RBOC: Notes from the Bosstown job hunt

• Hi, guys!  I'm in Bosstown now!  (See photo of downtown Bosstown.)
• Bosstown seems to run on meetings.  Meetings in order to set up more meetings.  Which pave the way for even more meetings.  At some point in this seemingly endless feedback loop, a job materializes for the job seeker.  Everyone here swears to me that it is ultimately a matter of acquiring a sufficiently large circle of acquaintances who know me personally that one of them will realize that zi has a job I'd be perfect for.  The whole thing feels distinctly like the Underpants Gnomes business model:
  
• Fuck me, new wardrobes are expensive.  Here in Bosstown, people dress a lot more formally than in any university I've ever heard of, and that goes double for interview attire. 
• On the plus side, I've got some nice shirts now, and some killer ties to go with my new suits.  I also have a beautiful pair of business-dress shoes.
• On the down side, the stupid screen door where I'm staying has already scraped my left shoe a few times.  No doubt about it: I'm hard on footwear.
• We can put a man on the moon, but we can't develop truly tropical-weight wool for business suits?  WTF?  It's in the goddamn 90s already; it just isn't right.
• Still, the clothes are fun.  How do you like today's ensemble?  (I know, it's not quite my best angle.)

RBOC: Liveblogging the final exam and thinking of the future (and shoes)

• I am not pleased about CBU's habit of scheduling final exam blocks on a Saturday.  They do this in order to speed up the grading cycle, since the final grades for seniors have to be tabulated far enough in advance to let the administration work out who is actually going to graduate and who isn't.  I get it, but still.  
• Plus, as I might have mentioned on this blog before, it's total bullshit that they give the students exactly one reading day between the end of classes and the start of finals.  Once again, the administration demonstrates that it doesn't really care that much about academic quality, but really just wants to hustle its customers through efficiently.  Sigh.
• Several students I had this semester enjoyed my classes enough to declare either a major or minor in pseudology.  In a school at which most students seek the path of least resistance, I consider this a personal victory.
• Thank heavens, everyone is here.  A few times in years past, I have had a student all but assassinate hir GPA by not showing up to the final exam.  It's really depressing to see a grade sink to an F because the student simply never even walked into the room and threw something together on paper.  Even a disastrously failing exam counts for some minimal points, in my rubric.  I take my cue on this issue from King Lear: nothing will come of nothing.
• I have complex feelings about overseeing final exams this semester.  On the one hand, I doggedly cling to my sense of self-worth as partially rooted in being a rigorous teacher, which requires me to spend a lot of energy considering how to grade essay exams.  On the other hand, I have the distinct sense right now that I must expect to make my living outside academia, and thus feel like spending more than minimal energy on grading is a waste of effort.  (Does anyone beyond the academy even give a shit about my teaching portfolio?)
• If nothing else, though, I feel like I still need to be rigorous for the academic benefit of the students who really tried.  I may well go to an early grave because of my insistence on encouraging excellence and discouraging mediocrity.
• So, have I mentioned that I'm looking for a job outside academia?  Long-time readers know what that implies as a start for a self-absorbed would-be bourgeois like me: new clothes!  I picked up two of this bad boy, in gray and navy.  (Slightly more understated patterns than the stripe pictured, but you get the idea.)  These are the first suits I've ever owned for which I actually paid attention to the style and cut to make them look good on me. 
• And, comme de juste, new shoes!  I've become aware that there are dress shoes and then there are dress shoes: specifically, the kind that I have always worn are meant to last for a few years at best before falling apart, but others are built for the long haul.  I can't yet consider purchasing a $700 pair of shell cordovan oxfords, but I seem to be inching closer to that.  For the time being, I'm sticking with my cheap-ass might-actually-be-plastic black cap-toes from DSW, but I'm adding some good-quality brown shoes to my wardrobe.  Check 'em out!  (I ordered them in walnut, if you're curious.)  I'm told these shoes will last for decades, with a little care.
• This class is blessedly quiet and focused.  Makes it much easier to geek out about suits and shoes.
• Oh, poor soul of a student staring at that blank page!  I feel for you, I do, but I effing told you repeatedly that you need to come to class in order to grasp the material.  Please do not look surprised, now that you confront essay questions you have no idea how to answer.  The look of resigned misery, however, is appropriate.
• I feel emotionally torn between the two extremes of my career-seeking advisors: those who are sure that next year will be the year! and those who are convinced that academia is just a con job and I should run.  It feels a bit like dueling cults vying for my loyalty.  If nothing else, it suggests an exhausting job hunt for the foreseeable future, as I try to live in two worlds at once.  I suspect that this will not work out well for me, and I will feel obliged to drop academia as too much time and effort to spend when I have to earn a living elsewhere.  But we'll see.
• Back on the topic of business dress, I feel like a schmuck right now with my full academic regalia hanging in my closet.  I know, I know, it's always there for Harry Potter-style Halloween costumes, but y'know?  I bought that outfit as a goad to myself to secure an academic job.  Perhaps this is yet another reminder that, whatever effort I put into this business, I am not ultimately in control.
• On a related topic, do I really want to march in the graduation exercises this year?  I know every use of the regalia helps to amortize the cost, but fuck, people, I don't know if I want to sit there shvitzing for several hours while a parade of idiots old and young speak on the dais.  Every encounter with academic ritual right now feels like touching a raw nerve.
• Wow, first student to finish took an hour and fifty minutes.  And zi is no scholar, either.  I think it's a good sign that even the so-so students are taking this seriously enough not to rush through.
• Damn it, I'm getting hungry already.  I rose earlier than usual today, probably out of the ancient anxiety of sleeping late and missing an exam, but this meant that I had time to cook a proper breakfast for myself.  I was hoping that would sustain me until a little closer to lunchtime, but I forgot to factor in the physical effort of standing for three hours.  Now I just want the few remaining exam-takers to hustle so I can get some food.
• Burgundy/oxblood shoes: too much for ordinary office wear?  Opinions?
• My shopping habits seem to me an indicator of the kind of employment I need to pursue, in one form or another: research.  I can't even buy a pair of shoes without researching leathers and cobbling techniques for several hours.  Hopefully, this obsessive tendency of mine will pay off in a good job that uses my geekiness skills to best effect.  I wouldn't mind also ending up the best-shod pseudologist at the party.
• OMFG, kids, there are only fifteen minutes left, and you've been at this for 2.75 hours.  What the hell could possibly take any longer?  If you're waiting for inspiration to strike, I have news for you: it's not happening.  Just wrap it up so your professor can go to lunch.
• Stop sitting there staring at the page.  You look like your ass could take root in that chair at any minute.  It irritates me.
• Did you know that I get cranky when I'm hungry?
• Down to two minutes now.  Whether they like it or not, in five minutes' time they'll all be out the door no matter where they are with this exam, and I will be in the sunshine heading toward lunch.
• DONE.  Aaah, only two more of these to go!

Back to work (and I'm glad of it)

Good grief, but I am tired.  It's been an utterly miserable few days here for weather, as everyone knows from the constant news reports.  I now consider 20ºF to be balmy and pleasant, after several days of -15º to -5º.  I've been on an online shopping binge for heavy weather clothing: boots, sweaters, socks, wool pants.  I'm considering browsing the sites for nice long underwear.  (This may or may not be a cry for help.  I'll see what the going prices are.)

I'm additionally dragged out from playing host to a friend who just moved to the area and pleaded to come stay with me until the deep freeze and snow had passed — zi was terrified by the prospect of being snowed in when zi had no internet and, really, no local contacts as yet in case of emergencies.  The upshot of this was two high-strung, stir-crazy people eating too much, drinking too much, and eventually getting into bizarre fights.  I am heartily sick of hosting, maybe even more so than I am sick of this fucking winter weather.

But I am free now, and can enjoy the solitude of my apartment as an asset.  Plus, tomorrow is the first day of my stupid little January term course, so I'll be getting out of the house regularly for work purposes.  I'd actually be thrilled to be going to campus tomorrow, if it weren't for the frightening road conditions between here and there.  I drove to the supermarket this afternoon to replenish my locust-despoiled post-visit refrigerator, and it was honestly scary.  My little Beetle has some good qualities, but road-worthiness in snowy, icy weather is not among them.  I got stuck once in snow too deep for my wheels to get traction, and I was fishtailing at little about 40% of the time thereafter, even at 20 mph.  I've never been so exhausted by quick trip to the grocery store.

On the plus side, a colleague with a sturdy all-wheel drive vehicle has kindly agreed to take me to and from campus tomorrow, so I don't have to fear dying on the road before I even start teaching this calendar year.  I'm hoping that Cornstate will get its act together and have the roads properly cleared off for Friday's commute, for my poor car's sake.

Enough of this f-ed-up winter vacation.  Get me back to the office!

RBOC: Liveblogging the final exam

I'm proctoring.  I'm bored.  So.

• There is a noticeable scent of Axe body spray in the air this morning as CBU students begin their exam week.  I wouldn't be surprised if a few of the boys are putting it on as a talismanic gesture in preparation for an exam, but the smart money is that they stopped showering days ago and believe that a rampant chemical stench will cleverly disguise their poor finals-time hygiene.
• It fascinates me to observe the varieties of boots that students wear for winter weather.  This can be broken down in several ways:
• Men very rarely wear boots.  It is sneakers, loafers, or bust around here.  How they avoid pneumonia is more than I can say.  (Of course, I write this with some decidedly non-boot oxfords on my feet, so maybe I should shut up.)
• Women are all about the boots here.  Sure, there are the usual Uggs and Bean boots, but there's an impressive array of alternative styles on display — most of them, to my eye, fashion boots rather than actual heavy-weather gear.  (I sure hope you waterproofed those nice leather boots, sweetheart.)  
• Speaking of the Bean boots, I am amused to see how many of those look absolutely, flawlessly new.  And expensive.  You don't get hot pink or fur-lined duck boots cheap.  (To say nothing of hot pink and fur-lined.)  I wonder if the owners ever actually walk in such fancy footwear any further than the distance to the dining hall.  I mean, yes, the shoes are cute, but wear the damn things!  Buying something with a lifetime guarantee motivates me to test its endurance, not baby it.

• Given how lazy time-inefficient some of the students have proved at semester's end, and how much I've heard colleagues grumbling about catching plagiarists of late, I'm really glad that the heavily weighted final assignment in my intro classes is an in-class exam.  It's simply not possible to plagiarize such things without flat-out cheating like a first grader.  In my grading rubric, even a disastrously failing exam earns a positive integer of some kind, which makes even flaming idiocy earn a higher grade than dishonesty.
• My, it's warm in this classroom.  My stylish professorial four layers are perhaps a bit of overkill in here.
• Including the awesome red lambswool sweater I'm wearing.  Have I mentioned that I've been stocking up on nice grown-up clothes ever since Black Friday?  I'm aiming especially to vary my color palette, since the dark greys and browns are starting to depress me.
• Oh man, I have to go to the bathroom.  It's just unavoidable after my morning coffee, you know?  But can I trust all of these students not to whip out notes the moment I step out?  Probably not.  Oh dear.
• A miracle! Out of bladder desperation, I ran to the men's room for a few minutes, and when I returned, no one was cheating!  They didn't even look like they had frantically dug out their notes and then thrown them back in the bag as I walked in.  SO relieved, for multiple reasons.
• I'm a little surprised to see how long this exam is taking my students.  I had estimated one and a half to two hours to complete it, but most of them look on track to take the full three hours.  Good student and poor student alike seem to need more time than I expected to write the whole thing.  Unprecedented.
• This probably has something to do with the fact that this is the first exam I've ever written without any multiple choice questions at all, and heavy emphasis on essays.  They really get to show their stuff on this exam, and with no softball questions, they have nowhere to hide. 
• Somehow I find it distasteful to see students chewing gum as they write exams.  It always reminds me of the scene in The Bird Cage when Nathan Lane disparages a gum-snapping dumb bunny of a dancer.  But it's just not appropriate to say to a student, "Sweetie, you're wasting your gum."
  
• Fifteen minutes to go, and half of the class is still writing.
• OMFG why haven't they finished yet?  Why can't I go to my office already?  I think time itself may be bending around some kind of black hole created by the energy of my students' brains working on overdrive.  What if they reach critical mass and we're all crushed to death by the pressure of the implosion?
• It would really suck to be crushed to death in a black hole before I've had my lunch.
• Oh, students, I see you turning in exams with questions left blank. *facepalm*  Don't you understand that you're sacrificing at least the possibility of points that way?  Nothing comes from nothing.  It frustrates me to see good students screw themselves that way.  Is it a point of honor for them that they don't try to bullshit?  I supposed I understand that way of thinking, but surely they can see for themselves that this is mathematically damaging to them.
• Then again, considering all the boneheaded questions I endure every semester about GPAs and maximal final grades, maybe they're even worse at math than they are at pseudology.
• DONE!!
• Now I have a full ninety minutes to enjoy before I have to do the whole fucking thing again for the other section of Intro to Pseudology.  Sigh.

RBOC: Still freaking teaching edition

• Some of my students have begun coming to class barefoot.  I'm accustomed to seeing people take off their shoes during class for comfort's sake, but these people aren't even bringing shoes with them.  We're still getting early-morning temperatures in the upper 30s here in Cornstate.  Why are people doing this?  Is this a thing now?
• I'll give the barefoot people this much, though: they at least look better than all of those guys who walk around wearing this.
  
  (Photo credit: Ryan Dunn)
  I cannot see this combination without thinking of poverty.  This looks like an outfit scrounged from the free bin at the Salvation Army.  Awful.
• In my cold/allergy-induced haze*, I completed flubbed my grading calculations for the test I just gave, and included only 80 points of regular credit instead of 100.  (I meant to make the last question worth double the others, and I just fucking forgot to do it.)  There were some hard questions in there that I anticipated would bedevil a lot of students, so I was relatively generous with the extra credit section.  Now at least half of the little buggers have test scores breaking 100, which will only encourage them to screw around more instead of buckling down and studying for the final.  I FUCKING HATE BEING SICK.
• Speaking of which, I went to my allergist yesterday, and on their recommendation, I picked up a Neti Pot.  So far, I'm not sure this isn't some practical joke at my expense.  All I'm doing is drowning myself in salty, phlegmy water*** while feeling certain that someone is watching me and laughing as they say, "I can't believe that asshole fell for it!"
• A pseudology colleague of mine at another school just walked away from a good tenure-track job.  Zi is now in training for a completely different line of work.  Part of me is impressed that zi knows hirself well enough to recognize that academia is not for hir, and is willing to change course so drastically.  Another part of me is sad that I may not get to see many publications from hir, since zi is brilliant and was, by all accounts, an up-and-coming star.  Another part of me is just annoyed that the person who walks away from a job we're all killing ourselves to get is the one who has already been so blessed professionally.  And a small and very petty part of me is relieved that at least one colleague genuinely better than I am is permanently off the job market.  I'm not proud of this feeling, but it's the truth.
• My Saturday afternoon has been devoted to a load of laundry, a Neti-drowning episode, and about six hours of grading.  I think I'm going to postpone my next dose of decongestant and head to the bar for a beer.  Sigh.

*I can't figure out if this is a cold as I first thought, or a serious allergy attack.  I'm starting to suspect the latter, since a huge build-up of mucus throughout my poor head is really the only symptom**.  Well, that and exhaustion and fuzzy thinking as a result of all the oxygen I'm not getting and the feeling of congestion from blocked sinuses.  
**I know, you really wanted to know that, right?
***See above.

Divers sujets sans rapport

• Does the French make more sense than the German did?  I continue to labor in the dark here with translations of "Random bullets of crap."
• I made a purchase that I cannot easily defend in any way except ego gratification and, potentially, an extra goad to fight my way into a tenure-track job: I bought my own regalia.  I'll just admit it: I really hated wearing loaner robes at commencement.  Since I'll be wearing this get-up several times a year for the rest of my career (if my luck holds), I figured it was worth buying an outfit that suited me.
• In a new low for my life skills, I no longer appear capable of reading the funny-looking numbers at the bottom of my bank checks.  In consequence of this, I mistyped my own account number on my tax return filing, causing all three refunds I am due to be electronically sent to a non-existent account.  After somewhat frantically calling around, I confirmed that this just means that the deposits will fail and automatically bounce back to the various revenue departments, who will then mail me paper check refunds instead.  Sigh.
• It says something about the instant gratification that the internet breeds that I am so frustrated about having to wait a month to get my refunds.  Remember when you were happy to get them that fast, because there was no choice?  No doubt, my causing this delay by my own idiocy makes it more irritating.  (And before you say anything, I was totally sober when I filed!)
• I was not totally sober last evening, though, when I was editing my manuscript.  This is for the best, I think: it's so annoying to go line by line correcting fiddly little bits of formatting that a nice Manhattan makes the process more bearable.  Obviously, this is not the more important part of editing, but I noted a few good ideas of stuff to follow up on as I pored over the pages.
• Speaking of good ideas: I am finally starting to understand what it means to have teaching influence my research.  A quotation that I hadn't thought about too much before suddenly leapt out at me yesterday, since it fit right into material that I've been flogging in both of my topics courses.  It occurred to me that I should spell out the importance of that quotation to readers just like I would spell it out to my students.  The light dawns!
• I'm actually toying with the idea of giving this particular bit of my book to one of my topics courses, to see how it reads to reasonably smart undergrads with only a little background knowledge.  That's nowhere in the syllabus, of course, so I thought I might offer them a few points of extra credit on the final grade if they gave me constructive criticism.  Is there a need – and, if so, a practical way – to make sure that they tell me something useful, rather than either suck up to me or just phone in something meaningless?  Or would this be a self-selective assignment?
• Ah, the syllabus.  Why do I even bother printing out syllabi?  Half of my students clearly do not read them.  They don't even know my office hours sometimes, and that is given at the tippy-top of the first page.  The flurry of boneheaded questions I have endured lately is getting on my nerves.  Is this how it is everywhere nowadays?  Do faculty at Harvard and Amherst also facepalm over their students' failure to consult the syllabus?
• I long ago decided that my body was not intended to display tattoos or other body modification.  But man, if I ever were to get a tattoo, it would be in Times New Roman, 72-point font, bold and all caps:
  
  
  
  READ THE FUCKING SYLLABUS.

RBOC: New year edition

• I'm doing my best to maintain a social life over winter break, so that I don't cloister myself in my apartment and get all weird and stir-crazy.  Mixed results so far, but at least I occasionally get to hang out with Fie and her family.  Fun to start the new year with some good old-fashioned hang-out sessions.
• Speaking of Fie, I can't believe that teh internetz still have not commented at all upon this photograph.  The sheer cuteness has overwhelmed all of you, hasn't it?
• I am righteously sick of planning my spring syllabi.  Can't these things just work themselves out? I'm starting to feel dread when I sit down at my computer and see my unfinished syllabi sitting there.  More than anything else, it's planning out the day-by-day schedule that irritates me.  It's not how I conceive of the material I teach, but I guess it's hard to avoid doing this for the students' sakes.
• Reading what I just wrote above makes me realize that a vision of my own private hell is a split consciousness in which half of me is my professorial self, and the other half is me when I was a junior in college.  Both halves would deserve the other, I fear.
• Might as well admit it: I'm fussing with my syllabi partly to procrastinate from working on my manuscript revisions.  I need to get my head into that game for real, now that we're into January and my winter break no longer feels like an endless Siberian hibernation.
• The thermostat in my apartment appears to be partly a theoretical construction.  I am always a little cold nowadays, and as a result, I have become obsessed with acquiring woolen clothing.  I'm trying to convince myself that I've already bought all that I need, especially now that the clutch of crew neck sweaters has arrived.
• To continue with obsessive acquisition, I recently indulged in a small online shopping spree of goods relating to my vainest, geekiest interest: nice shaving gear.  I'm getting to know a little badger-hair brush that I acquired, and I have a slightly larger one on the way.  I'm also currently working my way through a sample pack of aftershave splashes and colognes, all of them variations of a particular scent that I like.  My life may be an unending stream of chaos and confusion, but damn it, I will confront all of it with an amazingly smooth, close shave, and smelling good.  (I finally grok my female friends who just don't feel capable of leaving the house until they have applied their lipstick and mascara.)
• Unless some more deals get worked out in Congress soon, I expect to be paying more in taxes this year.  Please remind me not to buy any more shaving stuff until I settle on an aftershave.  And maybe a cologne.

RRBOC (Really RBOC!)

• One of my students has a pair of shoes more awesome than anything that I own.  It eats me up with envy.  I don't want to give him a swelled head or cross any lines of appropriate professor-student relationship, but I'm dying to know where he found those shoes.  I'm also scandalized to think that his shoes might cost four times what I'd spend on a pair.
• Speaking again of footwear, I continue to despise this godawful trend of wearing black socks and shower sandals.  I have yet to see anyone wearing this who doesn't look like zi just escaped from an insane asylum.  I am utterly baffled that any person in possession of hir full faculties would ever think of putting on such items together, much less walking out of doors like that.  It actually makes those running shoes with toes look reasonable, even stylish.
• Crickets keep making ill-advised incursions into my garage when I come home in the evening.  They don't seem to realize that they are cutting themselves from their friends and family by hopping in there.  They probably neither realize nor care how much it irritates me when they start chirping in there, and the walls and cement floor magnify the sound half a bajillion times when I'm trying to sleep.
• It always shakes me a little when a student tells me that they can't attend one thing or another because a hugely traumatic event has befallen them.  I was such a blissfully ignorant college student, I now see.  There are so many awful things that can happen out of the blue that can throw a student totally off-track for a semester or more.  Had I even been aware of them all, I might have become an insomniac by my sophomore year.
• I used a BB&B 20%-off coupon as a flimsy pretext to treat myself to a new roasting pan, a small saucepan, and a rice cooker.  I am excited.  (I suck at cooking rice.)  I briefly considered going hog-wild and getting a pressure cooker too, but I don't yet have a clear idea what I'd do with the thing, and the trustworthy models all seem to be at least $100. 
• I think I'm going to use the book contract as a reason to host my first house party in years.  It'll be my first time to have colleagues over to my place.  Maybe I should buy a coffee table ahead of that?  And maybe put up the wall art that I've had leaning against a wall for months now?  And Christ, I should probably at least unpack that freaking vacuum cleaner that has sat unopened as a makeshift end table for way too long now.

Upgrading my footwear

It may be a questionable move for a man trying to pay down a sizable credit card debt, but damn it, I "needed" to buy some new shoes!  At the very least, I needed to replace my workaday black oxfords, which are so worn out that they give me terrible aches and pains when I wear them for a day.  I bought my last pair of these stupid Dockers less than a year ago, and they're already worn to shreds.  Never again, damn it; I need some footwear with better longevity than that.  I decided to minimize my trips to the shoe store, so I resolved to buy a new pair of brown shoes, too, since the brown Dockers are only a hair's breadth away from the wrack and ruin of their ebony brethren.

And so it was that, partly because I needed some shoes and partly to comfort myself with some retail therapy after finding that my kitchen sink is inoperative and may need to have the entire faucet replaced, I bought some nifty new shoes.

Behold!  My new black Sandro Moscolonis, and my new brown Borns.  The hotness, am I right?

Campus visit attire

All right, now that I have a campus visit coming up, let's talk about what really matters: clothes.  Last year, Historiann had a post on this subject in regard to academic conferences, and the comments together with the post seem as close to an authoritative treatise on the topic as you will ever see.

But hark: this is no conference, but a short-list interview for a non-tenure-track position.  My gut instinct is that the temporality of this job suggests a slightly more casual dress standard than tenure-track, since you're trying to convince people to set in motion the process of hiring you forever.  On the other hand, I imagine that it would be inappropriate for me to show up in truly casual teaching clothes — in my case, jeans, a polo or button-down, and maybe a sport coat if the weather isn't too warm.

All right, theory section concluded, and on to praxis: should I wear a suit, or should I wear a sport coat-and-slacks combo?  I hope very much to hear from my friendly neighborhood bloggers who have served on hiring committees, since they will have been through this process on both sides of the table.  Let me give you an idea of my thoughts on the matter.

SUIT
The bad:

• Not as comfortable.
• Makes me feel like I'm at a wedding or funeral.
• Despite my best attempts to seem debonair, the suit probably doesn't flatter me as much as I would like.  (I'll never be able to afford a tailored suit.)

 The good:

• Indexes respect for audience and people encountered more certainly than any other clothing choice.
• If the weather is warm, a suit might actually be a little less sweat-inducing than any of my sport coats.

SPORT COAT AND TROUSERS 
The bad:

• Less formal — does that mean less respectful?
• May index casualness of attitude toward job?
• If the weather is warm, I will be a sweaty mess.

The good:

• Generally more comfortable.
• Makes me feel like a professor, rather than a job applicant; I often teach in these clothes anyway.
• Feels more natural to me, and will make me feel more at ease.
• I think that these clothes drape a little better on me, and look at least a trifle more fashionable than my undertaker-on-holiday suit.

Hmm.  I guess my question is ultimately, "Oh, pleasepleaseplease, can I pleeeeeease wear a sport coat and trousers instead of a suit?  Pretty please?"

Wardrobe update

Like all good bargain hunters, I know that half of the battle is a matter of patience: you need to wait for the really good sales to roll around.  Finally, a good one came up, and gave me the chance to update my wardrobe a bit from "harried and impoverished grad student" to "harried and semi-impoverished professor."  I am particularly pleased that I've finally bought myself a second sport coat, and – oh, happy, geeky day! – sweater vests. 

I feel so...so...professorial.  :)

RBOC: post-T-Day, inter-conference edition

• It occurs to me to mention that, although I brought my suit with me to the Big Giant Pseudology Conference, I never wore it.  I actually put it on the morning that my interview onslaught began, but as soon as I saw myself in the hotel room mirror, I knew it wasn't right.  (It doesn't help that the cut of the suit somehow makes me look like an undertaker.)  I wanted to look professional and respectful at my interviews, but a suit would be going way too far.  I ended up substituting my sport coat for the suit coat, and wearing the suit pants as separates.  Felt much better.  
• For those of you who find yourselves in a similar position to mine, try bringing a suit and something just a little less formal (but business-appropriate) to your next conference.  Scope out the scene before you have to swing into action.  I think that I saw only five men at BGPC wearing suits, the entire time I was there.  Sometimes a suit just isn't what you need to look professional.
• Coming off the BGPC and getting ready for the Major Area Studies Conference coming up soon means that I was actually back in Ghosttown for Thanksgiving, which in turn meant that I spent Thanksgiving by myself.  I felt a trifle sorry for myself about this, even though Thanksgiving is one of those holidays where I feel like I'm supposed to be with other people because everyone tells me I should.  (Valentine's Day is the worst offender of these.)  In time-honored fashion, though, I stopped feeling sorry for myself after a ten-minute phone call to my family in Hometown.  As they passed around the phone so I could send greetings to everyone, I could clearly hear three of my close relatives yelling at each other in the kitchen about how to do the cooking prep — especially when someone put the phone down for a solid minute without anyone else picking it up.  I know exactly where all of that was going, and when the call ended, I gave thanks to whatever powers might exist that I was nowhere near Hometown that day.
• And really, I get a little more uneasy about celebrating Thanksgiving every year: all this stuff and nonsense about "what are we thankful for this year?" seems to me a band-aid for our consciences, given that the source of the holiday is really a celebration of successful colonialism and the establishment of a toe-hold of British imperialism in the New World by "some Mayflower-cruising Jesus freak corn rustlers." 
  
• Since I've been having trouble focusing on work after BGPC, it's only yesterday that I really began to write my talk for MASC.  Of course, I never make things easy on myself, so I've also begun to fiddle around for the first time with iMovie, so I can edit together bits and pieces of things for my presentation.  I'm not sure I can make this work, but I'm hoping to knit together some clips and some subtitles, and have it all come out looking good.  No doubt this will require many hours at my computer muttering under my breath as I learn on the job how to use iMovie.  But at least that's more productive than spending many hours at my computer surfing YouTube clips, repeatedly checking hobby forums, and generally skiving off work.
• The other thing gluing me to the internet for long stretches of time is the current wave of unrest in Research Country.  It's arguably worse than earlier this year, for a number of complex reasons.  And now, to be self-centered for a moment, it hurts me more, because it's beginning to hurt people I know.  (I knew people involved from the start, but they all caught lucky breaks at that time.)  I won't go into details here, for the sake of their privacy and mine, but it's giving me and a lot of my friends gray hair.  I'm supposed to share a hotel room with an old friend at MASC, and now we're not sure that zi will be able to travel out of RC.  Not that zi is likely to end up in a dungeon or anything, but the sense of instability, to say nothing of potential travel bans by the government, may make it seem more prudent for hir to stay in RC with hir family.  I certainly couldn't blame hir if that's what happens, but I'd be sorry to miss out on seeing an old friend — which, as I've been saying lately, is the best thing about academic conferences.  
• And, naturally, it raises everyone's anxiety to think about why people would have to make such choices.  The beauty of non-violent civil disobedience can also be its weakness: it doesn't push violent people from power.  We're, uh, coming to the end of the non-violent phase of RC's political transformation, I fear.  (Really, it ended quite some time ago, but here we would have to start parsing language about who is coordinating violence in premeditated fashion for political ends.)  There are many violent people still in power in RC, and they are willing to kill whomever they think they have to kill to maintain that power.  Getting rid of them may require RC to endure a proper civil war.  I don't know how any of this will pan out, but it seems a sure bet that there's going to be a lot more death and destruction before the dust settles.  
• The neighborhood that I lived in for several years, and where I spent untold amounts of time during my doctoral research, is turning into a genuine war zone.  A lot of my area studies colleagues and I have similar experiences there, due to the presence of a major academic institution in the area, and we're all heartsick to look at the videos on YouTube that show our former stomping ground transformed into a battleground, complete with front lines, field hospitals, and poorly observed ceasefire agreements.  It's hard to see such things, even when your professional judgment tells you that these sorts of events had to occur sooner or later to sort out long-standing political disputes.  It's...it's just hard. 

Pre-conference anxiety

I'm not usually the type to get tied up in knots prior to conferences.  I like to hobnob, and catch up with old friends, and generally feel professional and professorial.  But this year, I have a sense of dread, largely because I feel a distinct lack of confidence.  (Thanks a lot, Journal of Pretentious Self-Justification, for taking the wind out of my sails.)  I'm still struggling to put the subject of my impending talk into words that don't sound superficial and played out, since that journal rejection seems to think exactly that of me.  And that journal's home discipline is, ostensibly, less theory-centered than my home branch of pseudology.  Can I offer any analysis that will not yield a shower of rotten vegetables from an enraged audience?  My blood runs cold to wonder about this.

The fear is ratcheted up as well by the fact that a friend of mine is chairing the session, and zi is pretty well up to date on my work.  I feel personal pressure not to repeat too much of what zi has already heard, although zi is certainly more intimately familiar with my research than 99% of pseudologists.  And I'd die of shame if I left myself open to a serious criticism from my friend about my methodology or my analysis.  Avoiding shame would be nice.

Speaking of fear, shame, and colleagues, have I mentioned that I'm on the job market this year?  Lord love a duck, I've lined up three preliminary interviews at the Big Giant Pseudology Conference so far, as well as a face-to-face chat with the press editor I've been corresponding with about my manuscript.  My intellectual knowledge that I have acquired a sophisticated repertoire of questions and answers for job interviews is at war with the id-like fear that I will only continue to humiliate myself the way I did the last time I attended BGPC.  I've already had one prelim interview this year via video-conference, and it was a struggle for me to speak about my research, because the criticisms/dismissals in the article rejection were so fresh in my mind.  I was afraid to say what I was working on, because I was newly aware that people might all but say out loud that it was stupid.  That I'm stupid.

We all go through moments of this, right?  I just need to get my theory brain going again — I feel like I've been spending entirely too much time thinking about my classes, which is exactly what everyone and his mother warned me not to do.  And I need to get my game face on for impressing potential manuscript-buyers and hiring committees.  I need to spend a little time thinking of myself as a functioning scholar, instead of a contract teacher.  And maybe I also need to drop by the haberdashery, since I just realized that my dressier shoes and accessories are all black, but my only sport coat and my best non-suit trousers are both brown.  In my anxiety, I'm planning to pack both my (charcoal gray) suit and some more professorial clothing, and I find it easier on these business trips to pack a wardrobe that goes with a single overarching color to match or complement.

And yes, I am aware that this clothing-buying impulse is probably yet another way for me to avoid writing my conference talk.  FML.

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.