rose marshack : whyamistillawake.com

Yesterday was my last day at UIUC. It was very, very strange. Most of the people whom I probably would have cried hugging goodbye left before I had to hug them goodbye and cry. Anyway I left my Chris Schneberger Viewmaster Series Art there so I need to pick that up at some point.

It feels very, very weird to not have any responsibilities right now, so I decided to find a couple of other ones. I rode my bike to get The Toddler to daycare this morning. I thought a bit about what a slacker mom I am to put him in daycare instead of having him here in the house with me.. for a couple of minutes, and then I smiled. I don’t have that guilt. Gram’s with a bunch of his friends with teachers who are teaching him 3-year old things, and he’s got his music class at school today, which he loves. There was always a twinge of guilt for me, dropping him off there instead of doing what my mom did and raising me at home. But I know life is better for all of us this way. I’m not geared for daycare of a 3-year old. At his school he’ll smear shaving cream all over himself, play with sand made with coffee-grounds and corn starch in a giant blue tub, play at the Water Table… I don’t have those things here. I also don’t have 10 other 3 year olds for him to be with.

I will soon buy a membership to our local food co-op, even if it’s scary and hard to get there. You worry you’ll do something wrong, like wear a leather belt or park in the wrong spot or wear too many diamonds or something like that. Then you look at the produce and wonder, does it look like crap because it’s healthier for me and isn’t painted store-chemical red, or does it look like crap because it’s actually rotten?

But I’m shopping there for eggs because they are from Arthur, IL, and mostly, because I don’t have to keep buying more egg cartons and throwing them away. If I have to throw away another egg carton, I’m going to buy a chicken. The egg cartons and the frigging peanut butter jars are making me crazy. The co-op has a giant tub of peanut butter that you can bring your own jar for, and use. At least there are two packagings that I don’t have to have anymore.

I think this is enough. Time to go drive my car to the workout place and run on a machine.

Then we’ll get in line for the Iphone. Fashionably late, but not too fashionably late of course.

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2 days of work left. I have only quit one other job in my whole life, the job at Frasca, programming flight simulators. The day Rick and I left there, we stayed extra late, burning EPROMs to make sure everything would work perfectly when we were gone. The boss stayed to watch us to make sure we didn’t steal anything, but we were completely driven to make sure we left everything working perfectly. I remember that felt so good. Then afterwards we left and went on tour. For 10 years.

So now I’m quitting another good-paying job for MUSIC! I hope my parents know how proud I am of myself! (although let’s face it, this is a much better job that I’m going to. It’s not like I’m runnin oft on tour again.)

I had lunch with The Famous Author, and he helped me with my syllabus - you kids are so lucky next semester - and I got to find out what the next book is about! But I’m not going to blog about it. I’m just so excited - I can’t wait to read it! I wish I was on the Shorter List, there are some people on that list who actually get the books BEFORE they come out. Could you believe how amazing THAT would be?

My friend Frances Kuo researches the effects of environment on people. She has sent me a paper about what happens to kids who don’t get to exist in nature. It is wonderful. I know so many beautiful, wise, intelligent, generous, caring people. It is hard to go to bed sometimes, just wondering what everyone is up to.

I am reading the cult of the amateur, how today’s internet is killing our culture, by andrew keen. Even the typesetting on the front of the book makes me angry; it’s all lowercase. Is he trying to show that he’s an amateur too?

The book is about how us amateurs, us Time’s Persons Of The Year, yes, us monkeys not typing out Shakespeare, are going to destroy America (I suppose like the Gays are going to destroy the Institution of Marriage) - American culture (??) - by self-publishing using Web 2.0 technologies. Yes, it’s a perfect textbook for my class.

He makes a lot of good points (over and over) but it seems very reactionary, and almost kinda..uh… amateurish? I’m waiting for the punchline at the end where he says, “Aha! Gotcha! I’m an amateur, too!” But it hasn’t happened yet.

He is saying that wikipedia is not written by the Learned. and he’s right, but I think that there is a wonderful use for wikipedia and another use for The Books Of The Learned. Obviously people need to be taught what they can believe, but that’s no different than non-Web2.0 technologies now, is it? Watch television and tell me what you should believe? The commercials? The news?

Anyway in my research I signed onto Facebook and started filling out my profile. I was taught how to “hang out” on mySpace by a friend Erin, at the museum. I definitely need to know these things if I’m going to teach this class.

Rick has cut out a template for the iPhone and has been carrying it around with him, holding it in his hand. We’re looking for reasons to buy this thing. When I got back from teaching Tae Kwon Do tonight, he had discovered that the iPhone that is coming out in a couple of days is smaller than previously specified; we’d thought they’d gotten someone with bigger hands to do the newer commercials, but no, it IS smaller. It looks like they’re going to make it affordable to people like me and Rick. So now all I have to do is deal with the fact that I might end up with a 1.0 first generation something. I still have my Newton. Gag.

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One of my favorite teachers from my entire academic career, Bruce Reznick, (Combinatorics, math 313) sent me this absolutely wonderful guide for new TAs. I loved reading it because it is obviously his guidelines for teaching; I remember the days in his class and how well he ran it and how great learning in the class made me feel, and now reading his instructions is like getting to see what’s behind the curtain.
http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~reznick/ciu.html

I’m busy at work researching what I will teach next semester for my New Media class. I’ve never done this much research into New Media in my entire life! I’m beyond excited about the class. Right now I think it will be about Web 2.0 concepts, and I will call it something like Web 2.0: Question Authority.

I even have the first quote (I always have some sort of quote on opening day) - Here it is from Lipstick Traces:

“I must speak to a boy named Elvis Presley,: said the headmistress of a London comprehensive academy in 1956, “because he has carved his name on every desk in the school.” - p 41, Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus

This is a prime example of the audience (literally, in this case!) becoming a tool for propogating information.

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