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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, May 2, 2011

Sighing

I feel like it sounds as if I'm gasping for air, but all the heavy sighing is just a method of stress management. Paul, William and I were laughing at ourselves a couple of semesters ago, as within a few short moments each of us in turn heaved a heavy sigh and said, "Ohhhh-kay." A physical manifestation of a metaphoric girding of loins--and the brain's desire for more oxygen so it can continue to operate.

Both classes went fine today. I could have kept the first bunch after I finished approving various proposals so we could finish talking about the novel, but I let them go early. Possibly a mistake, but oh well. They were supposed to have finished the novel last week; this week we're supposed to talk about Le Guin's introduction to it, along with her essay "Is Gender Necessary? (Redux)"--both of which are tremendously helpful to students (those who can read with college-level sophistication anyway). Most of the students in the morning class hadn't read this week's readings, so I turned them loose to do that for Thursday. I was happier with how the later class worked: for one thing, they actually were talking about the novel in their groups (not reading individually and working on reading journals). Only one young woman struggled with her thesis. I let her keep working while the rest of us talked about the end of the book--and actually, she chose to participate in the discussion, which was helpful I'm sure. I let everyone else go a few minutes early and got her to an approved proposal--just barely, but it's good enough that she can go forward. They're a nice bunch, and it's the class with the most students remaining (fifteen: each of my other 102s has eight students left). When the young woman was working on revising her thesis, I asked her how she was doing and she pointed at her group mates (and friends) and said, pitifully, "They're not helping." Everyone in the class broke up--including her.

My one real concern right now is about tomorrow's class: one student plagiarized his proposal and is saying that he just used the internet sources "for help." I've told him we need to talk, but the only time he's "able" to come is immediately before our class meets. I don't think he realizes how deep the shit is that he's in. I'm going to scare the hell out of him if I can, but I've decided I'll give him a zero for the proposal yet let him write the paper--just with no help or feedback from me. Since I know he plagiarized because he doesn't understand what the hell is going on, that means his final paper will probably fail, and I'll let him know that his chances of passing are not good. (I need to look at his grades so far, too: it may be that even the zero for the proposal will put passing out of mathematical possibility for him.) I can understand the panic that leads to plagiarism (his first proposal attempt was honestly his own; it was only when that failed that he chose to cheat): what pisses me off is the cavalier--or weaselly--attitude. (Can a weasel be cavalier? I'm suddenly thinking of "cavalier" as implying more insouciance than disdain, indifference, negligence--and I've got a mental picture of a weasel dressed up as D'Artagnan....)

Anyway, describe it how you will, the 'tude makes me grit my teeth to hold on to my temper. I'm considering whether to write something up to give him tomorrow. I wish now that when he e-mailed the plagiarized proposal, instead of saying, "You're guilty of plagiarism: we need to talk," that I'd just said "we need to talk"--or sent him the Plagiarism Letter in reply. Ah well. We'll see how things go tomorrow.

Before I have to deal with that student tomorrow, I have one more essay to mark for the Native American Lit students--and one I'm going to run through Plagiarism Detector tonight when I get home. It may legitimately be the student's work, but there are just enough red flags for me to check, plus it's that time of semester when I get more cautious. It's not a great paper anyway: the kid doesn't know what "personification" means and is confusing it with the effect of not using an article before a common noun (if there's a specific term for that, I'd love to know what it is); he's also dragging in the idea of storytelling, which is a completely different idea (and not in the poems he's ostensibly analyzing); he uses a critical essay about Mary Oliver to support what he's saying about Native American poet Peter Blue Cloud; and he spends most of the paper blathering about Native American poetry in general instead of in specific, focused analysis of any poem or poems. Plus he's missed class seven times (and registered late, so really nine times)--and my attendance policy stipulates that six mandates withdrawal or failure. I'm meeting with him tomorrow: if the class were larger, I wouldn't hesitate to tell him to withdraw, and even as is, I think I'll probably recommend that he take that option. He's smart enough, too, but kind of a train wreck in terms of responsibility. I could go on about him but enh, not worth it.

In other business, I felt smug yesterday that I had almost finished my Year-End Evaluation (an administrative hoop we have to jump through every second year), was sure I'd get it done today--and I forgot to e-mail the file to myself, so I couldn't work on it. Shit. But in the good news department, I thought I had a meeting tomorrow morning, but it's next week: it's like a gift, winning a tiny daytime lotto, getting an unexpected hour and a half in which to get things done. Right at the moment I feel worryingly on top of things (I must be forgetting something), but I know next week all hell is going to break loose. Not only will I be in the mad crunch of paper grading and final number crunching, but also, wearing my P&B hat, I'll have to write reports on other people's Year-End Evaluations, finish scheduling summer classes with Bruce, and get all this semester's work nailed down so my feet are clear when I head into post-semester madness (interviewing, adjunct contract signing, scheduling for spring 2012, prepping my paper for the Lisbon conference).

Like I said, throw your hands in the air and scream!

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