On Progress, of a sort.

In which our hero remembers why she hates Spring term


Psychologically, I respond to Spring term (be it semester or quarter) with a poor attitude and an increase in malaise. It never fails. It may be that I feel tricked by the word "Spring," since all of the mytho-poetical associations with the season--warmth, the emergence of flowers and animals, a general lushness that sends the world a-pitter-pattering--are distinctly confounded by reality.

In Portland, things turned green and beautiful and were constantly wet in the Northwest way that made mold grow in all the crevices of cars and sidewalks. But there, because Spring was the deceptive "quarter," it didn't end until mid-June. Late June, when I was teaching and had to solemnly grade all the research papers long after my students had forgotten about the college.*

Here, it still feels like Winter, despite the calendar having quietly absolved itself of the Winter months. This strikes me as unfair. Cruel, even. April is not the cruelest month, Mr. Eliot. In April there at least exist Lilacs to mix memory and desire.
In March, though, the weather in the Bronx is still on par with the weather in Moscow, and we've barely reached mid-term. Really, we should be listening to Caesar, not Eliot.°

But I probably shouldn't use the weather as an excuse. The truth is, Spring term just makes me lazy. I just want to lay in the grass and re-engage with my annual Mojito fascination. There's not really a whole lot of grass here, and I don't know where to buy mint.

This term I'm attempting to combat my laziness. I've taken on two projects, am presenting at a conference, am spending a weekend in Philadelphia, and--presumably--am getting my homework done. There are a lot of opportunities for anxiety, and I am taking full advantage of them all.

Project 1: The Workshop.
I decided that I was interested in leading the first Writing Center workshop this term, which means that I am taking everyone else's good ideas and trying to organize them in a way that does justice to the hard work others have been doing, and that will work in a classroom. Luckily, if we succeed, we all succeed. If we fail, it's probably because I've done something wrong in the organizing.

Project 2: The Conference.
A bunch of us (my colleagues and classmates) went to a conference, and saw something nifty. I got it in my head to revise the idea for an English department setting. Now, I'm trying to get my friends and people I've never met to participate in a hare-brained scheme. I just had to send out an advertisement to the whole department, and felt the contents of my chest cavity drop into my stomach when I hit "send". Hopefully, only a marginal percentage of the student body will think I'm a moron.

The Conference:
This causes me no anxiety right now, because I'm going to present a paper I've already written at CUNY, which means no cost to me. But when that day comes, I'll be a gibbering idiot.

Philadelphia:
Em. The Mountain Goats. Road Trip.
Awesome.

Homework:
This term is really shaking my confidence as a scholar. I'm getting mixed signals, feel out of the loop, and am generally confused. The course in which I have the most solid footing is 19th Century American Poetry.

Let that sink in a moment.

I'm in two medieval courses, and German, and the thing I'm most comfortable doing right now is parsing Emily Dickinson. The world has gone topsy-turvy. There will be boy bishops and Lords of Misrule a-plenty come these May Games.¹


But you know what? The real Spring has to show up eventually. And when it does, I'm buying some mint and finding some grass.



Notes:
* This is meant to be hyperbolic and melodramatic. Of course they still remembered the college. It's where their grades came from. Well, technically, I was where there grades came from, and they weren't about to let me forget it.
° This prejudice might be somewhat amplified by my never having read "The Wasteland" in its entirety, and by the fact that I'm perpetually hoping for a moment in which I can proclaim "et tu, Brute?"
¹ And that kind of statement, dear reader, is what belies the appearance of a normal human being. I just made a reference to medieval folk custom. If I kept going, I'd probably start spouting Bakhtinian nonsense about the Carnivalesque and talking about this picture I saw once of a Morris Dancer.ª


Notes to Notes:
ª And this is why I'll never be fit for normal society.