marginalia

Final grades for the summer class have been calculated, tabulated, and entered into The System. Goodbye, summer students. Goodbye, stepping foot into a classroom. See you in late August.

I used to feel a larger sense of something--accomplishment? relief? exhilaration?--when I submitted final grades. This year, though, it's felt oddly stressful. Perhaps it's that the novelty of the duty has worn off. Perhaps it's that it felt more ceremonial to bubble in the Scantron and submit it triumphantly to the department secretary than it is to sit alone in my office, select a bunch of letters from a drop-down menu, and hit "log out."

Most likely it's that I'm finishing up this first full-time year with some major qualms. It's not that I want to change careers--god, please, let me stay a teacher forever--so much as I just need some time to sit quietly in the backyard and reflect, chew, muse, come down for a couple months.

Teaching is strange like that; in most jobs, after a year, you'd feel better. The experience would make you feel stronger. But nearly everyone I know who's a year or two in only feels more self-doubting, more insecure. We've run into issues we never expected, we plan lessons only to have them flop, we spend all day long interacting with people and performing and talking to rooms only to drive home alone and realize that we have no idea if anything stuck or sunk in.

Most of the time, the only feedback you get is negative--a flurry of e-mails from the guy in the back of the class who hasn't turned in work all semester but suddenly wants to know if you'll take all five papers late, or that charming, anonymous eval claiming you were the worst professor ever. All this when you're already lying awake late at night, trying to think of ways to do it better next time. If you get a next time.

I'm not complaining. It's part of the job. I love this job. But I knew someone in Minnesota who raised the idea of tipping your teachers.

Tipping, hell. Just thank them every once in a while, if you got anything out of the class. I keep those e-mails, notes, cards tacked above my desk. They are the buoys on the bad days.

Plus I missed my chance once, and I regret it. Do I ever.

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Tomorrow I'm up to Ludington to retrieve the P from something called the S.S. Badger. I can only hope that it looks as old-timey and crummy as it does in this photo.

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I should figure out why I have had a headache that occasionally flares up into a migraine since last Friday. Maybe see the first item.

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We finally have a fridge/freezer that works, one that actually keeps our food. And we have purchased new Heath ice cream to replace the one that turned to mush last week, which I sort of just want to eat for dinner. The new ice cream, I mean. Not the mush.

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This reading series is going down next week and I actually made some flyers for it that don't totally look like shit. Wish us luck with rallying the good people of GR in late June to a literary gala. We're hoping the cocktails will help.

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I am so, so happy that for the past week and a half, I have woken up next to the B. There has also been many eggs in a baskets.

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I should really try to figure out why the first--only--search suggestion that came up when I typed "I" in a search box was the phrase I eat pussy yellow shirt. Gonna want to remember why THAT was a good idea*.

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Life around the new place is falling into a slow, summer rhythm.



You know--the sort in which you put off showering and drink coffee and chat on the phone while somebody encourages the dog to hang out on the table for a while. I love how bored we both look in this picture.

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Coming soon: the debut of the summer to-do list.


*now I am dimly recalling an e-mail from a friend in which she reported that someone showed up wearing a shirt that said that. TO CHURCH. How many shirts have be absolutely filthy and disgusting (literally) before you decide to wear THAT one? The I EAT PUSSY one?