Penny Hero (dot) Net

All three of my supervisors at work have a great work relationship with each other and also all have offices within 2 feet of each others…literally. Yet today, they hilariously apparently decided to communicate largely via email and all three of them basically passed each other in the writing center on their way in and out to tell me about the new developments in their conversation.

So it seems that they all knew I was there within 10 feet of their computers and each other, came in to tell me stuff, and then went back to their respective offices to email each other.

Wow. laff laff at the use of technology in humanities departments anyone?

It all worked out though, and we have a new meeting time. I just opened my inbox when I got off work and laughed my ass off at the written record of their conversations with me and with each other.

:)

I just went to my weekly writing center meeting… and was immediately pulled aside and dragged into Dennis’s office to talk about something “serious”. Wayne couldn’t stop smiling so I knew it wasn’t too bad, but I was still a little scared.

But… holy shit.

I’ve just been named the student representative for this year’s Pacific Northwest Writing Center Association. I’d link to a website or something, but it seems that the association doesn’t have one yet. But the association encompasses Oregon, Alaska, Washington… the whole region. Lots of people. (hundreds?) The conference invites hundreds of centers, and since OSU is going to be the host for this year’s conference, they get to pick the student representative.

I’m literally sort of beside myself. I think I actually had a little OBE for a second in Dennis’s office. I was sitting on his couch, and then for a minute i was sitting about 2 feet in front of myself. I’m still a little in shock, but this is going to wear off soon… like when i start getting emails and learn what I need to do. Come April 29th (30th?), there will be lots to do to help prepare for the conference, and before that I guess I might get to vote on some things.

This is… exciting. And a big huge boost to future grad school applications and career.

I’m so gratful.

So, today I had two meetings, neither of which involved me contributing anything accept laughter at Geff for leaving us to pick up his tab the night before after our Budget-request thingie. I was slightly annoyed at the website meeting though, because the first half was basically my boss and co-worker talking about security issues with authenticating our future userbase… all of this I pretty much followed, if not totally understood. I can listen to people discussing security issues and contrary to popular anti-feminist belief, my brain does not turn off. The thing that irritated me was that when it came time for my boss to ask me how the design aspect of development was going, he immediately “dumbed down” his language, to the point that he should have been embarrassed. Yes, I know how to install extensions on firefox, and you don’t need to be surprised when I do it right in front of you. Yes, I know how to upload a static html file to my onid account. Yes, I know how to locate and view a page’s css. My co-worker also seemed to notice, and tried to enter the conversation on a more “normal” level, asking me more specific questions… but my boss maybe didn’t quite notice that.

*sigh* The problem is that I’m probably to blame, because I don’t know how to talk about what I understand. I can make webpages. I even know a little php. I’m learning how to work with more advanced web design stuff, and well on my way to understanding how xaraya themes work. I can modify and write css and “make shit look cool”, and make it work across various browsers, but because of my lack of group-experience, I’ve never had to actually talk and discuss stuff… so I don’t know what things are called, or how group-procedure is generally done. So if I would just learn the vocabulary/diction/discourse that they are involved in, and pushed myself into the conversations a little more, maybe he would stop thinking of me as an archetypal “non-technical girl”.

The funny thing is, my boss’s wife is apparently pretty feminist-ish… so it’s kind of funny that he seems to default to this way of interacting with me. It’s probably NOT because I’m a girl though… I should give him the benefit of the doubt… he’d probably talk like this to any guy who appeared to have the lack of understanding that he seems to think I have…

Anyway… that’s all for now I think. I have seven chapters of The Turn of the Screw to read… and a crappy Philosopy paper on Descartes (*pukes*) to write… and a nihongo test to study for… and a pallet page to make, and some layout mockups to make, and some MLA research to do…

And it’s all going to make me explode at some point soon because my personal life is growing more and more tense… and the more I try to ignore it, the more it scratches at the window. (I’m telling you… androgyny would be nice! demo, I think there’s something wrong with me if I’m trying to cut myself off from the very things that make us human beings and not ants. )

P.S. Hi and *hugs* to . I had no idea you were still lurking around livejournal. Glad to see that you are. ^_____^

This morning I woke up, made coffee and toast, and then sat down to edit one of wikipedia pages on the Red Sox.

My boss at the writing center (a huge Red Sox fan) would be proud.

…and, today was just a really (???) day.

In one of my writing sessions, I totally lost my ability to explain why it was important to emphasize and focus on what the readers of her personal statement were looking for. I knew the paper was unbalanced; too much emphasis was on empty personal narrative, and more needed to be on her experiences shadowing dentists, her volunteer work with kids teaching them good dental habits, and her academic interests in dentistry. I tried to use words like “better balanced” and “emphasize this” and “can you see how you change direction pretty suddenly here?” but she wasn’t getting it. She wasn’t accepting what I had to say, and when I’d ask her “does that make sense?” she’d respond with “no”. I just crumpled, which is exactly what not to do in front of the person you’re trying to work with.

The next session wasn’t any better, and it immediately followed that self-esteem-pummeling Personal Statement appointment. A lab report, (a format that I’m not very familiar with, and I need to look up more information about) and his biggest concern was spelling. I tried to make a light joke about how my spelling is horrible too, and that I depend on spell-checking software. I laughed, but he looked at me like I’d just punched him in the gut. He was serious. (!!) The confidence level pummeled again there.

With him, I also lost all confidence in myself because i couldn’t make him understand the concept of “tense”… I couldn’t make him recognize that all his verbs were using different forms, let alone that this was not a good idea… I realize now that he probably just didn’t know what a “verb” was, and that he’d had very little exposure to grammar jargon. I should have recognized that, and I should have had a short lesson in what a verb is.. but I think I just panicked there, and my brain just turned off. I felt so unbelievably stupid.

The biggest problem was that I just didn’t deal with it all very well. I wasn’t there in the session. I was about five feet behind and to the left, kicking myself in the kidney for acting like an idiot, and not re-engaging.

*sigh*

So, those things made today bad.

Partly because of that, I just feel pretty empty right now. Unfulfilled. I’m not depressed though. Just kind of intellectually unconscious. (you’d never know it though, the way I’m being all critically contemplative right now.) I went into defense mode around 3:30, and I let myself become extremely bitter reading an article for the Writing Center meeting today. In my head and in the margins, I criticized the author’s reductionist advice, and the ridiculously over-simplified situations he described as “problems” with the way writing centers run themselves. I viciously attacked his misuse of the “postmodern understanding of Author“, when I probably could have let it slide… (or recognized that he was probably being ironic and actually himself criticizing those who misunderstand the Author concept he was referring to). In the meeting, many of his points were taken seriously, and I really couldn’t see the merit in it. It was too simple. too irrelevant. And… (because of the theories I internalized from someone who just died) I’m devoted to complexity.

So, about the late Derrida… Here is an article that for a brief moment made me feel less like an oil slick on a rainy day when I got home and actually read it. Someday, I would like to be seen the way I see this writer. I would like to be able to articulate my hate for the things I love the most like she does here. I would like to be allowed to bang my personal struggles out in print and make them relevant to people I’ve never even passed on a busy street.

…

So, today was a day that has led me to this moment. This moment of writing in my dusty journal, exposing and exploring problems in my fledgling academic carreer… with all kinds of thoughts I want to still pour out but don’t have the time or energy just yet. All I can do is make a mental note to try not to forget them, and to explore them before applications for grad school need to be sent out.

Today I had one of those moments, when something in my core fell into place. Walking from composition class, where I had become all brain-tingly and stuff due to the discussions and writing assignments, I suddenly realized that I would very much enjoy being a writing instructor. It was such a shock that I actually stopped walking completely and wondered why I’d never thought of it before. Declaring myself as an English major, I had inherited the confusion that comes with working toward this degree because it does not translate well to any specific job. But during my moment I suddenly re-realized how how important writing has always been to me, and how instructors in writing will always be needed… and so yeah. I am less confused.

Working in the writing center is pure glitter. I’ve never had a job, or even a hobby where I really felt “in my element”, but I think this is it. I enjoy it far too deeply to consider it work. I love the people I work with, who spend off-time comparing Faulkner and Bruce Springstein or giving each other writing advice using words like “clarity”, “structure” and “characterization” instead of “I liked it. It’s good.” And I love the coordinator. He is the first human male I’ve ever met who is more enthusiastic about grammar and language than I am. (and he speaks Japanese!)

Today in particular, I had a session that left me tingly all over, and very happy. He was a strong writer, but had concerns about his structure, his thesis and his conclusion. I felt his thesis was strong, and told him so, but I found that while his paragraphs never departed from exploring his thesis, some of his transitions were unclear, or non-existent. What was so great about the session was the fact that I would begin to explain something, (”I’m confused between these two sentences…”) and he would barely let me finish my thought before he caught where I was going and began talking about possible solutions. He seemed to have an intuitive grasp of the finer points of writing; whether or not he had ever had formal instruction wasn’t clear. It was just impossibly satisfying to work with him. He was so open to making changes, revisions. He scratched up his pristine copy until it looked like a rough rough draft. (so sexy) We explored his entire paper so quickly and efficiently that we had a good 20 minutes left before the session was over, so I launched us into a discussion about a possible new conclusion. I find that it’s super cool (and rare) to meet a student in that in-between place where they are just exiting the old-school “Conclusions restate your thesis and sum up your essay” and are open to the idea that conclusions are a place where you can say something more about the topic and leave the reader with some new thought. I can’t tell if he was familiar with the concept or not, but he dove right in to writing something new when I asked him “what would you do if you were to re-write Carter’s piece?”. He was enthusiastic. He was open. He seemed to take things from the session. It was a great session and made me feel like I wanted to do something like this for the rest of my life.

In Other News: My weekend was also glittery. Glittery and reflective, and fun and full of sunshine. I must say a special thank you to for being who she is, because she’s taught me lots of things, and I’m now a much more confident girl. *wink wink* I owe a lot too, because he served as compass and anchor for our weekend adventures, and he actually drove all the way out here to kidnap me and all the way back to drop me off. (wow.) So yeah… public livejournal thank you to them for a happy happy weekend.