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Don’t get me started on the whole gender identity issues this involves. Let’s just say that the questions and answers were very much of interest as I’m working on these subjects in a historical context for my fall seminar:

You Are 12% Girly

Um… you’re a guy, right? If not, you’re the most boyish girl in the world. And for you, that’s probably the ultimate compliment.

But, yeah, that’d be me. A measly 12% girly (redeemed mostly by my fear of horror movies and my love of puppies.)

What comes first? Research or teaching? It’s that eternal dilemma.

As I watch the body count enrolment soar in my classes, I wince at the thought of how much time teaching (especially grading) is going to demand. And I’m teaching a new prep for the fall in my senior seminar. Which excites me because it’s a great topic, but also fills me with dread because it will be a lot of work to whip the preparations into shape and be on top of matters enough to lead the seminar without falling into the lecture trap. So I have to “front load” some of this work into the next month in focused course prep or end up paying the following three months for my lack of foresight.

As I look at my hopes to someday go up for promotion to full, I realize that research has to be my real priority. Not so much research as writing for publication, to be honest. I have three “fun” articles on the go (but they won’t make a big impact when it comes to my CV but they’re fun and will raise my profile in the university), the encyclopedia, which is great fun, even if occasionally frustrating, and two other “serious” articles that I’d like to work on but will, realistically, form the core of my short sabbatical proposal.

I’m making progress on the writing, but I need to push some teaching prep and writing through in the next five weeks or feel hopelessly behind all fall term long. We won’t even talk about service, which is going to be a heavy burden this fall and winter (and which I should just say “good enough is good enough”).

Other academics? Where are your priorities as summer winds down?

I moved offices this past week (in and amongst recovering from food poisoning? Let’s just say that I’m glad Physical Plant moved all my books since they’re converting my old office into a photocopy room).

In the meantime, however, I’m temporarily blessed with:

• a spare computer (this will go to the grad students in due course)
• a spare filing cabinet (this? I might keep, although paper files are so 20th century, aren’t they?)
• a spare bulletin board (since I don’t have enough wall space for my art, I’m not interested in another bulletin board!)
• a spare in-box (definitely not wanted, but it has a “HISTORY” label on the side, so I can’t just toss it in the hallway)

What I’m still missing? An office key (and my nameplate).

Seriously, I’m recovering and feel about as weak as a newborn foal. I was felled by food poisoning on the way home from our vacation (no fun at however-many thousand feet, let me tell you) and have been slowly trying to catch up on emails as well as move offices (thankfully, our Physical Plant workers are preparing to move all of my books for me).

The vacation trip was a lot of fun before the food poisoning incident. Highlights included several visits to Brookgreen Gardens, a lot of time with my father and sister as well as a grand finale day for my clan spent at Patriot’s Point and Fort Sumter. (Yes, historians do take in historic sights whilst vacationing.) We got around a fair bit, there!

Even at the best of times, vacations are a lot of work. I need to realize this and schedule myself a day after the vacation to catch up on laundry, grocery-shopping and other home chores before feeling obliged to get back to the work routine. It’s not as if I’m actually going to use all of my vacation time this summer, anyway, what with the encyclopedia work backlogged from vacation and my other writing obligations to power happily through. Currently I’m only scheduled for two weeks vacation the entire summer (which is a lot more than some others get, I understand, but not even half of my allowance from the university).

In other news? Ancient Civilizations has now reached the magic number of 100 students enrolled and term’s start is still about six weeks away. Fortunately, the room only holds about 150 and the registrar’s system won’t over-enroll!

Over the weekend, a flood on the ninth floor of one building resulted in damage to dozens of offices and classrooms. (Not mine, I should note, but I feel sorry for the many dear colleagues whose offices were badly affected.)

Today, at ten minutes before noon, the lights flickered in my building and then went out. (We were told, after the fact, that a major power line was damaged near the U and that crews are working on it. Good luck, guys!) That takes out WiFi and email and phones, too!

Fortunately, I work on a laptop that seamlessly switched over to battery power. But my plans to take a former student to lunch on campus were thwarted (we resorted to off-campus, which was probably better eating, anyway.). And my sense that it’s safe to be working at the U during the summer took another hit.

Over the last weeks I’ve made big leaps and bounds with the encyclopedia. We’re nearing the halfway point in terms of entries assigned.

Of course, I could panic and fixate on the fact that I still have more than half of the entries unassigned as of yet. Instead, I will send out this appeal to the blogosphere — if you are or you know of a scholar of Elizabethan and/or early Stuart history, literature, religion or other studies who would be interested in contributing to the Encyclopedia of Elizabethan England. There are many literary topics, including several Shakespeare plays that are stilled unassigned. (We also cover some Scots, Irish and Welsh topics as well as subjects in the broader world as relevant to England.)

Contact me at the email address here on my departmental webpage. Feel free to pass this link on!

I’ll be flying United Airlines this month.

Thank goodness I don’t have a guitar!

or at least his exhibition maintains one.

I also recommend the interactive feature from the exhibition, Find Henry’s Marginal Notes which gives viewers a taste of what early Tudor documents looked like, along with a revelation of how Henry was wont to mark things up. (For all those people who think “well, these are English documents, how difficult could they be to read?” — hah! Double hah!)

Of course, I’ve already weighed in about my joy in the study of Henry VIII here in this blog on more than one occasion.