Bite me.

Several years ago, when I first applied to graduate school, I imagined going to a place where my intellect would be challenged, where I'd encounter new ideas and exciting thoughtful people, where I could become the woman I've always wanted to be! A place where I would promote and adhere to lofty principles of learning for the sake of learning, where struggling, and failing, and picking yourself back up again were all part of a long torturous road to Truth with a capital T! A place where mentors would pat you on the back in a "you can do it" sort of way, and help you make your way up that long nasty road, through ice and cold and icky prickly hail, and yuck and muck!

Some of that is still there--certainly, the icky yuck and muck, and the long torturous roads and the struggling...

But lately, I feel like that pat on the back is missing; as are those lofty ideals of learning for the sake of learning. A couple of days ago, I got the proverbial shit beat out of me with a sack of potatoes labeled, "Institutional WhoopAss." On that long road to becoming that person that I want to be, I didn't realize that I would be reduced to a crying, screaming, impetuous child.

For my first couple of years, I coasted (very fortunately) through school on a fellowship; this year is the first that I have been a teaching assistant. This isn't a totally unwelcome experience for me--in fact, I've been looking forward to it. How does one learn to teach without practice? And as someone who's deathly afraid of public speaking, this is an invaluable experience, if not incredibly frightening. With the exception of one superbly rotten student (on the very first day of section during an icebreaker, she decided to inform me and everyone else that "THIS IS STUUUUUPIDD...ugh!"), things seem to be going as well as they can be. I'm not sure my students are getting everything, but I'm trying as best I can to convey the material--the only problem is... overall, they are sooooo apathetic. Granted, the class I am teaching for is not based on the most exciting stuff...but I still want them to get it, and at least take the relevant info from this course to apply in real life. That's unlikely for most, so at the very, very least: they should learn to think critically; ok, even lower than that, I want them to be able to fully read through and understand a page of text (some of them can't even do that)...

I currently have a stack of exams and exercises to grade, and the norming sessions have not been going well: on Tuesday, I discovered that I am a mean, terrible bastard of a TA. I read a paper that I thought was regurgitated balogne--as in, the questions were adequately answered and correct, but it wasn't applied terribly well to the assignment. I figured it could have been written without doing the assignment at all, really. I gave it a C-. The professor and the seasoned TA that I was working with gave it an A+. I balked, but listened as I got a list of standards of evaluation after the fact. Awsome sauce. So, I spent the rest of the afternoon feeling like an ass who can't grade for shit--it's such an arbitrary task. The sad thing is, now that I've gone through most of the assignments, I realize that that paper was an A+. Where have the standards gone?

I am also a mean bastard of a TA because I told the students that their papers would lose 1/3 of a grade for each 24-period period after the due date that they turned in their assignments. This is a very lenient policy by my standards (the professor's of course) that only results in a loss of about 3 points out of 100. When the students said, "but on the syllabus, it says 'for every business day'", I thought, surely this is a typo--"Ignore that! Consider it to be every 24-hour period after the due date." During the same norming session, the professor said, "No, I actually meant business days. If I don't expect to work on the weekends, why should I expect the students to?" ...

Well. Because, as your TA, I work on the weekends, grading these crappy papers for you! *Sigh* Undermined, yet again. The other TA doesn't agree with me (she's done this enough that she knows to just submit)--she says I just have to lower my standards because the students will always disappoint me. But why? When I was an undergraduate (and no, I'm not some old monster--that was only a few years ago), most of my professors had "no late assignments" or "you lose a FULL GRADE each day that you're late" policies. And no doubt, students have extracurriculars, jobs, families, social lives that they are juggling in addition to school--but I still don't think that's an excuse. I did all of those things too, but I made my education a priority because I knew it was a privilege, not a right. I was there of my own volition; nobody made me go to college.

Just as I've started, I'm already getting the will to teach well (and by that, I only mean with some sense of responsibility and caring about students' education) beaten out of me.

To top it off that day, my favorite professor and mentor was in a terrible-no-good-grouchy-mood when I went to go see him. Obviously, at this point, I could relate. But I sort of needed a pat on the back, not another smack from the WhoopAss potatoes.

A lot of grad school is like fumbling around your very first heavy petting session in the dark--you know, when you were trying to get to third base, but you weren't sure exactly what you were grabbing at below the waist, and thinking 'Is it supposed to feel like that??! Sweet Jeebus!' At any rate, I went to ask Mr. Doctor to be on my qualifying paper committee--something that you only do once--and I wasn't sure exactly sure how formal I was supposed to be about it. Fortunately, Mr. Doctor is the least formal of the faculty here; translated, this means he is the most human and relatable, and not a wax mannequin. Even though I had every intention of being normal when I asked, I still sounded like I was asking for some sort of weird date--should I have shown up with flowers in a tux?--because this is a milestone in the program, and it means something important to me. He grumbled at me: "Sure. But you could have just asked me over email. I kind of already assumed I was on your committee." "Um... well then, I just wanted to stop by to say hello! Haha...ha..." And to waste your time; oops. And then I was in the lion's den.

I was subsequently subjected to a horrible lecture about how I shouldn't get lazy, my reputation is depending on this paper deadline. I should be done with it by the end of winter quarter--"how come you're not going to be done by the end of this quarter like we talked about??" "Umm...because it's qualitative, and that takes more time than quantitative work." "That's no excuse! No one on the job market is going to care about that!"

So, irony of ironies, I'm tough on my students, and then my mentor is tough on me. I know this is ultimately good for me in the end, but I am already ahead of the game and in good standing. Where's the pat on the back? Guess I just don't get one--yet. *Sigh* It's going to be a long year...

Election Day is COMING!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G_7CzddUR4

Ok, so I know I just posted for today, and this is only my third post (EVER! no pressure, right?...), but: This upcoming election is so chock-full-o'-exciting/potentially explosive stuff, that I can barely keep my little booties on.

We may have the very first black president in U.S. history. We have tons of people rallying against Prop 8 and Prop 4 in an effort to protect the right of gays and lesbians to marry in the state of CA, and to prevent the stymying of abortion rights, respectively. (http://www.feministing.com/archives/011848.html);(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/18/EDFC12VPTR.DTL); and if you want completely unbiased information: http://www.voterguide.sos.ca.gov/

And in San Francisco only (not statewide), we have Proposition K, a measure that would decriminalize prostitution (check out this website--if you want unbiased info, just read the text of the proposition: http://www.yesonpropk.org/). Hence, the giant picture of Sadie Lune at the top of this post--Sadie, you rock my socks off! She won a Tony Labat sponsored contest at the SFMOMA to have this poster up all over SF a few days before election day. This measure is a landmark--it takes up recommendations from the Final Report of the San Francisco Task Force on Prostitution (1996). Regardless of what you may think about the morality of prostitution, this measure would give power back to sex workers by allowing them to (legally!) speak up and out against violence that is done to them and their communities (most are currently afraid to go to the police to report assaults against them, because they fear being arrested themselves; and may I remind you of this ridiculous case: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/31/america/NA-GEN-US-Prostitute-Rape.php I hope Judge Deni rots in hell...); work and collaborate independently without pimps; form labor unions to ensure safe working conditions; have safer sex without fear of prosecution (condoms have been used in court against prostitutes as evidence of their criminal activity...!!! How fucked up is THAT?); allows for a clear distinction between sex work and sex trafficking, so that we can focus on real problems of exploitation and coercion. Awsome sauce.

Will it pass? Who knows, but I'm rooting for it. Hats off to all the women, men, and trans workers who have been fighting for your right to be treated equally under the law; you are my heroes!

I will be voting:

For Obama.

No on Prop 8.

No on Prop 4.

And although I'm not in SF, I am going to bully all of my SF friends into voting YES ON K!

Vitamin C...not the kind you get in oranges

Where do the days go? I swear I was sitting in this exact same spot, doing the exact same thing not two minutes ago...but really, it was yesterday; no, it was the day before; no--perhaps the day before that.

You know you're slowly going mad when you consistently begin to skip coffee to start work immediately after rolling out of bed. Not only does this course of action have a major zombifying effect, it also leads to insanely slow work. For someone who's been addicted to caffeine since she was 12 (that's right; I've been a coffee-holic for more than half of my life. "The first step to recovery is admitting that..."), this behavioral pattern is indicative of an extremely troubled psyche... The immediate cause? Graduate school. The solution?...

And here's the rub: I can't figure out the answer without my coffee!

In the beginning...

...there was writer's block. In fact, the writer's block was so immense, that I had a hard time coming up with the term, "writer's block." But I digress.
I've thought about blogging several times in the past, but always hesitated when I got to the actual writing part of the process. Signing in with an email address, check; creating a login name...a little more difficult, but check (I have no shortage of nicknames); creating a name for the blog--ooph, even more difficult, but I've managed to come up with something of some small satisfaction before, check. Then, the first blog post.

...

It never fails. That blank empty white stares menacingly at me, and my neuroses kicks in: "the first post is the most important one--better say something profound!" "what will people think of me?" worse yet, "will they figure out who I am?" "this is going to permanently be out there for people to look at...forever!" "ten years from now (or even five; or even one), will I be completely embarrassed when I look back at this first post?"

The answer to that last one is "yes, probably." But of course, the larger answer to all of these questions is: "Shut the hell up, V. No one gives a shit, so why should you?" In fact, this is the answer to most of my fears and anxieties, but somehow over the past 26 years, that thought still hasn't quite sedimented into all the nooks and crannies of my brain where it needs to be. The question of self-presentation and others' perceptions of our selves continues to nag most people well past awkward adolescence, and into their early-, mid-, and late-adulthoods. That being said, how am I here writing this now, if I'm so worried about this coming back to bite me in the ass?

Yesterday, I wasn't feeling so well; I think my professor sneezing plague-infected goo all over me in her office a few days prior may have had something to do with it. At any rate, I was dragging along still trying to get my work done for school, bundled up in long-sleeves and a scarf despite the 80-some degree sunny CA weather (I still felt chilly), and no doubt looking like a hot mess. Scott had given me a ride to the department so that I could make some photocopies and drop a few things off in Lisa's mailbox, and I was struggling to juggle my manilla envelopes, orange-beet juice, keys and copy cards as I walked back out of the department. Shitty as I felt, I laughed when I saw Scott again--he was looking intently at me through the tinted driver's window of our station wagon, which was rolled up just enough to cover the lower half of his beard; he appeared to have a mondo-70's style moustache (we have this running joke about moustaches...I'll explain later). "You look like a creepy moustachio-ed child molester! What are you staring at me for?" He grinned. "I was just thinking about you walking out of the department wearing an argyle sweater and drinking beet juice. It seems...appropriate."

I looked down, suddenly self-conscious of my nerd-dom, and couldn't help but laugh. He was right. Wearing an over-sized argyle sweater over a Triumph motorcycle t-shirt, wrapped up in a scarf and drinking orange-beet juice, my appearance at that moment summed up some intangible core component of my personality that I can't explain any other way. It would have made sense when I was 4, or 12, or 16, and will probably continue to make sense when I am 49 and 73. So, I thought, why not have something to remind me of who I am? Although blogs are public fare, I do intend for this to be a fairly personal set of writings; call it an exercise in comfortable public presentation. As I work my way through graduate school, it's becoming more and more apparent that it's virtually impossible to build a professional public identity without first being totally comfortable with your private self; you know, the self that picks it's nose when it thinks no one is looking, and farts on the cat 'just because.' It's also an exercise in creative writing. Being relegated to composing only academic articles and papers has a definite dampening effect on any sort of fun, creative, or otherwise enjoyable writing styles. "In the Communist Manifesto, Marx attempts to blah blah blahbity blah blah blah...which Gramsci calls hegemony." *Disclaimer*--Marx and Gramsci are not boring at all; however, my writing about Marx and Gramsci has a high probability of being more boring than watching your Grandma clean her dentures.

And so...it begins. Will I be embarrassed when I look back at this post years from now? Yes, most likely. Will anyone give a flying poop about this blog if they don't know me? Maybe, maybe not. Will I still be drinking beet juice, wearing argyle sweaters and farting on my cat when I am old enough to bore my own grandchildren to tears by showing them how I clean my fake teeth with Polident? Absolutely.