You are at the top of my lungs, drawn to the ones who never yawn

Tuesday morning at ACC and I'm thinking about the whole world this morning. My distractability factor is off the charts lately and I always feel like the answer to this is more discipline, more regimented behavior, more schema building. Another part of me thinks that this kind of crackdown on myself is exactly what creates my cognitive dissonance. I know that I am juggling too many things and people often ask me how I "do it all" and then seem surprised that I devote as much time as I do to pointless endeavors like Judge Judy and Scrabble on Facebook. I often wonder the same; if I have so much disposable time, then why isn't my dissertation written and why do I feel like I'm constantly short-changing my students? There isn't a student alive who would notice, of course, as I believe nearly all of them would gladly take less over more. This includes me.

Speaking of my student self, she is getting to be quite bothersome. Yesterday, my one and only professor this term in the last class I will ever have to take stopped after class to get a reading on my state of mind. I know this move because I am a veteran of the student-whose-vibe-sours-the-room-and-should-be-dealt-with school. Ferreting out such individuals and speaking to them directly is the surefire way to prevent their shooting you when they finally snap. I was a bit surprised to find that I no longer bother to hide my disdain for the DU environment and felt a smidge guilty at forcing Brian to have to speak to me to ask "how it's going" in a manner suggestive of "you're not going to go postal and kill me, are you?"

My attitude, I know, is terrible. My criticisms of classmates is harsh and perhaps unfair; sure, at least three of them annoy me so badly that I cannot keep from glowering and rolling my eyes, but it is certainly a new thing for me to outwardly express this. I am normally not an unkind person; in fact, I used to consider myself relentlessly optimistic. Funny thing is, I still do. When I look out into my own classrooms, I see these people kindly, and offer them almost boundless patience. I hope that they will succeed, that they will embrace the concept of education for education's sake, and that I will have a positive and lasting influence on them. I think what makes me so angry in the grad school classroom these days is - perhaps - the complete self-centeredness, egomania, and exclusivity that pervades such programs and particularly creative writing ones.

There seems to be only feigned humility among this particular group, if it exists at all, and I have no time for nonsense I guess. No time to devote to discussion of matters that don't further my education or make me a better teacher, except by default of knowing what I never want my classrooms to be like. I'm angry that my Ph.D. journey has so jaded me that I cannot and will not respond to people who use "nom de plume" conversationally and without even a hint at irony. Who take pictures of themselves each day in ridiculous outfits and post them on the internet and do not know who Thomas Becket is. Prima donnas who think they can hand you a workshop piece of five packed pages of crappy prose and then defiantly defend the 10-point, single-spaced font because she can. I'm sick of people who insist on bringing in a dozen books to a presentation for a final project that is only 10-15 pages and talking about herself and her writing as if anyone cares a whit about it.

I know that all of this is par for the course, and in some small way the fact that I don't fit in here makes me feel better rather than worse. Not one of these people could walk in my shoes for a single day and survive. When they started grousing about their 10 credit hours and shifts in the writing center as not providing them any time to write, I laughed out loud. I told them that I have been teaching more than full time, have a child and spouse, and a home to maintain the entire time I've been at DU, and I still managed to write a whole novel, compose a regular blog, and work on my dissertation. The whole conversation felt like, "bitch, please." Oh, and there's still time for Scrabble and Judge Judy. Take that, SoupandBread.