.**

So here's the deal, in case anyone is interested: I'm voting for Obama. The last time I remember being undecided about this was around the time of the primaries in Fellowship City, when I was torn between him and Clinton (my original choice, Edwards, was off the ballot by then). I think Obama will make a great president. I'm not troubled by the whole "share the wealth" thing -- I tend to believe that wealth in this country has been redistributed already, and not in good ways. McCain's tax ideas, as far as I can tell, are modeled on Reagan's trickle-down policies, and I'm old enough to remember what a disaster that was for everyone but a privileged few.*** And the cultural and social policies of Republican administrations have been, in my opinion, a disaster.

What I'm really opposed to in general, and not just in times of elections, is mean-spiritedness. Like this. (via Bitch Ph.D.) I've been exasperated and angry about policies of politicians and parties that I've opposed, but this is pure bile. And directed at little children. When the woman in question asked how she felt about having sent little children away in tears, her response was "Oh, well." Yeah.

On the other hand, I have to admit that this was a pretty funny bit of satire, and I liked McCain fractionally better for having played along. Still not gonna vote for him, though.

**I'll never be as good at mixing academics, politics, and feminism as Historiann, so if you're not reading her blog already, get your ass over there. (link to be posted soon -- there appears to be a glitch over there.)

***In my pre-teen years, I remember riding a bus in my working-class neighborhood, and seeing that one down-at-the-heels corner bar had a sign up advertising "Reaganomics Hour."

Does a working bibliography count as words?

Today, I began my first attempt at International Academic Writing Month (see here for more info). As you can see by the newly empty counter, I've resolved to write 8,000 words this month. I'm including footnotes in that. Brand new article project. I have a few documents that didn't make it into the book that are pretty interesting, but I'm not sure if there's enough to make an article. But I'm going to find out this month.

My first task was to compile a bibliography on the subject of women doing violence to men. Two hours of searching turned up pretty much what I'd suspected: that there was plenty of work on men doing violence to women, but little the other way around,** especially wives physically attacking their husbands. This is both good (mineminemine!) and bad (dear god, will I have enough to go on here?).

In any case, I managed to compile a bibliography that is about 300 words long. It's not going into my word count, but it's a start.


**If you know different, please let me know!