I go through phases in my life where even though I am ostensibly living my life, largely doing things I want to do, working toward my stated goals as much as I know how to in my everyday actions, I still feel as if something else should happen. I check my mailbox, my email, waiting. I remember feeling this way for a specific period of time back when I lived in Chicago–this was before I had an email account–and I would addictively call and check my voicemail from work several times a day. Of course, then as now, the inbox, mailbox, voicemail is generally empty, the thrill of those messages that do arrive passes quickly, and the waiting resumes. What, what, am I waiting for?
I did get one rather exciting (for me) email last weekend, which was the announcement of a T.A. position in the Gender Studies department at USC. My first thought was that unless the job consisted solely of handing out scan-tron sheets in a lecture hall, I would be completely unqualified, but then, as I looked into it, I saw a lot of similarities between the classes I would T.A. for and ones I have taught at FSU, and the more I researched the field of gender studies, the more I think it would be a fun and interesting job, that I would probably like even better than teaching comp classes, because it looks like I would be responsible for more discussions and less grading of papers.
Thesis progress update:
March 27-31: None.
I was driving to Sarasota and visiting my parents–it’s just impossible, for reasons it’s hard to explain. However, did listen to The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Far From the Madding Crowd, so I’m a little less startlingly under-read than I was. What’s up with Far from the Madding Crowd though? There was nothing at all in that book that even mentioned a madding crowd, although it does seem to take place in the country–but since there is no mention of a city, or even a crowd, it seems thematically random as a title. I always thought it would be a story about people who lived near madding crowds and either escaped them or dreamed of doing so. Of course, I never have looked up “madding” either, assuming it was an abbreviated version of “maddening.” For all I know it could be a proper name–“you know that Madding crowd,” but there was no-one name Madding in the book either. I’ll have to ask Steve K.
April 1: Virtually none.
I got distracted by a PSA (Public Service Advertisement) that Paul had to turn in, and even though he didn’t ask, I wrote the copy for it. I’ll post the link when it goes up–another contest. If he wins, I’m in for 5% which would make me feel really productive.
April 2: None.
I spent the entire morning and most of the evening working on my Gender Studies cover letter, though I did do library research on the topic in the afternoon, and read books of the topic in the late evening, which is necessary, but not writing.