Early blog

Well, how embarrassing. I just got an e-mail from my Portuguese friend, who is organizing the publication and conference I've been talking about, and apparently I left five sources off my works cited page. I'd slaughter my students for an oversight like that. What an idiot!

Anyway.

I'm taking a small break from grinding through the accumulated piles of old assignments. I was very happy that I got all the antique homework back to my 102 students today, and I just finished marking the stack for tomorrow morning's 102. I still have quite a bit to churn through for 229, and then a somewhat smaller wodge for tomorrow afternoon's 102--but it's early yet. I am certain I can get through the stuff for 229 before I leave the office today, and am hoping madly I can finish up tomorrow, around the dentist appointment I have when I'd normally be in a meeting.

Meanwhile, late papers continue to trickle in--and generally, they're pretty crappy and not worth having waited for. I don't intend to start marking them until I have everything I'm likely to get--and until my feet are clear of old stuff that's been kicking around too long.

In class today, we started reading The Left Hand of Darkness, taking it one paragraph at a time. The students did pretty well with it--but I find I'm treading a fine line. I want them to take time and pay close attention, but I don't want them to get so bogged down they can't get through the whole book as quickly as we need to. William is known to toss out readings he'd intended to assign in order to work through something as slowly as the students need--but with something like LHoD, we'd probably have to take the whole semester. Not only do I feel that it's important to cover several genres (and more than one work) in 102, but the other down side to that approach is that some students would be bored out of their gourds, because they're able to apprehend it much more rapidly.

Somewhat parenthetically, I mentioned that I'm a Le Guin scholar: they thought that was incredibly cool. I've not had that experience in the past: often before, I've mentioned it and students have had an "oh yeah? ho-hum" reaction. I wonder why this bunch got so excited about it--especially about the fact that I have a correspondence with Le Guin. (OK, I admit, I'm pretty proud of that--though she's famously generous about corresponding with those who bother to contact her about their critical work on her writings.) I also mentioned that I'd like to do a student edition of the novel--and they were fascinated by the idea, loved it. I've got to get working on that.

I consciously did make a point of telling them that they are capable of reading the novel, even though it may seem hard. I said, "This will be a challenge to your critical reading skills, but you've all improved a lot over the semester, and you can do this. You have the chops for it, even though you may sometimes feel confused; you'll get to a deeper understanding than you might believe possible." It's another balancing act: I want to acknowledge the struggle, so they don't feel like there's something wrong with them when they encounter it, but on the other hand, I don't want to plant the idea that they necessarily will struggle, setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, we'll see how they do.

It's a grey, gross, rainy/snowy day today, and I'm underslept (like that's unusual), and I am yearning for chocolate, which I'm trying to avoid (in an effort to regain that sylphlike figure I was working on), but cacao derivatives or no, it's back to the salt mines now....