All I Want for Christmas

1. Is to have the money to hire someone to clean my apartment, preferably someone who looks like Joe Manganiello and who flexes his muscles and bends over a lot when he cleans.

2. Is to get through one visit to my parents' house without my mother criticizing my looks/my clothes/my job/the fact that I'm still single.

3. Is to be able to eat a piece of cheesecake or pizza without cursing myself for it on the scale the next day.

4. Is to get through one visit to my parents' house without my father trying to control where I drive my car/how I should do my job/where I should live and work next.

5. Is to pay off my student loans before my students are old enough to retire.

6.  Is for students to spend more time reading books than whatever is on their cell phones.

7. Is for Donald Trump to SHUT UP and GO AWAY.

8. Is for my double-parking, space-stealing, loud-partying, chain-smoking, mooching off their parents neighbors to be forced to live with Voldemort, Donald Trump, and Mama June.

9. Is a life where I only have to work one job instead of two or three.

10. Is to have more time to write.

What about you? What do you want for Christmas?

A Workaholic's Regrets

Although I finally earned my Ph.D., I didn't get to go to my graduation. I didn't have the time or the money to make the trip, just so I could walk across the stage and accept my diploma. I really wanted to go, because I spent years working for that Ph.D. I think I deserved to be honored for it, even just for a moment. Missing out on my graduation made me think of other things I've missed out on.

When I was in my twenties, other people my age went on cross-country road trips and backpacked across Europe. I shelved books, folded clothes and resisted the urge to bitch-slap rude customers at least fifty times a day.

Other young people dated and fell in love, opening their hearts to people. I dated a soldier who told me I was beautiful. I didn't believe him. When he called me, I was irritated that he interrupted me while I was working. He stopped calling. I dated a graduate student who was quiet and kind and genuinely wanted to get to know me. But when I was with him, all I could think about was my work. He stopped calling, too. Every time a guy tried to get close to me, something inside of me froze up and I pushed him away, immersing myself in my work like it was some kind of barrier.

My friends and acquaintances climbed the corporate ladder, got promoted, and became richer. I worked as an adjunct instructor, earning less than janitors. I was on my feet for nine hour shifts at stores, resisting the urge to throw hangers or books at twenty-two-year-old supervisors on power trips. No matter how hard I worked, I was still barely able to support myself.

Friends couldn't understand why my workday didn't end at five P.M. like theirs did, or why I spent most weekends working. I didn't have the time or the money to go barhopping with them. Most of them stopped calling too, except when they wanted to tell me about their loving relationships, children, and successful careers (while asking me very few questions about my own life).

Long after my college classmates walked the stage at graduation, I was studying for my master's degree and then my Ph.D. I took seminars where professors told the entire class that my work was not good enough. I pored over books in the library until I fell asleep, where other students' snoring woke me up. I resisted the urge to scream, "Studying is not SOCIALIZING, people!" at all the loud undergraduates in the so-called quiet study areas.

People my age carried briefcases or diaper bags, while I carried a book bag. They went out for lunch or ate with their coworkers in their fancy office buildings. I ate alone in school cafeterias.

I moved far away from home to teach at a new school. Although I'd worked multiple jobs before, I am working longer hours here, at a full-time job and a part-time job. To my dismay, a third of my full-time salary goes to taxes and benefits, which is why I have a part-time job.

I teach larger classes with more students. My days pretty much have gone like this: teach, meet with students, grade papers, watch TV at home, yell curse words in foreign languages at my neighbors, and sleep. I have little time for anything else. That's why I haven't written any fiction and I've hardly blogged over the past few months, despite my earlier resolve to write more.

I looked in the mirror one day and saw the lines in my face, the gray in my hair, and the weariness in my eyes. I realized that I'd given up or lost everything for my work: my friends, boyfriends, my youth, alternative careers, a city that I loved, and now, my writing. I have become a true workaholic. And I hate it.

I look back on my life and regret that I spent so much time working, even though in most instances, I didn't really have a choice. I did accomplish several of my goals: I earned my master's degree and my Ph.D; I've taught at multiple colleges; I've taught high school; I became self-supporting; I became a good teacher. But I didn't think it would mean losing everything else that mattered to me.

I'll always be a workaholic to some extent. But I finally realized that there has to be more to life than work. Otherwise you'll be the kind of person who dreams that she's working even when she's asleep, or the kind of person who becomes so tired and stressed out that she makes voodoo dolls and pokes them ominously whenever her annoying, inconsiderate neighbors look at her.

What about you? Do you consider yourself to be a workaholic? Do you have regrets over certain things that you gave up or lost?

Teachers Have Rights Too

Recently, students at the University of Missouri in Columbia forced the school's president to resign. Several of the football players refused to play until he resigned. One student, Jonathan Butler, went on a hunger strike. Several other students, as well as a professor, Melissa Click, were overly aggressive with a reporter and literally pushed him away, claiming their right to a "safe, private" space.

They were (and still are) protesting because of several racist incidents on campus, including black students being called racial slurs by white students and a swastika made out of feces (though I should think that's more offensive to Jewish students than black students).

Jonathan Butler received a lot of praise from people for going on a hunger strike. It made me think of all the people in the world who are literally starving right now and who don't get to choose to be hungry. I doubt that they would praise Butler for what he did. I certainly don't.

Now students at other universities are protesting, and at Columbia University some undergrads reported feeling intimidated and pressured into protesting. Students at other schools are demanding to be excused from classes so that they can participate in protests. It reminded me of a "movement" at  Oberlin College a while ago. Students who were skipping classes in order to go to protests against police brutality wanted to be exempt from failing grades and demanded nothing less than a C for their final grades, regardless of what they earned. (The school refused.)

All of it makes me angry. I can understand their anger at feeling discriminated against, excluded, and treated unfairly. But I do NOT agree with their actions. On the one hand, NO ONE should call anyone racial slurs or leave swastikas for them to find. But on the other hand, it's gotten to a point where everyone's "offended" by everything these days. For example, once a student accused me of being racist towards minorities because I didn't call on him every time during class. He disregarded the fact that I called on him MOST times he raised his hand, but I wanted to give other students a chance to talk in class.

It makes me feel like professors and university administrators have to tiptoe around students' feelings all the time, because if we don't we'll be forced out of our jobs. Yes, racism is a problem at many schools, but that doesn't mean that students should be able to force people to quit. It doesn't give them a right to prevent reporters from doing their jobs (it's ironic and hypocritical that those Mizzou students demanded the right to free speech but prevented that reporter from exercising HIS right to free speech). It also shouldn't mean that professors have to give them a free pass from doing their work and giving them grades they didn't earn. I have never done that, and I WILL never do that. I'd rather give up my entire career than do it.

Honestly, I don't think that making university presidents or professors resign is going to solve the problem. I think they'd make a much bigger difference by tutoring students at inner city schools, volunteering at soup kitchens, or building affordable housing for the homeless.

Yes, students have the right to speak out against racism and discrimination, and they should. But they don't have the right to tell me how to do my job, or to accuse me of being a racist if I do something they don't like or they disagree with. I have rights too, and I refuse to back down to anyone, just because he or she was "offended." I read more than one article where the authors also disagree with some of these students, because they claim that the students are restricting or prohibiting any free speech that they think is offensive. (I'm sure the ACLU would have a problem with that.)

If I and all the other professors gave in every time, we'd be sending the students the wrong message. Can you imagine what their future bosses will say if they demand promotions they haven't earned or blow off work so they can go "fight for the cause"? I think that if they want to "fight," they have to be prepared to take risks and make sacrifices, not expect everyone else to cater to them.

What about you? Did you ever participate in any protests when you were in college? What do you think of the protesters' belief that they have the right to make school officials quit and that they should be exempt from classes and failing grades?

Side note: By the way, I decided not to change my URL after all; sorry about the confusion! I just figured it would be too complicated to try to change it to a different URL, since then I'd have to contact everyone about it. 

Road Rage

I hate driving.

In Chicago, I didn't have to drive. I could take the El or the bus, or I could walk to my destination. Many of the places we needed, like the bank, the grocery store, the dry cleaner, coffee shops, and restaurants, were within walking distance.

In this small town I've moved to, I hardly ever see anyone walking around, except for the students walking around the campus of the school where I teach. It's necessary to own a car here, which is why I will spend the next four or five years making car payments. I wanted to buy a cheaper, used car, but my parents insisted that I buy a new one. Since they were loaning me the money for a down payment, and since I got tired of arguing with them, I did. My mother demanded that I get the color and make that she wanted, even though technically it is my car.

One bonus is that since this is a small town, I can usually get through two weeks of driving on one tank of gas. I must admit that it is nice to only have to make one trip to the grocery store, rather than two or three trips like in Chicago, where I could only buy as much as I could carry in my reusable bags or small shopping cart.

I'm also saving up for a summer road trip to some place I haven't been to before, even though my parents say that they want to come along to "chaperone" (did I mention I'm thirty-four years old?). But there is NO way they're coming with me. I'm looking forward to a trip where it's just me, my car, and the open road in front of me.

But in this town, I often get stuck behind drivers who apparently drive by the following mottos: "I'm going to drive this ol' pickup truck as slowly as possible so that everyone can admire my fine, giant Confederate flag" or "If I cut off as many people as possible, I WIN!" or "I'm sure no one will mind if I delay traffic so that I can stop and spit out my window."

In my apartment complex, all the tenants are assigned parking spaces, though the assignments are completely disregarded by the majority of my neighbors, who apparently park by the following mottos: "Some people color outside of the lines. I park outside of the lines," and "Who cares if this space isn't mine? First come, first served, sucker!" It's easy for my loser neighbors to steal my spot, since most of them don't seem to work for a living and are home more often than I am.

I never let them get away with it, though. I've told them repeatedly to get their cars out of my parking space. I resist the urge to key the words "I HATE YOU" into the fancy cars that their parents bought for them.

Public transportation in Chicago is not cheap, but it's still a lot cheaper than owning a car. I have to make monthly car payments, as well as pay for gas, car maintenance, insurance, and cleaning. Due to all of those expenses, I haven't had a haircut in more than three months; my shoes have holes in them, and I'm down to one pair of jeans and two pairs of dress pants.

When I walked around Chicago, I burned more calories in one day than I do in a week's worth of walking around Small Town. When I was walking or riding the bus or train, I could usually take the time to observe the people around me, enjoy the music I was listening to on my iPod, and appreciate other sights, like the view of the Chicago River from one of the downtown bridges, the street performers, and the high-rise buildings that reflected the sunlight. When I'm driving, I'm usually focused on getting from Point A to Point B without getting into an accident.

I think the biggest reason I hate driving is because it reinforces the fact that my life is here now (at least for the next year or two), and that I might never live in Chicago again. I know this move was necessary, especially because I need this job. But sometimes, when I'm telling my loser neighbors for the eighth time to get their car out of my space or I'm trying not to flip off the driver who just cut me off, I wish that I was on a crowded El full of chattering tourists, rowdy Cubs fans, and random people shrieking about politics/religion/the upcoming alien invasion.

What about you? How do you feel about driving or commuting in general? Have you ever taken a road trip?

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?