Two out of three ain't bad...

In coming up with that title for today's blog post, I have given myself a terrible ear-worm, which I hope to eradicate as soon as I am in the car and listening to things on my iPod.

But it's true: the only class that seemed less than energetic was today's 5:00 section of 101. There were a few relatively bright lights, but the atmosphere was relatively leaden and nonresponsive. I realize that could well change radically by the end of the semester (or well before that), but mostly, I'm glad that the earlier section of 101 seemed lively and engaged: lots of smart questions, quick responses, bright eyes. So, between my good impression of the SF class yesterday, and my impression of that one section of 101, I don't feel the deep despair I felt leading in to the semester. Of course, part of that is--as I mentioned last night--simply because this old mule is back in the traces and plodding along a well-worn route. But some of it truly is that the students seem more open and receptive than most of my classes last year, and that's enough to buoy my spirits.

I do realize, however, that Mondays and Wednesdays are going to require me to build up some stamina. In terms of actual hours, the days aren't that long--10:30 to 6:15--but in terms of the energy expenditure, whoof. Of course, things in Advisement will be significantly less intense next week, after the add/drop period ends. And eventually I'll get the 101 students better dialed in, so I don't have to do quite so much hand holding about assignments, what's due, what X means, that sort of thing.

Today, however--and unusually, for the first day of classes--I was "on stage" almost the entire 75 minutes of each class period. I did go over the syllabus more carefully than I usually do--Paul has pretty well persuaded me of the necessity for that (and, in the case of the 101s, the need to repeat the review of the syllabus periodically)--so that took a lot of time. And I ended up deciding not to distribute two of the handouts I'd intended to pass around today; Monday will be soon enough. Today was pretty overwhelming, and Monday will be just as intense in terms of a massive number of handouts for the students to keep straight. But once they have a lot of the informational handouts (how to do discussion boards, what "handbook review" assignments entail, samples of annotations and expanded notes), the remaining handouts will be mostly the stuff they actually will work with: the articles I've selected to get them rolling on the topics.

And no one left the room and immediately withdrew, so, I guess that's a good sign.

Circling back to the topic of first impressions: I was reminded today that first impressions of students can often be quite erroneous. In the 5:00 class, there was a male student, obviously somewhat older than the "fresh out of high school" students (and there are several somewhat older students in that class)--and his facial expression looked very much as if he had an extra-king-sized chip on his shoulder, hating every second of what was going on. But he approached me after class--and he's actually very pleasant and has the makings of a great student. He is a military veteran (and as a general rule, I love having vets in class, as they usually have acquired pretty significant discipline along the way: they know how to take "orders" and get things done)--and he has high ambitions in terms of possible careers. He asked if he could work on a topic that diverges somewhat from what I laid out for the first essay; specifically, he wants to say that high school doesn't prepare students for college as well as time in the military does, not to mention the fact that time in the military makes college more affordable for students who might otherwise not be able to attend. As soon as I said that would be fine--with the caveat that he has to find some kind of support through research--his true demeanor came out. I have a suspicion that--as has been the case with other vets in my classes--he may get pretty impatient with the "fresh out of high school" students who slack off or otherwise try to weasel out of just doing what needs to be done. In fact, he may take them to task, as vets have done in the past, and of course I always love it when the "just suck it up and do the fucking work" message comes from another student, not from me.

So, that's at least one meeting with all my classes. Moving on.

I've been thinking about the very very slow start I scheduled for the students in SF. I was anticipating more movement (students dropping, students adding). Some of that may still occur, but I think I have already met just about everyone who's going to be in the class--so I think I'm going to make the first adjustment to the assignment schedule. Yes, already. I think they're going to be ready to start in on Frankenstein for Monday's class. I think I can have them do the handbook review, read my little handout of background and summary of the first part of the novel, and read at least one chapter of the novel itself. I'll sort of see how things feel like they're coming together--and how much I want to fiddle with the breakdown of which chapters are due by when--but if they don't get rolling with the novel, we're not going to have enough to talk about on Tuesday. So, there's that.

The "bells" (electronic variety) just rang out 7:00--and I'm just about reduced to toast. So I'll wrap this up and head out for tonight. I'll try to get in relatively early tomorrow (like before noon), either to do some more prep for the SF class (really more for next week, rereading the novel) or to work on the Nature in Lit class. Now, I'm packing it in for the day. Basta. Done. I'm outta here.