Exposed

Recently, I accidentally e-mailed all of my current students with my online screenname instead of my real name. The reason is because I had tried to sign up for Google Plus with my screenname, except it kept my screenname in my account once I e-mailed my students. Once I realized what I'd done, I screamed so loudly that the mirrors in my apartment almost cracked.

Most people in my "offline" life do not know that I have a blog or a Twitter page, even though I've been blogging and Tweeting for years. Most people don't even know that I want to be a writer. They think I'm just this over-caffeinated English teacher who freaks out over grammatical errors and students who think it's okay to show up to class forty-five minutes late and still expect to be counted as present (insert head exploding here).

Some teachers blog about the misbehavior of their students, like students who don't turn in their work on time or the ones who keep their headphones on during class. Then the parents who raised the "everybody gets a trophy" generation come out in full force to bring the teacher down, because God forbid anyone should point out that their kids have EVER done anything wrong.

I'm lucky to have a full-time teaching job, even though it's in a small town where country music is played everywhere, to the point that I want to find a banjo and smash it over the loudspeakers. But I'm not a tenured professor, so my job security is far from certain. I've been hired on a year-to-year contract, which means that I'm still not sure whether they'll renew my contract for next year and I won't find out for months (that's why I'm applying to other schools in the meantime).

Since I'm still applying for other jobs, I know that search committees may Google me, though several of them will never admit to this. They won't necessarily find anything bad, like pictures of me getting drunk, since if anyone tried to make me drink alcohol I'd immediately spit it out. They might find reviews of my teaching on one of those awful Rate Your Professor sites, where there are positive reviews of me but also negative ones that say stuff like, "She's so unfair. She makes us show up to class every day."

If I put my real name or pictures of my face on my blog, those search committees (as well as the school that currently employs me) might not appreciate my posts about teaching. I never named any of the schools that employed me, and I never named any of the students either. But I did describe some of their bad behavior, like the volatile student who screamed at me for twenty minutes because I dared to give him a B, or the disrespectful student who almost drove me to tears in front of my class several years ago.

When I realized that I'd sent my screenname to my students, I was worried that they might Google it out of curiosity, since it is an unusual name. Then they would find my blog and my Twitter page. They'd read what I wrote about them, and they'd read about my personal life. It was one of my biggest nightmares. All it takes is one disgruntled student upset about his or her grade to find my blog or my Twitter page and send it to my bosses.

I debated deleting both accounts altogether. I also e-mailed several of you in a panic, asking for advice. You were all kind enough to respond promptly, and I appreciate your feedback. Ultimately, I decided to make both of my accounts private and (mostly) stay offline for a couple of weeks. That's why I haven't been blogging lately, and that's why you may not have been able to find my blog the last couple of weeks. I wanted to play it safe.

I couldn't bring myself to delete my blog. That's five years worth of writing, and I couldn't give it up. I gave up or lost almost everything else because of teaching: almost all my friends, romantic relationships, my twenties, and the city I loved. I couldn't deal with the idea of giving up my writing too.

So for now, I'll keep the blog and the Twitter page up. I'll still write about teaching, but I'll be more cautious now. Fortunately, none of my students said anything about my screenname. Hopefully, no one ever says anything.

What about you? Do you keep your blog or Twitter page a secret? Would you have deleted your accounts, if you were in my situation?

P.S. I might be taking a risk by stating this on my blog, but I couldn't e-mail everyone this since not everyone has their e-mail address listed. I'm going to change my URL to weirdworkaholic.blogspot.com starting next week. 

What I'd Like to Say to My Students

I don't like waking up this early either. But if I can't go back to sleep during class, then neither can YOU.

You don't become invisible when you take a nap during class. I CAN SEE YOU, so WAKE UP.

Your followers on Instagram and Twitter will understand if you don't post anything for a whole hour. In fact, I'm willing to bet THEY WON'T CARE, so put your phone away.

It is not my job to give you an A. It is your job to earn one.

If you want to be treated like an adult, then don't let your parents e-mail me to complain about your grades.

You do realize that your fancy cell phones come with clocks, right? So why do you keep showing up to class a half hour late?

I think it's great that you enjoy your friends' company. I don't think it's great that you feel the need to text them seventy-five times an hour.

If you want to see my head explode, then say, "I know I missed a month of class, but I think I should have gotten at least a B."

Sometimes it seems like what I tell you doesn't even go in one ear and out the other, because you refuse to take out your headphones.

I know that you're shy and afraid of sounding foolish in front of your classmates and me. But it's better to say the wrong thing than to sit there for the entire class every day and never say anything. At least the people who speak up are trying.

If you're going to claim that you have a "family emergency" and can't come to class, then don't stick around on campus afterwards, where I can easily see you hanging out with your friends.

You complain that authors like Mary Shelley, Maxine Hong Kingston, and William Shakespeare are boring, but I really don't see how your friends' Instagram posts about what they had for lunch are much more interesting.

If you're not going to do the reading, pay attention in class, answer any of my questions, turn in the work on time (or at all), or show up on time (or at all), then why are you in this class?

Threatening to get me fired, e-mailing complaints to the chair of my department, screaming at me in my office, or stomping out during the middle of class are NOT going to get me to change your grades (and yes, all of these things have happened).

When your writing improves, when you talk about the characters in the stories that we're studying as if they're real people, or when you tell me that you read other works by the authors just because you liked them so much, you make my day.

Last year, when I declined a teaching job and took out a student loan in order to finish my dissertation, I didn't miss teaching. I enjoyed being free from eight A.M. classes, grade complaints from students (and their parents), and e-mails from students who wrote stuff like, "Sorry I missed the last eight classes. Can you just e-mail me what I missed?"

I still love teaching, but there are still parts of it that drive me up the wall. I can't help thinking that I wouldn't be such a neurotic workaholic if I had chosen another career. But I've been so focused on getting my Ph.D. and becoming a college professor that I've lost sight of almost everything else. I can't even imagine what else I'd do (other than write, though I'd still need a day job), and I'm still not willing to give up everything I've worked for.

At the same time, I REALLY wish I could put this post on my syllabus, because the more frustrated I feel, the more nostalgic I get for the one year when I didn't have to teach.

What about you? Do you ever feel burned out or frustrated at your job? Have you ever had second thoughts about your chosen career? If you could say something to college students from this generation, what would you say? 

Conversations with Writers

When I go to book signings, I'm usually too shy to talk to the authors and ask them questions about their books, even though I want to. But if I could speak to them one on one, it'd be different.

If I could sit and talk with Dave Barry, I'd tell him that he was the first humor writer I ever read. His work inspired me to try to write stuff that made people laugh so hard their drinks came out of their noses.

If I could sit and talk with Ruth Reichl, I'd ask her how the people like her ex-husband and former friends felt about the ways she portrayed them in her memoirs. I'd ask for advice on how to portray people who hurt me without provoking them to yell, "It's ON now!" before chasing me down the street while hurling my book at my head.

If I could sit and talk with Beverly Cleary, I'd tell her how I read and reread her Ramona Quimby books when I was a little girl, and how I once got in trouble with my teacher for signing my name followed by "Age 8," like Ramona did.

If I could sit and talk with Jen Lancaster, I'd talk with her about the most annoying people in Chicago, like the neighbors who blast their music so loud in the middle of the night that I want to post fake eviction notices on their doors the next morning.

If I could sit and talk with Amy Tan, I'd tell her that one of the greatest moments in my life was when I told her how excited I was to meet her at a book signing, and she leaned back and said, "Thank you!" before smiling at me. I'd tell her that her descriptions of daughters' difficult relationships with their mothers made me feel less alone, because it always seemed to me that everyone else's relationships with their mothers were so much better.

If I could sit and talk with Stephen King, I'd tell him that I made the mistake of watching the film version of his book Children of the Corn on a farm surrounded by cornfields. I was so terrified that I kept looking around at the fields and shrieking, "The evil children are coming out of the fields! I can see them! AAAAAHHHH!" And then I'd ask him if his writing ever scares him.

If I could sit and talk with Jhumpa Lahiri, I'd say that I love the way she describes loneliness (even though she rarely uses the word "lonely") without any of the usual cliches. She does it in a way that many people, including me, can recognize the same signs in our own lives, like in her story "This Blessed House," with her description of the man who only used the top fork and knife in his silverware drawer.

If I could sit and talk with Judy Blume, I'd tell her that I had to hide her young adult books from my mother, due to the depictions of puberty and sex. My mother wouldn't even let me watch the movie My Girl, because she thought the one-second kiss between Macaulay Culkin and Anna Chlumsky would inspire me to get pregnant before junior high.

If I could sit and talk with Emily Gould, I'd tell her that she writes like a true New Yorker, and how much I envy her for living in New York. I live in a small Southern town where everyone apparently goes to bed by 9 P.M. and people drive around with large Confederate flags flying from their pickup trucks.

Most of all, if I could sit and talk with all of these writers, I'd sit back and listen to them talk about writing and books, and I'd feel happy just to be with them. 

What about you? If you could sit and talk with a writer that you admire, what would you say?

Making Time to Write

When I first moved to Small Town, Tennessee, I thought I would have more time to write. In Chicago, I was distracted not just by my work but also by bike rides along the lakefront, free admission days at the museums, cheap tickets to plays, and neighborhood festivals.

In Small Town, on the other hand, there isn't much to do, unless you enjoy hanging out at Wal-Mart or watching sports. Many of my students are athletes, and on game days it seems like the whole town turns out to watch them play. I have about as much interest in sports as the Kardashians and the Duggars do in staying away from the cameras.

However, as I stated in my previous post, there is the pressure to accept at least a few of the social invitations that have been extended to me, which takes up a lot of time that I'd rather spend writing. There's also the fact that the classes I'm teaching are significantly larger than the ones I taught at other schools, which means I have to spend more time grading papers and answering e-mails from students who ask questions like, "Is it really necessary to buy the books for this class? Couldn't I just watch the film versions?" (I'm not making that up) or "Sorry I was absent for the last six classes. Did I miss anything?" (I wish I was making that up)

So unfortunately, I find myself with even less time to write than I did before. I still feel the urge to work on my manuscripts, which have been neglected for months due to my completion of my dissertation and my move to Tennessee. Every time I look at my unopened journal or glance at the files marked "Novel" in my computer, I feel tempted to drop everything else I'm working on and write. Grading papers and answering e-mails make me wish I was doing something more interesting, like pulling out every hair in my head. Writing fiction and creative nonfiction makes me happy.

I've read about other writers who make time to write by writing during their lunch breaks or by getting up early. Others give up activities like constant Facebook updates or television. So I've decided that I need to follow their example, or I'll never finish my manuscripts, let alone get the chance to publish them.

So I've realized that there are some things I need to limit, like my Law and Order marathons or my long drives to bigger cities when I feel claustrophobic in Small Town. I also need to discipline myself to stop checking my e-mail or watching YouTube videos every time I sit down at my computer.

I always felt contemptuous of writers like E.L. James, who published novels even though their writing was not very good. But they're still ahead of me, because they made the time to write, in spite of everything else that was going on in their lives. (On the other hand, I hope no one will think I'm mean if I say that I'd rather be unpublished for the rest of my life or be trapped in an elevator with the Kardashians AND the Duggars for an hour than write like E.L. James.)

What about you? How do you make time to write? That is, what kinds of things do you sacrifice or limit your time on, in order to have the time to write?

Me Time

In Chicago, people sat next to each other on buses and trains for hours and barely looked at each other. I'd go to my favorite coffee shop or bookstore and see other regulars there, but we never talked to each other. City dwellers usually try to avoid looking at or speaking to strangers, because they never know if those strangers are just regular people or people who would whap them in the head and run off with their wallets.

In Small Town, Tennessee, although I can't go anywhere without being stared at and gossiped about, the townspeople are generally friendly and strike up conversations with me, which startled me when it first started happening (I was all, "Why are they talking to me? Are they going to rob me? Because that's what happened the last time I got robbed.") Several of my colleagues have invited me to lunch, parties, or to barbecues.

Here's the thing, though. While I appreciate their invitations and have said yes to a few of them, what I often feel tempted to say is, "Sorry, I can't! Maybe next time...or NEVER."

In my version of hell, I would have to go to parties every day and make conversation with a bunch of people. When I was a kid, I liked going to parties, because we got to play games, eat cupcakes, and bring home goody bags. Now that I'm an adult, all people usually do at parties is drink alcohol, talk about the new diet they're on, and go home feeling obligated to reciprocate the social invitation.

I have a heavy course load this term, and I'm teaching more students at one time than I've ever taught before. As an English teacher, that means a lot of papers to grade, which means I might get so stressed that I end up writing, "All work and no play makes me a neurotic workaholic" or "redrum" over and over again.

I still have my website job, which, due to the car I had to buy (there is no public transportation in Small Town), my credit card debt that I accumulated when I moved here, and my student loan debt, I can't afford to give up. So that means I'm working too many hours every week. It's still the beginning of the school year, and I've been so tired that I end up falling asleep by ten P.M. (though I have to slap myself awake to finish my work) almost every night.

That means that when I have time off, I'd like to spend it doing what I want to do, like exploring Tennessee. Once I save up enough money, I'd like to visit Graceland and Dollywood. There is no mall in Small Town, so I'd like to drive to one of the bigger cities and go shopping. I'd also like to stay in town and write in a coffee shop, and I want to read more books without footnotes in them.

I've always been an introvert, and while I don't want to be alone all the time, I don't enjoy socializing every weekend, or even every other weekend. I prefer to do things on my own, because then I can do things on my terms. On the rare occasions I do go to a party, I spend the whole time counting the minutes until I can make up an excuse and leave "fashionably" early.

I don't want to be rude to my colleagues, which is why I've said yes to a few of their invitations. And I know that it is a good opportunity to network as well. But if I say yes more often, I'll end up resenting them and blurting out things like how I disagree with several of their teaching methods, the English department's policies and how I think it's extremely unfair to give us low salaries, heavy course loads and also require us to make time for endless meetings and committees. Or I might just blurt out, "Why does everyone in Small Town keep staring at me? Is it because they think I'm an alien, or are all of YOU the aliens?"

What about you? Do you consider yourself an extrovert or an introvert, and how do you deal with social invitations that you feel pressured to accept (but don't actually want to say yes to)?

Culture Shock

Whenever I tell people that I moved to Small Town, Tennessee from Chicago, they say, "Well! That must be a big change for you! Do you like it here?"

That's not an easy question to answer. On the one hand, it is nice to walk around without random guys yelling lewd things at me or trying to grope me, like they did on the streets of Chicago. Here in Small Town one day, some guys driving a pickup truck pulled up next to me when I was waiting to cross the street and yelled, "God bless you!" And I thought, WTF?

Here are some things I've observed about Small Town so far:

The drivers in this town might as well refer to themselves as "Tailgating is my middle name."

Only the devil's children go out after nine P.M. (which is why everything closes by then, except the bars) or drive faster than 25 mph in the left lane.

Several people in this town want to shake hands with Donald Trump (I try not to scream in terror or run in the opposite direction when they tell me this).

"Hon," "honey," "ma'am," and "y'all" are Southerners' favorite words (because everyone has a Southern accent).

Many of the girls at the school where I teach wear pearls and skirts to class, and several of the boys drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag license plates.

Several of the students have gun collections and enjoy hunting or fishing.

Apparently even the younger people in this town think they'll live longer if they walk (and drive) as slowly as possible.

I've started swearing a lot more (with the windows rolled up in my car so no one can hear me) ever since I moved here.

The only way to cook meat is to fry it or barbecue it.

Many people have wide front porches with rocking chairs and porch swings, which makes it easier for them to sit outside and wave to newcomers like me while gossiping about them.

Spitting in public isn't rude. It's just common sense.

People in this town also apparently have the motto, "Why give a straightforward answer to a question, when I can take ten minutes to answer it?"

In Chicago, people are all, "Don't look at me don't look at me don't look at me BACK OFF!" But here in Small Town, I can't go anywhere without people staring at me and making comments under their breath, because it's pretty clear that I'm not from here.

This place is pretty much the opposite of Chicago. I can't help wondering when or if this place will ever feel like home, especially since I still miss Chicago terribly.

What about you? Have you ever felt like an outsider in a place that you visited or lived in, or have you ever experienced culture shock?