Stammtisch!

Just look at that beautiful German in the title there! And even better, look at what it represents - speaking German with Germans who help me to learn and remember.

I'm studying English literature because I love it, but sometime during the past year German wormed its way into my heart and has taken up residence. Happily, I found a local German group that meets twice a month to have lunch or dinner and just chat. Not everyone who comes is German (several are American, one is Ukrainian), but they all have learned or want to learn the language and enjoy practicing it together. We met at a Mexican restaurant (cosmopolitan!) and I spent ninety minutes exercising my already-flabby German muscles. And it was really fun! Everyone there speaks English fluently, so there's no concern that you'll just get stuck. The non-natives speakers want to improve. The native speakers like hearing their mother tongue in a country where it's rare. Everyone wins.

Sadly I can't go to the second meet-up this month, but I look forward to my regular doses of Deutsch, and I may look into the university German club as well. It just meets at a really inconvenient time. No matter what, though, I'm not giving up on my hard-fought language skills. I'll even fight for more of them. Hopefully that all goes well.

Priorities, people!

My "Intro to Graduate Studies" class just had me read a book about how to survive grad school and find a job. Most of it was fairly useful. I hope that I'll be able to reference it again as I get through the various stages of grad school

But. There's always a but. In discussing time management, the author talks about how hard it is to find time for research, teaching, and family. He suggests that grad students hold off having a family until they've graduated at least, or have a non-working spouse. If one can't manage such a thing, he says, one must be aware that something's gotta give. And that something cannot be your research. Oh no. It's sleep.

Now I don't mean to say that graduate students (or professors) should do poorly at their jobs. And part of that job is research and writing. But it seems like this particular author has taken a leaf out of the business playbook and decreed that unless you give 250% for the rest of your life, you might as well give up now. And I don't think that's healthy. Every job has push and pull. Every job has time management issues. If you are talking to a bunch of graduate students and advising them that they need to be chronically sleep-deprived in order to have a life outside of work? Something's wrong with your view of the world.

Sure, there will be times when this happens. And sure, being both a grad student and a professor is more than a 40-hour-a-week job. But it doesn't have to be 80 hours a week. It could be 50. And there should be regular breaks. I wish the author would have told his readers that students should take a good hard look at whether winning the career game is worth the things they'll give up, instead of assuming that's the path they'll take. Because for me? I'll do my work well. And it won't just be a 40-hour workweek. And sometimes the rest of my life will have to be the thing put on hold until the current project is finished. But time to sleep, exercise, read for pleasure, and recharge are worth not being The Ultimate Grad Student or The Ultimate Professor.

I just finished training to volunteer for the local sexual assault hotline. (Intense. Really intense.) One of the most important things we talked about was self-care - the things you do to help yourself relax and be happy even when the world around you isn't happy. Taking some times - ten minutes, an hour, a day - away from workworkwork is part of self-care. It's part of keeping the thing you love from driving you insane. And it's necessary, no matter how much other people want to shame you for daring to care for yourself sometimes.

I've been keeping a running list of things I do and don't want to do when I'm teaching a class. It includes things like "for lower-level classes, give a bunch of small assignments and grade them fairly instead of inflating. That way, you can also grade the papers more fairly and not feel like you're torpedoing the students' chance of success". After this book, I added "never tell students that their work should be their one and only. Remember that everyone has a life outside of study, outside of work, and that is a very good thing".

Of course these ideas can be hard when you really just want someone to pour heart and soul into your class. It has become my new goal to tell students that yes, they need to work hard, but no, their work isn't the most important thing ever. Sometimes other things are important. If you're working well, if you're not using it as an excuse for mediocrity, never feel guilty about recognizing when something else takes over that importance slot.

Fuzzy wuzzy was a...?

When I was living in Germany, I shared my apartment with something small and fuzzy. I never actually saw the creature, but he lived in my ceiling and spent his time dashing about. Occasionally he did acrobatics. He also brought nuts or seeds back to his home, because sometimes I would hear something small and hard rolling around up there.

Based on how he sounded when he ran and the fact that I only ever heard one creature, it was determined that I had a Siebenschläfer living over my head.

This is a Siebenschläfer

So is this.

Helloooo

The name literally means "seven-sleeper" because the creature usually hibernates during the fall and winter. In English, it's a "fat dormouse". You can see that it looks like a cross between a squirrel and a mouse. And in Germany, they're a protected species - you can't set traps to kill them. Live trapping is acceptable.

I never saw the creature I named Siebe, but he never seemed to bring any friends home either. And during the coldest months of winter, he was pretty quiet. Unfortunately he didn't move out to his summer home in some tree come June and I admit that I was happy to sleep somewhere without audible reminders that rodents live among us.

Now I'm in a nice apartment in the United States. And guess who lives in my wall? No fat dormice here, but there's one and possible more than one squirrel in residence behind my shower. They make a lot of noise. And they get around a bit - sometimes they scurry around in my bedroom ceiling, and sometimes I hear them behind the stove. I've checked for holes they could use to get into my cupboards or apartment and haven't found any yet, but it doesn't stop them from being very disruptive. When they're especially loud, it sounds like I have a furry friend in my bathtub or kitchen cupboards. Very unsettling.

To add insult to injury, these little wretches have neither shame nor fear. Behold:

That's right, the squirrel is climbing on my screen door. While I was on the other side taking pictures. He also tries to munch on my basil plant when I put it outside for some sunshine. I shouted abuse at him and rescued it, but now it's drooping for lack of light.

Apparently I'm a Disney princess and the woodland creatures just can't help but get close. They've been quiet recently, though, and I can only hope they're planning to hibernate for the winter. In a tree somewhere. Fingers crossed.

Anniversary musings

It's been a year since I arrived in Germany!

(That's a lie, September 10 actually marked a year. But acknowledging the fact isn't nearly so pithy.)

I'm not teaching this year, though I will be teaching for the next three before spending a final year finishing my thesis. If all goes well. Instead I'm getting a handle on the aforementioned theory - I even read an understandable essay today, which makes Susan Bordo my new favorite person! And I'm learning my way around an enormous campus. My undergrad institution was south of 1500 people. You could walk across the campus in ten minutes. Now? There's a bus that takes students from the center of campus to their dorms. I wish I was kidding.

I get lost whenever I try to find a new place and realize it's in the opposite direction. Then, because I'm convinced the world is paying attention to the stupid things I do, I pretend to get a phone call and tell someone I'm "really close, be right there!" before changing directions.

Kidding. I only did that once.

Yesterday I had a meeting at a totally new building in the north section of campus. Everything else I do is in the south section of campus. Uncharted territory up there. Here be monsters.

So I looked at a map several times throughout the day and repeated the instructions to myself like a mantra. Those instructions? Leave the building where I had class, turn left, turn left, turn left, and walk a while. Impossible to get lost.

I left-left-lefted and walked across the river, so I knew I was headed the right way. All I needed to to was hit a main road and my destination would be right there. But then suddenly the street I was following turned sharply right. There was a sidewalk that continued going straight and some buildings over there, but I didn't see any busy road. And the street was turning on me! The map hadn't indicated that. Probably. This was not the first time I wished the university would put up maps of campus at strategic locations, like you find in downtown London. Highly useful.

My brave choice was to keep going straight, following the sidewalk instead of the street. Big mistake. After wandering between several buildings which were not the buildings I was looking for, I returned to the street, followed its curve, and a block later found myself standing right outside the correct place. The streets know what's what.

Also? I saw a rainbow! It was raining as I got lost and then the rain stopped and right in front of me was this huge arc of color. It was beautiful. I found my way around a city in Europe, right? When I first arrived I thought I'd be lost forever and only ever get around with a map. I'd be a perpetual tourist, the horror! I can totally manage a campus, even if the campus feels like it's just as big and with 1/3 the population. Which, when you're comparing cities to universities? 1/3 the population is still a disproportionately high number of people.

I can only hope that rainbows will keep appearing to cheer me up whenever I get lost. Because leprechauns are following me or something. I wouldn't argue.

Theory

The further along one goes in studying literature (and other subjects too, I'd imagine), the more it all becomes about theory. Not the kind of theory that is an intelligent guess or the best-we've-got, but the kind that takes something completely not-literature and applies that thing to literature to see what happens.

Ugh.

Sometimes what happens is really cool. Take feminism and Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and put them together. What do you have? Well, on one level you have a man (Petruchio) who eventually teaches a strong-willed woman (Katherina) to submit, as the patriarchy prefers. That one isn't so hard - very few people living now watch the play and find themselves in agreement with Petruchio's methods, including withholding food and sleep. But there are other levels too: at the end of the play, Katherina delivers a speech about how wives should submit to their husbands. Put your feminist glasses on and you might wonder if she's being sarcastic. Maybe that she's acknowledging that the world is set against women, but using such hyperbole in her "submission" that it's obvious she's not about to be always sweet and obedient. Maybe she's just telling her husband what he wants to hear and does what she wants most of the rest of the time (recalling that husbands and wives wouldn't necessarily have spent all day together in Shakespeare's day).

And so, with an infusion of feminist theory, there are ways to leave the theater less uncomfortable after watching Taming of the Shrew. The same thing can be done with Marxism (class struggles), post-colonialism (effects of racism and imperialism), and so on.

The tough part here is reading all of the theory. Most of the original essays that began and continued these theories are long and complicated and mostly involve the author informing you that this word means something else for the purposes of the essay. I've read engaging articles and essays before, and theory writing is not the least bit engaging, at least not to me. But theory is also a really big deal in literary studies and when actually applied to a novel, it can show you a whole new angle. Often we read novels with something like theory in the backs of our heads because we've heard about feminism, class struggles, racism, and so forth. So we recognize aspects of the story that the author probably never intended and maybe never even considered.

At its best, theory elevates the reader and gives us a fresh view. And I really like that. But reading it? Quite the chore. That's today's project. Wish me luck.

Parking v. Me

After living without a car for a year, I am both grateful and very frustrated to be driving again. Grateful because it's all but impossible to get around in the States without a car. Frustrated because that means I have to buy gas. Grateful because I can get somewhere whenever I want to with little physical exertion. Frustrated because driving is stressful and other drivers are mean to me. Grateful because if I'm two minutes late, I'm really just two minutes late instead of an hour. Frustrated because it's much easier to be a little bit late for things when you don't have to plan on being there thirty minutes early.

And then there's parking.

Thankfully my apartment has ample parking and so getting home is never a stressful thing. On campus, however, the story is entirely different. To begin, it's an enormous campus. There's a bus line that just serves the extended campus area. Walking from one class to the other can take a half-hour or more. As you might have guessed, a number of students have cars. And a number of students live off-campus and therefore have cars. And all the professors live off-campus, and therefore have cars. Is there enough parking for all of these entities? But of course not!

Now happily, as the recipient of some university funding, I get to be classed as an employee. That means that for a (rather high) fee, I can park in the employee lots, which are numerous and protected by a gate. I think there's more employee parking than student parking.

Before I could park in these magical lots, however, I had to buy my pass. I dutifully trekked over to the parking office (a twenty-minute walk from the visitor parking area) and stood in line for another forty minutes only to be told that the letter identifying me as an employee is illegitimate because it's a year out of date. Never mind that it specifies my program will take five years - the date at the top is 2012 and it's not good enough. So I go back to my department and ask for a new letter. First they try calling the parking office to verbally confirm my status. Not good enough. I need a letter. So they ask for a new letter. No can do - the dean of the graduate school issues those letters and is very busy right now. But one of the heads of the department offers to write a letter certifying my letter as valid. In record time it's written and signed and the next day I go back to the parking office.

I have ID, registration, letters, and a checkbook. I'm so ready for this parking pass. The man behind the desk inspects my letters, sighs, and tells me it's not quite right. He doesn't want to have to look through the letters to find the relevant information. He'll accept it this one time, but in the future, I need a letter dated from this year that simply says I have some university funding. Something that doesn't require him to look through anything.

The upshot is that I have my parking pass and have gleefully parked in the employee lots this week. Unfortunately the pass is only good for a semester, so I'll be back in the parking office come December, hopefully with the correct letter this time.

Dinosaurs and volcanos

The funny part about this is that I promised myself I wouldn't let moving take over my life. Haha. It did. But now I'm safely ensconced in my new apartment (and dwelling #10 for the last three months, counting the B&Bs in Europe) with a working internet connection and everything.

So, as a catch-up, I present a few more gems from my time in Colorado.

En route to dinosaur tracks

People actually lived here, and left an oven or sink or something.

Still trekking onwards...

Graves from a Spanish mission.

OBLITERATE!

5 miles later, look! A dinosaur track...maybe.

We waded across this river. It was an adventure.

My foot is so small.

Now that's a dinosaur track. A meat-eating dinosaur track.

In New Mexico, on top of an extinct volcano.

Ooooo!

Benches thoughtfully provided.

And mule deer.

I also floated down the Arkansas river, but for obvious reasons involving electronics and water, I don't have any pictures. It's very unfortunate, especially since half the pictures would be of me beached on a sandbar. There were many sandbars. And some of them would be of me covered in mud from our launching point under a bridge, which was very very muddy. Plus there would be the fact that we were using pool floaties rather than real inner tubes and so they didn't float quite so well. I was perpetually wet. It was hilarious. And then we walked a mile back to the car through some farmer's field. Actually next to the field - no need to trample the foodstuffs.

So now I'm starting - actually have already started - graduate school. And while that world is not nearly as exotic as Germany or Colorado, I already have a number of entertaining stories to tell. Next time: my battle with the parking people. And quite the battle it was.