Today I redid most of my descriptive-essay unit, if "redid" is the right word. I leaned on some exercises I've used before, ones I'd considered throwing out but eventually came back to as serving useful purposes after all. I still have some gaps to fill in, but I hope it'll be a better unit now. I felt like the version I'd had before put out a lot of information but also ran the risks of (1) overcomplication and (2) sucking the joy out of everything.
I lost one of my sections yesterday, so I'm down to two. This calls for some other kind of work on the side, whether paid (logical option) or unpaid (my parents have essentially offered to fill in the pay gap if I want to intern unpaid at some job I'm interested in, more or less to put another string to my bow because teaching will probably not work out long-term). But I think I can keep on top of that. The lesson-planning, bizarrely enough, will probably be the easy part of that, the grading and suchlike the difficult one.
8.20.2011
First-World Problem
There's a part of me that's long felt a sense of dread at Saturdays. I mean, not every minute of them, since they started when I was a kid with Beakman's World at 7 AM, and that was among the highlights of my week. But, generally speaking, Saturday has long carried a feeling of resignation or discomfort: my mother cleaning the house, me cleaning my room, or else our going on family trips, which sometimes involved long rides and any of various bodily complaints, all in the name of being someplace I didn't necessarily want to be anyway (I mean, there were people there whom I did want to see, but sometimes the location itself was a problem in some way, or seeing people I wanted to also meant seeing other people who were more difficult to deal with, or whatever).
Much of it is the fact, I think, that the only structure Saturday ever seems to have is one of drudgery, or of things being forced. It feels guilty-icky to not have structure, to sit around doing nothing in particular all day. But in some ways it feels even worse to impose what structure one gets from cleaning, errands, lesson-planning, grading, or trips out in the heat or in the cold to do nothing much in particular because it's our free day to do something and so we ought to capitalize on it. Not that I never want to do anything on Saturdays; I often do. But even then, it often feels unpleasantly different from how it would feel if I'd done it on a weekday. Saturday is sometimes just a wrong-side-of-every-door day, an awkward steppingstone between two days that feel right, that make sense.
Much of it is the fact, I think, that the only structure Saturday ever seems to have is one of drudgery, or of things being forced. It feels guilty-icky to not have structure, to sit around doing nothing in particular all day. But in some ways it feels even worse to impose what structure one gets from cleaning, errands, lesson-planning, grading, or trips out in the heat or in the cold to do nothing much in particular because it's our free day to do something and so we ought to capitalize on it. Not that I never want to do anything on Saturdays; I often do. But even then, it often feels unpleasantly different from how it would feel if I'd done it on a weekday. Saturday is sometimes just a wrong-side-of-every-door day, an awkward steppingstone between two days that feel right, that make sense.
8.17.2011
Neural Findings
Thank heaven for the records I kept last semester of the descriptive-essay unit. They're nothing like as thorough as they should have been, but they make a good springboard.
This semester I'm trying harder to be more organized so that I'm finally at the point where I don't have to reinvent the wheel so often - ironic in the sense that this may be the semester when I also start trying to find another job, so you'd think I wouldn't have to try so hard for a career I may have to leave. Though more likely I'd end up just making BCC my secondary job for a while and working another job primarily. But there's only so long I'll be able to spend without feeling like I need to be closer to financial independence. I'm twenty-six; though they're willing enough in a good cause, my parents are no longer obligated to support me, even if only partially, like now. It seems increasingly unfair to expect it, and increasingly dissatisfying to not be self-sufficient like my real-adult friends.
On the other hand, I'm also, at least for now, entirely committed to staying in Binghamton. And Binghamton is not necessarily a hotbed of attractive employment opportunities. So we'll see what happens.
This semester I'm trying harder to be more organized so that I'm finally at the point where I don't have to reinvent the wheel so often - ironic in the sense that this may be the semester when I also start trying to find another job, so you'd think I wouldn't have to try so hard for a career I may have to leave. Though more likely I'd end up just making BCC my secondary job for a while and working another job primarily. But there's only so long I'll be able to spend without feeling like I need to be closer to financial independence. I'm twenty-six; though they're willing enough in a good cause, my parents are no longer obligated to support me, even if only partially, like now. It seems increasingly unfair to expect it, and increasingly dissatisfying to not be self-sufficient like my real-adult friends.
On the other hand, I'm also, at least for now, entirely committed to staying in Binghamton. And Binghamton is not necessarily a hotbed of attractive employment opportunities. So we'll see what happens.
8.08.2011
Thoughts from/about Places: Rhode Island
This is partially patterned after the Vlogbrothers' occasional series "Thoughts from Places," wherein either John or Hank Green reports from someplace else, telling the story of his day and then coming around to a point (or points) he wants to make about it. I wrote most of this last Tuesday, the day before I left Rhode Island, and haven't changed too much since then (what I have has mostly been to clarify), but the stuff after the asterisk is the stuff that finished coming together in my head afterward, which I've just now set down so as to finish the entry (the timestamp is the entry's post date/time, rather than that of the start of my composing it). It's not a really polished piece, but here you go anyway.
I woke up this morning sometime around or past 8 AM and crossed the hall to the bathroom, and for about the first time, the baby-gate that blocked Ella the attack dachshund from running at me was gone, and she was sitting on the couch apparently without being held, but she didn't race at me barking and growling, as she so often does to people and has mostly done to me, hence the gate. I think she did growl a little from her chair, and Albert's mom told her to quiet down. But given that dog's psychology, we have made major progress over the last two months, progress that people usually only make by being bitten by Ella. So things felt good.
I also spent today packing up most of my belongings, ignoring the scribbled labels (where applicable) about what had originally gone into each box; instead I just arranged things as I wanted. Things have gone well: I think I'll end up using the same number of boxes to leave that I did to get here. I might have needed another, but when I went back to New York briefly in June for Michael's wedding, I grabbed my plastic cube-shaped pull-out drawer and brought it back here. I've been stuffing my junk into it, on and off, since then.
I had been thinking that my final trip over the Pell Bridge, the long one that brings you onto Aquidneck Island, where Albert lives, would be something profound. But I'd probably forgotten again that usually my deliberate attempts to create a memory fail: I'll only really know what my memories of these two months are once I've gone home and forgotten about large swaths of the trip. What's still there will have been the things I really took mental snapshots of, whether I'd realized it at the time or not.
In reality, I crossed over to Newport probably listening to All Things Considered instead, and thinking about Albert and about dinner (leftover orange chicken from this past Friday, when Andrea and Joe and Tom were here and we all made dinner together) and about being maybe-early (depending on your definition) for once. And later tonight, when I crossed back over the bridge onto the mainland for the last time, I guess I was thinking of Albert, and other things, and not really about the bridge or the moment itself.
Rhode Island represents my first two months outside of New York State - not a full two months, since early on in the trip I went back for the wedding and stayed for a few days, but still the longest I've ever been away from the state in which I was born and have lived all my life. And Rhode Island is different from New York, perhaps most notably in its consciousness of history.
Or maybe that's just Albert, who likes history so much, but sometimes it's hard to be here as a suburban New Yorker and not feel like this place is a little different. You go over the bridge, and you see sailboats, and it's easy sometimes to think of sailing culture itself, past eras in which boats played a bigger role in people's lives (though sometimes, instead, you think of the rich people of Newport). You take in the military culture (the naval base being located in Newport), and you hear reminders of battles and generations gone by. You see Revolutionary-War-era buildings and come across historical or just old-fashioned houses, you hear about Gilbert Stuart and Roger Williams, you stand by the ocean. I mean, there are also plenty of things that aren't historical, plenty of quotidian things. But even beaches, another big thing about Rhode Island, don't scream out modernity. If anything, they make me think of the past - Charlotte Beach in Rochester, as a kid and as a high-school choir member and as a college student.
A couple of weeks ago, Albert and I watched some of the John Adams miniseries that came out on HBO several years ago. I tried to picture living that history, making those decisions, being Abigail Adams. I couldn't put myself there; I'm not sure how I would have decided which was best, working with a system or being part of the grand undertaking of starting a new one. We know how everything ends, but of course they didn't. But I bet that felt more vivid still. Maybe every day would feel profound.
I've never studied abroad, and I love my state. I loved Rochester, I came to love Alfred, I came to love Binghamton. One thing I discovered early on while I was here was how very important, in fact, Binghamton is to me. But I didn't expect to like Rhode Island as much as I did. It grew to feel important - a symbol, maybe, of what I'd undertaken.
In a way, it seems as though a second world has opened up. Not one I want to live in all my life, I don't think, but one that seems connected to me anyway, that right now seems to be starting to be associated with things like wonder (quiet and otherwise), decision, and even to some degree escape, but which may come to stand in my mind for other things entirely.
Tomorrow I cross back over to the life I left, and I'm not sure what will come with me.
*
One lesson of history, I guess - not really a new one, but one that I'm thinking about - is that a lot of things happen, all the time, everywhere, to everybody, and there's usually no way to know what things will rise to the surface to be remembered later. There's usually no way to be sure of what will turn out to have been important on a grand scale. A lot of people considered the question of independence, and probably many of them came to have dramatic lives, but John and Abigail Adams were so placed that they're two of the people we remember: two people once seen as fairly normal.
I went to Rhode Island; in some ways I left home for the first time, though saying that is much more dramatic than living it usually was. I've been trying to figure out how I'll explain, to myself, to everyone, what it meant that I went there. But some of my explanation will have to be incomplete now and come later in retrospect. I don't know what parts will rise to the surface, or when; I guess I'll have to find out in time what has.
I woke up this morning sometime around or past 8 AM and crossed the hall to the bathroom, and for about the first time, the baby-gate that blocked Ella the attack dachshund from running at me was gone, and she was sitting on the couch apparently without being held, but she didn't race at me barking and growling, as she so often does to people and has mostly done to me, hence the gate. I think she did growl a little from her chair, and Albert's mom told her to quiet down. But given that dog's psychology, we have made major progress over the last two months, progress that people usually only make by being bitten by Ella. So things felt good.
I also spent today packing up most of my belongings, ignoring the scribbled labels (where applicable) about what had originally gone into each box; instead I just arranged things as I wanted. Things have gone well: I think I'll end up using the same number of boxes to leave that I did to get here. I might have needed another, but when I went back to New York briefly in June for Michael's wedding, I grabbed my plastic cube-shaped pull-out drawer and brought it back here. I've been stuffing my junk into it, on and off, since then.
I had been thinking that my final trip over the Pell Bridge, the long one that brings you onto Aquidneck Island, where Albert lives, would be something profound. But I'd probably forgotten again that usually my deliberate attempts to create a memory fail: I'll only really know what my memories of these two months are once I've gone home and forgotten about large swaths of the trip. What's still there will have been the things I really took mental snapshots of, whether I'd realized it at the time or not.
In reality, I crossed over to Newport probably listening to All Things Considered instead, and thinking about Albert and about dinner (leftover orange chicken from this past Friday, when Andrea and Joe and Tom were here and we all made dinner together) and about being maybe-early (depending on your definition) for once. And later tonight, when I crossed back over the bridge onto the mainland for the last time, I guess I was thinking of Albert, and other things, and not really about the bridge or the moment itself.
Rhode Island represents my first two months outside of New York State - not a full two months, since early on in the trip I went back for the wedding and stayed for a few days, but still the longest I've ever been away from the state in which I was born and have lived all my life. And Rhode Island is different from New York, perhaps most notably in its consciousness of history.
Or maybe that's just Albert, who likes history so much, but sometimes it's hard to be here as a suburban New Yorker and not feel like this place is a little different. You go over the bridge, and you see sailboats, and it's easy sometimes to think of sailing culture itself, past eras in which boats played a bigger role in people's lives (though sometimes, instead, you think of the rich people of Newport). You take in the military culture (the naval base being located in Newport), and you hear reminders of battles and generations gone by. You see Revolutionary-War-era buildings and come across historical or just old-fashioned houses, you hear about Gilbert Stuart and Roger Williams, you stand by the ocean. I mean, there are also plenty of things that aren't historical, plenty of quotidian things. But even beaches, another big thing about Rhode Island, don't scream out modernity. If anything, they make me think of the past - Charlotte Beach in Rochester, as a kid and as a high-school choir member and as a college student.
A couple of weeks ago, Albert and I watched some of the John Adams miniseries that came out on HBO several years ago. I tried to picture living that history, making those decisions, being Abigail Adams. I couldn't put myself there; I'm not sure how I would have decided which was best, working with a system or being part of the grand undertaking of starting a new one. We know how everything ends, but of course they didn't. But I bet that felt more vivid still. Maybe every day would feel profound.
I've never studied abroad, and I love my state. I loved Rochester, I came to love Alfred, I came to love Binghamton. One thing I discovered early on while I was here was how very important, in fact, Binghamton is to me. But I didn't expect to like Rhode Island as much as I did. It grew to feel important - a symbol, maybe, of what I'd undertaken.
In a way, it seems as though a second world has opened up. Not one I want to live in all my life, I don't think, but one that seems connected to me anyway, that right now seems to be starting to be associated with things like wonder (quiet and otherwise), decision, and even to some degree escape, but which may come to stand in my mind for other things entirely.
Tomorrow I cross back over to the life I left, and I'm not sure what will come with me.
*
One lesson of history, I guess - not really a new one, but one that I'm thinking about - is that a lot of things happen, all the time, everywhere, to everybody, and there's usually no way to know what things will rise to the surface to be remembered later. There's usually no way to be sure of what will turn out to have been important on a grand scale. A lot of people considered the question of independence, and probably many of them came to have dramatic lives, but John and Abigail Adams were so placed that they're two of the people we remember: two people once seen as fairly normal.
I went to Rhode Island; in some ways I left home for the first time, though saying that is much more dramatic than living it usually was. I've been trying to figure out how I'll explain, to myself, to everyone, what it meant that I went there. But some of my explanation will have to be incomplete now and come later in retrospect. I don't know what parts will rise to the surface, or when; I guess I'll have to find out in time what has.