Social technology

Of course, I had no idea when I created the topic for the final essay that this year it would have more powerful resonance than ever before, since all my students--and to a certain extent their professor--are all in the position of having to rely on social technology for contact beyond our immediate families, and we're starting to feel on a visceral level the value of being in the same physical space with other human beings.

But I'm always interested to note that many of my students are in full agreement that their attachment to their smart phones is problematic. There are always a few who make a powerful (and at least partly defensive) argument in favor of the connectivity we gain from our devices: contact with people around the world, communities who are like-minded, creative connections. They're less aware of the "echo chamber" effect, which is highly problematic in our society--and that's not generational: that's for everyone.

I'm also interested to note how much I want to actually talk with them about all this, not just exchange monologues in text. I love that they're having to get their ideas into written words--that's an enormous boon in a composition class--but when it comes to debating the topics, we need the give-and-take of real-time interaction.

Because it's a fully online class, I can't mandate meetings at any specific time. I am, however--and shifting gears--going to mandate online essay conferences, if I teach the class again. That personal discussion, even just for 20 minutes, does more to guide them than anything I can put in writing.

Today, I realized I was a week off in my own head and I had to issue a quick disclaimer to the students: their essays are due this coming Monday, the 13th, not the 20th as I'd said in my emails to them. But I decided to extend the deadline to the 15th--partly because I screwed up and partly because I'd like them to have the extra time. I could push it even later, but I don't want them to rush their final essays.

But having that realization also made me realize I was falling further behind with reading/responding/grading homework than I was aware. And as I've been reading their discussion board posts from last week, I realize I don't want to post a response in writing. I'm going to make a video for them, talking about the points I see in their posts. I'm not quite sure where I'll post it yet, but I think in the same folder where their essay submissions go will be a good place.

Now, however, my mind has gone on the fritz. It is a spectacularly gorgeous day, and I need to get out in it. I would much prefer to garden or do something useful, rather than taking the usual walk, but being out is being out--and we're going to have another cold spell in a few days, so enjoying this while it lasts is paramount.

No can do

I swore to myself that I'd get the rest of the damned essays graded and back to students today, come hell or high water. Neither hell nor high water have made an appearance, but I just reached a point of total brain fry: I can't tell anymore whether the problems are the students' or whether I'm just not processing ideas. And even if I assume the problems are the students' (which is likely the case), I am afraid my comments wouldn't make any sense, so it's time to call a halt, dig into a foxhole for the night, and try to reach the summit again tomorrow.

And I only had two more to go. One will be pretty good; one won't be. Tomorrow, I should probably take the more problematic one first, save the decent one for when I'm starting to flag a bit anyway. (It doesn't seem to take much.)

How in the name of all that is holy was I able to grade the masses of essays I used to face on a regular basis? I simply can't fathom.

In any event, I am sure they don't care, but I just sent an announcement apologizing for the delay and promising the essays for tomorrow. I also told them I'll be available over spring break, if they need me.

But now, I need to email a student who has yet to submit any essay at all--neither version of essay one, and now not the first version of essay two. I've been telling him for weeks that he needs to withdraw, and now I have to let him know that his very last chance for making it has sailed and is already gone over the horizon. I'm not looking forward to the meeting with Working Dad on Tuesday, either.

Oh, hell: I'd forgotten I have a meeting with another student tomorrow; that will cramp my grading time a trifle. Maybe I have to (horrors) set an alarm clock so I'm up and at 'em earlier than has been the case for some while.

Well, whatever. Sufficient unto the day and all that. I'm toast.

Thank heaven for Paul

I have, once again, made so little progress it might as well be zero progress. I finished grading the essay I started yesterday and graded one more. I wondered if I could find an "easy" one to grade, but the few I looked at caused me to feel existential despair, so I decided to hand it up for the evening and hope for a more productive day tomorrow.

Part of the lack of progress is that I've been having phone conversations, but I don't regret the time lost to them--especially not the time lost to talking with Paul. Of course, our conversations are always wonderful; he is my dear, good friend, and we can talk a blue streak. But today, I wanted to vent to him and to get his support about Working Dad--and he was, as always, a voice of clarity and reason. In fact, I am not being overly draconian in this time of plague; I'm being realistic.

Today's little kicker was that Working Dad emailed to say he needed another example of what he's supposed to do. I said, in response, he doesn't need an example to know the difference between his words and someone else's, no matter how much stress he's under. The poor man is clearly a train-wreck, but as Paul said, Working Dad was a mess before the crisis hit--for years before, probably, maybe even always--so the crisis isn't really the problem, though it may be something of a factor. And the bottom line, Paul reminds me, is that the guy cannot seem to understand the most absolutely basic, simple of concepts, and therefore he cannot be said to have mastered what he needs in order to continue.

I am, of course, sorry that he paid for the course out of his own pocket and it won't advance him toward graduation. I am sorry that he may "never" be able to afford to take the class again (which begs the question how he can afford to take any classes again, but I won't go there). I am sorry that he is anxious and stressed. He still has to provide an essay that is actually an essay and that uses sources appropriately.

And as I'm writing this, I suddenly thought, "Wait: the handbook has sample student work, including examples of how to use sources." And I've certainly assigned the pages in the handbook where those examples are given, though whether he's read and comprehended them is a different matter entirely. I will point that out to him when we talk.

That's my decision, by the way: we need to talk. It's clear that the back-and-forth of emails will not suffice to clarify the situation for him, so we're going to have another meeting next week. I expect I will give him a chance to "fix" (as in, actually write) his essay for the final version, rather than dropping the (velvet) axe right now--but I will tell him that if he screws up again (which I expect he will), he will have only the option to withdraw or fail. He doesn't have to withdraw; he can refuse until the cows come home (where the hell are those cows, anyway?), but he won't get a passing grade.

On a more positive note, I did hear from the student I was fretting about who didn't fix an instance of plagiarism in the final version of essay 1. I'll meet with him next week, too--and I will allow him the opportunity to fix the mistake and get credit for the essay; he can learn from the learning opportunity, whereas apparently Working Dad cannot.

Paul and I also talked about life during pandemic in general--and how the unknowns of the future are more glaringly "unknown" than is usually the case. Apparently, the powers that be are wondering whether the school will even exist in the fall: will we have enough students enrolled to keep anyone, never mind everyone, working? Unknown. How long will the pandemic last? Unknown. What will happen to our society in general as a result of the pandemic? Unknown. How might it affect our individual lives? Unknown.

So, we breathe (coherence breathing--five breaths a minute, six seconds in, six seconds out--for 10-20 minutes, or 4-4-6-2 breathing--breathe in for a count of four, pause the breath for a count of four, breathe out for a count of six, pause the breath for a count of two: repeat at least five times). And we follow the 12-Step program adage: Trust in God and do the dishes.

And, like Scarlett, think about anything else tomorrow, when we're stronger.

The "I can't think" compounding factor

Of course, as any of my blog readers know, it's hard enough for me to focus on grading student essays under the best of circumstances. After the third night in a row of not enough sleep--and last night's being by far the worst--my ability to focus is even more shot than usual.

Two essays were submitted late. Technically, I shouldn't provide comments on one of those two, as the student didn't ask for any kind of extension, and my policy is that essays submitted more than 24 hours late don't get comments. But this student missed the first version of the first essay, so she hasn't gotten any comments from me before. I therefore think it's rather important that she gets comments this time. The other student has been in touch with me for some time--before the pandemic hit, in fact--about health problems, so when she asked for an extension, I gave it to her. She then didn't complete the upload, apparently, because the essay she said I'd get on Monday didn't land until after I poked her about it yesterday. I sent her an email saying, in essence, "'I thought I'd submitted it' isn't much of an excuse." But I didn't slam her as hard as I might, as she's generally a very diligent student.

Much more to my dismay, Working Dad submitted an essay that was 84% plagiarized: he simply cut and pasted almost an entire article into his paper. He's one of those people who legitimately has serious problems of all sorts, but he's also one of those people who always has an excuse,so the compassion fatigue has set in. Pretty much, he wants me to say, "I know you're struggling, so here: you don't have to do any work and I'll give you a B." In the case of this essay, his excuse was all sorts of crises and disasters in his life (some clearly in his own head: he is sure he's got COVID-19, but none of the symptoms he describes are symptoms of the virus)--and that he accidentally uploaded the wrong file, saying he also was very embarrassed.

I wrote him a sympathetic email in which I said I understand how, under the circumstances, he could make that kind of mistake, but in that case, he needed to upload the correct file to Turnitin and contact me immediately if Turnitin won't let him do that (my settings may mean he can't) so we can work out another solution.

But today, I got an email from him saying he had "reviewed" his essay and he could see that there had been some instances of "unacceptable borrowing" from his sources, which is why I "assumed" it was plagiarized.

And now I've fucking had it. 1. An essay that is 84% plagiarized is not a case of some unacceptable borrowing, nor is it an assumption on my part that it's plagiarized. 2. If he uploaded the wrong file--as I said earlier--he needs to fix the error. 3. If the file he reviewed matches the essay in the plagiarism report I sent him, then he does not understand what plagiarism is, how to use sources, or how to develop his own points--and at this stage in the semester, if he doesn't understand those basics, he cannot pass the class.

We'll see what he comes up with next.

When I hit the wall rather abruptly just before starting this post, I was working through the essay submitted by one of the two students who had been guilty of uncorrected and genuinely accidental plagiarism--the one of the two who never contacted me about that issue and who therefore, according to my plagiarism policy and my email to him about his first essay, should get a zero for that first essay. Part of why I hit the wall was that, as I was trying to just respond to his essay, I kept fretting about how to handle that situation. Do I not say anything and wait to see what he does? Do I say something, and if so, what? Do I hold to my policy, or do I still keep the door open for him to correct the error? He hasn't been doing any other work, I don't think, so I really don't know what his deal is.

There also was just a weird file thing: one student submitted an essay and Word asked me if I wanted to translate it out of Spanish--but the essay was in English, entirely. All I can think is the student has Spanish set as the language for Word on her computer, so any other computer assumes that's what language it's in. I did "translate" it, just because it was annoying to see all the red, wiggly underlines as Word flagged "spelling errors." Computer stuff is just odd sometimes.

All through this, I keep thinking that my students are in the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis, and I really simply cannot imagine what they're dealing with, what their lives are like. We're supposed to stay at home here--and I tend to do that anyway--but I've been pretty lax about really, really isolating myself: I've still been seeing my mother and sister, for instance. And the initial panic buying of food and supplies is starting to wane, though it may pick up again when the number of cases in this state starts to go way up.

Weird, to sort of be teaching as if life is normal and then periodically pulling myself up short and thinking, "Pandemic: be more gentle on them."

Now, however, my excuse for knocking off after finishing only one essay and starting a second is that whole "I didn't sleep, so I can't focus" think, coupled with the usual "I need a long time to wind down, so I'd better stop working if I want to sleep tonight" factor. And it's been a week full of reasons to put off grading--or to not be able to do it because I was running around doing other stuff--so now I really have to be diligent so I can get everything back to them by Sunday. I'd love to get it back to them on Saturday, but--unless there are a few that I don't really have to grade at all (Working Dad's for instance, if he doesn't submit something that's not plagiarized)--I don't think that's likely. I have ten to grade. (I'm not counting the one I started as even partly graded, as I didn't get far.) I used to be able to do that in a day, or a day and change, but the retired me just isn't interested in pushing that hard.

So, off I go to noodle and fritter until bed time.

"Learning Continuity"

In the "Total Administrative Bullshit" category, file this: We are now obligated to fill out a spread sheet with the name, personal email (assuming we know it), phone number (assuming we can find it), and so on for every student who has "stopped attending" class since campus first "suspended" activity on March 10. And we're supposed to do it by Monday. How the fuck would I know? They have been so spotty in their attendance under the best of circumstances, I would have no idea who has actually gone AWOL versus who is just being negligent as usual and could return at any moment.

We're also supposed to write out how we've changed our syllabi and grading policies under the crisis circumstances and have them ready to be electronically filed once the powers that be figure out how to do that. Both of these measures are thinly veiled "bash the teacher" provisions, designed to take us to task for 1. not running all over creating trying to contact every student who's gone silent and 2. not following the same factory-made parameters for our courses so that they'll be "fair." (This is a long-standing battle with the administration: they want to be able to assure students that they will get exactly the same content and experience no matter whose section of a course they take, but short of having everything taught by machines, that can't happen, and in our discipline in particular, the process can vary wildly and achieve the same end result, though we can't persuade non-humanities types, especially corporate-think bean counters, of that fact.)

As for changes in syllabus and grading policy, the answer for me is, I haven't changed anything at all. The only thing I've changed is I'm being less draconian in enforcing my various late policies than I would normally be.

But I'm thinking about my colleagues--especially those who are pretty nearly completely computer illiterate (even now)--who are suddenly having to switch to a completely online modality, and on top of this, they're supposed to chase after missing students and write up syllabus/grading policy changes in a way that will satisfy the administration on top of everything they're doing just to try to keep doing some semblance of teaching? Not to mention the fact that they're in the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis: we all see the news about what's happening in NY, and although our campus isn't in the City, a lot of our students are, and it's close enough to the City that the number of cases in Nassau County alone is more than some entire states are seeing.

I had a great talk with Paul yesterday, but he did share with me that the lawyers have taken over just about everything, so that way of thinking--trying to fend off any possible ambiguity or cause for a law suit--is trampling all over academic freedom and faculty professional autonomy. And again, I am grateful beyond words that I retired when I did, so I receive only glancing blows from the rampant corporatization of the campus. I do not envy my colleagues who are still in there, trying to fight the good fight.

Meanwhile, it's early enough in the day that I certainly could do some evaluating of discussion board posts, plus I think there's one more quiz ready for me to grade--but I'm too cranky to read anything they've written in the spirit of providing learning opportunities. I'd just want to smack them all with a two-by-four. Even the good ones. (And can I just say, thank god for the good ones. I know I can read at least three things--discussion board posts, essays, whatever--that make sense and are not filled with sentence-level errors.)

Gah. I'm cranky. I'm done. Stick a fork in me.

Grading, and teaching during a pandemic

Really, the title of this blog should revert back to its old title, since all I'm talking about these days is teaching. I spend a fair amount of my time not teaching--but I'm not doing much of anything else, either.

So far, where I am, the novel corona virus hasn't had a huge impact. Where my students are, however, is an entirely different story. I truly simply cannot imagine what their lives are like--and a lot of them were struggling to keep on top of the class anyway.

Still, I haven't heard from most of them about their graded essays--though one of the ones who didn't revise and didn't fix plagiarism did get in touch with me. I'll meet with him tomorrow. And Working Dad continues to plagiarize his homework--where he understands the question at all, which he often doesn't. And yet he seems to understand the articles he reads, so I don't understand what's going on there, unless he's just so anxious about being "tested" that he freezes up.

One student has been taking quizzes but doing nothing else.

And speaking of the quizzes, I get the absolute weirdest answers to what I think are very clear and simple questions--partly, I think, because they can't believe the answer is so easy and obvious.

But I also think there's a real factor here of what happens to our ability to read and absorb when we're anxious--and especially to read and absorb what's on a screen when we're anxious. And I can't really advise them to calm down because, as I said, I really can't imagine what they're going through.

Nevertheless, I got about 1/3 of the way through all the stuff I need to grade--some of it way overdue--and my own mind short-circuited. So I'm calling a halt today. I won't get much, if anything, done tomorrow, either, as I have to meet online with Working Dad and I Don't Need to Revise student 1, and by the time I finish with that, I may well be too rattled to do a damned thing--except engage in the kind of soothing behavior so many are turning to in these house-bound times and cook something. Which wouldn't be altogether a bad thing.

It's easier when they don't do the work

It took me a lot less time than I thought it would to grade the essays--because, as I realized, I didn't emphasize that submitting the essay unrevised would mean a lower grade for the second/final version. So several students figured whatever grade they got was good enough and didn't revise.

And I took a step that I'm not entirely sure I should have: I let them know that, since I provided my comments for their benefit, the fact that they essentially ignored my comments is disrespectful of me, my knowledge, and my time. It is, and it pisses me off, so I thought, what the hell. They should know that their behavior actually has a detrimental effect beyond their grade.

I also note that two of the students who didn't revise also didn't fix instances of "accidental" plagiarism that I pointed out to them in their first versions. I've told them both that I haven't yet given a grade, so they need to contact me to set up a time when we can talk. I'm giving them two weeks to contact me. If they haven't gotten in touch with me by then, my plagiarism policy goes into effect and they get zeroes for their grades.

The third one who didn't revise is potentially an A student, but he's just barely able to mask his utter disdain for the class. (He's one of those "it doesn't apply to me so why do I have to take it" students.) I've told him he can disagree with me, but now he knows he still has to listen to me.

I've also made it very clear that--going forward--if an essay is submitted for a second time without a serious attempt at addressing my comments, the grade (relative to number of points possible) will go down.

But one student really is an A student: not only is he very good, he really, truly revised and revised well. What a pleasure that was--especially as his was the second to last essay that I read.

So, now that's done. And although there are assignments I could grade (a quiz, I think, and at least one discussion board forum), I'm going to leave it for now and engage in mindless noodling. And I have a week in which to sort of breathe and get caught up before the next essays land. (Which reminds me: I need to contact one student to let him know he's not going to pass, now that he's completely missed both versions of essay 1. Oh, fun and frolic.)

I could get out walking this afternoon, but instead I'm going to work on the Guinness World Record in sloth.

Grading essays, god help me

It is remarkable to me how many ways I can find to avoid grading essays when it certainly would be better to simply do it and get it over with. I meant to grade four yesterday, four today, and four tomorrow and be done with it.

I graded zero yesterday, four today--so now I have eight still to do, and I highly doubt I'll be able to get them all done tomorrow. I'll be pretty danged happy if I manage to get four done and finish the remaining four on Saturday.

Meanwhile, there is at least one quiz and several discussion boards I could/should be grading, but am I? Hell no.

But I think about the fact that for me, this is all pretty much "situation normal"--except I'm physically far from campus--whereas for many of my colleagues, this is a time of crumbling crisis: quickly switching to FTF classes to online, which even for teachers versed in online teaching would be a nightmare, while coping with all the psychological, social, and pragmatic problems of life during a pandemic: grocery stores empty of basic necessities, medical facilities already strained close to breaking point and the numbers of confirmed cases still climbing, people trying to balance maintaining lives while remaining as isolated or "distanced" as possible.... Out here in the sticks, we are in a much better situation: not very many people and a whole lot of space, and we started putting all the precautions in place before things were already getting ahead of us. And apart from the need to get to a store from time to time, and the absolute lack of toilet paper anywhere in the state, it seems, I can toodle along just fine for a good long while just me in my little house, bitching about my students as if life were normal.

I have to remind myself how challenging things are for everyone back "home." Today, for instance, I started to feel impatient that I haven't gotten an answer about a payroll issue--but then I thought, "I have no idea what kind of insanity they're dealing with that's a whole lot more important than my question; I can follow up in a week or so. This is not 'house on fire' urgent." Ditto an issue with my vision coverage; it seems I've been paying COBRA payments but my coverage won't work out here. I've asked my Human Resources contact about it, but I don't expect an answer any time soon.

This is such a completely weird time in history--as one friend said, living it is a bear. Things to be grateful for: that the internet still works, that my computer and internet connection still work, that most of my friends and relatives are accessible through the internet one way or another. Strange, strange days.

Kinda-sorta caught up

I believe I have caught up with all the stuff I didn't grade from last week. I don't know why I resisted doing it for so long (and several times started, graded one or two, and then thought "I can't do this right now" and stopped). It really wasn't onerous, and it's nice to have my feet clear so I can focus on grading revisions of essays in the week to come.

There has been a whole lot of silence on the freelance front, which is OK by me at the moment. I may have mentioned that at one point I was contacted by some book designers who wanted to include an estimate for my services in a proposal they were making to a west-coast museum. I heard from them that they didn't get the job, so that won't be landing on my desk over the summer.

I really don't have a whole lot else to say at the moment--other than noting that I did create overall posts on two discussion board fora, correcting misunderstandings and pointing out realities that the students tend not to consider in their responses to the readings (about U.S. industrialized agricultural practices). I have stopped commenting on most individual posts, as most students aren't reading my comments anyway, but I specifically informed students that those threads now exist and that, well, they should read them.

I don't know how much work I'll do on the class tomorrow; I imagine I'll at least check Turnitin to see how many essays were submitted on time. Apart from that, it will be a day mostly about life maintenance--and simply doing personal stuff that I want to do (transferring compost from one bin that is not bear-resistant to another that is, for instance; it should be warm enough for such shenanigans after the brief arctic snap we just endured).

Life goes on. Life is, generally speaking, just hunky dory.

A little grading, a whole lot of fiddling

I've been futzing around with things like grade sheets and emailing students who are AWOL--mostly because I can't quite bear to read any more student work but feel as if I should be doing something that has something to do with class.

Regarding grade sheets: this may seem like a ridiculous expenditure of energy, since I'm teaching, and therefore grading, online, but since NCC insists on the need for paper rosters--and those paper rosters have to have a break-down of how the grade was determined--it's helpful for me to have an Excel spreadsheet that will calculate specific categories of grades in ways that Blackboard's Grade Center doesn't seem to like. Or, really, that I don't want to have to figure out.

But in putting together the Excel spreadsheet, I realized I wasn't sure exactly how many sheets I'd actually need. I only need them for the students who have submitted enough work that calculating their grade requires more than adding two or three numbers. And I realize that there are a few students who might still return--at least for a while--though they seem at the moment to be among the missing.

As for the emails I've been sending, I doubt they'll have any particular effect, but I've now done all I intend to do. We haven't yet gotten the Academic Progress thingy that we are required to do every semester; I imagine that in all the upheaval over the pandemic, "suspended" classes, attempts to transition as much as possible to online modalities, and hoarding of toilet paper, that little detail has slipped through the cracks. If it ever happens this semester, it will happen too late to be of any use to much of anyone (especially students whose grades are in danger)--but I will, of course, dutifully fill it out.

And in all this pother, I had rather blissfully forgotten that students are supposed to submit their revised essays by end of day Sunday--which means more substantive grading for me next week. So I really "should" have tried to hang in there a little longer getting discussion board fora graded, but ... nah. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe Sunday. There will be time....

Working with an aspiring writer

Using the online tutoring platform Wyzant, I just met with a student who wants to become a better writer and who is working on a "fantasy" novel. Really, what he wants to write is a tragedy; the "medieval" trappings are simply a device--and honestly, I'm not quite sure why he wanted them, but whatever. He does, so we'll work from there. I talked to him a tiny bit about fantasy as a genre, what it is and what it does, but mostly I talked more concretely about things like having the personas of the main characters more vividly present in the first chapter, having the emotional stakes higher (and more clear), and making sure he knows enough about the characters to know how and why the main plot points could happen. I found out toward the end of the lesson that he feels like, once he puts something on paper, it's therefore and forever after immutable, so my first assignment for him was to write five pages of anything, then make a copy of the file and make deep, systemic changes to what he's written. This is a bit of "do as I say, not as I do," but he really needs to know that revising is not only possible but necessary. I also wanted him to do a detailed character sketch of one character, one he doesn't know very well yet but who will ultimately be an important part of the overall plot.

It was interesting--and it's going to work in a very catch-as-catch-can way going forward; he's not sure when he'll have time to write, and I'm not sure how this is going to work generally speaking. But we'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, the students in my online class are turning into idiots, all of them, asking questions about things I just explained--one student asking a question in reply to the email that answered precisely that question. I'm getting a bit testy with them. They're also emailing assignments to me when I've specifically told them not to--but they're doing that because they're experiencing glitches with Blackboard. They probably need to clear their computer cache and cookies, but if I tell them that, their brains will explode. I was hoping to get an email from the help desk about how to do that, so I could mail instructions to my students, but I haven't gotten that yet. The Blackboard glitches are annoying to me and anxiety-producing for the students. Not happy about any of that either.

In fact, I'm sort of systemically grumpy. But I think I was helpful/encouraging to the aspiring novelist. I reckon I'll find out in a while whether he liked what I did well enough to want to use me again.

I'm too tired for more tonight. But it is fun working with the potential novelist. I wish we could work together more often and at greater length. Much more fun than teaching comp.

Must dash...

...but wanted to vent just a trifle here first.

One particular student was hounding me all day today about the fact that there's some kind of glitch with an extra credit discussion board forum, so she hasn't been able to post to it. I fixed what we thought was the problem, but it didn't work, which means I have to contact the help desk to figure it out--and she was all over my email about it. She also was all over my email asking about her essay grade--even after I returned the essay, which has the grade on it. Calm the hell down and be patient--and recognize that the world doesn't run to your schedule, dammit.

And Boopsie did respond to my email, to my astonishment, and she said she has been falling down on the work but thinks she can pass the class--so she and I will talk during my office hour on Monday. That will be interesting, to say the least.

Oh, yes: and there's the student who said he got his essay back, and was there anything he could do for extra credit. I referred him to the syllabus:

Some extra credit is built into the regular assignments: if you do all the assignments and get top marks, you can earn more than 2,000 points—and that would be the equivalent of getting 100% on every single assignment. I have also included a few extra credit assignments to help if you should fall behind. That’s enough extra credit. Your task is to do the work assigned. Do not ask for additional assignments to boost your cumulative score.

So, answer your own question, young man.

But I got the essays all marked--including Boopsie's--and got the Met project done (turned out to be tiny, thank God), and even wrote a letter of recommendation for a student from my last semester in the classroom, and I am now, by god, stick-a-fork-in-me done for today. I'm going to meet my mother and go out for dinner. Not a steak blow-out with Paul and the gang, but it will do nicely, thank you.

Might as well revert to the old blog title

Seems like, for the foreseeable future anyway, this is going to be a blog that is 99.9% about students. Which is OK, of course; it just isn't what the title might lead a new reader to expect.

But about the students:

Imagine my utter astonishment when Little Boopsie--the one who tried to join the online office hour, gave up; submitted a quiz and started another, gave up, otherwise has been AWOL--submitted her essay, two days late, and sent me two very chipper emails, one saying, "Oh, oops, I forgot my works cited page!" and the next saying "Oh, sorry, sent you the wrong works cited page; here's the right one!"

OK, so clearly she understands at least that emails work in one direction, but I emailed back saying the professorial equivalent of "What the fuck??" and of course have heard absolutely nothing back. The letter that was mailed should arrive at her house any day now--assuming she still lives at the address she has on file, which may be a huge assumption.

I'll give her some feedback on her essay--once I finish with everyone else. I got another late submission, too, from a student who emailed on Sunday to ask where he could find the article for the essay (and to whom the answer was, "You need to do research; I suggest you read the essay assignment"). So now I've gotten submissions from ten of thirteen, but not from one of the students who I thought was among the best.

And what with one thing and another, I haven't gotten everything marked--and I'm going to send everything back all at once, to sort of level the playing field as it were: no one gets extra days to work on the revision--so even though there are only two more (and Boopsie's), I have to really get rolling tomorrow morning and crank fast, so I can at least start on the Met project and see how long that will take.

Of course, while I focus on grading essays, I'm falling way the hell behind on everything else I need to mark for them, so even when I finish grading essays and get the Met project returned, I'm still going to have a bolus of work that needs doing.

Meanwhile, Cathy offered me a summer section of Native American Lit. Online courses in the summer run ten weeks, not four like the FTF versions, so that removed one objection, and I confess I'm kinda tempted--that whole "I need money" thing--but I'd have to start over from zero, as the textbook I used to use is insanely expensive new, and there are problems with students getting it on time if they get it used, and I used to use a lot of handouts, so I'd have to think of something else to do ... and I think I just talked myself out of it. I do love the course, but I haven't taught it in seven years, and there's just an awful lot to convey if I'm going to teach it right. The problems go way beyond the textbook. I'll think about it over night (the idea of the money really is appealing), but it would be an astronomical amount of work to get it up and rolling. I don't think an online version of the class has ever existed, either, so I couldn't even raid what someone else has done (and actually, full-time faculty get paid a stipend to put together an online course when it's never been taught online before, so I'd kinda be giving NCC my work for free, which I don't much want to do).

But now, even though the sun is still up, as far as I'm concerned, the curtain has descended on the day, and I'm packing it in. I thought I might do a little research into possible textbooks for the Native American Lit class, just to see how possible it might be to throw something together, but if I start on that, the wind-down process will be delayed even further, and I would like to try to make an early night of it. I expect I'll touch base tomorrow. It will be interesting to see if I get any more late essays (tonight midnight is the absolute deadline), and to see if I hear from Boopsie. We'll see.

Mostly students

I did get another little freelance gig for the Met, but I'm going to make myself finish the student essays first.

And it's a damned good thing I'm only teaching the one class, or I'd be utterly, completely sunk. It's that whole keyboard/spend-too-long-on-comments thing. But then again, I have only received eight essays--and I rather think at least one of those (Working Dad) won't make it to the end.

Working Dad plagiarized, by the way. According to Turnitin, 39% of his essay was plagiarized. And his "argument" was about which college his son should attend. (The plagiarized stuff was from a website about the values of a Catholic university education.) I hardly knew what to say to him. I do wonder what's going on with his mind: there are things he misunderstands that simply baffle me. Is he not reading? Not comprehending? Too distracted to know what the hell he's doing? All of the above?

One student tried to cover all four possible topics. {{buzzer sounds}} Thanks for playing, but you lose.

One student wrote two pages of random thoughts with no focus.

Those were the three I graded today--and I was unbelievably nice to the non-plagiarizers. The grades I give on the first version of the first essay are usually what I would consider very generous and students still receive them as horrifically insulting and demeaning. Well, sorry, but if you don't actually do what you need to do, failing grades would probably be appropriate, so anything above that is a gift, don't you think?

But I recognize that they are learning--and we're at the "they don't know what they don't know" stage: most of them simply have zero clue what a college paper should look like and have even less of an idea how to approach creating one. So, yes: I'm generous. Once they get my feedback, one hopes they'll have a better sense of what to do. But I just realized that I could have--and should have--provided a sample essay so they can see what a good, solid B looks like. I'm sure I've got one somewhere....

I'm also a bit concerned about one of the students who has not yet submitted her (I think her) essay. She's a pretty good student, so the fact that her essay hasn't been submitted yet is a real concern. I sent her an email--but then I decided to send a group email to the students who are not as good but who still have been hanging on up to this point but haven't submitted essays. It's my compulsion to keep them from drowning--if nothing else by pointing out where the lifeboats are. I doubt I'll get more submissions--and if I do, I might be kicking myself for making more work for myself--but I really do have a vested interest in teaching them, even when they don't do their part.

Well, whatever. If they don't submit by midnight tomorrow, they're out of luck on this one--and even if they do, I'll still devote Thursday to the Met project. My policy says I don't give comments on anything that's submitted more than 24 hours late, but if they at least make the attempt, I'll give them something; I'll just try not to devote quite as much time and attention to them as I have given to their peers who submitted on time.

About students--the perils of electronic files

Yeah, see: it's about me and the keyboard.

When I marked essays by hand--writing comments and noting problems with the mechanics in pen on the page--there were limitations in how much I could say and how quickly I could say it. I still spent way the hell too long grading essays, but I was kept at least a little in check.

But with a keyboard under my fingers, all bets are off. I am a very wordy person anyway; I talk a blue streak, and I'm even worse when I'm writing using a keyboard. (If you haven't, you should see what a "brief" email from me looks like.) I except the "keyboard" on my phone, which doesn't really count, as I can't use all ten digits the way I can on a computer keyboard, but when I can type the way I was taught in junior high (and perfected as an undergrad and even more when I worked as a secretary), it's off to the races.

Which, of course, means that a. I provide comments that are way, way, way too long for the students to absorb and 2. I spend way, way, way too long providing them. And I don't quite know what to do about that, as all my usual solutions don't seem to work: setting a timer (I ignore it for the first two and then just stop setting it), drawing a line (because I keep reading after the line, and I find more that I really just have to point out), whatever.

So of the approximately 13 students who are likely to submit an essay at some point, eight have actually done so (they were due yesterday)--and it still could take me most of the week to get them evaluated and back to the students. Which is not optimal to say the least; I know they won't do their revisions until the nth hour in any event, but I don't want that to be my fault.

It's a dreadful thing to say, but we all know it's true: I'm relieved that at least one of the essays is so ungodly bad that I won't have to do much at all. The student has falling into the trap of "plagiarizing" because he didn't use quotation marks, even though he's tried to give credit to the sources; his essay has absolutely zero attempt at correct formatting; his ideas are all over the map. There's another student who used quotation marks correctly, but Turnitin helpfully points out that more than 30% of his essay is quoted, which is problematic for other reasons, mainly that whole "you actually need to have an argument" thing.

And I grant you that the one essay I graded probably is a sort of worst-case scenario: there's enough going on that it's worthy trying to get the student to do better, but it's bad enough that there's a whole lot for her to do.

In any event, I'm going to take a break--after having graded only one essay!--to catch up on other stuff I need to grade from last week, which also will help me take attendance for last week.

But oh, I didn't mention the student who sent me an email at 5:30 last night asking where he could find the article he needs to read so he can write his essay. Uh, that would be the one you need to find doing your own research?? He even took the quiz about doing research, so I don't understand where the disconnect occurs in his mind--and of course he hasn't answered my email, because my response wasn't instantaneous (I only got his message and replied today, early afternoon NY time).

On the other hand, I did talk with the student who didn't realize she'd already taken and passed 101, and we sorted things out; she'll withdraw after spring break, so she won't have to finish the class and her financial aid won't be affected. That's a positive sign. (And I just remembered that I need to contact another student who said she was going to withdraw but--as far as I can tell anyway--hasn't yet.)

Well, this is how this particular cookie will crumble. We roll along, doing what we can and knowing that many will fall by the wayside before it's all over.

All about students

First, it seems that it's likely I will get these late-start, online classes in future semesters, as long as I remember to submit my availability. Which, despite the problems with the classes, is a good thing. It's a reliable revenue stream, while the semester lasts, and I can sure use that.

But I will have to check a lot of my philosophical frustrations with online teaching in general at the door. I really am a much, much better teacher of 101 when I can do it face to face--largely because of the psycho-social needs of many of the students. That said, the students who last to the end of the semester in an online class are most likely going to be only the best and brightest, which isn't a bad thing. As of right now, there are three who never attended--and I'm not counting the little boopsies who did just enough to be considered "present" but have otherwise done no work (or, in the case of one little boopsie, one quiz and nothing else). I'm pretty sure that those two plus three others are gone for sure. One student who needed a disabilities accommodation only got extended time with tests--which, as I explained to the student and to the counselor in the Center for Students with Disabilities, won't do the student any good in my class as there are no timed exams. I got an email with the student's stated intention to withdraw. One student shouldn't be in my class in the first place, so I'm hoping she withdraws. And another three were AWOL the week before the break and haven't shown up since, though they'd been doing OK up to that point. That leaves me with thirteen students who are hanging in there so far.

Paul and I talked about the process of leaving comments on their discussion board posts, and he said he thought it was a useless endeavor. I wondered, so at the end of my comments for each student on one forum, I said I'd give two points extra credit if the student responded by email and said something about my comments. One always checks--and follows up--so she got the two points automatically. Three others responded. I'm on the fence now. I can either not provide comments to anyone except those four, or I can (after their essays) send out an announcement explaining that I'm not going to waste my time commenting for students who aren't paying attention and see if that jolts anyone into starting to read my comments. (Doubtful, but one never knows.)

And meanwhile, I got an email from a student asking what he was supposed to do for the forthcoming essay. At first I thought, "Well, start by reading the assignment handout." Then I thought, "Oh, shit: did I maybe forget to post the assignment handout?" So I went searching for it and at first I didn't see it; I was all set to send out a huge apology--but then, no: there it was, first thing in a folder a few weeks ago. I posted it there thinking it would help students keep the essay in mind as they did their reading. So, back to first response for that student. "Read the assignment handout. Here's where to find it. After you read it, let me know if you have questions." Then I sent out an announcement: "OK, some of you apparently missed the assignment handout, so here's where to find it."

This experience, of course, identifies one of the problems with online teaching: I am not sure where to put things so students will actually see and pay attention to them. With that in mind, I have posted handouts about the elements of their revisions in two places. My hope is that the people who are the "let me do this now" type will find it in the first location and that the people who are the "I need to clear my head of this other stuff first" type will find it in the second--but that everyone will find it somewhere.

And I've graded everything from the week before the break, so now I can turn my attention elsewhere and wait for a new bolus of work to be ready for me on Sunday (really, Monday morning, as I won't be checking late Sunday night for the last-second submissions of work). I am on tenterhooks about their essays. Please, please, please let them at least have understood the assignment.

Students ... and freelancing

I only had about eight more discussion board threads to read, and I. Just. Couldn't. I've been wading through them for hours, and I got to the point where I simply couldn't see what they were saying any more. They all turned into meaningless noise--which isn't necessarily incorrect even when my brain is sharp and I can fully focus on their content, but in this instance, I could tell the problem was at least partially mine.

But here are today's causes for dismay.

1. Somewhere in the second week of class, a student tried to attend my online office hour--her first attempt at anything in the class--and I'm sure she thought that she was trying to attend the class. (I have since changed the name of that link from "online meetings"--what was I thinking??--to "online office hours: request required.") I emailed her. Nothing. I would have called her, but she has no phone number in her contact information. And since I had to do the first attendance census, I sent up a flare to Cathy, asking whether that counted as having attended the class. It did--though several of us agree that it shouldn't--and I was feeling terrible about that, because, poor infant, she did try, and clearly she just has no idea what to do for an online class. But I was grading quizzes today, and lo and behold, she did a quiz. She has, however, done absolutely nothing else. She did a great job on the quiz, but still: clearly she hasn't read any of the instructional materials--I bet she hasn't looked at the assignment schedule--and if she has been scrolling through the week's tasks to see what she needs to do, apparently she just skipped over the stuff she didn't understand and did the one thing she did understand: [Student, scrolling, thinks to herself]: "Some article thing, something about a discussion board forum, I don't get it so ... oh! a quiz! I know what those are. I'll do that." This despite the fact that the links to actually create a thread for each discussion board forum include detailed information about what students need to do.

I no longer feel sorry for her or bad that she's going to fail the class.

2. So, there I am, reading these posts about articles that discuss various topics under the general heading "college education," and I'm reading responses to an article that discusses remediation, why it exists, why it's a problem, what might be done about it. One student uses her personal experience to say that remedial classes are really helpful, and she explains that, last semester, she was in a section of 001, but she also attended 101... and I realize, she's talking about the Accelerated Learning Program, in which students register simultaneously for 001 and 101, and they are put in a cohort that also includes students who tested straight into 101. They get the remedial class, but they also attend the credit-bearing class and have to do that work, and do it to the standard required of all students. I quickly hustled to her degree evaluation and, yep, she already passed 101. Which, of course, begs the question what she's doing in my class. I thought, "Maybe she wants to retake the class for a higher grade?" Well, if she does, she'd be better off not taking it from me, because her grade last semester was a B, and she sure wouldn't earn anything better than that from me. I sent her an email telling her she needs to A. get herself to Academic Advisement toot sweet and find out what she needs for her degree and what she doesn't. (Half her course load this semester isn't progressing her toward graduation.) While she's there, she also needs to find out whether she can drop my class now without screwing up her tuition/financial aid, or whether she has to wait a while (as dropping my class would drop her below full-time status). And B. As soon as she can without it being a financial problem, she needs to withdraw from my course--and as long as she absolutely remembers to withdraw, she can stop doing any work for me.

My hunch is that she didn't fully realize that she got credit for 101 (though I'm sure Cathy explained that about a zillion times), and that--of course--she didn't go to Advisement before making her schedule but just signed up for what she thought she needed.

I feel a little sorry for her. But not very.

Meanwhile, I've stuck a fork in reading student stuff today, despite the fact that I just got a sizable job from the Met today and should turn my full attention to it tomorrow. It's going to be a bit of a challenge for me, because it's really too much to print (well over 100 pages, though there isn't much text on any single page and a lot of the pages are images, which I don't need to print), and I do not edit well on the screen. I could print everything at Staples--that wouldn't break the bank (and would be a tax-deductible business expense) but I think it makes more sense to just print the pages with text, even from my sloooooow printer, and work from there.

And yes, I need a new printer. That's an expense I keep kicking further down the road.

Further on the "things that frustrate me" front, I am once again clueless about the status of the job for the NYPL. I sent an email this morning asking whether I'm likely to see more materials or should submit my invoice and I have heard nada, zip, zilch. I know the little assistant person I've been dealing with is deep in a tangle of getting the exhibition up, but really, what does it take to answer an email? "Yep, you're done" or "Oh, yeah, you'll see the labels. Don't know when. Soon." Either would be fine; it just would be nice to get a fucking reply.

Writing for myself? Not happening. That will probably be sidelined entirely until the semester is over--and maybe further, if I keep getting freelance gigs, which would be a small disappointment but more a relief, as any revenue stream is helpful in what feels like a financial desert. Reading anything of substance--like the Antonio Damassio book I was so proud to have picked up again? Uh, not likely. I need enough brain to really think for that--in fact, to stay on top of what he's saying, I have to not only annotate but take notes--and I just don't have the brain to spare when I'm juggling the freelancing and thrashing through the weeds of student syntax.

But it's all good. Life is good. I wouldn't trade it for the alternative, that's for sure.

Freelancing ... and students

I am about to throttle the young woman who has been my point of contact with the NYPL in the freelance editing job I've been doing for them. She keeps telling me that X is the date when everything has to go to press, but then she sends me stuff to read, so I have to ask, "Is there time for me to read this and for any changes to be made?" And she says yes ... and then we do the whole round again. She defensively said that they pad schedules for the curators (granted) and hope the curators follow the schedule (of course) and can't predict what might happen when the curators don't (understood), but she doesn't seem to realize I'm not a curator. I need to know the real, true, actual, drop-dead deadlines, so I know what's expected of me. Can we add a comma? Do a whole-scale recasting of an awkward sentence?

And because they've been telling me that everything was due yesterday, I've been working too fast, so I'm still finding mistakes I should have found in the first round, and probably would have, if I hadn't felt like they were telling me the building was on fire.

Well, oh well. They'll either hire me again or they won't.

Meanwhile, materials that were supposed to come in from the Met yesterday still haven't arrived, and I'm looking at that clock tick down to when everything needs to be complete--and I know my friend there gives me real dates, dates I have to take seriously, so that ticking clock actually means something.

And instead of twiddling my thumbs (which I would prefer to do, really--or the mental equivalent thereof), I've been reading through student responses to readings. Generally, although the writing is at times atrocious, after the one reading that they all fell apart over (which I believe I ranted about the other day), they're getting the ideas and generally they have something to say about the ideas, which is rather the points. They're starting to understand the idea of "discussion," though I just realized my analogy may be meaningless to then. I told them to think of it as sitting around a table with cups of coffee (or whatever), talking about the reading--but I bet they've never done that, even as part of a study group. Kids these days.

Anyway, we'll see what lands in my email inbox tomorrow: more from the NYPL? Something from the Met? Neither? And whatever lands, I'll work on it for a while, then shift gears to reading/responding to more student work, then back again. And I am trying very hard not to get too wound up about the essays that are going to arrive--if they arrive at all--on the 29th. I kinda wish I'd forced them to work over the break, but who am I kidding. They wouldn't have. They'd still have put everything off until the last minute. Well, what can I do. I can't make them do anything; I can just see what they do and provide feedback--including grades that will surely shock the shit out of them, but that's part of my job, too.

I think I'm toast for the night. It's about time to shift gears into dinner mode--and I'm going out with mother, sister, and sister's boyfriend, so that will be nice. It's not a bad life, all in all.

About students this time

We're three weeks into the semester, and they're already falling away or falling apart. And I am dreading, truly dreading, what the first versions of their first essays are going to look like. I am confidently sure that the ones who will have the hardest time with every part of the assignment are the ones who also will wait until next Sunday to even start--and then they'll completely freak out and either just quit entirely or turn in something so utterly unbaked it will be painful to contemplate.

Then again, as I've said all along, if I only have a handful of students, I only have that many essays to grade, and that isn't a bad thing.

But there's one student, I'll call him Working Dad, who is going to be more than a bit of a pain. I don't know whether he legitimately is not very quick off the mark or if he's the kind of person who worries himself into problems he doesn't really have, but he seems to find very simple things quite surprisingly difficult. He's getting help, though, which is great--he is going to the Writing Center and he has a faculty mentor--but still. For one thing, I really don't want to hear for the fourteenth time that he is a working father so he has to get a good grade in the class because he's paying for it out of pocket. (I finally had to say to him that he's not the only student who is in that kind of situation. Almost all our students have very difficult lives, and most have to work, in addition to everything else.) But after whining about that--again--he also said he was disappointed in his score on the first quiz, and that he had tried not to use the language of the book; could I give him an example of where he went wrong?

I told him 1. the quiz is a "low stakes" assignment (20 points out of a possible 2,000), so he shouldn't sweat about it too much. 2. Sometimes one has to use a specific term, but it's a good idea to put the term in quotation marks--and then, the most important thing, to explain what it means. 3. Here's an example--and his answer was exactly, word for word, the language of the book. It wasn't even one of those cases where the attempt at paraphrase is too close for comfort: it was exactly, word for word, the language of the book.

Oh, and in reading about research and what to look for to evaluate sources, the book mentioned currency--and explains the importance of having things that are up to date--but apparently he just read the word "currency" and thought it meant "money."

{{Professor quietly slams forehead into computer several times, takes a deep breath, tries to explain to the student the error.}}

But another thing--and this is a shift of gears--but I've seen, and am seeing again, that over the past decade or so, the number of students who struggle with anxiety, as well as depression and other psychological difficulties, is rising exponentially. They're not pulling a pity card, either: more of them are genuinely psychologically troubled than was the case when I started teaching. I've been reading about it, too: for all the parental attempts to keep their children safe from every bump and bruise and to make their paths entirely smooth and easy, students are more fragile, frightened, and lacking in internal resources than ever before, and the world expects more of them in some regards--like, know your career trajectory and that it will earn you a good income when you're 18 years old....

Actually, let me restate that. The students' fragility, fears, and lack of internal resources exist because their parents try to protect them and smooth their way. I listened to what I think is the first TED talk given by Brene Brown (back in 2010, I think it was), and in it she says that parents should look at their children as beings who are "hardwired for struggle." And yet so many of my students encounter my class as the first place they have ever had to struggle in their lives, and they absolutely know they cannot do it.

It breaks my heart.

It doesn't make me want to make my class easier.

But it does make me wish I could do more to help them: be their psychologist and coach and tutor and support system, to help them learn that they can struggle, that they're good at struggle, that they get stronger when they struggle. But that, I'm afraid, is a lesson I really cannot teach them. They have to learn it on their own.

Oh, blech

I've been trying to write a little. For reasons that remain mysterious, I have been riddled with anxieties yesterday and today, and as is often the case for me, anxiety and feeling down/depressed often go together. And I do feel down. I hoped that trying to write would bring me out of it, as being productive in one way or another often does. I also tried a little grading of student assignments until I realized that--since everything for this week is due tomorrow--it's rather pointless to embark on that enterprise until more students have done the work.

I shoveled the driveway.

I'd have cleaned the house, but that's what I did yesterday to try to combat the anxiety/blues.

And I should have known better about trying to write in this state of mind: I'm forcing it, and consequently, I absolutely loathe and despise what I've written, even as I'm writing it.

This is why I don't think I'm a writer, only a person who occasionally writes. When I write well enough that I like the result, it happens because the story, the words, come to me and won't shut up. My dear friend the playwright Jane Shepard said of one of her plays that it woke her up in the night and wouldn't let her sleep. It kept saying, "Write this down. You have to get up and write this down"--and that the process was, she said, like taking dictation. And I've had stories like that. The one that's been published, "Birds in the Head," was like that. All the stories in that story suite were like that, in fact. And parts of the historical novel have been, too--and as soon as I start trying to make a scene happen that I know needs to happen to get the plot across the arc I know it needs to take, the result is, to me, nauseating.

Yes, yes, yes. As I've said: I know the received wisdom, that our task is to just write anyway and know that the shit can be dealt with--revised, reworked, or even thrown out wholesale--but must be gone through in order to get to the stuff that sings. I know I am too hard on myself, and that I'd be a lot more productive it I could turn the volume down on the judgmental voice inside me that sneers in disdain at my own work.

I also know I don't have to write on any specific thing: if this project isn't "speaking" to me, then I can try that one instead--and generally speaking, my essays don't require the same kind of "channeling the muse" feeling that my fiction or poems need. But a while back I wrote a post that I wasn't "feeling" it, and that is the case in spades today.

But it's too early to go to bed, in hope that tomorrow might turn out to be a better day. This whole "being retired" gig is a hell of a challenge for those of us who are not terribly driven to do much of anything but who also don't want to simply allow the devolution into killing time until it kills us.

Ach, I annoy myself. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself, but something other than wallow in my own uselessness, which is apparently what I'm doing here.

I'll just watch it snow....

My plans to do something writerly and productive today have once again gone for naught. So far, I have shoveled the driveway and cleaned off my car, solved an online jigsaw puzzle, played a game on my phone, checked personal and work email about four times, and checked Facebook twice. I did write in my journal a little, mostly recording a dream I had this morning, but I don't think that quite counts.

My brain is simply making murrrr-eeee murrr-eeee noises but nothing is coming out except a vague and formless anxiety (mostly about the fact that so much of the "work" I do is in no way monetized--and the brain-rot activities definitely are not monetized).

The fact that it is snowing again is just situation normal: it's Montana. It's winter. I'm actually lucky it hasn't done a whole hell of a lot more of this. And I don't know why that seems reason enough to do more bugger-all nothing, but, well, it does.

A little of this, a little of that, and a whole lot of nothing

Since the pressure is (briefly) off in terms of monetized work, I've had a hell of a time trying to dedicate myself to anything much today. I did dutifully hold my office hour (why, why did I set that up??); a student was even going to be a test subject for me, but in the event, he couldn't make it. I did a little writing on the maybe-too-personal essay I've been working on, or rather, that I haven't worked on in a while but haven't yet gotten to the point where I feel like I want to make it public. I recorded a little video about research and documentation for my students. It's still early enough I could easily do something else, but ... nah.

As for that student. He's one of those maddening cases of a student who says he really wants to succeed and wants help--but then he doesn't actually get the help, or do what he needs to do in order to succeed. He's an adult, too--student, works, single parent--but he seems to want an awful lot of hand-holding. I'm glad that he has an appointment with one of my colleagues who does mentoring specifically for distance ed students, and I hope she can help him; more, I hope he actually shows up for his appointment with her. He said he was going to go to the Writing Center, too, but somehow I don't think that's going to happen.

One of the things that's going to be interesting for me is that, even when I have the impulse to do a lot of hand-holding and shepherding of students, I kinda can't, since I'm not physically able to meet with them. I'm oddly frustrated by that, but I'm also going to use it as practice in letting the students develop their skills as responsible adults (even the adults) without my doing so much to herd them along.

As for the essay, well, hmmmm. The more I work on it, the more I begin to think it may be one that's just for me: a chance for me to work through my own thinking about something but not anything I necessarily want to share, or at least not share publicly. (A select friend or two may get to see it.) I have several other essays that are in various states of development--mostly of the "not very" variety--but none of them are calling to me much at the moment.

But we'll see what the morrow brings. I am keeping myself from doing any more grading until a lot more students have gotten on the ball with their submissions, but who knows when either of those freelance jobs might boomerang back to me. If there is no work of that variety to be done tomorrow, I hope I can make myself do something that has to do with my own writing, no matter how paltry or scattered that "something" may be.

For now, I'm going to just noodle away until it's time to call a halt to all things having to do with the computer and figure out what to do for dinner.

Oh, that's right: I have a blog

I kinda keep forgetting I even have this blog. I got out of the habit of writing (and out of the habit of teaching), and now--like the vast majority of my readers--I tend to forget that this thing even exists.

I will say, also, that I truly was under quite the deluge there. I think I said that I managed to get the class up and running by last Monday (though that was quite the sprint), and I believe I mentioned that I also had some freelance editing work landing in my lap at the same time. That wasn't much, just enough to make me feel those pearls dropping and clattering around the floor. And on top of that, I volunteered to do what I thought would be a very simple job for my mother--a job that actually ended up being a snorting pain in the ass that devoured two and a half days of my time. I mean, I was really nailed to the computer, could barely allow myself time to get up to take care of necessary bodily functions (ahem). William kept reminding me that I mustn't take time to sneeze. ("Achoo! Dammit, I don't have time for this!!")

But there's now a lull. I'll be getting more on the larger of the freelance gigs soon--we hope by end of this week, but that's quite the "yeeks!" deadline, as the whole boiling has to go to press at the end of next week. I see another frantic weekend in my future. Of course, I could say to the NYPL, "Sorry: a crisis on your part doesn't necessitate panic on my part. I cannot do this in the time allotted; you'll have to figure out something else." But this is my first job for them, and I do want more jobs from them, so I figure it behooves me to just be superlatively fast and efficient and wait until I'm deeply entrenched there before I start dropping the football, as it were.

I also have evaluated the first batch of assignments from my class, and of course many seem to be adhering to the philosophy of "let me see what the minimum is that I can manage to do." I was about to take them all to task for that, but then I thought, no: let me see if they actually read my comments (and the handouts that explain my expectations) and at least try to improve next week. If not, then perhaps I will get fierce with them. Of course, as I told Paul, whether I send a course announcement or an email, any screed of mine will reach the students who don't need it and not the ones who do.

At present, seven of twenty-four are utterly AWOL. One who registered on Saturday asked for an extension, which I granted; she said she'd have the work to me by 4 p.m. today--and even Rocky Mountain Time, it's after 4, with nary a peep from the student. Another student was disenrolled for financial reasons. I said he could certainly re-enroll, as far as I was concerned, and at that time there were seats available--but Cathy said she'd take care of it today, and in the interim, the class filled to the brim again. She has two options: overload my class (a precedent she has driven herself nuts not to set: the department policy has been a firm "no" on overloads and "we" want to keep it that way) or see if someone else will take him into another section, though there he'll be two weeks behind the curve. (I don't think there are any seats in the other "late start" section or sections.) Well, that's her mess to clean up, not mine. If I could have taken care of it without her getting involved, I would have, but she needed to sign off on the reinstatement of the student and ... well, there we are. I'll be curious to see what she decides.

Today I realized I've been slipping into a pattern I do not want to foster, of holing up inside the house and, when not being prodded down the chute of work, doing things that are utterly mindless. I tried to do some reading of substance during my "office hour" (which I'm regretting even setting up, as it nails me to the computer for those hours each week when chances of anyone taking advantage of the time are vanishingly slim). But I realized I was A) perpetually checking to see whether a student was lingering in the hall, figuratively speaking and B) worrying about how it actually works when a student does want to participate. I mean, do I get some kind of little "ding" or "beep" from the computer, or is the student just suddenly, silently there? I'm going to ask for test subjects: anyone who wants to visit me online during an office hour just so I can see how it works. I thought briefly about offering a few extra points for that, but no: they get enough extra credit as is. I'll just offer the Brownie points. (Maybe I should offer a badge...? I used to love getting those when I was a Brownie and a Girl Scout.)

As for my own writing, qu'est que c'est? Maybe one of these years I'll get back to playing around with that whole notion. Actually, maybe the combination of a recent sense that work is done on the computer with a lull in the monetized work will get me sitting here at the keyboard but doing something more productive than playing online jigsaw puzzles. (Really. I love them. A total brain-rot activity, but oh, let's rot that brain.)

And let us all now intone: "we'll see."

In the "it never rains" department...

Kinda bananas.

I got the online class--which I've got ready to "go live" tomorrow (despite some moments of random stupidity on my part and one glitch that--according to tech support--is a "known problem" with Blackboard). I got the materials to edit for the NYPL that I've been waiting for since November. A little project I'm editing for the Met boomeranged back to me, as they do (I have to comb through them several times before they go to press). And the assistant at the NYPL who has been my point person there recommended me to some people she knows; they're designers who are putting together a proposal for a large art book for a west coast museum, and they need to include an editor in their proposal. I'm saying yes to that, too. In the near future, all I need to do for that is produce a bio paragraph (what the hell do I say?), an estimate (at which I suck, but I'll get better at them as time goes on), and "samples" of my work--which will be just a list of some of the big book projects I did for the Met.

And I really, really wish I had an office. Even just a designated room in my house, but somewhere big enough that I have some desk space on which to spread out materials. My "office" (or "study") is in the little guest room, so the guest bed is covered with books and papers and I don't know what all. (I really do need to go through it all, clean up, sort, file, toss.) To look at a piece of paper while I'm working on the computer, I have to open the drawer of the little file cabinet that's doubling as a night stand and balance the paper there (otherwise it's too far away for me to see it clearly).

Well, maybe some day I'll graduate to a place big enough that I can have a sizable desk, not just the little flimsy thing I have my computer and printer on (the footprint of which isn't much bigger than either of those things).

Meanwhile, I'm calling a halt to work on the class earlier than I did last night; it seems to take me about three times as long to wind down from this as it does to wind down when I'm doing anything else--and it always takes me a long time to wind down. I have about five more weeks of content to get online, but the students have all they need to start. I also have changed the order of assignments at least three times since I posted what I thought was a "final" syllabus and assignment schedule; I'm hoping that won't happen again, but at least I haven't made 28 paper copies of the wretched thing; I just change the file and post it again.

My brain needs to make mrrrrr-eeee mrrr-eee noises for a while. More tomorrow.

Unexpected development

Much to my surprise, and very much at the last possible second, I am back in the educational trenches. I got a call a few days ago (feels more like weeks) asking whether I'd be willing to take a "late start" online section of 101. I was feeling a bit despondent about the fact that I had not gotten any materials to edit from the NYPL and had just about made up my mind that that exhibition was going to be scrubbed--or at least that they wouldn't be using my services--so, in the spirit of "I need the money," I took the class.

And then I promptly got the materials from the NYPL with a request that they be turned around by today.

I should also say that, although I've taught fully online before, I've never taught 101 online. Fortunately, I've taught it "web enhanced" for donkey's years, so at least some of the work of pulling the thing together was done, but the vast majority of it needed--and still needs--to be worked out. I've ditched a few assignments--and may ditch one more, unless I can figure out a good way to do it and assuming doing so won't screw up the grade calculation enough to be a problem. (I have extra points built in, so I think I can ditch those points and still come up with more than the 2,000 that I use as the 100% of everything mark.)

In any event, I slammed through the editing for the NYPL--and I am hoping I made no egregious blunders, though I worry a bit, as I had to go back through everything about four times to fix little inconsistencies or to check for things I could have missed (along the lines of "did I remember to use 'U.S.' with the periods everywhere that appeared?"). But whatever: it's done. Eventually it will boomerang back to me with some new material that needs a preliminary edit but mostly with the stuff I already edited fixed up and ready to be checked again.

That won't happen until next week, though, so I'm now up to my antlers in getting the course put together. But I am about to take a break from that work for the rest of the evening to go do some dancing. I'd be very tempted to bail for any number of reasons, not least among them my "hair on fire" panic about having the class ready to roll by Monday, but my ass has been nailed to this computer chair for at least three days now, and if I don't get up and move, I may freeze permanently in this position. There is life maintenance that needs doing, too; I'm hoping to take care of some of that on my way to the dance thingy.

As for my own creative writing, heaven knows when I'll get back to it. I wonder if I will feel more or less energetic about working on it when I have something I must do because of external pressures. If that makes any sense. My brain is about the consistency of pancake batter right now, and nowhere near as much fun. But off I go, merrily, merrily, or some such.

Distracted by "research" again

My writerly duties today consisted primarily of selecting somewhere to submit a story or two. Ended up being one--and not one of the ones that recently got rejected, though I'll submit those as well, just elsewhere.

It's a strange thing to throw those darts: there is no way to anticipate where one of my stories might find a happy home, or which one to send to what journal or magazine.

But I also got distracted by some research, as I was also doing some revising. I came across a file with a title I didn't recognize, so I thought I'd look at it. It seems I once had an idea of turning the "story suite" I've been noodling with into a novel, though I'm now very sure there isn't a novel in there: the interconnected stories are the right size and shape for what I have to say in that setting. But I realized that my mental image of the common setting has varied some over the years, and I wanted to try to get some of the details more clear to myself so the setting coheres better among the stories--and indeed, in the one I was looking at, so the setting coheres within the story. For instance, I had imagined a town with only about three businesses along the main street--but with a relatively large high school and a public library. That doesn't hold together. Any town large enough to have a high school of its own and a library is decidedly going to have a few more businesses in it. (I should know: I live in a town that size.)

So I was digging around, trying to find towns I could use as approximate models for the one I'm imagining, but that led me into thinking about growing zones (could there be a melon farmer, as in the story I was revising?) and who the local big-wigs would be (mentioned in one or two stories, and one story is that of the daughter of that family, assuming there's only one). (And I just got distracted for a minute there by what the family's source of income would be, which will require more thought and possibly more research.)

I also opened up some of my other stories because I wanted to record word counts (it matters for some submissions), which got me revising a different story--actually, the first that I wrote in this suite--and that led me to trying to find out what plants would be growing beside a creek in that setting, which also led to an attempt to find a good synonym for "weed"--and I don't mean the kind a person smokes, so I was rather out of luck on that one.

And I was going to work on another story, or at least record the word count, and I suddenly realized that I have to do some snow removal before I head off for tonight's get-together with my mother and sister, but I wanted to post to the blog first so ... here I am.

And here I go. That driveway isn't going to shovel itself.

Yeah, not feeling it.

This is why I do not and cannot think of my self as that wondrous being called "a writer." There are days--such as today--when I really, truly just can't write anything of substance. I can blather, as I do here in these blog posts; I can do the verbal equivalent of noodling. But I can't dig into either coming up with something new (another story, another chapter in the novel) or working with something that already exists (revising, oh, anything). My brain just won't let me go there.

I did spend a little time doing some revising of the personal essay I'm working on, and I may be a tiny bit closer to having something reasonably well put together there, but I'm now wondering whether I want to publish the thing at all. Again, how personal is too personal?

For the record, when I submitted my two short-stories to The Masters Review, I thought I had submitted one to the fall contest and one to the "New Voices" segment. Apparently I submitted both to the fall contest--I think I may have said something about the very nice rejection email I got--and I did, as I thought, submit one also to "New Voices": I got a much less lovely rejection for that one the other day.

But thinking, "OK, I'll hunt around for somewhere else to send it for rejection" also got me thinking about the title--and the epigraph. The story is about a young man of Native heritage and his unrequited love for a woman he works with. His being Native has little bearing on the story, however; it's simply an interesting little character detail. Nevertheless, the story is titled after the Hank Williams song "Kaw-Liga," and the epigraph is the first verse of the song, and goes like this:

Kaw-liga was a wooden Indian standing by the door.

He fell in love with an Indian maiden over in the antique store. 

Kaw-liga just stood there and never let it show, 

So she could never answer "yes" or "no."

And yeah, that's a pretty serious racial stereotype: cigar-store Indians are considered pretty offensive these days, for I think understandable reasons.

So the question of the day, kiddies, is this: should I retitle the story, do away with the epigraph, and remove the mention of the song in the story? Is my story tainted as racist by association? I don't think it's any better if I just omit the first two lines of the verse: anyone who knows the Hank Williams song will know the racist reference (and anyone who doesn't can very easily look it up, as I have to say where the epigraph came from).

As I'm blathering about this, I'm beginning to think I'll change the title and remove the song references. The story certainly doesn't need them, and I do think the "offensive by proxy" charge would have enough merit to stick.

So, yeah: I can "feel" that much.

How personal is too personal?

Since one of the things I'm writing these days is that thing called the "personal" essay, I'm finding that there is a place where I suddenly wonder about what is right and good to share and what is maybe too much. I'm not so concerned about myself. I've sometimes wondered if I have "boundary issues," as I am generally pretty forthcoming about my life, sharing things sometimes that others might consider too personal, too close to the heart, to share. Not with everyone--I do have very specific boundaries with specific individuals--but I often find myself writing something for Facebook and then thinking, "No one wants to know this. It's really more than I 'should' share."

But there's also the received wisdom that the most personal is also the most universal. But that's a dicey proposition as well--as testified by a lot of the "poetry" written by my students (when I had students). Sometimes the most personal is squirmingly uncomfortable for the reader--or feels ungodly trite. But my specific, personal, individual story of great grief, for instance, or a moment of feeling blessed: that can indeed approach the universal.

It's a strange thing about writing personally. We essentially do it for two reasons. One is to work our way through whatever we are feeling or thinking, while it is happening, making sense by turning whatever is going on into a narrative, which helps us manage it with a modicum more grace. We don't generally share that stuff hot off the griddle, as it were. Before it sees an audience, it is carefully combed through and recrafted to more precisely capture the experience--and, I think, to more directly universalize the experience, to help readers to feel vicariously whatever it is we went through. But then there is the writing that is done in retrospect, after all the personal processing is complete. The end result is very much the same: a more clear, calm, and deliberately structured attempt to convey an experience.

As I write this, I realize that part of what I've been wavering about is that the thing I want to turn into an essay is still a little too fresh and raw for me personally. If I can't get the requisite objective distance in my own head and heart, I can hardly produce something that feels appropriate to share with an audience. I'm suddenly thinking about some inspirational talks I've heard, in which the speaker is relating something deeply personal and often extremely painful--being raped repeatedly by a trusted figure in the past--but is able to do so completely calmly. It isn't that the feeling isn't there; if the speaker didn't have all the feeling behind the words, audiences would not be as captivated, I think. But the feeling vibrates behind the presentation, which is ... well, not matter-of-fact but clear and objective.

I hasten to say that what I'm writing about is nowhere near that personal nor that painful. I'm trying to verbalize something I value and to explain why I value it. That requires a fair amount of self-examination, of course--which is why I love writing personal essays. They give me an opportunity to find clarity in myself, as I try to put the clarity into the words I write.

Again, the process is not entirely dissimilar from academic writing, in that I must continually ask the questions that might arise to counter whatever it is I'm saying. I actually do imagine being asked, "Do you mean X? Is Y really the case, always? What about Q and T?" And my work to answer those questions, not to dodge them, helps me clarify what I think, how I feel.

Shifting gears: the freelance job I was expecting to arrive yesterday is, once again, late--god knows when I'll actually get it, and I'm starting to wonder if I'll actually get it. Instead, I have a second round to do on a smaller job that I got last week. So my personal writing may be, again, put on hold for a while, which means blog posts may be put on hold as well. But when I'm back writing, I'll be back blogging.

Gotta love research

I've been working on a little essay that I may eventually toss up on Medium, and for it, I found myself doing a tiny bit of research. And man, I love chasing down all the possible rabbit trails research--even of the superficial "search Google" kind--can reveal. I used to tell my students that I am not good at coming up with search terms, which is true; my brain does not get "search engine optimized" approaches to topics, so it takes me a fair amount of floundering around to find what I'm looking for. And if I head to Google Scholar (which I enjoy doing), I almost invariably find something I want to read that I can't access directly (not without paying a larger sum of money than idle curiosity would justify), so I try the NCC databases--and generally I strike out. If I'm serious enough, I'll use ILIAD (ILLIAD? I can't remember), the inter-library loan service of the NCC library. The librarians who staff that service are amazing. They can find just about anything. Librarians clearly have a particular kind of brain--one I just as clearly do not have.

Perhaps tangentially, I will report that my retirement brain has gotten hungry enough for metaphoric red meat that I have actually embarked on reading non-fiction for fun. At some point in the past, I started reading Antonio Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. Clearly I got about half way through, then put the book down, intending to pick it up again--and didn't pick it up again until a few days ago. I will be interested to see whether I finish it this time. It is certainly fascinating. It has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the research I was doing for the little essay I was writing--nothing whatever to do with any of my writing, really--but I'm enjoying the knowledge for knowledge's sake, and I do notice that any time I read about the workings of the human mind, I see applications to my own life that are, to me, fascinating.

Shifting gears, but I realize I didn't persist in a program of writing every day long enough for it to become habituated routine. Still, I haven't given up on the prospect of that happening. I do love to write, and I have enough things going, and enough places I could go, that I don't have to feel nailed into writing just this one thing. It's writing itself that I love, not so much any specific thing that I'm writing.

But I have nothing else of great interest to report just at the moment. Tomorrow I will get one small editing job, which is returning to me after the authors have had a chance to look at my initial edits. I was supposed to get another editing job today--a slightly larger one--but so far, no sign of it. However, if it does show up, or when it does show up, I will have to put my head down and grind on it to turn it around jiffy-quick: we're running out of time before the hard deadline of "materials to press." We'll see how it sorts itself out.

I mention that because, if I'm immersed in editing, I won't be writing--or blogging--for a while. Again. But we'll see what transpires.

Spelunking in the psyche

Well, I was doing that personal writing, and then there were holidays in there, and life maintenance, and what with one thing and another, I kinda forgot about posting to the blog--and wasn't quite sure what to say in any event. This is, after all, a public forum, and personal writing is, well, personal, so there's only so much I can say about it.

But I will say a few things about it, not in terms of what I'm actually writing about, but about this process, and how it connects to other writing more generally.

For one thing, although eventually there will, in fact, be an "audience" for what I'm writing, that audience will be one person. And I realize that most of what I'm doing actually isn't intended for that individual at all; it's for me. I need to do a lot of "writing out," which can be a form of acting out: I have to "perform" the various personas that get involved: the warrior, the victim, the philosopher, the psychologist, the supplicant, the judge, whatever parts of my psyche get involved in the issues I'm working out. But "writing out" also is a process of clarifying thinking. That was a continual struggle (and continual area of failure) when I was a teacher: trying to get students to understand that writing is actually a form of thinking. Putting something into words--even spoken words--does help us clarify what we think, but putting what we think (or feel) into writing has advantages that speaking does not: one can go back to rework, clarify, change wording, change order in which things are presented, all in hope that what is going on inside the writer's psyche can be comprehended, or perhaps more accurately apprehended, by the reader.

However, we can never know how a reader will see what we've written. Le Guin was very willing to allow readers to see things in her works very differently from what she had in mind when she wrote them. Example: One of her characters is from (future) earth, from a future nation called Borland. Since the character is black, I always assumed that was from "Boerland," i.e. some part of what had at some point been South Africa. She had something similar in mind (as long as the character didn't talk with the Dutch-inflected South African accent but rather with the British-inflected version)--but she said that some readers had assumed "Borland" was a stand-in for "Portland"--as in Oregon, because that was her home town, and she was OK with that idea, too. (She also was generally OK with readers pronouncing things however they chose, though there were a few instances in which she got rather fierce about the correct pronunciation of names.)

I suppose a writer whose work is out there in the public, especially if one is fortunate enough for the work to start to receive critical attention of any kind, must get used to "misreads" of her (or his) precious and treasured words. I don't have that concern in terms of any of my public writing: no one is paying that much attention to it (and likely never will, which is fine by me). But when a piece of writing is intended as specific communication to another individual--or even a very specific group of individuals--then the challenge to prevent potential misreads becomes more highly charged.

So in order to clearly convey what I feel/think/mean, I must work to put it in language that is absolutely clear--or as clear as my skill can make it. But that in turn requires that I understand what I feel/think/mean well enough that I know what words best convey it. Personal writing of any kind, then, becomes an exercise in knowing the self. I can be a lot sloppier about clarity in my journal writing, as that's intended only for me (and yes, I have a plan about my journals when my life is close to complete: I will read each one, taking them in chronological order, and then, after reading it, ceremoniously burn it.) As my students often said, "I know what I mean"--and in a journal, that's enough. (I will say, though, sometimes I go back to an old journal and read an entry and have zero clue what--or more often who--I was talking about. Memory like swish cheeze.)

The connection I see between that personal spelunking--exploring the inner reaches of the self and bringing back whatever crystals or dull stones one finds there--and writing creatively is that the successful writer must have at least an intuitive sense of the inner life of the characters. That's why one of the exercises I gave my fiction writing students was to answer a huge list of questions about the character. None of the answers would end up in the story, but it helped the writer fully visualize and get a sense of the character, each arbitrary decision informs the writer's understanding of the character's inner self. ("What kind of shoes does the character wear?" "Hand-tooled cowboy boots"--ah! we know something about this person already.)

So although the writing on which I am currently embarked--and have been and will be for some time--is purely personal, it still informs my creative work: what I get to know about myself helps me understand all humans more clearly, including the ones I invent, and the effort to communicate clearly is good practice generally.

And as a sort of post script to this examination of this writer's process, I should note that the two stories I submitted to The Masters Review were very kindly rejected. They said, "However, your submission stood out among others and received praise from our staff. Unfortunately, we always have to decline some excellent pieces, but we are grateful for the chance to read such high-quality work." That may be boiler-plate, but if it is, it's very nice boiler-plate. So, now I get to go back to the list of literary journals I have somewhere and throw a dart to see where I might try next.

Thus begins the new year. May we all find the words we need for every situation in the year to come.