My Writerly Blog

It comes down to this: I need funding. So. Very. Desperately. I'm teaching 7 classes this semester - and I have to design all the lessons for 5 of them. This is the amount of teaching I have to do in order to pay my fees. That's 9 hours of contact time a week. Add in the requisite 3 hours for every 1 spent in the classroom for prep and marking (for which I am NOT paid), and it's a full time job. At least. I'm exhausted. After marking 40 1st-years' short stories, I never want to see the written word again. And I have 20 more to go. I haven't even had time to think about my PhD studies all week. Five years - that's how long I'll have to keep this up if I have to self-fund the entire PhD. I should take a picture of myself now, the way they do US Presidents before they take office. They age about 50 years during their terms; I have a feeling I'll age at least 30. So I'm busting my ass to find funding, which is as plentiful for Americans in...

Second day of the conference, and what an interesting day it was. The schedule listed a slot at the very end for "prizes", which mystified us. Were there categories? Awards? Statuettes? I didn't know, so today I decided to award my own prizes based on my own arbitrary classifications. Awards included: -Most bizarre use of out-of-context visuals -Most enthusiastic/evangelistic about subject -Most in need of a lower primate prop -Most in need of screaming girls in the front row -Most creative "avoid having to actually talk" method -Most BS and pseudoscience packed into 15 minutes I think there were others, but they may have been too...er...adult-themed to post here. Anyway, I wound up taking first prize (official conference first prize, not my silly prizes for which there is no order) at the end of the day, sharing it with my fellow NIECI and New Media cohort (see our " Press Release "). Our supervisor will be stoked, and our Dir of P...

Gave my very first academic conference presentation today. It wasn't the best experience it could have been. The conference was put on by a student organization, and none of the organizers seemed to be very take charge. It was more as though they were absentee wedding planners – they planned the day, booked the room, and called the caterer, but they had no role whatsoever in the fall out of the events of the day. For the most part, they let the room fall fallow, the presenters to load their presentations onto the one computer willy-nilly. I was prepared, but I had to cue up a digital story to a certain point beforehand, and did so. Only to have an idiot of a keynote speaker trounce into the room as soon as I left and proceed to crash the computer. When I returned to try to sort out the problem, he treated me like a kindergartner and told me how many bajillion computers he runs all at the same time. BS. He couldn't even open his PowerPoint. He was a mixture of Tony Robb...

I gobble up two television shows like an addict in a heroin shop: Stargate Atlantis and House . I don't care about the plotlines - they're always the same, recycled from old scifi or old medical dramas. I don't even care about the token hot guys in each show (even if they do have Aussie accents and cool hair). What I love about these shows are the a-holes Rodney McKay and Gregory House. Rodney is a narcissistic, misanthropic, hypochondriac scientific genius. House is an anti-social, misanthropic, haunted medical genius. Frankly, I don't care what their jobs are. All I care about is the things they say. The things I always want to say, but feel the need to struggle to hold back (note I don't say I always hold back. I know who I am, people). If I were to meet either of these guys in real life, not three seconds would pass before I'd want to poke them in the eye. It's not like they'd be hilarious jerks to everyone else, and nice and chummy with me...

First, I'm not a computer geek. I'm an online geek. There's a big difference. Computer geeks are heroes, for one, because they can bring back my computer from the dead. They can read and write in obscure languages like ASCii and Java. If I asked, one could probably figure out why my HTML code for my labels is not working here. Online geeks are people who can use the computer, but can't talk to it or fix it or even know the difference between a motherboard and a wake board. We're like race car drivers who can't change their own oil. Half my friends are fully "online" friends, and I even met my husband online. I get all my entertainment on-screen; I don't even own a TV. News: internet. Phone: internet. Shopping: internet. But even so, I don't know much about software. And of course, the challenge I've set myself for this PhD is going to involve a lot of software. I can't create a digital novel unless I can create digital art, e...

I'm in school again. I'm a student. It's so cool, and yet so weird at the same time. I haven't really been a student in a long time. My Master's was an experience in "this is how it's done and I have little statuettes from academies, so everything I say is gold!" No debate, no real thought. But here, it's a good thing if you stand up and shout about what you think of something. It's a good thing if you tell the head of the department he's full of crap (as long as you can back it up, of course). I was in a class a couple of weeks ago, and we reviewed a rather crap journal article, IMO. Some felt it had merit merely because it was interesting, and we went back and forth, back and forth over what has value in our field, what other schools perceive about our research, etc. We all shouted over one another and made points and trotted out examples. I had an amazing time. In the induction week for postgrads, they kept telling us what a lone...

I finally got sick of it last week. Not being a postgrad myself, but hearing so many others whine about their experience while simultaneously not doing a darn thing about it. Note to PGs: no one in this department is psychic. Everyone in this department cares. Talk to them! NIECI is a brand-new department, barely out of diapers, really. Last year, they had a handful of PGs. This year they have over 40. That's a big adjustment, particularly when the department doesn't have dedicated administrators. Our head and director of PGs are both busy with their own research, in addition to running the department and helping all of us out with our studies. They've got a lot on their plates. I just kept hearing MA student after MA student (most in creative writing) complain about lack of direction, that they don't know what they're supposed to be doing, no one is teaching them, and they're wasting their money. Meanwhile, none is asking the department for help, or ev...