Too little, too late?
Well, I've signed on as an official Deanie Bopper, but part of me feels that it may be too little, too late. Forgive me if I've mentioned this, the week has blurred together, but a friend is here campaigning (she's on Dean's national team) and it's finally lit a fire under my butt to stand up and be involved. For the months I spent fighting the "involvement" urge, I can't hold back any longer, I just need to accept the fact that I can't be one of those dusty library-pale academics, I need to do a little moving and shaking, a little administrating, and get out and do something. So, I've signed up with Grad Students for Dean in Madison. I had a nice little perk last night because Dean was here campaigning. For those of you following the press, you know that the WI primary is kind of a keystone or an Alamo for Dr. Dean... it might be too little too late, but if I can help, I will. I am ringing doorbells on Saturday morning. After this week especially, I need something to be happy about and to feel good about - with any luck, this tonic will lift my spirits.
That aside, it's been an exhausting week - it was hard to keep up, honestly. I nailed my big presentation and it helped build my confidence in the classroom when it comes to actual filmic matters (teaching public speaking really is just guerrilla training for want to be high school teachers). It feels refreshing to know that I could pursue this, if I want to... Having completed it feels good, and having it done, I feel like it should free up on my "things to complain about list." I also finished a big pile of speech grading and if nothing else, I hope that it will shut the grade grubbers up until the next batch is issued.
Going into the weekend, I'll be a slave to politics and production. I need to shoot my "procedure" project (it's a minute project of some kind of multi-step project shot on 16mm with a heavy Bolex). My friend Anne has agreed to star in the short - a little story about a frazzled grad student who finds grading much more agreeable after a gin and tonic (this is *not* autobiographical, I swear). That, and I have a long list of things to do - yet it's daunting, for some reason everything seems complicated and hard just to be done with. With any luck, I'll get some reading done before I head to bed and with any stroke of fortune, not run out of gas tomorrow at 2:30 and actually get something done after my classes are over.
Just the same, it was nice to take a breather tonight. I sat in on a job talk that probably would have knocked my socks off a year ago. It is for a possible joint hire that is tangentially connected to Com Arts - he's a video game guy. The talk was dryly methodological, but he recovered some of my political science self in trying to apply Robert Putnum's "social capital" idea to on-line gaming communities. This time last year I was really wrapped up in ideas of virtual space and new media, and I would have gobbled it down. So maybe I learned a little something about myself today, in taking a pen and paper to the lecture but leaving without a single note. It just didn't seem like I'd need to access that data for any kind of academic reason any time soon. What a difference a year makes... How different my life would have been at MIT. I digress, instead of writing about on-line dating phenomenon (by the way, I am sad to report that I am just as obsessed with this match.com site, but I might have exhausted the possibilities for me in Madison. I might be voluntarily pulling my profile this weekend and get on with life), or trying to chart a corollary between architectural and virtual spaces, I am cutting my teeth on Andre Bazin, and there's something tingly about that.
posted by lmjasinski at 10:03 PM
