voncookie | September 5, 2010
I guess I’m blogging again. Funny. maria callas told me a few weeks ago that I would get back into it. I said “no, no, no” because I couldn’t imagine what I’d have to blog about, since I try not to blog about specific things about work/students/people I know. Or rather, I try not to [...]
voncookie | September 4, 2010
I decided to go to my Online Academic Knitters group for advice about my course-limit dilemma (see previous entry) because I really wasn’t sure about my decision — and I admittedly *had* made a decision before I went to get the advice (big mistake). Why big mistake? Because essentially, I am gathering from the advice, [...]
voncookie | August 31, 2010
What do you do when, in the first seminar you’re teaching on a semester schedule, a class that is a requirement for the undergraduate major in your discipline, and your enrollment is capped at 15… and there are 14 students enrolled in the class, and 6 on the waiting list… all majors nearing their last [...]
voncookie | August 28, 2010
This is my first year as a minted Ph.D. and I thought it might be fun, years and years from now, to reflect on this process that is the transition from graduate student to professional. And let me start by saying, quite simply, that it’s much harder that I thought. Than *anybody* thought. And yet… [...]
voncookie | May 27, 2010
Things that make me feel like I’ve been living too long in the Ivory Tower: I hate the whole phenomenon of “Sex and the City” and wish they would put it out of it’s misery, because 100% straight girls are entirely too annoying and superficial. Millennials make me feel like a fuddyduddy, not because I [...]
voncookie | March 12, 2010
Academia is, make no mistake about it, currently shooting itself in the foot. It is signing its own death warrant, digging its own grave, doing all that is humanly possible to make sure that humanities education becomes completely irrelevant in the 21st century. The mechanism by which it is doing this is quite simple: No [...]
voncookie | March 7, 2010
After much deliberation, and hemming and hawing, and, of course, feeling like utter crap about the whole thing, I have decided to STOP applying for any more academic jobs this season, unless, of course, they are what could be a *perfect* fit. I’ve been having such a hell of a time coping with the cycle [...]
voncookie | November 26, 2009
yarnyarnyarnyarn. booksbooksbooksbooks. papers rustling in every corner. My apartment is filled with books, papers, and yarn. Knitted yarn, crocheted yarn, hanks, skeins, wound balls of yarn. Books, read and unread, my ill-gotten gains. And papers–written, half-written, scrawled upon, lying in wait in my computer. I do love all of it, for this royal mess of [...]
voncookie | October 17, 2009
I finished the second draft of Ch5. Hurrah! That’s terrific, take 4 hours off. Did you enjoy that? Great. Now get back to work. This semester is, to say the least– the *absolute* least– overloaded with responsibility. I would list the projects I have going, but I fear it would not only bore you to [...]
voncookie | October 6, 2009
This past weekend I received two unexpected treats: 1) I got word that a paper of mine has been accepted for a conference and 2) I got to see an old friend from Big U who showed up unexpectedly in Liberal Paradise, visiting from distant lands where football reigns supreme. (Which is not to say [...]
voncookie | September 18, 2009
I’ve signed up for another 4 weeks of climbing the Academic Ladder at academicladderwriting.com. For those of you who aren’t acquainted with Academic Ladder, it’s an online support group that encourages you to write every day, and has your back if you fall a little short of your own writing expectations. I have “met” some [...]
voncookie | September 13, 2009
Slick Management Firms’ hiring processes (those of all three of them) are currently on a collision course with the highly convoluted and time-consuming nature of landing a job in academia that culminates in Big Scary Convention. As mentioned in a previous post, the thought of me being unfaithful and window-shopping outside of academia is an [...]
voncookie | September 3, 2009
I feel like Elmer Fudd today as I hunt down Calls for Papers (CfPs) that pertain directly (or even not-so-directly) to my field. I’m tiptoeing through cyberfields in search of the Wild Humanities Forum, an elusive creature, given to the pursuit of tweed and arcane knowledge. Be very twiet… Humanists frighten easily. Kind of like [...]
voncookie | May 3, 2008
Today I was on Ravelry, and noticed that teabird wanted to start a readalong with Billy Collins’ book, The Trouble with Poetry (and Other Poems). Of course I jumped in, writing a reasonably lengthy reply to the thread, which was about the first poem in the book called, “You, Reader“. Here’s what I wrote: “To [...]
voncookie | December 19, 2007
I’ve been asking myself, ever since I received a job announcement for an otherwise perfect academic position (with the exception of the fact that it really was located in East Jesus Nowhere) just how far I’d be willing to go for an academic job. I’ve been asking myself, “Really, vonCookie… REALLY… Would you relocate to [...]
