Visiting Hours

I have my first "visiting writer" gig today. I'm going to be reading some poems in Mary's new poetry class with Michael Dumanis, Robert Miltner, and Dawson Steeber. After the long line of poets Mary's been bringing in this semester (Kate, Jeannine, HL Hix, please, please tell me I didn't forget anyone) I'm going to have a bit of performance anxiety. Excited to hang out with Mr. Dumanis though, and hear him read. I'm almost done with My Soviet Union, and hopefully I will have time to completely finish it before I go walk Rubi.

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Yesterday, my boss came to observe me (despite my valiant efforts to postpone his visit again) and told me...I suck at lecturing. *Surprise!* No, he didn't say I suck at lecturing. He just said I rushed through and didn't give enough examples. Duh. That's why I wanted him to observe me on a day when I was doing group work, which I know I'm good at. Lecturing makes me nervous, he makes me nervous, it's really not a good combination. But overall it went well and I think he's still going to let me join the adjunct army next semester.

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Yahoo weather tells me it is 59 degrees outside right now. I think I have to go check that out.

October, Already?

Oh, how time flies when you only have one semester left of your MFA. It's hard to believe that in just five weeks, I'll be defending my thesis. I think there are still some holes I need to plug, which has gotten me thinking about order. I have been avoiding chronology...although I'm really not sure why...but today I plan to put my poems into a timeline to see what's missing. Maybe they'll stay in that order, maybe not. But I think it's an exercise I can't finish my thesis without.

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Yesterday, I got really, really mad at my students. But for some reason, I always feel silly and a little embarrassed when I get angry. Maybe it's because I'm conflict averse. At any rate, they asked for more time on their rough drafts last Friday, and I didn't have a problem with that, except that it threw off my plan for the week. So, I told them that if they wanted more time, they needed to bring drafts and questions to class on Monday. But they didn't bring questions, so all I could do was give them quiet writing time. I wanted to slap them on the wrists and send them home, but that would have seemed more like a reward, so I held them hostage.

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I'm hemming and hawing about going to see Michael Dumanis read at John Carroll tonight. I would really really love to hear Michael read, and to show my support because I think he is such a wonderful addition to the MFA faculty, but I just found out about the reading yesterday, and I really have a lot to do today. (Plus Phil Brady is reading in Youngstown tonight and I had kind of planned that if I got caught up, I would go there. But I've heard Phil read before...) I suppose I could try to be super productive for the rest of the morning and afternoon and reevaluate my level of swampedness later. We'll see.

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New American Writing rejected me less than a week after I mailed them my stuff. I'm all for quick response times, but I can't help feeling like the girl who goes to the audition and gets kicked out before she reads her lines.

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You know what's not on my to do list for today? Updating my blog.
Maybe I should go do something that is.