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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).





Thursday, April 12, 2012

Ew.

I'm going to have to take work home this weekend--in addition to the Chancellor's Award application, which I had planned to give my full attention to, as I have to have done by the end of next week. Damn. What I have to bring home is not a lot to add, but still, ew. I find myself in that position because I've not slept well the last few nights, and even though I had all intentions of chunking through a lot of work tonight after class, my eyes are drifting closed as I try to read--which obviously means it's a bit hard to evaluate what I'm reading.

I've been reading the essays for an Assessment study on whether our attempts to improve revision are bearing fruit. (I was supposed to have done this before the break. Ah well.) A few semesters ago, essays were collected from a random sample of professors, including an early draft and the final of each student's paper; everyone on the departmental assessment committee got a couple of classes worth of paired student papers to evaluate. So far, the packets I've been looking at have been 001 sections, and at least most of the students are making some kind of attempt at revision, which is good. I'm happy to see that they're mostly focusing on revising at the idea level, rather than merely editing at the sentence level, even though the sentence level problems are pretty atrocious--and sometimes inadvertently very funny. A couple of examples:

"[Texting while driving] is against the law in 97% of every single state part of the United States of America."

"Texting is against the law and also is very illegal."

But I've gotten to the point where all the sentences look like that to me. Time to quit reading for now.

And I find I'm not able to summon the energy to say much about the teaching today. Nature in Lit was again a bit of a debacle: only one student had a journal/log and paper to turn in. I let them know I'm pretty pissed off, and they hung their heads, staring intently at the table rather than meeting my eyes. But somehow I don't think their apparent shame is going to translate into an increase in submitted work. I did have to have a brief talk with one student after class: she got back her mini-papers and flounced around over the grades, then spent the rest of the class texting (no doubt complaining about her utter unreasonable bitch of a teacher). She was sullen and resentful when I started talking with her, but after some reassurance and soothing talk from me, she managed to summon a genuine smile as she was leaving (though I'm not sure how deep it went). Fortunately I have two meetings with her next week to talk about her papers; I hope the one-on-one helps her see what she needs to do to get closer to the grades she wants. I think I've said this before, but the sad truth is that she wants A's, and I don't think she has an A brain. She is, however, capable of hard work, and that can be some compensation for sheer, blazing intelligence. We'll see.

Native American Lit, by contrast, was delicious. The Whiner had an excuse about her paper (of course) and didn't have her journal-log (of course), and had missed her meeting with me last night (with stupid excuses), but she at least was there and sort of trying. Everyone else came through with the work--and with wonderful questions and comments and connections about Ceremony. I will probably have to come to class with a burlap bag to suppress the senior observer (following the Alice in Wonderland guinea-pig method), but other than that, the class is a delight.

In fact, I realize I'm remarkably un-depressed for this time of semester. Paul said that the Tuesday P&B meeting was largely a bitch session about how little our society values a liberal arts education in general and how woefully unprepared our students are in specific--and that he felt better knowing he's not the only one to feel profound despair. Normally at this time of year I'd be tearing my hair out with frustration and anguish, but not this term. Fewer students, I reckon, and therefore less crap writing to wade through. Next semester, when I'm teaching two sections of 102, will be an interesting test of whether anything else has changed (better pedagogy, more patience, who knows).

The only source of frustration for me this week was that I've become the target of what borders on e-mail harassment. I'm choosing to ignore it for now, but I've already talked to Bruce about how to handle it should it continue or escalate. But still, ick. It's a good opportunity for me to work on practicing compassion. Not only can I feel compassion for my poor students, who have to get over enormous hurdles to succeed, I can feel compassion for the harasser, who must have some deep psychic pain in order to behave this way.

Funny how much that helps me relax and reframe the whole week.

Well, I've already shoved the 102 journal-logs and glossaries into my "take home" bag. I've watered the office plants. I have a triage list going. Nothing more remains for today here at work. And we'll see what next week brings.

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