Sometime in late Octomber last year (ED: More like early Dissember, actually.), I plugged in a USB microphone, opened Audacity, sketched a list of about eight likely questions, cleared my voice, and asked, then answered each question, recording one after the other until I had something like the dullest, geekiest album of all time: eight home-studio tracks of me asking typical job interview questions followed by me answering the question in under two minutes. (Of note: I categorized the tracks as 'jazz' just to add pep). Rather than polish them, re-record, or fret about the quality of the performances, I imported the raw, uncut tracks in iTunes and slid them onto the shuffle, right along with the more or less stable collection I was at the time carrying to the YMCA with me each day.

Now, I don't have any idea whether other job seekers did the same thing. No clue. But I was pleased with what this approach allowed me to do. I did not so much treat these questions and answers as focal and specific, which is to say binding, but I preferred instead to have them wash over me, deliberate, ambient noise very close to thinking, only slightly more measured. I'd be at the Y, humming along on the elliptical machine, and one of the tracks would come on. The questions would spring up, as if out of nowhere, and surprise me. The exact answer mattered, but it didn't matter as much as getting the genre (that is the generality of the utterance) down, getting to know approximately what was possible in such a time-bounded exchange.

Who can say whether it worked? Or how well it worked? Well, I am attesting to its convenience, for one thing. It was comfortable at MLA to prop up my feet in the evening, mute some televised sporting event, and listen to those forty minutes worth of questions and answers. And in public, it felt a lot more hip than sitting, as others did, with scripted note cards clenched in their trembling hands minutes before the elevator ride to destiny. Being on the market is tough (not scary, exactly, just intensive, demanding). May as well do as much of it as you can with headphones in. All the better if the headphones are tied to a playlist as likely to land on something speedbeat funky as on a self-recorded practice question: Please, tell us about your dissertation. Eventually the two start to blend together, the answers begin to have a faint cadence, something on the verge of musicality: academikocoapopfunkfusionbliss. And then you know it's time to press pause, stow the ear buds away, and knock on the hotel room door (or answer the perfectly timed phone call, as the case may be).

By the way, had I to do it over without a microphone, I would simply open a Drop.io Voice account and use my cell phone to call in a couple of MP3 audio messages, download, import, etc. In fact, what brought this entry on is that just a few minutes ago I was chatting on the phone with a friend who will be on the market in the year ahead. Only, no mike. I suggested the Drop.io Voice workaround. Also, about the questions, they were a mix: about the dissertation, about future plans for research and writing, two about classes I'd taught, two more about classes I want to create, something on administrative experience, philosophy, and style, another about framing TA training and mentorship, and then something definitional about new media and digital writing practices (their value, etc.). There are hundreds if not thousands of possible questions, but there's not much value, I'd argue, in overdoing it. Diminishing returns, if you overdo it. I guessed that these few would get a lot of play, and, while some came up more than others, all of them came up at least once during the interviewing process.

I had no choice but to ditch it. Only, upon ditching it, I also turned my ankle.

It went like this: Riding along on the grass as we exited the Barry Park playground last evening, D. and Is. (in the tot-seat) ahead of me, I came upon a dip--a three-foot rise from the park lawn to the road. Crept slowly, approaching the dip. Rode up the dip. I had the strange feeling that the front tire was lifting too much, like I was pulling a wheelie. But it touched down again, and when it did, the front wheel lurched just enough to create a momentary loss of balance. I was moving too slowly! So I tried unsuccessfully to eject: I put down my right foot, rolled my ankle, and belly flopped onto the bicycle and then onto the ground where I came to rest part on the pavement and part on the gravel. A bona fide, aww inspiring wipeout.

When the dust settled, Is. was explaining to D. that I just tipped right over. When I could breathe again, I got back on and finished the ride. The damages weren't all that bad. Wind knocked out of me (and today very sore ribs) from where the bike seat broke phase one of The Fall, a badly bruised left palm, a scrape on my right forearm, and mildly skinned knees. I'd say there were about the same number of witnesses as when I took a spill on the treadmill at the YMCA back in March. No other falls to speak of in 2009, but there was a close call on a campus visit. By "close," I mean that with coffee in one hand and a loaded computer bag over the other shoulder I did a hard Charleston-style step on the ice (similar to what you'll see when the playhead is at 0:29)

spilled coffee into the air, and then caught the coffee back in the cup without any loss, regained my balance, and carried on with the short walk. It wasn't a fall, but it did have all of the excitement of a fall, none of the pain or humiliation.

I've written about bike crashes here before, but I intend to make this the last entry on the subject.

To be fair, I have done little in this entry other than pot-shot on the site (and remember a link for future returns). And, to be even fairer, I don't even need anything from it today. But this craggy little hike through the cluttered SCSD corner of the web got me thinking that it might be interesting in a class to look around for the most polluted school district web site in the U.S. (or in a given state) and then to work on improving its usability.

I did cut the lawn. On Saturday. Slow blog-reaction time these days. Approaching slow to the point of stopped.

I'd explain the two week lull, but there is no juicy story in the explanation. Did I mention my allergies? Oh. The rest, all teaching prep, teaching, and road time. I'll spare you gory details about the workload I'm hefting this summer. On a lighter and more delightful note, the late May lull included a lap around Michigan for a nephew's graduation, a welcome to EMU barbecue, and house hunting. I'm pretty sure we have a place to live come August, but we haven't signed the lease yet.

I have a lot more to say and, at the same time, nada. Warming up lately to a tolerable degree of blog ambivalence, actually, which means I might blog every day in June or continue the hiatus until sometime after that.

Rule 1. Sunshine.

Rule 2. Especially when you feel an argument brewing, do not mistake Dinner Club for Fight Club.

Rule 3. If the guests are pizzatarians, honor their special dietary needs as best you can.

Rule 4. No moving of furniture inside of 90 minutes to scheduled arrival.

Rule 5. No unplanned painting projects. Note: This is not only a Dinner Club rule, but a rule for any time guests are on their way.

Rule 6. Wolaver's before, during, and after.

Syracuse offers this course in other formats: a six-week Summer I course that meets on campus, a six-week Summer 2 course that meets on campus, and a 12-week summer course that meets online. Sections following the six-week on-campus format remain open. They have seats available, that is.

I wondered, "Why on earth would students so clearly prefer the thirteen-week version, which includes a Friday evening session at the end of next week, when these other options are available to them?" I floated this question in the WP offices and heard about how great a preference many students have for actually meeting a person. Might be exactly right. This falls into what I think of as the "metaphysics of presence"-based critique of classes that meet exclusively online: they're too virtual, too dependent upon writing and only writing, too far removed from the material commonplaces of fluorescently lit bodies slumped over in badly designed deskchairs, classroom style. [I can't make up my mind about which emoticon to insert here.]

I accept that some students might be drawn to an online section where they get to meet the instructor for a few face-to-face sessions. When I logged onto MySlice this week to check the class roster, I found another reason that could explain the attraction to this section, a section with a bonus week over and above its 12-week online-only counterpart (other than the "metaphysics of presence" shtick or the named instructor):

The class is listed as meeting only during Maymester. For half of Maymester, actually: one week, instead of two. Ten hours total. I won't be able to confirm this suspicion until next week, but that crucial qualification, Maymester Blended or Maymester +12, does not show up in the online enrollment system. That's...*gulp*. Worrisome, anyway.

So I went ahead and emailed everyone enrolled to explain that most of the heavy lifting will get done in the 12-week online postlude to Maymester. A few days since the email, the class is full. I welcome the full class (capped at twenty, it's a reasonably-sized group), but I can't help but brace just a little bit for Monday evening, for that moment when we take an earnest, collective look at the schedule, when I'll have no choice but to explain the missing asterisk next to Maymester in the registration system.

As I mentioned last time, Joe Biden was the speaker. He started with Sinatra's line that "Orange is the happiest color," and suggested that Sinatra must have had SU in mind when he said it. Biden told about his graduation from SU in 1968, contextualizing events occurring around the time of his commencement and gradually establishing a bridge between 1968 and the present moment. Graduating during times of great uncertainty uniquely positions you to shape the world at whatever scale you will (i.e., oftentimes this shaping grows from small, principled deeds, from being one who "was not made to look the other way"). He also expressed his strong sense of loyalty to Syracuse University because Syracuse ties have helped him through some of the greatest challenges he has faced. Interjected within these two aspects of his address were references to his father's advice: when you get knocked down, "get up."

This summary is the best I could do without notes. And I dedicate it to Sleepy Pete, who appears in the photo above not to be paying attention to the VP.

Other than those awarded honorary degrees, doctoral candidates were the only group introduced by name and called across the stage. D. snapped this photo of the best the jumbotron could to do capture Chancellor Nancy Cantor and me in the same frame.

After the ceremony, I was fortunate to catch up with professors Lois Agnew and Eileen Schell who waited with D. and Ph. outside HBC for this photo--"fortunate" because temperatures dropped sharply into the 40s during the ceremony, so milling around outdoors wasn't as appealing as it might have been on a warmer May afternoon.

This Flickr slideshow has a few more photos from the weekend's events.

Also here's a photo from last night's hooding ceremony in Goldstein Auditorium.

Please beware of "senioritis". Senioritis is a condition that happens to good kids in the spring semester of their senior year. It is contagious and the symptoms are not sometimes obvious at first. Students with senioritis are not focused, demonstrate a sudden lack of interest, and they find it difficult to complete and follow through regarding simple tasks. Senioritis will pass but the consequences may be devastating, i.e. not graduating, not being accepted in your school of choice, etc.

Were I not myself "find[ing] it difficult to complete and follow through regarding simple tasks," the next part of this blog entry was going to be a snarky blow-by-blow analysis noting how the senioritis bullet appears next to clip art of a stethoscope and doctor's bag. It was going to have a witty joke about how nobody is using doctor's bags or medical instruments these days to diagnose the affliction and also something about what a damnable shame it is that the most devastating consequences from this "sudden lack of interest" are centered on the student and only the student insofar as it may keep you from your school of choice, or worse, from graduating altogether.

Anyway, beware of this and other stuff and such.

An impressively long and heartening string of birthday wishes poured in today over on Facebook. Add to that a couple of phone calls, a couple of cards, lunch with friends, and an improvised cake+ice cream social with Is.'s neighborhood pals, and, well, turning thirty-five hasn't gone too badly. In fact, it has all in all been pleasant.

I would rather be tied up to stakes in the Kalahari Desert, have honey poured over me and red ants eat out my eyes than open a Twitter account. Is there anything you can say to change my mind?

My guess is that a honey-sweetened eye-flesh-eating episode would not bode well for the continuation of her syndicated column. Opening an account is worse than this? No. Dowd's position is ridiculous, and this hypothetical alternative to opening an account would prove painful and unwise. Nothing against red ants; I'd take Twitter over Dowd's daring stunt in the Kalahari any day of the week.

Manaugh basically identifies Twitter as a "note-taking technology" that can be put to many different uses. He might be right, but I don't think of Twitter as a note-taking technology exactly. I mean, if that's what it is, aren't there better ones? Second, Manaugh answers at length Dowd's comment about Twitter being designed "for bored celebrities and high-school girls," as he goes on to reframe Twitter as a tool for everyday writing. Finally, he compares Twitter to private journals. With this line of argument, he downplays the social aspects of @directed tweets and says he has no use for or interest in them. If you glance the entry's 70+ comments, you'll see there has been a fair amount of objection to this third point, perhaps the most dubious of his positions in response to Dowd.

For me, the gem in Manaugh's response was this:

You take short-form notes with it, limited to 140 characters. The clichéd analogy here has been with Japanese haiku, but perhaps we might even reference the Oulipo: in other words, Twitter means that you are writing, but you are writing within constraints.

I was well aware of the 140-character limit, even familiar with the analogy to a "less is more" aesthetics. But I hadn't heard of Oulipo, a group of French writers, thinkers, and artists, including Raymond Queneau, who worked at deliberately constrained projects. Queneau's Exercises in Style is perhaps the best-known example of a project produced according to this group's constraint-bounded undertakings. Thus, the suggested tie between Oulipo and Twitter sparked a few ideas for me. I've been thinking off and on lately about the relationship between style and technology because I will be teaching a pair of classes in the fall concerned with their intersection. Where style and its close counterpart genre introduce explicit constraint-affordance capacities, they are, arguably, technological, and I find this to be especially conspicuous with a platform like Twitter, even if I have not used it all that much. Because it is conspicuous, it might be a good place to first address the style-technology relationship. I mean that Twitter and its 140-character limit is a good, simple case for grasping style-technology interdependence. I want to say more about this, but I am short on time for now. The style-technology relationship, however, is going to be on my mind over the next couple of months.

One last point about Manaugh's answer to Dowd: I think they also stand as solid examples of the distinction Richard Lanham draws between strong and weak defenses. Dowd's is a weak defense, it seems to me, in that she gets caught up in a moralistic binary: her anti-Twitter way is superior to any other that would use Twitter at all, much less take it seriously, engage with it productively, and so on. Manaugh, on the other hand, leverages a strong defense because he allows for an unfolding process through which its uses will determine its many different values (also values yet-to-be). Both are worth holding onto for this reason, if not for the stuff on constraints.

I'll say more about the application and the article another time, perhaps, but all of this is a roundabout way of getting to the more pressing issue: because I re-installed CMap Tools, I also rediscovered an old, forgotten myscot wheel folder.  The myscot wheel is an idiosyncratic cluster of mascots from programs where I've worked and studied, a wheel because the figures are arranged in a circle. For just over two months, since mid-February, I've had cause to add to it, celebratory cause. 

The new, improved wheel gives it away. As the culmination of my job search, eight weeks ago I accepted a position for this coming fall as an Assistant Professor of English at Eastern Michigan University.  In addition to being so warmly welcomed by great colleagues and preparing for a job I look forward to starting, the move to Ypsi-Arbor later this summer also means something of a homecoming for me. I grew up in Michigan and have always referred to it proudly as home.

As tempted as I am to gush on, I'll refrain for now and instead loosely commit to a series--eventual entries on the position, on the courses I will be teaching in the fall, on the market and anything worth sharing about how I approached it. But there you have today's circuit: CMap Tools, an updated myscot wheel, and an upbeat announcement about joining EMU.

Right now I'm in the sunporch, grading. I would post about this to my Twitter account, but for this I need more than 140 characters. It's a longer trip all the way around these ideas I'm having.

Here are a few of the grades FERPA will allow me to share:

• B- to my deteriorated spelling skills. Here I thought "sun porch" was one word.
• Make that a C+ because I had to look up "measly."
• F to the cooling fan on my five-year-old Vaio laptop because it sounds like a motorboat engine. All the time. The Family Finances Committee says my new home computer is on the list of "Things To Buy When In 2018 We Get These Student Loans Paid Off." Fie!, fiscal conservatives!
• C- to the rest of the laptop for getting me this far. I mean it: thanks!
• C to the unsightly water-stained hole in the ceiling above my head. The exterior was repaired; the interior left like a monument to water damage, intact.
• A to family, except, why is nobody home right now to nudge me through these fits of procrastination?
• C- to Yoki, the dog so conflicted as to whine when inside because he wants out and to whine outside because he wants in. Any more whining and both of us will be crying. The C- also goes for that smell.
• B+ to the bug carcasses in the shaded corner on the indoor/outdoor carpeting.
• A to temperatures adequate to warrant grading in the sun porch on a Sunday afternoon.