Notice about Cookies (for European readers)

I have been informed that I need to say something about how this site uses Cookies and possibly get the permission of my European readers about the use of Cookies. I'll be honest: I have no idea how the cookies on this site work. Here (I hope) are links to the pertinent information:

Google's Privacy practices: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en&gl=us

How Google uses information from sites or apps that use their services:

https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites





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).





Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Resorting to chocolate

In Advisement today, grinding through logs for the 102 classes, I hit a wall and found that only an infusion of chocolate would help me over it. It did help, sort of--but I still am woefully behind in what I had hoped to get done. Of course. Situation normal. I just looked at the stack of stuff I collected from the Short Story class today, and know that I will collect two sets of logs from each of the 102 classes tomorrow. What that means is that by the time I leave here tomorrow, the "to be marked" stack will include the following:
     six sets of logs (two for each class);
     mini-papers for the Short Story class; and
     the remainder of the self-evaluations for the 102 classes
Clearly it's time for me to stop giving much feedback on logs. I'm hoping I've provided enough feedback on the first few for them to get the idea (if they're going to)--and if not, any student who wants further guidance is perfectly free to come see me.

One poor student in the Short Story class came up to me at the end of class today: her English is minimal (despite having passed out of the ESL developmental class and having passed two comp courses), and she is utterly lost. She can read the stories and summarize, but she honestly has no clue how to do anything more--and she certainly doesn't have any idea how to approach even a mini-paper. I told her to submit anything as her first mini-paper--even if it is only summary--so she has something to "revise," and then to contact me via e-mail to set up an appointment: I need to figure out what help she requires, whether I can do it or whether I have to pass her along to the Writing Center or ... I don't know where else. I hope she is brave enough to hang on and get a handle on this, but she's so quiet and shy, she may vanish before we can get her there.

Other than that, the class was a great success. The students are really getting into the swing of working through the stories, and there was a lively debate about Katherine Anne Porter's story "He," whether Mrs. Whipple really loves her profoundly retarded son or whether her behavior is merely intended to present a good image to the neighbors. I'd say about 75% of the students participated with at least one comment, a damned good ratio. Nice.

I also had what may be a cool idea. I keep thinking about how to reconfigure that wretched PowerPoint thing, and I think I'll commission an artist friend of mine to create some images: a whole story containing a lot of details; the details spread out but not doing anything, just lying there (observation); the observations starting to have ideas attached (interpretation); and the interpretations beginning to come together to form an overall analysis (interpretations from observations of details leading to analysis). If together she and I can figure out a way to turn the concepts into something visual, that may help: I can work from the visual image to textual examples.... Hmmm. Worth a try, I reckon.

But back to the current work load: I'm not going to do any more marking of assignments today. I'll do some photocopying (brainless but necessary), and then Paul and I are going to have a working dinner. Yes, we'll be having a steak blow-out (and alcoholic beverages will be involved--though not to the point of tiddly-ness), but we're going to start hammering out the concepts and ideas for the style guide we want to write, the one that addresses all the stuff most style guides don't talk about, or talk about badly. I already have some ideas I want to bat around with him; it will be interesting to see where we agree and where we have differences. For the most part, he and I are on the same page, though sometimes we give more or less emphasis to various aspects of writing. I'm not going to say a whole lot about what we come up with in here (don't want anyone raiding our ideas and stealing a march on potential publication), but my aim is to insist that we meet at least once a month to work on it. This is pretty much going to take the place of the ecocrit group I tried to put together in the spring; this semester I sent out the call to those who'd said they were interested and only one responded with days/times when she could meet, so I think that's died away. Ah well. I may do something less groupy, more individual, with that colleague and maybe another--and that may be good enough.

But apart from the work with Paul, my scholarship is going to have to take a back seat for a bit here, until I get some committee stuff cleared off my table and am on top of the wave of student assignments, not cowering in the face of the tsunami.

I do love this though, when it's going well. Even with the sort of "Bambi facing the headlights of a semi" feeling I get facing huge, steaming piles of work to do, I still have enough missionary zeal to keep me charging forward. Nice to have an actual career, and one I care about very much.

No comments:

Post a Comment