I Must Have Really Bad Karma

I have bronchitis. So does M.

Sigh.

Random Bullets of Awfulness

I didn’t blog over break as I thought I would. Here’s why:

• P. got sick (again) pretty much as soon as I turned in grades.
• For that matter,the whole family has not been 100% since Thanksgiving.  After we got home home from my  parents’ house, P woke up the next morning with his right eye  swollen shut–an allergic reaction to my parents’ three cats. They set off my asthma as well, and G got sick, too.
• The  day after M finished Nutcracker (December 11), I had to take the whole family to the after-hours clinic. She had bronchitis, ear infections in both ears, and tonsillitis. P had a sinus infection and tonsillitis, as did G. I got the sinus infection two days later.
• P didn’t get well like he should have, which is why I took him back to the dr the day after I turned in grades. He had ear infections in both ears. This was six days before Christmas, btw.
• I came down with food poisoning late Friday night. I have never been so sick in my life–it was truly awful. At one point, I honestly thought I was going to die. The worst symptoms abated Saturday evening, though I am nowhere near 100% yet.
• I have still eaten very little. It’s 2pm here, and so far today I’ve had a small blueberry muffin and a few graham crackers. I have little appetite, and nothing sounds good.
• Our dog, Lucky, has seriously deteriorated. He has been struggling since early last summer, and the last few weeks have been very hard for him. G and I decided this weekend that it’s time to put him down. I have scheduled the appointment. I know this is the right decision, and the vet agrees, but it is so very hard to think about saying goodbye to my sweet little Lucky dog.
• Given all of the above, I have done none of the work I need to do before the semester starts.

So there you have it: my listing of suckiness.

Bad Boy Christmas

Fall semester is winding down, my grading is almost over, and I should be able to start blogging again soon. In the meantime, here’s some Christmas cheer. These are my kids performing in a video made by our next door neighbor, a singer who plays in many venues around Fort Wayne. He put out a Christmas CD two years ago, wanted to make a video for one of the songs, and asked the kids to be in it. It was a great experience for them, and it’s fun for everybody else to watch. Enjoy!

“I Work Out!”

(The title is a reference to LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It,” which is totally my guilty pleasure these days.)

I know I said blogging would be light, but I have to share this: I went to the gym today. This is the first time I’ve been to the gym since April. Between the foot injury, assorted illnesses, and some of the other issues I’ve been dealing with, I just couldn’t get there. Then, when I could go, I didn’t, because I was afraid. I’ve been fighting these feelings for almost a month now. I feel ashamed that I’ve gained some weight over the past few months and ashamed that I haven’t been to the gym. I felt like I’d completely undone all the hard work I did to get healthy, which also made me feel ashamed. I was really worried that I’d get to the gym and would be able to do very little of what I used to be able to do.

I’ve been trying to get out of that mental space, and today I broke through and went to the gym. It was great!!! People probably thought I was insane, because I was grinning like a maniac for a while when I first got on the elliptical. It just felt really good to use my body in that way again.I did 34 minutes of the elliptical, compared to the 40 I was doing last spring–not much of a drop-off at all. I did a 60 minute strength workout, and I didn’t have to reduce the weight I was lifting all that much. Well, I did with my arms, but that’s due to the tendonitis. My legs, back, and stomach changed very little, if at all–I was within 10 pounds of where I used to be. I’m shocked that I didn’t lose more of my strength, but apparently I haven’t.

I’m really happy that I had such a great workout. I have to remember this feeling to keep me motivated to start going regularly again. I’m blogging this in the hopes it will make me feel accountable, but I think it will get easier now that I have broken through that initial fear.

Protected: Coming Out of the Dark

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Ouch

I haven’t been posting much lately, and some of you know why, thanks to Facebook: I have grading-induced tendonitis in my right forearm.

My right hand, wrist, and forearm started really hurting about ten days ago. At the time, I was in the middle of a seven-day span where I was grading three different sets of papers. While I spend a lot of time at the computer for my job, thanks to email and writing, it’s the grading that sent the problems I have with my hand and arm into overdrive. I have a slight case of carpal tunnel as well, thanks to clicking with a mouse, but it’s the tendonitis that is causing me so much pain–pain that has even been waking me up at night.

Thus, I’ve been trying to refrain from typing as much as possible. Of course, it’s impossible for me to avoid it completely, given the nature of life as a professor. I’ve greatly reduced the time I spend on the computer for any reason other than work, which means blogging has been paused.

A former colleague recommended that I try Jing as a way to reduce the time I spend typing comments on students’ papers Jing allows me to not only make audio comments, but also screen capture the document and show the students the specific thing I’m looking at as I talk about their drafts. I tried it for the first time last night, and I think it’s a good option. The student whose draft served as my trial attempt with Jing (this young man, incidentally), emailed me back and told me how much he liked it. Hopefully, using Jing will really help my arm rest and recover.

I’m going to do a password-protected post in a little bit (same password as before), but don’t expect regular blogging for a while. The next four weeks will demand the heaviest grading of the semester, and I need to finish final revisions on one article and finish drafting another. I have to save my hands/arm for that. I will check in during this time, but know that I’ll be keeping things short.

My literacy narrative

This will be a record for me lately–two posts in one day! But I wanted to share with y’all something that I recently became aware was available.

At the CCCC in April, I agreed to allow Ohio State’s Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives to collect my literacy narrative. My narrative was recorded right then, in the middle of the conference; we were in the hallway near one of the elevators, which you’ll see coming and going throughout the video. It’s a long video–30 minutes–but I discuss many things I’ve blogged about, including my grandma’s influence on my life and my work. I also talk in more detail about things I’ve alluded to on the blog, such as my time at the University of Cincinnati and how I decided to become an academic. So, if you’re curious about my thoughts on literacy–or if you just want to know what I sound like or look like–follow the above link to my literacy narrative, which will enlighten you on those subjects and more.

As you will see if you download the video, it was a very emotional experience; not only did I cry during the recording, but my interviewer and I both cried afterwards. It was also a moment that brought home for me that I really need to write a book. This experience is what gave me the final push to start work on the edited collection on Appalachian literacies, and it’s why I’ve decided that I will write my own, single-authored book. It is something that I simply have to do, and sharing my narrative is what brought me to that realization.

Ya Gotta Have the Want-To

A few weeks ago, my friend BrightStar asked a question that I have found myself thinking about quite a bit over the past few months:  “How do you think your experience in a PhD program, if you went through that experience, changed you, if at all?”

I definitely think my PhD experience changed me. I don’t just think it–I know with absolute certainty that it did. While the general experience of going to grad school–which for me included a MA–changed me, earning my PhD did in more specific ways.

The most noticeable change I see in myself is that I am much more assertive.  I have the ability to advocate for myself and my needs, as well as the needs of others, in ways that I could not do before. This has benefited me professionally and personally, as well as people in my professional and personal lives; I think my students and my children have benefited from my advocacy, for example.

I have no qualms about calling things like I see them. Now, I have always been a fairly blunt, direct kind of person, but I go much further than I used to. For example, at a recent conference with a student, I stated that the graduation rates for young African-American men are extremely, depressingly low and that I do not want to see him become another statistic. I told him flat-out, “You owe it to yourself and your community to succeed. You are too smart and too talented to not graduate, so stay focused and keep your eye on the prize.” Before the PhD, I would not have had the nerve to say this to a student.  I would have worried about overstepping my boundaries or whatever. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, maybe it’s because I’m tired of seeing talented young black men drop out of school, or maybe I just don’t really care what people think anymore. But I wouldn’t have said this before the PhD. I just wouldn’t have. I would have been too worried about what other people might think, what the student would think, etc.

I don’t worry about that anymore. I know what my intentions are when I am tough and direct with students, and I have enough experience now to realize my students know it, too. They know that when I speak to them like that, it comes from a place of care and concern. This student seemed surprised but grateful for my comments, and he later emailed  and thanked me for caring enough about him that I didn’t want him to be, as he put it, “just another black male dropping out.” I get many emails and comments from students that echo his words, so I do think my students know I talk tough because I care.

Speaking of being tough, I have a certain sort of mental toughness that I did not have before the PhD. I think resilience has long been a strength of mine, but that quality was certainly burnished during my Ph.D. That makes perfect sense to me, because I personally think that earning a PhD requires a great deal of resilience; I think that is one of the qualities that separates people who finish the degree from those who don’t.

Like every other academic, I know plenty of people who began their PhDs but never finished. This was a phenomenon I didn’t understand before I earned the PhD–I thought it was all about intelligence and being a good student, and if they were smart enough and good enough to get into a PhD program, then why didn’t they finish? But as I moved through the degree myself, I began to learn that how smart one is or how well one did in school really has little to do with eventually finishing the PhD. Don’t get me wrong: of course one must have a certain baseline of intelligence and aptitude to earn a PhD, but that is a given, in my view. One won’t get into a program without those qualities. But once the degree is underway, those qualities don’t matter very much.

I say this because I know people who are far more brilliant than I who did not earn the degree. I’m not speaking from false modesty, either; I know I am pretty damn smart. Even in a room full of PhDs, I feel comfortable with my ability to keep up with anybody. I’m intelligent, and I received an excellent education, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. But because I am smart and feel quite sure of my own abilities, I can recognize degrees of intelligence, even among those who are quite gifted, and I can freely admit that there are people whose intellectual gifts exceed mine. He was in my cohort at OSU and part of my dissertation writing group that still meets occasionally. I knew from the first day I met him–when he was a brand new MA student–that he was going to do great things. His brilliance was that obvious, and I am so happy and proud that the rest of our field is discovering what many of us have known for years.

But there was another person whose brilliance struck me when I started my PhD. He started his degree that year, too, and if I had bet on who would finish the degree, I would have placed a great deal of money on him. I would have lost, because he has still not finished. I don’t think he ever will.

I understand now that earning the PhD takes so much more than being brilliant. As I blogged many years ago, “ya gotta have the want-to,” to quote an evangelist I once heard preach when I was in high school. Getting through the exams, the dissertation, and all the self-doubt that comes with it takes perseverance and resilience, and those qualities have nothing to do with one’s brilliance or previous stellar performance in school. In fact, I sometimes think that the reason why some folks struggle once they get to the dissertation is because they were so successful in school–they don’t necessarily know how to handle academic challenges, because they never had to learn that skill before. I know that I really had to learn how to revise while writing my dissertation, because until that time, my early drafts had always been more than enough to earn gushing praise from my professors. The dissertation was really the first time I heard–repeatedly–”This isn’t good enough.” That was a difficult adjustment for me, as some of you well know, but I did whatever I had to, because I wanted that degree more than anything. I had the “want-to” quite badly, and I would have walked through fire to get my PhD. At times, it certainly felt like that was what I was doing!

Walking through that metaphorical fire shaped me. Just as fire forges metal and shapes clay and glass into different forms, my PhD forged me into a different kind of person–stronger, tougher, and more resilient than I was before. I am far more sure of what I know and what I don’t know. I am more accepting of criticism and more adept at standing up for myself when that criticism is unwarranted. I can say “no” more easily now than I could at any other stage of my life (though that has a lot to do with my years in the professoriate, a subject for another post). Even though revision was something I really had to learn as a dissertation writer, I now feel I am better at revising than generating. Those experiences also made me a better teacher of writing, because I can now understand the struggles of my students in ways I really couldn’t during my early years of graduate school.

While I have my struggles, I am proud of what I have accomplished and the person I am today. I like who I am, and I strongly believe the PhD helped me become the type of woman I always wanted to be–confident and assertive, while balancing a sense of mental toughness and caring.

Fear

Tuesday night I experienced the scariest moment in my teaching career.

I teach my women’s studies course–Gender, Violence, and Popular Culture–on Tuesday nights. This Tuesday, we were watching the film Hard Candy in class; the readings for the night were about pedophilia and incest. As you can imagine, we were dealing with emotionally difficult subjects; we have been all semester, but this week’s readings and film were particularly tough.

During one of the film’s most disturbing scenes, a student left the room. I wasn’t surprised, as I have advised the students from the beginning that they can always leave the room whenever they feel uncomfortable or as if a scene (or even a discussion) is just too much. I had also noticed that this student seemed more and more bothered as the scene progressed, so I actually felt relieved when I saw him stand up–I was just about ready at that point to go to him and remind him he could leave, though I didn’t want to embarrass him by doing that, either.

He got up and walked out, and I noticed he didn’t seem very steady on his feet. As he went through the door, I asked if he was okay. The door swung shut behind him, and then I heard a horribly loud crashing sound. My student had collapsed in the hallway. I ran to grab my phone and call 911, directing other students to check on him until I got my phone. As the other students opened the door, I could see my student convulsing on the floor.

By the time I got to the hallway (only seconds had elapsed), the convulsions had stopped. Other students were helping him–they put a jacket under his head and were trying to make him comfortable. He started to talk, saying he was hot, and he said no when another student started to lay a jacket over him. He was digging in his pocket for his phone; he wanted to call his mom. I told him to relax for a few minutes and that we would get his phone and call his mom for him. Throughout all of this, I was talking to the 911 dispatchers, answering their questions and directing them to our location. As we waited for the campus police and EMTs to arrive, my student became more and more aware; he was able to correct me when I told the dispatchers his age, and he correctly stated his date of birth.  He talked about other things, too–mainly how embarrassed he felt and that we didn’t need to make such a big deal over him.

Finally, the police and ambulance got there. I say “finally,” but I doubt it took them long at all; it just felt that way. They checked him out, and everything was normal. He declined going to the hospital, but I insisted on driving him home; there was no way I was going to allow him to drive after all that. He argued with me a little, but he knew he wasn’t going to win that one and quickly gave up. I drove him home and told his dad how wonderful I think this student is (more on that in a minute). The second I pulled away from the house, I collapsed into huge sobs. I’d had to keep it together for so long, trying to stay calm for this student, for the other students, for the call to 911, etc. I simply could not keep it together one moment past the time it was absolutely required. As soon as I was alone, I just lost it.

I slept very little Tuesday night. I kept seeing my student on the floor in those first few, awful seconds. I could not get that image out of my head.

This incident scared me more than almost anything that has happened in my life, and it’s the scariest thing that has ever happened to me in the classroom. This student is a strong, healthy, athletic young man. I’ve had him for several classes, so I know him well. He’s smart and engaged and an excellent writer; he’s the type of student we all want in our classes. He’s even babysat for M and P, and they love him.  He has a kind heart and is the type of young man I hope P will grow up to be some day. To see him in a heap on the floor, convulsing, was terrifying. I felt absolutely helpless, and I feared the worst for my student. I remember the thought flashing through my mind, “What if something happens to him? What will I say to his parents?”

Because the student is who he is, he stopped by my office on Wednesday to let me know he was truly OK.  He sat and talked with me for quite a while. He knew I felt horribly guilty that the film caused him to collapse, so he kept reassuring me it wasn’t my fault. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to teach that film again, though, and I am seriously considering taking a first aid/CPR class. I’ve always meant to, and this incident has prompted me to think it might be a pretty good idea.

I’m glad this week is almost over. It’s been pretty intense.

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