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I am a miserable failure I've been reading lots of detective stories lately - Agatha Christie, Perry Mason, that one stupid one from England - and I think I'm so smart and detectivey now, and last week I stumble upon a perplexing mystery that took place in my very own bedroom: the disappearance of my lunch card, my coffee card, and my extra house key. I deduce that they have disappeared together. Thieved! But then I found my house key out by where I normally keep my house keys, hidden under an envelope. So, fine, the thief stole my lunch card and my coffee card. But then this morning I put on my pants and find, in addition to a pair of underwear in the leg (seriously), my lunch card in the pocket, along with some hair clips! So this leads to the obvious conclusion that the thief was only after my coffee card after all - the other two were a ruse to get me off the trail. But then, just now, cleaning up my room a little (it looked very tidy but I guess it really wasn't), in a pile of important things, I found my coffee card. So: no thief, no plot to get my free coffee, etc. Very disappointing. How could I have been so easily fooled? Also: the conference in August, abstract submission deadline today. Last night I decided not to do it. I was all, "You what dawg? Fuck it, I don't want to." I felt very good. I'd still go to the conference and schmooze with the peeps etc., but I wouldn't have to be stressed out all summer about it. I'd disappoint some people but who cares about them anyway, right? So today I went to the department to give them my transcripts for my class-teaching gig, and I told one of the professors there that I'd decided not to submit, and she was like, "Just do your thesis presentation," and I was like, "Yeah but... I'll just attend this year and submit next year," and she was like, "The audience here will be less critical, they're formalists at the other places," and I was like, "Well, then, I'll present at [the conference I helped out with at my other grad school]," and she was like, "No transportation or lodging costs for this," and I was like, "Fine, I'll think about it." So I thought about it and realized I need to do it to acknowledge/honor the professor who chaired my thesis, the guy I came back here to study with, the guy who held up his retirement for me to finish, the guy who then kind of got fucked over by the university. So I submitted a stinking abstract and I'll probably get accepted and then I'll have to give a presentation at a goddamn academic conference at the beginning of August. And then that'll be over but then a few weeks after that I'll have to start teaching a 400-level university course and I'm so dumb! So dumb! Also, I hate academia! I procrastinate everything - it took me two months to make a CV, mostly because I had nothing to put on it. Arggggggggh. How did I get into this mess? Now I have to pick out a textbook or two for the course - I have a two-foot tall stack of books to choose from. ARggggggggggh. And all I want to do is read murder mysteries from the 1930s. Here's all the stupid academia-related things I've had to do: write a CV (an arduous months-long struggle), edit a paper (at least I didn't have to write it though), order transcripts, write an abstract (and I couldn't even get to their minimum word requirement!), pick out textbooks (blaacchhh). Then I'll get all that done and I'll still have to do all of this: write the paper to go along with the conference presentation (uuuggrrrruggghhh), make a syllabus (oh sweet lord), do lesson plans for all the thousands of class meetings that will occur over the semester, PRESENT those lesson plans (shit fuck), grade homework assignments (that'll be fine), read papers (blaggggghhh), etc. etc., a never-ending stream of trials and tribulations. Why didn't I just go to typing school after high school? I could have been so happy!
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