Keeping the lid on

So I was just on the phone with Raquel, having a late-night decompress, and I remembered that I hadn't written in ages. This is not because I have gotten lazy or because I'm home now, but because I am BARELY keeping the lid on my life. Today was a really good, productive, successful day - good meeting with the department chair, reasonably successful first round of teaching, got to see an old DC friend, didn't trip wearing heels and figured out a nice and semi-sophisticated way to pin up my hair, etc. etc. Triumph. But I haven't really been able to concentrate since I got back from TZ and the summer of travel. I think, after 3 weeks, it may be about time to be able to do that, but it's strange. Finding the quiet hours has been close on impossible. How do people who have children do it? Boggles the mind.

I'm wary of having this get too Stanford-y, but it's a reference I can't really avoid. Today, in CIV section (because that's basically what I'm teaching, history CIV), we were discussing Sir Thomas More's Utopia, and the kids did a bang-up job. I am ten years ahead of them, and realizing that is strange sometimes, but we've still got a fair amount in common in terms of general cultural references. This one girl, quite brash but also smart and VERY talkative, started a comment with, "Okay, have you seen that movie 'Ever After'? ...and you know she's Cinderella - and anyway, it's like my favorite movie, so maybe it's not a good example, but you know how she's talking about how like you can't keep people poor and then punish them for stealing? I totally saw that in the way Thomas More was writing about law."

Props, kiddo. But the funny part was feeling myself want to say "Oh, and the guy in that movie who played the prince, Dougray Scott? SO HOT. And Scottish!" I remember looking him up on the internet, he was so cute and obscure at the time. Obviously, I did not say this, I smiled and demurred, and things went on. But it took a considerable amount of restraint to remain professional.

Speaking of the generational continuities, I decided that my ice-breaker question would be about their earliest memory of a book. I was just curious, really. Turns out most of them remember the Berenstein Bears or Dr. Suess or the Boxcar Children (people still read that one?!). Mine was "Go Dog Go," reading myself, though apparently I liked reading National Geographic with my dad. Again, I did not tell the kids this. It's one of the more interesting parts about TAing, figuring out what you can and cannot say. They teach you to "be friendly, but not a friend," which is a pretty solid pedagogical philosophy when you could reasonably be friends. The age gap can be neglible. I got to be buddies with the younger folks in my Swahili class, and my co-TAs were sort of flabbergasted today when a kid from the college buzzed out of a group of girls and threw her arms around me during our post-mortem on sections. Hopefully I'll be able to avoid being their TA...

And my last little blurb: Being at a non-academic event the other night made me realize that jargon can get you into trouble. Here in the history department, third year is the time that you sit your comprehensive examinations, which we call orals, because they are not written exams. It never occurred to me that it could mean something else, especially not something dirty. Like, ever. Sigh. But again, my relative gullibility and naivety is something I'm used to. Most people got the lyrics to "Baby Got Back" the first time around, in junior high. Not their senior year in college. ...sigh... Thank goodness, we were among couples who were mixed academics & lawyers, and no one made fun. There was some comfort in all of the academics never thinking a thing of it.

Mentioning orals reminds me that I have a meeting with my advisor tomorrow, lists to work on (you not only have to sit the exam, but you basically have to write your own test, and that's part of my panic right now), and sleep to get in the meantime. And the lid to keep on. Which I will do.




My little secret, though? All I want to do is get on a plane and fly home. I miss the folks, and I need it more than I let myself think about.