Selling Sno-Cones at the Beach

checking in

I seem never to blog here anymore. Why, I wonder: I'm no busier particularly than any other semester. I do have other blogs - one that is a resource for geography job-finding, and one that is about my progress towards being "PhinisheD" as the grad student support website has it.

Maybe I just feel guilty not writing a lot on my dissertation, and don't feel I "can" write here. Or maybe most of the observations I'd make involve other people and I don't want to be snarky, at least in a public forum. I see enough of that on various listserves, and it is sometimes momentarily amusing but mostly just sad. How quickly the abstract becomes the personal, in a really ugly, unproductive way. A Machiavellian lesson for my future in administration.

In other news, I'm applying for New England-based teaching jobs for next academic year and trying to keep up with my current teaching obligations. I have a pedagogy class that takes quite a bit of time. I have a weekly appointment with a native Polish speaker, which is great, but requires preparation too as I "take charge" of my own language education and develop some sort of plan every week for what we should talk about. No more crabbing about what works or what doesn't in the courses I take: I am the sole captain of my own future language facility at this moment.

Also I'm feeling a little down. It might be the impending cold and darkness of winter, or my relative isolation from working at home all the time, or my fears about the future, or just plain old not enough exercise. I am completely dependent on my own resources, and that's an odd feeling.