One bright and shining moment

For one brief and glorious hour or so, my "to be marked" folder was entirely, blissfully empty. Of course, I collected more assignments this afternoon--but last night's gamble paid off: I got a good bit of down time last night and still got everything marked for both of today's classes, with time to spare for lunch. All of the deliberations over what to do about students whose paper submissions were late have been resolved smoothly and, I think, fairly. There are three papers from 102 students on the office door right now, waiting to be collected, but the students have been duly informed, and it's now all over to them.

My dear, sweet 102 students. When I told them to brace themselves for the seas of red ink on their papers, they almost visibly blanched. One young woman--a favorite student, in fact--began fanning herself. This was not pretense: she genuinely was experiencing an anxiety-produced hot flash. I need to talk with her at some point: she is so concerned about doing well, so tense about it, that she freezes and can't see what's in front of her. I overheard her saying, "I can't tell if this is good or not," and I said, "Count how many times I wrote 'good' in the margins." Hers is a good paper. It needs work--but they all need work. I told them that the revision process could pretty well be endless; my implication (which perhaps I should have stated) was that they should not be surprised that they still have further to go in terms of improving ideas, overall structure--the big revision points--not just sentence level editorial changes. And, in truth, despite the seas of red, most of them don't have huge problems on the sentence level. Often they only have one or two types of problem--comma splices, for instance, or wordiness; there simply are numerous instances of the type.

I was interested to note that wordiness was a problem in most of the papers. I've been aware of this in the past, but it was more glaringly obvious this time. It arises from the high school thinking that lots of fancy language equals good writing. There's a brilliant little essay I ran across eons ago that brings up that precise problem and equates it with how students are taught to read literature (i.e., badly). In fact, I wanted to use the textbook it appeared in back when I taught 101--but the publisher's rep told me the book was for high school students, therefore (for some mysterious reason) unavailable to me. Even so, I love that a high school textbook would contain an essay pointing to a serious problem with high school education. (The essay in question: Francine Prose, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read," originally published in Harper's in 1999.) In any event, I think I need to give every student in all my classes an embroidered sampler that says "Simplify to Clarify." I said to the 102 students that the two most important aspects of good academic writing are clarity and logic. (I said it rather fiercely.) The trick, of course, is helping them recognize both--or the lack of either--in their own writing.

Still on the 102 class but shifting gears slightly: I got an e-mail from the student I've been struggling with about getting the right things to the right place in the right format at the right time--the one I said yesterday I wouldn't mind losing. The e-mail was rather plaintive: she's having serious trouble juggling work and class, but she was going to talk to an adviser and she is going to the Writing Center. I apologize for my assumption that she got my comments and departed in a huff. However, she is in serious grade trouble, and I'm not sure it's in her best interest to stay in the class. I told her that I hope she got some good guidance but that I'm also willing to meet with her--which is always true, even of the students who put my hackles up a bit. This young woman is the perfect example that the impression does not always match the reality. I went to a professional development event devoted to that topic, in fact: we assume that students are recalcitrant or hostile, but often, if we can get them to sit down and talk with us for a bit, we discover that in reality they're confused, frightened, overwhelmed.... (Maybe I need an embroidered sampler: "Don't Assume You Know What's Behind a Student's Behavior.")

As for the Mystery class, I was too tired and cranky to deal with putting them into groups. Immediately launching into whole-class discussion usually doesn't work very well--and indeed it didn't today, but it went well enough. My favorite student in the class--charming, intelligent, and eager young woman--got us onto several significant tangents, and there were a few moments when her enthusiasm needed to be reined in a trifle, but I truly enjoy her contributions, tangents, interruptions and all. I might not if her work weren't as good as it is, but it is good: it's excellent, in fact.

This, by the way, is the young woman I thought might be wondering what the hell I know about mysteries, as she often was more clear and specific than I about the early stuff. I don't think I need worry; I know my stuff well enough. However, today she asked when I first read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Well, this spring--though on reflection, it may have been early summer; either way, I read it when I was getting ready to teach this class. She was astonished that I'd not read it before, but I explained again that I'm not a big fan of Christie. Great plots, cardboard characters. I like juicy, round, complex characters more than the puzzle itself--which is why, from that era, I prefer Ngaio Marsh, or (though I didn't bring her up) Dorothy Sayers. But since I had to choose, and this is an introduction to Mystery and Detective Fiction, I felt compelled to go with the "Queen of Mystery."

The student--I'll have to come up with a moniker for her--also noticed that I teach Native American literature, and she asked if Nevada Barr's Track of the Cat was chosen for that reason. No, I said, but that's why I chose Tony Hillerman's The Dark Wind. I explained that Hillerman isn't Native but that, generally, the Navajo say he does a fairly good job of representing their culture (for a white guy, and to a Euro-American audience). Track of the Cat, I said, comes out of my love of the nature writing vein, and I mentioned that I also teach Nature in Literature. (I hope. I hope it's on my spring schedule. I hope it runs.)

So far, both my Tuesday/Thursday classes are continuing to be great fun, and both work well in terms of class chemistry. The students who are dropping by the wayside aren't shifting the balance in the wrong direction, and the ones who remain are, if anything, getting even better by bouncing ideas off each other. I like ending my weeks this way.

And my week is at an end. I'm looking forward to getting to the rest of the sabbatical application over the weekend, maybe the publishing proposal as well, possibly even a little whack at the book review, depending on how well my brains, energy, and available time hold up. (I do have to do life maintenance, too, what a snorting pain in the ass.) I also want to construct a rubric for the final version of the 102 papers: if I come up with one that is comprehensive enough, I may not have to mark their final versions at all, which would be glorious. I'm flying high on the lift I get from great interactions with good students, but I dare not do any more work now, or I'll never wind down. Lovely to leave the week on the high, though, lovely to feel happy about the work in front of me instead of beaten down. I'll take more of this, please.