Moving to the Tenure Track

A week from now, I'll be beginning the next chapter of my teaching life.  In some ways, it won't be that different from what I've already done.  It's not the drastic change that I experienced going from teaching to administration.  A week from now, I'm back on campus as an Associate Professor on the tenure track, not as an adjunct, not as a year-to-year lecturer.

My teaching load will be lighter:  4 classes instead of 5.  My service load will be heavier, as I didn't have to do committee work in my previous incarnations at Spartanburg Methodist College.  I will keep an eye on tenure requirements which are not onerous.

When I was in grad school, I wanted a job like the kind I have now, as a faculty member at a small, liberal arts college, the type of undergraduate school where I earned my BA degree.  Almost all of my fellow grad students who weren't on the Creative Writing track wanted that.  One of our Victorian Lit professors sneered at us for wanting "a unicorn" of a job.

I assumed I wouldn't be able to get tenure at a state university.  I worried about my ability to get my academic writing published.  I wanted to teach at a place where my creative writing would be a way to tenure, and now I am.  Service to the school and community will also count towards tenure.  I've been impressed with the way that SMU allows faculty to be their whole selves.

And yes, I would expect that at a liberal arts college, but I know it's not always that way.

In fact, I am a bit worried about what happens if leadership leaves.  I've worked with enough presidents of schools to know that the leadership at the top does make a difference.

But those are worries for a different day, a day which might not arrive at all.  SMC's president is my age, and he says he's planning to retire when he leaves, so he may be here at least another 5 years or more.  I suspect that our provost is in a similar position, and my dean, too, seems unlikely to leave.

I am coming onto the tenure track as an Associate Professor, a job title that I've never had.  I am happy that my years of experience are being recognized in this way.  I remember years ago showing a job posting to a friend who is 13 years older than I am, and she said, "I'm a little old to be starting as an Assistant Professor on a tenure track."  She likely would have felt the same if it was an Associate Professor position.

When we had that conversation, she was younger than I am now.  I'm happy to be an Associate Professor, but I'd have accepted the job if it had been an Assistant Professor tenure track.  I'm relieved to have the certainty of a job with a salary and benefits that I can count on for more than a year.

A Short TEEM Report

This morning has less blogging time, but I have finished my movie review, the first assignment for my TEEM class on Pauline letters.  I have done the practice quizzes one more time--I've been doing them over and over in the hopes that I'll do well on the quiz that will begin today's class.  

We have another quiz tomorrow, and I haven't done any practice for that one.  So tomorrow may be a light blogging day too, as I practice and practice.  I have not taken a quiz for course credit since undergraduate school.  Of course, I've taken quiz after quiz as part of HR training--those quizzes that you can take over and over again so that you can continue to be employed.

Each quiz counts for 10% of the course grade.  My inner good girl wants to make an A.  My pragmatic older self knows that whatever grade I make will be fine.  I'm not even sure if TEEM classes show up on a transcript.

And then, part of me wonders why I care about my official record.  Am I going to do more graduate work?  Maybe--and that's why I care.

Yesterday's TEEM training was a workshop on stewardship.  When I first heard about the workshop, I felt a bit of despair.  I've already had so much stewardship training.  But it was a great workshop.  We talked about a much broader vision of stewardship:  what do we value?  How do we protect what we value?  It's far more than money, budgets, and a finance team. 

I've been part of small churches, with attendance below 50 members, so these are not concepts that are new to me.  In a very small church, one can't assume that others will pick up the slack, unlike in a church that has over 100 members in the pews on Sunday.

Our workshop leader, Tim Brown, was both compelling and entertaining.  We had worship in the middle of the day, followed by Indian food.  It was good to have that long break.

Let me bring this writing to a close so that I can get some breakfast before the day begins.  Onward!

TEEM Work and Other Anxieties

It has been a strange week in terms of home renovations.  We're at a point where it makes sense to wait until the work of next week is done.  Hopefully by this time next week, we'll have an HVAC system installed and the house rewired.  Then we'll do the painting and the hardwood floor restoration.

It feels weird knowing how much work needs to be done, but not doing it.  Of course, I have plenty of other work to be doing, primarily grading and encouraging students.

In a way, it has been a good week to be pulling back on fixer-upper tasks.  I've gotten information about the next part of my path to ordination.  I will take three classes through the TEEM program, and the first class is next week.

The TEEM program has 3 onground intensives a year where participants gather in Indianapolis and take 2 classes, one on Monday-Tuesday and one on Thursday-Friday, along with a workshop on Wednesday.  I will be taking the Thursday-Friday class on Paul's letters next week.  I'm happy to be able to patch up some holes in my knowledge; I had wanted to take a seminary class on Paul, but it never worked out.

I needed this week to order books and get started on the reading.  I had missed the deadline to get the discounted hotel price, but happily, when I called, I was able to get that price. 

It's been an up and down week in terms of anxiety.  When I'm at the house in Spartanburg, I feel that we made a good decision.  When I'm not there, there's a bit more self-doubt rattling in my brain.  I've never driven to Indianapolis from here, so I feel a bit of anxiety in terms of a car trip, while reminding myself that I have relatives along the way who could help me if need be.  I'm headed there by myself, because my spouse needs to be here to oversee the HVAC installation and rewiring.  I'm looking forward to being away, but also a bit anxious at the thought of all the new people I'll meet.  I feel a bit of anxiety at the thought of all the money we're spending on home repair--if it goes well, I'll be glad we spent the money. 

I have some course work to do besides showing up for class next week.  There's reading to do, and a movie about Paul to watch, which I've done, and a review of the movie to write, which I haven't, but will soon.

But it's nice to feel I have time to do that work.  The last time I was getting ready to go to an onground intensive, it was October of 2024, and we were still dealing with Hurricane Helene aftermaths.  I'm sure there's some residual anxiety that my body is dredging up.

Hopefully, in a week or two, I'll be able to look back on this anxiety and smile because all the moving parts came together so well.

Happy Bloomsday!

I only care about Bloomsday as a sort of cosmic accident. When I got to grad school and pored over the list of classes I could take, I discovered that most of them were full. As a new grad student, I was last to register. And so I found myself in Tom Rice's class on James Joyce. What a life-changing experience that was.

Several of the stories from Dubliners show up in anthologies, even first year literature anthologies, so I might have eventually discovered them in my teaching life that was to come. But would I have ever had the patience to wade through Ulysses all by myself? Absolutely not.

Bloomsday celebrates the day, June 16, on which all the action in Ulysses takes place. The book covers almost every kind of action that can take place in a human day: we see Leopold Bloom in the bathroom, we see Stephen Dedalus pick his nose, we see Leopold Bloom masturbate . . . and we finally get to the masterful final chapter, where Molly Bloom muses on the physicality of being a woman.

As with many books, whose scandalous reputations preceded them, I read and read and waited for the scandalous stuff. As a post-modern reader, I was most scandalized by how difficult it was. It's hard to imagine that such a book would be published today.

But what a glorious book it is. What fun Joyce has, as he writes in different styles and plays with words. What a treat for English majors like me, who delighted in chasing down all the allusions.

I went on to write my M.A. thesis on Joyce, trying to prove that he wasn't as anti-woman as his reputation painted him to be. Since then, other scholars have done a more thorough job than I did. But I'm still proud of that thesis. I learned a lot by writing it. At the time, it was the longest thing I had ever written--in the neighborhood of 50 pages. A few years later, I'd be writing 150 pages as I tackled my dissertation--on domestic violence in the Gothic. By the time I'd written my thesis, I had said all I had to say on Joyce.

So, happy Bloomsday.  Those of us who were born later than Joyce, who haven't read much of the work that came before Joyce, probably aren't aware of what a radical experiment he presented.  A work that takes place in just one day?  Revolutionary!  I could argue that Virginia Woolf did it more artistically with Mrs. Dalloway, but before the Modernists, most people would have thought of just one day as not worthy of documenting.  And Joyce's interior monologues capture like no other work what it's like to be inside a brain, to listen to thoughts without the scaffolding of traditional narrative.

I have read Ulysses several times, and I confess, I likely will never read it again.  But I'm grateful to have done it, grateful that it exists, grateful that I had guides to show me of its mastery.

Short Story Inspirations and "Mrs. Dalloway"

On Friday, I headed to Columbia to see my grad school friend who had a catastrophic stroke 2 years ago and now lives in a skilled nursing unit.  After that visit, I went to a different grad school friend, my upstairs neighbor in long-ago grad school days.  We are both writers, both college English teachers, both on life paths similar and different.

Lately she's been attending a Shut Up and Write group, which has been working for her in all sorts of ways.  I keep thinking I might go with her on a Friday when her group meets.  I'm also thinking it might make an interesting experiment for my own writing classes that I teach.

As I've been driving these past few days, I had an idea for my idea that I had a year ago on the 100 year anniversary of the publication of Mrs. Dalloway.  I wrote about it in this blog post:  "Now I am thinking of new projects, a new narrative that might weave the voice of an older woman in seminary, a younger woman teaching section after section of freshman comp in a community college, a middle aged woman struggling to write poems around the edges of her administrator job--and yes, they would all be me."

Throughout the past year, this idea has bubbled back up periodically and then simmered right back down.  I have not had the time or focus to write a novel.

And then, on Friday, I thought, why not write linked short stories?  Write a short story for each year of my past 30 years and then choose the best.  I would probably not play with time; I would probably organize the stories chronologically.  So the fact that the characters in the blog post description are the same would not be a surprise.

I immediately felt tired at the amount of short stories if I had to write one per year--so I immediately decided that I didn't have to do each year.  I did wonder about perspective--if I'm writing a story set in 1995, can I use knowledge that doesn't come for another 20 years?

On my drive yesterday, I thought about a different approach.  I could write stories by way of subject.  I wrote one such story as a requirement for a seminary class, which I wrote about at the end of this blog post.  That story used fairy tales as a jumping off point to talk about beauty and self image and other stories, like the Little House books, that girls often read, along with boiling water in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.  

Some subjects I thought about:

--shoes:  hiking boots and camouflage high tops

--the habit of buying fixer-uppers

--tea practices

--various books could serve as jumping off points, the ones we read in grad school or in childhood and the surprising intersections

--journaling and blogging and the types of writing that aren't always valued by grad school professors

--the oat bran muffins I made in grad school, the muffins sold in the coffee shop in the basement of the humanities office building

--all sorts of baking

--nutrition developments through the years

--a wide variety of religious/theological issues

--and then there's all the music

--yearning for graduate studies even after getting a PhD

I love the idea of short stories instead of a work that has a long narrative arc across 200-300 pages. It's an idea that's much more manageable with my current commitments.  Maybe in retirement I'll return to to writing traditional novels. 

Easter Sunday Wrap-Up

I am listening to Sting's Nothing Like the Sun.  I am remembering a time that seems long ago now, the first year of grad school, and we were off for Easter, probably just Good Friday and maybe Easter Monday.  I was making hot cross buns with a recipe from The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. While the dough rose, I scraped together my last bit of money and went to the local record store, Sounds Familiar, where I bought the double LP, three songs each side.  I spent Easter week-end enthralled.

Yesterday was different, rainy and dreary for most of the day.  I was happy to see the rain--it's been far too dry.  As we do most Sundays, we headed across the mountain to Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN.

It was a good Easter Sunday.  It's a small, country church, so we don't have what suburban or city churches experience, those folks who show up only for Christmas Eve and Easter.  We are more likely to have brand new visitors on Christmas Eve, not Easter, and even then, it's only one or two.

The church felt full, though, in a similar way yesterday.  It's one of the few days when all members are likely to come, along with some friends and family members tagging along.  In addition, the folks who aren't members but come here and there--they were there too.  It was joyful and a bit noisy.  It was also raining outside, so we don't have as many pictures at the chicken-wire cross covered with flowers; some folks did put flowers on the cross, despite the rain.

We lingered a bit after worship, but it's not the kind of church that has coffee hour afterward, much less an Easter brunch.  Off we went, back across the mountain.

As is often the case for me as a grown up, Easter afternoon was low key.  I felt more wiped out than usual.  Happily, my life is set up so that I can go to bed super early, which is what I did last night.  At one point, I woke up and saw the red streaks of sunset, but not even the possibility of a glorious sunset was enough to rouse me.

This week may be hectic, but it's one of the last full weeks of the semester for me; next week I'll be out on Friday for the Create in Me retreat.  The week after that is a full week again, and then on April 27 and 28, we have the last class day.

That gasping sound you will be hearing across the next few weeks will be me coming up for air.  But these last weeks of busyness feel different--the end is close at hand.  And then, beyond that, summer!

Atlanta and Me

Atlanta is famous for its horrible traffic, and yesterday's traffic was horrible, just as we expected.  The worst part was some side streets which had cars parked on either side of the street, a 2 way street, which barely left room for one car to drive through.  Yikes!

Happily, we made it through and got to the hotel in Midtown Atlanta.  The car is parked in a garage, and we will not be moving it until we leave.  Last night, we walked down to South City Kitchen for dinner--what amazingly good food, drinks, and service!

As we walked back, I looked at the huge skyscrapers and thought about my connection to this city.  My earliest memories are of Atlanta and theatre.  In 1972 or so, we came to Atlanta to see Godspell, a life changing event even when I was 7--that play shaped my theology and that trip to Atlanta made me see big cities as thrilling, not scary.  In 1978, when I was 13, we came to Atlanta to see A Chorus Line and to shop for some Scandinavian furniture to go with what my mom and dad had bought when they were stationed overseas in France in the 60's.

We lived in Montgomery, Alabama, and when we would drive to see my grandparents in South Carolina, Atlanta was an unmissable landmark with buildings bigger than any in any other Southern city, a statement no longer true.  Later, in my undergraduate years, I would go to Atlanta or drive through Atlanta periodically.  I loved Atlanta and my Georgia Tech friends so much that I thought about going to grad school in Atlanta.  But instead, I went to the University of South Carolina, a choice I don't regret.

I remember coming to Atlanta in 1997 to see an exhibit at the High Museum, the first time I ever saw Pre-Raphaelite paintings, the real ones, not pictures of them in books--amazing.  I left and bought my first set of paints and brushes from Pearl, a local-ish art supply place (only later did I realize it was a chain when I moved to South Florida).

My fondest memories are of Charis Books, a feminist bookstore that is still in business, a happy surprise.  But I will not be going there today--the wedding week-end logistics don't allow for many other activities, but that's O.K.  It's good to see relatives we don't get to see often, and good to have a happy occasion to bring us together.  I am aware that in future years, it will be more likely to be a funeral that draws us near.

But let me not think about that today.  Let me marvel in this city, which 1980's Kristin would not recognize.  That girl could make her way through the city in her 1974 Monte Carlo without breaking a sweat.  I remind myself that she was younger and more foolhardy, and the city wasn't as crowded then as it is now.  Let me enjoy this time out of time, an experience that has always been quintessential Atlanta for me.

Snow Days Come to an End

Today our snow day mini-vacation comes to a close, albeit with qualifications:  if the road conditions are unsafe, just let your instructor/supervisor know.  I've already had several e-mails from students.  I thought about writing such an e-mail myself, but I went for a walk yesterday afternoon, and the roads were clear and dry.

I'm still adjusting my lesson plans for the rest of the week.  I'll give my morning class, the English 101 both today and Friday to write their essays, and we'll do peer editing on Monday.  My two afternoon classes are English 102 classes.  I'm leaning towards doing the same class and in-person daily writing on both today and Friday--students can choose which one to attend.  Those who can't make it today aren't penalized, and neither are those who made an extra effort to make it back.  And it keeps my MWF classes more in sync with the TT classes than other approaches.  It's an experiment, and if it doesn't work beautifully, it's not a huge deal.  And it may give me insight.

I have gotten a lot done during these snow days--not all that I thought about getting done, but enough.  I even pulled out the shop vac yesterday and vacuumed up some of the spots that are impossible with a broom.  

I haven't gotten as much exercise as I might have, had the roads been passable before yesterday afternoon.  But that's O.K. too--it would be better if I had been eating more sensibly, but that's O.K. too.  I have managed to stay calm and less anxious, without drinking or going for a walk, two of the coping techniques I'm most likely to use when I'm feeling anxious.

To be clear, eating treats is also one of my most used coping techniques in dealing with anxiety, so I've used that strategy more than I might have otherwise.  I've also tried writing in my offline journal, another effective technique.

It will be good to get back into my regular schedule--albeit a regular schedule that's about to change with tomorrow's first Lutheran Confessions class.  I did spend some time with the course materials yesterday.  The syllabus gives more insight about the writing expectations than I realized when I wrote yesterday's blog post.  The writing looks very manageable.  I read the assignment in the textbook yesterday morning--a delightful book.  I have not yet opened The Book of Concord, which I predict I will not like as much.  I just don't find pre-20th century theology as appealing as the theology that comes later.

Posted late because . . .

Snow Days and School Days and Anxiety

This morning, I'm feeling oddly anxious.  I have much less reason to feel anxious this week than last.  The ice storm wasn't as bad as we feared it might be.  I had been worried that the seminary class that I'm taking starts Thursday, and I haven't gotten a Zoom link or seen a course shell uploaded in Canvas--this morning, it's there.  We have power, internet, and water, and I have another remote learning day today, so I don't have to worry about the roads.  My spouse had jury duty today--also cancelled.

So why the anxiety?

I've been trying to get to the bottom of my anxiety, trying to understand.  I'm sure part of my anxiety stems from my schedule ramping back up again--so, even though this week includes some extra time at home, most weeks won't be like this.  I've also been feeling anxiety about taking another seminary class with worries about all that could go wrong trying to take root in my brain.  What if the Zoom link doesn't work?  What if the class requires too much of me?  What if this class is the one that breaks me?

I do have to laugh at myself.  I've been taking online classes for 5 years, and I've never run into problems I couldn't solve.  I explored the course shell, and the assignments look manageable.  I have the textbooks.  And then there's the larger situation:  I'm not a 25 year old, just starting out on my life's journey.  I have a full-time job that doesn't depend on this seminary class.

My anxiety might also be sadness masquerading as anxiety.  Why am I sad?  Well, I've enjoyed these snow days, even as I felt anxious about all the ice that might fall.  I'm sad to see this snow vacation come to an end, sad even as I have at least one more day to enjoy.

Let me make a list of some moments that I don't want to slip away:

--I've enjoyed the cooking we've done,  from the seafood stew on Saturday to last night's homemade pizza made in cast iron pans.  I've baked bread, both an oatmeal bread on Saturday and a pumpkin bread this morning.

--We watched Sinners on Saturday--what an amazing movie!  If it hadn't gotten so much Oscar buzz, I might have skipped it, thinking it would be too gory a horror movie.  Thankfully, the gory parts weren't too gross, and the horror bits weren't haunting.

--I've done a lot of sewing and sorting of fabric.  I decided that I was ready for a change from the Christmas fabrics that I had been using, so yesterday I made the shift back to the same type of project, sewing log cabin patchwork out of scraps, but using a wider variety of fabrics.

--Yesterday I took an unintended nap.  I had laid down in the late morning to watch the glitter snow that developed in the morning but was only visible when seen through sunshine.  The trees gleamed through their ice glaze.  Next thing I knew, I was waking up from a deep kind of nap.

Visits with Friends, from Long Ago and More Recent

I made a quick trip to Columbia, SC on Monday.  One of my grad school friends had a catastrophic stroke in summer of 2024, and she's in a skilled nursing unit.  I try to see her regularly, although it's difficult because of my schedule and her health issues.  She still hasn't regained all of her powers of speech, so I worry that my visits are frustrating.  But I also know how much people in care facilities need visits from their friends and family, and so I am determined to keep making the effort.  It's what I think I would want my friends to do for me.

We had a good visit.  We looked at some of the ornaments on her tree.  She's made counted cross stitch ornaments through the years, and the most beautiful and elegant ones are on the tree and hung on across the window.  We had a discussion of sorts about Jane Austen.  I thought of my grad school friend yesterday as I drove home and listened to a discussion of Jane Austen, on her 250th birthday; it was a great conversation on the NPR show 1A, which you can enjoy here.

After the visit with that grad school friend, I went to visit another grad school friend.  We went to our favorite pizza place for a very late lunch/very early dinner.  Zorba's on St. Andrews Road does an amazing job with their Greek pizza.  We also drove around the Shandon area to look at holiday lights.

Long ago, in our grad school days, we lived in a run down apartment building near Five Points, and we often drive by to see it.  Well, we won't be doing that again.  It's been bulldozed.  It was disconcerting to see a construction site where our apartment quadplex used to be.

I left yesterday morning and stopped by the new Trader Joe's out in Harbison--at last, a Trader Joe's with enough parking!  I stocked up on cheeses and other appetizer like snacks, along with a variety of stuffed pastas.  We had some neighborhood friends coming over for happy hour last night, so I wanted to get food on my way home.

I took a walk yesterday afternoon--the weather has gone from record breaking cold Monday morning to a high in the low 60's.   I took this picture because the blueness of the sky took my breath away.

And the photo makes me think that maybe my phone camera is more O.K. than I thought it was.  Maybe the washed out quality of some of the photos I've been taking is about the fluorescent light. 

After my walk and before the happy hour guests, I got a call from the melanoma doctor.  It was last Thursday when I got the phone call from my dermatologist.  I'd been keeping my eye on a spot that we all thought was a bug bite, but it didn't go away or fade, so we decided on a biopsy.  I was expecting it to be a cancer, but not a melanoma.

After the biopsy

My dermatologist refers melanomas to a specialist, so I was instructed to wait, which I did.  The melanoma doctor passed the first test, by calling me within days.  And I will go tomorrow for the consult.

The prospects are good for me.  The melanoma isn't deep:  .3 mm (.3, not 3.).  There's a 5 level scale of seriousness, and from what I can tell, .3 isn't even a stage 1.  The biopsy site looks like a deep cut, but who knows--I am sure there will be additional flesh removed.

But for today, let me focus on the pleasant:  coffee with a retreat friend, quilt group at the local Lutheran church, and a Zoom session with folks/friends who have been meeting to discuss books and the contemplative life.

Environmental Resilience in Our Science and Our Literature (and Psyches)

It's the kind of morning where I feel a bit fragmented--so let me collect the fragments to see if a mosaic emerges.

--There was a Facebook ad that took me to this new degree, a Master's in Environmental Resilience at UNC-Asheville.  It's not as interesting to me as it first seemed it would be--if I was younger, perhaps.  I'm just glad to see that some programs are thinking in this direction.

--I also wanted to record it because I wondered if they would ever offer an elective in writing the history of environmental resilience--and could I teach it?

--Also, if I put together any sort of reading series, it's good to remember non-literary audiences that might be out there.

--For the sake of future historians, I feel I should mention Hurricane Melissa as the strongest landfalling hurricane in the Atlantic, which came ashore in Jamaica yesterday.  It was the strongest in terms of wind, while in terms of barometric pressure, it ties with the Labor Day hurricane of 1935.  It's too early to know what the damage is, but certainly it will be huge.  

--Future historians might laugh at me.  Faithful readers of this blog know that I think strong hurricanes like this one will be more and more common as the years go on.  Future historians will understand the scope and contours of that prediction.

--We are having lots of rain this week.  In a way, I'm glad.  We've had a dry October, which is glorious in its way, but it makes me worry about fire dangers.  In a way, the rain makes me anxious, particularly when it continues day after day, particularly with hurricane coverage increasing.

--Let me go take a walk, while we have a break in the rain.

Reunion, with Tea

I am sitting in a hotel room in Columbia, South Carolina.  Soon I will go to breakfast with grad school friends who are in town as part of their grand North American tour.  They live in England, but both of their sons live in the U.S., one on each coast.

Yesterday we had a grand tea.  My English grad school friend made scones, and I brought 2 sweet treats:  raspberry streusel bars and butterscotch bars.  I've posted the recipe for butterscotch bars before (go here), but search as I might, I could never find the recipe that I used for the raspberry streusel bars.  So I experimented.

On Sunday, I realized I had forgotten to put in much sugar.  Happily, I realized it as I was assembling it, so I used a bit of brown sugar.  They were very crumbly because I always try to use less butter.  So on Tuesday, I tried again.

I wanted these bars to work because they were my vegan and gluten free offering.  I used too many frozen raspberries, so the bars were a bit soggy.  Happily, everyone loved them.  

The scones were the stars of the show, as they deserved to be.  And there were other treats.  We had delicious finger sandwiches.  I forget how wonderful a cucumber sandwich with cream cheese can be. There were some petit fours and slices of apple.

But of course, the real treat was being together.  Long ago in grad school, we gathered every Saturday.  We each brought a treat to share, and we worked on various craft projects.  Many of us in those days were working in embroidery of sorts:  counted cross stitch, crewel, tapestry.  I remember going to various craft stores and wishing I could afford the pre-assembled kits.

I also remember wondering if we should be working on writing projects--and not the research for grad school type of writing assignments.  Most of us had dreams of writing a novel or some other long-form piece.  Of course, it's much easier to sit in a group and socialize over sewing than to socialize over writing.

And now, here we are, decades later.  I am grateful that it is still good to be together, even if the parameters have changed.

Mary Wollstonecraft and Me

Yesterday was the first day of my British Literature survey class, and yesterday, in addition to doing the first day syllabus review, I talked about the revolutionary winds of the late 1700's.  I was doing some intro work to Mary Wollstonecraft, particularly her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

I talked about the ideas of human rights that were in their infancy in the 1700's and reminded students that we were not at a human rights for all moment of humanity.  No indeed--and along comes Mary Wollstonecraft to argue that women should have rights too, the same rights that people like William Godwin and Thomas Jefferson argued that men should have.  Not all men, of course:  white men, landowning men.

I talked about how now, her argument seems fairly obvious and/or straight forward and maybe even obvious:  educate women, and they'll be better mothers. Educate women, and they'll be better wives, companions to their husbands rather than mere ornaments. Nothing too shocking there.

And then I paused, a bit gut punched to realize how many rights for women have been rolled back in the past few years.  So I also talked about that. 

This morning, I'm thinking about Mary Wollstonecraft anew; I've written about her before in this blog post.  I'm remembering when one of my favorite grad school professors gave me a copy of the Norton edition of Vindication, along with a note that said she had an extra copy and thought of me.  I felt thrilled--a copy of my own, and proof that my professor might like me.  I may still have it in a box somewhere.

I'm thinking of all the times I've taught this work, through the years, and how long it's been since I taught it--the last time was probably in 2001.  At some point, I assumed I would likely never teach this literature again. I'm so glad that I was wrong.

Unplugged Summer

It's been an interesting summer of being unconnected and unplugged.  I don't use the computer at work for anything other than work, and using my phone to go online shows me all the disadvantages of using the phone--I have no patience for the small screen and the glitchiness.  I'm already hauling enough stuff to my office each day; I don't want to bring a laptop.

It's been interesting, this experiment.  I'm not completely unconnected.  I listen to NPR on the way to and from work, so I keep up with the big news stories.  But the intricacies escape me.  I often go online to social media sites and wonder what people are talking about.  It's not like in the past when I've wondered why people are getting so worked up or why they aren't more bothered.  No--I genuinely have no idea what on earth they are talking about.

I must say, I don't particularly care.  Once I would have thought I should be more informed.  Once it would have been easier.  Once it might have felt more important.

I wish I could say that I'm filling the empty space with writing, with reading.  But no, on the week days, I go to work, I come home, and I'm asleep not much later.  That, too, is an interesting experience.  I check my phone once or twice a day to see if there's a message.  But it's like I've fallen into a distant time, when an emergency would have to wait for my off-duty time before I got the message.

I'm also using a DOS based system to enter chart notes.  It reminds me of the earliest days of Microsoft Word, using spell check and grammar check.  In some ways, I prefer it.  Let me write, and then give me corrections.  So far, the corrections are correct, unlike 2025 versions of the software.  Sigh.

I'm trying to remember when I last used a DOS based system on a daily basis:  maybe 1992 or so?  Probably before Microsoft Windows came out in 1995 or so.  I am feeling my age.

But it also feels like those days in other, more delightful ways.  I feel like I have several future paths that may open up at any moment, if I can just keep juggling.  It feels very last days of grad school lately.  And in some ways, it is.

Placing Book Orders for College Classes in an Age of AI

Yesterday was a day of taking care of small tasks:  ordering books for fall classes at Spartanburg Methodist College, importing syllabi for fall online classes and then putting dates in the syllabus for my online class that starts in late June, picking up prescriptions, reviewing the instructions to get ready for my Thursday colonoscopy, and on and on.

My spouse has been feeling under the weather, so we shifted menu plans, and I made a pot of chicken and dumplings, one of the better ones I've ever made.  I am now convinced that I can only make fluffy dumplings with a biscuit cutter and hand mixing.  The food processor makes the rubberiest dumplings.

In the late afternoon, I went to a neighborhood friend's house for a dinner of snacks and wine (one of my favorite kinds of dinner) and sketching, while her spouse was at church council meeting.  It was the perfect way to end the day.

This morning, I find myself thinking about the Norton Anthology of  British Literature, more specifically, of the 3 volumes that cover the second half of the survey course.  I spent part of the week-end rereading Michael Cunningham's The Hours and watching the film and thinking about Virginia Woolf.  Mrs. Dalloway is now in the anthology, in its entirety.  When I studied British Lit in undergraduate school in the 1980's, Woolf's reputation was in the process of changing.  But at the time, she wasn't always seen as important, particularly not her fiction writing; feminists did prioritize her nonfiction writing on how hard it is to be a woman writer.

I remember when Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was first included in the Norton, somewhere at the turn of the century.  Now we don't have Frankenstein, but instead her novel, The Last Man.  So I ordered Frankenstein in a separate volume.

This morning I wondered how grad studies might have changed.  Would we still spend the same amount of time on Wordsworth and Coleridge?  Is Frankenstein seen as more important, the gateway to much that is modern?  And more sobering, to think about how removed I am from literary scholarship, that I'm probably asking the wrong questions.

I am looking forward to teaching these works again. I will probably not spend much time on the last 40 years, particularly as Norton enlarged the scope to include all sorts of countries that used to be colonies, which makes the topic unmanageable.  We will do a deep dive into post World War II lit and end by thinking about whether or not these topics (fear of nuclear annihilation, seeing an increasing concentration on human rights for more groups, who will rule the world now) are still relevant.  

For decades now, when I got to make my own textbook choices, I've gone with no book.  This year, as I've been reading Maggie Smith's Dear Writer:  Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life, I decided to use it in my English 100 and 101 classes.  I'm not sure exactly how yet.  For those first year writing classes, I still plan to do a lot with trees and observing nature.  But some of the chapters in the book will make a great contribution to the class and to their experiences as first year college students--at least, that's my hope.

Last night, at my neighborhood friend's house, we talked about AI and teaching and how life is changing.  I'm glad that when it comes to teaching, I'm in a place where I have a lot of latitude.  All of my colleagues are distressed about AI and how students use it to avoid doing the work of being a student, and we're all experimenting with different ways to engage students.  

I feel lucky to be part of a liberal arts college at such a time as this.

Graduation Morning

It is graduation morning, a day which may have seemed improbable years ago, before Covid, before seminaries started experimenting with distance learning, before higher education began its long and then sudden decline, before, before, before.

I have earned an MDiv from Wesley Theological Seminary, and later today, I'll participate in the graduation ceremony that happens in the National Cathedral.  It starts at 2, and you could watch from a distance by way of this livestream link:  https://youtube.com/live/hAGLcoosBYo?feature=share

I am not sure what to expect, beyond the usual:  lots of folks in caps and gowns, walking across some sort of stage to get a diploma.  I have participated in many graduations, but rarely as the one getting the diploma.

I have sensible shoes, and I'll wear the olive skirt with the pockets, not the black but pocketless skirt that would blend with the gown better.  I am not nervous about the graduation ceremony.  I'm not speaking, after all.  My family will park the car, and I'm hoping we'll be early enough that they can get a space in the parking garage.

Because the Eucharist ceremony was on Thursday, we've spent several days here in the DC area, days with family members, precious time.  Some of us have been in a local hotel, sharing space with lots and lots of soccer players who are in town for various championship games.  This morning, I'm hearing sniffling and sneezing and hoping it's just allergies.  I have avoided airline flights for a variety of reasons, but belatedly, I'm thinking about the risks of crowded hotels.  We haven't lingered in common spaces or crowded spaces, so hopefully we'll be O.K.

I'm thinking about the last time I stayed in this hotel, back in October for the onground intensive week.  At that time, it seemed more populated by business travelers.  I remember feeling so exhausted, not just from the intensive work, but also from the cumulative fatigue that comes from having a natural disaster fall on one's head.

It's good to remember that it hasn't all been easy. I still feel a bit weird, like people are making too much fuss over me.  After all, I've enjoyed my classes and most of the work felt like it came naturally to me.  But as I think about this 4 year journey, I am reminded of all the ways it has taken perseverance.  It's good to celebrate these milestones.

Spring Term: Done at Last!

It is finally here, the moment I've dreamed of, the moment that I was afraid I might not be able to find.  My last set of grades are turned in, as are my last seminary papers.  Let me take a moment to collect some fragments so that I remember.

--People might see the above sentences and think I'm done with work for a bit.  Nope--I need to update course shells for my online courses for summer which start on May 13.  I am still the Synod Approved Minister for Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN.

--Last week, we didn't go to Bristol because I was at the Create in Me retreat.  Yesterday we were both amazed at how the trees have gone from budding to green.  It was almost disorienting, to go from being able to see far beyond the highway to not being able to see beyond the trees at all.

--But I am also so glad that the trees that were so late to budding and leafing are green now, and not dead, like I was afraid that they were.

--I am remembering USC grad school days--when I was done with classes, both the ones I taught and the ones I took, I'd head to the public library to get reading for fun.  Our public libraries are closed on Mondays, but tomorrow--tomorrow is a possibility.  I have a pile of books to return, now that I've finished writing papers.

I am having trouble thinking of things to say--a bit braindead, after so much grading to meet today's noon deadline for grades.  Let me go for a walk to clear my head.

Last Seminary Paper Submitted

Last night, after my final seminary class session, I turned in my final seminary paper.  It was about recovering the voice of the prophet Anna, who we meet for 3 verses in the second chapter of Luke (36-38) after Simeon has hogged the spotlight.  We don't get Anna's words, but we do get her actions:  she sees Jesus and goes out to tell everyone the Messiah has come, which makes her the first evangelist after the birth of Jesus.  Thirty some odd years later, Mary Magdalene will also testify, but Anna is first.

It was a fun paper to write for a cool assignment.  In the first part of the assignment, 8-10 pages, we were to write an academic essay that looked in depth at the text that we chose, mostly exploring what others have said about the passage, and in the last part of the assignment, we had much more leverage to be creative:  we could write a sermon or a skit or an outline of something longer, but we had to explain the relevance of the material to a modern listener.

Much of the week, I've been focused on this assignment, but every so often, I let myself think about the whole seminary process, and what all has changed since I first explored the Wesley website, in February of 2021.  In a way, I'm very lucky:  the website described the seminary as it was before Covid.  Even now, as I look at the website, I see pictures of the largest lecture rooms on campus full of people.  When I was there, taking classes in person, we were able to space out across the room, and I was glad.  But the lower in-person attendance did mean that many of the campus opportunities described, like food service, no longer existed.

When I first applied to seminary, the school where I had my full-time job had been sold, but we weren't sure about the implications.  For a time, the new owners talked about consolidating, then they expanded, then they closed most of the campuses, then they closed them all.  I'm glad that I didn't count on them for future income.  I've never regretted leaving academic administration; I was always wanting to protect the interests of faculty and students, and people higher up wanted me to figure out how the school could make more money (they hired me, a PhD in English, and wondered why I couldn't figure out how to transform a campus into a money-making machine).

When I first applied to seminary, we had a house with a mortgage in a flood zone, less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean.  In between then and now, we moved to a condo in downtown Hollywood, which we only lived in for 10 months before buying the house we own outright now, in the mountains of North Carolina.  We also moved some of our stuff to a seminary apartment, which I only lived in for 9 months.  It seemed certain that the building would be bulldozed to make room for a brand new building, but that hasn't happened yet.  I have no regrets about making the decision to move back to North Carolina.  I've been able to take the classes I need in the modality I need.

I do feel lucky that I got to experience seminary classes in a wide variety of modalities--and such a wide variety of classes.  I've taken art classes where I got to work in mediums that were new to me.  I've taken theology classes and Bible classes and preaching classes.  I've taken classes that didn't fit neatly into the subject matter.  I've had amazing professors who have astonishing credentials.

We've weathered a variety of disasters.  One was a disaster in the traditional definition of that term:  Hurricane Helene.  I expected that a hurricane might disrupt seminary when I lived in South Florida, but not in North Carolina.  The extent of the devastation still shocks me.  I broke my wrist, which was a survivable disaster, but it did require surgery (three years ago, on this very day), and it did complicate the end of my second semester (thank goodness for talk-to-text technology) and made the move to North Carolina harder than it had to be, since I couldn't pick up anything at all.  My husband's brother died suddenly, just six weeks after graduating from seminary himself.  I've spent my seminary years worrying that one of our parents would die, but I didn't expect a younger member of the family to drop dead.

My job trajectories have surprised me.  When I did all the pre-candidacy interviews, at the point after I described my job history, more than one person mentioned how my face lit up when I talked about teaching.  And here I am, teaching full-time in a face to face modality again.  When I first applied to seminary, I had never heard of Spartanburg Methodist College.  Now I don't understand why more people haven't heard of it:  it's a solid school with an amazing scholarship program. 

I've also had the opportunity to serve as a part-time Synod Appointed Minister, which has given me a lot of the joys of being part of church leadership with none of the headaches.  When I started applying to seminary, I would not have thought that I would be a good fit for a rural church in the mountains of east Tennessee.  Nothing has deepened my appreciation for worship like this appointment has.

Even though I'm finishing my MDiv, I'm still a distance from being ordained.  Because I went to a Methodist seminary, I have some Lutheran things to do, like CPE and at least one class in Lutheran theology and an internship (as of right now, my SAM experience can't count for an internship).  But I have no regrets about my seminary route.  It's been a wonderful experience, one that has shaped me, one that I will miss.

Favorite Classes

 I've spent all of my adult life as a teacher, and a good chunk of my adult life as a student.  When my American Lit class asked me if they were my favorite students, if they were the best class, I said, "If I made a list of my top 10 or top 20 classes, they would make the list."  Some of my students said, "Top 10 or top 20?"

I let the question go, but the answer would be, "It's complicated."  Should I compare them all, the upper class Brit Lit classes at FAU and the Developmental English classes at Broward Community College, as it was called then?  The students at the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale and the students at City College (not the famous one in NYC, but a South Florida health careers kind of school)--both closed now.   I have taught in schools in South Carolina and South Florida, but not many places in between, and those places are very different.  The University of Miami, where I taught for several years, is very different from FAU, which is very different than the local community colleges.

And yet, they are all more similar than different, all these schools where I've taught.  Most of the students are interested in learning, although not all in learning the same things.  All of the students want a better world with better opportunities--until recently, I'd have assumed we all did, whether in school or not.  I still assume that we all want a better world with better opportunities, although some people define that all more narrowly than I once assumed.

For me, what gets a class on my top 10 or 20 list is that I leave the room feeling better than when I came in--and that can happen for a variety of reasons.  I have often left the American Lit class feeling profoundly grateful for being able to teach a literature survey class one more time.  I enjoy teaching Composition too, but I have no doubt that I can do a variety of that kind of teaching until the day I die, or the day that AI becomes capable of doing it.  Literature survey classes have not come my way as an adjunct as often, and with the anti-Humanities feelings these days, it is a wonderful surprise to have the opportunity again.

Tonight I have the second to last class meeting of one of the best classes I've taken as a student, the seminary class that looks at the Christmas and Easter texts without all chapters about the life of Jesus in between.  It's a topic that interests me, but I've taken plenty of classes that interest me.  This class impresses me because of the quality of the discussion; at the end of every class, I always wish that we had more time.

Today is the start of the retreat that means so much to me, the Create in Me retreat.  In the past, when I've had a Thursday night class, I've skipped it to be at the retreat.  Today I won't be at the opening night activities.  Just as with Quilt Camp two weeks ago, I can't bear to miss this class.

I know it could be otherwise, and I am so grateful that my seminary years are ending this way, on a strong note, that makes me wish we had more time.

Easter Morning, 2025

If you came to this page, hoping for a theological reflection, I'm happy to provide!  This post at my theology blog will fit the bill nicely.

On this Easter Sunday, I have cleaned the bathrooms--more of a Maundy Thursday task, to be sure, but my Maundy Thursday was consumed with other tasks that kept me away from the house for most of the day.

Later today, my spouse's brother and his wife will be arriving.  Luckily, our residential area is part of a church camp, so we were able to get him a room over there.  We have a sleep sofa in the room which is also where I work, and tomorrow, I need to make a presentation for my seminary class.  Having guests stay with us is just not doable right now.

Later today I will make a cake to go with the rest of the strawberries--yum.  It's not the traditional Easter bunny cake, but it will taste of spring and warmer days ahead. 

Soon we will get in the car and go across the mountain to Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee, where I will preach and preside.  It feels more leisurely because we didn't have to be there before the service to do Confirmation.

In the middle of all of this, I am also writing my last paper for my Worship and Digital Technology class; I have to make a 10 minute presentation tomorrow evening, which won't be hard, but I also need to be ready to turn in the paper.  Then I have 72 hours to turn in a reflection.

After that assignment, I have two more papers to write and I am done with my MDiv degree.  As when I was in the home stretch of classes for my PhD, I found myself thinking that I might never write an academic paper again.

Let me bring this writing to a close--time to get ready for the day, the more public facing part of the day.