Prologue: Monday at the Meeting
GLOSS #1
Next Time: Prologue: Monday at the Meeting
[this is a GLOSS on the Prologue, which has been re-posted in tandem, but also linked here for your convenience.]
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My Big Quit
Wow! how much higher ed has changed since the time of this Big Quit of mine. That was 2022, and it’s only getting stupider from here.
I think it’s fun to see my experience in body language being used for specific purposes here. Whenever I teach students this stuff (body language, social status, microexpressions, psychological gesture, etc.) they get weirdly paranoid, over-aware, when it’s new to them. Then, after a series of exercises and lots of readings, analysis, and real world observation, they start to figure out how they can use certain techniques to help them in certain specific ways (instead of being so super aware at all times, which is impossible for anyone else but Sherlock Holmes, or Cal Lightman.)(And even then, it does drive those men crazy.) (Also, they’re fictional.)
I’ve written about this sort of thing before, so take a look at today’s mini-bibliography for one of my most popular essays on that topic.
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Call Me By Your Name (or someone else’s)
All the theatre companies and plays I list here retain all their real names. I’ve changed the names of the university itself and individuals involved. Or I don‘t name them at all, but call them by their title (e.g. Tenured Tech, Department Chair, etc.).
My first draft that Herb looked at, I used all real names for everything, and the first few waves of my throwing this at
brick wallsagents to see what would stick, it was that draft with the real names. I figured any editor working with me could finagle all that with me. But then when I decided to put it up myself as a serial, I thought I should do the renaming myself for these versions.I rename with similar names, or with synonyms or joke versions of the real names. Also? I know very well that it’s not at all difficult to figure out what all these real names are. It’s fine—I’m not trying to hide anything necessarily, just keeping everything more apropos in its entirety. Doxxing is a thing in this world, and I don’t care if you really want to know who these people and institutions are: if I did, I’d do a lot more scrubbing of my socials. But as it is, it’s a relatively simple task to figure out what Subway University really is, who Tenured Jim is, even who Professor Bubbles is. That’s just not important to my narrative.
I’m not committing libel, anyway—I’m only setting forth what really happened, and the feelings I have about what happened are my own. I’m not telling any lies, with the caveat that a memory is a fucked up thing, as is eyewitness testimony.
So like, don’t go finding any of these people and giving them shit. They don’t need that, it wouldn’t change their attitudes or opinions of me, wouldn’t help me or my situation at all (quite the opposite), and certainly wouldn’t gain me any good jobs or anything like that. No need. Just hear what happened, know what it is to be an adjunct, and in the humanities, and hey. Maybe think twice about the relationships in your own life story, and appreciate your new awareness of what the higher ed deal is really like. And we can let those people stew in their little pettiness bubble, can’t we? Now that I’ve moved on to better things. Agreed?
In the Room Where it Happened
Both pictures are shared here because they’re in ARTS 271, the room of infamy from this story. I took the one, and the other of me teaching was taken by a student, but I don’t remember who. Probably Max S.? As you can see, we had just returned from plague lockdown and were required to wear masks. We also had an assembly line of sword cleaning after each class. Which is a good idea regardless of plague, to be fair. And no, that purple lightsaber isn’t mine—I own 4 but that’s not one of them. It belonged to a student, who felt that it was only appropriate that the teacher use the special Mace Windu one. (iykyk)
TODAY’S BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Boughn, Jenn Zuko. Stage Combat—Fisticuffs, Stunts and Swordplay for Theatre and Film. NYC: Allworth Press, 2006. (Link)
Cloud, Henry. Necessary Endings. NYC: HarperCollins, 2010. (Link)
Zuko, Jenn. ‘Amygdala.’ From Zuko’s Musings, Jan. 2023. Available: https://open.substack.com/pub/jenn5c3s4/p/vocab-word-othweek-0f2?r=1fslzq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
—>Would you all like me to start annotating these mini-biblios? Like, put in a short explanation of why these sources are chosen for these glosses? Let me know in the comments.