In these shoes?

 Hmm, shoes.  The responses to my last post suggested I may need to upgrade my footwear for teaching purposes, to help ward off lower back pain.  (And yes, I get it, I should also be exercising.)  Since this relates to an earlier post in which I wondered about buying new shoes versus repairing old ones, I am now considering afresh what to do about the damn things.  (Obviously, I never made it to a shoe repair shop this weekend.  Midterms.) 

So first of all, here are the shoes I've been wearing pretty much consistently for the last few years.  I don't like to think too much about this stuff, so I buy a pair in tan and another in black, and I'm covered for almost all wardrobe situations in my working and private life.  They work fine with business-casual trousers, they look great with jeans, and on occasion – including my memorable campus interview this past winter in a heavy snowstorm – I can even get away with the black ones when I'm wearing my charcoal-gray suit.




These shoes have several virtues in my eyes – versatility and comfort – but durability is kind of a problem.  A year and a half walking around DOU-Town did in my last pairs, and less than a year in Research Country accomplished much the same thing to my current pairs.  So, with that in mind, as well as my aching back, I'm no longer sure that I should bother to repair these, or even buy new pairs.

So, tell me, O internet, what other options have I, as a dorky academic who just wants a nice pair or two of plain-toe* oxfords for all occasions that fit comfortably and are good for my health?

Yeah, yeah, I know, Dr. Martens are supposed to be nice.  But I never really understood the point of these shoes, once we all graduated from college and were no longer allowed to look like...well, like college students.  That stupid-ass yellow stitching and creepy-colored sole utterly ruin color coordination with anything that didn't come out of the $1 bin at the Salvation Army.  And really, I never went for wingtips.  Wingtips are, from my perspective, kind of douchey.  Even the ironic ones.  For that reason, I'm not much fonder of these (non-ironic?) Dr. Martens.  As a final complaint on these shoes, I find the heel very thin and knife-like whenever I've tried them, and I really hate shoes that make my heels blister.  Comfort is key!

Swinging in the other direction, there are some seriously cushy-heeled shoes out there, like these Tims.  And Timberlands, as I've found, are pretty hardy shoes.  But these?  They're a little too boot-like for my taste.  As far as I can see, they are Timberland boots, except with a lower top that doesn't go over the ankle.  But this doesn't make them look like any classroom-to-dinner-date shoe that I've ever seen; it only makes them look like industrial-strength safety shoes.  (Don't they look like they should have steel toes?)  I can't imagine wearing these to a conference, especially in a year like this year, when I'm on the market and, pace Historiann, should be prepared to wear a suit or something close to it for my (fingers crossed!) preliminary interviews.


Now these more formal Tims are closer to what I'm looking for.  Nice simple lines, no wingtip nonsense, no ooh-look-at-me ironic-hipster trimming, and even a little cushioning around the heel.  Frankly, the only thing I worry about with these – apart from the obvious fact that I won't know how they fit unless I buy a pair online or trudge all the way up to Major Regional City and go shoe shopping – is that the sole may not offer the level of support that I need to teach on my feet all day long.  Well, that, and the inescapable fact that they cost $120 per pair.  The Dockers I've relied on for years cost half of that.  But perhaps this is one of those situations in which you get what you pay for.


I dunno.  Can anyone lend me some fashion brains for a few minutes?

And, lest the post title leave you hanging...



*Cap-toes can be fun, but a little ostentatious for me.  I have a ridiculously over-the-top pair of cap-toe oxfords that I've worn with my gray suit for ages, though.  Maybe I should get something a little less flashy and workaday, but I can't bring myself to do it, given that I wear a suit about four times a year and want to enjoy the occasions as they come.

A cry for help

Friends, I need your aid and support at this time.  Support in particular.  I have discovered that my teaching regimen of four lectures a day, three days a week is giving me serious lower back pain.  As a practical matter, I have to stand in order to lecture — otherwise, I can't make eye contact with too many students, I lose energy and focus, and in any case, I have a tendency to pace around the stage or podium area as I talk. 

Clearly, I'm getting old, since I never used to notice that standing and walking gave me lower back pain.  What am I supposed to do, or wear, or avoid in order to stave off feeling achy and exhausted three afternoons a week?  Surely other professors have experienced the heartbreak of backache.

I noticed this especially last week when I proctored midterms for all my sections.  My TA and I were both groaning and muttering by the end, and zi is way younger than I am, so I'm hopeful that this is not entirely a function of my being a broken-down old coot.

Rigor, reason, and reality

Continuing a bloggy conversation that Dr. Crazy started this past week, I've been doing a lot of thinking about, well, look at the title of this post.  I've been bitching and moaning for weeks now about my disappointing students, and some blogging colleagues have offered various suggestions for getting a handle on my anger and frustration, and for finding more useful ways to explain information to students.  In the meat world, some colleagues and I have also been commiserating about all this, particularly those of us who are all new hires at Ghosttown U.

From one angle, at least, I feel a lot better than I did before: I have learned that the students' evaluative narratives count for precious little towards my future job prospects.  Thus, I don't have to fret before bed each night that I won't get another job because my students here, irked at being made to think hard, are going to write "OMG wurst prof evar, to hard, donot take any classes with this jerk!"

And on my end of things, I am making my peace with the fact that some of my expectations for my students here were simply too high, and I will have to adjust them as much as I am able within the confines of the course requirements, and fix them more fully in future semesters.  I've heard universal exclamations from my newly hired colleagues here that the students at Ghosttown U. cannot handle the same level of work that students at a wide variety of other big state universities could do.  My former students at Dear Old University are but one example of this phenomenon: I was at a collegial party last evening, and I lost track of how many different state universities were mentioned in exactly the same way.  They could handle what Ghosttown U. students cannot.

Obviously, this means that I have more work to do on my syllabi than I wanted, but that's the way it is.  Challenging and pushing my students is one thing, but it's a kind of cruelty to set them up for failure by presenting them with reading material that, by all accounts, they cannot yet understand at all.  In practice, this means that I will need to ditch two or three readings on my current syllabus that aren't working out: students come to class without having really tried to read, because they are dead certain that they cannot do it.  As pathetic as that sounds, that's the truth.  The few super-bright students in my classes will not be harmed by not reading these things; they'll likely encounter them later, as they qualify for and seek out successively harder, more ambitious classes.  I'm teaching an intro course, after all.  It also means I have to lower my expectations for one or two readings this semester: the students will suffer with them, not get them at all, and give up.  And, as I remain aware, I do not want them to give up if they are really trying in the first place.  I don't grade primarily on effort, but I pay a lot of attention to effort when looking for ways to engage them.

That's not to say that I'm not going to challenge my students at all, and just pat them on the head for spelling their own names right.  The challenges will continue.  But I'm developing a sense of where the boundary lies between "tough but possible" and "impossibly tough" for the majority of my students. 

I'm also going to fiddle with the current syllabus a bit – it ain't no legal contract, after all – and institute some pop quizzes on the readings.  I'll have to go easy on this in practice, lest I simply demoralize them with the sense of constant testing.  But I'm seeing even some of my better students acting on the belief that it's okay for them to slide on some days.  I'm okay with them struggling with the readings, but not with neglecting them.  I thought that the pace of the standard quizzes would keep them current, but I was wrong.  Too many of the students assume that they don't have to read if I haven't expressly warned them of a coming evaluative assignment.  Like I said, part of the problem is that I overloaded them with reading material that they find too difficult, but another part is that they think that they only have to read before quizzes and tests.  Well, we'll see what happens when they learn that any day (...or every day?...) can be Quiz Day.  

As for not being heartsick and agonized to behold the continuing downward spiral of public education in this state...well, I'll have to toughen up about that.  In some ways, it just sucks for my students that they have run into a professor who runs a tougher class than some others do, and who thinks that even an intro-level class should make students sweat a little.  But I'm going to try very hard to demonstrate to them that, in some ways, this is not only good for them, but will feel good, too.

Acting like an imbecile

I've not been in a good mood lately.  I've been avoiding answering emails as well as checking in on the blogging scene here, because I have so much negativity built up.  I'm just frustrated with the apparent inability of my students to think straight, to understand that it's not appropriate to waltz into class twenty minutes late and then start texting on the cell phone, to recognize basic facts of reality.  I'm a little worn down by the realization that the closest place where people aren't exactly like the residents of Ghosttown is a full hour and a half away by car, on poorly maintained roads that throw gravel at your windshield and make you wonder why we stopped investing in the railway system.  This whole place makes me feel lonely and isolated.

Rather than dwell upon this any further, I am going to try to cheer myself up with a music video that involves synthesizers, Morris dancers, and what I can only assume was a huge amount of cocaine and pills.