Where this blog(ger) has gone…
This blog isn’t being updated anymore. It was always “about” academia more generally even though it was often also about student veterans or medieval poems. Since I left academia last year (and, sadly, abandoned my dissertation and PhD completion due to issues I have no way to resolve in the foreseeable future), there’s nothing left to say here.
That all of this came shortly on the heels of my getting a coauthored article published in Studies in Philology — a major career goal than I managed early on without actually being able to manage having the career — this is all especially bitter for me still, and I have not recovered. In fact, I am still really not okay, psychically/emotionally or financially. The grief has been tremendous.
But after two years of 70+ hour workweeks teaching mostly freshman comp, so a crippling grading load, and a final semester during which I had to call campus security to remove a hostile and aggressive student from my classroom, I had to admit that this non-tenure-track, contingent, contract teaching job I was so incredibly lucky to get was *actually killing me.*
And as I’ve discussed several times on this blog, adjuncting is simply not a possibility for me, and I cannot afford to stay on the job market *and* stay viable as a candidate.
So that’s it for me. I’m no longer an academic. I don’t know what I *am* instead yet, and that is a big part of the problem, but there’s the short-to-medium version of what became of this blog and this blogger.
Slouching Towards Extimacy 
Chris Harville said,
March 31, 2016 at 11:19 pm
As I sit and ponder over my probable future, I realize that I need to give a great amount of thanks to a teacher who would not let me settle for the ordinary. The constant challenge to please her and counteract her arguments left me wanting to push deeper and further than I ever have. Each day, as other students decide to settle for the average grade, I have her proverbial whispers in my ear saying, “dig deeper, don’t settle.” It’s unfortunate that we live in a society that doesn’t appreciate “the push” that helps us see our true potential. Thank you is definitely in order and well deserved for the contribution that you made in my life. It’s because of you, that I have the confidence to pursue the challenges of writing with no hesitation.
Karma said,
June 26, 2017 at 5:06 am
Chris, you were the kind of student that kept teachers like me going. I hope you have continued to do well. There is no doubt in my mind that you can succeed in anything you set out to do, in your school work and beyond. You were a very real bright spot in what, sadly, was my last semester of teaching ever. Keep fighting the good fight – to push beyond complacency and ask questions. I still believe it is a noble endeavor that will also serve you very well, practically speaking. I still believe it makes us all better citizens. I guess I’m a dinosaur for believing that, or for believing it matters, but that’s where it is 🙂
It means a lot that you wandered by and left this note. I really appreciate it. One of my old teachers from South died last week – she was first my teacher, then my mentor, and later my colleague. I realized that no matter what vicissitudes life or the profession send us, and no matter how radically things change over the decades, it’s still really just those semester-long, compressed learning experiences that can go by so quickly…. those strangely small building blocks we build a career and a sense of the profession from… and that we build a sense of ourselves as writers and thinkers from… that altogether make up what we later come to think of as “our education.” It’s a long process, to gather a sense of what that means, but its really made out of some very discrete building blocks, in a way. I’m grateful to have the had the chance to be your teacher. Be well.