Nice things about May: Fresh strawberries from the farmer's market. Mmm, strawberries. I got Woodchuck pear cider, too, so I can sit out on the patio drinking it. Also, lots of time to read and write and do whatever.
Not-so-nice things about May: It's so hot that the glue on the rear-view mirror melted and fell off. (This happens regularly in the summer around here, and I hate it -- it's such a pain to reattach.) When my parents came down for graduation, they expressed the opinion that the Old Brown Ford was now in its final stages of disintegration, and while I'm not sure that's true (it runs better than it looks), they are probably right that I can't take it with me when I move halfway across the country. Sigh.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Labels
- 450 (3)
- academic labor (2)
- alternate endings (2)
- anthologies (3)
- ap exams (5)
- austen (2)
- autumn (1)
- bloggery (5)
- bookishness (7)
- Brit Lit I (12)
- Brit Lit II (12)
- Chaucer (5)
- chicken-centered pedagogy (4)
- Christmas (4)
- class matters (6)
- composition (21)
- conferences (8)
- courseblogging (32)
- daft theories (5)
- Deloney (2)
- Dickens (2)
- early modern weirdness (1)
- exam week (3)
- exhaustion (3)
- family (4)
- freshmen (10)
- games (2)
- gen ed (8)
- gender (2)
- geographic angst (2)
- ghosts (1)
- grading (7)
- graduation (2)
- Harry Potter (1)
- Herrick (4)
- Heywood (6)
- history plays (15)
- honors program (3)
- idle musings (7)
- if I ran the university (8)
- institutional culture (10)
- irony (3)
- jargon (2)
- job search (28)
- Julius Caesar (1)
- Kyd (1)
- legislation is like sausage (1)
- life and all that (2)
- Liz-Jac (4)
- Luddism (1)
- Marlowe (2)
- medieval lit (9)
- memes (4)
- Milton (1)
- Misnomer U (21)
- moving (8)
- music (1)
- nature (1)
- New SLAC (12)
- news of the weird (1)
- non-canonical lit (1)
- not-quite-translations (2)
- panic (6)
- photos (16)
- pirates (8)
- plagiarism (3)
- poetry (10)
- politics (7)
- post-mortem (1)
- procrastination (14)
- public humanities (1)
- random complaints (20)
- reminiscing about grad school (5)
- reminiscing about high school (5)
- reminiscing about undergrad (17)
- Robert Browning (1)
- Rowley (1)
- Salinger (1)
- scholarship (2)
- Shakesblogging (33)
- Shakespeare (82)
- silliness (13)
- Spenser (2)
- spring (1)
- study abroad (6)
- summer reading (11)
- summer teaching (5)
- teaching (105)
- tenure process (1)
- textbooks (2)
- things not to put in the teaching philosophy statement (4)
- translations (6)
- travel (16)
- trivia (7)
- unhealthy addictions (2)
- Webster (2)
- whatever (1)
- women's studies (3)
- Yeats (1)
- yes-I-really-am-faculty (4)
- yes-I-really-am-full (1)
- yes-I-really-am-tenured (3)
Blog Archive
About Me
- Fretful Porpentine
- Heya. I teach Shakespeare, British lit, and some other stuff. I am an associate professor at a small public university in the South, here known as Misnomer U; I spent a year in a visiting position at a private liberal-arts college that I call New SLAC. I hold degrees from the Beloved Alma Mater (undergrad) and the University of Basketball (grad). This blog contains teaching anecdotes, occasional posts about whatever I'm reading, and random thoughts.
6 comments:
Hi! I just found your blog, and thought I'd say hello, because I see some overlap between your current situation and mine. Although I'm a medievalist, I'm almost 31, just finished a literature Ph.D. (which took me 7 years, too), and, like you, will be starting as a visiting asst. prof. at a small liberal arts school this Fall. I must confess, however, that the most recent Harry Potter book did not leave me eagerly awaiting the seventh; I found it a little...I dunno, disorganized? Ah well. I'm trying to gear up to read the seventh book of Remembrance of Things Past--does that count?
Wow! I got a comment! Hi, jb, and nice to meet you!
I wanted to be a medievalist once, although that particular ambition didn't last much longer than my first semester of grad school. Ah well.
Hello! Crazy sent me. What is a porpentine, and are you only fretful when it's hot?
In the spirit of meaningless competitiveness (which isn't really my usual style), I will say that I am almost 32, and have been working on the PhD for seven years, and didn't get any job offers so I'm sticking around and not bothering to finish for yet another year, so take that jb! Heh.
So, are you traveling to Lands Far Far Away for this visiting-ship, or is it more local?
Hi, Sisyphus, and good luck next year! A porpentine is just like a porcupine, only Elizabethan and therefore much cooler. It is an excellent beast to mention when you begin a ghost story, like so:
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And make each several hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine...
... and I thought it wasn't a bad beast to mention when you begin a tale about the academic job market, too.
Not really Lands far Away, but not terribly close, either -- about 1/3 of the way across the United States, I'd say.
Hey Porpentine,
I'm wondering if you're ending up anywheres near me, in the upper midwest?
I'm excited for you! My first job away from grad school was at a small slac in the rural midwest, though now I've moved to a less rural area.
Hmm, I'd say it's more sort of lower Midwest bordering on South, but tough call. Definitely a lot farther from the ocean than I've lived before, anyway!
Post a Comment