staggering into the oasis

Gawd almighty it was hard to get myself here today. Every molecule in my body was screaming "Nooo!!" at the very thought of having to do anything other than lie about in my sloppy clothes and stare mindlessly into space, interspersed with naps. Rather like the cats. If all goes as planned, that's exactly what I'll be doing tomorrow.

But once I got here, of course, the old war horse knew the drill, trotted through her paces like a trooper. Or trouper, if one considers what I do a performance, which in some ways it is. Students were mostly present for the Short Story class--and I mean that in both senses: most of them were present, and the ones who were there physically were mostly present, if not entirely. I wasn't surprised by most of the absentees: they've been falling apart anyway. Most of the students had papers for me, too. And with a little prodding, they got into a pretty good discussion--even of Gallagher's "The Lover of Horses," which they'd been obstinately resisting on Monday. Two rather overlapping thematic categories are emerging from the stories (actually, the stories were chosen specifically with those categories in mind): one is Coming of Age, the other is Parents and Children. Of course, in terms of their papers, those ideas are way the fuck too huge: "What about Coming of Age? What about Parents and Children? What's the perception or insight we gain from the stories?" (Prof. TLP's perpetual comment: if it would fit on a stamp, I'd have one made up, like the Bozo Error stamp Paul had made for me.) But they're still hacking away at it--the ones who are left.

Typically, the attrition rate in all of my classes is approximately 50%--a little more for the Short Story class. I have about 13 of 28 students left, and I'm not completely sure all of them will stick to the bitter end. Most will, but a few more may implode before it's all over. I haven't counted the exact number remaining in my comp classes, but I think the tally would be low double digits in both. And again, I'm not sanguine about how many of those will make it through. I think Paul's right: this must be a sign that I deserve promotion to full professor, even in the absence of any meaningful scholarship or contributions to the college as a whole.

Somewhat surprisingly, there was a pretty steady stream of students in Advisement. Paul had thought it would be relatively empty (day before Thanksgiving and all that), but I think two factors were at work. One, students had to be here for classes anyway, so decided to make use of the time on campus. Two, a number of them probably thought exactly what Paul did and figured they would have less of a wait if they came today. It took me a while to get the cogs of my brain engaged with the wheels of Advisement; the first few students I saw must have thought me a gibbering idiot. Nothing was making much sense to me, like when I'm tired but trying to read something with any weight: what the students said, their paperwork, information on the computer, all washed over me without soaking in: lots of words but no understanding. "Blah blah blah, Ginger." But I got there eventually, and received genuine thanks from a few students who told me I'd helped more than any other adviser they'd seen. Thank you; I'll take the compliment.

Sitting in Advisement, I got thinking about my own spring courses: I just checked, and Native American Lit has five students at the moment. That's not bad for this point in the registration process, but I've been to this fire before. I hope I don't go through the usual nail-biting about whether the thing is going to run--but I will have to print out fliers and hang them up in Advisement (if nowhere else), for the delectation of students waiting to be seen. My colleague who is teaching Nature in Lit distributed his flier, and I'm very interested in his approach. I've asked for his reading list; I'll be curious to see what he'll be teaching that's new to me. I'm happy to shill his course for him--but in exchange I may ask him to shill mine for me, especially as I see he already has more students than I do (eight to my five: Shall we have a competition?). Of course, what I really hope is that both run with full counts. Wouldn't that be great?

I have a little time in which to noodle around before I meet Paul for a steak dinner/work session. I can feel the muscle knots in my neck already letting go, just at the thought of that kind of fun. I'm taking a bunch of papers home to work on over the weekend, but I'm not going to think much about that for at least 40 hours or so, maybe more. And I will be back with you, Dear Readers (all two of you), next week.