"I have chosen the words 'spelunking,' 'fungible,' and 'spork'..."

So said the wonderful Scott, in prefacing his report at our department meeting, saying that he would respond in the theme of the meeting. He is a wonderful and rare example of an academic who can be simultaneously genuinely funny, cogent, and concise. Nice to have a few laughs in the meeting, before it devolved into a food fight over observations and the need to adhere to specific requirements for syllabi. (I left early. I saw that the usual suspects were about to get exercised in ways that would piss me off and decided retreat would not only be a good diplomatic move but would prevent an increase--even temporary--in my perceived stress levels.)

Shifting gears to the experience with students: Of the three young men whose first day in class was Thursday, only one remains; the one who showed signs of initiative and intelligence. I'm a bit disappointed to lose the one who was taking careful, step-by-step notes on what to do, but given the fact that he was concerned about becoming overwhelmed, I suspect he made a wise choice. One student who impressed me on Thursday by suddenly having interesting and insightful things to say showed a very different side today: he said he didn't own a pen (my response: "College Student 101: always have pens"), didn't have his homework (me (trying to sound friendly) "After today, this will be 'thanks for coming and see you next class'"; him (snotty tone of voice) "I'm aware of that."); spent the entire time in his group doodling, contributing absolutely nothing. But other students seemed to have more going on than I anticipated, and the major players are making their presence known.

Not to my surprise but somewhat to my discouragement, I could see that the first set of notes from most students was woefully inadequate, despite all I'd done to try to set up for them what they need to do--both in terms of the concepts and in terms of the process. I talked about it again. I will no doubt need to talk about it again. And again. And again. The words "detailed" and "specific" seem to be the verbal equivalent of "blah blah" to many of them.

This happens every semester. Every semester. I am completely, utterly, out of ideas for how to convey what's needed. I've tried everything I can think of--short of working with each student individually, which obviously I can't do.

Sigh. Well, moving on.

P&B was interesting, too. We have two brand-new members--and a lot to work out in regard to the aforementioned foo-raw over observations and syllabi. Fun and frolic, y'all.

I realize I have almost entirely already clocked my brain out for the evening. Fortunately, I think I'm pretty well packed up for tomorrow already; I think I have a general sense of what I want/need to do throughout the day. Usually, I'd be holding a seminar hour right now, but we haven't officially started holding them yet, so I'm going to send one more email (which I forgot about until I wrote the words "seminar hour"), then shut everything down and toddle off for the evening. And more to report tomorrow, I'm sure.