this post is not about dogs

It's about the rest of my life, which consists of

a. teaching
b. writing
c. social commitments

Not much to say about c. these days. Been overwhelmed with what this post is not about.

As for a. and b., things are coming along nicely. Both of my classes seem like they're going to be a lot of fun to teach, and by fun I mean that I'm going to get almost as much out of them as I think the students will. In senior seminar, I've shaped the course loosely around the question of what can be bought and sold in an information economy. The other day in class I realized that the question could also be what can be bought and sold in a gift economy, but the more I think about it, the more I like the first version better. In any case, in just the first week, we've had some really engaging, productive discussions about what constitutes "fulfilling" work. And in my rhetoric course, we're investigating the rhetoric of "monsters" in public life, with an emphasis, of course, on the ways in which we define ourselves in contrast to the monsters that we create. This is why I love teaching: I get to investigate with students issues that matter, issues that change from semester to semester, issues that help me figure out what I want to say in my scholarship.

As I told my students--both classes--the other day, during a discussion of what David Graeber calls a psychological need to feel like we're doing good in the world, I have the best job in the world.

So what if my collection of personal essays on social class was rejected by three publishers? Maybe the essays need to be published individually. Maybe they'll never get published. But you know what? I had to write my essay on class to get to the ideas I have today. If you'd told me that two and a half years ago, I wouldn't have done it. Ah, the learning curve.