On a TV Bender

I learned today that I am what people call a "binge tv watcher."  I learned about this term by reading up on the specific television show that I have been binging on: Breaking Bad.  I've read a few warning things about this, and this Slate article was especially insightful.  Apparently even though I've hardly watched TV in any regularity over the past four months, watching three seasons of a TV show in the course of one week is considered a terrible habit.  But, to be perfectly honest, I don't think I'll stop anytime soon (well, except in five more episodes when I've completed season 4 and there are no more episodes to watch).

The thing is, on the contrary to what Jim Pagels says in the Slate article, I don't think that taking time to ponder each episode after watching it is important to the viewing experience.  With all due respect, I will say that as a person studying narrative I don't think you can tell someone how to take their narrative....  I mean, some people appreciate consuming things in high volume and sorting from there.  Some people like to spend time on smaller sections at a time before moving on.  I myself am a person who thinks best when I am given tons of material to think through.  The sustained thinking on one single thing has the potential to send me into my own personal hell of self-contradiction by thinking through every single meaning and blah blah blah.  No joy in that for me.  Whereas if I had just moved on without fully forming opinions on what I'm reading/watching, I might actually be more open to whatever happens.

No, thank you Jim.  I'll stick with binge TV for now.  I find it the single best way to punctuate a time when I don't have any particular responsibility.  I mean, I've watched four episodes of Breaking Bad today, and I expect one more before I go to bed.  I'M ON VACATION!  TV reminds me that I don't really have to think about this too much; I can sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.  Of course, if this was my daily routine, this would be a problem.  But as a way to spend a few days every now and then--especially on a rainy day like today--in between the world of responsibility, I think it's fun.  Plus, there are relatively few shows that one can binge on -- Arrested Development, The Wire, Breaking Bad, 24, and Battlestar Galactica all set the bar high -- without getting bored or irritated pretty quickly.  So, when a show like one of the ones listed above comes along, I think binging can be pretty great.

Mapping Du Bois' Intellectual Interests

I'm still wrapping up my FINAL final paper, which is due tomorrow.  My brain has basically already started vacation, so I really just need to finish this thing.  One of the things I'm talking about in the paper is Du Bois' bibliography for his work Black Reconstruction in America, which is fascinating because it lists his sources in groups.  I've never seen a bibliography quite like this.

He lists 10 categories with several sources included in each category:

1. Propaganda
2. Historians (Fair to Indifferent on the Negro)
3. Historians (These historians have studied the history of Negroes and write sympathetically about them)
4. Monographs
5. Answers
6. Lives (These are lives of leaders who took part in Reconstruction and whose acts and thoughts influenced Negro development)
7. Negro Historians
8. Unpublished Theses
9. Government Reports
10. Other Reports

Each category is pretty fascinating, but I am most interested in the section "lives" since Du Bois wrote THREE autobiographies and uses people's lives as a more valid representation of history than scholar-produced histories (or so I argue).  It's got me thinking about my own bibliography for this paper since I'm so committed to proving that Du Bois' intellectual interests can be traced through this bibliography.  Well, I've got a bunch of historical stuff, a New York Times article from 1897, archival photos from the digital W.E.B. Du Bois Archive, and a couple of historians who theorize race and historiography.  I am getting more and more interested in the historical material related to the authors I'm working with, so I expect to continue to work with older newspapers and photographs and incorporate them into my work as much as possible.  

One day I would love to have an elaborate bibliography like Du Bois that categorizes the materials I'm using rather than just a boring list.  I think it is a valuable resource for showing people how you are thinking and says a lot about the value you place on certain resources. 

Bird Watching and Radical Activism

As the winter break approaches, "sun of my life" and I are exploring some new hobbies that might take us away form our typical day-to-day activities.  So, we took a couple of really stupid quizzes online...yes, a quiz for hobbies.  No, we are not out of touch fools who don't know how to take note of the things we like to do.  It's just that both of us are totally spent right now and so, it seemed like a reasonably entertaining way to spend 3 minutes of our time.  And when I say stupid quizzes, I mean that one asks questions like "do you like string"?  Um, I neither like nor dislike string.

Here is the quiz, and you should take it and tell me what your recommended hobby is: http://spacefem.com/quizzes/hobby/

It recommended that "sun of my life" take up radical activism as a hobby.  Yeah.  Right.

Mine was bird watching.  Because this quiz gathered from my answers that I am highly motivated, but apparently don't really finish things.  I think this assessment is not true and that I would not really enjoy birdwatching at all...unless Jack Black and John Cleese were involved:

Out on a Limb

I've been writing away on final papers, which has taken me away from blogging.  But I figured this was worth sharing because it is FASCINATING -- a new documentary on prosthetics called Out on a Limb:

Obviously, I really want to see this film.  It sounds like it will also focus on the relationship between the military industrial complex and the development of advanced prosthetic technologies, which is of great interest to me.  In fact, the film's website indicates that this project was sparked by recent wars: "advances in prosthetics always coincide with wars. But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have spurred unprecedented focus and funding, just as emerging technologies and developments in neuroscience are providing opportunities that never existed before."

This is helping me to make an argument in one of my final papers as well since my professor and I have been in a semester long debate about whether or not I can make the claim that current prosthetic technologies are creating new relationships between the body and technology (she says I can't, and I say I can).  

The Train to Christmas Town

It's hard to describe Santa Cruz to people--the vibe, the beauty, etc.  On the surface it looks like a cute little surfing town, and the more time you spend here the more familiar you get with the zaniness.  Once you are here for a while you see the weirdness come out...one example is that homeless men won't ask you for money, but they will ask if you want to play cards.  It's a small thing, but it says a lot more about the place in general, ya know.  

This holiday season, we are getting a sense of the structural weirdness of this place.  All weekend, at nearly every point throughout town, from about noon to 8 pm you can hear the loudest freakin' train horn I've ever heard blowing repeatedly every few minutes.  This is apparently "the train to Christmas town."  "Sun of my life" notes that the county made the decision to purchase this train because of the business opportunity it presented...although no train to an actual location, like San Jose or San Francisco, (that might actually be a significant business opportunity) is in the works.  

Apparently people board the train and ride around for an hour or so while elves come through the train cars and serve cookies and hot cocoa.  It sounds pretty adorable for kids...but the train itself sounds like the end of my sanity on the weekends.  

Radical Grading

I'm obsessed with the notion of grading at the moment.  I hate having to assign a specific value to a paper, and I also hate the pressure that grades put on students because they have the potential to cultivate students who work for a grade rather than for knowledge building.  Yet, as I'm required to grade, I am trying to be as reasonable and equitable as possible.  I use a strict criteria that students must meet, and I reward complex thinking even if the writing isn't up to par.  The problem, of course, is that complex thinking is harder than I realized it would be to identify when the writing is poor.

So, I've been thinking about how I'm going to deal with this since grading is a significant part of the work that I'm getting myself into.  One idea I've been thinking about today is the idea of sticking with my grading criteria, sharing it with students on the first day of class next quarter, and offering a caveat: grade your own paper before your turn it in.  The easy answer would be to allow them to submit a re-write.  The problem with this is purely a time issue; I don't think I could reasonably look at re-writes given my responsibilities during the quarter.  However, what if I had students turn in some kind of assessment form along with the paper they turn in that says something about where they think they fell on the grading scale using my criteria?  

It might give students a sense of agency with their work and more importantly, allow them to think critically about their papers as readers rather than writers.  I've gotta do a little research, but I'm compelled by this idea.  It could be problematic when the student's grade is far higher than the one I would give, but it would be a chance for me to offer specific feedback of an area requiring improvement that they might otherwise be blind to....  Anyway, it's really got me thinking.

Grading Papers...

is a race against time, and to make matters worse, I'm a really grumpy grader.  It's not because I think I'm brilliant and that the students I'm grading will never live up to my expectations or something like that.  Not at all.  In fact, reading their papers makes me empathize with the difficulty and complexity of expressing oneself.  In their writing, I see so many of the same errors that I make.  So, it's not from some grand high up position that I look down on these papers.  It's just frustrating when you have limited time and you keep reading for pages and pages and cannot figure out what in the heck someone is talking about or arguing for/against.

To be frank, grading just isn't nearly as "fun" as I thought it would be.  It takes me about an hour to grade each paper, and I have 30 students, so within the week that papers are turned in, I have to prepare to teach my section, complete my own reading/writing/ homework, AND grade all of the papers.  Let's just say that these pressures don't bring out the most generous attitude and commentary that I have to offer. The time pressure sets up an intense mood surrounding the papers as something I just have to get through rather than a process that I can enjoy and use as a way to get to know the students better, ya know.  

I'm really trying to fight this attitude, though.  This second round of papers is much better than the first because, in general, I can see how students' ideas are progressing after having read their first paper.  I can see them engaging more deeply in the material and finding ways to more clearly express their analysis.  It's just hard to maintain that front while I'm finding it far more difficult than I ever dreamed it would be to not fall into a deep malaise about the mountain of work that seems to always lay ahead of me.  Time management is part of it, but there is also a skill of knowing when to stop that I have not yet developed.  I'm starting to realize that I will never get on top of the workload...and that the best thing I can do for myself is to figure out how to manage the impossibility rather than try to conquer it.  

With that said, any and all tips for managing the impossible are more than welcome.