The Purge End of 2016 Edition- Why I'm Happier Living Minimally

This is the phrase that has been going through my mind a lot lately.
I noticed yesterday that my last personal blog here was January 2015 and was about paring down. Specifically it was about paring down clothes à la the 333 system---33 pieces of clothing (not specialty/sports) for each season.

Part of the reason I haven't been posting on here is that the last couple of years I have been all consumed with my dissertation. But the other day I was trying to explain and lay out the minimalist movement (minus the pretentious hipsters) and then last week someone was talking about the 33 clothing movement. And on Christmas it came up again.

For the first time in a long time I have some breathing room so I thought I'd provide an update to how paring down has worked for me and briefly outline how I use minimalism.

The last couple of years I have taken a ridiculous amount of truck loads of stuff to Goodwill and I still look around the house and spot things that go in the next round. In fact the box on the dining room table on the left hand side of the picture is the current "To Goodwill" box and I just took a full truck load last week.
Now my living room is wide open, which Nehi loves because now it's become a big playground for her. This may seem like a silly thing, but this is a side effect of paring down. I get more joy out of the multiple play dates a day that occur in this open space then I ever did with the stuff that used to fill it.
Here are a couple of examples of recent purges:

• I got rid of my DVD shelves. I realized that my TV sat on shelves. Which were empty. And it hit me that a lot of furniture is just an excuse to fill it with more stuff. So I moved the DVDs to the TV shelves and dumped the DVD shelves. The hallway (to the right) is now clear. Nehi can race between the living room and bedroom and I no longer feel cramped. 
• I no longer buy DVDs, preferring digital copies, but next goal is to use Vudu to transfer my DVDs to digital copies so I can get rid of them for good.
• I got rid of VHS tapes a few months ago so this is the last remnant.
• I only have two dining room chairs. I want none honestly, looking for benches instead. And that too is part of paring down---a lot of things you get rid of, a lot of things you get better versions of, and a lot of things you replace with things you realize would work better. In over a year I have had one instance where I had two people over for dinner. I rolled my desk chair in and sat on that. No one cared, least of all me.
• I recently got rid of the one chair I had in the living room. No one visits me so it literally just sat there. And it wasn't comfortable so I never sat in it. I'm thinking about getting a replacement, but another side effect of paring down is you spend a lot more time contemplating purchases, so it may be a while.
• I recently realized I had posters that I had bought during undergrad at one of those center of campus cheap market things. I didn't like the pictures. But I had moved them for over twenty years. 
• This too I've noticed with paring down, you suddenly look at something and wonder why the hell you have it.
• The flip side is on the left there's a Captain America comic print that I bought as celebration for a piece I wrote that I love. On the wall is a pair of pictures, a shot I took of Alcatraz and a commemorative piece of art that supported Alcatraz.

The bedroom looks disorganized because most things are out. I discovered that I like to see things out, so I leave stuff out.

• I used to have a trunk at the bottom of my bed. It held linens, so was useful, but there was no reason to have it out, so now it's in the closer, accessible but away. I like this trunk as it was a gift when I moved into my dorm freshman year of undergrad and it's been everywhere with me. Likewise I had another trunk but it was empty. So it's become a bit of a hope chest, things I don't want to get rid of for sentimental reasons, but also don't want to have out.
• The bonus of this is that I no longer bang my foot on the trunk in the middle of the night and Nehi has more running room (are you sensing a theme?).
• One example of the shifting perspective of paring down is my adorable penguin flannel duvet cover. Before Mom died she bought two flannel comforters for me and the house for winter. One had snowmen on it, another cute stockings. Nehi de-stuffed the snowmen early in her puppyhood and I took the stockings, lugging it cross country. But I realized this winter that it's a comforter for a double and I have a queen, so it never provides coverage or warmth. So away it went. 
• In the three plus years I've been getting rid of things I have only regretted giving away one thing, a blue sweater of Mom's. And even that not really. It was a 3x so I never wore it, but I had it. The stocking comforter recalled some of these same feelings. It's a little harder to get rid of things I associate with her. But I don't use this, I didn't need it, and someone else could. Do gone.
• I looked long and hard for a flannel comforter to replace it, because the high desert does get cold in the winter and I did need something. I toss and turn a lot so lots of layered blankets aren't an option. I found this penguin flannel duvet cover. Now my personality tends to snark at things like Spark Joy, even though I do like some of the ideas, but I admit that every time I see these guys I am happy. Look at them---they're adorable!
• So this is another side effect of what I've found. This duvet cover was pricey. But it's exactly what I wanted, it's adorable, it's super soft and I justify the cost because I won't have to buy a winter cover ever again.

The next big area, and harder for some than others, is the closet.  For me this was harder and easier. At first it was hard because for me getting rid of a lot of things meant getting rid of preconceived ideas about me. I don't wear skirts to work. In fact, I don't wear skirts. I wear dresses to Mass but only a certain kind. I prefer to be comfortable than anything. I had to let go of the idea that I was ever going to be a person who wore skirts, girly-clothes, was going to fit into X. And the weight that lifted from letting all that go was amazing.

Some other key things:

• I used to wear button down shirts, ties, and vests. Part of it was because men have it easy with dressing professionally and part was comfort. But last year when I was having anxiety attacks a side effect was I couldn't wear tight clothing because it made the attacks worse and/or could start them. Last year I also went back to teaching high school, which is more informal. So I went shopping.
• Since I had given myself permission to buy new work clothes (but still following the one in, one out rule- so I had to purge things to bring things in) I thought about what I wanted in my work clothes. I wanted something that fit, comfortably, so not tight. I liked colors. I liked no collars or buttons. So the majority of the shirts I got were tunic tops. I got some button down shirts but because they're female not male styles they don't have to be tucked in, and I went a size larger because I have Hulk shoulders, so this fixed the suffocation issue. 
• The shirts are best for summer, they're cotton and fairly light, but they work for colder seasons by just putting a t-shirt under them and/or a jacket over them.
• I'm pretty proud of my pared down closet. In the high desert seasons are weird- it was 20 on Christmas, and 58 yesterday, so like the South, we tend not to pack away clothes. Your wardrobe is your wardrobe all year long.
• I do have a weakness for jackets. I don't get to wear them a lot here, one professor jokingly said New Mexico had like one week where you could wear a jacket and he wasn't wrong. But these are good quality, I do love them (and the matching pins I've collected over the years), and if I move somewhere else I'm sure I'll get more use out of them.

This year my favorite discovery was Old Navy's Boyfriend Tee. I have tattoos so I hate the cap sleeve tees that most women's t-shirts have. As a high school teacher, I also don't like deep v-necks. These t-shirts are perfect (middle stack). They're not expensive. They're super soft, and they fit great. I bought five short sleeves and when the long sleeves came out bought a bunch of them (left side). I love them.  Colors I couldn't find I search Goodwill for (right side). They're light so they're good for layering, I wear them under sweaters, under the Wal-mart tunic topics I bought, so they're good all year.

Sweaters also got pared down. Just seven. Neutral colors mostly, go with just about everything else I own. That red sweater was Mom's and is older than I am. I have decades of pictures with her in it. I don't wear it often but I'll never get rid of it.

The top shelf is pants- 2 khaki, 1 navy blue, 1 sage, black corduroy, red corduroy, grey, purple jeans.
Bottom shelf is cargo pants, three pairs of jeans.
I struggled with the pants because I've been trying to lose weight the last couple of years (which when dissertating you should just cut yourself slack on) so my weight fluctuates a lot and so I pretty much rely on Goodwill's $5 pants.

One thing I like about my wardrobe is what things like 333 and Spark Joy is that I love everything I own now. It all fits. It all looks good on me. It's all in good shape. I love it all. There is no stress at all getting dressed for work, or anything else, because I can literally grab anything and be happy. This seems like a small thing, but it's not.

The middle shelves are my t-shirt collection which I will never get rid of, never pare down. Some of the shirts are just my geek shirts, but a lot were purchased when traveling and represent adventures.

The miscellaneous:

• I have several sweatshirts/sweatpants because I run/walk with Nehi every day.
• It's the same reason I have a lot of knit hats and gloves. For warmer weather I also have a lot of caps for the same reason. Could I get away with less?  Maybe. But this is one of those conversations- if I had one sweatshirt/one pair of sweatpants instead of seven I'd have to wash them every day. So what's the trade off of more items versus water? Time? I choose to keep what I have.
• But this also means that I got rid of all my pajamas because I didn't wear them and run Nehi in the pair I wore that night, so...
• I have a wool Navy pea coat that's a "fancy" winter coat.
• A military winter coat for long time in the cold and a jean jacket and polarfleece, so I'm covered there.
• I have a lot of fashion scarves. I don't wear them often. But some of them were Mom's so for now they stay.
• I struggle with shoes. I have issues with my knees, and standing on concrete floors for eight hours a day doesn't help. I tend to have two pairs of everything, one brown one black, so two pairs of boat shoes, two pairs of dress shoes, two pairs of work boots, one pair of sneakers.
• The shoes are an expensive trial and error. Finding shoes that don't make my knees throb by the end of the day is hard. 
• As a default I wear my sneakers most days.

I recently reorganized my office.  I wanted all my "work" books out, I wanted a better background for the video lectures I make for my online classes, and I wanted to clear out some living room space.

• The bookshelves on the left are full of books that if I ever got a college teaching job would go to my campus office.
• Nehi's crate is there because I watch her through my web cam while I'm at work.
• I made the desk, it's wide and long (and it's my fifth desk incarnation) because I noticed while dissertating that I need to be able to spread out my papers, notes, books so I needed to large surface space.
• But there's not a lot else. I have a plastic filing box for current tax stuff that gets filed regularly, a small filing cabinet under the desk that's the only drawers I have.
• Above my desk is a corkboard for inspiration and a whiteboard where I track dissertation progress.

The office has a walk in closer which I converted two years ago into extra shelf space. I made ladder shelves which are super easy and cool. Next time I move I'll probably paint them before moving them into a new place. These are mostly high school teaching books, recreation books and banker boxes that contain dissertation work.

• Last year I got rid of a lot of papers I'd been dragging through multiple moves, lamps that didn't work that I "might" someday fix.
• One project that I do have on the horizon is to digitize all the family photo albums using Scan My Photos. I did a box last year, and was really happy (it's $99 per box, you fill it, they can it and send you them digitized and return the photos). I inherited all the albums when Mom died, so I'd like to see them saved.
• I personally don't display many pictures, but I like seeing them on my computer as my screensaver. Digitizing them has also allowed me to share them with family and friends which is nice.

 My kitchen is small. Super small. Nehi frequently gets told to get out if I'm in there because there's literally no room.

• I pared down kitchen utensils to bare necessities, silverware to same, plates, cups, glasses, mugs all down to just what I use.
• Same with tupperware and most recently, cooking ware. I've gotten rid of frying pans (why do you need more than one? I don't, gone) and have upgraded some. I recently started baking bread weekly so got a great Lodge pot to do this in.
• I noticed that when I'm off from work, and have time to hand wash my dishes, I use less and could probably purge down more. Except I'm not off work much, so I keep the extras and use the dishwasher.
• My godmother got me a toaster for Christmas. I had mentioned the paring down during one of our Skype conversations and one example I mentioned was that I had been debating for over two years about whether or not I should get a toaster- did I not eat toast because I didn't have a toaster? Would I eat more toast if I HAD a toaster? Was broiling bread enough like toast to get by?
• Her note on the toaster said Santa sometimes brings you what you want and not just what you need.
• I've had toast pretty much every morning since :-)

So those are all the details, the breakdowns, but here are some of the larger takeaways I've noticed.

• Returning to the quote at the top, I seem to be returning more and more to the hippie roots of my childhood. Giving to Goodwill, shopping at Goodwill, doing more with less, these are things that I feel good about. I feel good about ducking out of the capitalistic revolving door. If I need things or really decide I WANT something I get it. But I think a lot more about purchases before making them.
• This mindfulness is one of the things I like best. I am more aware of the footprint of purchasing. What went into making certain things, whether or not I want to condone those practices. Packaging material. Supporting more small businesses whose practices I approve of. Thinking very hard about the difference between want and need.
• I'm an English teacher so you would think that paring down the books was hard. But it really wasn't. Books I need for work are hard copies, because I highlight and Post-It note them. But books for fun I ask for on Kindle now. Or get from the library. While I love to read I realized as I pared down that books for me got sorted into: work, loved and will read again, special editions to keep, and things I liked but will never look at again. The majority of my books fell into that last category, so I released them into the world for others to love.
• The last few years have been hard, working on my PhD, other things. A lot of things out of my control. A nice side effect of all of this is the control. I can shape my space. I can clear the clutter. I can control this. Making my home an island of calm has been nice.
• You'll notice that a lot of these things resulted in making life easier for Nehi. This may seem insane at first. Except she's one of the things that makes me very happy, like ridiculously happy. And this too is a result of paring down, when you get rid of stuff you don't want or need, and pare down to only the basics, you start to think more and more about what DOES make you happy and refocus on that.
• So the house is clearer because playing in the open space with Nehi makes me happier than anything else.
• So I have seven sweatshirts/sweatpants/hats because my twice a day runs/walks with Nehi are often the best parts of my day.
• I started buying Nag Champa incense again because the smell reminds me of growing up and makes me happy.
• It takes me fifteen minutes to clean the house. That means there's lots of time for other things. 
• The simplicity has spread to other things:
• No bottled water, I have a water bottle.
• Less and less processed food, simpler foods, meals where I know everything IN the meal.
• More cooking, less buying crap.
• More time running, walking, doing yoga. 

I am certainly happier now than I was. Not just because I've decluttered, or pared down, but because by doing so I had to really think about who I was and what it was that I wanted, what made me happy.
I know this isn't for everyone.
But I know for me, this is the best way to live.

And it seems that once you get started, the more you realize just how little you need or want, and how much happier you can be.

So if anyone is looking for a new start in 2017 I recommend this. You don't have to do it all at once. There are tips like pack things in a box and set aside for a month, if you don't look for anything in that box in that time, get rid of it. Or if you have a garage you can move things there as a temporary try out period. There are lots of websites and blogs you can read. For me it's less about the method, or the things, then what you discover about yourself.

Crafting the Dissertation: December 2016 Update on Being Done (Kind of)

Earlier this morning I sent off chapter four, my Milton chapter, my penultimate chapter of rewriting my dissertation from scratch, off to my director.

So the total rewrite of the dissertation, the throw out over a year's worth of work and start over, is done.
Kind of.
Sort of.
Maybe.
I still have the introduction and conclusion to rewrite.
And all of it is still in rounds of revision with my director.

But the heavy lifting, the emotionally insane work of starting over and rethinking everything is finished.

I rewrote the dissertation in four months. Working, except for breaks, just one day a week on Saturdays. This forced schedule (forced by my full time job teaching high school and my TAship teaching an online Shakespeare class) had some interesting results.

• It meant Saturdays were long days. From waking up to dark except for walking Nehi, I did not leave my desk. Whether inspiration struck or not, I was not allowed to leave my desk because it was the only day I had to work on things.
• It also meant that ideas percolated the rest of the week. Several times I had thoughts and inspirations during the week that I'd write on a scrap piece of paper or Post-It and place on my desk during the week to revisit on Saturday.
• My goal was one chapter per month and I met that goal. I met it mainly because I had very structured goals:
• Week 1 was pull all the close readings for that month's chapter.
• Week 2 was add the scholarly sources.
• Week 3 was add introduction, conclusion, and footnotes.
• Week 4 was last looks and done.

The schedule didn't always work. I was very sick for two weeks in November, so days I'd thought I'd have to get ahead (election day and Veteran's Day) were lost, as were those Saturdays.
I had also forgotten just how exhausting teaching high school full time was. I have been tired for months.
I was done with my high school teaching job 16 December, and thought I'd get more done before Christmas than I did. Mainly because chapter four, my Milton chapter needed a lot more time than I thought.

All this being said, one of the lessons of this summer's STUFF was not to be tied to arbitrary deadlines. So while I had a time management plan, when it went wrong or things took longer I didn't stress about it, choosing instead to do what was best for the dissertation.


As I was finishing this week I thought a lot about crafting the dissertation. There's a lot that gets said about just finishing, and that the best dissertation is a done dissertation and I get all of that. I am certainly ready to be done, to defend, graduate, move on. But I have seen very little about what it means to craft a dissertation. I did not focus on craft with the original dissertation for a couple of reasons. I was focused on getting done and I was focused on fixing other people's notes and lost sight of what I was making.

This dissertation is totally focused on craft. Part of this is that after being told I had to throw out and start over I had to focus on craft. I needed to build a complete outline for the re-write. And let me tell you, if you're just starting your dissertation please listen--- outlines are magic. They will force you to identify and track your argument. They will force you to ask yourself necessary questions. They will save you when you get lost. I needed to make sure that my arguments were clear so introductions, conclusions, and topic sentences that clearly signposted what I was doing became vital to my purpose. Each chapter had to have its own clear, articulated argument and each chapter had to interlock with each other. My dissertation actually makes three distinct arguments in each of the three chapters and then analyzes those arguments in Paradise Lost. I knew before I started the rewrite what I needed each chapter to do (and was still surprised hitting CH 4 that the focus, and my argument, was the infernal councils).

My new director also specifically MAKES me think about crafting sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. She asks me questions about organization, word choice, WHY I chose to do certain things. And this is perhaps one of the biggest changes from the original.

This is MY dissertation.

My director has offered great advice, and support, suggestions of where another source or theory might help, and has asked questions to get me to clarify my thinking. She has offered suggestions for word choices or rephrasing. But the ideas in the dissertation, the argument, is all mine. One of the problems with the the original was that I got stuck in a loop of addressing notes, doing what notes told me to, trusting that they were correct. And I'm not saying they weren't (fog of war honestly prevents me from  knowing). But what I can say is that early on in the process of my first dissertation I lost my voice. I ceded it in the interest of giving what I thought others wanted, and more importantly, what was needed to pass.

I am even more grateful now that my committee did not let me go to defense in June. Not only would it not have passed, but I honestly believe now that I would not have been able to speak about the dissertation as it was not really my argument, my ideas.

I have made this dissertation my dissertation. I have built it. And the process of crafting it has made me better. My biggest fear after this summer was that I could not do this. That I lacked the skills and knowledge necessary to write the dissertation and earn my PhD. Sitting down to write the first chapter was one of the hardest things I've ever done. There was so much to overcome, both my own fears and depression, but also the almost crippling list of everything that was wrong with the original dissertation---no argument, too many texts, too much description, no argument, uneven interaction with secondary sources, wrong arguments or approaches, no clear methodology, too long, too bloated, no idea what you're saying here.
Sitting down with my director to get notes for that first chapter was terrifying. What if I hadn't fixed it? What if I proved, again, I couldn't do this?
Know what the biggest note was? Have you thought about swapping this section and this one, and putting this in a footnote. I gained a lot of my confidence back in that meeting. I also learned to internalize the notes. The organization of CH 2 and 3 was better. I didn't make the same mistakes. I learned to pay attention to the words, to hear my director's voice in my head as I revised, guiding me. I learned to anticipate the questions she would ask.
When we met about CH 3 the week before Christmas I was almost as nervous as that first chapter because it was the Shakespeare CH, and was the only chapter that contained anything close to the original. I was terrified that in revisiting some of the same texts I would replicate the same mistakes. Once again, I proved myself wrong.
Don't get me wrong- there are still notes. I still have to control F for contractions, and still have style to polish. There are things to be done.

But today I finished the last chapter. I fought with this chapter. I worried about this chapter. It took SO much longer than I thought it would. It scared me--If you suffer from imposter's syndrome I don't recommend studying Paradise Lost. But the lessons of the last few months served me well. When I was overwhelmed by the close readings I stopped and took the time to outline the entire chapter. I started small, looking at my close readings and seeing what the argument was (this was where the infernal council epiphany came from). I focused on crafting each sentence, each paragraph, each section and before I knew it I had finished.

I went through it a couple more times.
And then I sent it off to my director.

And I just stopped.

Because if you had told me in June, and the height of my anxiety and depression this summer that I ever would have been able to rewrite the dissertation and write something that I was proud of I would not have believed you. I have come a long way in just a few months. So I'm taking a bit to acknowledge that because it's a big deal. And I don't think we spend enough time stopping to acknowledge the things that are hard and then celebrating when we overcome them.

It's a contradiction of course to say I'm done. I'm staring at the next round of notes on CH 3 that I need to do. Now that I've drafted the whole thing, I have the introduction and conclusion to rewrite. Now that my director has the whole thing we'll focus on making sure I'm tracing throughlines and arguments through the whole thing. Plus the polishing, revising, tweaking that needs to happen over and over again.
So lots still to be done. But it still feels like this is a big deal.

I'm not exactly sure what happens next other than what I just wrote above. One thing I told myself this semester was that I was just going to do the work. I was not going to think past rewriting the dissertation. So I don't know how long this next portion will take. I don't know if I'll defend and graduate in the spring. We'll see.

But today is a good day.
And for now, that's enough.

Checking In- Dissertation Progress as of November 2016

I've had some people ask me how revisions on the dissertation are going. So I thought I'd take a few minutes and update you all.
As of today I have completed second round revisions on chapter 1 ("Devilish Leaders and Resisting Role Models in William of Malmesbury's Gesta regum Anglorum") and chapter 2 ("Parliament is Demonic: The Lesson and Context of Þe Deulis Perlament"). I'm meeting my goal of completing one chapter a month. It's getting a little tricky now because I'm juggling drafting the chapters with also revising notes from previous chapters, but I'm trying to time management it all.

My new director is great. Since I'm writing a chapter a month we're meeting about a week after she gets the chapter to go over it. It means a lot that she sets aside 2-3 hours each time to go over things with me. It also really helps that she gets drafts turned around to me so quickly. So far it's a process that's working well. For the most part the notes are minor and I seem to have internalized and corrected the major issues from the initial debacle. The new dissertation has a clear argument (YEAH!), both within the chapters and the diss as a whole. As a result the dissertation is leaner, and more focused. I was really worried after sending her chapter 1, worried I couldn't do this at all, worried that there were just so many things to fix. But each chapter I finish and get positive feedback on I feel more confident and better about it all.

The last couple of weeks have been a little rough--- I've been sick so I'm a little behind on my schedule/goal of one chapter per month. But this month I'm on chapter 3, my Shakespeare chapter, which is actually the only part of the previous dissertation that I can use any of so it's not the start from scratch that the other two chapters have been. I also have a five day weekend coming up where I can play catch up so I think I'll be fine.

That just leaves the penultimate Milton chapter, chapter four, for December.
The first three chapters each deal with an element (devilish leaders, demonic parliament, internal rebels) that I will then revisit and analyze in Paradise Lost.
My high school is finished 16 December, so my goal is to finish chapter 4, address the chapter 3 notes, and draft the intro and conclusion over the break. So a complete draft by the end of the year.

The next steps will wholly depend on how second and third drafts of the dissertation go, and we'll just have to wait and see on all that.

So that's the update. I hope everyone is well, and I hope too that it won't be too long before I have the time to come back and participate in my online communities!

A New Approach to a Paper Assignment

I have not had the time to blog lately about either the dissertation or teaching but I just tried something in my online early Shakespeare class that I'm really proud of and wanted to share.

I usually assign several large assignments:

• a 2-3 page close reading
• a 5-6 page thematic paper
• a presentation on a single topic or theme
• a final paper or project

I tell the students that mastering the close reading is important, which is why we spend eight weeks practicing these skills before the first paper, and the thematic and final papers build on close reading.
I also tell them that the presentation should be a way of exploring things they might want to write on later.
In the past, many students have chosen to write final papers, but I have a lot of education majors/future teachers in my classes so many in the past have elected to create lessons plans for their final projects. Honestly, the projects are always my favorite part.

This semester I noticed that a lot of students seemed to be struggling with front loading assignments on how to write a large analytical paper. So I changed the thematic paper assignment to this:

Thematic Paper Project

Directions: This paper has several parts. You will submit all of them together in a single Word document, but in this order. Please clearly title/label each piece and insert a page break between parts.

Project Piece	Possible Points
Annotated bibliographies of your two secondary sources Proper Works Cited full citation Under the citation one paragraph (6-10 sentences) where you evaluate the argument (does it agree or disagree with your thesis? How could you use this source?) and specifically refer to the article	15 points
Organizer of paper which includes: You may use the sample provided in the course or not Thesis that tells me what theme you’re analyzing in the two or more plays AND what you’re analyzing ABOUT them What two (or more) plays you’re analyzing Specific textual evidence from those plays that shows that theme Explanation of HOW that evidence shows that theme	15 points
Introduction that outlines the entire paper Title of paper that gives me a clue what the paper is about Thesis Mention of all subtopics your paper would cover Conclusion	20 points
One sample body paragraph that includes: Topic sentence Close reading(s) in support of theme Explanation of HOW that evidence shows that theme Conclusion/transition	30 points
Properly formatted works cited page	10 points
Paper should be MLA formatted 1” margins Double spaced Correct parenthetical citation (Author’s last name page #) Times New Roman 12	5 points
Submitted as one document	5 points

The deadline for this is this Saturday but I've had some students submit early and a couple of early reactions. Students have done better on this assignment. I asked students to write in the submit box what they thought of this process and all said they found it helpful.

As a result I think this is what I'll do from now on. I'm also going to give my students the option to write this paper in full as their final paper if they want. I'm also going to give them the option of submitting this process for a new topic for their final.

From what I've seen, this change in assignment addresses a lot of the issues I wanted.

It still doesn't address problems my students have with the close reading- describing and summarizing versus analyzing, but I think I'll redesign some of the smaller build up assignments to do that. 

All in all I'm really happy with this and the students' reactions, so I wanted to share!

I'm Not Back...An Extended Hiatus

As some of you may have noticed, I have not been my normal chatty, super-posting self. And I won't be in the near future, so I wanted to write a short explanation.

For those of you not caught up on summer events-

• I did not defend my dissertation in June. I did not graduate. Instead, I am starting over, and not just revising the dissertation but completely throwing it out, setting it on fire, and rewriting the dissertation. From scratch.
• I can tell you this summer that I came really close to quitting. A lot of things, not just my PhD program.

• With no face to face support system, everyone gone for summer, I found myself floundering on many levels. 
• So I retreated a bit into hermitage in order to take stock, find my footing, figure out my next steps. You know, the normal cliches.

After two months, this is what I know:

• What I wrote was an interesting literary survey of the devil in English literature from the Anglo-Saxons to Paradise Lost. 
• A survey is not an argument, it is not a dissertation.
• It certainly has a lot of information, and I have lots of stuff for future projects, but it's not going to get that Dr. in front of my name.
• So a summer of soul searching, multiple crying jags, break downs, radical decisions, calls for help no one answered, and a lot of meetings later,  I have a revision plan/outline for a new dissertation.
• This revision plan has a clear argument. Each chapter has an argument. Each chapter builds on the previous, with the final chapter's argument interlocking with each previous chapter.
• This is a leaner dissertation, four chapters instead of six. Each chapter only focuses on 1-2 primary documents instead of 20-30.  Size-wise it will be probably be a little more than half the size of the original. More importantly, it does what a dissertation should.
• While the dissertation is still on the devil in English literature, I'm trimmed or dumped a lot of the things weighing it down. Folklore and my original methodology is interesting, and still what I want to explore in the future, but it's not in the dissertation, neither is a lot of the interdisciplinary work I originally wanted to do. This is okay. The dissertation is my ticket into this world. It doesn't have to do everything I want to do in my entire career.
• I know people have written about how isolating writing the dissertation can be. So have I. But I realized this summer that I was really, totally, on my own. And it took me most of the summer to not just internalize that but find a way forward from that.

I have a rough plan for HOW and WHEN I'm going to complete these chapters but I'm not married to it if notes, revisions, the work requires something else. This summer sort of cured me of that.
I'd like to draft one chapter a month, with the goal of having a complete rough draft of this new dissertation by the end of the year (so by January). But past that, I couldn't tell you. At least now I can see a way forward. I do feel as one committee member said, that once I figured out my argument, since I'd done all this reading, research, and work, much of the rest would fall together. I hope that all means that I'm on the right track. I trust too that my committee will guide me if not.

So certainly a lot of this contributed to my social media withdrawal.
But a lot more of it is practical.

I reported to my high school teaching job 5 August. Students reported 11 August.
I leave for work at 630a and I am at work from 7a until 230 or 3p. I teach five classes. My classes are bigger this year with mostly 30+ students. We also this year have had it  recommended that we give an assignment per week, with at least one assignment given every two weeks, so there's a lot of grading to do.
I had one week of this before I started teaching my online early Shakespeare class for my university this semester (which covers my tuition, and with the late notice of everything this summer, I'm happy to have it). There are currently 73 students in it, and I do not have a TA. However, I designed and taught this class this past spring, and made some changes based on student feedback this summer, so I feel good about it. The first week went well. Last semester the class started with 75 with a 5 student wait list but the class dropped quite a bit by the end. I was told this was the norm. But I also took some steps to make the course more accessible, and barring that, asked students to check with me before dropping. We'll see.

Right now scheduling and organizing is key. Lucky for me organization and color-coding is my superpower because every day, every hour is scheduled and set aside for specific things.

• I have Monday through Friday during my school day to work on my high school stuff, so lesson planning, grading, etc. I'm aiming for getting it all done during the school day, but we'll see. 
• I answer/check emails all day from my online course and once I get home I log onto my online class and grade daily so that it doesn't get out of hand.
• Saturdays I have set aside for dissertation work (week 1 close reading for chapter, week 2 interact with/add secondary sources, week 3 write chapter intro and conclusion, add footnotes, week 4 final revisions). The good news is that the last year was not wasted. While I can only use about five pages out of the original 333 page dissertation, the research, the scope, the knowledge I gained has made writing the revision plan, and hopefully the writing, easier.
• Sundays I grade in my online course, post the announcement of weekly reminders for week. Since I don't have a TA, I probably won't get their bigger papers graded and turned around in a day like I did spring semester and this summer. But I'll get it done as soon as I can, and I think I've scheduled the bigger papers where it will be okay. I'm letting myself off the hook with this because I know of no other professor who turns papers around in a day.

So, I am busy.
I am scheduled within an inch of my life.
Because of this I'm a little worried about hiccups- small things could have big impacts if they mess up. For example, the grad student I hired to come let Nehi out (she's crate trained) during the day quit with 3 days notice, so I'm scrambling a bit with that. I also have been horribly sick this past week so working when I just wanted to sleep was hard. When it's just you everything is harder. But I'm working on it.

I've tried to separate the wheat from the chaff, of things I really have to focus on, that matters, and what doesn't. Certainly in my personal life, the events of this summer made that easy. People who revealed themselves to be fair weather friends were easily cut from my life. If you can't be there for me during a crisis, then I don't need you.
I do feel better about myself than I have in a long time. I proved to myself that I could survive anything. I can do anything. I had forgotten that. I believe in myself again. And I am happy with myself. I have found my balance.

This is not to say things are always easy.
I love teaching high school, and am enjoying my school and my students. But I miss working from home. I miss spending most of my time with Nehi. I miss the flexibility of that schedule. I am sure I will miss participating in department events at my university that I won't have time for. I will miss submitting to conferences and participating in conferences I've attended for years but can't just now. I'm just going to one this year, #Kzoo17, because I can't afford more money-wise and I can't afford the time off from my teaching job.  I will admit that while this workload is a lot, the trade off is I am not worried about money, which I find has eliminated a lot of other stresses I had last year.

And all of this brings me to my hiatus.

I love Twitter and blogging. I love that  people who have read my blog about my grad school and dissertating experience have found it helpful. I love the community of Twitter, the sharing of ideas, the networking, the people. But this summer I realized a couple of things. The first is, I was looking to social media for answers, and help, and support that I needed, and I realized this summer that the help I needed was not to be found on social media. Not because people aren't nice or interested. But everyone has their own lives, their own priorities, their own stuff. I needed to find my own answers. My own support. And since I don't have a face to face support network I needed to be that for myself. This means I have to put myself first because no one else is.
Also, others have said this before, but Tweeting, blogging, a social media presence, requires a certain environment, a privilege in your life to be able to do it and do it well. I don't believe either is something you can dip your toe in and have it be meaningful. It's time consuming. It takes daily work to cultivate these conversations and relationships, to be aware of the ongoing conversations, to read all the references, the comments, the posts. And I just don't have that time right now.

I'm not deleting accounts or anything.
I get emails when people message me, and I appreciate those of you who have reached out to check on me.
I have a roundtable at #Kzoo with a deadline in September, so I've posted reminders to the CFP. I'm sure when #Kzoo17 does roll around I'll be tweeting and sharing as conference time allows.
But for now I need to focus on balancing my multiple jobs and workloads and on making sure I get through this all.

My Revision Plan and Working My Way Through Failure

It's 21 July.
I return to my high school teaching job in two weeks.
I've on version four of my revision plan.
It's been a rough summer.

I now realize that out of my 333 page dissertation (not including bibliography/appendices and feel free to insert a joke here about being half a devil) that I can use maybe (maybe) 5 pages. There's a small bit about Owain Glyndŵr from 1 Henry IV and Macbeth that I can use. The close reading on Satan and animals in Paradise Lost is okay. The rest is crap.

Kind of.

The fact is most of the work I did on devil texts in English literature from the Anglo-Saxons to the Restoration will now be relegated to a single sentence in an introduction or explanatory footnotes that show I know this other stuff exists. So the work was valuable. But valuable in the "learn how to do long division and show your work so you can later do it in your head" way.

I was advised back in June that the dissertation did not require revision, it required a complete re-visioning of the topic.
I admit that I was not sure what this meant exactly or what this would look like.
But I honestly did not want to look stupid by asking. I already felt stupid enough.

At first I thought that I could just rearrange the dissertation thematically and change some things.
But then a committee member met with me and just kept asking "what are you arguing?" And as I struggled to answer that question (ashamedly), I realized it was because the dissertation did not have one. There was no clear argument, not in the dissertation as a whole, and not in the individual chapters.

Now, I think I now understand why.
A key scholar for me is Jeffrey Burton Russell and his lifetime of work on the devil. But here's the problem. While my dissertation could be considered interdisciplinary, I am an English PhD. So using a historian's work as my model was a foundational issue. Russell lists just about every appearance of the devil in history, tracing the timeline. And my dissertation did the same thing. The problem is that's not analysis. That's not an argument. I also stated that I was applying Dundes' psychoanalytical, folkloric methodology. The problem here was that I was using his later career case studies as a model and that was untenable for an English dissertation.
So my methodological foundation was flawed and the rest just compounded these initial issues.

I do believe in interdisciplinary work. I do believe in applying folkloric studies more to English literature. I do believe in challenging periodization.
But I realized too that these are the arguments of a lifetime.
I don't have to make them all in the dissertation.
This is what academic careers are for. I literally have enough material from my diss research to last years, decades. 
I forgot a key lesson:

Dissertations are marathons not sprints.

But it's hard to realize that the dissertation you spent a year working, and almost ten years thinking about and researching is crap and needs to be completely thrown out. It's the equivalent of tossing years of possessions and letting go of all the emotional baggage that goes with that (which incidentally I've also been doing the last few years).

Now, with almost two months of hindsight, I think I have some better perspective.
The first thought is just how little higher ed or graduate education prepares you for these types of setbacks. I got a lot of supporting noises from people this summer. I received little real, practical, "here's where you go from here, you can do this" help. In some ways I get it, part of this process is PROVING you have an argument, PROVING you can do this, that you have a contribution to the field. So someone can't hand that to you. But I have no problems telling you that I was not only depressed this summer but has initially had  serious thoughts of self-harm. 
And no one noticed.

I did not ask for help because honestly, I didn't think there was any help to be had.
"You'll be fine" from friends did not cut it. And as grateful as I was for my social media support network, it was just not the same as a face to face support network, which I don't have. 
As with so much with grad school, I had to find my own way through and it took most of the last two months to do it. Last week I almost lost all the ground and confidence I thought I had regained. Once I dumped the thematic idea of revision not re-vision, I worked on a revision plan I thought showed  growth. It did not. In any way. And I spent most of that day crying in my office, thinking I had obviously proven I couldn't do this, so I should just make my peace with the fact that I was a high school teacher and that was it. When I said that because of all of this I had a hard time seeing any future I heard I'm sorry you feel that way.

I didn't mean so much that I didn't think I HAD a future, or even that I don't think I could BE a professor, I meant more that after the last year, of believing one thing and reality being something else, it just seemed better not to set goals. Or deadlines. Or expectations.

When you're drowning, it's really hard to remember that you know how to swim. 

I mean, I thought I was graduating. I applied to teaching jobs out of state under this assumption. I was planning a move out of state.  I took a full time job under that assumption. I envisioned a whole life that was "after the PhD" and what that looked like. I successfully met with book editors about #DevilDiss. On a personal note, I was bragging to everyone about graduating. People made travel plans. I was already looking so far beyond the defense...
And all of this contributed to just how hard the news that I would not be defending and graduating hit me.
Don't get me wrong, at this point, I do not disagree with a single note or piece of feedback about the dissertation. I get it. But that's a mind thing. And much of the above is not.

We write in the abstract a lot about how isolating a PhD program can be, and dissertating in particular, is- you're not on campus as much, you're working all the time, you're sitting at your desk, staring at a screen. But I don't think we talk enough about what this isolation looks like in reality. What the short and long-term effects are. 

So what does all this mean?

• It means I return to my full time high school teaching job in two weeks.
• It means I'm spending those two weeks trying to finish my revision plan. Which I feel good about.
• Originally, these were all the works in the diss (highlighted). Now it only includes the unhighlighted works.
• The dissertation has an overarching argument and each chapter does too.
• This meant cutting a proposed chapter on pamphlets, which made me sad because the independent research I did on the devil in pamphlets is some of the most original work and I am really proud of it. But it doesn't fit the argument of the dissertation.
• The current set of texts is lean, and hopefully, more focused.
• This next week the goal is take this working document and expand it into the revision plan.
• I feel good about the focus on the primary texts and the scholarship, but am nervous about having to write a paragraph for each that shows the heavy analytical lifting of that chapter without having written anything.
• I'm also trying to focus on the fact that the things I've had to cut from the dissertation will make good future projects and ideas. I'm trying to see the dissertation as the beginning of a career and not an end point.
• I'd like to rework the pamphlet stuff and publish it because I do think it's original and valuable work.
• I'd like to revisit some of these texts through a folkloric lens.
• I think in another form the material in my original dissertation in a reworked form would make a good encyclopedia of every devil appearance in English popular literature.

So I guess you could say that I have made my peace this summer with where I am. 
And I have a rough idea of how I'll work this school year juggling everything. It helps (I guess) that I can't afford any conferences except Kzoo in the spring which I'm splurging on. So there's focus. I'm trying to see this as an opportunity to get some medieval and early modern publications on a CV that is currently folklore and pop-culture heavy.

But I'm not making any plans. I'm not thinking- oh I'll finish this by...
Or this time next year...
Or I'm aiming for X... 
Or even entertaining any ideas about defense or graduation.
In short,

I can tell you that this point my eventual defense and graduation will not be a celebration. I do not plan on inviting anyone. At this point I wouldn't even tell anyone. I would only tell people once it was done. Because I honestly...I can't go through this again.
I would be grateful just to be done. Because as much as I see the notes, and have worked hard to fix them, and want the work to be done, I just need to be done.
I just need to survive. Get through. Finish.

So that's where I am.
Feel free to share any brilliant or inspirational ideas for getting through.

Prepping for the School Year Fall 2016 Edition

Each summer I spend a lot of time reflecting not only on the past year but on new steps or tactics for the new year.
This year will be a bit different, and a bit of a challenge. I am still TAing for UNM, teaching the online Early Shakespeare class I built this past spring. But I'm also teaching high school full time. And completely rewriting my dissertation. This seems daunting. Until I realize for two years I taught high school full time, was department chair, taught at the local community college, taught online, and still presented at conferences and published. So I can do this.
It's just gonna suck.

My routines, my organization will be a big help.
But admit that when I looked at my online Early Shakespeare class I did look at the work load. In the end of semester evaluations some students said they thought the practice assignments were "high-schooly" and "busy work." Pedagogically I have them because they are low-stakes practice assignments for the skills needed for the larger assignments. But I get that a lot of students take online classes because they are busy, working, parents, and juggling a lot. So I went in and made most of those assignments optional. They'll count as extra credit under participation. I didn't change the assignments but I added language about why I made them and thought they were important.
I guiding question I think is important to ask about any class we teach is- what are we fighting over? And is the fight worth it?
Do I think these practice assignments are valuable? Yes, it's why they're there.
Is it worth fighting over? No.
So students that do them will do better. And I've told them that.
But I will not spend time fighting with students over it.

The syllabus scavenger hunt seemed to work really well this summer, so I added it to the fall class.

The scavenger hunt seemed to fix a lot of the "it's in the syllabus" questions we all struggle with. But I'm always looking for improvements, so I wrote this Note About Our Syllabus.
The more I teach the more important I think it is that we not only present things to our students but that we're more transparent about WHY we do the things we do.

In addition, I've added language to the syllabus about the required tech. I don't require anything weird or unusual but there were a couple of issues that came up last spring, so honestly this is CYA language now.

I'm also reading Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School by Starr Sackstein.

Now, the longer I teach, the more I back away from grades. This summer I moved a lot of grades to just Complete/Incomplete and told the students that the feedback was important. 

I much rather just give feedback on papers not grades.

I tried a couple of years ago to go gradeless. I gave students the option to not receive grades throughout the semester, just check ins and feedback, and then a well-discussed final grade. 

No one did it.

I get it, knowing where you stand may not be great but it is comforting and it is known. But I like new ideas, so I'm reading this to see if there are ideas I can work into my classes as they are now.

BUT, I also had an interesting thought on Twitter based on a tweet by JJ Cohen.

So I joking made the statement that my new amended grading policy would only be stickers, gifs, and feedback.

Was a total joke.

But IF we give grades, for various reasons, mostly our and our students' comfort, is there a way to CHANGE how we give them and more importantly, how they are received? Most of us see grades as a form of feedback. But I think often students see them, have negative reactions, and this then shades their work and progress moving forward.

I woke up the next morning and wondered what this would look like. I couldn't get the thought out of my head. So I made this.

Now, I have no idea if this would work. Some people have less of a sense of humor than me I've found. In fact last semester a student complained about my use of gifs and memes in the course. So there's no way I'd make this required. But I am thinking about making it an option.
Students would make their own grid, supply how they want their grade, and then I'd give feedback.
Maybe it works. Maybe not. We'll see.

So I know it's a few weeks, for some of you a month, before you go back to school or are thinking about prepping for the new semester.
But I wanted to share some things:

• My Google Drive of teaching resources.
• TA and Teacher Resource Manual
• How to Prep for Grad School While Poor 
  
  
  Feel free to use anything you find here, share, contribute! 
  And have a great start to your school year!