New Kid on the Hallway

What have I done??

So, you know the complete-the-sentence meme I did below?

I've been reading people's versions all over the blogosphere, and almost everyone else has completed "If I ever go back to school, I'll..." with some variation of "have to be crazy," "kill myself," and the like.

Right now, it so feels like they're right.

Today was the first day of class (three subjects today), and I feel completely confused, overwhelmed, idiotic, and out of place.

Don't worry, I'm not going to judge how well this is working for me based on the first day. But it's been so long since I've had to learn to do something completely new from scratch - as opposed to just learning more about the same thing, or more generally similar stuff - that it's kind of painful. And it's reminded me of the sad truth that I have always been a really rotten, cranky beginner. (At least at anything I give a shit about.) Seriously, I am the worst student in the world, not in the sense of being bad at stuff, but in the sense of wanting to learn and being open to new things and humility and shit. I want to be the one who KNOWS EVERYTHING. I mean, why the hell else would I become a college professor?

(As an aside, I've already had a couple of people assume I'm going to breeze through this because I have a Ph.D. People, you do realize my Ph.D. has nothing to do with this, right? Okay, we did have an example of a pleading from medieval England in our Civ Pro book last night, and yes, I was probably the only person in the room who's read one of those in the original. Which helps me understand modern Civil Procedure...not at all. Well, maybe a teeny, tiny bit, and it was pretty damn cool to see the medieval stuff. But then I turned the page.)

It's a little unnerving that the people who pipe up in class seem to come up with different answers to a lot of questions than I do, but you know, most of them have had really different experiences than I have, and besides, just because they volunteer answers doesn't mean they're always right.

Okay, gotta go read more cases where someone has done something really bad to someone else and is trying to get out of it, or argues that someone's done something really bad to them, and the like. (Did you know that, according to one case at least, if you swallow a fishbone while eating fish chowder in New England and it injures your throat, you're shit out of luck as far as getting anything from the restaurant that served you the chowder, because it is inherent to the glorious tradition of making New England fish chowder that bones might remain in the finished dish, and if you eat the chowder, you're doing so at your own risk?)

(Oh, and you people totally ROCK. I love all the suggestions and info about schlepping lunches that you gave on the post below - I will definitely go through this well-nourished!)

First day down

And I survived! But am brain-dead, so we're going to go with random bullets:

• I am one of four Ph.D.s in my class.
• I am not the oldest person in my class. (Though as an aside: I totally can't tell people's ages. Everyone either looks way younger than me/straight out of undergrad, or way older than me - and the oldest person in the class is not THAT much older than me. I totally read jeans as younger than me and suits as older than me. Yeah, that's effective.) (And I should add that the people who look way older than me probably only look that way to me, because I have no idea how old I actually look - to everyone else we probably all look pretty much the same.)
• Yes, it was really weird to sit in a classroom as the professor went through all the first day kinds of things that I used to go through on my first day of class - often the exact same first-day things. (This was Legal Writing, which is structured differently from the other first-year courses, I think in a way closer to the traditional humanities class.) It kinda makes me want to apologize to my past students, actually. (Not because it was terrible - the prof seems good, the first day stuff was effective as first day stuff. It just reminded me how much I hate first day stuff!)
• It was funny how NOT weird it was to be on a campus again - because I've never actually LEFT campus. And no matter how different each looks, to some extent a campus is a campus is a campus. Yes, my role is really different this time round, but the surrounding culture is still pretty familiar.
• The Legal Writing prof warned us that the (usually humanities) people who come in thinking they have this writing thing down cold frequently have to relearn how to write specifically for law. Great.
• I knew that laptops in the classroom is a contentious issue. I've seen people talk about the pros/cons in the context of undergrad education, I've seen lots of legal folk complain about the ubiquity of surfing/e-mailing/IMing etc. in law classes, I know U of Chicago Law School cut wireless access in its classrooms, and I myself banned laptops in my class last spring. That said, I did not quite realize that meant it would be a big issue at my law school, too. It is. Wow.
• I met lots of cool people and enjoyed speaking to (almost) all of them. And no matter how much the place looked like it was populated with my students from last year, I know I'm not the only older student. I also realized that I have to broaden my definition of non-trad student somewhat, since I'm tending to think, "my age and older," when honestly, people who are ten years younger than I am are still pretty non-traditional. Someone who's 29 probably wouldn't appreciate it if I treated them as if they're no different from someone who just graduated at age 22. (Which is not a knock at people who've just graduated - I don't mean that I plan to treat anyone a particular way based on their age. I just need to recognize that "younger than me" encompasses a pretty wide range of people at this point, and I shouldn't lump them all together!)
• That said, two of the people that I most wanted to hang out with, that I most identified with, were profs on one of the panels. Sigh. Gotta work on that student identity thing.

And saving the best for last:

• A former student of mine is a fellow 1L at my school. In fact, ze's in my Legal Writing class. (Thankfully, ze was a very cool student, so it was a pleasant surprise, but yeah, kind of weird.)

The introvert's lament

So, this is really dumb, but the first day of orientation is tomorrow, and I'm already nervous. I think orientation actually stresses me out more than classes starting, because so much of orientation is social - tomorrow we have a two-hour lunch in which to get to know each other, a bunch of other socializing-type breaks, and I signed up to go to a Fun Social Event in the evening (though I am allowing myself to consider ditching it if by that time I'm feeling completely wiped from being around strangers all day). And then there are two more full days of it!

Dr. Crazy posted today about how  she finds the first few weeks of school intense and draining, because after the relative isolation of the summer you're suddenly dropped in the midst of students! and colleagues! people! people! people! again, and I am SO with her on this one. The only people I've spoken with face to face this summer, besides NLLDH, my mom, and my sister, have been various medical professionals, and one charming blogger who came through town with whom I met up recently. And while I enjoyed the meetup immensely, after two hours of lovely conversation I was both wired and drained (I went home and babbled nonstop at NLLDH). I also came home completely convinced that I have the social skills of a baboon and that I had droned on about myself WAY too much (not that the other blogger made me feel this way, this is just my usual reaction after being around unfamiliar people for the first time in a while).

I mean, I feel relatively confident about my ability to handle classes at this point - I know law school classes will be very different from what I've previously encountered, I don't mean that I'm going to coast through with a 4.0, but the academic arena? Not that intimidating to me by now. The social arena? Please. It still baffles me. (I'm not sure how being an academic has affected this. On the one hand, the common refrain is that academics are people who didn't get asked to dance in high school, and some people seem to wonder if academics have any social skills at all. On the other hand, we have to handle meeting and getting along with classes full of complete strangers at least twice a year, which has to count for something.) I guess it's not surprising that when it comes to Myers-Briggs, I score about as Introverted as you can get.*

Anyway. This whole nervousness thing wouldn't be such a big deal, except I feel like I have a zillion things to do today, but I just can't quite concentrate on any of them because I'm fluttering around like a ditz!

*ISTJ, in case you were curious, which is apparently one of the most common personality types among lawyers.

Just when I think I have a handle on the whole "blogging" thing, I run across completely different blog cultures

I knew, consciously, that I tend to hang out in a relatively homogenous corner of the blogosphere, in which many of us share similar expectations about the norms of blogging. But subconsciously, I think I still assumed that "my" blogosphere is "the" blogosphere - that the culture of blogging I've come to understand is pretty typical. Oh, sure, it's probably not typical of some of the really big shot, sort of "universal" blogs - how can it be when you're attracting thousands of comments? - but at individual faculty/student blogs? Sure.

So it's been interesting, reading law blogs (often dubbed "blawgs"), and discovering small but significant differences in that culture.

First (and I realize that MA/doctoral students may well disagree with my take on this one), I've seen a much bigger gulf between law student blogs and law professor blogs than between MA/PhD student blogs and faculty blogs. That's not because there's no status/social/power differential between MA/PhD students and professors (I still think blogging helps to break down those barriers, but I know not everyone has experienced that, and my attitude may also arise from having mostly senior, fairly hierarchical professors in grad school, so what seems to me like the egalitarianism of the blogosphere may simply be a more egalitarian atmosphere than my own grad experience, not true egalitarianism) (could that sentence be longer?). It's because MA/PhD students are usually studying to do pretty much what their faculty do, so unsurprisingly the two groups share a lot of interests. Law students, in contrast, are usually studying to do something many of their professors have either never done, done only briefly, or are no longer doing - that is, practice law. Law schools (unless you're at Yale, maybe) are not designed to turn out law profs. So there seems a much bigger gulf in outlook between law student bloggers and law prof bloggers than in the MA/PhD world (the exceptions I've seen, unsurprisingly, are SJD students - people with JDs who are doing the equivalent of a PhD in law and, presumably, going to become law profs themselves). In fact, some law student bloggers seem to regard law profs in the same light that undergrads regard their profs - a real "us" and "them" attitude. (I'm not saying that us-and-them-ism doesn't apply to MA/PhD students as well as to law students, but it seems fundamentally different.) (And this is not at ALL a criticism of JD students! It's not good or bad - it's just different from how things work in the corner of the blogosphere I know best.)

Another thing that's struck me is that in law profs' blawgging, there's less tolerance of anonymity than in my own academic blogosphere. I know there are plenty of individual non-law academics who disapprove of anonymity. But most of the "big" academic blogs I can think of (e.g. Crooked Timber) allow pseudonymous (or anonymous) comments as long as they're appropriate (i.e., on-topic, thoughtful, not gratuitously insulting/racist/otherwise bigoted - you get the idea) and not used for sockpuppetry. They all reserve the right to determine what's appropriate and to delete anything they deem falls outside those parameters, but pseudonymous/nymous isn't a big deal. HNN's Cliopatria originally banned anonymous comments, but revised their policy to allow people to comment under consistent pseudonyms as long as they registered and didn't comment under both the pseudonym and their real name.

More law prof blawgs, however, seem to discourage anonymous comments - though this may just reflect an unrepresentative skew in my sample. On his Legal Philosophy Blog, Brian Leiter frequently disallows comments, and when he opens them, he states, "Non-anonymous comments strongly preferred; post only once; comments are reviewed for relevance." (Emphasis in the original.) The policy at Prawfs Blawg is that "In general, if we can't determine who you are, there is a strong risk that your comment will be deleted. If comments are civil and substantive, we may overlook the anonymity of the rebellious commenter. We own our words. You should too." Perhaps because of this policy, I've seen quite a few snarky responses from nymous commenters dismissing anonymous commenter's comments at least in part because they are anonymous - along the lines of, "I post under my own name and I'm not going to answer someone who doesn't." (Now, some of those anonymous comments aren't remotely helpful, but in that case it seems easy enough to dismiss the comment because it's unproductive, or rude, or stupid, or whatever, without saying it's unproductive/rude/stupid/whatever because it's anonymous.) Many blawgs by law profs have no problem with anonymous comments, of course, but I seem to have come across more that do, than I have among non-law profs.

(Conversely, almost all the law student blawgs I read are pseudonymous, even if some of those pseudonyms are very thin. Almost all the law student blawgs I read are written by women. Anyway, we don't need to get into that debate again - it's just interesting.)

What prompted these observations was reading something by Belle Lettre (posted at Scatterplot rather than her own blog). In brief, Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Profs made a comment at PrawfsBlawg stating that, "Posting somebody's personally identifiable comment from another blog without giving them notice and opportunity to respond is viewed by me and many acquaintances as a form of bullying." 

Now, responses to Belle's post and at PrawfsBlawg itself suggest this may not be a norm accepted throughout the blawgosphere. But reading this was another moment of thinking, "Wow, the blawgosphere has some different norms than what I'm used to." And Belle's post at Scatterplot asked for comments about norms in the blogosphere. The following thoughts began as a comment at Scatterplot, but I've never posted there before and decided if was going to drone on about my own thoughts, this was the place to do it.

First, I disagree that quoting someone's comment without giving them notice that you're doing so is "bullying." I see publishing in the blogosphere as analogous to publishing in print in this respect - if, in their own writing, someone quotes something that I've published elsewhere, are they obligated to tell me about it, whether they agree or disagree with me? Of course not. So why should they be obligated to do so in the blogosphere? (Belle points this out in her post.)

Second, Bartow implies that discussing someone's comment is basically talking "behind their back," because she seems to believe that if the person posting about the comment doesn't tell the author of the comment, that author will never know they're being talked about. Belle also points out my own objection to this, which is that Google alerts allow bloggers to know when/where their comments (if linked to their names) are being referenced in the same way that Technorati and the like allow them to know when/where their posts are being referenced. (Somewhere I picked up the idea that if you refer to a blogger it's polite to link to their blog, even if you're not referring to a specific post - which allows the blogger to see who's talking about them. Hence my link to Feminist Law Profs above, even though I can't link to Bartow's comment directly - although at many blogs you can.)

I understand that it can be distressing to stumble across conversations in which you feel like your comments are being mischaracterized/abused (and this probably happens to Ann Bartow more than it does to me, due to the difference in our blogs!), which is what Bartow's stance seems to be addressing. But I think in the blogosphere, as in print literature, once your words are out there, you have to - in most circumstances - let them go.

This is for two reasons. First, you just can't control how people respond to what you write. Say I wrote a book, and it was widely read - a blockbuster best-seller (I should be so lucky!). People are going to talk amongst themselves about it, and some of them are going to get it "wrong," which in some cases means they will fundamentally misread it, and in other cases just means that they will take from it what's relevant to them, and in so doing skew what I consider to be the central message (because that message isn't as relevant to them as to me). I can't be present at all those conversations to say, "No, that's not what I meant at all!!" And I have to live with that. Even published, official critical reactions - if it's a really widely read book, how will I have time to respond to what everyone thinks? I have to get over it. (I guess I am not one of those people who, upon seeing a negative review of my book in a journal, would write one of those furious "reviewer X has COMPLETELY mischaracterized my book!!" letters to the editor. Life's too short! Do you think J.K. Rowling wastes her time writing letters to the editors of publications that publish negative reviews of her works??)

The second reason why I don't agree with the "must tell someone before you talk about what they've written" is I think that unduly restricts what people can talk about. Nor do I think it's my responsibility to inform someone I'm talking about their work; rather, it's their responsibility to track down what people say, if it's important to them.

I'm having a hard time connecting these points logically, so bear with me, but: relevant to this is the way that I view the blogosphere as made up of a whole slew of different communities. Just because you can contribute to all of them, doesn't necessarily mean that you should, even if they're talking about you (or a comment you made). Rather, people should understand the norms that govern a particular community - or its culture - before they participate in that community. If I write a comment somewhere, and one of my regular readers/readees picks up on it and comments on it, I feel comfortable responding, because I regularly participate in conversations with that person and I have a relationship with them (however slight). But occasionally something I've written has been picked up by Inside Higher Ed (for example), and gets read and possibly commented on by a lot of people outside my usual blog community, people I've never read and who've otherwise never read me. While my kneejerk reaction is to leap into those bloggers' comments and dispute what they're saying (and I have done so), I feel like the further away from my usual community a blogger is, the ruder it is to jump into their comments complaining about what they're saying about me. (I realize this is referencing posts rather than comments, but I don't see a real distinction between the two.) That is, if I haven't been part of the conversation in that blog community prior to a discussion of my comments, it's a little rude to blunder into the conversation just because I'm annoyed with what they say about me. I have the right to do so; I just think it's a little awkward. 

It's like there's a group of strangers are next to me in a coffeeshop talking about something I completely oppose, and I decide I'm going to tell them how much I disagree with them, even though I've never met any of them and they're not really talking to me. They're talking around me, in public where I can hear them, and in that sense their speech is public; therefore I have the right to respond, but social norms suggest it's a little weird to butt in and bust on them. Conversely, if I go to that coffeeshop regularly, and I always see the same group there discussing stuff I have strong opinions about, there are polite ways in which I can join the conversation. I could approach one of the group on hir own, say "I couldn't help but overheard you talking about subject X - did you see the NYT article about X last Thursday?", ease my way in, that kind of thing. Then, when I've become part of the conversation, I'm in a position appropriately to denounce things I disagree with. If nothing else, if I don't know how that group's conversations work, I might completely misunderstand what I hear, and my indignation might be inappropriate and wasted.

The idea that blogging about someone else's comment without telling them directly is "bullying" seems to me analogous to saying that not inviting that stranger sitting near your group in the coffeeshop to participate in your group conversation is bullying. Why is it that community's obligation to make their conversation even broader than it already is? Why do you have to tell a scholar if you're responding to some kind of idea they've expressed? We're not talking about personal attacks (at least, not necessarily - in some specific instances, that might be the case, which could well merit a different response) - we're talking about a response to someone's ideas. Moreover, what about a positive response to someone's comment? How is that bullying? Finally, there's an implication also that if someone pulls out a comment to disagree with it, that's inherently oppressive, which I find disconcerting. Disagreement with someone's stated ideas is not an attack on their intelligence, legitimacy, or a criticism of their very status as a scholar (well, not necessarily - it can be, of course, if done badly!). 

None of these are absolutes - I can easily envision situations in which yes, it is worth busting in on that group in the coffeeshop, even if it's socially awkward and maybe even rude. Some things are important enough to override those niceties. But I also think there are some conversations in which it's just not worth participating.

But what we might have here is simply different norms for blogging. I see the blogosphere more as salons made accessible than an extension of print journalism/scholarship - and this may be less the case in other corners of the interwebs. And, I'm sure, some people would argue that my attitude is different because I'm not writing under my real name.

So, yeah. Lots of different blogging cultures. I can't assume I have it all figured out.

Got a problem? Throw money at it

Okay, I don't really have a problem - but somewhere along the line I picked up the idea that buying things could improve any situation. I know that's not really true, but it's still my knee-jerk reaction. Identity crisis due to changing careers? It could all be solved if only I could buy the right wardrobe!

Recently, Maggie posted about back-to-school clothes, and the Bittersweet Girl posted about her "bi-annual Personal Appearance Crisis (P.A.C.)," the one that crops up at the beginning of each semester, in which she's "suddenly thrown out of my usual appearance complacence into a desperate desire to be fashionable and look stunning." So wardrobe concerns and crises are certainly timely roundabout now. As I commented on the latter post (and probably the former post), I am so in the midst of my own P.A.C., because I'm going to a NEW SCHOOL where NO ONE KNOWS ME.

On the one hand, this is liberating: no one knows me! No preconceptions! Reinvention!

But on the other hand, it's terrifying, because I know that in the past I was better-looking than I am now: I had no gray hair (stupid graying bangs), I had younger skin (though honestly, the academic lifestyle is a boon for preserving the complexion, since spending all my time inside with books tends to minimize wrinkles), and most importantly, I weighed less. My resemblance to a dumpy middle-aged matron was, well, non-existent - whereas now it's rapidly becoming inescapable. And no one at school will have known me any other way. They will have no memories of previous aspirations to hotness to temper my current image! I will always be that Older Woman.

Which I know is silly. Like success in law school is dependent on how hot you look! But, you know, it's how I think sometimes. So, if I could buy a new wardrobe, I would OF COURSE look stunning and make exactly the right impression in law school. Of course.

The other thing is that if I thought it was hard to dress myself as a thirty-something academic, it's even more baffling as a nearly-forty-something aspiring lawyer. On the one hand, I'd love to buy some more comfy, campus-friendly clothes (since my wardrobe currently consists mostly of "teaching" clothes and "can't leave the house in" clothes). But on the other hand, soon enough I will be working in legal-type settings in which I'll probably be expected to wear (gasp) suits (I possess none). So buying comfy clothes seems counter-productive in the long run.

And really, it's not even that I can't put together comfortable-enough outfits from my teaching clothes (though I think I REALLY need a new pair of flat black shoes... really, I do!). It's that buying new clothes would be a great way to help facilitate my shift from one career - and consequent identity - to another. If I look different, I will be different.

I always feel like if I procure all the right accessories for a new situation, I will succeed. You should see me in the lead-up to a trip to Europe - I search for the PERFECT shoes, the PERFECT bag, the PERFECT clothes, because if I find them, this will mean that during my trip to Europe I will be a) comfortable b) elegant c) not sweaty d) able to maneuver my goods around public transport effortlessly and e) not immediately spottable as an ugly American. If I had the money, I'd probably buy a metric crapload of stuff I don't really need. Since I don't have the money, I spend a lot of time agonizing over what the right accessories actually are. (Parallel anxiety now: what should I use to haul my law school crap around in? I hate backpacks. Should I get a rolling bag? Will I be a complete geek? Will it be unmaneuverable on the bus? etc. etc.)

If someone handed me the proper accessories, I'm sure that would be good. But there's something about BUYING stuff, about throwing money at the problem, that consoles me even more.

What's nice about going to law school is that unlike going to Europe, I don't have to prep EVERYTHING before the first day. If my bag turns out not to work well, I can buy one IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEMESTER if I want. There will always be more clothes and shoes to buy if I find there's something I really need (as opposed to thinking I need before I even start). Telling myself this helps calm the "if you spend money, it will help!" beast inside me.

But I'd still love to buy a new wardrobe to transform myself into this new person. I won't, but I'd love to.

(I will, however, get my hair cut and colored before school starts. Some things are non-negotiable.)

On a certain variety of atheism (edited)

I am not a believer of any organized religion, nor am I one of those generically "spiritual" types. I have a few vaguely hippy-dippy pseudo-pagan-animistic impulses (particularly attributing spirits to, and seeking to placate, inanimate objects like my car and my computer), and an unexamined faith in the precept that what one does to others ultimately rebounds upon oneself, though the latter is more a philosophy than any belief in the divine. And unsurprisingly, as a politically liberal, highly-educated (note: educated, not smart!) modern woman, I have a lot of problems with the doctrines of certain denominations and the behavior of many in the name of religion.

Yet I cannot embrace atheism, and ultimately, it's because atheism as a rejection, even hatred, of religion comes into conflict with my principles/beliefs as a historian.

Before grad school, I was pretty anti-religion, and considered almost any expression of religion as an imposition on my right to be religion-free. I'm not sure why I was so hostile, except that I had very little exposure to it. My parents both grew up devout (Anglican on the one side and Roman Catholic on the other), but it was a devotion rooted in time and place, and by the time I came along both my mother and father had left behind the communities and class in which their faith had been fostered. My mother made an effort to teach my sister and me about Jesus' life, but without the parish framework with which she'd grown up, or something to replace it, in her own words, "It just sounded...silly." She told my father she had no objection to our being raised Catholic, but he would have to be responsible for it - the man who never again took communion after his divorce from his first wife. Besides, in my parents' marriage, the immediate, day-to-day tasks of raising the children fell to my mom. So it was nothing, pretty much.

We also heard a LOT about the Holocaust in my elementary/junior high school days, which I think taught me a disdain for religion as much as anything else. Not because the Nazis were portrayed as Christians or representing Christianity - which is good, because I don't think that would be very accurate - but because it was the fact that they cared so much about someone else's religious beliefs that started the whole mess in the first place. (It was okay to be religious - the Jews were cool - but not okay to care about other people's religion.)

What changed in grad school? First, I met some deeply religious people, which opened my eyes to the role that religion could play in someone's life. I remember confessing to a devoutly Lutheran friend of mine that religion just looked like a whole bunch of rules about what you couldn't do, and she just laughed - wasn't shocked, wasn't upset, just thought that was one of the funniest things she'd ever heard.

But more importantly, I began to study the Middle Ages in depth, and ran right up against the fact that whether you think religion is good or bad or neither, it was central to medieval people's lives. And I don't mean that in the simplistic, "they had to think the way the Church wanted them to" caricature that many people hold in their heads in the section labeled "Middle Ages." Rather, Christianity provided a framework for medieval people's understanding of the world around them, a lens through which they saw the universe. This shaped how medieval people thought - in the same way that the modern understanding of gravity shapes how we think today - without telling them what to think. While I've never succumbed to what I've heard people call the professional hazard of medievalism - converting to Catholicism - studying the Middle Ages made me view religion in a more balanced manner.

Because the thing is, if you believe that people of religious belief are, essentially, stupid and irrational, then you have to believe that medieval people were stupid and irrational. But spend even a small amount of time studying medieval people - seriously studying them - and you soon realize this is completely untrue, and in fact, I consider it part of a historian's creed that if you think the people you study were stupid and irrational, you're not a very good historian. That does not mean historians should be cheerleaders for their subjects, or accept or approve of all that they do (hello, I teach about the Crusades!). Nor am I saying that it's invalid to dislike or consider stupid specific historical individuals (my sense is that some biographers come to loathe their subjects by the time they finish their projects; myself, I wouldn't want to spend a lot of quality time with Abelard). But to dismiss an entire culture or society because you don't agree with some of their beliefs is simply not being a good historian.

That's all very well and good, a modern atheist might say, but medieval people didn't know any better. Today we do. I don't blame medieval people for being stupid enough to believe in religion, but I do blame modern people. 

But this violates another part of my historian credo - one that is perhaps more important to medievalists and other pre-modernists, but which I would hold to be necessary for all historians. And that is that progress is bunk. People are people are people, wherever and whenever you go. People in the twenty-first century are not smarter or more advanced or more evolved than people in the fourteenth century, just by virtue of the century in which they live. We, like medieval people, interpret the world around us in light of cultural frameworks that shape our beliefs just as strongly as the medieval church shaped the beliefs of medieval people. They just happen to be different frameworks.

This is not to say that those differences aren't important, or that I don't prefer living in the modern world to living in the Middle Ages (from what I can determine about the latter). But for me, the issue of living today vs. then is one of standards of living - we have better hygiene, greater comfort, better medical care (I'd still have a gall bladder if I lived in the fourteenth century). We live lives of what medieval people would view as unimaginable luxury. I'd like some evidence, though, that our modern cultural frameworks have actually reduced human suffering and conflict compared to medieval cultural frameworks.

So, throw out progress, and what you get is not the idea that modern people should be more rational and intelligent than medieval people, but the recognition that humans are humans are humans, and that religion is simply part of human society. All human societies. I don't know of any society that genuinely lacks some form of religious belief (and don't give me the Soviet Union; sending religion underground isn't the same as actually abolishing it). Religion may be "irrational," but that's because humans are irrational. I don't think we can change that, and in many instances, I don't think we need to. I have no problem with objections to specific, oppressive religious practices - no one has the right to hurt other people in the name of their religion. But I see no point in railing about the existence of religion itself. The very existence of irrationality isn't a threat to humankind - it's a condition. Let's study its expressions, let's understand what it provides people.

ETA: From some comments about the meaning of atheism, I need to clarify something: Dr. Virago's comment is correct, and this post is inspired by recent conversations at Pharyngula, especially those about PZ's request for consecrated wafers. I like and generally respect PZ, and, to be frank, didn't want to attract the response of some of his diehard commenters (many of whom I also like and respect, just differ with on this one issue), so I chickened out and spoke in overly general terms without linking. But the atheism I'm referring to here is atheism that is actively hostile to religion, that considers it the height of ignorance and irrationality, and considers the eradication of religion as a noble goal. My apologies to those of you who consider yourself atheists but don't fall into this category - I should have been more clear. (I also probably have more to say about progress but that can go in the comments.)

Hot times, pity partysummer in the city

jo(e) has a post lauding summertime, with a lovely picture from her time at the monastery that she visits (which I envy). It's a lovely post, and I know exactly what she means about the unreality of summer in the midst of snowbound winters; we'd look at summer photos in the winter when I was a kid, and marvel that the world had ever been that soft and warm cacophony of gold and green. (Conversely, looking at pictures of 12 inches of snow in the middle of summer was equally mind-blowing.) But I also had to laugh, reading jo(e)'s post, because just yesterday I was being exceedingly grumpy about summer, and rehearsing in my head all the reasons why I hate it.

I should explain, first, that there was a specific trigger for this hatred. Our new apartment building is still undergoing renovation; almost everything is done but they've been replacing the windows. At the moment, I think NLLDH and I are two of maybe four people actually living here, and there's no one else on our floor. While I was waiting for the elevator yesterday afternoon, I realized the door to the apartment next to ours was ajar, and I thought I'd take a quick look.

I really shouldn't have, because the result was dissatisfaction. It was one of the two-bedroom apartments, and while we're fitting in to our one-bedroom pretty well, the two-bedroom is just bigger enough to make it the perfect size for us. There's more drawer space in the kitchen, there are two more closets than we have, and of course, the second bedroom would be nice (while I really don't work at home very much any more, it would be nice to have a separate room to study; plus, my sister could sleep on an air mattress if she comes to visit. There is literally no space to roll out an air mattress in our current apartment). But worst of all (in my self-centered view), I discovered that the two-bedroom apartments have actual CENTRAL AIR, with their own thermostat and everything. Our apartment, in contrast, has a cooler/heater, which, it turns out, is a radiator: in the winter the building people turn on the boiler so hot water runs through it and it heats the apartment; with the boiler turned off, cold water runs through it, and so the fan blows air that is cool, but not what I would call chilled.

Now, I should also note that I LOVE air-conditioning. My time in the south has changed my view of what counts as "hot" a little (I no longer flip out over temps in the 80s; it has to hit 90 for it to count as "really" hot). But living in the south definitely didn't wean me off A/C; it's EVERYWHERE there. And one of the draws of this apartment was that it has "A/C." (So they said when we were looking at it.) And yeah, the cooler is better than nothing, and yeah, when I thought all the apartments had coolers, I was pretty blase about it: oh, this building has coolers, okay, that's fine. But now that I know some of the units have REAL A/C, for some reason, it really annoys me that we don't.

Anyway, that started me grumbling about stupid summer and stupid heat and what the hell is summer good for, anyway? And then I really started thinking, and I realized: I don't do any of the things that traditionally make summer fun.

I can't tell you the last time I went to the beach or went swimming. (Actually, I can; it was at a gathering of friends from grad school, when I still worked at Rural Utopia. So it was at least four years ago, probably five. It was the only swimming I did that summer, and I had to buy a new swimsuit, because it was the first time I'd needed one in ages - at least since moving to Rural Utopia, which I did in 2000.)

The only barbeques I've been to since leaving Rural Utopia have been faculty-student ones on campus.

Because we've lived in apartments and have no outdoor space, I can't garden (if I were so inclined). I can't sit out in the backyard and sip lemonade, or watch the fireflies and gaze at the stars.

I can't tell you when NLLDH and I last took a vacation together, just going someplace fun to see what it's like, that wasn't to visit family. (Not that family vacations aren't nice. But NLLDH and I haven't taken one of those together for a while, either.) I think it might have been in 2003, when we drove up to one of the Twin Ports in the great white north and stayed overnight.

This is a pretty damn self-pitying list, isn't it? As an academic, the summer has been nice because it's meant a break from teaching, but it's also the time in which one is supposed to make up for all the things that one doesn't get to do during the year. So honestly, all summer seems to bring is the heat I don't like, without any of the fun things that are supposed to go with it.

In a fit of self-pity I confessed this to NLLDH, and within hours he had suggested that we take the day on Tuesday (his next day off) and check out one the national parks nearby. We probably won't actually hike-hike, but we might stroll one of the "accessible trails," and check it all out so we can try some of the easier hikes later in the summer. Yay for NLLDH! How much more sensible than wallowing in self-pity, to come up with a solution!

But if I'm completely honest with myself, one of the problems is not so much summer, but missing having a group of friends with which to do any of these summery things. I recently read a blogger talking about having friends over to her new house, grilling in the backyard and just hanging out on the deck in the warmth of an evening. And I was so envious that I could hardly stand it. I have all sorts of wonderful friends. But none of them are HERE.

Rudderless

That's how I feel at the moment, anyway - it's a very strange feeling not having anything specific to do.

My grading is done; my teaching responsibilities are over.

Classes don't start until August 25, and while there are some people who argue for a rigorous course of study in the months leading up to law school, the general consensus is that such prep isn't really going to help and that since it's your last summer off for a while, you should probably relax and enjoy it. There are a few things I'd like to read before the fall (including an intro to the constitution, because it dawned on me that I don't think I've ever actually read the whole thing, and I just might want a better grasp on that before starting a class on constitutional law!), but I have no fixed timetable for such reading.

There are more things to do to get the apartment in shape, but some of them (taking empty boxes etc. to storage, buying and installing blinds) need to wait until NLLDH's next day off, and others (organizing a shelving unit) require buying stuff, which I'm trying to avoid doing every single day. I could probably hang some artwork, though I'm not positive we have everything in place yet to be sure of where the artwork will go. (Though some of these reactions are, I realize, excuses for laziness. Plus, it's kind of hot out these days.)

There are a variety of other random things that I need to do at some point, but can be done whenever:
- talk to the financial aid person at my school (though first NLLDH and I have to work out exactly how much of the loan money we want to take)
- get the case of my laptop fixed AGAIN
- take Eldest Cat to the vet to get his bloodwork done (this I am procrastinating on because I was supposed to do it months ago and I feel like a bad cat mama not to have done so yet - so, of course, I will be a worse cat mama and let it go longer because I'm embarrassed - I know, sensible)
- complete a craft project I owe someone
- revise an article I owe for a festschrift
- sort through my/NLLDH's books and sell/give them away

I am finding it VERY hard to do much of ANYTHING, though. What I guess this means is that I really benefit from structure in my life, which is what I pretty much thought, but I suppose it's useful to have it confirmed, because this means I should thrive taking classes again (let's hope!). Until then, though, I sit on the couch and read mystery novels. Kind of pathetic.

Partly, I think, this is because I know that at some point soonish I'm going to have that gallbladder surgery, and there's a weird (stupid) feeling like my life has to be put on pause until that's done. Because, you know, I'm SICK. Even though I feel fairly normal at the moment (thank God, no more gallstone attacks yet - touch wood!), there's part of me that feels fragile and vulnerable, like I should stay in a protective cocoon until I get the gallbladder out. I don't think that part of me is right, but it's definitely part of what's keeping me on the couch. (That, and inherent sloth.)

So. How do manage to get things done when there's nothing structuring your time for you??

You've got mail!...maybe

When you were younger, did you get all excited for the mail? I totally used to look forward to checking the mailbox, because anything that arrived for me was pretty much going to be cool - an actual letter or card of some kind, or maybe a package - fun stuff.

By now, however, my physical mailbox is usually filled with bills, junk flyers, and catalogs (which are occasionally fun, but these days I toss them without looking at anything because if I don't look at the ads, I won't want what they're pushing). It's much less exciting. There are even times of the month where I dread getting the mail because I don't want to get certain bills.

So e-mail has become my, "oh, goody, something cool!" thing. Because yeah, I get a ton of spam and boring e-mail, but a lot of e-mail is stuff I signed on for, or actual communications from cool people. I'd say I get a lot more "cool" mail via e-mail than via snail-mail by this point.

The problem, of course, is that snail-mail comes once a day - I know once I've picked up the mail I don't have to think about it till the next day. E-mail, on the other hand, arrives willy-nilly, whenever, according to no fixed schedule. Which is part of what makes it fun, but which also means that I can get a little obsessive about checking my (three!) e-mail accounts. Do I have any e-mail now? No. What about now? Nope. Any yet? Nada. Now? Oooh, e-mail - oh, it's a coupon off pet-food. Well, okay. Maybe there's something now....

Obviously if I'm actually working - teaching class, cleaning the apartment, cooking dinner, exercising, whatever - something that involves not being in front of the computer screen - I don't stop every two minutes to check e-mail. (My students might rightfully take offense at me checking e-mail during class. Although, hey! If they check e-mail when I'm not engaging enough, can I check e-mail when they're not engaging enough?) But if I'm writing or doing class prep or something else that involves computer time? And especially if it's not
perhaps the world's most exciting task? I'm an e-mail inbox-clicking machine.

All of which is to say, I think I need to get a life.

The prospect of my last Kalamazoo

Kalamazoo, the gargantuan medievalist conference at Western Michigan University, is fast approaching. I think I'm in denial about how quickly, because the conference is at the beginning of May, and I'm used to that being at the end of my semester. This term, however, I teach through to June, and I have to keep reminding myself that although the end of the term is still far off, this year that DOESN'T mean that Kalamazoo is.

Attending this year is going to be fun (I will get to see lots of wonderful people I usually only visit via my computer screen!*), but also sort of sad, because going to Kalamazoo is one of the most fun parts of being a medievalist, and something I will miss quite a lot in my future career (and I should say that I mean the conference rather than the town itself, as Kalamazoo, MI is perhaps not the world's most exciting location, though it's definitely been on an upswing since I started attending). I hear a lot of academics say that they hate conferences, and I'll be the first to admit that I suck at the schmoozing and networking that one is supposed to do at such events. But I never quite understand why people really HATE conferences, and that's probably because my idea of conferences is shaped irrevocably by Kalamazoo, and Kalamazoo is really an entity unto itself (and can I add that by this point in the post I have no idea how to spell Kalamazoo anymore, as it looks really funny no matter how I spell it?).

Kalamazoo is huge, it has an infamous dance (which I don't even usually attend, so it's not like that's what draws me to it), it has the occasional crazy SCA contingent, it's got some truly horrible presentation rooms, and its dorms are ugly and uncomfortable. But it's also a place where you can play name-the-order looking at the different-colored habits of the monks and nuns roaming the sessions, it's got a book exhibit to end all book exhibits (including a great booth with amber jewelry), there are no nasty interviews to depress the atmosphere, and for most people it's right near the end of the semester, so while they may be stressed to the max with finals to grade, the end is in sight, the spring flowers are blooming, and summer is coming. There's a pond inhabited by swans and frightening numbers of carp. The world's most preeminent scholar of Old Norse runes rubs shoulders with the second-year grad student Chaucerian. Some incredible scholars give terrible papers, some unknown scholars give amazing ones, and vice versa. There are a gazillion grad students presenting, and while I've seen one person get shirty with a perhaps-less-than-impressive student paper, it's only been one - otherwise, eminent scholars have been universally kind and helpful to the newbies, and the not-so-newbies.

No conference is perfect. I've been in some excruciatingly boring sessions (who hasn't?), I've witnessed someone present their paper as a dramatic monologue, and I've heard some surreal comments in Q & A (example: an associate professor in a literature department asking, "Who is this Judith Butler person?"; I mean, I won't claim I've read any Butler, but I'm a historian, and even I know who she is!). But I continually find that the conversations at Kalamazoo are amazingly supportive, interesting, and free of the most egregious status-snobbery that I see at other gatherings (cough*MAA*cough). I'm sure Kalamazoo has seen its share of pissing contests - it seems inevitable, doesn't it? - but I've been lucky enough to avoid them. It's such a huge conference that regardless of how narrow your interest, you'll find an audience of people interested and informed enough to give you valuable feedback. Okay, maybe not every time. But you have a pretty good chance.

The first time I went to Kalamazoo, I drove with friends from grad school. It was about a 10-hour drive, so I'm sure I was a little punchy by the time we got there, but I remember driving up to the registration building and seeing what felt like all two thousand or so medievalists who attend at once. Seeing that many medievalists in one place for the first time is a little bit scary. But it's also its own brand of awesome, and each year I've enjoyed it more. I will miss it. 

*and if I've left anyone out, it's not personal - it's simply because I couldn't remember if you were attending this year; if you are, and you want to hang out, let me know!