Oddments

Strange thing: yesterday, Paul and I were talking about my blog audience (according to the Blogspot stats), and I mentioned that apparently I have a following in Russia. This morning, I got an e-mail--hoax? scam? genuine?--from a woman from Ukraine who says she is a fan. She also says she wants to stay with me when she comes to NY in May (and if you are my Ukrainian fan: flattered as I am by your admiration, no, I won't give you my street address, nor will you be staying with me. We're not that trusting of strangers here in the U.S.) I am bemused: if it's a scam or a hoax, I don't know what the purpose would be--but if it's genuine, it seems equally odd.

I have noticed that my readership is apparently increasing--largely, apparently, through Google searches (again, according to the stats). I have no idea what people are searching for that leads them to my blog posts, but if you're one of those people, I'd be very interested to know. If you are a visitor who does not know me personally, please feel free to leave a comment about how you found this blog--and why you read it.

The little event for recipients of Chancellor's Awards was a bit of a snooze (especially when one chair felt he needed to read every single positive student comment ever left on an evaluation for the faculty member from his department)--but it was fun to sit there next to Paul. Our office is now officially populated with winners of Chancellor's Awards (if we discount Cathy, who is nominally an office mate but is never here, as she is downstairs, running Placement). I said last night that I'd have felt more celebratory if the three of us--William, Paul and myself--had just gone out for drinks, so we're going to do that before the semester is out. William is the nominee for merit as a scholar; I am for teaching. Paul got his for teaching. Once William and I have our official medallions, I think the three of us should go to a bar wearing them. And maybe some sort of fez.

Class today was one of those in which the energy was painfully low (maybe because of a downturn in the weather--or because two students were missing). The students had also only been responsible for reading 13 pages, so there wasn't a lot of new material to discuss. I kept urging them to go back to earlier bits, but we didn't. I'm very concerned about the two young men who were there today: Mr. Enthusiastic (who hasn't been turning in any work at all of late) and a student I'll call Mr. Confused, as he has struggled all semester to differentiate between analysis of literature and use of critical sources. He's using a different text than the rest of us, so the pagination is different--but he's using that as an excuse not to do the reading, because he doesn't know where to start. I find that excessively strange as an excuse: where do you start? You start where you left off reading the last time. I shouldn't have to provide a page number: if you weren't caught up with the rest of us, then pick up wherever you quit. Simple use of a bookmark seems like it should be sufficient to cover that problem. In any event, I told them both that I wanted one big log, with as much depth and detail on it as they can provide, by end of next week, catching them up to where the rest of us are. Right now, they're both falling into Mercy D category, and Mr. Confused is actually very bright, so that would be a horrific shame. Mr. Enthusiastic is less of a scholar--but he needs at least a C to transfer, and right now, he's nowhere near that.

But even without those concerns, I'm very worried about papers from all but one student. Even one of the potential B students is not doing well on her papers. Her ideas have possibility, but there is no clarity or logic to her arguments, and her papers are riddled with sentence-level errors, which seriously detract from the quality of any of her thinking. (Interesting side note: I saw my opthamologist today, and we got into a discussion about the value of a liberal arts education--and the importance of being able to write well. He said that he works with people who can't write well, and he thinks to himself, "You're not going to go very far in your career." What I love is that he truly is willing to come to talk to my classes to talk about the value of writing clearly and well--and because he is a scientist, not an English professor, somehow I think my students may listen to him with a little more attention than they give me.)

In any event, that young woman wasn't in class today, but I did tell all the students who were there that I want to meet with them to talk about papers--especially before they revise. And I want all of them to revise, though I can't mandate it (as I didn't put the mandate in my syllabus). We're running out of time for them to fix anything. Thinking about my grade quandary, I know I am giving them grades that are higher than what I think is correct in my deepest heart of hearts. However, right now, I just want them all to stay and pass--though I'll knock myself silly to help them get higher grades than they're on track for right now.

Even the potential A student hasn't yet written what I consider an A paper (or maybe one...). This makes me all the more hell-bent on getting my 102 students up to snuff. I don't want them to end up in a class with someone like me and bombing because they've never been taught what to do and how.

Oh, and speaking of that, I bought a book of critical essays about Ceremony--I may have mentioned it in an earlier post--and I have noticed that almost every one of those essays does exactly what I tell my students to do: the first sentence mentions the title of the novel, the author, and an overview of the specific topic. Models! "See what these guys are doing? Do that."

Shifting gears: since I got the final versions of second papers from the 102 students, I've been saying I'd grade them over the weekend--but this weekend, I really need to at least work on them, even if I don't get them finished. The students are starting to get restless about them--justifiably. The stack looks unnecessarily daunting: I have to remember that it's actually about a third the size it appears (as each submission has three versions): there really aren't that many of them, and it really won't take me that long. And if they're as bad as I fear they may be, it's better that I know that now--and that the students do, too, since we're about to head into final papers.

Speaking of which, I realized today that I haven't put together the assignment for the final paper for the Native American Lit class. I have it--it's essentially what I've used for the past years--but I need to go over it, change dates--and see if I can clarify, simplify, or otherwise improve on it. (The continual search for the magic assignment that will produce nothing but A papers.) I also set up to do a little mini-library lesson for the Native American Lit students next week, as a number of them have no clue how to do critical research using databases (or at all, really). Even the potential A student wasn't sure how to select critical essays, what criteria to use. I gave a quick overview of that today (since we had time at the end of class), but I'll go over it again when I do the demo next week. That's assuming that all the tech stuff works, of course: I've encountered the inability to access the internet when I've tried to do this lesson in the past, so I couldn't access the library web page or demonstrate a search.

Oh, and note to self (coming out of my own learning experience last Friday, to be continued tomorrow): go slowly and repeat steps--especially since the students won't be doing anything hands on. And another note to self: I should set up library days for the lit courses, too, not just the comps.

Ach. I can feel that wall rapidly approaching, so I'm going to wrap this up for now. Again: unrevised, unproofed, hot off the grill.