Sums it up

One of the best and brightest in the SF class turns out to be a stream-of-consciousness writer--no structure and starts on a riff that he just follows wherever it leads, and tends to write lots of run-on sentences as well--but here's something he wrote that explains why he's one of the best and brightest:

"My goal for this semester is to use this English class as a buffer between myself and my cellphone. I want to read more pages in books than emails or texts by the end of the year."

There you have it: students who actually like to read.

Not all of them do, of course: a number of the students confessed to rather hating to read for various reasons--but all of them were excited about, or at least cheerfully challenged by, the prospect of the reading in this course. A bit daunted, in some cases--but several students said that they truly wanted to reestablish a love of reading that they'd lost, and that already the assignments and approach in the class were igniting their interest.

Ahhhh. The sigh of a contented professor--even if the contentment is only momentary. I'll still take it.

Whatever else I might have had to report has just flown out of my head, so I'll make this a brief post. Perhaps there will be more over the weekend.