Jen Russum

Life right now…

Life right now…

Have I ever mentioned that being a grad student is CRAZY?! I'm not talking about the taking a couple of night classes or online classes to get your Masters in fill-in-the-blank type of grad school. Not that it's bad to get your Masters this way.... this week I approve of the night/online method more than ever. I am talking about full-time, ruin-your-life grad school. The kind of grad school where you can't really work another job or clean your house or have friends. The type of grad school where they kill you with reading and writing assignments then tell you what a horrible writer you are at the end of the semester, even though they thought you were a good enough writer to accept you into their program in the first place. I am talking about the grad school where they accept straight-A students and then refuse to give them As anymore, even though they are working way harder at school than they ever have before in their life. I am talking about the kind of grad school where it takes at least five or six years to get your degree, while they tell you the whole time that you will never find a job after you graduate. That's the kind of grad school I'm talking about. No wonder my own professor said this week to "NEVER go into academia." Touché. But I digress. This is turning into a bigger rant than my last post, and it wasn't intended to be a rant. I love grad school. I am thankful to be in grad school. But grad school is hard, and the final weeks of the semester are incredibly overwhelming and intense. I happen to be in those hellish weeks right now. Let me sum it up briefly. In the next three and half weeks, I will: 1) Present an 8-10 page work in progress paper to my Rensaissance Sexuality class on Elizabeth I's chastity as represented in The Faeire Queene 2) Give a work-in-progress visual presentation to my digital literacies class on my mommy blogs research 3) Finish and submit 20 page Renaissance paper on chastity by May 6th 4) Finish and submit 20 page mommy blog paper by May 10th 5) Grade TWO more rounds of my own student's essays (aka 35 essays times two = grading 70 essays in the next three and half weeks!) So this is the last time you might hear from me for awhile, but I promise that when mid-May rolls around I will be a consistent blogger once again. I will leave you with this picture of what my kitchen table looks like right now as well as a picture of my to-do list for the day, and ask for your sympathies during my absence! Farewell friends! Pray for me!!! Yuck.  Yes, I will be reading an article called "Florimell's Girdle" later this afternoon... ... Read more

RANT: Things I Hate about Arizona

RANT: Things I Hate about Arizona

As promised, I would like to share a couple of things I dislike about living in Arizona. And a "couple" is not an understatement. After nine months of living in the desert, there are only TWO thing that significantly bother me here. And, no, it's not the fact that it is going to be over 100 degrees for the next five months. I think I'm okay with that. Hot summer days = a good tan. Also, hot summer days = warm summer nights. And warm summer nights = wearing a dress in the evening without needing a jacket or sweater. Also, warm summer nights = that amazing feeling when you are sitting in an air-conditioned building (restaurant, movie theater, etc) and you feel cold until you walk outside and feel that warm, 80 degree night air hit your chilly skin. MMMmmm.. Hot summer days = GOOD. Okay, but let's move on, because this is my chance for a short rant. The two things that bother me about Arizona: 1) The smokers. Did someone forget to send the memo to Arizona that smoking is going out of style? It's not cool anymore. The original Marlboro man went on an anti-smoking campaign before he died of lung cancer in his 50s. It's not "green" to smoke. It's not trendy to smoke (unless you are Phoenix hipster). It's not economically savvy to smoke. Even Europe is cutting back. And if the Europeans are quitting smoking WHY aren't the people of Phoenix?! Now granted I hail from Seattle where smoking is one of the biggest faux pas around. The health conscious people of Seattle do not smoke. It's not even really legal anywhere in the city, because as of 2005, you can't smoke in any public building OR within 25 feet of any public doors, windows or vents. And in a city it's pretty hard to find yourself 25 feet away from any doors or windows... It's a glorious law. But Phoenix is behind the times as far as the anti-smoking movement is concerned. Everywhere I go, there is smoke. Smoke in my face. All over ASU's campus. When I walk down city streets. Coming in through the vent in our apartment's laundry closet. I've had enough. Smoking is illegal in most public buildings in the city, but there are very few restrictions on where you can smoke outside. In fact, many places, including the ASU Library, provide ashtrays in outside seating areas for smoking convenience. Gross. I'm fine with the 100 degree weather, but I'm not okay with the cancerous smoke floating through this desert valley of ours.  Here ASU student... why don't you light up while you study???  ASU students can sit and smoke...  They can walk and smoke... They can even ride a bike and smoke... What talent we draw to our school... 2) Speed bumps. Now I don't know if there are any kind of regulations on the lawful height of speed bumps, but if there are, they must be on a state by state or city by city basis... and Phoenix, Arizona must rank #1 for highest speed bumps in the country. You think you are in a valley until your car gets hoisted up by one of these cement monsters and suddenly you are looking over the mountains and peering into New Mexico. They are ridiculous. Since when does Arizona have the right to ruin my car? I haven't gotten out a tape measure to measure these horrible humps, but I think many of them might between close to twelve inches above the surface of the road and they are EVERYWHERE. Arizona has a speed bump obsession. They are in parking lots, the driveway into our apartment complex, on residential streets. There is no escaping them. My car is crying out in pain. I am crying out in pain. Honestly, sometimes my back jars a bit as I cross over the highest ones. And it's not only that they are too high, but that some of them are so abrupt. They aren't the kind that are wide, which can be rolled over gently. And it doesn't matter how sloooooowly you go over them. They might as well put a pile of 4x4 lumber out in the road. My car might appreciate a small collision more than the drive out of our apartment complex each day (okay, I don't really want to get in an accident, but you have to exaggerate in a rant, right?). My students are currently writing practical proposals to fix lcoal problems around the city. I should have begged some students to write about regulating speed bump height in the city and then sent their papers to local officials. Maybe this will be a topic choice for next year. Here are some pictures of these beasts... Here I tried to capture the sheer height of the bumps in our apartment complex... This picture is taken on the flat ground next to the hump. Notice you can only see the roofs of the car ports, because the dang speed bump is so freakin' tall.  This picture could be of ANY parking lot in the greater Phoenix area.... ... Read more

RAVE: Why I Love Arizona!

RAVE: Why I Love Arizona!

This post has been a long time coming. Ever since we moved to Arizona and I started this blog, I've been thinking about how I just want to write a rave post about why I love living in the southwest! It's so great! However, the reason I am finally getting around to writing this post NOW is because I've begun taking pictures for my rant post highlighting the few things I HATE about Arizona. My complaints are not many, but I feel they need to be addressed. But I figured that it would not be fair to rant before I rave, because the positives about this desert life far outweigh the negatives. So here we go... WHY I LOVE LIVING IN THE SOUTHWEST: 1) The southwest really is just that - a mix of the south and the west. Now for someone who grew up on the west coast, but spent a lovely six years living in Texas, living in the southwest means that my favorite things about both my worlds collide in one place. Here are some examples: I get all my favorite establishments from both places. From the west, we have Red Robin, In-n-Out Burger, Safeway, etc. From the south, we have Hobby Lobby, Quik Trip, and Chic-Fil-A among others. I could not be happier. Yes, my happiness is based, in part, on cheeseburger consumption. 2) Secondly, Arizona is more politically conservative than Washington (but then again, what state isn't?) and I just like being around conservatives instead of crazy liberals (Seattle's "self-righteous recyclers" as our friend Mike Finley calls them... sorry, Seattle friends, but you know it's kinda true...). Not that I am against recycling by any means. I think it's a very practical, simple way to be good stewards of what God has given us. And that leads me to one thing I hate about Arizona, which is the lack of recycling, but I'm not allowed to rant here, so I'll save it for another post... 3) However, even my love of conservatives has a breaking point. For example, I think people should be allowed to carry guns, but if everyone around me was packing heat, I would honestly feel a bit nervous. Thankfully, in the SOUTHWEST we get a healthy balance of conservatives and liberals. For every tried and true gun-in-his-holster Republican down here, there is a mowhawked, long-boarding transplant from California. We keep it balanced, and I like it. 4) Who can really complain about 310 days of sun a year? I know there are people out there who say  "But I love the rain..." (liars!), but we all know you just tell yourself that because you live in Seattle or some other equally horrible climate and it's the only way to console yourself ten months out of the year. Can you really wake up in October, November, December, January, February, and March and see the sun smiling down on you and feel the sixty degree breeze on your face as you walk under brilliant blue skies and say, "I hate this." Please... And for those of you, my sweet friends, who live in sunny climes such as Texas, and claim you love Seattle-like weather and hate the Texas summer, I double-dog dare you to live in Seattle for a full year. Then get back to me on your feelings about the rain. But then again, who can afford to live in Seattle??? 5) Which leads me to my next rave. The economy, all things considered, is pretty great down here compared to many other places in the country. Our gas prices were reasonable (until the insanity of the past month worldwide), and our rent is CHEEEEAP. If you remember one of my recent posts, I actually can't disclose our rent on this blog so my Seattle readers don't get depressed. Let's just say we are going to be house-hunting soon, and we won't rule out properties below $100,000. The only thing, as far as I can tell, that is significantly overpriced in Arizona is cereal. I don't know why it consistently costs $5-6 a box here (unless you go to Target), but I'm not allowed to talk about my irks right now... This doesn't even cover all the reasons I love Arizona. There are others, such as being halfway between WA and TX (flights are shorter and more reasonably priced). We are six hours from LA and San Diego (aka the ocean) by car. And we will be traveling there very soon. All major sporting events take place here... hello BCS championship, spring training, PGA golf tours and MLB All-Star game, as well as regular Pac-10, NBA, MLB, and NFL games. And mostly, I cannot wait for the return of warm summer nights, where you can walk around in a dress or shorts without having to put a jacket on after 7pm. In Washington, I used to wear a North Face in June. Blech! I will leave you with this. One Saturday in February I was sitting on my couch reading, and this is what it looked like outside my window. True love. Did I mention I fold my laundry out on the patio while wearing my bikini? Yes, I do.   ... Read more