A Writer’s Diary Entries From Late August, 2000
Monday, August 21, 2000
7 PM. I survived the first day of teaching at ASU, just as my students – nearly or all of them – survived their first day as undergraduates.
I actually felt better to be at the front of a classroom again, although I hope my comp classes will be less teacher-centered than they’ve been in the past.
While I don’t know how I came off to the classes, all I can say is that if I’m a good teacher, that will show up in the long run.
Last night I fell asleep at about 9:30 PM and I slept nicely till 2 AM, when I awoke with my mind racing the way it has lately.
But by 3:45 AM, I willed myself to get back to sleep by using a technique I usually find nearly impossible: to lie perfectly motionless for as long as it takes.
I picked this up from an insomnia tape at New York Hospital that I used to listen to when I first moved to Florida. The idea is that the body teaches the mind to rest.
It worked, and when I realized I was dreaming (playing with Kiran at Sat Darshan’s house), I relaxed and slept till 6 AM, about the latest I’ve slept lately.
After gentle exercise (my back still isn’t back to normal) I ate breakfast, put on my teaching clothes – including a tie, just for today – and left for school, taking the streets.
There were plenty of spaces in Lot 44 at 7:50 AM, and I greeted people as I passed the comp office. Demetria gave me my rosters, and I handed in some stuff to the Writing Center people, whom I want to visit my classes on Friday.
I got to my first class early, a good thing because I wasn’t in the right room: My section, Greg Glau found, was in the basement of the Nursing Building. Since my next class is on their third floor, that was no problem.
In both the English 101 and English 105 classes, I went through the rosters, jotting down the students’ preferred names, and I went over my syllabus, taking questions, telling them what they could expect.
Today’s high school grads seem familiar with peer reviewing and conferences, perhaps more so than I am.
While I feel a bit shaky about teaching comp, I also know that I’m someone with a lot more experience as a writer then kids of 18, and I let it slip (ha) that I’d published nine books, was a lawyer and had taught college since 1975.
Few teachers that I’ve had ever gave their credentials, so I suppose I’m insecure. I mean, I always assumed that my teachers at Brooklyn College were competent, and I didn’t really know which ones were adjuncts and which were professors with scholarly reputations.
The kids are overwhelmingly white. I don’t have a single black student, and the two or three with Spanish surnames don’t look Latino and are named Bethany and Cara.
There are a couple of Asians, mostly Indians (one is Sikh because her middle name is Kaur), but it’s not the kind of diversity I’m used to from Florida and New York.
I told the class my day-by-day schedule is very tentative and that they should transfer to another section if they need a more anal-retentive teacher.
Toward the end of the second class, I started becoming tired and I sat down for a bit. Walking back to my car, I wondered if my right foot would be in bad shape tomorrow because I’m not used to standing up so much.
It was about 12:20 PM when I arrived home, got into an old t-shirt and shorts, had lunch and relaxed the rest of the day: going online, reading the Times, listening to NPR. The electricity went off twice.
I need to read the first chapter of the Allyn & Bacon Guide, which I assigned for Wednesday, but hopefully I’ll have time tomorrow. Perhaps I’m lazy, but as usual, I don’t expect all that much of myself.
Tomorrow will be the last Tuesday morning when I won’t have to teach at Mesa Community College, so I can sleep late – or at least not have to be out of the house at 7 AM.
This entry is some of the worst writing I’ve committed to paper lately, but these days I’m all out of eloquence and style.
Tuesday, August 22, 2000
9 PM. My back is killing me. It’s imperative that I buy myself a good office chair. The molded plastic ones I’ve been using are horrible, and I’ve been sitting at the laptop a lot. Also, my back is probably reacting to all the stress I’m feeling.
I left my English books in my office at ASU so I won’t have to drag them with me over the longer walk tomorrow; tonight I was able to park in the structure next to Stauffer Hall, the communications building.
My fellow students who are veterans of the M.M.C. program warned me not to take this Methodology class the first semester and scared me with how tough and what a massive amount of work it would be.
But after sitting in class for over two and a half hours (without a break, which is unconscionable), I’m convinced that the class will be mostly a pain in the ass. Professor Mary-Lou Galician, AKA “The Original Dr. FUN!” seems like an eccentric crackpot, ditzy in her floppy hat.
Yes, the research stuff can be challenging, but I think I can deal with the workload, and if not, I’ll drop the course in September or October. But I do have grave doubts about my ever finishing the degree program.
The students are all over the place: a lot of guys who are recent grads and interested in sports; some local television journalists; older women; kids just out of college; an Indian journalist who reports business news in Qatar; and people who, like me, don’t know what else to do with their lives.
The program’s director, John Craft, came in and told us newbies we should be feeling lost and that there would be a meeting of new students next Thursday at 4:30 PM.
I’ll see how my other classes go, but it occurs to me that, totally unexpectedly, I may actually end up enjoying teaching composition more than being a graduate student in journalism.
Wednesday, August 23, 2000
7 PM. My back is very tight now and near going into spasm. Still I managed to get through my comp classes and tonight’s short Newswriting and Reporting introductory session.
However I managed to aggravate my back problems, I can’t ignore the tension I’ve been under, tension that my back muscles feel quite literally. If it gets worse, I’ll probably go to student health or maybe a chiropractor. Stretching, the heating pad and aspirin help a little.
What I really need is to be able to relax and to let my back muscles relax. I’m going to spend tonight watching the finale of Survivor and forget about teaching and the M.M.C. program.
I was up at 4 AM, unable to get back to sleep, my mind racing. I’m in the midst of a full-blown, Gale Sheehy-tape midlife crisis, as Sat Darshan and Mark Bernstein have recognized.
I probably need to drop the Research Methodology class but I don’t want to have to give back student loan money, so I’ll probably wait till September, when I’ll owe ASU tuition for the course and they won’t be able to take my loan money from me.
I thought of picking up another course, but I don’t think so. I don’t see myself ever getting this degree – not that I need it, but that didn’t bother me with the programs at FAU and Teachers College that I enrolled in, so why should it bother me now?
Yet it does, just as living off credit cards now bothers me when it never did in the 1980s.
Thursday, August 24, 2000
1 PM. I don’t think my back is any better today although it did feel a bit less tight when I woke up – which may mean it’s not my mattress that’s causing the problem.
I can feel there’s a spot in my vertebrae that’s sore and hot. Aspirin helps, and so does stretching and the heating pad, though maybe I should also try ice.
Last night’s two-hour Survivor finale and cast reunion afterwards made for compelling TV, and I’m glad the gay Machiavellian tribe member won the million dollars. I don’t know if I’ll be a survivor of my midlife crisis (terrible segway).
I feel as though coming down with a cold, and it would be no wonder because I must be producing stress hormones at an unprecedented rate. I can’t recall when I last had a really good night’s sleep.
I did get stuff accomplished today. I finished my MCC syllabus, and after printing it out at Kinko’s, I took it over to the English Department so they could send it to be copied. Linda, the secretary, still seemed snotty to me, but perhaps my perceptions are skewed these days.
After reading a little of the Times at Borders, I went to CompUSA and bought a printer, cable and surge protector, and then to Staples, where I got an office chair with lumbar support as well as a portable lumbar support pad.
I spent over $250 I don’t have, but who’s counting?
Then I went to Albertsons to get some zinc lozenges for my incipient cold. After seeing two cars with flat tires at the parking lot at the shopping centers, I’m paranoid about my own tires, which feel a bit wobbly.
Tomorrow at ASU I’m going to have my students write so I can look at their work over the weekend. With all the writing that I have to comment on coming in, I’m not going to bother reading the next chapter in the text even though I’d already assigned it to the students.
This evening I have my Arizona Media Law class at 5:40 PM, and hopefully David Bodney, the teacher, won’t keep us the whole time. Last night in Newswriting and Reporting, Ed Sylvester impressed me as a competent instructor.
We’re going to have to get out on our own beats and actually cover some government agencies. We’ll have a deadline to hand in stories, and the Lab (we met in an iMac lab) won’t last the whole time for most of the course since we’ll have our own stories to cover
I don’t think I’m going to enjoy being a reporter, but maybe it’s important I learn that now.
Sylvester wants us to subscribe to or at least read the Arizona Republic, and of course I have my New York Times snob’s bias.
In an email, Mark Bernstein said that Mass Communications attracts a low caliber of students sort of the way Education does.
Teresa thinks maybe I should quit right now, but I want to try to stick it out for a while if only because I’m too stressed to be thinking clearly.
Besides, I’m living off the student loan money, which I don’t want to forfeit. I feel I’m a burden to my friends with all my kvetchy emails.
My hands are sweating so much that the paper I’m writing on is curling up.
*
9 PM. I actually feel happy after going to my Arizona Media Law class.
Before class, I chatted with some of the other new students, whom I’m starting to get to know. And I really like David Bodney, the attorney who’s teaching our seminar.
He provided us with a huge casebook of Arizona and federal cases, so I feel comfortable with the format – and I can take a law school-typed final exam, with which I am also familiar.
It feels good to hear familiar terms like “reasonable person” and “strict scrutiny,” and Bodney is a liberal guy from my generation whose career has been spent representing the Republic and other media clients.
He’s a mensch who knows how to hold an interesting discussion. Of course, I’ve got to make sure I let other people speak, so I will try not to talk too much in class.
Anyway, Bodney won’t be in next week because he’s taking depositions in West Palm Beach.
Tonight I got a parking space on the first floor just by the exit of Parking Structure #3. After returning to my car, I drove to Trader Joe’s on McClintock and Guadalupe, by the Changing Hands Bookstore, and bought frozen mango chunks and edamame, GoLean cereal and some other goodies.
The south part of Tempe is upscale yuppie, and I feel comfortable there.
My back pain almost disappeared, but I think it’s just that I’m feeling good. For the first time this week, I can see myself enjoying life here. It may be temporary, but it gives me hope that cheerfulness will return.
Tuesday, August 29, 2000
2:30 PM. After waking up at about 2:30 AM last night, I never was able to get back to sleep. I’ve got “Dr. FUN”’s Methodology course tonight, so I tried to get some rest for the past hour, lying still under the covers in a darkened room; however, I did not really slip into even a demi-sleep.
I suppose I felt anxiety about my first class at Mesa Community College, though dread maybe more like it.
Arriving at the English Department about 15 minutes before class, I saw that friendly woman who’s a full-time instructor at ASU as well as another faculty associate there.
My class looked about as dispirited as I felt, and right now I don’t know how I can adjust to teaching them – at least with any enthusiasm. Maybe it’s the early hour. I’ve never had a class that began at 7:30 AM before.
The class is mostly white (a few Hispanics), nearly all local recent high school grads. I have a few older students – a practical nurse, a construction worker, a chef – as well as two girls who are still in Dobson High School.
For some reason, the kids in this class look a lot more worn and less fresh than my ASU students. Perhaps it’s that people from upper social classes look less weather-beaten and more carefree, even in adolescence.
After going over the syllabus, I had the students introduce themselves and ask questions. I let them go 15 minutes early, at 8:30 AM. On Thursday, I’ll have them write a diagnostic and begin talking about writing.
Nobody looked happy about their being there. As one guy – a Theater major, probably gay – remarked, he’s there because his mother is making him go to MCC.
I went to Starbucks to get some caffeine-heavy black iced tea and then to Albertsons for some groceries.
I’ve been home ever since then, reading the Times and the MCC student paper (not bad), listening to NPR and trying to rest. My teeth ache a little, but pain isn’t what kept me up at night.
Last night I did the first week’s reading in Arizona Media Law except for the stuff I need to get from Lexis or FindLaw. Of course I already know the U.S. Supreme Court cases.
Before that, I watched Big Brother, the reality-based show which is pretty much of a flop. After the first couple of house guests were voted out, basically it’s been a bunch of sweet but boring people hanging out. Still, I find it somewhat comforting. They all spend a lot of time loafing in bed, wearing shorts and a t-shirt like me.
While my MCC students might be slightly impressed by a guy who says he’s published nine books, has two master’s degrees and a law degree, etc., I feel like an abject failure.
I mean, here I am, teaching composition in college – which is something I did at LIU when I was 24 and living with my parents in Brooklyn a quarter-century ago.
Yes, it’s better than Jonathan’s selling pizza at a high school – but not by all that much, especially considering the potential I had.
What went wrong? Is it my bad character? My arrogance? My delusional belief that I could be a writer?
Last academic year, I had the fun of teaching Legal Studies, the prestige of being a visiting professor, and most of all the hope that Silicon Valley Diet would be a breakthrough book.
Now I realize that even if it were a better book, even if I had a swifter publisher, unless the book had come out in hardcover from a New York trade house – one of the conglomerate-owned commercial publishers – the book could never get anywhere.
And so I’ve basically lost any desire to push for even local readings. What would be the point?
Now I remember how let down I felt after I Survived Caracas Traffic was published; even a review in the New York Times meant nothing.
Thursday, August 31, 2000
11 AM. Once again, I awakened before 3 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep. Somehow I managed to get through half my class at Mesa Community College and then had them write a diagnostic.
I decided to drop Methodology, so at least all my middle-of-the-night agonizing got me somewhere. Basically, I’ve acknowledged that I’ll never get the Master of Mass Communications degree and I don’t care.
I don’t want to give up the loan money I have for this term, but I don’t think I’ll have to if I drop one course. If I do have to repay some money, I don’t care. Methodology is a pain.
What I’ll probably do with ASU is what I did as an admitted student in computer education graduate programs at FAU and Teachers College: take six credits in classes that interest me and avoid paying off old loans by keeping a student deferment.
I’m not sure that I’ll even stick it out in Newswriting and Reporting. Last night as Professor Sylvester lectured, I felt queasy and wondered what I was doing there. I hate to say “too old.” But maybe it’s that I’m old enough to know what I want to do and what I don’t.
I still have a great intellectual curiosity, but basically I want to learn what I want to learn. And with the degrees I already have, I have the luxury of designing my own curriculum and ignoring the requirements of the M.M.C. program like Methodology.
I don’t know if getting rid of that course will free up enough time to make me happy, but I’ll take it one course at a time. I can’t do justice to my three classes of comp students if I spread myself so thin.
All of this, of course, was my own doing – by which I mean that nobody made me go to ASU or teach there or at MCC.
I need more time to explore what I want to do with my life. Last year I was quite happy teaching at Nova. I’m sure I could find other things that make me equally happy. Right?
*
7 PM. I made it through August – by the skin of my teeth. My back hurts again, my foot hurts, my teeth hurt, I’m sleep-deprived and depressed – but I’m still here.
It seems to getting cooler thanks to the monsoon. Yesterday I drove to ASU in a vicious thunderstorm that flooded streets and dropped temperatures into the 70°s, and today’s high was only about 95°. It will probably get hot and dry again, but basically I can see that the worst of the oppressive summer is behind us.
I left for ASU at 2:30 PM. Dropping Methodology didn’t take too long, and I got a $150 refund credited to my Visa when I turned in the texts.
I saw several of my English 105 students in the Student Union and Hayden Library as I tried to relax and hang out before our new grad student meeting.
About seven or eight faculty members showed up, as well as the new Cronkite School Director, but mostly John Craft led us through the basics of the program.
I will be very surprised if I get this degree, but another master’s isn’t going to help me get a job.
What I want out of this program is to be in an academic environment, to take courses that interest me, to defer my student loans and maybe continue to get loan money.
At Teachers College and at FIU and FAU, it never bothered me that I didn’t get any degrees – but I certainly got a lot of stuff out of the classes I took at those schools. Basically I can educate myself the way I always have through my reading.
Teresa’s package arrived from UPS, and although I haven’t put all this stuff away, it contained glasses, plates, cups, mugs, a frying pan, sheets, and a bed cover. I’ve got to write Teresa and thank her. She’s been a jewel in my life.
Rick Peabody wrote and said he’d already bought my book from Red Hen Press, which was certainly nice of him.
Someone at ASU has taken out Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog and I Brake for Delmore Schwartz from Hayden Library, and while I’m embarrassed to think about my students reading my fiction, I’m kind of flattered.
Justin thanked me for the birthday card and said he had a perfect day with Larry. They rode on the Staten Island Ferry, wandered around South Street Seaport and had a Thai dinner back in the Slope.
They also took an end-of-summer New England vacation: visiting Justin’s parents in Connecticut, taking in an exhibit about Bloomsbury at Yale, and touring the mansions of Newport.
This fall looks good for Justin, as he’s increasing his workload at the Henry Street Settlement, where he will be running the Urban Youth Theater Playwriting Lab.
He also has a one-act commission from AMDA and maybe a film adaptation of another one-act play, and some former students are doing his piece at the Dumbo Arts Festival.
Justin told me to “hang in there” and that he admires my adaptability and said he “loved” The Silicon Valley Diet.
He wrote: “Your writing keeps getting deeper and more emotionally layered with each year. You said this summer that you considered writing your hobby. When I objected, you pointed out it was your best defensive position. But part of the joy of sticking it out is that we do get better with age and time.”
That note from Justin means a lot to me.