The week in review
Thank you all for the congratulations and good wishes...
As I dipped into my fanmail bag this week, the question that came up over and over was a pretty obvious one: how did you spend your first week as a tenured professor? Well, the first thing I did was to abandon all active research projects. Then, I printed up all of my class notes, and smoked them on cedar blocks, so that I could turn them as brittle and yellowed as possible in preparation for next year, where I will recite them verbatim regardless of what course I'm teaching. Finally, I damaged my hearing irreparably, to the point where I am only capable of hearing the words "raise" and "sabbatical."
Okay. Maybe not.
If I were really on my game, I would have turned each of those into full-length, dryly humored entries, that I would disavow only at the very end. The fact of the matter is that a week with tenure is not all that different from a week without. Last week was Computers and Writing, which is almost always timed really badly (or well, if a body prefers that I not go). I spent Tuesday and Wednesday struggling with my presentation (which I read rather than spoke, I fear), and was only able to come out with something satisfactory on Thursday after our trip.
Derek rode out to Detroit with me (and returned to Syr today by train), and we had a nice, leisurely trip where I managed to pick up a sinus cold (although the stress of struggling with my talk might have planted the seeds) somewhere at Niagara Falls. So tenure has included a throat tickle, sinus drain, stuffy head, and a great deal of kleenex. I blame the Lady of the Mists, personally.
We arrived in Detroit on Thursday night, and went to a bit of the conference on Friday, enough of it to deliver our papers, meet up with various and sundry, etc etc. But my energy was low, truth be told, in part because of the cold, in part because of the timing, and in part because of my franticality.
I'm now in Iowa for a spell, where I plan on minimal net connections, copious sleep, and finishing more than a couple of books.
Oh, and after my C&W paper, I have a new summer plan for the blog. I'll unveil it soon. (It does actually involve posting, and more than once a week.)
That is all.
Comments
Hey everyone -- Collin ended his C&W presentation with "that is all." It was GREAT.
(Wish you could have stayed longer at the conference.)
Posted by: Clancy | May 21, 2007 8:00 PM
Posted by: Gillian | May 21, 2007 11:24 PM
1. Nope.
2. You raise a question the answer to which I do not know?
3. Pretty soon, EVERYONE will!
The plan with which you are familiar, G, is my plan for summer's end, the dawning of a new design age. But I'd planned on doing it only once I'd reached quadruple digits in posts, which is a ways off if I don't post more than a handful a month. So I've come up with a posting plan, one that will change my pace up a bit...
c
(but I need better access than I currently have, so I may wait until early june for implementation)
Posted by: collin | May 22, 2007 3:25 PM
I've always found it fascianting the way folks in a community pick up on the sayings and phrases of others. However, not many of my colleauges have picked up on my frequent use of "Well, halleluia." I can't imagine why that hasn't caught on.
The comments about "That is all" also make me think, as I often do, of a TV show I love. I'm thinking of the way the phrase "What's next?" served as a thread that ran throughout the 1st episode of the 2nd season of The West Wing. That was, of course, back in the days of Sorkin glory.
Posted by: T J Geiger | May 23, 2007 11:32 PM
Aha--so you're the reason my Taiwanese students have been ending their speeches with "that is all" for the past 15 years... (Well, you're an easy target to blame, anyway.)
Posted by: The former native speaker | May 27, 2007 11:56 AM