Well, dammit...

The SF students let me down today. Most of them had their essays (good), but only three had even attempted the reading, and about half of them didn't have their books with them. I told them I'm not allowed, legally, to boot them from the class, but that I was sorely tempted to do it anyway. However, making the best of a crap situation, I said, "OK, this is going to be kind of like kindergarten, but we're going to sit in an oval and do a read around."

I will say, they rather salvaged my mood by 1. being entirely willing to read out loud (though some of them were painfully bad at it) and 2. by finding the humor in Atwood's writing. They were picking up on some good bits--and some of them diligently taking notes as we read and talked.

They're trying to refrain from speculation--largely unsuccessfully--but they at least are learning that the response to a question might be, "You'll find out," or "Let's keep looking." I will have to set them straight on one issue, however, as I can tell that, if I don't, they're going to be following unproductive rabbit trails and missing more important bits: they want to know whether the eponymous Oryx and Crake are/were real or are the result of Jimmy/Snowman's fractured mind. (They are/were real--but whether Snowman is hallucinating or just having vivid memories can be debated. I think they'll figure that out in the next chapters, but ... well, I may just have to hand it to them.) To again give them credit where it is due, they also understood when I pointed out that Snowman's interjections into the memories of when he was Jimmy are an adult commenting on childhood memories. I remembered to frame it in terms of their own experience: "When you remember what you were like or what you did as a child, can you now, as an adult, comment on what you remember?" Yep, nodding heads. OK, there we go then.

Backing up to earlier in the day, I met with the Cowardly Lioness--and she was much braver and stronger today. She has good, solid ideas, which is great. I pushed back against some of her thinking, but she could adjust and come up with a new stance or a counter-argument. One of the best moments was, in fact, when I was talking with her about the value of including counter-arguments, and she said--without any prompting from me--"I can see how that will make my argument much stronger." That's a big score for her. I suspect that, as she has these realizations, her confidence will grow--and I told her that: she's experiencing one of the things she's talking about in her essay, which was the way in which the college experience can make us "grow in ourselves," as she said. Yes, indeed.

P&B was only moderately annoying. The new administrator in charge of labor relations is after us to clarify some things in the qualifications to teach various courses, and although in some instances we could simply adjust the language (or say, "Yes, we do that," to her query about whether we did X and such), she also was asking us to quantify some things that really can't be quantified. How do we quantify a "significant" record of publications? How do we quantify sufficient "experience"? Paul very rightly pointed out that 1. the contract gives P&B committees control over such decisions (and in one case, she flatly tried to take it away from us: no), and 2. this is an area where we can't back down. We have to say, "This is something where you have to trust the knowledge and expertise of the professionals in the field; these are determinations that we make as elected representatives of the department in terms of personnel matters." Basta. End of story.

Of course, I don't envy Cathy the task of having to make those arguments--but I know if anyone can make them and not back down, it's Cathy. She heard us and agreed to go to battle.

Paul and I are also involved in trying to clear up degree "audit" information for the Associate's degree in Creative Writing that we now offer. The college is switching over to a new software system for tracking which degree requirements students have fulfilled (don't get me started on that), so we had to vet the way things appeared--and I'm glad we were asked to do that, as there were some errors, some needed clarifications, and the whole thing raised much thornier problems that we'll eventually have to address as a department. There have been long and convoluted email chains on all of that, and it feels a bit like there's just more hair being added to the hairball. I tried to sort out some strands that were getting tangled together, but ... well, oy.

I'm sure there are other things I could report for today, but that wall just loomed up out of nowhere and smacked me stupid. I'm signing off. More tomorrow, I'm sure.