Grad Students Don't Wear Sweatpants

I made it through my 5 days of hell Monday night as I submitted my take home midterm exam on 10pm Monday night (after submitting my 8 pg paper at 2:30pm earlier in the day). Now its Wednesday and I have to work on a paper due Friday evening, begin my reading for a facilitation I have to lead, and grade my students midterm's that I just received today. But that' not the point of this entry. This is just to explain the necessity of sweatpants in attempting to complete work for hours throughout the day. One thing I miss from undergrad is that your Duke sweatpants made an appearance at least four times a week. Well they did for me. I have yet to buy Purdue gear since I have so much Duke stuff to lounge around in but it wouldn't matter. I wore sweats to a seminar and was asked if I was tired (you look tired aka hott mess lol). Its not like I can wear sweatpants to teach and wearing sweatpants to class seems to be an "undergrad" thing to do because they "dont care." What's wrong with that? Might it mean that they care about their work more than appearance? Either way - I miss sweat pants and sneak them in anywhere I can!

Say You'll Go - Janelle Monae

Has been on repeat for the last two weeks. Wanted to share.

The Attack of the Lady Bugs: Indiana Living

Horrible news everyone ... Indiana is infested with Lady Bugs. More importantly my apartment building is infested and the hallways are covered with them. Its been this way for the past few days and I occasionally saw a few in my apartment where I proceed to mash them up with a flip flop. Yes I killed the lady bugs, they are still bugs and I do not have plants that could benefit from them. They are a nuisance. This isn't the point, however. I came home right after teaching this morning (which I think went pretty well) and I took a nap. I've been feeling ill all day and am finally feeling a lot better after some serious sleep happened throughout the day and unfortunately no work. After the nap I wake up to three lady bugs on my bedroom ceiling. This is the first time they've been in the bedroom so I was a little disgusted. Again, I killed, cleaned, then flushed the evidence down the toilet. I walk into my living room because I wanted to grab something to eat from the kitchen then I realized there were so many lady bugs on my ceiling!!! It was absolutely disgusting! There had to have been at least 30. I'm cringing just thinking about the memory. I had no idea what to do. I couldn't kill them individually so I decided to vacuum them and empty out the canister in the large trash can outside of the building. I was absolutely mortified. Lady bugs may be cute and friendly in cartoon fashion but let me remind everyone there are movie that make even mice cute (ew). I come back into the apartment and a few more have popped up. I google them to see what else I could do (aside from calling maintenance to come kill each and everyone of these nasty things). I say that they weren't lady bugs, they were Asian beetles. The biggest difference is that these Asian beetles do not die during the winter, instead they find warm places to hibernate. What did I do? I turned the AC on! They will not hibernate here!! (It's not warm enough for the AC any more). I go to the grocery store and buy some RAID that is supposed to kill and continue to kill for four weeks in the sprayed area. I sprayed everywhere!!! Now I have a whole bunch of dead ladybugs on my carpet (I know not cute). I had to vacuum about three times today. The issue is that they are still in the hallway of the main building hibernating away. When I call maintenance tomorrow they better not say that this is normal. This is not acceptable at all! I was sick today and in this whole cleaning frenzy I barely ate and was extremely weak. The Lady Bugs defeated me. I napped again then awoke to no lady bugs in sight. I had some energy to I proceeded to clean the entire apartment. I normally do a massive cleaning every Friday anyway but this time I had the little nasty bugs to keep me motivated. Unfortunately, they are attracted to heat and I can't turn the AC on during the winter.

I would take a picture of the ones in the Hall but I can't stand there. I run from the front door to my apartment door. I know a tad bit melodramatic but its an army, you have to understand. They outnumber me.

In other news, today officially begins my Fall Break which should be wonderful since the boyfriend is coming to visit. However, all the work I was supposed to do this week did not happen to the extent I wanted it so work all weekend it is :(

Until next time,

Quote: "A Self-Policing Subject"

I'm reading for class on Wednesday (for my Feminist Theory and Methods class) and come across this quote. I won't discuss it further since I have to finish the reading but I wanted to share with anyone out there.

Normative femininity is coming more and more to be centered on woman's body ... Images of normative femininity ... have replaced the religious oriented tracts of the past. The woman who checks her makeup half a dozen times a day to see if her foundation has caked or her mascara has run, who worries that the wind or the rain may spoil her hairdo, who frequently looks to see if her stockings have bagged at the ankle, or who feeling fat, monitors everything she eats, has become, just as surely as the inmate of the Panoptican, a self-policing subject, a self committed to a relentless self-surveillance. This self-surveillance is a form of obedience to patriarchy" (Bartky 1998)

Bartkey, Sandra Lee. 1988. Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power. In Femininity and Foucault: Reflections of Resistance. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby, eds. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Any thoughts?

Finding My Teaching Style

Hey Everyone,

I have it in me to blog again. If you've gotten a chance to speak to me you've heard that I haven't had the most fun teaching my class. I have had great days and really days where I'm frustrated with students for not having read. I find myself not in my comfort zone and I'm not a big fan of lecturing (I wasn't as a student). I'm also coming to a place where I'm not very familiar. Purdue is a state school where most of its students are from Indiana and an occasional bunch from Illinois. Adjusting to the location hasn't been too difficult as a student but as an instructor I guess its something different. I LOVED my teaching experience over the summer with my high-school students from Newark and other parts of New Jersey but I don't want to attribute things only to location. They chose to be there and had been committed to the nonprofit for three years already. My students now have to take this class to fulfill their "diversity" requirement which I personally find strange although I understand the merit it in.

So I'm sitting here trying to think of creative ways to engage my students some of which do regularly read an d are somewhat interested in the material. I keep saying this but I am infinitely more grateful for the wonderful professors I have had at Duke. Don't get me wrong I've also had Professors that I didn't care for but they really aren't the majority. I try to think of what it was that I really liked about some of my classes and try to enter them into my classes. They seemed to happen to effortlessly for them. Not so much for me. I find myself stumbling through lectures and really not enjoying going into the classroom which I know has to affect my students. I guess I'm still trying to find my teaching voice and style. I already know how I will change some aspects of the syllabus for next semester and adding articles that I LOVED as an undergrad and would love to teach. This semester I just used the core readings (most of which I hadn't read and am now reading and creating lesson plans). In case you didn't know one of my majors was African and African American Studies at Duke.

So in thinking of what my teaching style is I definitely want to incorporate a lot of the theory I'm learning now within feminist discourse. I want to find a way to decenter the classroom where the teacher isn't the focal point of the class. I try to do that now with my students submitting discussion questions every week. I want them to feel like they are a part of the class as opposed to always being spoken to which is one of my issues with lecturing. Don't get me wrong there are some GREAT lecturers out there and sometimes a professor has to to cover a lot of information and/or cover the reading that the students so obviously haven't read. Either way de-centering the classroom is something I try to focus on and need to find my way of doing that consistently. Another tactic I have learned is successful is group work. As an undergrad I HATED group work. It was probably one of the most annoying things but I've found (past summer and this semester) that for the most part my students really get a lot out of group work and its proves for dynamic discussion. So now my students have group projects and I try to incorporate it at least once a week (from now on).

I don't know, this is a work in progress I guess. I'm not a great teacher yet and I know it but I guess the most I can do is keep trying different things and cross my fingers hoping that it might work. I hope through it all I make some connections with my students (which I think I'm beginning to do). We'll see where I'm at when I'm done teaching my first class. The director of the African American Studies Research Center is coming to observe my class next week Friday and I'm a little nervous about it although I know it'll go faster than normal. We'll see how that goes.

PS: I'm reading on campus well obviously not right now but was before writing this and will after finishing this. This is my life lol. At least I'm reading stuff I really care about. I'm a lot more confident in being a student which I know I've done for far longer. But I can say I'm participating a great deal in my classes and I'm getting through most of the reading. I still need to work on my writing skills but that will always be a work-in-progress.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!