Another "hurry up" blog post

I have to leave earlier than usual tonight to get to PT, so I don't have much time in which to write this post. I'll try to cover what I can.

I was very happy to have gotten everything marked for the 101 class today, so I could return it all. Of course, I collected more today--which I really do want to be able to return to them by Monday, so my decks are clear for when their essays come a week from today. (Yep, already. Groan.)

And I have at least sorted through the enormous stack of stuff I have to mark for the SF class before tomorrow's class. I haven't checked my calendar recently, but I think my day is clear up until class. I intend to set an early alarm (well, not super early, but earlier than I might normally) so I can get my butt in here and start cranking on all that work. I told them I would try to have it all for them by tomorrow, and I do want to do that for my own sanity, as much as for theirs.

Speaking of the SF class, in crowing about them yesterday, I completely forgot to include one of the best moments I've had in a very long while. After class, a student stayed after everyone else had left to talk to me. He said, "I just wanted to tell you I am very sorry for your loss." He told me he had read my email about Le Guin's death, and about how much she had meant to me (still means to me), and that he found it very moving. He said he thought losing a mentor was harder than almost any other loss, and he told me that his grandfather had been such a person to him: far more than a grandparent, but a mental giant (I think those were the students words) who, before his death, profoundly affected my student intellectually, personally, emotionally. And he genuinely did want to empathize with the sorrow I feel in the wake of Ursula's death. It was lovely--and surprisingly mature. He is, by the way, one of the best and brightest minds in that class (and is very well read), so I hope to keep him around all semester--and perhaps he'll be one of those students who stays in my life in one way or another long after leaving this campus. I got an email last night from a student who was in Nature in Lit with me eons ago; we've kept in sporadic touch since, and he was moved to send me a link to an article about Ursula. Nice.

Today's 101 was a bit better than they've been, though one of the groups was lacking in vigor when they were discussing the reading. Still, we got into a pretty good conversation about the readings--and a few of the shakier students asked very good questions about how to do the homework effectively. I probably should write myself a list of the things I want to cover in class on Monday. They'll have brought in articles they found through their own research, but I don't care if we don't get to talking about those; the main part of that exercise is for them to have their research (and some thinking about it) done before they have to start writing their essays. But most of the class will probably be spent on showing them how MLA works, showing them how to access the Turnitin submissions, that sort of stuff. So be it.

And now, I am out of time--just like that. Wish me luck for tomorrow.

The SF class is a complete and utter delight. Hot damn, they're good. Not only are we getting into great ideas with some real meat to them, they've already started talking to each other without bouncing things through me. Already! It's only week 3! And this was without a couple of the best and brightest--but there are enough of the best and brightest that they're lifting the tone for everyone. I am a little worried about one student in particular--he's completely out of his depth, bless his heart, and when I see him on Thursday, I'm going to recommend that he come in to talk with me--and there are a few who are looking a little like they've been hit upside the head with a 2X4, but some of the students who are less sparkling are starting to get a little gleam from their classmates, waking up to potentialities of thought that are possible.
For instance: students were batting back and forth some debate about aspects of Frankenstein. On two occasions, a student asked me what I thought, and both times I said, "What I think isn't what matters: what do you think? How would you answer your own question?" And then I explained that, although there are areas that are pure speculation, without enough textual evidence to support a strong answer (such as whether the creature would have turned out differently if Frankenstein hadn't abandoned it at the beginning), there are a lot of other areas where there is no definitive answer: if the text provides enough evidence to support an interpretation, go for it. "This is why essay writing can be fun. Well, OK, not fun, but this is why essay writing can be exciting. If you're tracking down an idea that you think you can support, and you're finding the evidence for it, it can be exciting." And a bunch of them were nodding in agreement, not just to brown-nose the teacher (they weren't even looking at me) but because they suddenly got a whiff of the possibilities.
Now, I am not expecting their essays to actually be good: I should make that clear (and remind myself). They're getting good ideas, but almost invariably those ideas fall apart when the actual writing takes place. But I almost don't care. I know that's easy for me to say now, as I'm not grading any essays right now, but really: what matters most to me is that they're getting jazzed about the ideas. And that's really the point. Literature isn't some horrible thing that they're being forced to contend with: they're getting the sense that it can actually be pretty interesting--and that the deeper they dig for ideas, the more interesting it gets.
Although there isn't quite the same rush in seeing what's going on with the students in the online course--because that thrilling class chemistry thing can't occur in cyberspace--it's still pretty cool to see a lot of their ideas, too.
On the other hand, before I went to class today, I was grading the first quiz, and here's what I got from one student:
Question 1
How do you demonstrate that you have truly learned something in any discipline, not just in a literature class?
Selected Answer:
You sceptics and z show hers. If I as disinclined to take.  O it eve eh ay. I'll write it down and practice and. It so I get usedto it 
Uh, OK...???
The student's answers to other questions clearly showed that he had not read the handbook that the quiz is about: he's just BS-ing answers ... apparently that he has tried to translate from Martian hieroglyphs.
But really, the quizzes are nothing: no big whoopee at all. It's the responses to the readings that matter. Some students are AWOL; others are clearly out of their depth--but some, a happy few, are knocking the top off, as I said before.
Man, it's almost like being a real college professor. I'll probably keep saying this, repeating myself ad nauseam, but if every semester were like this, I could keep teaching a lot longer.
Now, however, I want to get out of here. I've got a few little bits and orts to tie up before I toddle off, so I'm ready to head to Advisement in the morning, bright and early, but mostly, Tuesday is a wrap.

On giving a little less of a shit...

I do still care about my students and their progress, so in that regard, yes: I still give a shit. However, I'm getting better at picking my battles. Two students in the 101 have missed every class so far--for different reasons, but still. One of them swore up and down he'd get caught up on his own, and he did, I admit, submit two of seven assignments, but he still hasn't actually been in class, and he hasn't been reinstated on my roster. If he's not officially on the roster by Wednesday, I'll have to decide whether to boot him or not. The other showed up today; her reason for missing class is that she thought she was in an online course. This comes from sloppy reading (the section above mine is online--but mine very clearly has a classroom and meeting times listed; on top of which the student thought she was in another colleague's class, whose section is immediately below mine). It also comes from making rash assumptions. She said she'd thought, "Why do I have to go to class if it's online?" (Well, if days and times are listed, that might indicate that there's a different assumption you should make.)

Anyway, Paul was astounded that I'm allowing her to be in the class--he was pissed off with students in his class who gave him the same "I thought it was an online class" thing--but I just can't be bothered to be tough with them about the fact that they've fucked themselves over pretty royally already. I am 99.99% positive that neither student will make it to the half-way point. If either of them does, it's more likely to be the young man--but really, students who get themselves this far behind the curve usually end up going off the rails and failing. I'm certainly not going to try to rescue them; I've told them they'll most likely crash--and now I just wait to see how they handle things. I'm not lifting a finger to help unless I see a real reason to, and so far I don't.

Then there's the student in Nature in Lit whom I think I mentioned yesterday: hasn't so much as logged in, never mind doing any work. I sent her another email, but ... well, she's probably not reading email, either. Poor William had a student in an online class last semester who never did any work but never withdrew--and the student is in his class again this semester and again has not checked in at all (which makes one wonder about the student's thought process: "This was a total disaster last semester, but let me do exactly the same thing again"?) I haven't yet taken "attendance" for last week; I'll do that tomorrow, when I can sit at the computer and make some sense of what I'm doing. I have assignments to mark for the SF class, too, but if I don't get to them before class tomorrow, I'm not going to feel dreadful. It would be nice to clear them out of my hair, but the online course needs a little attention first.

Shifting gears back to the 101: I'm not entirely enthusiastic about the potential of the group, but they impressed the librarian who was running our information literacy session. She said they were engaged and asking good questions (I didn't notice a lot of that, but OK), and she was absolutely thrilled that one student--the unquestioned rock-star of the class, already--asked whether she'd be able to access databases once she's no longer at NCC, possibly no longer in school at all, as it might be useful to her in her career. I'm glad the student is aware that some of what she's learning may be beneficial beyond academia--but she's a bit like a student in the "bad" 101 last semester: super bright and capable but hard to get a read on: is she snotty and hostile or just smart and bored?

Time will tell.

In any event, I am going to do some life-maintenance I didn't get done over the weekend and then head home. it will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow of note.

Scrambled...

I've spent a good chunk of today reading and responding to discussion board posts for the online Nature in Lit. Interesting range of students, from the barely able to think to off the charts wow. I'm hoping like hell no one is plagiarizing, because that would be deeply discouraging--but so far, little random checks haven't turned anything up; it seems like the excellent thinking is genuine, not stolen.

Of course, I still have to try to drag students away from the comfortable pabulum of "this shows his/her appreciation for Mother Nature"--which actually says nothing of substance. (Neither does the remark that "this was a good read" or "the descriptions really let the reader picture things in his/her head.") But in this instance, I won't be alone in modeling a deeper, more interesting response to the readings, as several of the students are doing that on their own.

One young woman particularly stands out to me right now. She's very diligent, right on top of all the assignments--and although she's not spectacular in her ideas yet, she's absolutely doing exactly what I'd hope for: she's contributing substance to a discussion. I may have to let her know that sometimes other students get it wrong; she should be a little less willing to be swayed by what someone else sees in the readings. But still, she's taking in and mulling over what the other students say--and responding with intelligence. Good stuff.

Interestingly enough, however, I've had a hard time holding on to the fact that today is Sunday. I'm not sure why, but it seems to have something to do with getting my head deeply into the work. I'm also having a hard time keeping track of the time: I just realized how late it is--and that both the cat and I need to be fed. So this will be a truncated post. I may not have time for much tomorrow, either, but we'll see when we get there.

Tribute to Ursula

I've mentioned it a couple of times, so here's what I wrote to my colleagues, in remembrance of Ursula.

Many of you will have heard the news that Ursula Le Guin died on Monday; the news was confirmed by her son, Theo, yesterday. Many of you also know that I studied her work intensively and for a long while; you may not know that I also had something of a personal relationship with her. I wouldn't flatter myself that I was among her friends, but I was among those with whom she enjoyed corresponding. For me, her death is a personal loss, as well as a literary one, and I feel the urge to share with you something about my experience of reading her work and getting to know her as I did. I completely understand if you're not interested; by all means, feel free to delete this email without reading further. If you are interested, if this speaks to you at all, I'm grateful.

 

When I was about 17, living in Boulder, Colorado, my mother's boyfriend gave me a book, saying, "I think you'll like this." The cover was so god-awful I very nearly didn't read it: schlock image in garish colors of an agonized young man with some sort of monster on his back, shocking red title, author's name almost invisible. Eventually, both so I could report that I had, in fact, read the damned thing and because I was desperate for something to read (having consumed everything else within easy reach), I started. The title: A Wizard of Earthsea.  The frontispiece is a poem:

Only in silence the word,

only in dark the light,

only in dying life:

bright the hawk's flight

on the empty sky

     --The Creation of Ea

The story starts with this (I had to look it up: I know some quotes verbatim but not this one):

"The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards."

It's simple. It's clear. It's visual--but the frontispiece provides the sense that something deeper is going on than just "kiddie lit" about wizards. For me, that was where the wizardry began--Ursula's, as well as the wizardry of Earthsea.

(Some day, I will do a conference presentation, or write a paper, titled, "Real Fantasy versus Fake Fantasy: or Why I Hate Harry Potter." Don't get me started on schools for wizards.)

I immediately set out hunting for anything by this author. It probably speaks to that time (and how it differs from ours) as well as to the fact that I was in Boulder that I found not one but two of her most renowned works--The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia--in the corner drug store, on the paperback rack. I read everything of hers I could get my mitts on (with the exception of her poetry, I confess). I read each work repeatedly--some more than others, but all of them over and over. There are certain weathers, certain moods, in which only a specific book by Le Guin will suit me: one of the two above, or Malafrena, or The Lathe of Heaven, or her essays--or, as was the case in August, everything, in alphabetical order, across the shelf and a half of her writings in my apartment. In the 1980s, living alone in a rooming hotel in Manhattan, I wrote her a fan letter, explaining the mood that went with certain books: going into the dust with Shevek, or onto the ice with Genly and Therem.... To my inexpressible delight, I  got a postcard from her in reply. I've kept it, of course. "Keep your gin, boys," she wrote, "I've got Tonia."

Fast forward to the late 1990s, when I was about to finish my graduate course work and had to determine a dissertation topic. Knowing I would be living for some time with whatever material I chose, I thought, "What do I love to read?"  The answer was, "Le Guin, and nature writing." So, I found a way to combine them: I placed Le Guin's fiction--primarily her SF or fantasy but including all of it (what there was at that time)--in the tradition of American nature writing. Knowing how she felt about critics talking about her work without ever consulting her, as expressed in her essay, "The Only Good Author," I wrote her a letter--through her agent, as I had the fan letter years before--letting her know I was embarking on the project and that I would be honored by her input. She warned me that she wasn't very good at answering questions about influence but was happy to clarify what she could. As it happened, I didn't contact her often, but when I did, I'd always get a clear, insightful, gracious response. When the dissertation was ready to defend, at her request, I sent her the whole thing. And she read it all, carefully, thoughtfully. She sent me a ten-page letter in response. Most of the response told me more about what she'd been thinking when she wrote X, or Y; once she gave a gentle correction of a truly embarrassing error, when I got the name of the central character in a short story wrong (and her correction included the meaning of the names, the one I'd used in error and the one she'd chosen). She also thanked me for noticing and pointing out something no one else had.

 

And thus my professional relationship with her began. Whenever I wrote an article about her work for publication, or prepared a conference presentation, I'd send it to her. In the cases when I hadn't done so before submitting or presenting, I always regretted it, as her responses invariably strengthened my thinking, often redirected it. And periodically, she would provide validation that I'd found a nugget that was particularly gratifying to her, or that I'd made something complex more clear (as when I wrote about the strange amalgam that is Always Coming Home). Eventually she began corresponding with me via email (having resisted for some time, saying "This snail needs her shell"). We didn't correspond much unless I was working on something--but when I was, her door, metaphorically speaking, was always open.

 

Fast forward again, to my sabbatical in spring of 2015. Drawing on my years of teaching The Left Hand of Darkness, I wrote extensive apparatus for the book--and while I was in that process, Ursula and I corresponded regularly, several times a week, sometimes several times a day. I would take breaks from my work to read her blog, which covered everything from politics to books to writing to speaking to, yes, cats. In the wake of that correspondence, that summer, I asked if she would be willing to receive a visitor (actually two, as my boyfriend, Ed, would accompany me). I'd met her twice before--once at a book reading in Manhattan, once when she was a keynote speaker at a conference in Oregon--but, she admitted, she wouldn't remember me from those events, as, to her, I would have been part of that blur called "audience." She was delighted at the prospect of a personal visit--though, having lived enough of her life as a public person, she also was careful to set clear parameters (morning, please, and no more than two hours). Carrying flowers, I appeared, with Ed, on the doorstep of her beautiful bungalow in Portland, Oregon, and we sat in her living room, drinking tea and talking. I've said that it was a bit like being asked to tea with the goddess of wisdom--but what struck me most was how easy it was, how comfortable I felt--not at all awestruck or shy. She took me into the kitchen to talk with her about how I take my tea (yes, with milk, please--which she had to pour into a little silver pitcher before I could pour it into my tea--no straight out of the carton nonsense), and she and Ed sat opposite each other on either side of the hearth, Ed in Charles's chair, while I sat on the sofa, completing the conversational triangle. We talked about the novel, and about my project, but we also talked about ... well, I don't even know now. General, intelligent, warm conversation--and laughter. The next summer, Ed and I visited again--in the afternoon, this time, and bearing a bottle of a Speyside single malt, which we sampled together. And again, we just talked.

Little things I remember. Her habit of ruffling her sleek, grey hair when she was working out a thought. That she lifted her shoulders when she giggled--and she did giggle: a charmingly youthful laughter. That she spoke in complete sentences--with very little hesitation or backtracking, but also with no pretension or sense of effort. Her completely unmushy love of her children (describing the specific folk music her daughter Elisabeth was getting excited about as "shouting"), her curiosity, her home filled with books and no clutter. Like her mind.

In fall of 2016, she disappeared off the blog radar for a while; when she came back, she said she was aware that her silence may have alarmed many, as, given her age, we might have thought she had died. She hadn't, obviously, but a congenital heart problem had gotten worse, and she'd been in the hospital for some time. She let her followers know that her energy was henceforth a rare commodity, and that she wouldn't be able to expend as much in correspondence, or in writing anything of length--but she didn't go silent. She posted little bits of humor, added to the Annals of Pard (her record of her cat's life), occasionally provided a brief but brilliant response to current politics, or shared with us the process of working with the illustrator of a forthcoming edition of The Other Wind, the final novel in what ended up being a quintet of Earthsea books. Knowing her energy was at a premium, I generally refrained from contact--but I did reach out to her a few months ago, asking whether I could post a PDF of her novella Paradises Lost for my online Nature in Lit. She referred me to her newest agent--and her agent gently told me that the idea made Ursula uncomfortable; apparently, Ursula hadn't wanted to tell me "no." So I wrote to Ursula, thanking her for putting me in touch with the agent and letting her know I wouldn't bother her further on that score but that I missed having a good excuse to be in regular contact. She told me then that it was "always a pleasure" to hear from me.

And that was the last contact we had. Now she's gone. For a long while, knowing I'm terrible about following the news, friends and family  have sent me articles, interviews, notices about Le Guin and her work--and it's been gratifying to see that her work is finally getting some of the wider notice it richly deserves: medals, awards, and not one but two Library of America collections. There is a forthcoming biographical documentary (I contributed to the Kickstarter campaign for it; in testimony to the depths of Le Guin's fan base, the filmmaker exceeded her goal almost immediately), and there is a forthcoming literary biography. There is, today, an outpouring of remembrance, recognition, sadness, and gratitude. I join in all of that, but I feel the loss of not just a brilliant writer and thinker but of a human being whose presence mattered to me. She is part of my psyche: I think how I think, write how I write, in no small measure because of my involvement with her words and work over all these years. A great light has gone out of our world; I feel a void out there on that coast, a significant absence: that dynamic, sharply faceted, focused brilliance is no longer at work, and it will be missed. I am more grateful than I can express to know her work as intimately as I do--and to still have some new pieces to read, in her latest collection of essays, No Time to Spare--and to have had the chances to get to know her, even if only slightly. But I will miss her, the person, just ... Ursula.

A pre-class post--about AWD (average white dude)

I have a little time before class today (actually, I had a lot of time, but I expended some of it marking those assignments I was whining about yesterday). I will not, however, have any time after class, as a colleague and I are going out for dinner and a movie, so I need to do the "drop, grab, skedaddle" version of my end of day noodling about. I figured, however, this being the last on-campus day of the first full week of this semester, it would behoove me to say at least a little something.

Marking the assignments for the SF class wasn't quite as awful as I made it out to be last night. For one thing, several students did a very good job--one already knocking the work out of the park--and for another, I was in a frame of mind to recognize where the students actually are at the start of the semester, in contrast to where they'll be by the end, if they learn anything. I'm remembering a young woman from last semester's SF class: very shy but managed to speak up a few times, and her work got progressively better across the semester, until, by the end, she was doing solid high-B quality work. I see that possibility in a number of students in the class. There are also a few who may have the chops to knock the assignments out of the park--but who may be the kind who just can't be arsed (as the Brits would say) to do the work. But that's my job. I don't need to get them to where their potential indicates they could be, but I need to let them know what the work is that will get them there. Then they do it or they don't.

After I did the marking, I was recording points and shifting my attendance records from the photo roster to the index cards that I keep--and I realized that there are about four young men in the class who fall under the mental category "average white dude," which is a category I struggle with when it comes to putting name with face. They're all abut the same height, weight, age, all have short brown hair, just ... average white dudes. They're the college classroom equivalent of the birding world's LBJs (little brown jobs: the virtually indistinguishable little brown birds we see all over the place). I almost feel like House in a season when he has to work with a bunch of medical students and says he won't bother to learn all their names: he'll just assign numbers. But at least his students were morphologically distinct in obvious ways. These AWDs are ... well, AWDs. Name tags? Nah, I'll figure them out eventually. But it's an interesting challenge, until their work becomes more distinctive.

And of course, the three most distinctive young men in terms of their work are also morphologically distinct: this one has strawberry blond hair; this one a goatee; this one a face that looks deceptively tuned out.

I suppose there have been times in the past when I've had an assortment of the female equivalent, but that's been a while. Usually, something makes the women stand out as distinct, even in classes where the gender balance is more equal than it is in SF.

Random thoughts:

My colleagues continue to be completely lovely in their response to my emailed remembrance of Le Guin. I've gotten zero student response, but that doesn't surprise me: my guess is that most (maybe all) didn't read it--and those who did were probably either baffled (why is she sharing this?), confused (what the hell does all this mean?), or without a clue how to respond (what do I say?). I may or may not bring it up in class today. Probably not, unless an unexpected opportunity presents itself.

We had an extra department meeting today to begin discussing assessment of basic writing, critical thinking, and information literacy skills. It was very interesting to start with--though I felt bad for the colleague who was primarily in charge (the woman I'm having dinner with tonight, in fact), as she always seems to get sort of targeted for some of the hostility people feel about assessment, even though she's doing heroic work to make it make sense and have use for us, not just busy work we do for the administration. But, as is always the case, there came a point when I just couldn't listen to other people being annoying any more, so I left early.

But last night, Paul and I talked a bit about it, and he and I were pretty wildly split in our evaluations: I thought the sample essays, especially the first one, were OK; he thought they were awful. I'd love to sit with him and parse through them to figure out why we diverged in our estimation. He was teasing me about it yesterday, and I completely overreacted, as if he were serious--but I think part of the overreaction is because I'm afraid that my standards really have slipped to be unacceptably low, that I've caved, given in to "market forces" or whatever. Too tired to keep up the good fight, perhaps? But that's one of the concerns that drives my "I need to retire" statements: I do not want to continue to teach if I'm not still holding the line. That line is fucking important, and I do not want to be one of those who lets it slip.

That said, I'm about to go into the classroom and talk to students about everything from paraphrase to euphemisms to just the need for words on the page. I suppose that's a higher standard than many of them have been held to before. Not that that makes the standard acceptably high, but at least I haven't wimped out completely.

ripple effect

The little wavelets of sadness over the loss of Ursula are just enough to keep me slightly off balance today, somewhat distracted, overly sensitive, jangled. It's also hard to face marking student assignments--yes, this early. I hope that when I can hold myself to it, I'll see that things are not as woefully hopeless as they feel at the moment (a sensation caused in part by those wavelets, which--to mix a metaphor--color everything else, at least a tiny bit). But a glance at them--for the SF class, for the 101--and I think, "Ah, fuck: here we go. No matter what I do, I can't get them to understand. No matter how I try to set this stuff up, they get it wrong. And I'm just fed to the teeth with having to say, over and over and over, 'Nope, that's summary. It's still summary. Summary again. There's half a thought there, but the rest is--you guessed it--summary.'" Paul reminds me that I'm teaching them a completely new "genre" of response: that many of them honest-to-God cannot comprehend any other kind of response. If not summary, then what? What else can one do with what one reads? Isn't that it?

Of course, wailing and whining and whacking my head against the desk won't actually help anything. No, it really is true, Prof. P: you have to teach them. Yes, it would be splendid if you could know that this particular skill had already been learned so you could get on with more interesting stuff--but nope. That's not where they are.

The missionary zeal is wearing thin.

The assignments I collected from the 101 today were particularly disheartening. First, a number of them said they had no idea that they had to do annotations and expanded notes on the articles they read (despite the fact that the assignment very clearly says, "Writing due: Annotations and expanded notes on X; Annotations and expanded notes on Y"). Some did one; some did the other; some did neither. But even of the ones who tried to do both, either the notes are (everyone, say it with me) summary, or personal response of the "I thought this was a great read: thumbs up" type (glad you liked it but really not the point)--and in either event, far from expanded. (Quick quiz: what does the word "expanded" mean?)

I give them an assignment that says, "Don't tell me your life story," and I get a response that says, "I was born in Astoria..." (blah blah blah). I say, "Homework may be handwritten but only in dark blue or black ink: no pencil" and I get assignments written in pencil. I tell them that they have to give me the answers to a quiz about information in the textbook in their own words--and they say they think it's a vague assignment, because what are they supposed to write if they have to put it in their own words? I give them written instructions about how to expand on their notes--but oh, right: to understand those instructions requires reading. I almost regret that we'll be in the Library on Monday, as I feel like I need to start all over with the semester and walk them through everything again. Again.

Shifting gears, one of the brighter students from the SF class--one of the ones who was absent yesterday--sent me an email about Le Guin's death and suggested that we talk about it in class. I told her we certainly could, though I wasn't sure it would mean much to most of the students, at least not before having read her novel. But I wrote a rather lengthy email to the department, sharing a little of my history with Ursula, from first encountering her work an edition of A Wizard of Earthsea that had such a schlocky, awful cover I almost didn't read it through my correspondence with her in November about whether I could post Paradises Lost online for the Nature in Lit class (answer, delivered by her agent: it would make her uncomfortable, so no)--and all the steps between: the fan letter in the 1980s, the dissertation in the 1990s, the sabbatical, the visits to Oregon in 2015 and 2016. Cathy noted that it's important for our students to understand that the words, the works, and the people who created them, have a real effect: "They are the map of our lives, branching out to all of the physical, psychological, and emotional depths that make us who we are becoming." So I changed the message a bit and sent it to my students as well. I told them they are under no obligation to read it; I'll be interested to find out if anyone does.

The colleagues who have responded have been very positive about it: thanking me for sharing, saying I'd struck a chord. Of course, the colleagues who have responded have been those who are among my better friends on the faculty--or at least those who are sort of allies in the trenches, or fellow appreciators of Le Guin's work. I have no idea how the rest of our colleagues feel, but I also don't much care. Those who wanted to read it could. Those who weren't interested could simply delete the thing and go on with their business.

And I keep reading what I wrote, as if somehow I can find something in that expression of those memories that will ground me, calm the waters. My expression of emotions tends to the operatic, I know, and I don't want to overstate a sense of grief or loss, or give a sense that those little ripples are stirring things up on a deeper level. (Or, if they are, it really doesn't have anything to do with Ursula's death but with something else going on in my psyche.) But, just that little agitation of the surface, that small but spreading ripple ...

Well, there it is. I don't think it's an entirely good sign that I'm already counting weeks to the Presidents' Week break, and from there to spring break, and from there to the end of the semester--but I am. Now, however, it's time to put today down, leave the office, and spend a little time finding a calm, still center--which is always a good thing, in any circumstance, every circumstance. And it's there: I just have to let myself find it again.

A day of mixed emotion and deep loss

Today, Bradley Hall was on the chilly side--though it felt nice to me, especially after a few days when we had to run the AC to keep the temperature comfortable (despite it being downright cold outside). But the C building, where my class met, was ungodly hot. At one point, I realized I was actually sweating ... er, perspiring along my hairline. But in terms of the class itself? Hot damn, they did a great job. Two of the students I'd pegged as among the best and brightest weren't there, but the ones who were showed more acumen and energy than I'd anticipated. Nice, bright, lively conversation--so although there was literal sweat, the class was no sweat at all. Good stuff going on.

Then I came back to the office, and was talking to Paul when a colleague called with the news that Ursula Le Guin has died. The colleague who called didn't know that I had any kind of personal relationship with her, and he apologized for breaking the news so abruptly; I felt a little odd about his reaction, but in fact, I do feel her death as a genuine and personal loss, not just of a distant star whose light I've admired but of a warm and vibrant presence that I felt in my life. As Paul pointed out, she is deeply interwoven in the fabric of my mind: I am who I am, think how I think, write how I write, in no small measure because I have been so deeply involved with her work for so long, and because I have had the correspondence with her that I've had. The two visits to her home that I was able to make are all the more precious to me now. Every contact with her, cherished.

No one thought like she did. No one wrote like she did. That brilliant, diamond-clear mind, that cutting intelligence and intellectual beauty, that grace, that wisdom. I loved knowing that was there, and now it isn't. All at once, the entire world seems much smaller. I mean that literally: to me, the world seems smaller, without the breadth and compass of her thinking, her writing, her self.

It will be strange to talk with students this semester about my relationship with her, to read her novel with them, and not be able to reach out to her about it.

I know I am not unique in this. I'm one of thousands who adore her work, one of countless who wanted to feel some kind of contact with her. She was always deeply generous with her time and her ideas, and I'm sure her family will be overwhelmed with cards and flowers and letters from people mourning her loss. But I do know that she valued our contact. I know she valued my thinking about her work. I am deeply proud of that knowledge, and I wish I could find some sufficient way to honor it, to honor her.

So, there will now be silence from that realm. But what she left, all her words: those remain. Those are living presences among us now and, I'm sure, for generations to come. She's one for the ages.

Ach, I'm too sad to say more. Tomorrow, I'll return to the trenches and to blogging about the day-to-day ups and downs of teaching here. Tonight, I'll take my sorrow and go home.

Five minute post on the nature of the beast

So, teaching ENG101.

Attendance is very spotty at first--until students start to realize that every class they miss means additional snowballing of work.

Reading: a challenge. Today, reading the quotation on critical thinking by Sumner, a student thought it must be about learning a trade or going to school for a career because "what else could it be about?" Well, about critical thinking. Which is what it says.

Even handouts are a challenge. "So, you've read my handout on what to do with annotations and notes. What should you do?" "Summarize." "See this part where it says, 'Do not summarize'? What do you think that means?"

A lot of them are timid about their ideas. Some of the ones who are most vocal probably shouldn't be.

I am frequently surprised by who has great ideas--and who does not. (Note to self about those assumptions...)

Everything is bumpy to start, most of the time. I got a bit spoiled with that wonderful class last semester--and in an unusual twist for me, I am carrying around the memory of that positive experience and rather willfully forgetting the grinding annoyances of the other section. (I am usually more likely to remember the negative than the positive--but when it comes to teaching, my inner Pollyanna starts every semester thinking, "This one will be great!!" It could happen...)

And that's the end of my 5 minutes. I have to dash to PT. More tomorrow, I hope.

Shoulda...

It drives me nuts when, in the process of teaching a class, I think, "Oh, yes, it would be a good idea to tell them X," and then I promptly forget. It happened today, of course: I meant to go over the "examples" of the kinds of notes I want. I did that at least briefly on Tuesday, but I meant to revisit it today--and didn't. And a lot of students are still--and understandably--confused. Paul and I talked about it at some length today. This is not a typical "genre" of assignment for the students: it's highly idiosyncratic to me, and it requires an approach students probably never encountered before. I do tell them that I understand there will be a learning curve: they need to give notes a whirl--probably a couple of times--before they start to get the hang of them, but this time I have loaded them with as many ways of demonstrating and explaining what they need to do as I can come up with--short of workshopping note writing with them in small groups (which might do the trick, or might not).

Still, despite that small stick with which I can beat myself, I think things went relatively well today. On the good news side, everyone who is currently registered was there. And in talking about SF as a genre, some great stuff was coming up--mostly from the Bright Brit, who obviously reads widely and has watched a lot of films (including, delightfully enough, Young Frankenstein, which actually added some interesting depth to today's discussion). I had stuff scrawled all over the board, which is always a good sign--especially when the majority of it comes from them (with a few caveats or expansions by me).

One particularly useful moment came when I asked students what they think of when they think of SF. One student said "aliens," which is absolutely true. I could reference the bar scenes in the Star Wars movies (which most students in the class have seen), and we talked a bit about that--but then I said, "So, when we just see the word 'alien,' we think some weird creature--but what if I put the word 'illegal' in front of it?" A lot of them looked a little like I'd just poked them with a cattle prod. No one wanted to say anything, but the Bright Brit said, "immigration." Yes. So, that gives us a thematic thread to probe. If we consider "aliens" as not human, what is being implied about how we see immigrants? (I didn't get into the idea of situations in which we are the aliens--as is true in I think all the stories in Le Guin's Hainish matrix--but we'll get there when we get to Left Hand of Darkness.)

On a completely different front, I was absolutely stunned to see a student from last semester on my roster--and in class today. He started to catch on a little to the whole idea of needing to think toward the end of the semester, but his notes were so paltry that he never got passing marks on them--and then he completely missed submitting the second essay, at which time I told him he could not pass the class. He never withdrew, so he got an F--which is almost certainly why he's taking the class: at NCC, the grade for a second attempt at a class replaces the grade for the first attempt when we calculate the GPA. He could take another lit course--but retaking this one means the F will be replaced with whatever he gets this semester. I am not sanguine it will be anything other than an F again, but maybe he can pull off a D--or surprise the hell out of me and get a C. Who knows.

I don't remember if I mentioned, but a student who was in one of my 102 classes a long time ago is also in the class. I don't recall what happened: I think she withdrew because she was taking the class over to try for a better grade--but I don't remember who gave her the C that is on her academic record. Could have been me. I'm too lazy to dig out her card and figure it out.

There's also a student in the class who is newly registered; I don't know much about him yet, but my first impression is that he is one of those very sweet, very earnest--and very undereducated--young people who can delight me by suddenly catching fire or break my heart by trying with all they possess only to fall short. I'm concerned that he missed the first day--and I'm concerned that he keeps talking about "topics" and "articles" (this is a literature class...)--but I like that he clearly wants to do well.

Oh, and before I forget: I want to record something that happened in Advisement yesterday, which I forgot to report. A student sat down in my cubicle and--in all seriousness--asked, "So, on that degree evaluation thing: those courses that are called requirements. Do I have to take them?" Um, yes: that's what the word requirement means. He didn't understand that he can take electives--those can be anything at all that he wants--but if he wants to get a degree, yes: there are requirements. There can be multiple classes that fulfill a requirement, but still: required. Then he asked--again in all seriousness--if he needed to take a prerequisite before he signs up for something. Um, yes: that word prerequisite? What was maddening about the whole thing was that he seemed relatively bright; my hunch is that he just didn't like the fact that college wasn't a big party at which he can do whatever the hell he wants. (Which he can, actually--unless he wants a degree.)

So, that's what we deal with: students who need to be told, in no uncertain terms that words such as "requirement," "deadline," and "limit" all have real meaning. Go figure.

Hmmm...

Well, I met with the 101 today. I can't quite get a read on it, but I think I may be in for a bit of a bumpy ride. Two students were such eager beavers that they had already looked at the Blackboard page--and they were sort of freaking out (trying to do more than they needed to), so I had to talk them down from the ledge there. One of those students and a young woman confessed to coming from the Basic Education program--which is reserved for people who hit the trifecta of developmental course needs: reading, writing, math. (Some in Basic Ed start out functionally illiterate and innumerate. How did they graduate high school? Social promotion.) A couple of the students seem to have a little more wattage than the run of the mill. Two already looked like they've given up and zoned out.

And most of them didn't laugh--didn't even smile--at my jokes. I wasn't quite as daffy as I was yesterday; I didn't get the feel from the room that my sense of humor would fly. However, with the exception of the two who had already checked out, they listened with avid attention and interest to my philosophizing in general. I combined value of liberal arts, college will change you, and working through frustration in one glorious (ahem), one relatively coherent riff.

That, I think, more than anything, may make the difference to how the class rolls from here, oddly enough. I also had the presence of mind to have them tell me what's due next class, so they get used to the structure of the assignment schedule. I set out the reasons why students may be asked to leave (no homework, looking at an electronic device), and that I don't believe in "excused" absences. I hit the high points, I think.

I take it as a good sign that a number of them wanted to talk to me after class. One of the two who had freaked himself out over what's on Blackboard (the one who admitted to coming from Basic Education) told me that he'd already overcome a hurdle: he agreed to read part of the syllabus aloud, and he was very nervous about doing that. He has good reason: he clearly struggled to read the words. I wonder, in fact, if he may be dyslexic or something along those lines--but he heroically managed to get through it. I'm delighted that he tried--and I'm hoping that the problem is with reading aloud, not with reading period. We'll find out soon enough.

Two students know already that they have to miss class for unavoidable reasons, which I appreciate knowing about, but one of them worries me a great deal. She is in the Marines, and she has to do two weeks of service that will keep her from class right when we're finishing up the first essay. I asked her to email me to remind me to look at the schedule to see what we can figure out. I don't want to make her drop the class, but ... yeeks. The other student who has to miss was the other student who was freaking out over Blackboard. He has to miss class on Monday, which is another "puts the student behind the 8-ball" situation: I hope he can follow the schedule well enough to download what he needs so he can come to class prepared on Wednesday.

The one that struck me most forcefully, however, was a young woman in the class--the other student who confessed to coming from Basic Ed. When I said--in my extended riff--that I understand that writing doesn't come easily to everyone, that some people find it incredibly challenging, she lit up: it was one of those validating moments, when a student hears, "You're not alone." She's truly terrified--and after class, as I was giving her encouragement and trying to soothe her, she kept tearing up. She asked if there are counselors on campus; her Reading teacher told her that she doubts herself too much, and suggested that she get help. I agreed with that--and I also encouraged her to see me, to reach out to me in any and every way she can. When she was talking about how hard writing is for her, she said, "It makes me feel less than I am." I reminded her that her struggles with academics are not who she is: they're just how her brain is wired. I don't know what to expect from her. She may dissolve; she may implode--or she may find unexpected reserves and surprise herself with her ability to get through the semester. Neither she nor I can tell yet.

Meanwhile, I keep sort of obsessively checking the first discussion board for the Nature in Lit. So far, three of twenty-three students have actually posted anything. If I don't see more posts by end of day tomorrow, I'm going to send out another announcement, reminding students that, yes, the semester has already started and yes, they have to adhere to a specific schedule. I'm meeting Paul for dinner tonight, and I intend to ask him if he experienced a slow start in terms of students starting the work of the term when he taught online last semester.

And speaking of Paul: it's time for me to head out to meet him for dinner. I have a lot to do tomorrow, but I am, nevertheless, going to let myself sleep without an alarm. That almost certainly means I'll be awake at 4:00 a.m., as I was this morning (unable to drop back off until after 5), but ... once I drop back off (if I do), I won't be jolted out of it by NPR. That's a thing of beauty.

Like the optimist who jumped off a 30-story building...

...who passed each floor on the way down, saying, "So far, so good."

But, well, yeah. So far, so good.

It's going to be an interesting rhythm to get used to. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I only have one class, at 4 p.m. On Tuesdays, I'll have P&B before class (and I'll have to split on the stroke of on time, or I won't be able to trundle across campus in time--as, given the SNAFU over rooms, the class meets in a science lab)--but unless I have a meeting of some kind, which will be rare, I don't have to be anywhere until that point in the afternoon. My plan is to use the time for working on the online Nature in Lit--grading discussion board posts and so on--though I realize that not all students will have posted work by the time I check on either day. (I should have made their deadlines Monday/Wednesday, so everything would be in by Tuesday/Thursday, but, well, I didn't.) So I'll have to do some work over the weekend on that class, to make sure I give any necessary feedback within the week when it's all due. I have very strict deadlines: if a student hasn't posted within the week when the assignments are due, it's an "absence," and the posts receive zero points--so it behooves me to give feedback when the students are still likely to be checking.

And for the record, one student already submitted her self-evaluation assignment. It's a bit short, but I'm delighted that she's on top of things. It is interesting to have a photo roster for the course, too. I probably won't ever actually see any of the students (though Paul said some of his online students did, in fact, make in-person appearances)--but I "know" what they look like. I expect I will refer to the photo roster as I mark stuff: having a human face to put to the work is somehow important.

In any event, I met with the SF class, and they seem like a reasonable bunch. I ended up talking at length with one student after class; she got special dispensation to take 102 and my lit elective at the same time, and she's one of those students who flunked out of a four-year school, went out into the work world for a while, and now actively wants to be a student. I've got at least one other student who seems a bit older than the average--and pretty smart (with a lovely Brit accent, which, as far as I can tell, is genuine (remember the pseudo-Brit from the Fiction Writing Class years ago? No? I do...)). They were asking pretty good questions. They seemed to enjoy my rather whacky manner today. (Tired. Daffy. It's what happens.) But it is early days--and we know how quickly classes can transform in either direction. Indeed, sometimes first one direction, then the other.

Breaking with tradition, we had a P&B meeting today. (Traditionally, the first Tuesday of a semester is meeting-free.) Nothing of major import--in fact, some of it was just Cathy and me filling folks in on the mad scramble of the week before the semester--and, as a lovely compensation for the fact that we met at all, the meeting ended well early. Good.

Tomorrow, I will be in Advisement, helping all the poor students who for one reason or another don't have a schedule yet and need to try to put one together out of the limited courses still open. Then I trundle back to the office, at which point I hope to do some further organizing. I did spend quite a good amount of time today getting things organized: sorting out and filing the stuff that kept lurking over my left shoulder last week; making sure I had enough copies of handouts for each class; putting handouts in piles according to what I'm handing out when, in the case of the 101 class, that sort of magillah. I did, however, manage to leave the photo roster for SF in the office--but no harm, no foul. It gave me an opportunity to tell them that I am the absent-minded professor, which they'll figure out soon enough anyway, so might as well lay it out there early. And there are a few things that I'd have sworn I printed at home but do not, in fact, seem to have (and at least one probably needs to be changed anyway, so that's actually not a bad thing). I don't know whether I'll have time in the morning to take care of that, but I hope so. If not, c'est la vie.

And on that note, it is time for me to sit in traffic for a while getting to my PT appointment. So, my friends and faithful readers: until tomorrow.

Up to Week 11...

So, obviously I made slightly better progress today. And really, I only have three more weeks to construct, as the final week, week 15, is just the final essay and the final self-evaluation.

But not so fast! I have to adjust/alter/reconsider the next two essay assignments. And what the fuck am I going to have the students write about? "Animal encounters": OK, but ... what? We like animals. Animals are interesting. We should appreciate wild animals...

You see the difficulty.

And honestly, for the last essay, I'm not quite sure what I mean by "Responses and Responsibilities" (these "thematic" titles are fun to come up with, but as soon as I have to actually turn them into something with academic merit, things start to crumble).

Further, there's the "Informational Literacy" "Goal" that we're supposed to address in all our classes. I sort of have that figured out for the SF class (though it's still a bit bumpy). I like the overall approach there, however: I give them a selection of critical essays to use for their second essay, so they know what critical material looks like and how to use it; then I make them find their own sources for the final essay--though still with guidance from me. But, well, that means I have to do some preliminary research myself, so I know what's out there, so I can make a few selections for the students, so I can give them some guidance for the final essay.

And Oh, God, when and I going to have time for that??

And I just realized--hello, wake up, Prof. P--that I created the Turnitin assignment for Essay 2, but no assignment sheet. Ah, fuck.

But man have I ever hit the wall. My plan to get up and move once an hour fell to bits when it turned out I couldn't hear the timer in the other room over the music I was playing. I did get up a few times--and I took a healthy break a little while ago to do some meal prep--but now? My brain is experiencing the intellectual equivalent of vapor lock. We ain't goin' nowheres.

So, I console myself. I keep thinking I'll be able to work on the class in the next few weeks because I won't have that much work to mark--but then I remember, Oh, actually, yes: I will have a lot to mark. Nevertheless, there is the February break, thank God--and the students won't know that I don't have anything constructed past the break, as they only see weekly folders once they open (which happens the Wednesday of the week before, in case anyone is anxious to work ahead).

God, I can't even make sense of all this. I have to check work email--one last task before I turn my brain to "white noise" mode. Then, well, I have my evening. I may  not get to post tomorrow; I can't remember right now when my physical therapy appointment is, but it may mean I have to hustle off campus pretty quickly after meeting the SF students. But we'll see. If I have time to post, I will.

Yep, really, totally screwed

Enrollment in the Nature in Lit dropped briefly back down to eleven, but overnight, four more students registered, so now it's at 15. (I picked up a few more in the 101, lost one and gained another in SF, so that's holding steady.)

And I spent a little bit of time yesterday working on the online course materials, plus some time today (though not as much as I'd hoped or expected)--and I've managed to get one and a half weeks further along than I was when I last was on the site. At this rate, I'll have the course finished about the time the semester finishes--if then.

Of course, as I was complaining a few posts ago, part of what I was doing was going back through all the stuff that I sort of tossed together in order to get the course approved--most of which has changed at least a little if not radically. I had to keep combing through to make sure I hadn't missed anything (a process that seems set to continue for some time). Today, a lot of time was spent checking how I had things set up in terms of how students will submit their work, making sure I had the parameters I want for everything--and that everything was in the right order so I can find what I need to without scrambling once the course is officially open and running. Which will be ... day after tomorrow.

Fucking panic in the streets!

However, I did realize today that--although I am absolutely compulsive about finding images to include for each week (even when there isn't really anything specific to illustrate)--I am going to be a lot less detailed in my "lectures": the text I write to help situate students in the readings. I confess that I ended up adding to and reworking some of what I'd already done on that stuff, too, for the historical pieces--but I've gotten to the point in the semester when things are arranged thematically, not chronologically, and when the students are more likely to understand the basic framework of what they're reading.

I have been noticing that most nature writing requires a certain grasp of cultural history and a modicum of science: one needs to know who Linnaeus was, for instance, and what is meant by morphology. I'm trying to remember to gloss some of that for students--as I remember (or see an annotation in my copy of the textbook that says "gloss")--but I expect they will be baffled by things I don't expect. Their bafflement often baffles me: "You really, seriously don't know this?" Often, they really, seriously don't, which makes one wonder what on earth they have been taught.

Shifting gears: tomorrow, I really do need to set the timer so I'll periodically get my ass out of the chair. I have to do a little walking tomorrow for some life maintenance, but one spell of walking isn't enough to counteract hours upon hours of sitting. As soon as I started this post, I became aware that my knees and butt ache from being in one position too long.

So, on that note, I'm going to sign off and get up. Here's hoping for an amazing spurt of productivity tomorrow.

That satisfying feeling of figuring something out...

There was very little to do today in terms of helping Cathy with adjunct (and FT) scheduling, so I was able to go to the little "panic" workshops offered by the good folks in Distance Ed; I needed help understanding Grade Center. Both the staff members who were there were busy with other faculty (one of whom was clearly way out of her depth), so I was asked to go ahead and sign in and to interrupt with questions. I didn't want to interrupt, so I simply started clicking around on stuff--going back to the very beginning in some ways and making sure everything made sense for the changes I've made since I initially got the course approved. As I did that, I thought I'd take a look at Grade Center, mostly to make sure I could ask my questions in intelligent ways--and as I was looking, lo and behold, I managed to figure something out on my own. That was a teensy triumph--but you know, we'll take those wherever we can. The other questions I still had were relatively easily answered.

So, I came back to the office to get ready to make photocopies of my FTF classes. I found a few more errors in the SF syllabus (and it took me three tries to get them all made and uploaded onto Blackboard, for anyone who loses a syllabus during the semester). Then I started working on the 101 syllabus--and the changes I absolutely know I made are not in the file I have here at work. The date on the file apparently is meaningless: my fear, again, is that I copied in the wrong direction, copying things off the thumb drive and onto my hard drive, in the process erasing all my hard work. I really hope not--but I won't know until I get home.

I copied everything else for the first week, though, and I may come to campus briefly tomorrow to copy that 101 syllabus. (That rather depends on how long it takes me to get it fixed and right on all the various transportable devices, not to mention my computer at home.)

In any event, being unwilling to duplicate effort--in the (perhaps forlorn) hope that I have the correct syllabus at home--I stopped work on the 101 and started working on the Online Nature in Lit. The fact that I did some of the work so early--and have since changed my mind about things--means I have to go through everything with the proverbial fine-toothed comb, as little changes tend to proliferate like tribbles, and trying to track them all down and fix them is a snorting pain in the ass. But it does need to be done.

So, I haven't actually made any forward progress, dammit--though all the work I've done today did, in fact, need to be done.

I have to dash out of here pretty soon, as I have a PT appointment (and have to deal with rush hour traffic to get there). I need to shove a bunch of stuff into my tote bag, so I have it at home, if I need it. And I have to water the office plants--which I told myself I would do hours ago and completely forgot until just this minute. And no, since you ask, I did not, in fact, look at that steaming pile of handouts from last semester that I noticed at the end of the day yesterday. I just noticed it again, having blissfully forgotten all about it until just now.

If I'm this scatter-brained at this stage of the game, it doesn't bode well for the start of the semester. But at least I got through today without having to help Cathy put out any particular fires, which is a relief.

I may post tomorrow, if I have time before I head out for the evening. Or not. Probably not Saturday. Very likely on Sunday. I know you can't sleep until you know when the next blog post can be anticipated.

"Define 'Interesting.'"

I posted something on Facebook about how panic-stricken I am about the online Nature in Lit, referencing the repeated comment in the old TV series Farscape, the hero, John Crichton saying, "We're so screwed!" One of my FB friends added a comment of a similarly wonderful quotation from Firefly: the hero, Mal, asks the ship's engineer to define interesting, and the response is, "...Oh God, Oh God, we're all going to die?"

Well, it's not quite that dire, but I am going to be in a right tizzy for the next bunch of days.

The problem, you see, is that once again, I used most of my available mental acumen to handle more scheduling SNAFUs, from about 11 to about 3. I have a feeling that, if I hadn't pretty much sprinted for my office at that point, more problems surely would have arisen--and I'm reasonably sure there will be another maelstrom of problems to resolve tomorrow (albeit a slightly smaller maelstrom, or so one hopes). ("One" meaning me.)

However, I did nail down a few little bits that were buzzing around my ears like so many no-see-ums: remembering to schedule the Library class for the section of 101 that I actually will be teaching (which I had to do twice, as I completely screwed up when the class meets in the first request); letting Advisement know when I'll be putting in my time with them; letting the Bookstore know about the class that has dropped off my schedule; letting Distance Ed know ditto.

Each of those tasks, however minor and easily taken care of, did require a moment of time and a smidgen of energy--both of which are in diminishing supply.

Oh, and speaking of that calculus of how much time and energy I'm expending versus how much I have: yesterday I sent a rather snarky email to the students who had not collected their essays from last semester, even though they really, truly wanted my comments and really, truly wanted those comments sufficiently to agree to come to my office to retrieve the essays. Not one of them did. I pointed out to them that I had put some energy and effort into doing that work for them, so it was just a trifle annoying that they couldn't be bothered to get the result. One--young Mr. Street Smart--immediately replied by email, letting me know he'd pick his up today and saying that I deserved better from my students. I thanked him for that. I've not heard from anyone else, but I have heard some faint rustling on the other side of the door, which seems to indicate that at least one or two students have now retrieved their work.

In any event, after I finished with Cathy, I came up here and figured I could at least start getting stuff ready to copy for my FTF classes. In order to figure out what I needed to copy, I had to go through an enormous stack of handouts I was shoving to one side last semester, telling myself I'd sort and file it "later." I did plow through that stack--but just now, I remembered that there is another, larger stack in the bookshelf across the room from my desk. I reckon that's what I'll tackle tomorrow. And I hope to begin with the photocopying tomorrow as well.

I also noodled around a bit with Blackboard stuff for the 101 and SF--but I realized it was more important to get the first week's handouts ready to roll. And all of that--getting handouts ready to be printed, sorting through old handouts to see what I already have, making sure the Blackboard stuff for the FTF classes is in order--sort of needs to be cleared out of my hair and from around my ankles before I can do what I really need to do, which is to work on the online Nature in Lit.

I have no idea when I'm going to get that done. I can't think that far down the road.

In fact, at the moment, I sort of can't think period. I think I've hit the wall, rebounded, hit it again, rebounded, and hit it one more time. I will print out the syllabus for the 101 and check the schedule one more time: I keep trying to adjust it to give myself a little room for canceling a class or turning it over to a sub somewhere around spring break--but I'm not sure I like the solution I came up with. It's a lead-pipe cinch that I won't be able to make any sense of it tonight, so ... tomorrow.

(Out of curiosity, I just looked up "lead pipe cinch." Here's what Dictionary.com had to say: "This colloquial expression is of disputed origin. It may allude to the cinch that tightly holds a horse's saddle in place, which can make it easier for the rider to succeed in a race; or it may allude to a cinch in plumbing, in which a lead pipe is fastened with a band of steel to another pipe or a fixture, making a very secure joint." The saddle thing doesn't make sense to me (why would a saddle cinch be lead, or a pipe??), so we'll go with the latter. Sometimes, people who guess the etymology of colloquial expressions aren't thinking very far, it seems.)

That's it. When things devolve to the point that I'm looking up useless shit on Google, it's clearly time to stop blogging and do something less demanding with my brain. Like ... the intellectual equivalent of white noise. I think I can do that.

Wee-Hawken!

To quote Churchy LaFemme from the Pogo comic strip: "wee-hawken" was his exclamation of choice whenever something was startling or alarming (such as the realization that Friday the 13th is on a Saturday this month).

One course remains unassigned; even though it's got good enrollment, we may have to cancel it, if we can't find someone to teach it. A smallish handful of classes belonging to FT faculty are right on the cusp of having sufficient enrollment to run. Both my worrisome courses have just crossed over the threshold: if the counts hold until tomorrow, I'll be off to the races--and running around like my hair is on fire, trying to get ready for the start of classes next week.

Christ, this break really was not not not long enough. Not. Not long enough. Not.

Cathy and I very nearly had the blind staggers by the time we got everything straightened out and nailed down. I am quite certain that the department's adjunct union rep will find some reason to threaten us with a grievance, either on her own behalf or on someone else's, but we'll burn that bridge as we cross it.

I just graded the first version of an essay submitted by a lovely student who got an incomplete in 101. It felt oddly normal to be back in grading mode. I wonder how long I'd have to go without grading an essay before doing so started to feel at all unusual. Decades, maybe?


Back to the "hair on fire" thing, I know it is relatively early tonight, so I probably "should" do some work on my classes, but I expended so much energy keeping track of the domino chains for the adjunct scheduling (and fixing FT faculty schedules that were in trouble) that I am afraid any work I tried to do tonight would have to be done over tomorrow anyway.

Tomorrow, Cathy and I will spend some time reassigning the courses that people throw back into the pool as unwanted. Other than that, I should be able to start clearing the decks up here in the office: making sure I have copies of whatever handouts I'm going to need for the face-to-face classes, checking what's up on Blackboard, scheduling a Library class for the 101, that sort of thing.

But for tonight, I think retreat is in order. An organized rout is what it feels like. The best news of the day (other than that we figured everything out as well as we can) is that I didn't accidentally erase all my work from Sunday when I was copying things onto USB drives. I have it; I just have to make sure it's proliferated everywhere it belongs (home computer, work computer, Blackboard, various USB drives). But the fact that I actually have it is quite a relief. (That was a lovely little moment of panic, when I thought I might have lost it all.)

And with that, my faithful readers, I am blindly staggering out the door.

Either way, I'm kinda screwed...

OK, so Nature in Lit is back up to 11 students. Cathy thinks it will run. The section of comp that I prefer to keep is also up to 11, and Cathy ditto. We talked about my taking the Modern American Novel course but for various reasons decided it would be a bad idea. But ... Nature in Lit. Fuck. I haven't worked on it in days, and if it runs, panic in the streets will ensue, as I do not have it anywhere near ready to go.

Shifting gears slightly: I truly like Cathy very much, and I think she's an excellent chair of the department, but I wanted to strangle her just a little today, on several occasions. I kept telling her that I had a record of what classes didn't have instructors and that most had been provisionally assigned to FT faculty whose schedules were in jeopardy. She kept looking at the numbers on Banner and saying, "What about...?" and I'd say--again--"I gave that to ...." or "That's on hold for ...." When I could get her to stop doing that and to sit down at the table and work with  me, things went better, but I need to set up a barricade around her computer, because once she gets on the computer, she gets caught up in answering (or sending and then looking for answers to) emails, and we both lose track of where we were and what we had done.

In addition to which, because of all the if/then scenarios we had to set up or make happen, once it was time to start in with the adjunct schedules--the ostensible purpose for my being on campus today--it turned out to be easier just to erase everything I did last week and start all over. Note to self: don't start on adjunct schedules until FT scheduling issues are resolved. Ever.

Poor Paul has gotten the fuzzy end of the lollipop this semester: neither of his courses is going to run. Well, one might, but it is too uncertain to leave it on his course load; we had to take him off it and leave it for an adjunct to pick up (if it runs, that is). So we gave him a 102; I know he likes them, and he's brilliant at teaching them--but ... he had two honors classes and now he has none. The one that really hurts is his honors elective--a section of Brit Lit I, that went from three students to zero over the weekend. (Students who've been around for a while know that classes that are under-enrolled may be canceled, so if they see that they're in something with low numbers and its getting close to crunch time, they will often bail to find a class that will work for their schedules and that they know will run. I think that's what was going on with Nature in Lit at first--but now enough students are registered that others will take a chance on it (on top of which, most of the other online literature electives are full).

It's absolutely freezing cold in the office; I'm bundled up in multiple layers but my hands and feet are still cold. Nevertheless, I'm going to try to do at least a smidgen of work before I have to hustle off to physical therapy. And I'll be back trying to wrestle Cathy to the table as of about 10 a.m. tomorrow. Somehow or other, eventually this will all make sense, I think...

"Wasted" effort, almost certainly

So, I'm here, snowbound at home, and there isn't much I can do about the scheduling stuff from here--indeed, there isn't much I can do about any of it anyway: all the numbers seem to be moving pretty erratically (up, down, not at all). So, I've spent the last bunch of hours working on the online Nature in Lit, even though it's all but certain it won't run. Dammit. Enrollment went down the last two days, which obviously isn't what I'm hoping for.

Still, it's kept me amused. It also has revealed places where I don't know what I'm doing and can't seem to figure it out just by clicking around. If it looks like the thing will run after all, I'll make a point of going to one of the open help sessions the wonderful folks in Distance Education are holding at the end of next week. If by that time it's become clear the sucker won't run, I'll use the time doing other productive things instead.

What I really should do--and might well do tomorrow--is proof the syllabi and so on for the courses I know I'm going to teach: at least one section of 101 and the SF class. Just by chance, as I was looking for something else entirely today, I saw a few errors on the SF syllabus; I'm quite sure more are lurking, waiting to be discovered. And I actually have a bit of work to do on the 101s in terms of what's up on Blackboard. I've replaced a reading or two, and I need to make sure the Turnitin submissions are re-created (those can't be edited but need to be created new each term--for reasons that almost make sense to me).

Now, however, it's getting quite dark, and my mind is beginning to resist doing anything more challenging than reading a popcorn "thriller" and metaphorically eating bon-bons. I'd actually eat bon-bons if I had any in the house, but fortunately I don't--and since we won't be dug out of today's snow until some time tomorrow, I amn't going out to get any. It would be terrific exercise--and in some ways fun--to go out walking in the wind and snow, but ... nah. I'm too lazy. Loafing about is in order, and will commence very shortly.

Endless "If/Then" Scenarios...

So, a different battle with scheduling this year: we're running very few courses--but even of the ones we're running, a lot of garden-variety comp classes assigned to FT faculty have worryingly low numbers, so I spent a good chunk of time today trying to come up with ways to fix those schedules if need be. By the time I got to the end of the alphabet (not the seniority rankings, which is probably what I should have done), I was completely out of options: I'm praying like mad most of the courses I've flagged as problematic actually run.

Including, of course, my own. If both the low-enrollment section of 101 and the Nature in Lit get canceled, I have myself set up to teach Modern American Novel, of all petrifying options: a course I've never taught before. Talk about getting shot out of a cannon, if that happens! I don't think it will: the comp will almost surely run, as its the only one offered at that particular time--and the Nature in Lit still has a shot, as online courses sometimes fill at the Nth hour.

More problematic, however, is the fact that I'm making decisions for high-ranking adjuncts that may have to be completely rethought, once we have a better sense what's actually likely to run.

And of course, there's supposed to be a major snow storm tomorrow, just to bollix everything up royally. Not only does that mean no time in the office, it also means that students are unlikely to register for classes--as if the snow makes a difference, since they can register online, but a lot of them feel they absolutely have to get advised first, and with Advisement closed...

Well, whatever.

I'm about to hustle my little self home, drop off all the copies of adjunct scheduling paperwork I made (so I can, if necessary, work from home), maybe do a quick violin practice, grab a popcorn book to read on the train, and hustle on in to the City to take my dear friend Szilvia to see Farinelli and the King, starring the incomparable, superb Mark Rylance.

And tomorrow, as we all know, will be yet another day--whether it snows or not.

Time collapsing... but a start on the year

Yesterday, I finally nailed down the readings for the Nature in Lit, thank God. The students will probably bitch about how much there is--especially how many discussion board entries they have to do--but the readings aren't generally long. There are a few that probably need more time than I'm devoting to them, but the nice thing about the online course is that we can more easily circle back to readings if we want to, revisit points that were made. There may not be as much synthesis as I could arrange, but ... well, I'm doing what I can for a first time out of the gate.

So, today I spent some time actually typing up the assignment schedule, getting the syllabus sorted, making sure I have a few handouts (and am OK with how they're constructed, though of course they all could and should be more concise). I haven't got the essay assignments nailed down yet--and, more to the point, I haven't constructed the online parts, which I really do need to start focusing on. Tomorrow will be a truncated day, as I have to go to physical therapy in the middle of the afternoon, dammit (I may call to see if I can reschedule), and then as of Wednesday, I'm back on campus working on adjunct scheduling. If I look down the pike, I see day after day when I will have very little time to work on my own class prep and lots of time that I'll have to devote to other things, some fun (leaving work early on Wednesday to meet a friend in the City to celebrate her birthday), some not so (see above on adjunct scheduling). So, yes, panic begins to arise.

But I have the basics in place, which is good. Part of me wants to keep going tonight--I haven't collapsed with exhaustion yet, and it's the first day in ages when I've gotten to this point in the evening and have had any energy at all--but I know that I need to be careful about husbanding what energy I have so it builds instead of being continually depleted.

And of course I'm worrying about the pearls that are very likely slipping through the floorboards as I write. I'm trying to keep notes of what I want to be sure I do (and make sure I don't lose the notes). But mostly, I want to celebrate the fact that progress has been made. That's not a bad way at all to start a new year.