In the Wee Hours
This semester is liable to break some of my bad habits. First of all, I won't be sleeping late anymore. I became an academic because I like to start my days at the civilized hour of 9 or 10am, but I guess I'll be pulling a Ben Franklin this semester, rising early, having a productive start, and being a better citizen as a result. Today was a real obstacle course - dodging my two-hour production lab, French cinema lecture and discussion (2 hours), and back-to-back sections of CA 100, the public speaking class I teach. This was 8am-2:30pm solid. The production class is going to demand a lot from me - in the ways I least like to be pushed around by a class. Since we have to do video / film projects, I have to sign out equipment (sign ups begin at 8am Friday mornings, the one day I don't have to be in before noon) and make projects over the weekend, which kind of stinks. Physically, I spend a lot of time during the week at school, so the thought that my weekends now belong to Vilas doesn't sit well. While there isn't a lot of reading, I just know that the minutes will tick away as I fuss with equipment or learn to use complicated editing software. It is too early to sum up the French Cinema class, but it has more reading than either documentary / avant garde did last semester. To make matters worse, each Grad Student has to give a presentation about a recently published book about French Cinema (there is nothing like presenting on a book that no one else has read to a class of almost 45 undergrads). While I haven't committed to a title just yet, I am either slated to do a 487-page book about the Industrial History of French cinema from the 1920s-1930s or a whopping 600-pager about early French film, whoa nelly, there really isn't the lesser of two evils in this case (this might rival Charlie Brown's book report on
War and Peace). Thankfully, my Professor doesn't expect me to read the whole book in either case, but this is a mountain of an assignment. Due to the fact that I haven't seen many French movies, I stand to learn a lot from this course. Unfortunately the screenings conflict with my Classical Film Theory lectures, and I have to watch the movies on my own. I've become more of a film snob and it is hard to trade scheduled 35mm screenings for watching tapes & DVDs in the tiny video booths in the media center. After all of that reading, I feel like I am entitled to seeing some great movies, having to see great movies on a teeny-tiny screen psychologically diminishes their grandeur. I keep telling myself that production / French film are things that, like vegetables, 'are good for me,' but whenever I rely on this breed of self-help rhetoric, it is clear that I'd rather spend my time in other ways. It seems like "work" just got cranked up one notch compared to last semester.
By the time it came time to teach this afternoon, I will admit that I felt flustered and a little rushed. It didn't help that I was playing to a full house (one section had an increased enrollment due to an administrative error) and there is a huge difference between addressing a class of 13 and 18. Also, I have a lot of students with the same names this semester, making it that much harder to get to know everyone quickly. No red flags today and it seems like a good bunch of students so far, but it's too early to tell, I did most of the talking today in describing the course and the syllabus and everyone is on his / her best behavior on day one anyway.
Oh, I am featured, minimally in the Com Arts newsletter this month. There is a postage-stamp size photo of my Documentary professor lecturing and I am poised at my laptop taking notes in the front row. If I can find a link to the newsletter on-line, I'll insert it here. I am well on my way to becoming a
poster child.
I continue to learn how to use a Mac and today I loaded
Yoko, that's what I call her, up with a greatest hits package of new software. Honestly, plain old Microsoft Word makes my life better, but I am just infatuated with "stickies" (virtual post-its for your desktop). It is pretty pathetic that with all of this computing power at my disposal, I am most awed by "virtual post-its." There is something to the whole cult of mac / fetish object arguments - the fonts are much nicer on macs. Soon enough I'll put the G4 to work editing movies and the like, but until then, I'll settle for the aesthetic pleasures of iCal, a white keyboard, and a new email program.
posted by lmjasinski at 8:55 PM
