a question of calling

I went to church sunday partially because I didn’t want to miss the next sermon in the series, but, I’ll be honest, primarily because I’d had the girls by myself for going on four days and wanted to have a coffee and sit in peace for an hour or so while the girls were in nursery. Not the best motivation, but it did get us out the door. 

my pastor ‘s vocation is teaching at a private school in town. He was talking about how work is worship—that we are created to work and to worship,  and we worship through our work too. he said that he is an introvert, the intj personality (me too).  yet he has an extrovert job, teaching (me too!). and sometimes it just wears him out because of that (me too…). but God created him to be a teacher, even though it is hard for him at times. And sometimes God made us to do a work that is hard for us.

i half expected him to stop and say "i'm talking to you, RENEE EMERSON!"

 

Since I got my job, I had always thought it was going to be a temporary thing. after all, my kids are really little and we want more in the future.  my husband is really involved in ministry, so he needs my support. I’m bad at public speaking—in college I often cried or fainted after/during speaking in public. 

Despite all that, here I am, two years later, still teaching.  I’ve struggled with it. often in my prayers, I ask God what is the deal—how could he have me doing this job for when I’m obviously not made for it. 

I know I was made, like many women, to be a wife and mother, and made, more specifically to me, to be a writer. Maybe it is possible that  I was also made to teach and my having a teaching job is not just a stop-over on my way to doing what I’m really supposed to do, whatever that is. Maybe it isn’t a roadblock or a hindrance or a heavy burden but it is God allowing me to use a gift he’s given me, the gift of teaching. 

Two years of thinking a certain way, changed by a five-minute rabbit-trail in a sermon. God’s given me much to think on this month.

...if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise...

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
― Sylvia Plath

every semester i have at least one.

mrs. emerson, i can't write. i have to take this elective because of X, but i can't write fiction / poetry. 

when i first started writing, i thought that was true. that some people can write, and some people just can't. but the more i have studied writing and especially after teaching writing, i've come to think differently. i believe that anyone can be taught (or teach themselves) how to write. it is just a matter of persistence.

i've never been a good singer. i didn't grow up in a musical household, i wasn't in the church choir. so i never sang much around the house until zu was born--then i sang (and still sing) everyday, to her. when she was about a year old, i was singing some silly song to her, and i looked up to see bryan had been listening. i hadn't suddenly become adele, but he could tell my range had grown and i could match pitch. it wasn't something i had consciously set out to improve on, but everyday use had made my voice stronger.

this works for writing too. the classic advice on how to be a better writer? write write write, read read read. and it is true. if you write everyday, read everyday, your writing will improve.

this doesn't mean that you'll necessarily become a professional writer, publish a book, find fame. to give another example, if i worked at it everyday, i'm pretty sure i could learn to play basketball. i might even be able to sink it from half-court regularly, if i work hard, for some years. but will i ever be michael jordan? no.

so, yes, you have to be born with some of it. that gift for language. i believe that everyone is born with some small bit of writing talent that can be nurtured and grown.

every semester i have my writing students read the four temperaments and the forms of poetry by greg orr. in this essay, he states that there are four temperaments to poetry--music, imagination, story and structure.

Orr goes on to say "To me, the notion of the four temperaments holds the promise of an underlying pattern that can orient and guide a poet as well as a critic. The first issue is always one of self-knowledge or self-recognition. Once a poet has a sense of his or her fundamental temperament, the possibilities for growth are twofold. The first is to go further into the gift, but such a decision carries with it the risk of a narrowing as well as the promise of a deepening. The second direction is to expand. Such an expansion can be under stood as the poet's struggle to nurture and develop the other temperaments in such a way that their energies and constraints enrich his or her poems. Again, no one can hope to have all four temperaments in equal strength, but the goal will always be to have all four temperaments present, though some will arrive as gifts and others must be learned and labored for."

so just like i have the self-conscious student or two each semester approach me worried about their writing abilities, i also always have a self-conscious student or two who tells me, at the end of the semester, that they didn't know that they could write like they can write. it is one of the most rewarding aspects of teaching when i see it click for a student; when they turn in that poem or story that they didn't know that they could write--and when they finally see their potential.

with heart

this week kicks off the fall semester. bryan works long shifts at the library as they prepare for the arriving students, and i have a few faculty meetings/"retreats" to attend. i have a great schedule this semester--only one class on campus, the rest online--so i'll only be away from the girls six hours a week, and bryan will be with them during that time, since our work schedules puzzle-piece together that way.

as thankful as i am for my light work schedule this semester, i am struggling this week. we're in an odd economic bracket where we don't have one of us making enough for a parent to stay home full time or for daycare, but we do make enough for one of us to be part-time.

right now that one happens to be bryan, though we don't know what the future will hold. i am thankful that the girls get to spend time with him while i am at work, and that he is humble enough to provide for our family in that way (because providing for a family is about everyone chipping in to do their part, not necessarily just a financial thing).

but sometimes i get overwhelmed. it is hard work keeping up with a full time job and two-under-two, not to mention keeping house, writing, and nurturing my relationship with bryan. the hardest work i have ever done.  some semesters, like this past spring, leave me tired and beaten down. they leave me afraid that i won't be able to bear the weight of it all, to work in these roles God has given me.

so this week i've been dwelling on a verse a dear friend emailed me for encouragement:

 "whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as until the Lord, not unto men."

there are definitely going to be times this semester where i drop the ball--burn dinner, forget to brush the girls hair, turn in papers a week late, what have you, there are going to be mistakes, and that is something i need to accept because i'm not called to do it all perfectly, i'm called to do it heartily

i like the king james version of that verse-- heartily, meaning vigorously, cheerfully, with zest and zeal and passion. whatever i am doing this semester, i want to do it heartily--whether its playing ponies with zu on our living room floor or teaching metaphor, when i am there i want to be all there. because ultimately, all of this is for the Lord.

10 weeks until the baby comes.

that's only 10 mondays.
and only 2 of those weeks are regular-class-schedule weeks (7 more teaching days til summer!)

so i'm almost there, almost there. this is the part of the semester where i start doing that sort of math--how many classes again? lecture days? homeworks? papers? last minute random meetings?

this has been a different sort of semester. easier in a lot of ways--i'm teaching two creative writing classes, which i love! and my one of my freshmen comp  classes is half the size of a typical comp class. my grading is way way down from most semesters (80 papers each essay turned in the first semester, 60 last semester, 35 this semester).

but harder too. zu is much more to keep up with, now in her active toddler days, and i'm tired and big and its hard to do what i used to do, physically.  bryan said i've been doing really well; that i've actually been much less reliant on him and needy than i was when i was pregnant with zu. i think i'm just capable of more than i was when i was first pregnant; motherhood toughens you up. i have a theory that with each child, you become more superhumanly able to take care of things.

a few weeks ago i went to the park with bryan, his friend kyle, and zu. bryan and kyle went jogging while i stayed at the insanely-busy playground with zu--it was a randomly warm day, after weeks of rain, so there was a swarm of children around. i was wearing a casual dress and tights because my only pair of jeans i can fit into were dirty because i'd thrown up on them that morning right before heading out the door to church. i was awkwardly trying to juggle our oversized diaper bag and the umbrella stroller and keep up with zu when i ran into a mom from our homegroup. she's a little older than me and has three kids, but her youngest is just maybe half a year older than zu. she jumped right in and started helping me, pushing the stroller and keeping an eye on zu too, all while watching her own three children, carrying their diaper backpack (yes, i immediately switched from our diaper bag to bryan's old school backpack after this experience), and having a conversation with me. i had to stop and tell her that i was just amazed, completely amazed at how awesome she is. she's modest, so she said its just something that you get used to.

i hope that happens for me. because i think that being a mom is pretty much the hardest job on earth. i love being a mom, but it is physically and emotionally hard and if you don't think so then you probably aren't a mom or you must have a really boring and not very active kid.

sometimes just the fact that i love her so much is hard. last week, when she woke up, i noticed her belly button has a little hernia that wasn't there the night before. she has a little hernia already on her belly but what could it mean for another one to pop up over night, in another spot? i woke bryan up and informed him we were going to the emergency room, NOW, and i put on everyone's shoes while panicked and crying. bryan calmed me down enough to get me to call the pediatrician first though, and the pediatrician said it was nothing at all to worry about and she'd check it out when zu comes in for her next appointment in may. it took me a long time to calm down from that though, still all weepy and upset--what if it had been something? and i just love her so much, i can't have it ever be something.

so i need some of that 3-kid-mom thick skin. how do they do things? are their lives as busy as mine? i'm sure they're busier. how do they do things?? i'm on the verge of writing fan letters to a few 3-kid-moms that i know.

i trust that God will make me capable; and today's worries are sufficient for today.

its just that today has been a long day, and i'm tired, and big, and have so much to grade, plan, finish, prepare, for school and then for little june. maybe things will look more possible in the morning.

I Confess: An Online Class on the Confessional Poem

Troubled marriages, unstable minds, dysfunctional families—in this workshop we’ll write our secrets, our confessions, studying the works of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, Sharon Olds. We will study how to write what is intimate, how to remove the mask. Each week we will look at example poems from the confessional poetry movement and complete writing exercises to implement what we’ve learned.   

Register for this Workshop

Class size: 12
Dates: May 6-31, 2013
Price: $65

Sign up soon--Only 3 spots left!

from behind the stack of to-be-graded papers....

this week has been so encouraging. i was really burnt out right before thanksgiving break--and we'd had an awful week where everything in our house broke at once--so bryan encouraged me to not grade at all during break. so i didn't. and i'm glad i didn't! even though i've got a pile of yet-ungraded papers the size of your face, i feel much more relaxed.

and i had some students say some really sweet things these past couple of weeks; i never realized as a student how much a comment about loving a class can really lift a teacher's spirits, especially in that end-of-the-year crunch-time!

i haven't been writing much, but i have a stack of new poetry books to read. i've started researching and writing my confessional poetry class lesson plans, for May (i like to work ahead). there is a lot of grading to be done, but it feels manageable. i think i'm going to push through the next two weeks and get as much done as possible so over break i can just work on growing a baby and enjoying the three "r"s...

reading, writing, relaxing.

thanksgiving, like a bright beacon of light dancing on the horizon...

so close yet so far away...

among the happyhalloween and all the fun get togethers with friends, this week has brought a lot of not-so-fun things-- our heat was out for almost the entirety of it (and was expensive to fix), our internet was down for a time, i lost a jacket (with car keys in it!) at the mall, bryan lost a $20 giftcard, bryan's car broke down again, the shower in our masterbathroom is broken (old houses are good deals but not really), very stressful grad school work due for bryan, sicknesses in the family, And, to top it all off, zuzu's new sippy cup broke. 

tomorrow i get my next round of papers to grade, then two weeks later the next round (which is Much too close together--i gave my students an extension but probably shouldn't have), then two weeks later the exam-paper-round. which means i'll be grading about 180 papers between now and a month from now. oh man i shouldn't do that math...

then its all over!

for a month at least...

so, needless to say, bryan and i are very much looking forward to our thanksgiving break, which is an almost entire glorious week split between our two families. i keep thinking, if i can just make it until then...

only 7 more teaching-days until!
and only 15 more sleeps!

an assured completeness

1\  what work is
the past few weeks have been about adjusting to our new schedule as a family. bryan started work at the library, working in the evenings. since i was already the one who did zuzu's bedtime schedule, it hasn't been hard on her but i do miss the time bryan and i were able to spend together after zuzu went to bed. we've been working on being good stewards of our time when we are all home together--putting away the computer, turning off the tv, and heading out to the park or downtown. now that the weather isn't beastly hot we've started going out to stroll by the river, which i had missed terribly this summer.

it has been great for bryan to be back in a regular job. he went a month without anything after what happened with his last church, and he was getting very restless. i love that we're both working for the school and he has always liked working as a librarian.

teaching this semester has been so much easier than it was last semester. its nice teaching classes i've taught before, not everything is so very new. i ended up having six in the class and they are all so talented. i can't wait to see how their work blossoms over the semester.

i'm also co-advising the literary magazine this year. i could've taken it over entirely but i want to take a year to see how the current teacher advises it, so that i can make sure to do it right. our literary magazine is the oldest publication of the schools--its been going since the 1836!--but hardly any students know about it. we're working on awareness, and on building up our staff. i think that the magazine has a lot of potential.


2\ locomotion
we're a one car family now--bryan's explorer bit the dust. its fixable but the car is worth less than it would cost to fix it, so we've got it parked in the clearing (our land is wooded) until we can afford another car to trade it in for. we're thinking we'll just be a one car family as long as we can make it work--hopefully another couple of years. we live close to the school where we both work so on days bryan wants to take zu to the park or something, i'll just walk to work (or maybe get a bike!). right now zuzu is too little to play on the playground much so its worked out ok with me taking the car.

on sundays, tuesdays and thursdays i've started running/jogging/hobbling along as fast as i can (not very). bryan goes in at  five on those days, so i have a few hours before zu goes to bed. no impressive distances or times to report--i'm just happy to be getting active regularly. and zu enjoys being paraded up and down the street.


3\ my formal education
the form class ended this week. i enjoyed it so much, i wish it went on another year. i've written a villanelle, pantoum, sestina, ghazal, and gigan, and also learned about the blues poem, triolet and bop forms. i never had the courage to truly tackle form before i had the encouragement of that class. there is something immensely satisfying about form--an assured completeness that i don't always have in free verse, where the form is my own invention.  i'm so glad that bryan convinced me to take this class, and i plan to do more work in form, particularly the sestina, pantoum and villanelle.

while i'm here i might as well share the happy news--32 Poems accepted my poem "What to Wear"! its not really a poem about fashion even though it sounds like maybe it is. it is a poem that i wrote when i was in a nervous and sad disposition. it was one of those rare poems direct from the muse to the writer--i sat down and wrote it start to end, sent it out, and it was accepted the first place I sent it, 32 Poems.  i wish it happened like that every time--the effortless outpouring straight to the page.

first day of class

enter to learn

my first day went well. i like that its on a friday too, so i can have a two-day-breather before really getting into things.

this semester i teach 3 written composition II classes and a poetry class. i was happy to see a lot of familiar faces in my comp classes--i think that out of all my comp students, about 75% are ones i had last semester in comp 1. we just did syllabus review and a fun get-to-know you activity today. monday: Grammar review, and "what is good writing."

i had double the amount of students i expected in poetry--5! a much better number to work with. i can't wait to really get started with that class--i have so much to tell them, its hard not to just tell them all at once! monday we are conquering The Line--it will be a big lesson--then onto our first workshop.

there were a few first day hiccups--mainly that out of the four classes i taught, Three had their classrooms changed this morning, one of which i wasn't notified of so i had to track down my class and herd them to our new classroom.

i also found that i have no time to eat during the day again this semester. i get all woozy if i don't eat so i've got to figure out some time to snack on something at some point. otherwise i crash. like today.

i got home, played with zu for an hour or so, had some leftover zucchini fries (shared with zu of course). zu went down for her nap and i woke up on the loveseat in some awkward, fell-asleep-where-i-sat position, groggily asking bryan "what time is it? have i been asleep?"

he's making dinner tonight (yay!yay!yay!) breakfast burritos, yum. i'm planning on trying to draft a poem, but we'll see. friends are coming over for bbq (memphis-style, you know it) and a baby-play-date tomorrow so i really should clean the house...although, as brenda ueland urges, perhaps i will neglect my housework for writing instead.

vowels control your brain

this is one of the more interesting articles i've read in a long time. read it, i urge you. i think it is of particular interest to writers, the sound theory.

when i was thinking of baby names, i thought somewhere along these lines. one of my old favorite names, Isla, compared to my daughter's name, Susan, did not seem as steady, dependable and intelligent to me. I think that is partially that "Isla" begins and ends in vowels verses "Susan" which begins and ends in consonants, giving it a less feminine, or, as bryan and i like to say "frilly", feel.

Another factor for us is that I have a particular attraction to "n"s in names--my name and my sister's names all include them (Karen, Lauren, Renee) and my husband's name does as well (Bryan). I think Susan was so attractive to me as a name because it felt appropriate for a little girl name--and what little girls did I know better than Karen and Lauren? The name "Susan" blends right in with its similar length, repetition of consents, and concluding "en" sound. And, it also is fairly similar to the love-of-my-life's name--Bryan and Susan have very similar sounds.

So, all that to say, different names attract different people for a myriad of associations and history, so particular its hard to trace it back. there are the obvious things--i dislike the name Andrew because of a high school bully, the meaning of Susan is "lily" which is my favorite flower--but the psychology of naming goes so much deeper than that. i would love to study this further someday.

how teaching poetry can make you a better poet

Some people wonder why I help train my competitors and allow them to use the obstacle course I built, since they are my competition. But I don't think anyone should be afraid of a little competition--it just pushes me to work harder. We don't compete directly against each other, it is more a competition with ourselves. And I benefit from training others because when I see where they make mistakes in form and style, I can more easily spot my own mistakes and correct them.
~ David Campell, American Ninja Warrior Contestant

Helpful Websites for College English Professors

{1}  Modern American Poetry.
Great for teaching American Lit. Or just reading for fun, if you're a poetry nerd like me.

{2} Owl Purdue
Excellent powerpoint presentations and lessons on MLA and other grammar issues.

{3} Edsitement
Has lesson plans and great discussion questions for many different classic literary works

what kind of professor am i going to be?

the cows are lowing and there is frost on the ground

november was a blur--florida and thanksgiving and a wedding! so much traveling. so of course i vow to come home and never.travel.again. and now we have a trip planned for a little more than a week from now (a short trip though). i've got an interview. what can i say? it wasn't something i was looking for. but much more on that much later. probably after its all over. in the meantime, i've been hitting the books. luckily i'd already been doing some research on lineation in free verse poetry on the side, for fun, since zuzu was born (yes, i am a nerd) so that is what i'll talk about. at first i was daunted but then, as i researched and lesson-planned, i remembered that i Do really love doing this. that its my dream-job for a reason! i suppose its just the possibility of all that change (again) so soon (january?) that i'm a little wary of, if it happens. and thats a big IF. at least i can't say that 2011 lacked adventure.

::next week::

{ a goodbye lunch and a goodbye icecreamparty at work }

{ moving to the farmhouse... }

 { traveling home for my babyshower }

{ and, after 2years, i trade in my prettygreat job for a mostwonderful job... }

the job-hunt continues.

B has already gotten a lot of calls back & has a few churches seriously looking at him right now, but we've decided to keep sending out resumes until one of those churches hires him. i'm in charge of sending out resumes--i'm his "secretary," as my mother in law likes to say--and today i sent a resume to the closest place to family so far (TN) and one the furthest (AK).

i have to admit, i struggled with sending the resume to the alaska church...do they even have sunshine there? its above CANADA!...but then i felt convicted--how can i pray for the lord to lead us wherever he wants us to go, then say "oh, but not alaska, not anywhere that makes us too uncomfortable."

so, resume sent! who knows, i could really love alaska!

we're praying that God opens up some doors so that we can move before i get too hugely-big this summer--but, more than that, we're praying that God will lead us to the Right church for us to serve at, in his time, whenever and wherever that might be!

Water is essential for all dimensions of life.

~

I've been trying to drink more water this week. I'm very strange in that I hate to drink anything--I don't know why, I just would rather be thirsty than drink water--so I compared how much I normally drink in a day (maybe 2 mason jars of water) to how much I'm supposed to have (6 mason jars of water! what!?).

I've done good so far! 6 days of having the amount of water I'm Supposed to have and I can tell a little bit of a difference--I'm not as hungry in between meals, at least. I'm going to be very careful to drink the required amount for at least a month, so I can try to make a habit of drinking more water.

Note: My measurements are in mason jars because that is what we use instead of  water bottles. I got a pack of 12 for next to nothing and we use them all the time, for carrying drinks and cereal and whatnot. They also make pretty vases for wildflowers. and they cause my coworkers to stop by and say "Renee, are you drinking out of a JAR?" and I say "why  yes I am." 

.~.

I like to surprise people but I am not very good about it. I get too excited and end up telling them. THIS time though, THIS time I will surprise Bryan for his birthday!

I'm not going to say what it is {yet}. Just that I am excited about it. And that I think it will make him feel loved&special&appreciated. Which is especially important for poor December-born people, whose birthdays are continually lumped in with Christmas!

.~.

11 more poems to write for the 30poems30days!

.~.

Bryan and I have officially watched through Blake's collection of Studio Ghibli movies. Our ranking, most favorite to least favorite:

1. Spirited Away
2. Kiki's Delivery Service
3. The Cat Returns
4. Princess Mononoke
5. Ponyo

But really they are all good

.~.

I'm thankful for Friday. This week has been one of those weeks that wears and bears down and makes being here a little hard...I know what I am mainly good at, and enjoy--being a wife, writing, homemaking--but it isn't profitable, in a monetary way.

It was strange to realize that I was not actually going to be one of those high-achieving workforce women that I had always pictured myself being. Also surprising to realize that I could Care Less about being successful, in that way.

but only one year left. light at the end of the tunnel. And my husband is working so hard, as hard as he can, to get through quickly. I just need patience and endurance and hope for the future.

a day in the life

6:00AM: wake up. lay in bed thinking about rearranging the furniture. get up and turn off the airconditioner since Bryan is all wrapped up in the covers like a burrito and looks cold

7:00AM: cuddle with Bryan until alarm goes off. he's awake too. we are mutually sleepless this week.

7:20AM: wake up, fix my hair and make up, put on one of my favorite outfits (teal wrap dress, black tights, new black boots, purple trench coat), rearrange the bedroom furniture. the boots make me tall as Bryan and therefore confident

7:45AM: stuff books for the day (C.S. Lewis, Philip Larkin, Wendell Berry) and breakfast in purse, and walk to work with Bryan

7:50AM: get to work, clock in, open the window since I'm burning-up-hot today despite my typical cold-naturedness

8:15AM: finish checking work emails. have a long conversation with co-worker about cool new hairstyle she's trying out today. make mental note: try this hairstyle tomorrow

8:30AM: have my quiet time. currently reading Ephesians

9:30AM: read various poetry books until my boss gets in and gives me new assignments.

11:00AM: take my lunchbreak. clean the house, have lunch (leftover fried rice), read a little of one of the old Real Simple magazines I found in the free seminary thrift store

11:30AM: bring Bryan lunch at the music library, sit and chat awhile before heading back to the office. check our mail

2:00PM: set up for preview day. a new (and heavier!) display this time, but luckily I've got help from the other missions department

2:30PM: talk with new students about why they should be church planters. answer questions, (successfully!) resist eating the free cookies

3:30PM: pack everything up and head back to the office. check voicemails and emails

4:30PM: walk back home, thinking about weekend plans

4:45PM: a short pilates workout then long walk with Bryan for my easy workout day (yesterday was a hard workout day, and I alternate)

6:00PM: Head to the chicfila for free sandwiches with Bryan, resist buying another pair of tights at Forever21, then to the grocery store to pick up a few ingredients for the meals I'm cooking tomorrow.

7:00PM: get back home and chill out with my honey while waiting for my little sis to get in town for her weekend visit.

business.trip

I just got back from my business trip to Georgia. The Atlanta airport is so terrible--I got crazy lost when I arrived on Wednesday night, then got to the hotel and crashed. The hotel room was really nice--a kitchen at least twice as big as the kitchen in my apartment and a little office area. Thursday was busy, training all day. the training wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped, but it was good to meet the people I work with via email so often.I missed Bryan so much while I was gone (and I never really sleep without him there) so its really nice to be back home with my honey for the weekend.