Category: Daily updates

Generally musings of the day, usually accompanied by a photograph

Now 100001

As a coincidental birthday gift, I finally received my September, October, and November pay today. The first order of business: pay off my frightening credit card balance.

I won’t be able to spare much time for celebrating today, as I am still embroiled in my second big wave of grading for the term. Once this finally wraps up, I will be able to focus on my neglected PhD work.

Friendships and Judo aside, a miserable time

My second (worse) wave of grading for this term has begun: first year essays which we are vexatiously required to grade exclusively online.

At the same time, my PhD proposal continues to drift into strenge new realms of lateness; opening my email inbox produces blasts of panic; and it’s hard not to obsess over the insanity south of the border, even if that obsessing serves no productive purpose. The Trump victory also raises questions for my PhD project, with my supervisor making the dispiriting suggestion that it may be wise to drop Keystone XL from the analysis, and possibly refocus the whole project on opposition to natural resource projects in Western Canada, including fracking. This is about the last thing I want when I desperately need to get a proposal submitted and approved, and then get ethical approval granted.

On another note, the Lionel Massey Foundation (Massey’s student council) has acclaimed a “new College photographer” whose one set so far, from the Halloween dance, strikes me as rather amateur in quality.

To add to it all, I have not been paid for my teaching work since April 28th and have been living by drawing down the PhD account I established while still working and spending every cent I have ever earned from photography (no gear replacement or repair for the foreseeable future).

Another difficult rent day

I finally learned the reason why I haven’t been paid since my previous teaching assistant job ended in the spring. In an email from July where the body text said nothing about action on my part, one of the attachments contained instructions that have to be followed to get me into the UTM pay system. Submitting it means I will get paid for September through November at the end of this month.

During times like this, I find that I have to establish a gating mechanism for stress because I can’t hit all my deadlines if I am worrying about everything at once. That means I often need to freeze and exclude particularly stressful aspects of life until I have enough breathing room to engage with them without knocking everything else out of smooth operation.

Vortices

Grading and other obligations have amassed into a vortex which will keep me stationary and spinning this week. Today I basically need to wrap up my midterm grading. Tuesday I need to find an alternative way to pay my rent and internet bill because I haven’t been paid for my UTM TA work, meet with Dr. Neville about my proposal, prepare my tutorials for the week, and go to Judo. Wednesday I am out in Mississauga to teach back-to-back-to-back tutorials, followed by double office hours to help people with their forthcoming essays (the basis for my second, worse round of grading this term). Thursday a trip to the dentist will punctuate the completion of my application to the next Canadian Political Science Association conference. Friday I am back at UTM all day for a notes-and-photography assignment. Saturday, we have a double Judo class in the company of the intermediate and advanced classes.

Judo as a partnered undertaking

One way in which Judo is remarkable and surprising is how it is profoundly collaborative and cooperative.

Many warm-up exercises and all grappling and groundwork rely on close trained cooperation between two people.

Much of beginner Judo consists of learning how to fall without injury, and how to help a partner who is developing a technique gain ability.

It’s worth noting that since starting in September, we haven’t tried any free grappling in a standing position. The closest we get is free attempts to throw and hold down an opponent when you both start on your knees or sitting back to back, and we have been encouraged to tap out and end the round when we are convinced we cannot escape the hold down.

We are learning so many different techniques and working with partners of so many body types that we often need to seek guidance from the instructors and advanced students about how to perform techniques properly. For me, the hardest thing is doing a whole set of difficult tasks simultaneously: whether it’s practicing a forward rolling breakfall with initial foot and shoulder and arm positioning and then complex movement and then more precise foot and arm positioning, working on throws that require coordinated and complex foot and upper body movements, or trying to maintain or break hold downs using a combination of taught technique and the improvisation of enthusiasm.

A worrisome number of people think the Queen picks the Prime Minister, and that every Canadian law had to be approved by the British parliament before 1982

I am nearly 50% of the way through this term’s first big batch of grading, with the rest to be done by Tuesday. My lower right ribs have also nearly healed, and today’s Judo class went very well.

I may be able to spare the time to take some photos at tonight’s Halloween dance at Massey, which is unfortunately at the same time as the Clay & Paper Theatre Company’s annual Night of Dread.

If I live to be old, I will be poor but I hope I won’t think I wasted my life

Between midterm grading and Judo today, I attended an exceptional lecture delivered by Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

To me, it was a great demonstration of the vital importance and characteristic professional practices of history as an academic discipline, which I see as a necessary foundation for such upstart and tragically insecure disciplines as international relations and political science.

Compared in particular with a theatrical, well-received, yet historically and technically dubious talk from Ken Adelman on October 18th, Blanton’s talk seemed grounded in reputable sources and careful thinking rather than ideologically-driven enthusiasm which is little affected by either.

It’s not often that I get to nerd out on details of personal relationships between the old Trudeau and Nixon and Reagan; the close calls of the US-Soviet nuclear confrontation; issues of data preservation in a digital age; espionage; journalistic ethics; and the Vela incident.

And then I went to Judo where, despite sore ribs on the right side near my spine, I felt at least a little bit fit and competent for the first time in the course so far.