The Wall, again

It's not a matter of not getting enough sleep. It's not that kind of tired. It's the fact that after the 63rd iteration of "the definition of quotation is..." or "an important idea in this essay is...," I just can't stand it. It's not even like hitting a wall (though I did, in the sense that I simply cannot look at another review sheet or reading journal tonight). It's more complicated than a dripping faucet, perhaps a little like an ear worm (a wonderful term for one of those horrible song fragments--usually a commercial jingle or some revolting bit of pop nonsense--that gets stuck in one's head and won't go away). Mental activity is involved (mine, attempting to evaluate theirs) but after a while I can't tell good from dreck. It all turns into an annoying loop of the same damned thing over and over and over.

And the brutal truth is, it's incredibly subjective anyway. What makes one reading journal better than another? Of course I tend to give higher marks when it's clear the student understands the reading (and the more insightful and intelligent the reading, the higher the mark), but it's also true that a student can read insightfully and intelligently and write a crappy journal by gesturing toward answers instead of engaging in them. And it's equally true that someone who doesn't get the reading can do a spectacular journal by digging into the questioning process.

I realize questioning one's way into something is a practice that, as an intellectual, I take so much for granted it's hard to teach. I do it automatically. "I didn't get that sentence: let me take it apart in smaller chunks. Let me see what is said before it, and after. Let me ask what the connections might be, what makes sense in the context of the piece as I understand it so far, what particular connotation of a word makes most sense here, could there be something figurative in the language..." I could go on. And if I had more time with students--and could see them in smaller groups--I could do that with them: take a reading, break it down, question our way into it. In their journals I ask them to come up with questions for class discussion, and I continually have to say, "But that's a question about us, not about the reading. Ask questions that help us understand the reading better." "...Huh?"

I don't know where the problem lies. I don't know if it's that they have never been introduced to that kind of thinking, or if it's a product of that resistance to anything that takes time. One of the authors they could have read for extra credit says, "Anything interesting is complicated." (Kathleen Dean Moore, "Winter Creek." I'll give the correct MLA format citation if anyone wants it.) (Oh, and yes, I'll have to blog some time about my general disdain for extra credit--and why I decided to assign it this semester. But back to my original thought:) Students struggle with the idea that in order for something to be interesting, it has to be complicated--or that something complicated can be interesting. Another essay that I originally assigned (and am going to scrap) argues with the pervasive notion in our society that easy is good. They wrestle with that one, too. They'll pay lip-service to the whole "we don't want to be lazy" idea--the very same students who say they don't like to read because it takes too long.

So maybe the problem is that, since they don't buy the premise that the complicated is interesting, when they encounter a complicated reading, it just seems hard, with no payoff. Maybe they haven't had the experience of finally mastering something one has struggled with, that moment of sudden clarity when all the lights come on and the pieces fall into place and the scales of ignorance drop from one's eyes and all is beauty and grace. OK, well, maybe it isn't that transcendent an experience most of the time, but still, it feels damned good to get there. I vividly remember reading the first pages of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom when I started grad school and thinking, "I'm not smart enough for this; they should never have accepted me into the program!" I literally had to use a pencil to connect the subordinate clauses in his incredibly prolix sentences in order to make sense of the first pages. But once I did, suddenly I could read the book--and felt not only triumph but an enormous relief ("I guess I might make it through this whole Ph.D. thing after all!"). I grant you, it is not one of my favorite books, nor would I recommend it to a living soul--but I had the experience of triumph after heavy intellectual sweat. I wish I could give it to my students.

And what makes me most sad is that they are struggling like that over readings that I find lucid, logical, and thought-provoking (or I wouldn't have assigned them). One poor idiot in conference last week said that he thought the authors' intention was to confuse us. Of course: that's what writing is for, to inhibit communication, not to facilitate it. And in my world (obviously a fantasy world), although I grant students might not find the readings as easy as I do, they shouldn't be at such an utter, total loss--not at the college level. They might have to work at it, but they really, truly ought to be able to read this stuff and get it. Really. Truly.

Heavy sigh.

So, I have to get away from the assignemtns and come at them fresh tomorrow. In the morning I'll finish up the last of the backlog of student assignments, and if I don't get to the sabbatical folders before P&B, well, they can drum me off the committee. I'll get to them. Promise, I really will. But not tonight. And not until the student stuff is done.