A Writer’s Diary Entries From Early October, 2002
Tuesday, October 1, 2002
9 PM. Thanks to Ambien, I slept well last night – but in some ways I felt slightly worse today.
The nausea and queasiness disappeared, but I was more congested, and my right ear ached. However, that could be from having a cold or from the cold medicine.
I had a pretty busy day, although it seemed as if I didn’t do all that much. But a lot of my job appears to be just being there, responding promptly to email, fielding questions, or simply talking to students, staff, and faculty.
I checked in with the ARP teaching assistants as they dropped off attendance sheets or passed me in the halls. I also schmoozed a lot, though I probably should be doing more of it with faculty upstairs.
But I did attend the noon faculty Table Talk, sitting in on Mark Padin’s article-in-utero about non-traditional law students, their learning styles, and the teaching styles they respond to best. So far, the article seems diffuse, but it spurred an open-ended discussion about law professors’ usual suspects.
It seems that now that one of Steve Friedland’s research assistants found the scoring sheets that Steve had mislaid, he still has this idea that he and I are going to return the scored orientation writing exercises to the students next month.
Doubting the pedagogical value of returning the exercises to the students, I will stall Steve and call on Jane to back me up. I got Jane to call a meeting of the ARP committee to discuss what to do about the results of these exercises.
My opinion is that the exercises were never well-considered to begin with, but we should at least think about whether what we’ve got are in any way reliable predictors of how people will do in law school.
Today the usual pain-in-the-ass students I see regularly were the usual pains in the ass; luckily, they’re few in number, though sometimes they seem to predominate.
When I went to her office to pick up my sick leave form to fill out, Paula Habib said, “You still look sick.” That’s probably because I still am sick.
Later, Meg Chandelle stopped by for half an hour to chat. She told me that in 2000, both she and Debra were turned down for LSV professorships; Debra later got hers because the other candidates decided to go elsewhere.
My palms have been sweating all evening.
Wednesday, October 2, 2002
It’s only 7 AM, but I need to write. I barely slept and woke up with diarrhea and nausea. I still feel sick, and I’m so tired of being ill. My palms are still sweating.
Is this nausea, like the nausea I got as a teenager, a product of nerves? But I’m not having panic attacks. I’m feeling so disgusted.
*
11 AM. I went to work, then to the NSU clinic, then back to work, and then I felt so sick that I had to return home.
This feels like the worst day of my life. I felt so nauseated I had to walk out in the middle of a talk on the Faculty Terrace by Karen Doering, an LGBT lawyer from Equality Florida; I hope that everyone didn’t think my behavior was rude.
The nausea comes in waves. It will disappear for a while, and then, all of a sudden, it recurs. At the clinic, a resident prescribed Compazine, saying I probably have a virus.
Of course, I already had Phenergan. I took it this morning, and it didn’t do much good. I’ve never known a stomach virus to last this long.
Am I cracking up? It seemed in so many ways that the worst was behind me after I found out I’d passed the bar exam. I was getting oriented to the fall semester.
I guess it would be scarier if this isn’t a stomach virus. But while it would be terrible if it were something more serious, it wouldn’t be good even if it were psychosomatic.
The resident said it’s possible I have two viruses at once: an upper respiratory infection and a norovirus.
I weighed only 136 at the clinic, which is really thin for me.
I felt better on Monday and certainly yesterday. I guess I do feel like there’s at least one virus still in my system.
*
7:20 PM. Dad is sick, too.
He was fine last night when I told him that Aunt Sydelle’s doctor found cardiac arrhythmia and that she had to wear a heart monitor and go in for an echogram and other tests.
Dad and I joked around and reminisced about Brooklyn. (I’d sent him an email, “You know you’re from Brooklyn if…” that was originally forwarded by Mark Savage’s father.)
But during the night, Dad felt weak and nauseated and had chills, and in the morning, he had a fever of 103°. It soon went down to 102°, and finally his temperature was normal by noon.
Dad refused to let Jonathan take him to the doctor, but I’m quite worried about him.
We’ve become closer than ever before in the past year, and at this point I would take his death very hard, harder than I would have taken it if he’d died of that heart attack five years ago.
As for myself, I’ve had waves of nausea and tried to vomit by sticking my finger down my throat, but I couldn’t do it.
Friday, October 4, 2002
9:30 PM. Last night I slept soundly for eight hours, although I woke up with a bad headache at 3 AM and then again for good at 6 AM.
I think I’ve developed sinusitis from the cold, but it’s a lot easier to deal with than the constant nausea, which seems to have disappeared. I took my last Phenergan pill when I woke at 3 AM, and I haven’t been nauseated ever since.
My head is congested, and though I may not recover without antibiotics, eventually I will be okay.
More importantly, Dad is okay, although he needs to watch himself very carefully over the next week and go to the hospital at the first sign of fever.
Today the doctor gave him two more shots of antibiotics and told him that he healed a bit overnight. Dad could have very well lost his leg to the infection.
It was Mom who was smart enough to notice the connection between Dad’s foot rash and his fever, and she was right.
When I spoke to Dad tonight, he sounded all right. He said he’d just spoken to Sydelle, who was crying and complaining just the way she had to me last night. She’s ready to die as long as she doesn’t have to suffer, she insists, and certainly nobody will care that she’s gone, she says.
I had a pretty good day at work. I can see that a lot of the time I can do my own thing as long as I take care of business when it’s necessary, and I do that.
Pat returned my leave of absence form for the sick days with “Don’t be silly!” scrawled over it. She said I put in enough time so that I don’t have to report those sick hours.
I conferred with Joe Harbaugh by email about the orientation exercises, and he said to leave it to Steve and the faculty.
It’s almost as if, having done the exercise he was so hot to get started on, Joe is now bored by it. That seems to be a classic trait of visionary leaders.
Next week I have all kinds of meetings with students, and of course on Monday I’ve got my workshops on outlining, which I’ll need to prepare for during the day.
Two weeks from today will already be the mid-semester break.
Although my sweaty palm symptoms have returned, I felt no discernible anxiety today. I’m starting to realize just how comfortable my life is, especially with my job so close to where I live.
I probably know and socialize with more people now than I did at any of my other jobs except for those at Long Island University, Broward Community College, and the University of Florida. At Nova Law, I’m part of a community where people know me and where I have a role.
Remember how wonderful I felt when I hung out in LaGuardia Hall during my undergraduate years at Brooklyn College, where I seemed to know everybody. The year in grad school at Richmond College was different, but I knew a bunch of people and also felt at home there.
Actually, now that I think about it, the first community I felt a part of was the summer bungalow colonies of Rockaway, with all my relatives around me and all the other extended families of Lincoln Court.
In my junior high school days, I also felt part of a community, as my classmates and I moved together from 7SPE2 to 8SPE2 to 9SPE2 over three years.
After that, high school was a shock – the way moving to Arizona was a shock after the cocoon of Nova’s undergraduate college during my time as an adjunct and one year as a visiting professor.
Undoubtedly, one day I’ll move on from NSU Law, but right now it seems like a good place for me.
The administration hasn’t asked me about the progress of my bar application, so it looks as if all the school wanted was for me to simply pass the Florida bar exam, and that’s done.
Tomorrow’s Parents and Partners Day, and if I feel okay, I’ll be there.
Saturday, October 5, 2002
Last night I fell asleep at 11 PM but couldn’t sleep past 4 AM.
This morning the queasiness returned, though it never turned into horrible nausea and it went away by late afternoon. But I did have hours of sweaty palms and feet.
Whether its cause is physical or psychological, I hope this nausea isn’t going to be a long-term thing.
The first feeling of nausea came over me as I ate a plain toasted bagel at Barnes & Noble around 8:45 AM. I’d spent the previous hour drinking Calm (chamomile) tea at Starbucks and reading the paper.
Although I still felt queasy at 10 AM, I went over to school for Parents and Partners Day.
The first hour, I stood in on Steve Friedland’s presentation, and I was called on to help with some skits and discussions.
The second hour, I went over to see Billie Jo and Debra, who said she was impressed that I diagnosed Micah as ADHD. She told me that Micah is gay and that he seems to spend a lot of the time at the clubs and “is very caught up in that world.”
Billie Jo and I talked for a long time. She told me that when she and her husband moved to Fort Lauderdale so she could attend Nova Law School, she had already been a director of a public library with two master’s degrees.
I went home for lunch, where, despite the nausea, I ate what I normally do, and then returned to campus and went out to the tables and booths that were set up under a tent.
The various student organizations were there, and of course so were all the people from the student government. I saw Yassir, Casey, and Craig, and I mingled with the first-year students.
I met the parents of that student, Joe, who broke down crying in my office, and I could tell from the interactions between them that he’s very much a little boy.
The other set of parents I met were Gautam’s. The father is a doctor, and I think the mother may be one as well.
Norma, the lawyer from Venezuela – or is it Colombia? – was there, and I also spoke to Dina, the lawyer from Jordan, her husband, and their adorable 15-month-old son Muhammad.
As I wrote to Joe Harbaugh yesterday, we really need to do something more to help the foreign lawyers who have ESL problems.
Terttu, the Finnish woman who’s in her second year of the program, says her summer grades of B+ got her GPA above 2.0, which is good.
I watched people try to hit the target on the dunking booth. Richard was the only one who I saw who managed to do it, although I don’t know who the girl was who got dunked.
Chatting more with Debra, I learned that before starting last year as an LSV professor, she had worked at NSU Law on a project involving public interest law founded by the Florida Bar Foundation, and when that folded, she set up a similar office in Career Services back when Pat was heading that department.
I’m sure that Pat was glad to see me there today. Linda Lahey and Janet Masseri sat with Pat, and I also saw Mike Richmond, Linda Harrison, and Jessica walking around.
At home after 2 PM, I watched the Cuban film Bitter Sugar, and then I wrote out 25 checks for credit card bills going to the end of the month. I’m barely making a dent in my debt, and I only manage because I keep borrowing more and cash advances.
Eventually this will have to catch up with me – but I’m not going to deal with it now.
After dinner, I went back to the office, intending to read the Sunday New York Times online.
My vision was blurry, though I did notice that if I put my glasses down my nose, I could see clearly, so I assume my eyesight is just changing with age. Hopefully, I will see the monitor better if I take my reading glasses to work.
I printed out some front-page Times stories as well as articles from a special magazine section about New York City and how it has changed and not changed since 9/11.
Aunt Sydelle would like me to visit her tomorrow, but I don’t want to drive to Aventura while I’m still feeling queasy.
Monday, October 7, 2002
9 PM. I just got home from work.
The good thing about living so close to campus is that just fifteen minutes ago I was holding my workshop on outlining for the evening students, and now I’m in my shorts and t-shirt.
I spent most of the morning preparing for my outlining workshops. Although I still don’t think I’m very good at this, today only one person walked out early.
As a law student – and I can’t admit this to the students – I don’t ever recall making my own outline. Instead, I relied on second-year students’ outlines or no outline at all.
Although I still have sweaty palms, at least I didn’t feel nauseated today. Dr. K would say the diaphoresis is a fight-or-flight response and that, for some reason, my body is experiencing stress.
Aside from preparing my workshops, I did other law school work, although I had time to email Mark B and Sat Darshan.
Joe Harbaugh has bought the PLI material on the MBE and MPRE for the 3Ls. We’re going to ask the students for a nominal fee of $15 to receive the package.
Since I was the person who most recently used it – back in April and early May, before my bar review classes began – I will do a workshop on it.
But of course, I hope the students preparing for the bar exam will be doing a great deal more than just passively reading PLI’s numbingly boring outlines.
There’s no substitute for doing multiple-choice questions and writing practice essay answers on the material.
In my NSU email, I got a letter from Sara Constantakis, the coordinator of the Contemporary Authors Autobiographies at the Gale Group. She invited me to write an autobiographical essay for CA:
“Each essay, illustrated with personal photographs provided by the author, blends personal remembrances with reflections on individual works in a way that provides both new insights for the researcher and student and lively reading.”
They want original unpublished essays of 10,000 words (about 40 manuscript pages), and I’ll have to give them six to eight “personal photos with the significant people, places and events” of my life.
I will get “$1,000 on acceptance, a complimentary copy of the volume of Contemporary Authors in which the autobiography appears, the exposure, and the right to use the essay later – maybe as part of a book.”
I called Sara, who’s going to send me a contract, more details, and a sample essay, though tonight in the university library before my workshop, I looked at the last three volumes of CA and skimmed seven or eight of the essays.
Hey, it’s like being asked to write my life story. I can have until January or whenever I want. I see myself completing it in Phoenix over Christmas.
This is the best career news I’ve had all year, and I’m excited about it. For a change, I’m being treated like a writer.
Maybe I’ll write about my diary or discuss agoraphobia or my childhood.
Hey, I could really do my memoirs finally. It will be horrendous but exciting.
Wednesday, October 9, 2002
7:30 PM. I feel a lot better than I did a week ago, when I was horribly sick, but I’m also still feeling tired. Back in the 1940s, they would have said I had no “pep.”
I didn’t get to sleep till after midnight, so even sleeping until 6 AM didn’t help much.
After lying in bed for an hour, I forced myself to work out to a Body Electric tape.
Once again, I was busy for most of the day at the office, though I had only one appointment: with Robbie, this dreamy-looking dark blond 2L, to advise him about course selection next term.
At noon, along with Mark Rohr, Phyllis, Kathy, Lisa, Tracy, and Frank, I went to a Faculty Forum on email led by Stephen. He showed us some Microsoft Outlook tricks I didn’t know.
Billie Jo dropped off the new PLI MPRE disc, which of course reminds me that I’ve got to start studying for that test soon.
I also added a bit to the end of the letter Joe is sending to the 3Ls about the PLI software. Pat said that my presentation on it could wait until November.
Mark Padin came by after I asked him how much I could help Norma with her memo without going against the Honor Code. He wasn’t sure.
More than ever, I’m convinced we have to do something for the foreign attorneys with ESL problems. Mark suggested they could have reduced class loads.
As an LSV professor, he’s feeling burdened by all the grading and preparation work that the classes require. To me, teaching Lawyering Skills and Values is no life. It’s akin to being a full-time English composition instructor.
Teresa emailed that the Fair Harbor firefighters’ dinner went well, though this year they got “only one lobster each.”
She enjoyed the job so much that it reminded her of how much she used to like doing catering, so she’s going to send out a mailing to her old customers and see if she can get some parties again – just not on Fire Island. Teresa already has some jobs lined up for December.
Mark Bernstein advised that I probably shouldn’t do just “a straight autobiographical essay” for Contemporary Authors. But I hadn’t planned on doing anything experimental because I know Contemporary Authors and the kind of thing they want.
I may skip around in time in my essay, but I’d also like to tell the story of my life as a writer.
Last night I got Mom to tell me about how, when she paused in reading The Tawny Scrawny Lion and other Golden Books, I’d step in and recite the next words from the text.
I also asked Mom for details about her story of when I was two and a half and wrote my first word, Tide, which I’d seen on a detergent commercial on TV.
Mom said that Dad is now okay, but that I wouldn’t recognize the house now that they’ve had to put foam everywhere because of China’s blindness.
The poor old dog also pees all over the place now. China eats three times a day and goes out only into the backyard.
I really want to be back in Arizona to see my family, though I’m not sure China will be alive in mid-December.
Leaving the office at 5 PM, I lay down for about 45 minutes before making myself dinner. Then I settled down to read the newspaper.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my abnormally high red blood count on the test the doctors did. I’ve read all about the overproduction of red cells and the problems they can cause.
I guess I’m not going to fear dying young anymore. With my finances the way they are, I’ve often said that dying young is really my only retirement plan.
When I thought I might have prostate or testicular cancer, I was more worried about the horrors of chemotherapy or radiation than the disease itself.
I guess I have a good chance of having a stroke because of my thick blood. I don’t want to be disabled, but at least I could stop working, and hopefully I could get disability benefits to live modestly on.
Now I don’t expect to live as long as I’d thought I would, and that’s almost okay by me. Imagine not having to deal with anxiety.
Once I looked forward to a very long life, but at this point I feel so tired that living another twenty years seems like too much. I’ll probably die in my sixties, which still gives me a good deal of time.
For now, I’ll see if Dawson’s Creek is on at 8 PM tonight and then I’ll get it to bed after that. Hey, my habits are already those of an octogenarian.