Life gets in the way

I felt good this morning, like I was getting a good start on the day and could finally take time to do a bunch of life-maintenance errands that I've been postponing all week. I got them all done, but by the time I was home and had lunch, I was exhausted and it was much later than I had dreamed it would be. If I hadn't taken care of it, none of it would have gotten done (what I wouldn't give for an old-fashioned kind of wife!), but the time all that took meant I didn't get anywhere near as much student work done as I hoped.

OK, and I confess, after I had lunch, I was so exhausted I had to lie down--which turned into a monster nap. (I am a championship napper, in the endurance events.) And I don't want to keep working tonight because I want to try to keep my weekend schedule closer to the weekday one: I think it's hard on my body to go from getting up at 5 to getting up at 8 (or later), with the corresponding shift in bedtimes. And since it's cold/flu season, I need to be careful not to get run down; I already feel a potential cold lurking (which I'm working to stave off in every way I can).

Anyway, I checked my work e-mail to see if I had any panic messages from students about their revisions. I didn't, but I did get a message from a colleague who is on a committee I retired from a few years ago; he's taken over chairship of the subcommittee that tries to address any/all kinds of environmental issues on campus, from the physical (like getting bottle/can recycling bins around campus) to the intellectual (an annual "Greening of the Campus" colloquium, which grew out of my pressure: the committee wanted to host an event, and I pushed for the focus on environmental issues--and for it to be an annual event). Anyway, he said everyone on that subcommittee is new, so he asked me for ideas. Here's part of what I said.

... Last year I did a report to find out which departments included environmental issues in their curricula (the report was sent from CWCC to the academic senate). In the process, several colleagues in the science departments mentioned the fact that students are still being misinformed about causes of issues (many students still think hairspray is a problem, for instance; someone has to be teaching them that--and many students think the hole in the ozone layer is letting in too much sun which is the cause of global warming). We thought it might be interesting and helpful to do a colloquium about incorporating environmental issues into curricula across the disciplines--and making sure that the information passed along is correct and current.

Just informationally, Sierra magazine annually does a round-up of the 10 "greenest" campuses in the U.S. (and a little bit of a hall of shame). Might be interesting to look at that to get ideas for things NCC could do.

One final note, across the board, the biggest problem I encounter is the enormous mass of students who do not think that they have any reason to care. They dismiss people who are concerned about the environment as "hippies" and view the entire issue with disdain. How do we counter that attitude???

And that is a concern that chews away at me all the time. I believe colleges and universities should be in the forefront of raising awareness about how our choices affect our planet and of producing citizens of all political persuasions who understand that a radical paradigm shift is required in our society if we are to leave any kind of livable world for our grandchildren. And still, the vast majority of my students have the "I don't care, I want my SUV" attitude. Or, perhaps even more discouraging, "It doesn't matter what I do. No one else is going to change, so anything I do is useless." Even when I point out the self-fulfilling prophecy aspects of that attitude, I can't seem to get past it.

I start thinking about this and I feel frustrated and discouraged. There is no magic bullet for any of these problems. I just have to keep renewing my faith that the students who are affected by what I try to teach will contribute to what Rick Bass calls the "glacier effect." Glaciers are, after all, made up of individual snowflakes, and they move very slowly, but they do literally move mountains....

Chipping away

First, thanks to those of you who identified the song and singer I talked about yesterday: "Breathe (2 a.m.)," by Anna Nalick. See if you can find it online: great song.

Now, about today: I overslept (but it was nice to start making up for the week-long deficit), so got in later than I intended, then spent too long noodling around getting my feet clear. Consequently, as I was plowing through sabbatical applications, adding my dime's worth, I got a call from the main office: they were going home, and the application folders needed to be locked up. Damn and damn and damn. I'll have to try to blast through the rest on Monday, since we're supposed to be ready to talk about them in P&B on Tuesday. I'm interested in how different the tone is among the various applicants, from the elegantly scholarly to the jovially informal. One of them was barely more than a page or two, and I was all set to scoff--but caught myself, as the first draft of my promotion folder may not be much more. It was helpful (though a bit daunting) to go through the promotion folder for the one of my mentees who submitted hers to me early. (Reminds me: I need to bug my other mentee, reminding him of the draft deadline.) Her application is truly impressive--and she didn't even explain all she's done as fully as she should. I'd be utterly disheartened, but she's going up for full, and I'm only going up for associate, so....

Anyway, because I had to stop work on the sabbatical folders, I had to turn my attention to writing up the observations: done and done. I observe one more colleague on Monday. If I can get his written up by Wednesday, I will; otherwise he'll have to wait until after the 26th.

Once that was finished, I suddenly realized I hadn't set up an alternative date for my own observation (a member of P&B has to observe me, in addition to the observation by the chair). (That suddenly sounds funny, as if I am referring to an inanimate object rather than the nongendered title for someone who heads a department. I've heard that in the past, before Bruce was elected our fearless leader, people might have felt they were being observed by an inanimate object.) Also, I got the written form of Bruce's observation of 229, and I thought, "Wow, did we really do that??" I don't think the class was operating quite on the rarified level Bruce's reportage suggests, but one student's question ignited the linguist in him, so he let that rip in the write-up. OK by me: it makes me sound fearsomely smart. I just hope to hell no one asks me about the various constructions of "ka" in Pawnee....

In any event, realizing I needed to set up that alternative date to be observed, I realized that before I could do that, I needed to work on adjusting the syllabi to compensate for the classes I'll probably cancel next week. (The student who is following this blog is probably monitoring that decision very closely: Yes, Laura, it's a pretty good bet you won't have your English class on Thursday--but don't count on it just yet. There's still a minuscule chance I'll be working so efficiently I won't have to cancel anything.) I hashed out an adjustment that I think will work (actually is better than I thought it would be, doesn't create as much of a crunch as I was afraid we'd run into--that is, if I didn't screw something up; I have to reread what I did when I'm more alert). I e-mailed Allen to suggest two possible dates. I wish he was coming to observe RB, but the KC section will be fine. Whichever date he selects, we'll be going over a relatively complex reading, so it will be interesting to see how that goes.

But then, getting back to reworking the syllabus, I realized I have assigned a review sheet that I don't seem to have created (I'd swear I did in some previous semester, but I didn't have the patience to go hunting for it, so I just made up a new one). And since the next paper assignment requires that students do a little research--specifically on databases, dammit, so they understand there are sources of information other than Google and Wikipedia--I had to test-drive the search terms to be sure the kids can turn up something they can understand. Paul was going on about that last semester, not only about research but also the material they often choose to plagiarize: as he said, they either find the Proceedings of the Annual Conference for the Croation Lapidopterist Society or Billy Bucktooth's "I Love Butterflies" web page. They can't comprehend the one and the other is some idiot's random bilge. I actually have had students use articles from Ranger Rick as support for their essays. For those of you who are not familiar with Ranger Rick, I had outgrown it by the time I was in 4th grade. Even if I was a bit precocious, it still is hardly appropriate for college-level research.

And keeping them out of Wikipedia is really hard. We all try the "it's a place to start, but you need to track down the sources that are used by the people who post" approach, but most students just can't stand to take more than one step when it comes to research. The first thing they light upon is what they use, whether they understand it, whether it's useful--and if they can't immediately get to the full text of it, they say they can't find anything at all. (Sweetie, did you scroll down?)

Anyway, so here I am, at the office at 8 p.m. again. I don't know yet whether I'll come in tomorrow; I do tend to focus better here, but I'm starting to get some horrible kind of cabin fever. I've just been going from office to home to office to home (with only the inside of my car as a change of scenery) for so long I'm not sure I remember the concept of "outdoors." The fact that it is suddenly winter doesn't negate the fact that I miss actual air. (However, that plunge in temperature, in addition to clouds, rain, and wind, did make it easier to feel OK about canceling my ride again.)

I've got an entire thermos of tea that I didn't drink (kept forgetting about it), half my lunch is uneaten (got distracted), and I've been sitting so long my knees hurt. I can't remember the last time I got on my exercise bike, but ye gods do I know I need it. Maybe tomorrow. Depends on energy and how much work I get done. Story of the semester.

Just Breathe

There's a song refrain, a woman's voice singing "and breathe, just breathe." I tried to find out who it is, the name of the song, whatever, and couldn't, but that's what I keep telling myself. Breathe. Just breathe.

I got all the papers done, conferences accomplished--and as the day went on, was able to grab a few pages of Dickens in between students. Heavenly. Breathe.

Interesting, though: of course students were struggling with the thesis (always hard--even for accomplished writers), and many of them had taken an approach that was leading them into blather (I call it "unsupported commentary": when they go on about people in general, with nothing to ground their arguments) or into territory that the readings barely touch, as if it were the main point. So I kept reframing the assignment as three questions (plus the "how can I prove it" question that is always part of any academic writing). Finally, sometime either late yesterday or today, it dawned on me that perhaps my need to reframe in every conference means I need to rewrite the prompts for the assignment itself. Duh.

The thing is, I work so hard to keep them away from the "My sacred space is Disney World" or "No one needs nature because the city gives us everything we need" arguments (which they may believe but which are certainly not expressed in the essays they are meant to analyze), that I've neglected to clearly tell them where they should go instead. Part of the prompt is something about identifying what natural/wild places give us that cities can't--consequently many of them go on and on about what's wrong with cities (which they know from experience) instead of identifying what we get when we are immersed in the nonhuman world (which is the point of the readings).

Oh, and before I forget: blooper of the week: "Nature has been on Earth longer than humans have." (Yes: nature arrived on an alien vessel to spread over, well, whatever the planet is without "nature...." I grant you, "nature" is a pretty fuzzy term--a problem we wrestle with in Nature in Literature--but I think this is the first time I've seen a student separate nature and the planet.)

Getting back to the wording of the assignment, after my experience earlier with student confusion over the study questions in 229, I realize that the process of clarifying and simplifying my instructions will have to continue ad infinitum, as my natural tendency is to complicate and over-explain (it's hereditary: Mom is an information junkie; I got it from her). But everything about the readings, how to write, the whole content of the course, is so new for them--and so radically different from anything they've encountered before--that I have to break things down and use short, simple sentence, and not a lot of them.

You understand why this is difficult for me.

This is also why I will NEVER voluntarily teach remedial English of any variety.

But the other problem is that students always, always, find new and unique ways to interpret what I say as meaning something I would never have dreamed it could. I keep trying to find a balance between keeping them at least in the ballpark and overwhelming them into immobility.

Side note: got our schedules for spring. Despite all the juggling that the chair and assistant chair had to do to fix the problems we on the scheduling committee created, I think I got essentially what I originally gave myself: three 102 sections (comp 2, which essentially functions as an introduction to literary genres and how to write about them) and, hallelujah, the aforementioned Nature in Lit. There are other faculty who want to teach it, but I'm senior to most of them (hah! take that!) or--since P&B has decided to get strict about making sure people actually are qualified to teach the classes they're assigned--I can make a case that I have the better credentials. (It is my field, after all. Some others in the department are making forays into ecocrit, but I still think I'm the one specialist.) Now I just have to hope it runs--and that it gets the necessary critical mass of bright and interested students to make it work. Last semester's section was a dream--one of those miraculous confluences of personalities that produces brilliant class chemistry--and I know I can't expect that again, but something close would be nice. One prays to whatever gods (or dogs) there may be.

Tomorrow, into the office to attend to P&B business (writing up observations, reviewing sabbatical applications, finally attending to my mentee's promo file). But tonight? Breathe. Just breathe.

M&Ms required

As the week goes on and I'm grinding through all this work, I find I am searching for all sorts of things that I hope will give my brains a boost. Tonight, it was peanut M&Ms (I see little use in any form of chocolate without nuts). The only real help was psychological: I could tell myself I was having a treat while I worked (read a paragraph, eat an M&M, read a paragraph, ditto, repeat until paper is graded). I have four more to do for tomorrow (papers, not M&Ms), and I'll do them in the morning. I'll still have to get up in the dark hours to do that; yesterday and today I at least had breaks between conferences (and I barely held 229 at all today; we went over one poem, I lectured a little, I let them go after about half an hour. They didn't mind). Tomorrow, once the conferences start at 10, I see students back to back, no break, until 5:30. (I didn't even think to put an X through a few appointment times so I could eat lunch....)

But oh, how wonderful it feels tonight to know that I only have four more to do. I didn't even contemplate trying to squeeze any in tonight. Despite the fact that I've decidedly hit the wall (a problem even M&Ms can't cure), the four I have left are all in that problematic range between "good, good, nice, little thing to fix, good," and "Too many problems; I'll mark nothing and just write an overall comment." The really good ones and the really bad ones are easy to grade: the ones in the middle are a hairball. Consequently, I need to come at them as fresh as possible and having let the silt clear out for a while.

And tomorrow, after I finish with students, I will go home and keel over--I hope. I need a night when I just don't think about any of what I still have to do and go into sea-cucumber mode. It's always possible I'll be manic (happened last night), but even if I am, I hope I'll be able to employ my decompression tactics and won't have to resort to hitting myself in the head with a frying pan. Cast iron.

Just as a side note, I find that if I can get myself to bed early enough to get a certain number of hours of uninterrupted sleep, I'm actually rather enjoying being up before dawn. There is something very peaceful and cozy about it, knowing all around me people are still in their slumbers, but I am one of those with a light on, quietly beginning my day before the sun begins to make its presence felt. Native people say we should always be up in time to greet the sunrise--and I'd love to make a habit of it, except I really like being up at night too....

I keep telling myself not to think too far ahead, just to focus on what's immediately in front of me. (Twelve Step programs say "Trust in God and do the dishes.") I know what I intend to do on Friday, and I have the weekend priorities in mind, but if I think about it too much, the anxiety builds. One moment at a time is enough. Also, I've started having a problem I used to have with frightening regularity years ago: I'll be walking (or even scarier, driving) somewhere and suddenly will realize I have no clue where I am or where I'm going. I could be on Pluto--or in LA--for all I know. It takes a few seconds for the world to make sense again and I recognize what is around me. I know this happens when I get too far ahead of myself--almost literally, it seems, as if my mind has left my body entirely and when it snaps back into place, it's disoriented. At least, after my previous experiences, I know that I'm not having a stroke or a brain tumor: it's just a sign that I need to be here now (in the words of the Ray Lamontagne song).

Anyway, I'm going to take a few minutes to reorganize the chaos on my desk so I know what is in which pile, and then go home and attend to life maintenance. Looking forward to being in slobby clothes and full sloth mode. Not sure my eyeballs work well enough to read, so maybe something from Netflix, crossword puzzle, and lights out.

Good news

So, both my raving students--Monkey Skulls and AYM--were civil, respectful, and listened carefully to what I had to say in conference. I don't think AYM quite gets what I said (hard to wrap one's brain around the need to be able to articulate clearly and objectively a point of view one does not agree with--or that because of one's preconceptions, one may see something in a work that is not there). But he said he thinks he can do what he needs to in his paper. Fair enough. I did encourage him to bring his resistance and his counter-arguments into class discussion: after our meeting I started thinking about the cowardice involved in spewing on the page but being unwilling to say so much as a syllable in discussion with peers, never mind with the class and me. Either he's afraid he'll encounter the "I'm the teacher so I'm right" response (I am right, of course, but it's not because I'm the teacher--and I am happy for students to bring their arguments into class discussion, as long as they do so in a civil and intellectual way). Or, perhaps more frightening, he has a sense that he doesn't have a strong enough argument to support his beliefs and that the students who agree with the readings will outmaneuver him. (Not to mention that he'd also have to face my counter-argument, and I think he knows damned well he won't win in that situation.)

But I'm relieved things with both went well. And when I was talking yesterday about the evil star that put both those fountains of bile in the same class, I neglected to mention that that section also includes two young men who are extremely smart, very open to learning, quite capable of improving their already good writing and thinking--and (bonus) who are open to the ideas in the readings and the enviro-topic of the course. They are both quiet (even in groups, though at least there they will share their ideas--and I hope knock the socks off the rest of the group). Even so, they bring balance to the class. Same class also has a couple of women who are intelligent, articulate, and also philosophically and politically in line with what we're reading (plus one I often have to cut off because she gets so excited she won't stop. A little like me.) So, really, no evil stars involved, rather a few little irritants but generally a great bunch.

Oh, and the student I thought would give me the "you didn't get my e-mail?" thing contacted me prior to her conference: she has cocksakie virus and wanted to know if she should still come to her conference since she cannot speak: her mouth and throat are filled with huge blisters and probably will be for another 2-3 weeks. I worked out a deal with her so a) I didn't have to mark her paper, b) she can still engage in revision with a guidance from our conference and c) she can still get credit for at least part of the assignment. I have a high level of suspicion about the "my grandmother died" excuse (which I did get from two students, both of whom also said they had to leave the country for the funeral and had no access to computers/internet), but this poor young woman is genuinely in agony--and willing to turn up for conference and class anyway. She gets a break.

I'm actually doing OK energy-wise at the moment, so I don't want to do this blog thing for very long: I think I actually have one or two more papers in me tonight. I'm half tempted to take them home, but better to do them now before the energy starts to fade (and before I get interrupted by the life-maintenance stuff).

The triage continues. At this point, the one place where I can force open some space is in stuff for the students. I hate giving them the fuzzy end of the lollipop, but without boasting, I can say that I do give them way more response on their work than most of my colleagues--and by now the backlogged homework is so far out of their awareness that response is meaningless. So once I can get to that (this weekend??), I intend to whip through it as quickly as possible. That will be hard for me (along the lines of "I don't know when to shut up, or how to make things simple"), but it's a good exercise for me and it won't hurt the kids. And I am desperate to carve out some time for all the other stuff that's catching fire all around me.

But the heavens keep giving me tiny unexpected respites: I didn't have the committee meeting I thought I had today (an hour plus of time, whew!). P&B let out early (again, whew!). The last two student appointments tonight didn't show up (quelle surprise, as neither had turned in a paper). So back I go to crank out just a few more....

triage

I am in the position of having to make draconian decisions about what I have to not do, or do marginally, or do differently, or later. I've posted a notice to students that their marked papers will be on my door later than I originally said--and I'm still not sure how I can get them done in time. I HAVE to respond to my mentee's promotion folder by the end of the week. I HAVE to write up the observations (contractual obligation). I HAVE to look at the sabbatical folders that arrived today. (Friday I'll be in the office for sure; no ride for the forseeable future.) The huge steaming piles of old homework are going to get a cursory glance, just enough to give the kids some kind of credit for doing the work. Classes next week Wednesday and Thursday, cancelled so I can work on my promo folder (and it's going to be about quarter-assed as a first draft, not even half-assed). Reconfigured syllabus to come.

The skin of my teeth is peeling back, as are my fingernails, as I'm trying to hang on just long enough to get the worst/most of it done. I've been having panic attacks all day, and now am so tired I can hardly see (woke up, stressed, at 4:20, tried to go back to sleep but was on the hamster wheel of stuff I'm fretting myself sick over, and at 5 figured I might as well just get up). I have five more essays to have graded by 10 tomorrow morning; I really should try to squeeze at least one more out, but I just don't know if I can.

One positive note: I had the conference with Monkey Skulls today, and he was great. If he hates me and the class, he's doing a good job of covering it. I think he may understand that I'm not trying to make him miserable--but that he really does have to do what I am telling him he has to do. The only difficult conference was a student who said "I don't know," or "It doesn't matter to me," or "no" to every question. I finally told him that in college, he actually will have to learn to think, even if it is uncomfortable for him to do. And my job with him is done: I'm putting no more effort into any of his work unless I see something that indicates effort and some inkling that he gives a shit. If he doesn't, I sure don't. No time for that.

I can't even re-read this to see if it makes sense. I'm going to go home--take a few papers with me, just in case I get a fourteenth wind. If I don't manage anything tonight, I'll just have to hustle through tomorrow. Christ, I'm having another panic attack just thinking about it. My adrenal glands are sure getting a hell of a workout.

Serves me right

I woke up at 6:20 this morning and thought, "I should probably get up, as long as I'm awake, but I'll just close my eyes for another minute." I woke up again at 8:20, and thought, "I'm really awake now, but I'll just lie here for one more minute." At 9:38 I woke up having just had a new version of the teacher's nightmare. The teacher's nightmare is very much like the actor's nightmare: it's all about being lost, bewildered, utterly unprepared--and in the spotlight. But this one was about a snotty student response to my comments on a paper. The strange thing is that the young woman who was the snot in my dream is actually one of the sweetest, most agreeable students I have this semester. (I wonder what deep Freudian significance that has.) But in the dream, she had "revised" her paper so it was even more of exactly what I had told her not to do, and in addition she had written vituperative comments about me as a teacher and as a person (e.g., she assumed I am a homophobe, which is pretty funny in retrospect).... Um, maybe I'm a little stressed about all this; what do you think? But see, if I'd gotten up the first, or even second, time I woke up, I could have saved myself the clinging ick of that dream.

And indeed, as I was grading, I encountered a student paper (albeit not a revision) that was very much like the dream: the student clearly has been waiting for his chance to tell me that he thinks everything about the enviro-themed topic of the course and especially the readings we have done is complete bullshit. In his anger and resistance to the material, he is seeing logical inconsistencies in the essays that are not, in fact, there (he is reading his assumptions into the texts, and his assumptions lead to faulty extrapolations). Again, I wanted to blow up and tell him to get the fuck out of my face and my class--but instead I think I was pretty reasonable in tone as I wrote comments informing him (much as I did for Monkey Skulls) that the emotional approach is not appropriate for college work (not to mention the fact that he cannot put together a grammatically coherent sentence, which is another requirement of college-level writing, strangely enough). (OK, I'll admit to one snarky moment that I just couldn't resist. After slamming the authors for being "insane" he wrote, "but who am I to judge?" I circled the phrase and wrote "Indeed." I know, I know, but I just couldn't let that one go by.) I also asked him to think about why he is so enraged by the ideas in these essays: if he doesn't agree, that's fine, no one is forcing him to, but why is he unable to even consider their arguments and work to understand why they say what they do? Why the intensity of the emotional rejection? I told him that as an adult, he will often encounter ideas he does not agree with, and that his job will be to find rational reasons why he does not agree, rather than relying on purely emotional reactions.

I must here freely confess that there are political views that call up a similar emotional response in me, and I find it extremely difficult to encounter those views without simply going ballistic. So I understand that at his age, he probably has not learned any reason to curb that emotional response. And many politicians (not to mention most of the media) rely on emotional reactions rather than actual reasons to sway our behaviors and opinions--and most of the public don't know one from the other. But the idea of being in college is that one learns to recognize the difference--and to understand why one holds the opinion one does. That's the difference between me and Angry Young Man at this point: I recognize that my rage is not the best persuasive tool, and I can formulate a reasoned argument to counter the view that pisses me off so profoundly. (I can also, of course, do that best in writing, when I can rework an idea until the reasoning is precise--and that's part of why writing well matters, another idea I should probably introduce him to.)

I do wonder what confluence of evil stars it was that put Angry Young Man (henceforth AYM) in the same class with Monkey Skulls.... So far, they haven't toxified each other, but the potential certainly is there. I'm hoping madly that one--or both--will withdraw, and soon. Like the instant they see their graded papers. Or do some kind of astonishing turn-around and start writing from their intellects instead of their, um, bilges (unlikely, but it would accomplish the same end, which is I wouldn't have to tap-dance around their shit). I am curious to see how their conferences go--but I know I will have to do some kind of mantra before, during, and after, so I can keep my professional cool.

But no matter what, I'd lay any odds you like that these guys will go to RateMyProfessor.com and spew some of their bile there. If they haven't already. They are the kind of student who generally is compelled--anonymously, of course--to engage in character assassination of a professor who has displeased them. I used to check my ratings from time to time and found it amusing. (My favorite comment was "Hates people, only loves trees." In fact, some of my best friends are people--and appearances to the contrary, I am a person myself.) But I finally got sick of the cowardice of it. It's easy to snipe at someone when you don't have to reveal yourself. I'd actually pay attention and listen carefully if students were required to give their real names (not an alias) and the grade they received. In any event, guys like these are the reasons my rating usually has a grey frowny-face next to it (worst teacher ratings). Occasionally some of my fans will get on there and I'll move up to the green neutral face (she's not really a monster). I'll never get the yellow happy face--and proud of it. I'm not in this for popularity. Weird as students may find it, I actually care about whether they learn something that matters. Go figure.