Thinking positive

Today, I decided to think positively about my literature electives, so I spent a good chunk of the day putting together the assignment schedule for the Native American Lit course. In the process, I realized I could spread things out significantly (which will help the students stick with it, as they'll be much less overwhelmed by reading)--and I realized I wanted to look at a critical article that I may also want to share with the students. However, I couldn't seem to access the article. I thought, "I bet one of my colleagues can help," so I sent out an email to the department. Wham: six responses--including one from the author of the critical article (turns out one of my colleagues knows her). That was a lovely reminder of the quality of my colleagues.

I'm now sitting here, surrounded by flotsam (in the guise of printouts of various bits of things, books I've been consulting, books I've been considering)--and I am feeling somewhat poleaxed. I'm not sure if it's just that I've had my head down for enough hours that I can't quite pull myself up again or if I'm experiencing a strange back-wash of resistance to doing the work in the first place. But ... progress is being made.

I also took an unusual step and directly emailed several students (choice folks from previous semesters) to ask them whether they'd be interested in signing up for Native American Lit (which has six students in it at present). I heard back from one of them; turns out she graduated in May (which was not reflected in her degree evaluation online). The others? Well, I'm not really expecting anything from it--and I didn't contact enough of them to save the class from cancellation--but it doesn't hurt to ask. And it was a way to advocate on my own behalf without having to make a trip to campus with fliers.

And now, an enormous thunderstorm is rumbling around outside. (The power already went out briefly once; more outages may occur. Thank god for computer batteries, and surge protectors.) I'm going to take that as my sign to, well, sign off for today. I do like it when I can get thoroughly caught up in work and sort of "fall into the vortex" (as Jo March put it in Little Women). Getting out again can sometimes be a challenge, but that's a good challenge to have.

More posts to come, as we move toward the actual start of things...