Fencing Bear at Prayer

Fault : Always believe that failure is a consequence of insufficient personal effort Describe an experience : Please write a short story (approximately 2,000 characters) about a time in your life when this fault created a situation that had negative impact on your life. Basically, this fault is my life. It is hard to think of a particular instance in which it mattered more than others, when every time I fail, I tell myself it is my fault. Just read my blog back a few years. I refuse to blame anybody or anything other than myself for my inability to fence better. It isn’t my coach’s fault for not teaching me better. (He is an excellent coach and many of his students have gone on to become top-ranked fencers.) It isn’t my teammates’ fault for not being there for me to practice with. (They are at practice much more than I am, in part because they live closer to the club, but also because I am lazy.) It isn’t my opponents’ fault for having fenced longer than I have, although I ...

Fault : Could be better at cooperating Describe an experience : Please write a short story (approximately 2,000 characters) about a time in your life when this fault created a situation that had negative impact on your life. I don’t like people messing with my stuff. My sister and I shared a room when we were little, and it drove me nuts when she would leave her toys and clothes on my side of the room. So much so that one day, when she refused to move her things, I chased her down the hall and pushed her just as we got to the end. She hit her head on the edge of a half-wall separating the dining room from the living room...and the rest was history. She got the scar to show off to everybody, and I got the reputation as the Bad Sister. I think I was five, maybe six. She was three or four. I didn't mean for her to hit the wall, it just happened that that was when I caught up to her. I like having my things just right. My toys. My furniture. My words. I hate when other peop...

Fault : Could be a better listener Describe an experience : Please write a short story (approximately 2,000 characters) about a time in your life when this fault created a situation that had negative impact on your life. I have a hard time hearing certain things people say. Someone says: “I love you.” I hear: “I would love you if...” Someone says: “Good job.” I hear: “That would have been good, but...” Someone says: “I admire you.” I hear: “...but not as much as so-and-so.” Someone says: “You did well in that bout.” I hear: “...but not as well as you should have.” If it is praise, it bounces off of me. If it is support, I don’t trust it. If it is advice about how I could improve, all I hear is criticism. I try to believe people when they say nice things to me, I really do. My mother’s daughter knows how to accept a compliment. “Thank you,” I say. And I mean it. But there is always a part of me that is waiting for the sting. Because I know it is coming. Particularl...

Fault : Feel ashamed of my body Describe an Experience : Please write a short story (approximately 2,000 characters) about a time in your life when this fault created a situation that had a negative impact on your life. You mean there are people who aren’t? I have been ashamed of my body since I was seven or eight and started worrying about my weight. There was a chart in one of my parent's medical books for tracking the height and weight percentiles for children, so I knew that I was fat compared to others my age. I spent the next three or four years tracking myself on that chart, always on the pudgy side, until magically I lost weight when I was eleven. But that was only the beginning. Up and down, up and down. Sometimes I am able to lose weight, then the carb addiction kicks back in, and I pudge back out. I appreciate better now how I used carbs when I was a teenager, to dull the pain of feeling left out, but of course at the time all I knew was shame. The weight has com...

Fault : Don't laugh much or have fun Describe an experience : Please write a short story (approximately 2,000 characters) about a time in your life when this fault created a situation which had a negative impact on your life . In my mind, fun is something I have to earn. It took me years to allow myself to enjoy coming to fencing tournaments like the one I am competing in this weekend. It's expensive in a proper First World Problems kind of way. There's the coaching and the club fees, the equipment and the commute. Then there's the travel to the tournaments, typically air fare for our national events, plus the hotel for several days. And, of course, the registration for the event. A single weekend can cost up to $1000 easily, and to compete at the level I do, I need to do several of these competitions a year. It adds up. And I don't deserve it. It was worst when my son was fencing and we would go to Summer Nationals together. You'd think it would just ...

Fault: Can be contemptuous of other people and myself Describe an experience : Please write a short story (approximately 2,000 characters) about a time in your life when this fault created a situation which had a negative impact on your life. Sometimes I don't know whom I contemn more, my academic colleagues or myself.  They say such boneheaded things!  Like: “We can get more majors in History if we emphasize that studying history will give students research and analytical skills that they can use in other professions.” (Thus refusing to define a positive reason for studying history as such, while at the same time reducing our discipline to its lowest common denominator among the social sciences and humanities.)  Or: “We need more diversity among our faculty and students.” (Meaning, of course, diversity within the parameters set by the federal affirmative action guidelines.)  Or: “I think we need to consider race and/or gender and/or ethnicity here.” (Bec...

Fault: Feel inadequate when introduced to new people Describe an experience: Please write a short story (approximately 2,000 characters) about a time in your life when this fault created a situation that had a negative impact on your life . I have a hard time selling myself. I know, it's hard to believe. Here I am, professor of medieval history at the University of Chicago, and I feel inadequate when introduced to new people. Maybe I should start a club, Inadequates Anonymous. “Hello, my name is Rachel, and I feel inadequate when introduced to new people.” I have a fantasy that none of my colleagues in academia ever feels like this. (I'll wait...) I almost never use my academic Chicago status as a way of introducing myself. Almost. In over twenty years, I have used it once, and once only, to significant effect. (It was important, I had to use everything I had to get that special someone's attention. Then I was NOT going to sell myself short!)  Otherwise, ...

Fault: Have a hard time planning for the future because I am interested in everything Describe an experience : Please write a short story (approximately 2,000 characters) about a time in your life when this fault created a situation that had a negative impact on your life . I do not know Latin as well as I should.  Sure, I studied it for three years in high school. By my senior year, I was the best at Grammar in the state. I was the best in the country in Grammar the year before that. I won medals and trophies in Decathalon (grammar, reading comprehension, vocabulary, Latin derivatives, mottoes, Roman history, mythology, literature, geography, and Roman life) as well .  But I didn't stick with it in college after my first or second year, despite changing my major from Physics and Math to History and Religious Studies. It was too easy, or so I thought. I already knew Latin well enough to be the best student in Classics. Why study it more when there were so many other...

Fault : Seriously dislike having my routine or schedule upset.  Describe an experience :  Please write a short story (approximately 2,000 characters) about a time in your life when this fault created a situation that had a negative impact on your life. I was not there when my father died. It was early in March 2005. I had been sick for several weeks with a high fever and was behind in my writing. I had an important article due and a tournament coming up. It was going to be my first ever Veteran NAC. I had just turned 40 and was looking forward to competing against women my own age. The weekend before the tournament, Dad had a mild stroke. I talked with him on the phone after he got out of surgery, and he seemed to be recovering, even though he had a terrible cold and his voice was affected by the swelling in his neck. I had been planning for us to go see him in a couple weeks during spring break, so I promised him I would be there soon. I couldn't come sooner (or so I ...

Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which t...

There was a reception on campus yesterday afternoon in honor of John Boyer, our newly reappointed Dean of College. I have been back in the classroom for two weeks, but since  coming out for Milo  this was the first function I have attended where I expected to see a fair number of my Chicago colleagues. I was nervous, to say the least. Would they talk with me? Would they shun me? Would I find myself standing awkwardly in a corner, the cynosure of all eyes? Yeah, right. Are you kidding me? This is Chicago. We eat Nobel prize winners for lunch. Mere provocateurs barely raise eyebrows. Or maybe I am just really, really good at being a Happy Warrior . After all, I've been training with the Master these past six months . See? I'm stuck now, not sure how to explain. It was all so... normal . For Chicago, that is. One colleague admitted to seeing  Milo's interview with Bill Maher , but smiled and waved me off when I tried to explain how Milo chose his outfit for...

I've been here before. Yesterday, I made my confession on Facebook in a post shared only with my Friends: No matter what I do, about this time every year I get hit with such angst about my work, my writing, my scholarship, my career, I want to quit. In previous years, I have associated it with getting disparaging peer reviews of my work--I have had many, it is not just my blogging about Milo that has been polarizing ! I had thought this time round to have cheated the Devil, but it appears not. Not sure whether this is a warning, an apology, or a plea for help. Just sayin’. I'm here again...where I had hoped not to be. My friends, as always, have rallied round, but I cannot will away the gloom. I am stuck here, trying to argue my way out of despair. “I'm just grieving for my father, whose death day (March 10) comes around every year at this time.” “I'm tired from working so hard on my book, then my blog, and now having to go back to teaching. I never took a prope...