The Days are Long, But the Weeks are Short

What happens if you drink two breves and eat a severe amount of Greek yogurt all in one day? You have a moment of near emesis in your 2.5 hour evening class that forces you to reconsider your life choices. But I’m doing what I can here. I’m getting by, even if I don’t always feel the most comfortable with the way my thighs feel when they rest against each other or love the way that my stomach looks when I sit down. Saskia and I are braving the ozempidemic together, and I’d like to share some thoughts with you that I shared with her the other morning on my walk to class when I found myself being overly-critical of how my body moved with each step: “I am a woman. My boobs are supposed to bounce when I walk, they’re not naturally going to be perky and perfectly proportional and always look right. They’re natural. My hips and legs aren’t supposed to be tiny and narrow because they carry me everywhere and allow me to be a functioning, active person. My arms need meat on them to write and study and serve and take care of myself. My body is not meant to be tiny. My frame is not built that way – I’ve been that; it looked ghastly.”

 

So, in saying that, how does one actually internalize that belief? How does one step outside of the parameters society has set for women and not always perceive themselves through the lenses of others? I know I truly mean all of those things I sent Saskia, but at the same time on my walk to get a coffee today I saw a man look directly at my stomach, and my jerk reaction was to think about how he probably noticed that it wasn’t perfectly flat under the waistband of my shorts. First of all, why do I care? Also, in a matter of seconds, I realized that I had negated all of the things I had told myself only the morning before by perceiving myself through the eyes of this man (who also probably didn’t even think about my stomach at all), and by being so harsh to myself about how I look for absolutely no other reason than having internalized the idea that my stomach doesn’t look how it “should.” This shit didn’t ruin my walk, but it ruined about 8 steps of it. The inner turmoil reminds me of W.E.B Dubois’s “double consciousness.” It's just one of many reminders of the pervasiveness of patriarchy. It also makes me feel like I should get rid of all of the mirrors in my house.  

 I was listening to Dashboard Confessional on my walk too. A better part of the walk. :D

Oh well, what can you do? The shapes and sizes of our bodies have to be the least interesting things about us as humans. How we handle them is interesting. Do you have tattoos? Why did you cut your hair that way? Are you super in shape and into running, cross fit, etc.? Why do your hands look like that? Are they passed down from your mother and grandmother like mine?

Bodies are so cool, but they’re only cool separately from patriarchal desire and oppression.

The essential question is: How can I stop projecting that patriarchal desire and oppression onto myself as I try and exist as a healthy woman? It’s hard because we’re swimming in a cesspool of it. Our heads are above water and capable of rationalizing clearly, but our bodies are under, under, under, with that filthy, invasive water in every fold of skin, every hole, every nail bed. Every now and then some creeps into the ear, like a poison. Keep treading, keep fighting the good fight ladies.

I also come to you with an exhaustion that can only be defined as fall semester: week 3 of 15. Tonight’s after work activity is a trip to Walmart where I will be buying a twin bell alarm clock that will sit right beside my head as I sleep. There are never enough hours in the day, and so what must be sacrificed is sleep! I’ve never been a nap person, and honestly, I’ve never really been one to care about how much sleep I get, but every morning when I wake up having gotten around 5 hours of sleep, I have this one recurring thought, “You get to sleep again tonight,” that sort of involuntarily forms as I sit on my bed and stare out my window. I think that it’s my brain’s way of bargaining with itself, like, “If you get up now and do what you have to do, you can come back later and turn off again.” Which is funny to me when I think about it after I’ve actually gotten up and out of the bed. I go to sleep most every night excited to wake up and for the next day to start. I think the thought is just a way to pacify the screaming exhaustion I feel as I sit up on low-sleep and take stock of all of the things I need to get done for the day.

I teach at 9 a.m. this semester and I am very much enjoying the experience. I don’t know how the tone of this post is reading to someone not in my brain, but I’d say that the exhaustion thing – while maybe sounding weepy – was meant to be more of a poke-fun-at-myself type of thing because after the first 2 minutes of being awake in the mornings, I am filled with that same sense of humble gratitude that I’ve had ever since starting school here. I am so lucky to lose sleep over my education, and I am so lucky to be a part of a school that is so challenging and wonderful. Wondering, now, if maybe the institution has pulled a fast one on me and if I’ve just blindly bought into the problematic parts of life in academia? I don’t know, no time right now to dwell on that.

 

My first experience teaching has been very fun and very trying. It’s been challenging to a new degree and made sore a whole new set of muscles that I knew were there, but that I hadn’t ever used in this way before. I have been enjoying, on a very deep level, getting to know my students – who they are as people, who they are as writers, and who they are as thinkers. The more comfortable they have gotten in class, the more I have felt like I could relax my shoulders as I stand in front of them. Teaching is a performance. Ideally, it is an authentic one. It's not a performance of authority or expertise, but more of a performance of thought and narrativity to some degree. One of my professors said this morning:

I try to “equally butcher everything as long as I’m doing it correctly.”

That, I feel, is a pretty accurate representation of my (and the rest of my friends’) thoughts on how this teaching experience is going. Ideally, yes, I’d love to be perfect and send my students out the door every morning with some life-altering epiphany, but let’s be real. That will not happen. But there are small, important epiphanies every day because we are all (me included!) learning from eachother. So, I have been focusing on those. One student told me that my class was their favorite. They don’t know that that comment will probably sustain me for the rest of this grueling semester. Other students have stuck around after class to ask me interesting questions or share ideas that they felt like connected to our readings. They also probably don't realize that those small things, those curiosities that they feel are important enough to stick around after class for, are the exact reason that I am doing what I am doing, that their questions bring me so much joy, excitement, and purpose because they are being intentionally curious. Curiosity is the backbone of everything. I wrote about that in maybe my first post ever on here and am just now circling back to it like I said I would. By being curious, those students are giving me and trusting me with an opportunity to share knowledge with them. Knowledge that has transformed my life and my writing; knowledge that I know can, and hope will, do the same for them. Obviously, their job as students isn't to make me happy on a personal level; I'm just saying that these feelings are a byproduct of their learning in my role as their teacher. They care. And I am so happy that they do. I really love my class, and I hope that it continues to go well.

Being a part of a community of peers who are also experiencing the same challenges, questions, and joys and who are eager to talk about them is another part of this experience that is invaluable to me. Not struggling through the discomfort alone has been a lifeline for me. I love everyone in our department. Truly, I mean that. And I am already grieving the fact that in about 7 months our time together in this specific way will be over. I think about A.R. Ammons’s “Eyesight” and cry pretty often. I am so proud of everyone, and I am so thankful to know them.

 

UVA English Graduate Students

On another note, also on the topic of teaching, I found myself in a situation the other day where an individual asked me how much I was being paid by the university, semi-rude and pretty personal question I feel, and they were asking it in the context of, “Why do you still work at Burton’s if you’re getting paid by UVA?” The subsequent question was when they asked what specific amount I'm being paid. And I know everyone is different when it comes to how they feel about discussing money, but I just don’t really enjoy it. I don’t really care about money in some ways, but in other ways I understand why it feels like a private thing. There’s no apples to apples comparison between two people’s financial situation, and I think that’s what makes me avoid it because there’s simply no purpose behind knowing. We’d just be talkin’ to talk, and we can just as easily talk about somethin’ else. The questions were also being framed as if this person thought that I just came to work for shits and giggles, and that it was like that Monday night I found myself with free time on my hands so I decided to come into work. I awkwardly kept trying to side step the question about the amount and give an answer that conveyed that while I love working at Burton’s, I am here out of necessity and I have to literally create time, and sacrifice time to work here in order to just... be a normal, independent person. And as much as I find work to be a nice break from school and a place where I experience joy, it is time that no matter how well I try to budget it in will mean that something for school will have to give, whether it's sleep or reading time or the precious hours I spend at night working on things without the pressure of being anywhere. I prioritize my job at Burton's and it's not this flippant thing that I do only when I feel like it. I don't know why the question bothered me so much, but I reluctantly ended up telling them how much I made because, at a certain point after all the pushing, I didn't care. I felt like without telling them the egregiously low amount, they weren't going to understand why the question of, "Why do you still work here?" hit me funny.

 

Now, I didn’t say all of this to them, I just kind of awkwardly said the amount. In hindsight, I could have also probably gotten my point across while still omitting the specific amount I’m being paid, but it’s on the damn UVA website, so who really cares? So, I told them the amount and they said: “That is a lot. That much when you’re only teaching 3 times per week? And you spend probably, what, 3 hours getting ready for each class period? That’s only 15 hours per week.” ....

 

I felt a little bit like Kathleen Kelly in "You’ve Got Mail" when I walked away from that conversation because I didn’t say anything particularly sharp back to that. Instead, I actually just fucking agreed with them (I’m laughing) because when they… You know what? It was a man, of course it was a man… When he did his little math right there in front of me, I was like, “Huh, yeah I guess it is a lot for 15 hours of work.” But it’s not 15 hours of work! And I knew that. I don't know why I didn't say that. I don't know how I would have explained the labrynth that is a graduate program to this man, but I should have said fucking something. The "teaching" is maybe 15 hours on paper, but I think, then, that that's a pretty narrow view of what goes into teaching. It’s not a process that switches off when I leave the classroom and that I turn back on when I sit down to lesson plan. I think about it all the time, I reflect all the time, I constantly read and give feedback on my students’ writing, I spend extra time reading materials that don't ever even make it to the lesson plan in order to decide what I want to do and use. Those 3 hours he accounted for for prep don't account for the unit planning. The amount of time it takes to conceptualize a unit, constantly assess where it's going, if we're headed in the right direction, what do I need to begin doing now in order to prepare my students for things we will do down the road? Hardly any of that takes place in that 3 hour block, that's just how long it takes me to make the slides and structure the class period for the next day. Meanwhile, I also take my own classes. This year of my program is funded, sure. I knew exactly how much I would be paid when I applied to the program; I am by no means complaining. But to imply that I'm being overpaid is quite funny to me. Not working a job outside of school for me and many of my friends is completely unrealistic if you don't have additional fellowships or scholarships, especially with the cost of living in Charlottesville. Also, the program is set up that way with the funding because I will write my thesis this year. I will research and write in order to publish through the university while also teaching. The thesis on average takes 3-6 months of intensive research and work. Distill that with your numbers, sir. Let me know then that I'm being overpaid.

 

I say all of this because that interaction rubbed me the wrong way. We've talked a lot in class about how some teachers make a martyr out of themselves. It's insufferable, and that is exactly not what I am trying to do here. I just think that it's a job where it’s hard to quantify the hours put into it, whereas with a job like Burton’s I work from 4:30-11:00, go home, and don’t think about work again until I put the smelly shirt back on. It’s just different. And his math and the fucking bewilderment on his face pissed me off because I could tell that it seemed like a far greater amount than what he felt like was deserved. It reminds me too of when a customer at Burton’s told me he used to be the lead surgeon at UVA and that I should know that it’s, “people like us (Medicine and Science) that fund your department so you guys can do what you do,” – spit right up at me as he inclined his head, and still somehow spoke from straight down his nose.

 

No more money talk. I’m sorry if this post has seemed whingy. Things are good, I hope you are good, and I hope you’re all enjoying the anticipation of fall. My GESA partner and I are organizing a book sale for October… spooky themed. HEHE

 

xx

 

Olivia

The Courtyard at Ridley