Reader Response

So far today I have spent a total of--no joke--nine hours reading. That counts the Sunday NYT, but I knocked that off in less than an hour because I knew my eyes would need to be saved. I'm making my way through someone's dissertation, and one of my grad students just sent me a draft of her second chapter (hooray!). Read the diss in hard copy--one chapter in a comfy chair, and two during a marathon elliptical machine session at the gym (I got up to a page a minute in the middle there). Read the newly, ahem, born chapter at my computer so I could give neat and thorough electronic feedback. Read and rated a log of conference proposals, also at the computer, but this time slouched over my laptop--this reader apparently needs frequent changes of venue. Interrupted the conference proposal evals with dinner, and--lo!--look what's next to me as I finish up that task and sign on me blog: a quarter glass of guinness. Hang on. Make that empty.

Oh, and just for a changeup, I wrote two letters of recommendation earlier today. I only have two more chapters of that diss and a nice bo-omb frosting-topped chapter a friend just sent along, and my queue--it will be cleared.

You know what that means: if I have a fairly productive reading-evening, tomorrow morning I get to start my own new chapter, which I will in turn send to kind-hearted and sharpeyed readers.

When I think about the economy of reading and writing we academics inhabit, I frequently flash on a scene post-basketball practice when I asked one of our grad assistant coaches to stay after with me and feed me the ball so I could work on my shot. After hundreds of rebounds and sharp passes, when my shot finally started to reappear, I thanked her and fretted that I couldn't think of how to repay her. She just smiled and said I could stay after and pass to someone on another day.

All those passes. All those letters and papers and chapters my advisors, colleagues and friends have written and read for me. Yep. It's exactly that kind of economy.

Comments

[senioritis]

I am so jealous that you can read on the elliptical. I'm married to one of those people; he steams through books while working out. I just get a headache!

[dhawhee]

Certain machines make me dizzy when reading. So only one kind of elliptical (the kind with the arm things) or the stairmaster or the exercise bike will do.

[Stephanie]

Well, today I spent about four hours writing and deleting. All told, I believe I might have written 5000 words, but I have before me a mere few hundred of the damn things, and they aren't in any order, and they don't even seem on speaking terms with one another, and they look somewhat like ants going across the page. So I believe that I am going to spend a day reading very soon. But not on the elliptical machine. Because frankly, that's what my computer has become for my eyeballs. And it ain't pretty. Am I still writing? Jeebus.

[dhawhee]

Ha! From KB's story "The Excursion": "Miles upon miles I had walked for a thought, and at last I came upon an ant hill."