Nancy's Musings

In a struggle to decide how to plough into Monday's lesson on confronting intellectual difference to my English classes, I followed a string of YouTube videos explaining Sartre's mauvais foi s, " bona fides ," and other angles into bad faith and bad faith argumentation (which are clearly related, but not necessarily the same thing). I also came across this blog article on bad faith reasoning and masculinity. A long time ago, I wrote a series of difficult articles talking through the Young Women Values (part of the youth education program in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when I was a teenager). In that series I described Integrity as more than simple fiscal honesty, as presenting ourselves in realistic ways and unifying our internal identity and our external presentation of ourselves. If you forget that I'm talking about character virtues, it starts to sound a lot like trying to act in Good Faith. It also sounds a lot like this article by Micha...

 I read the poem "The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot to myself on April 1st, and recorded it. I'm not the best reader, but I love reading poetry aloud. And really good prose. It feels good in my mouth. If you need a nap, feel free to listen! https://anchor.fm/nancy-roche/episodes/T-S--Eliots-The-Wasteland-eu9hed

 As a teacher, I have certain obligations to my students to provide the desired and sometimes paid-for education at a level of quality they can respect, as it becomes part of their professional identity. As a college undergraduate, I struggled to respect my education, and therefore I understand the harm that such flaccidity enacted upon the institution and myself. Institutional respect should not be based solely on tuition costs or enrollment standards; the first of these criteria being more or less arbitrary (although rates of professor pay will make noticeable differences in a field overall), and the latter being frequently restricted by familiarity with western cultural norms and neurotypicality. The other primary tensions on traditionally defined rigor are kindness and inclusivity. I believe rigor and kindness are interrelated, and are ultimately a false dichotomy. Academic rigor comes from holding students' work to unconditional standards reflective of their scholastic experie...

 I LOVE ghost stories. They overwhelm my podcast queue. I've read the complete works of M. R. James , and the short ghost stories of E. F. Benson . I read Shirley Jackson , Charlotte Perkins Gilman , Sheridan LeFanu , Tananarive Due , Charles Dickens, Ambrose Bierce , Shakespeare, etc. I prefer frightening stories, subtle stories, and ominous atmospheres. I turn my nose up at the more sentimental of tales, and embrace the gothic Christmas Eve traditions. And naturally, since I love them, my next impulse is to write them. But here's the rub: I don't believe in ghosts. Theologically, ghosts indicate something beyond an afterlife (or pre-mortal existence, if you go for the REALLY cheesy). One of my Shakespeare professors pointed out the role that ghosts played for Shakespeare, at a time when England was being violently whipped between Catholicism and Protestantism, and had become spiritually burned out. Ghosts, he posited, are distinctly Catholic, because they come from a plac...

 My Facebook peeps already know about this, and you're being awesome, I assure you. But this is gonna be a thing with me, and I'm sorry. But it is. This song, by the Arrogant Worms, has been a favorite of mine for many, many years, but I have never felt it quite as deeply in my sads as I do this year. I did not accomplish much. Anything, really. But I didn't die this year, which (what number are we up to? 350,000 Covid-19 deaths?) lots and lots of people can't say. Y'all know I can gripe about being underemployed. That has shifted in a direction, but still remains in force. I can gripe about being single, although some days, the more men I talk to, the better I feel about being single/Never married, because I just. . . some people's exes. . . I feel for them. Solidarity, sisters. And then there's the "happy Mormon" option of counting blessings/vomiting gratitude. I mean - I have no problems with happiness, and seriously NO problems with gratitude! ...

 Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I leave my classroom feeling certain that I have said something that will end my career*. I think through everything I said. I gloss through each chatty or digressive moment. I flinch and gasp as I drive home, wondering what people who see my face must think of me, grimacing to myself.** I have said things I shouldn't have, and the consequences were catastrophic professionally, personally, and interpersonally. Consequences are necessary, but must they necessarily be nuclear? I needed to learn to see things from my students' perspectives, to understand how to make the room safe for learning. Not all of us come by that knowledge instinctively, and not everybody's primary discourse is conducive to teaching. But what is the point of learning if my supervisor says, "You're not going to try to teach again, are you," inflecting it as a recommendation rather than a question? What could I have said? I agreed that it wasn't for m...

 I feel like I blog about dating a lot. I think it's because I lost the journal I usually use to write out my experiences and feelings about the guys. I do apologize if I'm boring both of my readers. So mixed in with the general male rejection of me, which is to be expected and isn't a thing I'm worried about correcting at the moment, another pattern is beginning to emerge: men who date like fireworks - it explodes pretty for a few minutes, and then fizzles and dies. Covid still exists. It's by parts mundane and overwhelmingly horrifying, and there's not really a way to predict which will happen to any one person. It causes brain damage, permanent heart damage, and fatigue in otherwise healthy individuals who may or may not experience symptoms. I'm willing to take precautions to avoid it, and the fewer precautions the public takes, the more I am willing to avoid everybody else. Many men express a preference for in-person contact, and normally, I'd agree ...