polyglot conspiracy

I have not been posting lately because

a) I took too many classes for actual credit this semester. One involves scatterplot matrices and interaction plots that I am only borderline comfortable with looking at; one involves quizzes (I know, I know…yes apparently grad students do still have quizzes, sometimes) about specific details of the cochlea, auditory filters, frequency masking, etc.; one requires that I continue working on my qualifying paper research, meaning: producing tangible academic products from said research.

b) I’ve got a lot of papers to grade for the class I’m grading for, which is right up my alley, “Language in the Mass Media.” The class is awesome; Robin Queen is awesome; grading is awesome but tiring.

c) Due to [b] I am also required to take a fourth class, which is supposed to teach me the best way to teach students to write, but really teaches me how awful it sometimes is when a bunch of grad students who have to grade undergrad writing get together and bitch about it.

d) I am on the organizing end of this. Thank god for Kevin. (The other day I learned from a friend that in the department of History here at UMich, grad students are not required to do departmental service. Meaning, they don’t sit on committees, they don’t have to organize department-wide events, they don’t have to plan recruitment activities for the department’s admissions cycle, they don’t have to go to meetings or generally worry about things getting done. Now, in general, don’t get me wrong, I *love* the structure of our department, and I think it’s absolutely critical that grad students are allowed and encouraged to get involved in professional-type activities at the departmental level. But sometimes, like, um, right now, not having to do anything seems really, REALLY appealing.)

e) I am one of many people doing my share to try to win our union a better contract, one that sets our pay at an amount that is actually sufficient for living in Ann Arbor, recognizes the needs of parents who are in graduate school, and doesn’t pay grad employees who work fewer hours less per hour than people who work more hours. Oh and also one that secures affordable healthcare for all grad students, including increased access to mental health care (which all grad students need) and physical therapy (which most grad students will, at some point, need, what with all the typing and all). So far the university hasn’t responded positively (or really responded at all) to any of our asks, which you can read about here. This sucks up a lot of my time, but it’s one of the most important things I can be spending my time doing right now, so I’m pretty ok with the tradeoff.

f) I am trying to maintain a social life that keeps me happy.

g) Michigan winters don’t motivate me to do very much.

So that’s all. I guess I wrote this because I’ve been really bothered this semester by how little I’ve posted, because writing here is actually something that I feel contributes a lot to my identity (believe it or not). I don’t like telling people I have a blog and then knowing that if they go to look at it it will look like I’m neglecting it. This semester just hit me like a freight train - I’ve felt mostly overwhelmed and sometimes in control, and my brain just isn’t feeling as clever lately. But I’m still reading all y’all in the LBS (new hip faux-initialism for linguablogosphere??).

One thing I do have to say pertains to “a recent piece by Nicholas D. Kristof as just one instantiation of the unbelievably essentialist media coverage/commentary of the Democratic campaign so far: Way to reify. Awesome. Just what we need.

[I was going to title this post "Excuses and complaints," but it sounded weird. Is it always better to start with a word that starts with a stop/consonant rather than a vowel? Or is it the syllable structure?]