Saturday, April 20, 2013

"...But not yet."

I'm having a moment of frustration with the workload demands of a university that values teaching over research.  I'd like to work on my articles and my book, and write a few small grants.  And the stupid fucking class prep DOES NOT END.  But really, if I am honest with you, dear readers, I really want to tell all of my work to go soak its head.  I want to go out and have a few drinks and flirt and do something that does not make me feel like a flesh-and-blood word processor.  And because this is April, when all sorts of professorial chickens come home to roost, I feel like I can't even do that.

I know this is a churlish attitude to take, since I have a decent (if temporary) job, I get to teach some interesting classes, and I'll have the whole summer to write anyway.  But damn it, I want to be a selfish creature now and then.  My desire to have a great academic job that entails considerable professional responsibility whilst maintaining the option of running off to have fun puts me in mind of Augustine's excellent prayer, "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."

And somehow, it only occurred to me today, after many years of owning the album it's on, that Gillian Welch and David Rawlings might have had Augustine in mind when they wrote this song.  "I want to do right, but not right now."


6 comments:

  1. Summer is right around the corner. This is no real consolation considering how much crap we all have to do between now and then. But you know... summer is right around the corner. We should have a drink to celebrate the end of the mess once we're both released for good behavior. :)

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    1. A drink will be a fine idea by then. We'll have earned it.

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  2. Go be selfish! I am all about seizing the moment. :)

    What are you doing this summer?

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  3. Well, that's April for you (if you're on semesters.) It's always like that, even long after tenure, although at this point it's the endless meetings, not so much the course prep, that are getting me down. My first year teaching in a TT job, I'd come home from school, drink a beer, and fall asleep. My husband would wake me up and feed me dinner, and I'd go right back to sleep. Your first year of teaching a full load at a new uni is exhausting, period--and I was then still in my 20s! It gets easier, though.

    The good news is that mid-May is right around the corner, right after you plow through a metric fucktonne of papers and exams that must be graded. Right?

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    1. I think "metric fucktonne of papers and exams" may actually be in my contractual obligations. And if it's not, it should be.

      Mid-May seems like the Promised Land, from where I sit right now. (At my desk, with a fresh stack of quizzes to grade. FML.)

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