That Job Market: Suggestions for Interviewees

It is October 15, the traditional opening day of the job search season. I have a few suggestions for people going on campus visits — suggestions others may not have covered yet.
1. Good facilities are rare. Take note of the schools that have these.
2. Think of yourself as a colleague, not as an aspirant or [...]

Reading for Pleasure Wednesday: Mercè Rodoreda

Any time is a good time to read Mercè Rodoreda. The Nation’s review article on her is worth reading, too. I have never really studied Rodoreda’s life and I have not read all of her books. Having read the review, however, I am re-fascinated. At one point the writer says:
It’s curious that Rodoreda is so [...]

Research Hours

Tnis is one of those old-old posts.
ON CERTAIN FALSITIES
Perhaps it is for no reason related to me that people have always gone on at me how to be and work. So this is another piece of my counterargument against those who threw so much unnecessary time management advice at me — at me, a veritable [...]

Gabo

It appears that the eternal foodstuffs of artistic achievement are “discipline, fortitude, ambition and self-belief.” These were not allowed in Re/Education, and that explains my problems with it.
It has been an entire weekend of rather boring work, frustrating in part because all of it must be done rather superficially, uninterestingly. I was tired [...]

Radio Almenara

It is the weekend, and we are singing by listening to Radio Almenara 106.7 FM in northern Madrid, which streams on the Internet and sends television as well.
Axé.

Dat Blackguard

My friend and I discussed our problems with the Blackguard. I fear the Blackguard, if unchecked, can become our infernal wind. I do not want to feed that. Rather than discuss him further I am posting brief notes on the ideas we developed here.
Problems we can solve as individuals: dealing with someone who wants to [...]

Lime

If I put lime on anything I am instantly transported to Latin America, where Reeducation does not reach me. I think I shall put lime on everything, every day, in addition to expanding myself through yoga.
I have said it before but it is ever clearer to me how Reeducation insisted on the establishment of a [...]

An Anti-Fear Yoga. More Notes for That Anti-Procrastination Piece.

I must finish losing the “home identity” I acquired in Reeducation. With this identity I am abusable at home and at my home institution. This makes it really hard to concentrate in the places I spend most of my time because I am always looking over my shoulder for the next blow. I am loath [...]

On Recrimination

It was also the recrimination, which I had resisted so far but which Reeducation finally drummed into my pores, that made it so hard to work. A year or two later a friend mentioned that he was trying to stop “yelling at himself” and I realized it was what Reeducation had taught me to do. [...]

Sur la souffrance

Also in Reeducation, it was important to suffer so as to prove one could feel pain (pain being the only actually admissible feeling). One could not feel pain and do something about it — that would be “impulsive.” One had to feel pain and “grieve” it, lament and suffer.
I had always found that to move [...]