You Have: No Mail of Importance

I go through phases in my life where even though I am ostensibly living my life, largely doing things I want to do, working toward my stated goals as much as I know how to in my everyday actions, I still feel as if something else should happen. I check my mailbox, my email, waiting. I remember feeling this way for a specific period of time back when I lived in Chicago--this was before I had an email account--and I would addictively call and check my voicemail from work several times a day. Of course, then as now, the inbox, mailbox, voicemail is generally empty, the thrill of those messages that do arrive passes quickly, and the waiting resumes. What, what, am I waiting for?

I did get one rather exciting (for me) email last weekend, which was the announcement of a T.A. position in the Gender Studies department at USC. My first thought was that unless the job consisted solely of handing out scan-tron sheets in a lecture hall, I would be completely unqualified, but then, as I looked into it, I saw a lot of similarities between the classes I would T.A. for and ones I have taught at FSU, and the more I researched the field of gender studies, the more I think it would be a fun and interesting job, that I would probably like even better than teaching comp classes, because it looks like I would be responsible for more discussions and less grading of papers.

Thesis progress update:

March 27-31: None.
I was driving to Sarasota and visiting my parents--it's just impossible, for reasons it's hard to explain. However, did listen to The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Far From the Madding Crowd, so I'm a little less startlingly under-read than I was. What's up with Far from the Madding Crowd though? There was nothing at all in that book that even mentioned a madding crowd, although it does seem to take place in the country--but since there is no mention of a city, or even a crowd, it seems thematically random as a title. I always thought it would be a story about people who lived near madding crowds and either escaped them or dreamed of doing so. Of course, I never have looked up "madding" either, assuming it was an abbreviated version of "maddening." For all I know it could be a proper name--"you know that Madding crowd," but there was no-one name Madding in the book either. I'll have to ask Steve K.

April 1: Virtually none.
I got distracted by a PSA (Public Service Advertisement) that Paul had to turn in, and even though he didn't ask, I wrote the copy for it. I'll post the link when it goes up--another contest. If he wins, I'm in for 5% which would make me feel really productive.

April 2: None.
I spent the entire morning and most of the evening working on my Gender Studies cover letter, though I did do library research on the topic in the afternoon, and read books of the topic in the late evening, which is necessary, but not writing.