Erase your memory? No, thanks, I already have.

In Psych 101, you learn about the Zeigarnik effect, a principle affecting memory. The Zeigarnik effect describes the situation in which you remember incomplete tasks better than completed ones. It's named after a psychologist named Bluma Zeigarnik, who noted that waiters would remember an order while they were still serving it but forget it immediately afterward.

Although my memory clings with a desperate grasp to annoying commercials, random bits of doggerel (why couldn't I have memorized as much of Paradise Lost as I have of pointless song lyrics?), and times when I made a stupid mistake, it's a complete sieve about some things.

Today, I was talking with a colleague about Significant but Not Required Invited University Social Event. "I thought I saw your name on the list," he said. "Aren't you going?" I had a virtually identical conversation with another colleague later. "Didn't you receive the invitation?" he asked. "I thought your name was on the list."

Uh oh. The thing is, I might have received the invitation, or I might not have received it. Like all faculty members, I get a lot of, let's say, not immediately relevant mail on glossy cardstock from other places in the university. "Come help us celebrate the 150th anniversary of the invention of the shoelace," one might read, or "Please come and support our cause at this dinner for only $100 a head."

I look at them, and, if they require an RSVP, I respond. Action taken. Task completed. Task forgotten.

This also happens if I respond to something like a survey or a ballot of some sort. "Did you complete our survey?" goes the reminder. Beats me. Dr. Zeigarnik would be proud.

So, in short, I may have committed a faux pas by receiving an invitation and not responding, or I may not have received an invitation at all, or--and here is the scary part--I may have responded and completely forgotten it. If I did this on paper, it won't be in the sentmail folder so I can check, either.

Welcome to the road company of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotted Mind.

Random bullets of "there went the weekend"

The bad:

I've been sick with a cold and have had the usual experience of more or less total brain freeze: I can read the words in a book, but that's no guarantee that they've made an impression on my brain.

As a consequence of that, I'm behind on everything I was supposed to do.

As a consequence of that, I am dodging my email as though it has eyes to accuse me of massive slackerdom. I have muttered "leave me alone" to Outlook no fewer than three times today.

I am also wondering why, when everything has turned to ice, the road crews spread the sand around about as liberally as though they were scattering individual pieces of Godiva chocolate on the road and were paying for them out of their own pockets.

The good:

The nice thing about teaching for a long time is that that there are apparently teaching muscles that spring into action even if springing into action is the last thing you feel like doing.

The other nice thing is the students: they energize you, you energize them, and you come away from the class feeling better than you did before--oh, and they learned something, too.

Academic resolutions

In the past five "found" days (i.e., days when I'd normally be at or traveling to MLA but have had restored to me this year), I've rediscovered the gym, spent time with my family, and coaxed my ancient PalmPilot back to life with new drivers that don't crash my XP computer. What I haven't done is a lot of work that I'd intended to do.

Here are a few work-related resolutions I'm hoping to keep in 2008. Some of them may be tough to keep, but I still want to try.

Just say no. I'm not talking about various mandatory reports and things that you can't get out of, because, well, you can't get out of them. But in looking back at this year, I can tell that I took on too many things that weren't necessary, just because someone asked me to do them. Manuscript reviews for presses are a prime example. Many of them were worth doing because of the subject matter, but some weren't, and since they take a lot of time and thought that could be spent on my own writing, I need to learn to say no unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise.

Start writing earlier in the day. Although I try to work earlier in the day, my writing brain doesn't naturally kick in until the evening. The problem is that there aren't enough evening hours to do the writing I need to do, so I have to figure out how to get that same writing juice in the morning.

Not every call for papers has your name on it. It's easier to keep this resolution than it used to be, now that the CFP list at Penn has stopped sending emails and you now have to search actively for calls for papers at the site. It's still enticing, though, to see a CFP and think "hmm, I'd like to go to that conference; I'll submit an abstract and see what happens." What that statement should be is this: "I'd like to present a section from this particular work in progress; I wonder what conferences might work for that?"

It's easier to stay caught up than to get caught up. The hardest thing for me to remember that work doesn't do itself: papers don't grade themselves, writing doesn't magically appear on the computer screen, and simply lugging a book around doesn't mean that it gets read. You know how Method actors try to preserve a sense memory of an experience so that they can call it up when they have to act? Maybe remembering the misery of being behind with tasks will help with staying on time and on task.

What resolutions are you making?
[Edited to add: Bardiac, who is heading off soon for a great new adventure, and New Kid have a great one that encompasses all these: be mindful.]

Another Hotel California

Ever since Maggie so memorably used this song to characterize the great junior/senior divide it has been playing inside my head, along with one of Paul McCartney's late and not great compositions. (Sir Paul wrote a lot of good songs, but this one you don't want to have stuck in your head. Trust me--or, if you don't, look below.*)

As I was locking my door well past the dinner hour and heading out for the long drive home after a cool 10 hours in office, classes, and meetings, one of the grad students said, "You still here?"

The grad students are always around. They hang out and chat with each other (and work, of course), just as I used to do as a grad student. They're on my floor all day long, although I am always in earlier than they are.

But I had outlasted all but one of them. And I had literally just spent more time in my office--and commuting to my office--than I had spent at home for the past two days.

And then the song struck again: "You can check out any time you like, but you can NEVER LEAVE."



[*If you REALLY want to know, here it is: "Ballroom Dancing."]

Might as well be the first snowflake

About the end of July, I find myself avoiding looking at the sales parts of newspapers and also e-mail from the department.

Why?

Because they do not grasp that it is still summer. The ads want to tout Back to School items, and the chair wants to get everyone on board with the retreat/department meeting/training session that's been cooked up for us while we were thinking that it was still, well, July. It's as though you're having a good time at a party and someone reminds you that you have to do your income taxes when you get home. You can still be at the party, but it's not the same.

It's bad enough that every department I've ever been affiliated with has scheduled something for the day or days just before classes begin. Don't they know that if days could be bought and sold like Monopoly real estate, they're taking Boardwalk and Park Place away from us? Right when every minute counts--so that you can fight with the bookstore about why your books aren't in, or change your syllabus for the fiftieth time--you get sucked away into meetings whose importance may rank as a 10 on the department's significance meter but as a 0 on your own.

I did go to campus this week, and everything was as it should be: deserted, quiet, and dark except for a handful of intrepid graduate students. But what the e-mail and the ads tell me is that all too soon I'll have to ditch the shorts and t-shirt, and the writing and solitude, in favor of professional clothes and endless discussions of departmental business.

Would someone please tell these people that August is still considered a summer month?

Catching up

I'll write a real post soon, but for now--

A couple of writing days that were textbook examples of bad practices: Write a paragraph. Decide it doesn't make sense, that the elements don't fit. Decide to check e-mail. Go back to paragraph. Delete most of it. Pick up a book. Read. Write some more. Repeat.

A class in which one of the groups of students did an outstanding job of talking about the story they'd chosen to discuss, so much so that they made me think about the story in new ways even though I'd taught it before. This is why we teach.

Figuring out how to transfer music and audiobooks from the iPod to a computer whose hard drive had been wiped out. I tried iDump and EphPod, but both kept crashing; what worked was (1) deleting iTunes; (2) plugging in the iPod so that the computer could see it as a plain hard drive; (3) copying the iPod folders to the Music folder; and (4) importing the Music folder into the iPod.

Having lunch out with some colleagues since a visitor was in town. Why don't academics do this more often? Everyone I know (myself included) eats hunched over a desk, wolfing down a sandwich or salad in the five minutes before office hours start. Well, almost everyone: some people are ambitious enough to bring leftovers from last night's veggi tofu lentil bake or whatever and microwave them, but that takes a lot of forethought.