Hail the Gatekeeper

Janus was the Roman god of transition. It's a strange thing to have a god for, at first glance. But anyone who's studied anthropology will recognize why he's needed. Any beginning or ending, any movement from one state to another, is fraught.

We've arrived at the annual moment where our culture recognizes this. And for me in particular, the transition into a new year, with its accompanying look back at 2013 and expression of hope for 2014, is an especially rich story of beginnings and endings.

I'm spending this last day of 2013 interviewing the 84th subject for my research into the prayer shawl ministry, and reviewing and tagging a transcript from one of my earlier interviews. It's hard to remember that eight months ago I had yet to do a single interview. I was nervously anticipating the inauguration of this new project, looking back with some regret at the phase of textual research -- a process I know how to do! -- that I was leaving behind for uncharted waters. One of the most unexpected rewards of this research has been learning that I am good at these qualitative interviews, and that when I'm doing them I am a better person -- a more empathetic person, a better listener, a more attentive and responsive dialogue partner. Another surprise: Just when I'm most concerned about how much I'm asking of those kind enough to agree to an interview, they tell me how much I've given to them, by prompting them to think, by valuing what they say and do, by opening a space for them to speak.

Now the trepidation moves to 2014, when I have to leave the data-gathering phase behind and produce the written analysis. I am optimistic, but still, the unknowns of the process are daunting.

In 2013, I started leaving behind the world of pop culture criticism that I have pursued, in some form or another, since college. I hit my high point in terms of audience and influence in the process of that exit, with my reviews of the last season of Breaking Bad for the A.V. Club. In 2014 I'll review the last 11 episodes of How I Met Your Mother and write an overview of the series for the A.V. Club's 100 Episodes feature. And then I'll be done.

I'm looking forward to exiting that grind and focusing on the grinds that are more directly related to my academic goals as a teacher and scholar. But I'll miss the push to reflect critically and to appreciate expansively. I'll miss the readers and the community of TV critics.

It's almost hard to remember how I fit it in, but the other thing I did last summer was compile a massive four-volume application for promotion to full professor. That rank represents the top of my profession. As of this moment the application has successfully wended its way through two committees and two administrative reviews, and awaits action in 2014 by the provost and the board of trustees. I expect to remove the "associate" from my title this spring, just in time to also remove the "dean."

I'll never get used to this process of looking back and forward. When I turn my gaze to the things already done or set in motion, I can't believe I found the time and energy. When I imagine what current efforts will look like when complete, I can't picture myself as the source and the agent. It's a pleasant shock, though, to glance back and be flummoxed by what you managed to accomplish, and to peek forward and get all excited about what it will feel like to glance back this time in 2014. I hope all of you are having similar feelings on this day -- Janus's Day Eve.

A city that the damned call home

This year I've cut way back on my conference travel. Ordinarily this time of year I'd be juggling presentations and meetings at the national Honors education meeting, followed closely by the American Academy of Religion. But following my exit from most official posts at these organizations, I'm strangely passive about their yearly demands to gather in vibrant cities at big hotels and attend multiple parties. Back in the distant spring, before I made the decision to step down from administration, my boss included me as co-presenter on a session for this year's National Collegiate Honors Society meeting in New Orleans, so I've known for quite some time I would attend. But I've been otherwise content just to let it happen, and hope someone would tell me where to show up. (That's almost too much to expect, it seems; I somehow got left off the list of recipients when the big conference agenda was shared, so I didn't even know when our group dinner was until my boss happened to mention it earlier that day.)

The lack of business suits my mood -- and the mood of the city. I attend some sessions, do some thinking, grab a couple of hours off site to sample the city's food (from beignets to po'boys to gumbo), and try not to add to the self-important bustle of the conference. I support my colleagues and get a little work done and have the football game playing in my shared hotel room by 8:30 pm. And occasionally I wonder: Do I miss being at the center of the action? Having a bunch of special ribbons on my nametag? (The NCHC is crazy for one-off ribbons; there are at least a dozen that I've seen that only one attendee is entitled to wear.) I note that some of the decisions and work are quite important, not only to the organization and its members, but quite literally in the sphere of life and death. But of course, removed from that context as I am, it is undeniably pleasant to leave the worrying and the detail-obsessions to someone else.

This will be the first time I haven't been at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in many, many years. I believe the last one I missed was probably 1997. I went when my children were babes in arms, I went when I had interviews, I went when I had papers to give, and for the last six years, I went as a member of the board of directors. This year I have no committees to staff and I have no papers to give, so there was no rationale for me to ask for my department's support with travel expenses. I let it go. I'll miss it when my friends post to Facebook or tweet about the meeting, but I doubt I will spend a lot of time feeling left out. I have plenty on my plate.

But I confess that sitting in a business meeting here at NCHC this morning, my mind wandered to the AAR office I told many people I might run for in the future. I thought I might do it sooner rather than later. A year out of the trenches and away from the social whirl feels like a vacation. Two years, a well-earned sabbatical. When it starts getting to be a habit, though, you might start feeling sidelined. Irrelevent. Give me a chance to recuperate a bit longer, and then if you have a committee that needs a member or an office that needs a candidate, call me. I don't want to need that kind of status; I hope I'm beyond ever needing to feel important. And I'm way past wanting to have people pile responsibilities on me just so I can stay at the center of things. But on my own terms? I could see it happening again. And I'm betting it will feel as different as night and day, after having climbed the ladder once and been truly grateful to step off the rungs back to solid ground.

Commencement

You can't say that the end of summer sneaked up on me. I've had an eye on the calendar ever since the beginning of July, when I came home from my second research trip and took stock of the last half of my sabbatical. The kids bought their school supplies two weeks ago. U-Hauls are stacked up in front of the dorms at my campus across the street, and tomorrow the flood of new first-years will be arriving.

I walked through the Jewel Moore Nature Reserve with Archer and Cady Gray this afternoon, taking advantage of the incredibly cool weather we've had this summer; where normally temperatures would be pushing or exceeding 100 in August, it's in the low 80's at the moment. As I strolled along and listened to them discuss Pokemon and the deer and rabbit tracks they saw on the trail, I was suddenly struck by a contrast. Frequently last year I came to the Nature Reserve in a desperate attempt to de-stress. The knots in my back and shoulders, the uncertainty, the sense of my life being beyond my control -- I returned to this place again and again, searching for an escape.

Today on the eve of the new academic year beginning, I felt no stress. The magic I was looking for, I found in time away from my administrative load, and time spent thinking deeply about theology. Having made the decision to return to full-time teaching and research, I shed my last remaining doubts more quickly than I expected. Almost without my noticing, my future acquired a shape I recognized. The vague vertigo of an escalator carrying me somewhere I didn't want to go -- it was gone, replaced by a confidence that whatever happened next, I could handle it.

It's amazing how that shift has carried over into other parts of my life. The kids are growing up, and there are plenty of things to worry about there. But I've never been so confident that they're well equipped and poised for success. I know they have challenges coming. But when those hurdles aren't added on to obstacles in my own life, they seem far less terrifying.

When I stop to think about it too long, I can find plenty to fret about. I'm a natural at worrying. But one thing that doesn't concern me is whether I've made the right choice. This summer hasn't just changed my career trajectory. It's changed -- or reset -- my definition of doing well. Success doesn't mean more money and more titles and more people to supervise. It means converting a lifetime of the learning I care about into the lessons that give students more power over their pasts, presents, and futures.

I can't wait to get started.

Taking a break

It's spring break. More accurately, it's the last day of spring break. And it's been a fantastic experience. Every day I've been in the office, mostly all alone (on two days, two different co-workers were also present). Spring break is like a harbinger of summer, with its empty campus and long stretches of unallocated time.

And then the end of the semester rushes back, and it's five weeks of utter chaos before summer actually starts. Usually I think of that chaos as the last gasp of activity before a more leisurely pace for three months. But this year is different.

I applied for and received a sabbatical for the upcoming summer. Most sabbaticals are given for fall or spring semesters, because most faculty don't have regular duties in the summer for which they would need official release. But administrators, like me, can only be granted a sabbatical for the summer, because their administrative functions would (presumably) be more difficult to replace or reassign than the teaching duties of faculty in a normal semester.

This is the first sabbatical I've ever applied for. I'm in my twelfth year of teaching. Prior to a few years ago, when I considered a sabbatical, I didn't have a major project that warranted a request. But now I do -- a book about the theology of prayer shawl ministries, under contract and due next spring.

And the university and the publishing company aren't the only institutions expecting results from my summer off. I have a grant covering some of the travel I need to do for my research and even a course release to give me more time to write this fall. There are another couple of grants still in the pipeline, at least one of which I'm quite hopeful will be funded.

So my sabbatical will be far from relaxing. On the contrary, I'm hoping to travel fully a third of the time. But I'm still looking forward to it as a period of much-needed rest. While I'm not in active crisis like I was a few months ago, I'm still experiencing burnout in my job. I'm still feeling dread about the approaching pressure to step up in administration, and still wondering whether I should instead step aside.

If anything, although my emotional state about it all is more stable, the conditions at work have become harder for me to treat with equanimity. Not that anything overt is wrong, but that the ever-elusive promise of stability and order continues to slip farther and farther into fantasy. I crave work in which I control the pace and the outcome. For scholars, that's research. I'm well aware that it's asking far too much; few human beings ever have the chance of experiencing such control. But those of us in academia usually have some taste of it, and when they're not teaching, faculty typically set aside periods  for it. Right now, that kind of life seems mighty appealing.

So I'm looking forward to throwing myself into research and writing almost full-time for the rest of 2013. It's a test, of sorts, to see whether I get it out of my system and emerge ready to take up the administrative mantle again, or whether I find myself unable to contemplate a life without ample time for scholarly immersion. or something in between.

And when it's over, if all goes as I think it should, my application to be promoted to full professor will be nearing approval. I know my boss will be looking forward to the end of next year as a return to full strength for the department, with sabbaticals for me and another faculty member behind us. But I've long anticipated that moment of promotion as permission to look around and see what other opportunities exist. It's hard to contemplate changing jobs, moving my family, any of those massive disruptions. And I'm not planning on it. But after the freedom to work on my own behalf, on my own project, comes the freedom to see whether that work (and my other experience) can bear more fruit elsewhere than it can here.

Are we there yet?

I don't usually complain about my life or my work. I have an amazing life, full of love and joy from those around me every day. My job is meaningful, my students are astounding, and my colleagues have so much to teach me.

But I've had a crummy week for a lot of reasons, and I'm ready for it to be over.

First, for exam week when classes aren't meeting and only grading is left to do, I've been incredibly busy. There have been meetings and presentations to attend. My students' projects generated stacks of data that I had to design receptacles for, and once those spreadsheets were prepped it was less work to do the entry myself than to train someone else to do it. I expect my pace to ease up a bit during exam week, especially given the exceptional grind I've undergone throughout April, but it seems like I'm still working flat out.

Second, I've been engaged in a knock-down, drag-out, slow-motion struggle over multiple e-mail threads with various segments of a group to which I belong. It's about process and principle, personalities and priorities. It's been ugly and frightening at times, frustrating and angry-making most of the time. I get sucked into composing extremely carefully worded messages, trying to say exactly what I mean and no more, expressing a dissenting point of view to keep it alive in the face of efforts to declare premature consensus, and then an hour later have to come back and do it all over again. It has left me exhausted, day after day. But it's trench warfare; I'm fighting as hard as I can just to stand my ground. It's hard to know whether any progress is being made.

And yesterday I was entrusted with a confidence I'd rather not have been given. It's a burden. I've done what I had to do with it, but every time it crosses my mind, I feel the heaviness. The world is sadder and more complicated than it was before I knew it.

I was looking forward to my first date night in months with my husband tomorrow night, and then I got the news that I was working all three commencements tomorrow instead of the one I had been previously scheduled for. I drew the line at working two and spending my whole day lining up and sitting in a gym, rather than my whole day and part of my evening, which would have entailed canceling my long-awaited dinner and a movie. Such a simple thing that I have wanted for so long, but for a moment it seemed the universe was telling me it was too much to ask for. An appropriate cap to a week that has piled on the stress. I'm still waiting for the payoff for what feels like some of the hardest work I've done in years.

Art tasting

The end of the semester means service projects come to fruition in Honors classes. I've been kept hopping by documentary filmmakers and student researchers all swirling around the topic of public art. My freshman class used a mural painted by a student as a thesis project in their residence hall as a jumping-off point for a public education campaign and opinion polling about campus art in general.



We gathered the night before the event for all the prep. An essential element to any campus event, I've discovered, is the banner -- projected onto a bedsheet to trace the outline, then painted on by enthusiastic student artists.




Our concept was to exchange homebaked treats for responses to a quick 1-minute survey. The idea came about when my initial questionnaire of class skills revealed that eight of fourteen class members were bakers.




Even the best ideas need a helping hand. A class member's mom contributed these unsolicited and totally awesome cakepops in our theme colors.




Theme, you ask? Yes indeed. I don't consider a project really graspable or executable until we have a name that provides the core idea and the driving force. A student came up with SweetARTS, and two others designed this incredible logo, playing off the iconic SweeTarts brand.




We passed out specially-designed informational flyers with surveys attached at various locations on campus associated with public art -- the university's art gallery, the sports complex that houses mascot statuary, the library whose walls are lined with donated collections, near prominent outdoor sculptures -- and asked recipients to come to Alumni Circle, the campus's historic heart and the site of a much-ballyhooed but unfortunately abandoned public art installation a few years ago, to submit them.




The surveys (approved by our institutional review board) used pictures to assess the respondent's familiarity with outdoor sculpture on campus, and asked a few questions about the value and priority the respondent would place on campus art collections.




We were hoping to collect 100 surveys during the three hours of our public event. Community members stuffed this box with 316.




Respondents also were invited to paint or leave handprints on a temporary art wall at the Alumni Circle site.




It seems strangely appropriate that two random passersby snuck into our group photo. After all, our project was all about getting people walking through campus thinking about the art around them, and amplifying their voices. Kudos to the SweetARTS team for an amazing project!

You can follow the project results by liking our SweetARTS page on Facebook. There we'll share the full project report, including the research students did into public art and campus examples, and the results from our SweetARTS mini-survey, as well as a focus group and survey on the large mural installed as a student thesis project in the Honors residence hall last year and on opinions about the place of art within the Honors living-learning community.

Endings and beginnings

I'm in Chicago for the spring board meeting of the AAR. This is my sixth and last spring board meeting, at least on this shift. I joined the board in 2007 as a regionally-elected director. I voted myself off the board in a governance restructuring in 2010. I was asked to stay on for two years as treasurer until an election could occur for that position. And here I am nearing the last meeting with this shifting, ever-changing group I joined so innocently when my daughter was two years old.

Earlier this week, I found out that another position of responsibility I've held since 2007 is coming to an end. The Ravelry Welcome Wagon has sent an individual welcome message to every new member of the site for the past five years. Almost two million people have joined the site in that time. I've personally sent over 27,000 welcome messages. It's a daily ritual for me -- open two tabs, post in the thread for my designated letter of the alphabet indicating where I started, copy the welcome message template from Evernote, and start clicking on the new user page until I reach the person I ended with last time. I've developed a system that I can do very quickly. And yet I reflect every time I click the "send message" button how special it is that we do this intentionally as users, rather than having the system automated.

Such a system is unsustainable at a large enough scale, however, and the pioneers whose brainchild the Welcome Wagon is have decided to shut down the effort rather than try to keep the ship afloat in increasingly high seas. I'm glad to see that the volunteers don't question their resolve or their decision. We're counting down to the last welcomes coming on May 1, and celebrating the legacy we've left for hundreds of thousands of knitters and crocheters.

I like being in positions of responsibility and influence. I like being in positions of service that make a difference for lots of people. And I'm leaving a couple of those positions soon. There are plenty of other things I have planned, that the demise of these responsibilities will help make time for. But I'll miss them. It will be painful seeing April and August and November roll by without anticipating a trip to see the AAR staff and my board colleagues, without strategizing and sympathizing about board issues and politics. It will be a lack and a loss every day to click over to my Ravelry tab without the need to spend a few minutes copying the welcome template into a couple of dozen private messages, replacing my name in the salutation with the user I'm welcoming. I will miss that more than anyone can imagine. It was a perspective on a site and a community I dearly love, that kept me grounded and connected and allowed me to answer a thousand random questions, showing people that there are people on this site, not just forms and forums and bewildering folkways.

I'm going to need an avenue of service to replace these. Stay tuned. I predict it won't take me too long to say yes to some other massive endeavor that will eat up six years of my life.

Nothing but a number

When I was a kid, like any good middle child I measured my birthdays and age against that of my two brothers. Specifically against my older brother, who was born three and a half years before me. When his March 30 birthday rolled around, I know I had six months ahead where he would be four years older than me, in terms of the round yearly number we all use post-toddlerhood.  Then in October, I would catch back up, and enjoy six months of being only three years his junior.

Yesterday my brother turned 50. That's a big one, and I've known it was headed my way for some time. The fact that Dwayne has hit it brings the reality of its approach home again.  Right now he's four years older than me; in October, I'll close the gap again.

Another way to look at age is in terms of career. I got started pretty late, as many academics do, having taken my time wending my way through grad school.  I landed my first and only university job in 1999, and I'm currently completing my thirteenth year of teaching. I'll be eligible to apply for full professor status after next year (my first couple of years of teaching were non-tenure track, so I lost a couple of rungs on the ladder).  And then I'll be started the next phase of my career, probably looking around to see if my administrative experience might make me useful elsewhere, probably putting myself in position to succeed my current boss when he retires in a few years.

I've got maybe twenty years left in this business. More than I've got behind me. That's kind of the opposite of the age number staring me in the face.

This morning I ran my second 5K of 2012.  I hope there will be a handful more before the year ends. When I say "ran," it's even more of an exaggeration than usual; not only was it my usual 12-minute-mile slow jog, but I also walked a lot more than I usually would find acceptable. You see, on Thursday afternoon I came down with the most sudden, violent fever I can remember. I was knitting with my students one minute, and the next I was feeling like crap and trying to get home before the shakes started in earnest. I shivered for an hour, ached for another, then took Motrin. And it was over. I waited for the next twenty-four hours for the other shoe to drop, for the gastrointestinal part of the virus to take hold or whatever, and it never did.

So I took it easy today, still cautious after that strange interlude.  And I remember that even though this is the first time in my life that I've ever attempted to run 5Ks, meaning I'm about as healthy as I've ever been, I'm not getting any younger. I don't know how 50 is supposed to feel, and I'm pretty sure I don't feel it anyway, but I wonder how long I'll be able to ignore my age. No use asking Dwayne; he's a lifelong distance runner and still looks and acts like my default image of him, the athletic collegian.

What really makes me feel young is that I keep changing, I keep learning, and I keep reinventing myself. In that respect I really look forward to becoming a full professor and being liberated to look around and see what opportunities are out there for me. It's the kind of new stage in life that gets me energized. Sometimes the years you put into a career are better than a time machine that could take you back to the beginning.

A weekend away

For almost all of the last twelve years -- I don't think I've missed one since I moved to Arkansas -- I've been coming to Dallas on this weekend. It's the annual meeting of the Southwest Commission on Religious Studies, an umbrella organization that organizes a conference for the members of the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the Association for the Scientific Study of Religion in Texas and surrounding states.

Soon after I started attending, some of the organizers asked me to take leadership roles. I started as a chair of one of the program sessions, then served on the executive committee for the AAR's local branch, then agreed to become the AAR coordinator for the region. The six years of that job are almost up; next year will be my last in that position.

When I come to this meeting, I have a lot of jobs to do. Make decisions as a director of the Commission. Liaise between the AAR portion of the meeting and the meeting planner. Drum up attendance for the plenary. Give most of the reports at the AAR region's annual business meeting. And almost always, give a paper, moderate a session, sit on a panel.

This same weekend, my dad is going to a meeting that he's been attending for years. He's a member of the Kairos team that goes into a prison and spends three days with a group of inmates. The meeting involves months of preparation, like mine. It's packed with activities and a tight schedule, like mine. My dad has several leadership roles to enact, like I do. And there's a connection, too, with the premise of the meeting being religious. Mine is about the study of religion in an academic setting, and his is about practicing one religion's mandate to visit those in prison.

I'm sure readers will have their own opinion about which one is more in sync with their values and more salutary for society. As for me, well, we do good work here at the Southwest Commission on Religious Studies, but it's certainly neither as risky nor as courageous as the work of Kairos. I dare say that while our meeting may reach more people to advance their understanding in ways that improve their teaching of thousands of students, those people reached are already committed to that path, and so the advance is not revolutionary for most or all.

I dare say that the 40 inmates this Kairos weekend will reach are much more in need, and the effect on those men of being listened to and loved is potentially enormous, life-changing. College professors are used to being listened to. We have high social status. We are respected. The opposite is true, in all cases, for men in prison.

You might want to read about my dad's experience this weekend in his blog: http://walkinganewpath.blogspot.com. I am always humbled by what he relates. He may be the most self-critical blogger I read among the hundreds of feeds I follow. While serving others and seeking truth, he's always questioning his own motives and actions -- sometimes to a fault. I need to have more of that in my life, though. My confidence and ambition frequently lead me to believe that I'm a much better, more worthy person than anyone has a right to think themselves.

My dad has always been my role model. These days we often start from different premises in terms of our political and religious stances. The measure of our sincerity and effort surely is that sometimes we end up in the same place.

Those who are with Dad on his Kairos weekend don't have the same doctrine or politics as he does, either. Kairos is interdenominational, and folks participate from the liberal mainline churches, the nondenominational fellowships, the evangelicals and fundamentalists. When they read the Bible, some are reading God's dictation while others are reading human efforts to bear witness. But all are convinced that following the example of Jesus and Paul to pay special attention to society's outcasts is a good idea, good enough to take lots of time and effort and risk to undertake.

I'm convinced of it, too, and convicted. Here I am doing the work given me to do, and I'll do it with all my might, and I know it will make a difference and be appreciated. But how thankful I am that those rockier fields have found their laborers, too, and that I have some insight into their efforts through my dad.

Sticking to your knitting

Becoming a knitter six years ago has focused my attention on craft in a way that I've never experienced before. The relationship and frequent disconnect between technique and creativity is thrown into sharp relief by learning a new skill, and working to become better at it.  I am intimately obsessed with the details of executing a craft discipline.  I am often mystified by the ability of its master practitioners to internalize those details so thoroughly that they can imagine a world rendered through that set of motions, or see the world to be filled with the raw material that this craft transforms.

This afternoon I watched the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, about a sushi chef of 70 years experience who runs a ten-seat restaurant tucked into a hallway corner in the Tokyo subway underground. His creativity and perfectionism is so famous that people wait months or years for a reservation, and the minimum bill is 30,000 yen or about $350. The unprepossessing stall has three Michelin stars.

Much of the documentary focuses on the repetitive discipline of getting that good at something. Years of practice are required -- apprenticeships lasting most of a lifetime. Jiro, his sons and apprentices, and his adoring customers state over and over again that the key is to do only one thing. To do it every day, to aspire to reach ever new levels of achievement in that one solitary thing.

Years ago I might have found this intriguing but unrealistic. Most of our jobs require that we acquire many skills, and master few or none. But now, after thinking through the nature of craft with two seminar classes, I think there are ways for most people to take this as a challenge. How many of us develop an ability to perform in some area, and then expect that we will use this skill in a cruise control or autopilot mode while we advance ourselves in other ways?  I wonder if teaching is like this for many academics. We learn to teach, we get reasonably good at it, and then we take that knife ou of the drawer and wield it whenever the occasion arises, without feeling we need to continue deepening our appreciation or understanding of that activity. We can do it, so we do it, and if we are still learning skills they are likely to be in areas related by professional affiliation but not necessarily by methodology or material, like administration, writing, research. It's a well-known fact that most academics consider the appropriate wage for teaching to be fewer and fewer assignments to teach as the years go on. Is such a system --- are such ambitions -- likely to produce great educators?

No one would expect a knitter to become a master of his craft, to reach the highest levels of skill, by doing something other than knitting. No one would expect an athlete to become a champion by doing something other than practicing her sport. Performing one's craft and reflecting on one's craft are the only two activities associated with honing one's craft. In how many areas of our culture do we expect, for some odd reason, perfection to be achieved by diffusion of effort rather than concentration?

Waiting for karma

Earlier this week two days of tornados ripped through states to the north and east of us. I'm finding it hard to enjoy our beautiful outdoors, with its intact trees and undemolished houses, as a result. March is the top month for tornados in Arkansas. We are used to the threat, if still anxious about it. Why were these storms out of place? Why did other towns and families have the suffering that usually comes our way?

I've been delinquent on several important responsibilities in the last month of so. People I should have contacted, requests I should have made, organization I should have gotten underway. When I finally stepped up to the plate, very belatedly, I was somewhat dismayed to find out that I was not punished. My correspondants cooperated. Those I asked for help said yes. Schedules meshed. Stuff got covered. I couldn't help feeling guilty. It shouldn't have been that easy for me. I deserved something quite different.

I'm just waiting for the universe to balance itself out. Because truth didn't come with consequences recently, then some unmerited crap will have to fall on my head down the line. Maybe some bad behavior that got thrown my way this past week is the start of it, but to make up for all I should expect, for my sins and the probabilities that govern my life, there's a long way to go. And besides, it's not being wronged that I anticipate -- it's just the cards running cold. Plans falling through, serendipity absent, requests turned down, stuff breaking, inconveniences mounting to the same height as the undeserved conveniences I've shamefacedly enjoyed.

If my only penalty is monetary, I'll breathe a sigh of relief. Until the bill comes due, however, I'm going to have a hard time relaxing.

The craft of writing

The writing department at my university runs an annual literary festival called ArkaText. It features writers based on Arkansas or with a connection, either personal or thematic, to the state.

This spring the faculty were kind enough to invite Noel to be one of those writers. He gave a "craft talk" to a group of faculty and students in the morning, was treated to lunch with faculty members, and in the afternoon did a reading (of a couple of VSEs -- this one and this one) to the general public.

Even though I tell people all the time that my husband's a writer; even though Noel and I talk about writing all the time; even though I've taught courses on writing for the very department that invited him -- I still find it strange to watch Noel in that setting. He spends all his time writing. Now suddenly he's being asked to spend a whole day talking about writing instead of doing it.

It's not that he doesn't have plenty to say that's valuable to writing students about what he does. His presentations -- both of them -- got great reviews. It's more the psychological and cultural distance between writing, and being named, treated, and queried as a writer. Whenever you make that move from the daily work to the social meaning of your role, its status and connotations, you feel a shift.

That shift is enhanced when you go outside your normal site and are introduced to strangers in terms of your role. They don't know you as a person; they only know what they've been told you do. Then it's up to you to live up to those expectations, or to ignore them if you prefer.

I'm going to a university in a nearby community on Monday to give an invited talk. As I prepare my presentation, I'm not just thinking about the topic of my talk. I'm thinking about how they'll see me. I'm thinking about my image as a professor, and the image of my department and my university.  The school that invited me is a more conservative place than my home institution. I don't want to offend, but I also want to represent my topic and myself accurately. I want those who attend to leave informed and challenged, not only about my topic but about me.

In between my work, my self, and my various roles, lies my self image. And it's constantly on the move. I can't imagine how hard it must be for people who have more roles they need to fill and more people they need to please.

Body and mind

While driving Cady Gray to her school today, I was the recipient of an excited discourse from the back seat about P.E.  She loves to play games and dash about, in school or out. Anytime she's moving from room to room, she not only does so at a run, but also throws in random leaps and dance moves. It's a unique, syncopated rhythm.

As she was telling me how excited she was to have P.E. today, I responded with my pleasure in seeing her enjoy all kinds of movement. Not only major physical exercise, but also the fine movements of her hands that make beautiful origami for me, and those that twist yarn into crocheted hearts and knit snowflowers.

So much of what I find rewarding these days has to do with the movement of our physical bodies in the world. To run, to measure, to cut, to stitch, to knit, to walk, to wind, to embrace. It's quite a change from the first four decades of my life, which were all about the mind. And now when I look at my students sitting in class, doing their best to be disembodied as if that's what fulfilling their potential is obviously about, I wonder. Are they better integrated than I was at their age? Do they accept and understand and embrace their future as moving, working bodies, not just hosts for the dance of ideas?

I hope they won't wait as long as I did to learn the potential of my hands, my muscles, my senses. It is a shame that as we grow up, those topics are more and more segregated into classes like P.E. or art, away from the training of the mind which is thought to be purer the less it is connected to movements in space.

Dissed

I've had occasion recently to think about a complex of emotions with which I have limited experience. Disrespect is not something I've paid attention to for the first four decades of my life. Before the last few years, I doubt I could have articulated what disrespect feels like, and what it means.

But now I've witnessed disrespect at close range in various settings, and it's a very interesting phenomenon. Disrespect happens when a person is performing their role or duty, and another person either interprets that performance as a personal attack, or treats the performance as illegitimate. What's most intriguing about disrespect is that it's a public matter. It requires the witness of other people. The whole point of disrespect is that there is an audience. Just as the according of respect is a performance that communicates roles to a broader public than the two people involved, so the enacting of disrespect shows others that the recipient's authority or position is not accepted. In that way it is an attack, or more properly a rear-guard action.

Disrespect feels like a blindside. Here we are in a group setting, doing our jobs, and somebody's decided not to play the game.  And in a public setting, it can be jarring, and difficult to decide how to respond. Do you draw further attention to it by noticing or calling it out?  Do you take the high road and just go on doing your job?  What if you weren't present for the public disrespect, but found out later that people didn't feel like you deserved honesty about their intentions? How do you react next time you see them?

We can all understand disrespect because we've all been in situations where we are annoyed, frustrated, or impatient with someone doing their job. We feel like we'd do their job differently, or we find that their way of doing their job rubs us the wrong way. We have the impulse to roll our eyes or mutter asides to our neighbor or otherwise act out our disapproval. Normally we save it for the next venting session with friends or spouses. But sometimes we take it public, and it shades into disrespect. It can be impulsive, like a moment of annoyance, or calculating and thorough.

I don't think we deserve respect because of the positions we occupy, or even because of our simple humanity. We deserve respect if we haven't foregone it by failing to be worthy of trust. I think if we're trying to do our jobs, we deserve respect. And when we don't get it, the hurt is quite singular. We don't know how to fix it, since doing our job isn't the answer. How does one demand respect if others are clearly and publicly on record as unwilling to give it?

Sundance season

Noel has been in Park City, Utah since last Wednesday, attending the Sundance Film Festival. You can read his daily dispatches here at the A.V. Club.  By all accounts, he's had a good run in the screening rooms.  And clearly, he's worked very hard, as can be seen by how many films he's logged and how many thousands of words worth of capsules he's written in the wee hours of the morning.

Here at home, we have our own "Sundance Film Festival." It consists of trying to cobble together babysitters, grandparents, and my work schedule so that the kids are delivered to and from school on time, and receive regular meals.

That's been difficult in our 2012 outing.  A combination of regularly scheduled spring events -- a freshman book discussion, a sophomore orientation -- and two faculty candidate visits back to back, meant that this is the first weekday night since Noel left home that I have not had to head out in the evening darkness for some work-related event.

I couldn't have managed without my parents coming to handle kid transport and kitchen duties while I was otherwise occupied.  They left this morning for the grueling two-day drive back to their home on the Georgia coast.

Noel's last day at the festival is tomorrow; he flies home on Thursday, arriving around the time the kids are getting into their pajamas.  I have done a decent job keeping things together (knock on wood).  But I've done a poor job communicating with my absent spouse.  Normally I post status updates and blog entries regularly, supplementing the occasional phone conversation with public information about how we're getting along.  But the faculty candidate visits have thrown any concept of "regularly" out the window.  I've had neither the time nor the energy to write, even a hundred and forty characters.

When a big push like faculty hiring coincides with the stressful and difficult conditions of half parental strength, you put your head down and power through it.  But it always surprises me how much effort, mental and physical, that it takes.  Several nights in the past week, I've sat down in my recliner an hour or so away from bedtime, finally done with everything on my plate, and have felt the bone weariness seep through my shoulders.

Noel knows that feeling well, I'm aware. No one works harder, especially through the 20-hour days of film festival madness. My parents know it, as they bunk down in some motel midway through Alabama, still a day away from their home after driving all day.  We all look forward to getting back to the normal pile of deadlines and the usual routine of too much on our plates, rather than this crazy displaced double-time version of our lives.

Whose problem is it?

I encourage my students to knit in class ... or crochet, or play with Play-Doh, or sketch, or make rubber band balls, or whatever they want to do with their hands that doesn't involve language.  That means no surfing the net, no texting, no writing poetry.

The sight of someone knitting in class can be surprising to some people.  They may even be disturbed by it.  They may think that knitting means not paying attention.  From what students who knit in other classes tell me, most instructors have no problem with it; they're focused on performance, not appearances, and as long as the students demonstrate clearly that they are engaged and learning, they give their blessing.

But other students in their classes might feel differently. An outstanding student of mine told me about a classmate of hers in a major seminar who found her knitting difficult to take.  He made numerous references on Facebook to "the crazy girl who knits," exclaiming: "I fb and text in class but knitting?!"

I hope I don't even have to point out the craziness of that claim of crazy.  This guy believes that chatting on Facebook and carrying on text conversations on his phone is his God-given right as a red-blooded student.  Maybe he knows that the professor wouldn't exactly like it if it were waved in his face, but playing on your phone is as American as apple pie; you can't really expect someone not to do it.  Knitting, though?  That's just nuts.

Now, doing anything in class that is unexpected or unconventional draws attention.  People wonder if it's okay.  They worry that you're setting a bad example, and they suspect that you're getting away with something.  My question is whether that is your problem or theirs.  If your performance is not being affected -- maybe even is being improved -- is there a reason to be disturbed?  Maybe there's concern that others around the knitter are finding it disruptive.  My worry is that disruptiveness is a vague idea that has historically been used to keep all kinds of diversity of learning styles, teaching styles, and even student and faculty demographic segments from making an appearance in the classroom.

Knitting in class isn't just a practical act.  Taking such an activity out of the sphere to which it's been relegated -- the domestic, private sphere -- and into the larger world is a political act.  It's a statement about gender, about the material world, about the body, about value.  Is there any reason not to make the classroom safe for knitting?  I haven't yet seen the evidence against it, and I can muster several rooms full of outstanding students who will vouch for it.

Introductions

My classes are all seminars.  That means the students work as a team throughout the class.  They need each other to bring up ideas, develop them, and work through discussion topics toward learning and understanding.  They don't absorb and respond as separate individuals; they are responsible collectively for generating the material for the class, and they must contribute if they want to have anything to take and make their own.

So on the first day of my classes, we spend a lot of time getting to know each other.  I like to have the students fill out a brief questionnaire, and then share some of their answers with the class.  This semester I'm co-teaching with a colleague, and we have double the usual number of students.  So we built on my usual questionnaire in order to include items from other of our perspectives, while at the same time cutting down the number of questions in order to get through the intros expeditiously.

Today was the first day of our class, and we allotted 20 minutes to go around the room and have everyone speak. There were 27 students, so everybody had less than a minute apiece. And because of the room we were in, they were seated in a large circle with some people in a second row behind.

Yet despite these disadvantages, it was one of the most invigorating introductory sessions I've ever experienced. In the end, it wasn't due to our structure or prep.  It was one simple choice that student after student made when they stood to introduce themselves.  They turned to speak to their fellow students instead of talking to the instructors.

We didn't tell them to do that.  We didn't give any indication about why the introductions were happening at all.  But over and over again, it happened.  The students stood and told each other, not us, who they were and what movies they liked and where they'd like to live if they could live anywhere and what's unexpectedly changed about them in the last few years.  

I was moved, I confess.  No lectures about how they needed to work together were needed here.  They were already in seminar mode.  If that twenty minutes is any indication, it's going to be a great semester.

Commencing

Tomorrow is the first day of the spring semester. Students have been trickling back to campus all day. Parking places have gotten harder to come by.  And the bookstore has long lines.

Faculty have spent the day printing, collating, notating, xeroxing.  I can't think of any I've left undone, but then, that was the case earlier this morning before I thought of fourteen things that hadn't been done yet.

I'm lucky to have a safety net this semester -- a co-teacher in one class, a shared syllabus and an assistant in the other.  The only problem with that is that it makes it possible for me not to think everything through ahead of time.  I relax a little bit, knowing that there's someone to pick up my slack.  Two minds are better than one, but not if both of them are hoping that the other one is paying more attention.

I start the day tomorrow manning a welcome booth on the north side of campus.  One would think there would be fewer newbie questions or people needing directions in the spring semester than the fall, but maybe I'm completely off base.  There's surely no better way to take the temperature of the campus than sitting behind a table and gauging the expressions of students with 9 am classes in early January.  I wonder what I'll find.

Continental divide

One reason that some people get drawn to administration -- the dark side, as many faculty call it -- is the chance to actually get some stuff done.  You can get stuff done in your classroom, but the reach is limited.    People who see a chance to make larger, more systemic impacts move up to the levels where those decisions are made.

It's the role of faculty to be skeptical about change, because those larger initiatives threaten the freedom of the sphere where they get their stuff done: the classroom.  The administrative team to which I belong has spent a lot of time and effort thinking about what changes need to be made to solve some persistent, nagging problems in our curriculum and to enact fully for the first time some of the longstanding promises and rhetoric of our program. The changes are big and complicated, with lots of simultaneously moving parts, and the time they need to get started is yesterday, unless we want to give up on them for yet another year and keep doing the same stuff.  The rationales and proposals are as daunting as they are sweeping. The challenge is how to meet faculty somewhere in the middle between "here's everything we need to do!" and "why do we need to do anything at all?"

As I move toward more rarefied positions, I'm watching carefully to see how change gets done.  It's a little like sausage-making, I must confess.  Do you work out a detailed proposal, and risk having your personnel feel like they didn't have enough input?  Do you leave much unresolved, and try to corral a larger group of people into the process of invention -- which is often like wordsmithing a document with a dozen people around the conference table, if you've ever experienced that?  Present the proposal close to the time it needs to be implemented, and you have a sense of urgency and a deadline that can help you get stuff done, but you also may convey the sense that it's all already decided.  Give people lots of lead time and request their involvement, and they wonder why you're pushing them to do extra work on top of what they've already got on their plate.

I'm not sure there's a Solomonic way of doing administrative leadership that cuts these babies in half.  I see lots of ways to go wrong, and sometimes the only way that seems to go right is just steeling yourself and bulling through.  But that just confirms the divide.  Is there any way to get these factions pulling together?  And what's the role of meetings, memos, agendas, emails, minutes, reports, and other kinds of communication tools in pulling people together?

New Year's Day (Observed)

Noel noted today that the new year doesn't really begin unti the kids go back to school and the routine of work sets back in. That was today. Campus reopened, public school resumed, and at least in terms of our schedule, normalcy was restored.

Now, I can't say that I'm back to my usual routine, and I'm sure glad that's the case. As an administrator, I come back to work a few days before the rest of the faculty, and a little more than a week before classes resume. The office is quiet, there's plenty of time to work without interruption, and few meetings (and no classes) intervene with their repetitive urgency.

I'm happy to ease back into work. My colleague Phil and I are building an entirely new class, and we have a lot of work to do in the next few days to get that underway. But we've worked together closely before, we know each other well, and I have little anxiety about getting it done. There are several long-range projects underway that will be continuing this semester with committees and all that they entail; some of these have been muddling along in a two-steps-forward, one-step-back pattern, and though none of us are eager to get back into them, we'll all be glad to see them done.

And then there are big, intense, short-term efforts for the semester. We're conducting a faculty search, with three candidates visiting in the first three full weeks of classes.  Our admissions process will begin with application review after the priority deadline of January 15, and keep up at a steady pace through three full-day interviews and final selection in mid-March.  In the midst of all that, I have my usual regional religious studies conference, and I'm teaching a month-long Christian education course on Hell and a three-day short course on the Reformation.

Added all up like that, it seems like a very busy semester. Luckily I only have to live it one day at a time.  And even better, I have a few days yet to get up to speed.