1. This was the Weekend of Allergic Attack. Apparently, Cedar pollen likes neither Little Red nor I. An indoor quarantine helped to some extent, but I still feel like I have the flu today. And that's saying nothing about how I sound!
2. Speaking of Little Red, we are definitely in a new emotional/cognitive stage with him, and it has to do with his Will. One manifestation: he will repeat the same statement 10-15 times in increasing levels of volume until you answer him. Another manifestation: he has discovered that he can outright refuse and even throw fits when we instruct him to do something he doesn't like. The Vulcan Baby has learned to say "djuh djuh" to The Kindergartner and "maaaaoooww" to the cats. Even in the middle of the night last night, when he woke up with a fever of 103.6 (!), he looked at Sir Philip Sidney sauntering by in the hallway and said "maaaoooww."
3. I chose not to get angry yesterday when JH, one of the gentlemen who lives across the street (and whose mother also lives across from us...their lots adjoin each others'), came to the door and inquired whether or not we were planning to mow our grass, and whether or not we were sick or something and couldn't get to it. In all fairness, it was looking shaggy . . . but it just so happened that we were working on the mower over the weekend and had just gotten it ready to go. The Runner was about to set out in my place (due to my being quarantined). I declined to offer any explanation, just told him that as a matter of fact, we were about to get to it. It's a good thing that I answered the door and not The Runner...when I told her about the conversation, she got livid. On the upside, Little Red was really friendly to the guy.
4. I overheard a colleague a few minutes ago talking about how he wasn't thrilled with the participation in the class visits (there's a committee of my colleagues who visit composition classes to pitch sophomore- and upper-level courses) . . . but he also expressed surprise and delight that we picked up over ten majors this past couple of weeks. I want to shake them sometimes: students sign up for majors because they come across professors who inspire them! If we show them in real life the value (not to employers, but to them as people) of what we do, then they will sign up for our classes! Good lord, nobody more boneheaded than a professor, sometimes.
5. That said, I'm increasingly convinced that the profession is headed for a major change in this next decade--I may have joined up on the tail end of the old system, which means I may have to live through a painful and radical transformation of this work. Seeing things this way, I can't in good conscience advise students to enter traditional humanities graduate programs unless they know exactly what they want to do and are a match for the smartest people I knew at Carolina. Instead, it's about developing a toolkit of skills even as they store their minds with a whole selection of knowledges.
6. This has been a brutal semester work-wise, and that's with a couple of things having fallen through. Thank heavens, in retrospect. I'm ready for some rest.
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