Silence will fall

Awkward silence doesn't really bother me. I can usually wait through minutes of baffled looks, stumped expressions, and general slacker stances. But this semester has been excruciatingly quiet. I'll ask a question and there's crickets. A few students will glance through the reading to find the answer, but still, nothing.

I've spent the last weeks trying to figure out where the silence is coming from. Are they not reading? Are they shy? Do my questions make absolutely no sense?

So after several failed attempts at participation in the lecture portion of class, my students went to work on their group activity. I went around the room and checked off their readings (they were required to annotate or take critical notes on the reading), and it became clear that they did in fact read the material. Most took notes that had the answers to the questions I was asking.

I hate threatening quizzes or calling on random students, but I'm to the point where I need to do something, anything, to get them to speak up. Maybe I just need to readjust my expectations and call on people. I understand being shy or stressed out by a teacher calling on you, but it's probably just going to have to happen.

Lesson learned

I'm starting my second week of teaching. Things feel more like they should this week than they did last week. That being said, I've developed a list of things I learned the first week back to teaching:

• After four sections of the same class, you don't even find your jokes funny.
• Teaching should count as exercise. Seriously, walking up and down the three flights of stairs to get to my office and back and forth across campus plus all the standing and gesturing at the board totally makes it count.
• You can try and be the nice cool teacher, but they quickly realize you are a geek and aren't "nice" in the way they want you to be.
• Stick by your policies. If you say they need to print the readings and bring them to class, give them quizzes or in class assignments that are easy if they have the readings and painful if they don't. (See previous bullet about niceness.)
• Learning 100 students names is hard. I don't let myself have more than 100 friends on Facebook because I don't think you can really be friends with that many people. So memorizing that many student names in the first week is really rough.
• Naps are one of the best part of my teaching schedule (7:00 wake up, 9:00 get to my office, 12:30 teach, 2:00 walk home, 2:15 play Frisbee with Wash, 3:30 take a nap, 4:30 finish doing everything I should have done instead of napping.)
• Wear comfortable shoes. (see bullet point 2.)

Here's hoping this week continues to go well.

Jumping back in

I finished my final grad school application yesterday - a week early. Now it's just time to wait.

Fortunately, I get to spend the time teaching. I accepted a teaching position at Colorado State University about two months ago, but I think all three of you who read this blog already knew that.

While I'm thrilled to return to teaching and feel pretty confident about dealing with a room full of college freshmen, there is a part of me that is worried that the transition won't be as easy as I hoped. I felt like I did really well my last semester of grad school, but that was almost two years ago, and I only had one section. Now I will have close to 100 students.

Hopefully I will have some time this week to get my head straight and update my syllabus and calendar, maybe even create a course website. Yeah, there's a lot to do.

This is me

I'm starting again, starting the long process of creating a packet (rather an electronic folder) of materials that is supposed to be pushed off into space and represent me as a student, as a teacher, and as a thinker.

Can these constructed documents present me in any realistic way? This narrative is constructed. The one I tell myself, the one I tell them, the one I tell my coworkers, the one I actually live - none of them really exist. The random chaotic events that are strung together, I somehow take and place in a created frame and pass it off as an explanation for who I am.

Have I been lying to myself about my hopes and dreams? I'd call them goals, but that just isn't the case, I want my life to be more than a list of accomplishments. Am I preconstructing the person I think I will become after I work through a PhD program?

Women Don't Ask

I have never read this book, nor do I have any interest to. I've read reviews and newspaper articles that site it's claims, and I choke on them every single time. As a woman, I find it offensive to hold women accountable for the way businesses treat them. Sure, more women need to be strong and not afraid to pursue the lives they desire. However, you have to consider the implications of a life being trained to not ask and being punished when you do ask for more.

That being said, the reason I bring it up here - after a long silence on my blog - is because my co-worker brought it up last week. We were discussing an influential woman in her life who helped her navigate the political waters of, well, politics. These skills transferred to the "private sector," and she was encouraging me to get to know her mentor better and to consider the claims of this book.

I was bothered by this conversation because I consider myself a strong, independent, feminist woman. It's true that I don't stick up for myself enough and remain silent when I feel justified indignation about what is going on close to me. At the same time, I don't want to attempt to follow the so called "masculine" business beliefs and do "what men do" to be successful in my life and career. Nor do I feel like I need someone to tell me the woman I should be. I'm all for mentors, but I want to pick them myself.

Even more than that, I was bothered because she was kind of right. I've never really asked. There have been numerous times that I've asked for raises at work, but I've never really asked for more than the company offered me.

When I worked at a music store (my first real job), I asked for a raise after a year to $6.50, thinking I was making $5.50. Now, I had never actually done the math, which is why I was making 25 cents less than I thought. Given that, "the man" decided to only raise me to $6. I thought it was crap, complete bullshit. But I quietly accepted it and continued working there for another year and a half.

I was only 18. But the truth is, I never changed.

So, while all women are not at fault for not asking for more money, better positions, better working conditions, etc., I am - individually - guilty of not doing so. And this really bothered me.

Yesterday, when my current boss, a woman who owns a small business of mostly women, offered me a raise, which was substantial percentage wise, I asked. I had several very logical reasons why I wanted more. After explaining my reactions to the offer and where I saw myself in the company, I said that I deserved more. I couldn't tell if she was shocked or proud.

Long story short, I got the amount that I thought was right. Not as much as I wanted, but I knew that was a huge stretch.

And it felt good to ask. Not so much for the money. It was more that I didn't feel like I just accepted what was offered because that is what I was supposed to do as a "good woman."

Staying Put

Well, at least for now, I'm going to continue residing in Colorado. I've known for a while now that a PhD program wasn't in the cards for next year, but I've been processing the news. After the first 3 rejection letters of varying degrees of meanness, I became a bit numb to it all. I continued to stare at my phone thinking it would ring, but it never did.

The next step is in the works, but I'm not feeling totally certain about anything any more. I still know what I want to do and will continue to work towards that, but any sense of time frames have gone out the window. For the next few months I just have to work enough over time to pay for all those application fees. By my calculations it will only take... wait... that is just a depressing way to think about life. Forget the calculator, forget the calendar, bring on more independent reading and writing (if only I was better at the independent writing part).

Along that line, has someone figured out how to be an unaffiliated academic? Doing research without an online library login seems extremely difficult. For now, I'm sticking to refining old research, but soon I'd like to move on to a different topic I have in mind.

Hushed Resonance

There's something about that sound,
so subtle but with penetrating vibrations
like a pencil scratching on paper.

Sustained rhythms, hesitation, slide.
Suede on wood planks shuffles and shifts,
composing symphonies beneath feet.

It drowns out the jazz and blues
that guide the bodies through endless steps.
Drawing shadows across the floor.

No longer one but two,
then combined with all the others.
Chaos embracing, traveling, redirecting.

Feeling it under you controlling the breath
drawing the tones from the floor up.
Free falling into silence.