voncookie | December 31, 2008
As the year sputters out its final hours, let me pause for a moment to reflect on what was, what might have been, and what may be: I completed 2+ chapters of my dissertation this year I broke my pinky I had a viral plague of insomnia that ruined most of September I went to [...]
voncookie | December 30, 2008
The stress. The nausea. The catty gossip. The rump-kissing. The blatant self-promotion. OVER. Thank God. And now back to our regularly scheduled dissertation-based whining. Seriously, though, Big Scary Convention was everything it was supposed to be: a sea of stress, made palatable by the warm congeniality of long-time colleagues and lost friends. Nice! Last night [...]
voncookie | December 29, 2008
I’ve had quite a range of experiences here at Big Scary Convention! I am loving the hotel–but then again I just love hotels–but this one is nice and swanky, even though it is filled to the gills with tweedy intellectuals. I have my last two obligations to fill today, and then it’s PAR-TAY. How hot [...]
voncookie | December 24, 2008
I’m spending my Christmas Eve writing up some sample syllabi. Not very merry, that’s for sure, but, at the very least seasonal. Big-Scary-Convention Seasonal. Crud Update: Getting better, need more rest. Thankfully tomorrow has built-in Rest Potential. The cough sounds a lot less like I’m dying of consumption and with the albuterol I’m breathing a [...]
voncookie | December 23, 2008
For those of you who are wondering out there in CyberLandia what’s going on with my Crud, it has been officially diagnosed as a big nasty case of Bronchitis. They have given me a bunch of antibiotics, an inhaler, and some yummy red cough syrup, and I’m hoping that the combination of the three will [...]
voncookie | December 20, 2008
I’m still sick and that’s why I haven’t been posting. It’s hard to think of anything clever to say when you’re all doped up on cold medicine. I desperately want to write something clever, and it’s frustrating me that I can’t find any words. Big Scary Convention is a week away, and I’m barely holding [...]
voncookie | December 19, 2008
I’m awake. Awake awake awake. Cannot sleep because I feel so g-d awful. So much stuff that I have to do. All I need is a little sleep. Let me try this again.
voncookie | December 18, 2008
Tomorrow I have my mock interview with the faculty at Big U, which would be great if I weren’t ill with the flu for the third time this fall. This go-round is worse than the last two: my voice has dropped about an octave, I’m running a low-grade fever, my head is all sorts of [...]
voncookie | December 17, 2008
Last night I had a Magical Holiday Experience with my friend, the overworked lawyer, who cajoled me into taking a trip to a posh, spendy part of town to look at their Christmas lights. She swore by them, saying they were amazing. I was reluctant at first, but in the Spirit of the Season, I [...]
voncookie | December 17, 2008
It is now officially my Jesus Year–I just turned 33 recently. I think the Jesus Year is frequently misunderstood: “Look what Jesus accomplished by the time he was 33! What have you done??” That’s like a 46 year old musician comparing himself to Mozart. As Tom Lehrer once said… “It’s people like that who make [...]
voncookie | December 13, 2008
Pardon the long title– it’s a riff on a book of poetry by Rafael Alberti. A book I own. A book I can’t find. A book I neeeeeeeeeed for my dissertation!!!!!! Loosely translated it means “I am an idiot, and what I HAVEN’T seen has made me into two idiots”. I’ve said the St. Anthony [...]
voncookie | December 12, 2008
Tonight I’m working on sample syllabi and I’ll be damned! It’s really freakin’ hard! I mean, suddenly I get to think about courses I’d want to teach? What the hell is that?! Intellectual freedom?! Leadership capacity?! I’ve been a graduate student for so long that these things seem entirely unnatural. Unnatural and super fun. Super [...]
voncookie | December 9, 2008
Unable to sleep, as I mentioned in the previous post, rocked by nightmares about my own inadequacy, I turned to my dissertation for help. In the nearly 5 hours that I’ve been awake since 2 a.m., I’ve managed to do some pretty thorough outlining of not just one chapter, but my introduction, conclusion, interlude, and [...]
voncookie | December 9, 2008
Woke up about a half hour ago after a horrible dream in which I went to Big Scary Convention and in my interviews they started lobbing QE-like questions at me about random literary figures and the result was: FAIL. I used to have dreams about failing my QEs, only in the months after passing my [...]
voncookie | December 8, 2008
The Elgin Marbles: These are the gigantic marble friezes that were lifted off the Parthenon by the British sometime in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I saw them back in the early ’90s when I went to Oxford for a month of summer study, on a group excursion to the British Museum. As [...]
