Blog Colloquium

I spent all of today at the final event for Eng 794, the day-long colloquium. Basically, it was all twelve of us reading our final papers out loud. The individual papers were fine--and some, even some other than mine, were really good--but after number 10 or so, you just want to go home and not worry about what the self is any more.

My paper was on the expression of self in comic book blogs. I toyed with the idea of ending my presentation with a joke. Specifically, with this image:
It's probably best I didn't. But when will I ever get such a chance again?

A lot of people were saying they were glad to be done the course, myself included. A lot were also saying they had been really nervous about the presentation itself, which did not so include me. I kind of like presenting papers, to be honest. I love trotting out the oral skills and showing them off, even if calling them "skills" may be overstating them. I was the same way pretty much all through high school. It took me ten, fifteen minutes to work up the courage to strike up a conversation, but I'd perform in front of the entire school without thinking twice about it.

The presentation also marked the first time I used a powerpoint presentation. Given that I'm supposedly specializing in digital media, it seemed a wise course of action. I think that part went fine; I didn't have as many slides as other students, but quality over quantity, right? And while a picture may be worth a thousand words, a picture of the Punisher punching a polar bear is worth, like, six of those other pictures.

I found the bio blurbs the profs did before each session interesting; I've been in class with these students all year, and in some cases, this was the first chance I had to really hear their research interests and goals. A lot of the MAs are in it to make themselves more marketable. That still blows my mind: people come to U of Blank to get a marketable English degree. A marketable English degree. It... it just doesn't sound right. A healthy donut. A clean trash heap. A A smart rock. A marketable English degree.

I guess the last noteworthy thing about the colloquium is that I used it as an excuse to wear the full suit. Getting the whole thing to the university was a pain in the ass, especially on the bike, but it all held up remarkably well for spending the entire trip wadded into a ball in my bookbag. And honestly, I felt better wearing a suit. Cooler. More awesome. I totally get Barney Stenson now. (What, no How I Met Your Mother fans in the crowd?)
And how did the actual presentation go?
It was legend--wait for it--ary.


Later Days.

It's really Mr. Mandeville's fault for being so devilishly inscrutible.

It's been a while since the last post. Things have been busy--well, nationally, things have been busy. Yay! Canadian Politics are interesting! And the NDP matter! And though the pros and cons of that are worthy of their own post, my own busyness prohibits it. I leave on Saturday for Someplace Else, and I've been desperately trying to wrap up everything at Blank first. (Hey, typing Blank is easier than typing __________. What a shock.)

My marking for students is almost done--I've got about 8 assignments left to mark, and 5 of those are because the student in question hasn't handed them in. I can't remember the last time I was so entertained by my students' final essays. For the most part, they're a pretty sharp bunch, especially for a first year course. (Either I'm getting easy in my old age, or it's because it's a first year course full of fourth year students wanting to cross off their English elective.) And the essays have had some really, really awesome secondary sources. One managed to use Mein Kampf to draw a connection between propaganda and the US in a way that wasn't entirely inflammatory. (Just partially inflammatory, which is what happens when you mention Hitler. Ever. And I can't wait to see the interesting key-word searches this post will create.) Another used Baldwin's PETA video. I checked that out personally. I was expecting a happy-go-lucky fun-loving Baldwin, ala 30 Rock. That is not what I got. Most disturbing thing ever. Finally, one student writing about school discipline used a 1953 film designed for 8 year olds. This lead to a three hour marathon in which Person and friend watched the entire gamut of 50s educational films, from the weenie roasts in "What To Do on a Date" to the bold truth in "The Trouble with Women." Surprisingly, the male-oriented "As Boys Grow" was very accurate. The female "As Girls Grow" was not--ladies, remember that to be safe, you should avoid washing your hair when you're having your period. That's how it works, right? Sadly, since the student was using a 1953 film without either irony or historical context, it didn't really work for a university level paper.
My work for the blog class is done too; I'm ready for the presentation on Friday, slideshow and all. The slideshow will be an academic first for me, so I'm hoping it works well. I'm comparing one comic book blog that involved detailed, personal introspection and another that involved the Punisher punching a polar bear in the face. Which will the audience prefer?
The only thing not going well is my 18th century paper. It's 15-20 pages, and I've finished... um, well, I wrote an outline. *Cough*. Since I've given up on finishing that one by Saturday, the question now is how to minimize the number of books I need to take home. So far, I've winnowed it down to a mere fifteen.
...
Yeah, maybe I should go work on that instead of typing this.


Later Days.

What's Falling Out of My Pocket Now:

My friggin' cellphone. I spent hours today on campus retracing my steps looking for it, only to have my father send me an email saying that it's been picked up by campus police, and I'd have to come pick it up. So that's like a shaming in front of two separate authority figures.
The real kicker? As my brother pointed out, I had access to another phone. I could have phoned the cell. Instead, my thought process went so far as to reason: "I don't have a cell phone. I can't make phone calls." So, under this plan, my next step would be to obtain the grad student phone list, and call someone else to get them to phone my cellphone. (I needed the grad phone list b/c I didn't have any of the numbers, except on the cell phone.) I'll say it again: I reasoned that I couldn't make phone calls myself THEN I STARTED A PLAN CONTAINING THE STEP "CALL UP FRIEND ON PHONE." Gaahh.
Anyway, I got the phone back, and I went home. Between the phone debacle, and a frankly terrible mark in the blog class, it was a pretty down-south day. So, as per my prerogative, I am postponing my "Comic Book Wednesday" segment to Thursday.
But, Person, you say, how can it be Comic Book Wednesday on a Thursday?
Because I said so, that's why.
Now I excuse me while I spend the next 24 hours pondering why all my possessions seem to have a deep-seated urge to throw themselves away from me.

UPDATE: Aaaaaand Today's Tuesday, which means no comics anyway. Thank you and good night!
Later Days.

auto-semi-meta-quasi-ethnography

I've been throwing together an annotated bibliography--I mean, compiling the carefully selected evidence that I've been accumulating over the past three months--for the blog class all night. (Exciting Friday night madness!) And I came across this paper. For the nonlink clickers, it's basically a paper on how two scholars, Lilia Efimova and Andrea Ben Lassoued, became friends through the power of blogging, but through the lens of ethnography. First, a quick moment to show off. From what I've read in the past two days, Ethnography is a study of culture (ie. anthropology) that requires the ethnographer to participate directly in the rituals of the culture, as an outsider. And when the ethnographer crosses the line between outsider participation to insider, it becomes autoethnography. And the whole field is sort of an attack on the view that the only way to get any real knowledge is via the detached, separate scientist.
And that's where my "uncomfortable" factor starts to seep in. I've done a lot of autobiography and digital technology reading from this course, and one thing I've noticed is that both areas tend to involve personal narratives in a way that most other scholarly papers really don't. Being raised on the whole "there is no 'I' in essay" school of teaching (I'm totally claiming that phrase, and plan on unleashing it to year after year of undergraduate), I've got something of a problem with this approach. Maybe that's why I'm more comfortable analysing fiction--the defining trait about fiction is that it's not real, so it's easier to detach yourself from it, a bit.
Anyway, the Lassoued and Efimova essay struck me because, even in this area, it's a lot more personal than most, to the point where I felt like I was eavesdropping on a private conversation. They're basically articulating how and why they came to know each other. On the one hand, it's all slightly uncomfortable-feeling, but on the other hand, I appreciate that this is what it's all about: the way social and private and public and everything else can get blended together when people create new forms of communication. It's a paper documenting their relationship, but at the same time, it IS their relationship. Like this blog: it's writing about my life, but it also, in some hopefully not at all depressing way, IS my life.
Not to mention the more you study this sort of thing, the more it paralyzes you towards writing about it. Clearly, I'm going to have to do a half-dozen or so comic book reviews just to regain some perspective.
Hope everyone likes Wolverine!

Later Days.