Dragging

...not of the gender performance variety, unfortunately.

I've officially completed just one full week of Spring classes since the start of the semester last week, and I'm already feeling exhausted.

It's been too long since I last let myself just write/blog--mostly because I've been getting my syllabi finalized, preparing new lesson plans, and adjusting once again to commuting.

Classes seem to be going well so far (which is a good sign since it is, after all, only the second week of classes). I've got lots of excited students in both my classes, with only a few (seemingly) misguided ones.

I even ran into a former student this afternoon. Turns out this student has a class in the same room right after I teach. She heard me teaching while she was waiting in the hallway, and as I dismissed my class and she and her classmates entered, she passed my students with praise for me and stories about how she enjoyed my class last year. It was very flattering, and just the kind of experience I need to remind myself of when I'm this tired.

Excitingly, though, I was able to pick up two books that I requested from interlibrary loan:

Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life. Eds. Alondra Nelson and Thuy Linh N. Tu with Alicia Headlam Hines. (New York: New York University Press, 2001)

Queer Migrations: Sexuality, U.S. Citizenship, and Border Crossings. Eds. Eithne Luibheid and Lionel Cantu, Jr.* (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005)

*I had the privilege to briefly cross paths with Lionel during my undergraduate studies at the University of California, Irvine. His unexpected death in May 2002 is certainly a great loss, not only for the lives he touched personally, but also for those he touched through his scholarship. His research interests included international migration, queer theory, feminist studies, Latina/o studies, and the sociology of HIV/AIDS.