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.