"Winter" "Break"

After growing up in Massachusetts -- with a wood stove and, for many years, no insulation -- and later living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for a few years, I'm not sure I will ever think of this California season as winter. When one is used to sub-freezing temperatures for weeks on end, a view of green grass and ripening citrus fruit just doesn't say "winter." It says "rain," and it says "chilly out there," and it even says "hot tub season!" But winter? No.

Winter is this:

And this:


And this:


And this:


Mind you, I'm not complaining. I do like that my windshield wipers don't freeze to the windshield, and that I haven't shoveled out a car since the Reno Snowpocalypse of 2004. I don't mind the season; I just can't get my head around the label.

And what about "break"?

It's a similar case; the word is not inaccurate within some frames of reference, but within mine it simply doesn't apply, at least not as it did when I was an undergraduate student. I remember flying back to Massachusetts at the end of each fall term, sleeping on the airplane (and sleeping for much of the break itself). If I did any reading, it was novels, and writing meant letters to friends. Summer was similar, though with a bit less sleeping and a lot more letter writing and with summer jobs filling my days.

Now during break I do a little recreational reading, and I write to friends and family (and write here), but mostly I work. December means lots of letters of recommendation are due, I am prepping for two classes that start January 9th, and I'd love to get an article done and sent before then. At least one grant proposal  is due in January, and a few conference proposal deadlines are coming up fast.

I'm not complaining about this, either. The flexible schedule works both ways -- I write and prep during break, but I can take a weekday off during the quarter if I want to, and I set my own daily schedule for more than half the year. I also love and value most of the work I get to do.

So, happy winter break -- even if it's not really winter here, and not really a break.


Comments

  1. Sara JamesonDecember 24, 2016 at 12:35 PM

    I do hope you get some rest amid all the work. Winter "break" for me means lots to do at church, so it's also busy though not so stressful. What are you teaching winter term? I have online Sci Wri again, which I enjoy. Might be the last time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sarah & OrhanDecember 24, 2016 at 2:56 PM

      I have 11 (rhetoric of popular science) and 220 (grad seminar on genre theory). And I will rest, too -- the lessons of the summer (bronchitis verging on pneumonia) are still with me.

      Are you considering retiring for real? Or is OSU saying you can't keep teaching? Or maybe a bit of both?

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

UWP 018: Style in the what?

Image
I have taught  UWP 018: Style in the Essay  once, in Fall 2014, and am looking forward to having it again. As you can see from the official course  description , it's pretty poorly defined, both in general (so many goals!) and in specific parts (e.g. "Students should be familiar with the general principles of good writing upon entry into the course," whatever that means). Even the topics are hard to pin down, especially "the essay." It's vague enough that Phillip Lopate's anthology  The Art of the Personal Essay  covers 2000 years (starting with Seneca) and several countries and languages (with translations from Latin, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese). Round 1 (2014) Given this range, I thought for a long time about what  the essay  is before teaching UWP 018 for the first time. I thought back to what I read during my MFA in nonfiction writing, not only essays but also books and articles about the various forms of nonfiction prose. I also ...
Read more

Some architectural comments

Image
Some Vancouver locals call it The Rainy City, or Raincouver. I call it the City of Balconies. The city has extremely high population density, achieved in part by having lots of high-rise residential buildings -- and by lots, I mean all over the place, with more going up all the time if the number of cranes and construction sites are any indication. This is part of downtown Vancouver: And this is the view from our hotel window, out in Burnaby (part of the metro area): Some of the buildings are fairly bland. Some I like because they are reflective, and I enjoy taking pictures of things reflected at the scale of an entire building, especially other buildings. Some of the buildings were lovely and unique. We saw the Woodward's Building from several angles, starting with noticing its rooftop grove poking up from behind another building: When we got closer, we saw the lovely exoskeleton: It turns out the building was torn down and rebuilt just a fe...
Read more

Moray Coast, Day 2: Findhorn to Hopeman part 2

Image
I was pretty bushed by the time we stopped in Burghead; we'd talked about resting a mile or so before town, but there was no shade, so we pushed on. Dev, of course, has ridiculously long ostrich legs and therefore was not fatigued at all. (Also, he rode in my pocket, though he prefers I not point that out too often.) He found some interesting items in the cafe, such as these ship-building tools used by Daniel Young Hopeman: This is the boat Dev would like to have built if he had Dev-sized versions of Mr. Hopeman's tools (and the skill to use them). We didn't have time to look up Mr. Hopeman at the time, but later investigations revealed that he was a fireman on drifter (a kind of boat, I assume) that sank on June 10, 1931. The Glasgow Herald reported: Dev also was intrigued to learn that Rhubarb! (And, of course... Custard!) Our next stop was a local shop where I attempted to buy a sun hat. We were ready for rain, but we were not ready for so much...
Read more