Dr. Erika Alpert @ErikaAlpert@scholar.social

I wrote a thing and you can finally finally read it! It’s about how “bad,” edited profile pictures in matchmaking + online dating turn out to be “good,” meaningful, and useful. Featuring my silly face, Japanese and Pan-Asian photographic practices, CS Pierce, and musings on Chinese selfie apps + makeup. Open access!

https://www.semioticreview.com/ojs/index.php/sr/article/view/37

“I have never wanted to work on my book so badly as when article reviews come in”: A case study of labor and affect in the practices of one early career academic.

Frodo: “I’m glad to be here with you, Samwise Gamgee, here at the end of all things.”

Me, an intellectual: 😭😭😭😭😭

But I'm writing all this out just to illustrate how deep all these stigmas go, and how profoundly internalized they are.

This is classic Foucauldian stuff: Here I am, a self-disciplining workaholic, steeped in all the toxic modes of academic work and dreadfully embarrassed to have discovered I am, after all, only human.

How unreasonable it is all round.

And how amazing it is that knowing all this doesn't make me feel any less guilty and weird.

But you know, it also absolutely stings to get the reprieve and the focus that I need? I feel so guilty. Like I'm letting my department and colleagues down. Like they'll think less of me from now on, like I've proved unreliable, like they'll never think of me the same way.

Kind of feels like I'm ruining my career, like I've accrued debts I can never repay. My partner, bless him, insists that this is going to save my career, if anything.

So my book didn't get written. The extent to which my publisher can be flexible about a second deadline extension is... limited, but they're trying. Still, I'm absolutely at the end of my rope, and something had to give. I decided that something was going to have to be teaching.

I am SO FUCKING GRATEFUL to the colleagues who stepped in to help me out, at the end of the semester, with scheduling already in place for next term.

(What happened? 2 deaths in the family, 1 death of a friend/my department chair. Unearthed family secrets and my mother divorcing my stepfather in the way of her mother's death. An insecure housing situation with unreliable hot water, clean water, or sometimes any water at all. Moving house due to all of this. Advocacy on behalf of queer and mentally ill students in untenable situations. And my father was hospitalized last week as a bonus.)

So next semester, with the help of super supportive colleagues, I'm taking a break from teaching to FINALLY finish my book, and, while I'm at it, recover from the Actual Worst Year of my life.

In truth, this year has been so spectacularly bad that I would defy anyone to get through it without needing some kind of break. Mental ill health comes for us all at some point or another, previous diagnoses or not.

Today I learned how to say "dickhead" in Kazakh AND Russian, you're welcome:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D2%9B%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%B0%D2%9B%D0%B1%D0%B0%D1%81

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%91%D0%B1

Bless my student for writing a paper on gaming insults.

Few things are more embittering than finding out that a good and beloved app has switched to extractive subscription pricing as its only option.

And now... back to grading. Aieeee.

Initial proceedings from CALA 2019 have been published! so if you want to hear some of my academic reasons why Tinder is #theworst you can read a short version in the proceedings! (Longer version to be published in good time, book version... in the works.) Open access for everyone! https://cala.asia/cala-2019-proceedings/

One day, in an absolute fit of elderly curmudgeonliness, I am going to stop accepting papers that do not indent the beginnings of paragraphs (especially when those paragraphs are also not separated by white space as in standard web style).

For as I tell my students, lo, I am old, my eyes are bad, they pass over many papers, and THEY ARE TIRED.

I have reached the point in the semester where I'm commenting on papers in emoji.

Send coffee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_y9F5St4j0

I will rot in semiotics hell for letting autocorrect mangle Peirce's name 🤦🏻‍♀️

https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/09/21/insurgent-tongues-loose-cantonese-romanisation-became-hong-kongs-patois-protest/

I wrote a thing and you can finally finally read it! It’s about how “bad,” edited profile pictures in matchmaking + online dating turn out to be “good,” meaningful, and useful. Featuring my silly face, Japanese and Pan-Asian photographic practices, CS Pierce, and musings on Chinese selfie apps + makeup. Open access!

https://www.semioticreview.com/ojs/index.php/sr/article/view/37