The theme of this posting is "BUTTS". Yowza!

It's been quite awhile since my last posting, but there's a good reason for it, I swear. So, here goes:

I've been locked in dark musty dungeon, chained to a desk and having my bottom lashed by a wrinkly green gremlin with gnarly horns and sharp point-ed teeth whenever I ceased to work in order to sleep, to eat, pick my nose, whatever. Weirdly, I have kind of enjoyed this...

Ok, so that's not what really happened. Though, besides from the possibility that this might be some deep dark kinky fantasy of mine ("I kiiid, I kiiid..."), it wasn't that far from the truth. Since returning to sunny California after winter break with the family, I have done nothing but work on my godforsaken qualifying paper. This is in addition to taking two graduate seminars (one of which I was jedi-mind-tricked into keeping after the professor told me that no one was allowed to audit his class), doing a teaching assistantship, and working part-time...

WTF??!...

After getting over the initial shock of not experiencing the joy of weekend-rest anymore--is this what people feel like when they quit sleeping?--I got into the groove of things and figured the only way I would ever make it out of this quarter alive, was to buck up, churn out this paper, and keep plowing ahead with classes. Part of the reason I had to churn this paper out was due to the artificial deadlines I'd set for myself, including regular meetings and workshopping with a friend in a similar position, which was a wonderful experience, and I love this person to death for dealing with my crappy writing and helping me along; and a department sponsored paper-workshop/presentation where professors and students alike get to come tell you exactly what they think of you and your paper. Sometimes, the latter event entails being told that "you are amazing and wonderful and you've done a good job, we love you"; at other times, this entails being told "you are a deep-fried piece of asshat, and how dare you waste all of our time with this garbage you call academic writing!!!" Most of the time, paper presenters end up being told something in between, such as "Yawwwn...some of section X and Y was great, this, that, and the other needs to be reorganized, and this part wasn't clear--once you finish that, you can probably achieve the high honor of publishing your writing. Now (to a prior presenter), where is that latte you promised me, fried-asshat?"

So. I presented my paper this last Friday, and fully expected to have the last type of reaction; i.e., parts of the paper needed work, and I knew it. Other parts, I thought (and my fellow paper-buddy thought) were pretty damned awsome. I also had high hopes because Mr. Doctor, my favorite professor (who is on my paper committee--see prior postings) had already sent me a sweet note saying that there were a few things that he thought would need work, but overall, he was impressed with the job I'd done, and thought this was a kickass paper that was well on it's way to being done and ready for publication--woohoo! This is a man who by all accounts is really mean about papers and student work in general; he does not say nice things unless he really means it because he's a hardass. Which is part of the reason he is my favorite professor. That, and a great pair of buns. Just kidding. Okay, maybe not... *AHEM* Moving on!

At any rate, I was expecting something less than the deep-fried asshat reception that I recieved. Totally lame. Usually, even when people at these workshops are saying to your face that you are a deep-fried piece of asshat, they at least remember to preface their vulture-like feasting with a couple of preparatory pats on the back. "This formatting wasn't so bad...Good margins. I also really liked the font that you used!" None of that this time. And I really liked my font too...I've become quite fond of Calibria. At any rate, the tone of the workshop was vitriolic to say the least--for some reason, my paper pissed people off royally. Possibly because it had to do with sex work, but was not a sexy paper (I refuse to offer a voyeuristic account of a group of people that have been objectified by researchers for their sensationalist appeal, ad infinitum); possibly because I was using theoretical constructs as the object of my analysis, rather than people or organizations (again, see the remark on objectification); or possibly because my paper was a deep-fried piece of asshat, and none of my friends and favorite cronies would tell me because they love me too much or they think I'm fragile. It is also entirely possible that the people present at this workshop all just hate my guts and I somehow never realized it before. Oops.

At any rate, the moral of the story is, I have now been labeled as "fried asshat", and somehow, I am supposed to work even harder this quarter in order to redeem myself to something along the lines of...perhaps just "fresh asshat". That's better than fried, right?

So what's a gal to do? Get back to her tushy-lashing work-gremlin, that's what. I told you the theme of this posting was "butts"--what did you expect?