Almost

I am almost, almost caught up with my grading.

This will be the weekend, I swear.


(Apologies for another nearly content-free post. But it was my last chance to get one in before September officially ended.)

Earlier than expected

I just had my first full-on in-office meltdown. There were tears and sobbing. And it's not even October.

Girl Scholar's Sure-Fire, One Hundred Percent-Guaranteed Plan for Total Insanity in Twelve Weeks** or Less

So, perhaps I'm the only one paying attention to my blog's sidebar, but have you noticed that there's now not one but two word-counters there?

Yes, I'm insane.

I've finished the Shitty First Draft and Slightly Better Second Draft of the big article project that I want in review-ready (though anticipating one more revision before final submission) form by the end of the semester. But I've also got a conference coming up in November. And the paper actually has to be good, because the organizer got the bright idea of getting Esteemed Former Advisor to chair the panel.

(Eeep!)

I'm currently calming myself by telling myself that it's only ten or eleven pages, and I can write only ten or eleven pages on anything. But I also remember my disaster at Kalamazoo last year, when I discovered that I really couldn't, not always. And this is my first real foray into Shiny New Project territory.

So, this morning I read a book on the new topic. I'm on my way. Wish me luck.


**The "twelve weeks" of the title refer to the approximate length of time between the day I started this absurd write-every-day thing, and the end of the semester.

Do they really think I can understand them?

The guys who shout at me from car windows while I'm riding my bike, that is. It happened again today.He could have been yelling "Nice t!ts!" or "Get out of the road, btch!" (both of which have been yelled at me on previous occasions), or even "Eureka! I've just solved Fermat's last theorem!" The fact that the yeller was leaning out the passenger window to look at the yell-ee (me) as he passed implied to me that he was expecting some sort of response. But of course, the magic of the doppler effect (bike = 15 mph; car = 35 mph) turned his words into an aural smear.

Somehow, I don't think I'm missing much.

My Mom Answers Student E-mails

Okay, not just yet, but perhaps appearing in this space soon, because I have decided that, from now on, I will be forwarding all correspondence from my students addressed to "Mrs. Notorious" to the only person I know who goes by that name: my mom.

It should be interesting to see what she makes of it.

The House Always Wins

So. This guy wants to know why women are so unhappy, why they're getting unhappier over time, and why they get less happy as they get older.

He presents the quandary: "Wherever researchers have been able to collect reliable data on happiness, the finding is always the same: greater educational, political, and employment opportunities have corresponded to decreases in life happiness for women, as compared to men."

He promises to tell us next week why this is. I'm worried about what the above statement portends. But I've actually got an answer of my own worked up, one that explains both the "decrease over time" and the "decrease with age" phenomenon. It's one that goes back to a grad school seminar on, believe it or not, revolts and revolutions in early modern Europe. In that seminar, we were introduced to some historian's theory of the "J-curve." I have only the haziest recollections, so someone else can fill me in, for certain. But here's what I remember. According to this historian, revolutions don't happen when things have been bad for a long, long time. By that time, people are used to it. Rather, they happen when there have been consistent improvements followed by a change for the worse, or expectations of improvements that suddenly fail to materialize. Imagine an upside-down letter J. Get it?

Now, imagine that women's** expectations of the limitless possibilities for their lives are thrown into contrast (a contrast that gets sharper as women age) with the realization that, in spite of (or perhaps because of?) all this, we're still expected to spend enormous amounts of our energy trying to be something we’re not: pretty, thin, young, compliant, non-swearing, perfectly-groomed, dependent, dumb, nurturing, self-sacrificing, quiet-voiced, unconditionally adoring, nonthreatening, patient, or simply never, ever angry. In other words: “feminine.” And the older we get, the more we realize that the house always wins in the end.

Yeah. I suppose that could make a woman a bit unhappy.

UPDATE: Rootlesscosmo provides a link in the comments to a site that exposes how the "problem" of women's unhappiness (often implicitly blamed on feminism) is based on dubious statistics, but keeps getting recycled every few years anyway. Kind of reminds me of that whole "you'll never get married after 35" thing. I'm now convinced that the premises upon which the question is based are specious, but still stand by my answer to this non-question -- if that's not too illogical.

**In light of the content of this post, I am bitterly amused that Blogger does not recognize the word "women's."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcus-buckingham/whats-happening-to-womens_b_289511.html

How the hell did I manage to do THAT?

In the last 13 days, I have written a draft of an article, from start to finish.

There are caveats to be had, of course. First caveat: it's based on material from the book. This essay is supposed to be a more condensed version of the most innovative parts of that book's argument, but also with a broader geographic and chronological scope, so there's work to be done. Still, it's mostly familiar ground, not at all like starting from scratch.

Second caveat: it is indeed a Shitty First Draft, lacking introduction and conclusion, and replete with square brackets saying things like "[300 words here on topic X; see professor B's book, pp 67 => ??]" and "[get info on country Y -- check authors Q & Z]", and also, more than once, "[rewrite this para. to avoid self-plagiarism]".

But, wow! I wrote 7,000 words in 13 days, working no more than 2 hours a day. I wouldn't believe it if the evidence weren't sitting right here in front of me.

There's still a long road to go before I can show this to anyone, much less until it's truly finished. But this is seriously encouraging.