Colleges and Snobbery

I am somewhat belated in posting this, although I composed most of these thoughts nearly two weeks ago. This article is a nice response to the bizarre and pandering remarks about snobbishness that have been made recently. My dearest college friends are all over the map, politically speaking, and to suggest that college makes students less religious seems like a real slap in the face to those earnest undergraduates who give themselves over to exploring their faiths for the first time in their lives. I have a serious problem with the fact that there are would-be students who are unable to afford whatever post-secondary education or training they would like to have, and I have a serious problem with the assumption that someone in academia is necessarily smarter or more worthy in some way than anyone else. It bothers me that, rather than changing anyone's political beliefs, post-secondary education all too often seems to reinforce socioeconomic status in ways that made me feel both hopeless and guilty as a high schooler who'd always enjoyed a degree of privilege. I seriously considered not going to college because of these concerns, but I also have a serious problem with the apparently widespread myth that college professors do little work for astronomical pay: Most of us work long hours with relatively little pay, but with a lot of concern for our students.

Scheduling woes

I am having a hard time adjusting to my teaching schedule this term. Okay, no, I'm doing fine; I get to all of my classes, and I even manage to be ready for them. So, that's all fine, but I don't like teaching sort of every other hour in the first half of the day. That's not long enough to do much in between (e.g., hold office hours), and it means that what used to be a lunch hour is now a teaching hour.

I had formed the habit of reading for relaxation over lunch because I function better when I do something like that in the middle of the day, but when I'm scrambling to eat a little mini-lunch before class and maybe another one after class, I never do any leisure reading. This isn't the end of the world, but I had really enjoyed being able to make progress at least through, say, frivolous but cosy mystery novels during the school year. That doesn't look so likely this term, though I am not quite ready to give up hope.

The other problem with having smaller gaps between classes is that I have to work a little more consciously in order to get a sufficient amount of food at sufficiently close intervals. One of the early signs of low blood sugar for me is that I struggle to find words for even fairly basic concepts. Another is that I sometimes mix up parts of my sentences. A few weeks ago, I said this at a moment of waning energy: "Oh, look, they have painted trains that you can wood." Well, almost. You can see that neither of these effects would be desirable in a classroom setting.

I have also had to schedule some office hours on non-teaching days in order to avoid what I fear would be uselessly small segments of time in between classes, particularly by the time I allow for at least a brief lunchtime. (Remember that I need to eat fairly regularly.) This addition of office hours to a non-teaching day may actually be good for students, who may or may not find it convenient for all of my office hours to be held on the same days as my classes, but it does mean that I sometimes forget that I'm going to need to be in my office on a non-teaching day. Luckily, my habit is to work out of my office every day, so I have yet to miss office hours, other than while I was hiding at home yesterday, trying to sleep off a bug. The big victory is that I remembered to phone and ask the departmental secretary to put a sign on my door to warn any would-be visitors.

So, I'm still battling to find the rhythm of my week this term. I look forward to the time when (I trust) it will no longer be a battle.

Post-Conquest English

Yes, it existed. Here's a video of a friend of mine being clever on the topic of English as spoken and written after the Norman Conquest. This is such a fascinating period, and I'm always glad to see it get a little more attention.

Optimal language use?

This is not a post about why we should be sticklers for mechanical errors, but I have been thinking a lot about a pair of interesting radio stories I heard around the same time. In neither case have I done any additional research, nor do I have very coherent thoughts to add. I would like, for the time being, to bookmark these and to share them with others who may be interested.

So, in the worst of blogging cop-outs, I offer you first an account of the ways that language may in fact strengthen (or even enable?) the brain's ability to grasp the concept of large but specified numbers. The old joke about the Anglo-Saxons is that they counted "one, two, ... er, a lot!" They had language (or else I'm living in some kind of weird other dimension), so I will obviously have to think more about this topic.

Secondly, here is a defense of writing by hand. I adore writing letters and postcards, but I wonder just what size of a minority I am in on this one. I need to listen to this piece again, and I wish that they had offered a transcript or slightly fuller summary, but the gist is that writing by hand might be good for your brain! So, keep on sending those notes to Grandma!

Climb Every Gehu?

While working on the final chapter of my dissertation (speaking in terms of the table of contents, not in terms of my work schedule), I concurred with academics who had previously goggled over a seemingly inexplicable gloss by the Tremulous Hand, but my "internal external" examiner (as opposed to the external external examiner, you see) made a point at my defense that led me to a possible explanation of this gloss. I am planning to write this up, but I'd been afraid that it would be nothing more than the merest, barest note. At this stage of my career, to be frank, I'd prefer a nice, meaty treatise. As I was listening to a lively MLA discussion on editing Old English, I saw another way that I could fit this merest, barest note on the Tremulous Hand into the context of some of the larger editorial questions we are facing today. This is not going to become my magnum opus, but I think that it will be a little more substantial now, for which I am very thankful.

We tend to see a divide between two styles of editing, and this editing dilemma could be posited as a tension between the maintenance of standards, on the one hand, and the cultivation of storytelling, on the other hand. How do we tell the story of the stages in a textual history without removing our regard for a deep knowledge of, in this case, the Old English language? Similarly, we wonder how to take advantage of the openness that the internet and digital tools make available to us without sacrificing the benefit of long experience with the language and materials, as offered by traditional academic study. For the Tremulous Hand, the trick is to tell the story of the layers of accretion in the manuscripts and printed texts without losing sight of the fact that we believe some of the glosses to be inaccurate. In fact, this is the same problem faced by parents who hope that their children will meet the world with confidence but who shrink from a culture in which we all seem to believe ourselves to be Very Special. That last bit probably won't be in my article.

Maybe I can squeeze in a trip to London?

An exhibition I wish I could go to. Sigh. Somebody visit the BL and go through this exhibition for me!

Turn, turn, turn

Well, let's see, if I count correctly - and I do have a math degree, mind - then it has been over six months since my last post, at which point it had been three months since my last post before that one. It's doesn't seem like six months; what can have happened that filled six months? The most recent post came on the evening when I sent off my last chapter for comments from my committee members, and I spent the rest of the term generating my introduction, and conclusion. Over a dreary New Year spent alone here, I worked on a paper for a workshop in Paris, and after teaching the first week of the new term, I made the trip, first to London and then to Paris. (If someone pays your way to Europe, do you neglect to look at a few manuscripts on the way?) When I arrived back in the middle of January, in time to teach on Monday morning, I had a nightmarish two weeks of somehow managing to turn up for my class every day but spending every other waking moment (and there were twenty hours of waking moments, every day) feverishly revising my dissertation. My gorgeous plans for a manageable amount of work and an increased amount of sleep following my submission were upset when I took on some copy-editing for a journal, but I did manage to write *most* of a draft of an article in between submitting and defending my dissertation. (Also in that interval, I met a day-old baby, got my class through highlights of Beowulf, agonized over struggling students, and even smiled occasionally.) Post-defense, I struggled to concentrate (even to get out of bed, frankly), marked many an essay, administered (and marked!) a final exam, and was deeply grateful when all the students who attempted to fulfill all of the requirements for my class did in fact manage to pass. I think the biggest compliment I've ever received on my teaching is the message sent by several students who separately said, "That was a really hard class. Are you teaching anything else next year?" The day after I handed in my final marks, it was past time to begin on the proofing for the journal - oof. Since then, I've worked up my article a bit more and started scribbling for the two projects due by the 15th of July: a paper for the NCS congress in Siena and a review article for our student journal.

Okay, so maybe that was six months' worth of activity, but it still feels a bit hazy, especially the period between mid-February (official pre-defense submission) and early May (the end of the proofing). I do have a slightly clearer recollection of the three weeks I spent with a pair of adorable cats - perhaps something to do with the positive health benefits that must have arisen from the intense pleasure of being able to run off-road along the lake and from the soporific effect of furry, warm bodies that wanted to cuddle. Oh! During those three weeks, I also read the Harry Potter books, at long last. I don't know whether or not this represents a positive health benefit, but they kept my interest more than Alice in Wonderland did.

I have clawed my way back from the four hours of sleep that was the norm over the last nine months, and my goal for the next six months is to keep that up, while finding ways to be productive in spite of it.