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THINGS HAVE CHANGED:

Since I am no longer a professor in the classroom, this blog is changing focus. (I may at some future date change platforms, too, but not yet). I am now (as of May 2019) playing around with the idea of using this blog as a place to talk about the struggles of writing creatively. Those of you who have been following (or dipping in periodically) know that I've already been doing a little of that, but now the change is official. I don't write every day--yet--so I won't post to the blog every day--yet. But please do check in from time to time, if you're interested in this new phase in my life.


Hi! And you are...?

I am interested to see the fluctuation in my readers--but I don't know who is reading the blog, how you found it, and why you find it interesting. I'd love to hear from you! Please feel free to use the "comment" box at the end of any particular post to let me know what brought you to this page--and what keeps you coming back for more (if you do).





Monday, December 13, 2010

Getting there

I have one more student registered in each of my lit classes: I'm up to six in one class and seven in the other. I talked to one of Paul's students today, who is signed up for Nature in Lit: I told him to advertise the class, talk it up. I'm hoping this helps. Thanks to Christina, I also understand why my flyers keep disappearing (a confusion over who is allowed to put up flyers with what kind of permission). Not sure whether I want to keep papering or let it go. We'll see.

I had a rocky weekend in terms of my physical ability to focus: I keep getting spells of light-headedness, which literally make it hard to see, not to mention concentrate. So I didn't walk onto campus smug with relief at having gotten anything crossed off my "to do before final papers come in" list--but I did manage to get everything returned to today's 101 class (and collected more, but nothing major). I should be fine to return everything to tomorrow's 101s, which will get my feet clear so I can try to get all the backlog marked for the short-story class by Wednesday morning. Then, I dive into grading final papers. To my vast surprise, five students in the short story class want their papers back with comments. Two of the requests were not a shock, but the rest were.

That class session was fine today: we had a nice conversation about the semester, wrapping up what they learned. This means I won't meet with them on Monday: I'll just have their final papers graded (and those five marked) and their final grade sheets done, ready for them to pick up from my office door. I also got some helpful suggestions from them about assignment structures, so I think I'll be revamping my reading journal forms for both lit classes next semester, and I will be assigning mini-papers. The students pretty much across the board told me that although they hated writing the mini-papers, those low-stakes assignments were indeed helpful when it came to writing their big papers. Ditto the proposals. It is gratifying when students volunteer their sense that the pedagogy works. The whole point of mini-papers is precisely what they pointed out: they get a chance to see what I'm looking for before it counts heavily, and they get a chance to work out their ideas, which they can then combine into their bigger papers. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get mini-papers to work with 229 and 281, as I've never approached the papers that way before, but maybe it makes sense to let go of the more carefully constructed topics I've used in the past and allow the more free-form explorations I used in the short story class (and in last semester's poetry class).

Today's 101 was a curious mix. One group--Mr. Macho's--did their presentation, and although the information was fine, what should have been a 15 minute presentation was not quite ten. Sigh. However, the other group did a lovely job: they presented the factual information very clearly and, well, factually--but then they had put together an adorable, very funny little 5-minute video, starring all of them: they had put together a series of little scenarios in which people needed to be taught about recycling or precycling, and in each case Captain Recycling (the shyest student in the group) appeared to save the day. It was extremely well done, funny and informative. And I loved seeing the young man being Captain Recycling: he had a blast doing it. (They get an A.) The best part for me is, we decided to do the end-of-semester wrap-up on Wednesday, as we'll surely have time, and once again, that means I don't have to meet with them on Monday: I'll just be here in the office, crunching numbers and getting grading done. They can come by to pick up their final grade sheets any time after 11.

Lovely moment, too: I had made a comment on a reading journal submitted by the smartest student in that class, saying how I'd love to talk with him more about some of what he'd been musing over in his journal, and he came up to me after class to say yes, he'd love to talk with me, too. If we can find a time this week, we'll meet; if not, we'll meet next semester. He's one of those rare students who is worth keeping in touch with, who's fun to have just drop by for a chat about ideas. That young man will go far. Nice.

And now, I'm in the position I usually find myself in when I blog: do I have it in me to grind through a few more assignments for tomorrow's classes, or do I call it a night and hurl myself back into the fray early tomorrow? I still have a LOT to do for the short story class, even though I'm whipping through it all as fast as I can, so it would be best in terms of time if I were to try to do more tonight. But the woozies are making it difficult to bear down on the miscellaneous bits for the 101 classes, to clear those out and make room to finish the short-story stuff. Jesus, I don't even know if I'm making any sense or have suddenly started the written equivalent of speaking in tongues. I'm guessing that in itself is a pretty good indication that I should pack it in for tonight and just get an early start in the morning--or at least go home and relax for a bit to see if my brains stop wobbling.

Weirdly, a candy bar and a bag of peanuts didn't fix the problem. Something obviously is cosmically awry here.

Home, home, here I come.

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