voncookie | March 23, 2010
Back in 2007 I started a series on ambivalence in my professional life. Episode 1 dealt with Ambivalence vs. Indifference and Episode 2 dealt with Ambivalence and Flexibility. Now, three years later, I would like to discuss something that I couldn’t have understood back then, before even the first chapter of my dissertation was written, [...]
voncookie | December 24, 2009
It occurs to me that at Big Scary Convention this year, everybody is going to be bringing their best game. Actually, they’ll be bringing their best game + 1. Everyone will be putting about 200% into their interviews. And so I’ve decided to do the same… starting with my teaching portfolio. I’ve decided to put [...]
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 | May 22, 2008
So here it is: the long-awaited end to the semester. In one hour I have my final meeting whereupon I will turn in my final grades for the course I taught this semester (which was honestly the most fun I’ve had teaching a course in *years*). And then I’ll go home and probably pass out, [...]
voncookie | May 8, 2008
No more angst, no more drama! Things are deciding to look up all of a sudden and WOW! Life is good when it isn’t all fraught with Pessimism and Other Things Horrible. A Very Good (but Unnameable) Thing happened today. And I am H-A-P-P-Y!!!! Of course, it’s been quite a roller coaster lately in the [...]
voncookie | April 12, 2008
I’ve had some nemeses in my lifetime: the Perfect Girl Valedictorian that could do no wrong in High School… My sinuses, which required four separate surgeries in the early ’9os… Depression which later morphed into a particularly toxic brand of Rapid-Cycling Bipolar Disorder… Medications that made me gain 40 lbs in 6 weeks immediately after [...]
voncookie | March 17, 2008
It’s noon here on campus. The carillon is playing some indiscernible tune. The entire department—with a few exceptions—has gathered in the department library to fête the new crop of incoming grad students. I am being avoidant and reclusive because, well, that’s just what I’m doing these days. And most of the people here know me [...]
voncookie | February 28, 2008
I found out yesterday that I was not passed on to the next round for BPUF (Big Prestigious University Fellowship), so that makes 3 Fellowships now that I’ve been denied. It’s fine, I can deal, after all , the department only nominates one Grad Student for the BPUF out of the whole mess of us [...]
voncookie | February 25, 2008
Goodness! (The word I use when I don’t want to swear profusely…) I never have been so completely stressed in my entire existence. And here I was a few entries back at the beginning of this month saying how calm things were and how I shouldn’t wish for drama. Well, a part of me must [...]
voncookie | February 18, 2008
I went to bed early and everything, hoping for some good REM-sleep, to wake up refreshed and invigorated. Instead I woke up with that ice-water-on-my-spine feeling that accompanies the onset of anxiety attacks in my world. I lay paralyzed in bed, unable to get my mind off where I feel I’ve messed up in grad [...]
voncookie | February 17, 2008
Confession: I have a left-over Incomplete grade from 3 years ago. I had every good intention in taking the Incomplete—I was dissatisfied with my usual method for writing papers, and wanted to teach myself how to write a paper in a new, less High-School type way. And then, suddenly, it was time to study for [...]
voncookie | January 18, 2008
It is going to have to be a very political semester, I feel, as I step out of my lovely 8 months free of teaching responsibilities and into what promises to be a very different way of doing things. … A little back-story… When I came to Big University in the early ’00s and given [...]
voncookie | January 6, 2008
I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, I just haven’t gotten around to it, like so many other things these days. For several months, in my Spam folder, I was getting these “comments” (Akismet), blatantly selling illicit substances, but interspersed with comments such as “I so glad I found this forum!” “The [...]
voncookie | December 7, 2007
Well, I finished my 9 pages of narrative about my dissertation. Let’s hope that a narrative is actually an OK thing to present. With the very little time I had to put this together, I’d say presenting anything is close to a miracle. It was a smooth process, so I assume that means I know [...]
voncookie | December 7, 2007
…Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen… …Nobody understands why it is I have to write papers in the wee hours of the morning and cannot write them at any other time previous to the last minute… …Very few get what it means when I say I’m either “percolating” or “working in my head”… and nobody [...]
