flaneuse.org

Well, I haven’t gotten as far in Guitar Hero as I wanted to, because I just haven’t had the time. I can play a smaller-scale, shorter game like bubble spinner, but I haven’t had the time to practice songs to get better at Guitar Hero — which tells me something about the time kids spend to get really good at video games, to the exclusion of other things they can be doing. This semester is absolutely nuts; it reminds me of my dissertation seminar, but on steroids. I’m teaching my usual three classes, but also working on the book. The full manuscript is due in July and that’s going to be a tight deadline. I’m also working with middle schools in East Orange on a federal grant program to integrate technology into literacy classes. I have a paper to write and give at the American Educational Research Assocation conference in April, and another symposium to present. I’m tutoring an absolutely wonderful second-grader with her reading and writing once a week, and of course there’s all the usual stuff at home — cooking, cleaning, taking care of the animals. Thank God we don’t have children — I have no idea how that would work, how working mothers do it all.

This week my students from the video games, literacy and learning class and I are going to start playing and learning, which means I have to get past the two songs I know how to do on Guitar Hero. Which kind of sucks because I am sooooooooo close on one of them — like just a couple of notes but I just can’t seem to make it that last little bit. I have hit a learning plateau, so I need to practice the song more, so I have to find time to do that, which means learning takes practice. An important lesson. No such thing as immediate expertise, people. No such thing at all.

Until I go up for tenure in September, I am wearing a big sign or t-shirt that might as well say “tenure undecided” on it. In today’s department meeting, as I am the only one going up next year, I think everyone kept looking at me when we talked about tenure. Then again, I probably imagined that. Erik, next to me, probably always thinks we look at him when we talk about men — do we talk about men? That might be another question. All the way around, tenure is very much on my mind and I also wonder how I managed to get to go up in such a stellar economic climate. Maybe it’s the flu talking (yes, I have the flu, for the first time in years and there is no way I would be at work right now if it was anything less than a campus-wide series of departmental strategic planning initiative meetings made mandatory by the provost and my current position = toeing the line very closely) but everything feels very very important. Too important.