Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

It’s the second day of classes and I already feel like I’m behind in my reading!

– Sydney

In-between classes today I finished up the last few pages of George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Just in time! It was my second time through this book, and my third 700- to 800-page novel in the last month. On a really basic level, it was nice to get that polished off just as my first assignments for classes come rolling in . . .

But it is also simply a great novel, and I really enjoyed reading it. Eliot is a master of marriages, and I appreciated that as a married woman in a different, but equally awestruck, way than I did as a single college student. Alright, I love marriage plots as much as the next girl, but unlike Jane Austen, marriage is merely the beginning of the story for Eliot, not its ending. For Eliot, marriages are one extremely important window into understanding how people relate to each other.

She spends quite a few pages introducing us to her heroine, Dorothea, at the beginning of the novel. We think we “know” her, austere, severe, self-sacrificing soul that she is, particularly when set next to her jewelry-loving, socialite sister. But when Dorothea marries a cold, middle-aged, work-obsessed academic, she suddenly appears passionate and affectionate by contrast. Throughout their lives, Eliot’s characters change hues, depending on circumstance, personal reflection, and company. Such a subtle movement – very different from the “ah-ha!” moments of change in so many other authors’ books; you know the kind, where it takes a near-death experience for them to change their opinion on appropriate window-dressings.

But now it’s time to get back into the twentieth century. I’m starting a class that is all about E. M. Forster (Room with a View, Howard’s End, Passage to India). I’m getting ready to indulge myself in my area of specialty, rather than racking my brain, trying to remember the differences between rectors and vicars in nineteenth-century England. It’ll be good to be home again!

Erin

I’m also off to the class I’ll be teaching: a freshman writing seminar.  I’m not a TA, so I actually have to do my own tap-dance with my students today for 50 minutes.  But why do I feel more like I’m running off to teach third grade than to teach a college class???

Erin

We’re about ready to head back to classes. The first class I’ll be attending will be PHIL 101, the class for which I will likely be TAing. So, yes, it looks like I’ll get to spend the semester with students who don’t know how to make decent arguments, who think they’re saying something profound when they talk about relative truth, and so on. Perhaps I’ll get some enjoyment out of disabusing them of such silly notions. Anyway, it should be a good experience for me, since I will undoubtedly have to teach this kind of course at some point. Plus, I’m quite familiar with much of the material, so prep time for sections should require much less time than it took me last semester.

– Sydney

So today Sydney and I had a trial run of being back in academia. We spent a fairly long day on campus, with a luncheon, lecture, a trip to the gym, reading in the lounge, etc.

I must say, it was nice to be home. Yup, you heard me. When I walk in my building, I have keys to an office, access to a computer lab and lounge, and comfortable chairs just outside my department. Sydney and I spent enough time on campus last semester for it to really start feeling homey. Not that large, echo-y hallways are my idea of cozy, but it’s a big, solid building that I can point to and say, “There, that’s what I do.” That’s actually sort of comforting after weeks on my living room couch, inhaling novels, wondering if I am really sure that I’m working, or whether I’m going to get a rude awakening someday.

Another thing that helps it feel like home is the fact that Sydney’s just down the hall. You heard me. The Philosophy and English departments share the second floor of a large building on the arts quad, meaning that I routinely stride down the hall (It’s actually long enough that I’m often tempted to run) and ask if he’s ready for lunch.

And, whenever shared offices get a bit rowdy and I really need to grade papers, I have a carrel in the library whose austerity ensures that I will be productive (though it’s kind of a last resort). It’s just really nice to have your own little corner of the planet, particularly on a college campus, where the students change composition each year and the comfortable chairs in the cafes are always warm from the person who just vacated them.

Oh yes, and I discovered that I need two more books for one of my classes . . . book-shopping always gives a big boost to the beginnings of semesters.

Erin

So earlier in the morning I posted a link to Charles Murray’s article on why fewer people should go to college. Murray relies fairly heavily on the point that a college education is largely irrelevant for a great many occupations. Coming from a community where nobody goes to college but where people do well enough economically, I think he is exactly right about this. I remember being told in a sociology class that Hutterites are barred from most careers and couldn’t run large businesses by the fact that they don’t pursue advanced education. I wasn’t quite sure whether I should laugh or become depressed at the professor’s putting his ignorance display. Granted, in general society there is a strong correlation between education and success. But perhaps that correlation can be explained rather easily by noting that the people likely to be successful anyway are for various reasons also the people who are likely to go to college.

But someone might respond by noting that education has other values than just as career training. One might even think that a focus on career training is a perversion of the purpose of liberal arts colleges. I’m sympathetic to this line of thought. But I doubt that college brings this value except for that rather small subset of people who are already inclined to value the liberal arts.

Here’s the kind of thing that I’m disputing. Suppose people are talking about some lamentably widespread form of bigotry (racism, for Continue reading →

1) I will return to wearing dress pants, skirts, and heels, rather than layering thermals, jeans, and sweaters good for lounging on a sofa. I refuse to wear uncomfortable clothing, but it’s nice to look different from my students, who may have just rolled out of bed in those tracksuits and hoodies.

2) I will not have time to inhale books a couple hundred pages at a time. My planner will become attached to my person, and time will come in slivers, not large chunks.

3) My body will be much happier. I eat well when we’re both home and have time to cook, but our apartment’s small: no exercise. I can feel my body thanking me when I go to the gym, but over the course of the winter break it gets progressively more difficult to do so – despite best efforts I’ve lost ground. And if Cornell is known for nothing else, it has a reputation for arduous hills and a lot of vertical mileage!

4) Sydney and I will be crazy-busy.

5) I get to be teacher again!

6) I get to have someone else assigning me work, rather than try to make sure that I am actually productive with my days. Naturally inclined to laziness, right here. Somehow, though, by dissertation stage I have to become entirely self-motivated. Right, still working on that.

7) We will probably post less often (sorry, guys). However, you might be glad that we don’t try to maintain our current production, because our lives will get even less interesting. What are you up to? Homework 🙂

Erin

So I was sitting on the couch, deep in a book, when Sydney says out of the blue, “So are you going to write a post about the catastrophic lunch we had today?”

Note that no such post had been floated in conversation at any time today, and as far as I knew no recognizable catastrophes had taken place. Sydney had made a great Sweet Potato Burrito dish that I had thought was quite good, but when I asked him his opinion of it I got shrugs and comments along the lines of “Edible,” “Possibly edible,” and “It’s alright, I guess.” So I was confused that a) he didn’t seem to like the dish better b) he later described the dish in terms of catastrophes and c) he brought it up hours later. My conclusion was that he was actually quite proud of the dish and wanted the world to know about it – not that he himself made that clear.

I am happy to note that I was right in my guesses, as Sydney later acknowledged. By this point I have finally figured out how to pick out my husband’s true opinions any time he starts waffling like a bashful teenage girl.

Speaking of girls, I would like to cite this particular experience as counterevidence to those who make claims about the female sex being that which is flighty, fickle, or flaky. Sydney also, by the way, does a credible job of batting his eyelashes. I’ll leave you with that picture.

Erin

Charles Murray on why fewer people should go to college here. I’m quite sympathetic to his argument — I think college is greatly overrated in both the U.S. and Canada.

– Sydney

One of my historian friends has posted a contest to see how your pick of influential Americans lines up with those of The Atlantic Monthly‘s panel of historians. I have some issues with the Atlantic‘s methodology (I think the weighting to consensus systematically biases the results in a rather easily predictable and, to my mind, pernicious way), but, still, it’s fun to see who one can come up with and to compare one’s list with the panel’s list.

– Sydney