A bit of a break now...

After a lot of internal back-and-forth about having to get up early enough to make it to today's colloquium, I ended up going--and am glad I did. I didn't stay for the whole thing, in part because the second of the speakers for the day was not holding my attention (however important his points) but in larger measure because of a whopping sinus headache, which finally said "go home." But the first speaker was very interesting. There were no real surprises in what he said, but it was damned nice to listen to someone say it--and in front of administrators, too: stuff about the fact that the SUNY strategic plan says a lot about "commercializing" and "markets" and nothing about academic freedom or critical thinking.

The state of education as it now stands. The burning question is, what will it take to get those in power but not in the trenches to listen to those in the trenches but not in power?

I intend to take these ideas to my students in the fall. Legislators and administrators tend to discount anything faculty say, because they think we're being self-serving (and they're not always entirely wrong, quite honestly). But if students--and, for the K-12 system, parents--get vocal, people start to listen. (I guess politicians forget that faculty are also both tax-payers and voters.) I did a teeny bit of research the other day from the office, looking into the kinds of articles available on our databases: I need to do some more checking around so I can start to choose articles to use as idea generators and, even more important, so I know what students can find where, which will be crucial for the structure of assignments.

Right at the moment, however, I'm posting primarily to state that this blog is going to enter one of its quiescent periods: the term is officially over for me as of today, so although classes and assignments and committees (and my application for promotion) will all be on my mind throughout the break, I won't be posting much if at all until the new semester is ready to gear up. I do want to emphasize, however, that the thinking and planning--the mental work--goes on all the time. Being a professor is not just what I do for a living, it is an important component of who I am as a person: I am deeply invested in the educational process. The speaker was talking today about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, and although the extrinsic motivation of promotion does fuel some of my choices in terms of how I allocate my time and energy, the real impetus for everything I do in my career is entirely intrinsic. When I left a highly secure position at the Metropolitan Museum to take my first academic post, not only was there a significant decrease in my salary, I had a two-year non-renewable contract. I took the risk in part because, as my father succinctly put it, the choice was between being scared shitless or bored to death--and I chose the former. But I also took the risk because I didn't think working at the Met was of tremendous social value, and apart from being a parent, I can't think of anything more socially significant than being an educator.

So, as I head into a break from being in the classroom--and setting aside the ad hoc committee I'll be serving on, or the work helping Bruce with adjunct scheduling--I'll still be "working"; the work will just become internal rather than external.

Neither commencing nor concluding

The commencement ceremony is tonight. Usually I can consider that a sort of period on the long sentence of the semester (and the pun on "sentence" is apropos)--but since there's a big college-wide symposium tomorrow (or is it a colloquium?) and in a few weeks I'll be back working on scheduling, plus trying to get my head wrapped around what I want to do in the fall when I return to teaching 101, tonight's ceremony doesn't wrap anything up for me. I also know all the lovely things people say in commencement ceremony speeches about commencing meaning to start something (your new life, blah blah blah), but I don't feel like I'm about to embark on a glorious adventure, start something new. I will enjoy creating variations on the theme of my work life, but I'm feeling spectacularly grouchy and crotchety, as if I will have absolutely no time to relax and recharge over this summer. I know that's not true, but the feeling persists nonetheless.

I've been such a good girl: I think I've been to every commencement ceremony since I started at NCC, one of the few faculty members who can be counted on to show up. (There is a certain percentage of faculty from each department that is "required" to attend, but since we don't force anyone to go, we never get even close to reaching our quota.) Today, I would dearly love to bail--but last night, I agreed to take Bruce's place as marshal, so he can get home to his dogs, and now I'm stuck. Well, I have the sabbatical next spring; that may well be my year to skip commencement.

As for students and final grades, I got a plaintive e-mail from the one student who failed: she hadn't gotten her final grade yet (though it was posted); she wrote to find out how she'd done, as she was very anxious about it. I wrote her a very gentle response, saying that she'd missed too much work to pass and that I thought she'd honestly be best served by repeating the course. She was sad but understood. Another student also wrote to inquire about his grade: this reminds me that I need to clearly state that they can check Banner (and when they can check). I liked him very much--he was one of the two dads in the favored 102--so I told him his grade instead of writing a snippy "check Banner" reply (though I did mention that he could have checked). I could give him better news: he needed to make at least a C in order to have some old, bad grades expunged from his record as part of a program for students who've been away from school for a while--and I gave him a C+.

There is some irony to the fact that all my handouts say, "Professors don't give grades; students earn them"--and here I am juggling grades to "give" a grade that the student has not earned, not looking at the grade simply from the math. But I'm in a touchy-feely, subjective discipline, so the grading gets a bit touchy-feely too. I'm hoping I don't hear from anyone else, but I won't know for a while. Students are often lax about checking for those grades, so there is sometimes a long pause before I hear a metaphoric "Hey, wait a minute. Why'd I get...?" Well, we'll see, I reckon.

In the good news department, we finished scheduling very expeditiously today, with a minimum of juggling at the end (sometimes we have to do three-way swaps in order to give people reasonable schedules, and it can get hairy). We took a break and double-checked the work. I'm sure there are still errors--there always are--but we did manage to catch at least one mistake, and we also managed to improve on a few schedules at the end, with the courses that remained unassigned. So, that can be crossed off the list entirely: we'd thought we might have to do the final double-check tomorrow, but both William and Andy (the third member of the committee) are leaving for long overseas vacations on Friday, so they're both thrilled to bits not to have to come to campus tomorrow.

And I'm happy I can focus on doing just one thing tomorrow: I'll go to the colloquium (or is it symposium?) and can bail whenever I've had enough. I will have to get up at 6 (ick), as the main speaker is first thing in the day, but if I need to bail early, I will.

I'm well aware that I'm on the typical end-of-semester running on fumes but wired for sound kind of manic energy: I keep thinking surely there's something else I can get done--but in sober fact, my brains are pretty non-functional at the moment. I'm having a hard enough time deciding what I want to do about food and rest between now and when I have to show up at the Coliseum to get ready for the processional. I've noodled around long enough that it doesn't make much sense to go home; I'd only be there for about an hour before I'd have to turn around and come back. A bunch of colleagues are getting together at an Italian place nearby, going to have a drink and some fun conversation before the ceremony, but I'm feeling decidedly antisocial these days, so I'll pass on that--or at least on most of it. I don't have it in me even to tidy up files, make sense of the chaos on my desk, so I figure I'll go somewhere a little more relaxing than here, strap on a feed bag and read until I have to put on the regalia and look professorial.

Let me take a moment here: this very difficult, clunky, awkward, jangly semester is over. Finished. Complete. All the work from here forward is about what comes next. So, I take it back. I have concluded something, and I am commencing something else. If tonight isn't a period, it's at least a semicolon. I'll take that.

Staggering across the first of a series of finish lines

I just finished submitting all my final grades to Banner: I don't know whether to celebrate or simply fall limply to the floor. It's been quite the day today. I did take a brief break to eat my lunch (at about 3:30 p.m.), but other than that, I've been smashing through work all day.

I got in later than I expected (something slowed me up getting out of the house this morning--perhaps a psychological ailment of some sort), so I didn't get a chance to write up the evaluative statement for the last year-end evaluation I had to complete. I'm still on the verge of murdering that particular colleague: he's on P&B, and he's the one who hung me up on those, so I wasn't finished with them when I left on Thursday evening. But it's done now, goddammit.

We slogged away on scheduling, too--and I realized that when William is on sabbatical and I become the senior member of the team, things will not go quite so expeditiously as they do with him at the helm. He and I both rather fell in love with specific tasks in the process, and we've both gotten very good at those tasks--but his is more complex and requires a kind of thinking that he is now used to doing almost reflexively. Since I haven't done his part of the job in millennia, I hardly remember how, so I'll be facing a rather steep learning (or remembering) curve. We really should rotate positions more frequently, so everyone is equally familiar with each task, even if we each have one we like best.

The new member of scheduling, whose service on the committee doesn't actually start until next semester, joined us today--and she's going to be great. She's careful and intelligent and focused: perfect. The other colleague on the committee has the same traits, so those two will be sailing: I'll be the one bumping along awkwardly.

But now all that has to be set aside for tomorrow's day of interviews. William and I are both pretty cranky about the fact that the first interview is scheduled for 9:30 a.m.--and he has more reason than I, as he's at an orientation for honors students that may go on beyond zebra, then he has to commute home to Manhattan and back in the morning: he has to leave about the time I'll be starting to make breakfast for myself and the cats. I feel for him, I truly do, but I reserve the right still to be whining and pissy on my own behalf.

I suppose I should fess up here, too: I did fiddle with final grades a bit, especially in the M/W 102. Some students were getting marks way below what I felt they should get for the course, despite the fact that they were missing enough work to drop their grades significantly: I know I'd been talking about this last week, fretting about what to do. I'm letting go of my role as gate-keeper a little bit and letting a few through. In the instances when I was giving the biggest gift, I sent the students e-mails letting them know what I was doing. And as I do that, I wonder if there will be fussing and screaming from anyone who got less of an artificial boost--or the ones who got no boost at all, because I genuinely feel the mathematical calculation matches the grade I'd give the student if I were to rely only on my subjective, gut sense.

The only one I feel a little bad about is the young woman who was so triumphant about having made it all the way to the end of the semester and having written her final paper, despite the torture. She didn't pass. I teetered on the brink of giving her a D, on the theory that it doesn't transfer--but she truly is not ready to go on to any other level: she needs to take 102 again. She may well take it from a professor who sets the bar significantly lower than I do, in which case she won't learn a damned thing from retaking the class, but on the off chance that she gets someone who has high standards but can somehow reach her better, I'm hoping she'll actually get a chance to learn what she was just barely starting to grasp in my class. I feel particularly terrible about that one because the young woman told us all that she was diagnosed with a severe social anxiety disorder just at the start of the term, so she had been in a screaming panic from jump street, but she found the class welcoming and friendly enough that she stuck with it. I hate doing anything at the end that might take away from her ability to trust the class, me, us all--but as I said: she isn't ready to move on, and ultimately, I don't think I do her any favors if I pass her along only to have her hit an even more painful wall down the road.

I'm not sure if the office is still open: the last step I need to take is to photocopy my paper rosters and hand them in--but I think I'll let that wait until tomorrow, since I have to be here anyway. I think flight is the better part of valor at this point: I need to get out of here molto pronto. That other day thing? It's coming alarmingly quickly: I have to be back in a little over 13 hours. Ick! And oh well.

Last meetings with students

It was another sweet goodbye today with the students from Nature in Lit. Two who were in my Mystery and Detective class last semester hung out for a while after everyone else had left, just chatting, and two of the young mothers had to leave early for various child-related reasons--and at least one student I'll see next semester in Fiction Writing. The young man who met with me on Tuesday about his final paper gave me a hearty handshake and a huge smile as he said goodbye--and he is the only student this semester who wants the paper back with comments. I'm truly looking forward to reading it and don't in the least mind writing comments: he still wants to learn, and I'm happy to keep teaching.

I got all the papers for the Monday-Wednesday 102 read and the numbers crunched, and I was starting to do the paperwork, but I had to stop: I need a little more time to think about whether I want to give the students the grades they actually earned or the grades that I think accurately reflect their skills and abilities. In three instances, the disparity is caused by missing assignments--and in at least two more cases by the fact that they didn't fulfill some of the requirements on the final paper. I find I'm tremendously reluctant to give anyone an F, even the students who probably are not truly ready to move on to the next step, academically--but I know how maddening it is to have students in electives who can't do the basics that they should have mastered in 101 and 102. I also know that, if the students encounter a "real" professor in their next step, they'll probably fail at that level, so am I doing them any real favors passing them along knowing that I'm setting them up for defeat?

But I hate to smack anyone who has made it all the way to the end and has genuinely learned something, even if not enough.

One student in Nature in Lit asked if I'd fail any of them at this point, and the answer there is no. Most of them won't have to take any more English classes and possibly not any more classes in which they have to write, so I'm more likely to invoke the "Mercy D" rule for electives. A D passes, so it allows students to graduate; it does not transfer, so if a student need a literature credit, he or she would have to take one at the transfer institution--assuming such a thing is required in the student's chosen major.

Looking at what I have left (and considering that I am not going to get any more work done tonight), I don't know if I can finish up on Monday or if I may have to drag it out until Tuesday, working around our full day of interviews. Today's lot went relatively quickly, so all things are possible, but I do have to put in a chunk of time doing scheduling (full-time schedules for spring 2015; I'll start work on adjunct schedules for fall 2014 sometime in June). I would be completely done with the year-end reports, but a fellow member of P&B called me today to give me the long, sad story of how his sciatica was too painful for him to get it done, so he'll e-mail it to me tomorrow. So, despite my best efforts, I still have a tiny bit of that tangling around my ankles. Fortunately, it won't take long to get it cleared out, but it is annoying as hell to have one of our own screw me up here.

Shifting gears, I had an interesting conversation with a colleague after the department meeting today. She's a full professor and asked me when I would be one, too. I told her I will submit my application in the fall but wasn't sanguine about my options--and she immediately counseled me about it, saying that if I should not make it next year, I should buckle down to do conference papers and whatever else I need to do in order to shore up the weak spots in my application, because I will be much better off once I'm over that last hurdle. It's a thought. And honestly, rereading the first pages of my dissertation again, I thought, "I wrote that? Jeez, I used to be smart"--and it made me itch to do something, write something. Of course, if I don't get the promotion next year, I can hope that my sabbatical project is not only complete but has a publisher: that should push me over the top. The little delusional voice in my head is saying, "Maybe I could write a paper over the summer..." but I know myself better than that. I'm going to feel frantic and robbed of down time as is; I know damned well I won't have the discipline to force myself to also produce anything scholarly.

But it's a fun thought.

I have some time to kill before I head off to dance class tonight (west-coast swing), but the wall has been well and truly hit--and now it's noodle time.

Panic panic! Oh, wait, no, it's OK.

For a brief moment there, I thought either one of today's 102 students had not submitted her final paper or--even more panic--that I'd lost it. Crisis averted: it was simply clipped to someone else's paper. Whew.

It was sweet saying goodbye to that class today. Two of the young men in the class clearly didn't want to go, hanging on to reasons to stay and talk with me--and I felt a lot the same way, as they were two of my favorite students. I did mention that I'll be teaching Fiction Writing in the fall; it will be interesting to see if either needs the credit and signs up. It would be a treat to have them in class again. I also read through the end-of-semester self-evaluations, and I found them very touching. Many of them were quite badly written (making me wonder what I actually managed to teach), but every one of them seemed quite sincere in saying that they were deeply grateful for the class, not despite but because of the difficulty. Each one seemed to believe he or she had gained something not merely important academically but life-enriching from the class--and that's even better to hear.

I realize, however, that my emotions start to get in the way at this point in the semester, and I'm tempted to fudge the grades upward in several cases. I've crunched the numbers for a few of them--including the final papers, which I'm reading as I go (read and grade paper, crunch numbers, repeat for next student)--and when I see the end result, the math makes a harsher calculation than my heart wants to accept. I don't have to actually submit grades until Monday (or later, honestly, though I'm determined to be finished on Monday), so I have some time to think about this, weigh head and heart to find an ethical and just balance.

Another nice note: the young man I met with yesterday just sent an e-mail, including an attachment of his final paper, telling me that he found some perfect quotations and feels that they truly pulled the paper together for him. He wants me to read it before class and tell him what I think; I won't do that (partly as policy, partly because of lack of time and mental energy), but I'm delighted he feels good about it.

Today's assessment meeting even felt productive, miracle of miracles. And I had a brief talk with Bruce about concerns regarding the "seminar" hours we are trying to figure out: in tomorrow's department meeting he is going to mention something about how close we came to losing the work-load fight, and he suggested he might mention some of the things we can do to fulfill our obligation, but I warned him that if he talks about any specific examples, he's likely to get a lot of people very unhappy. I think he's going to be more circumspect tomorrow, simply be reassuring--but Kristin and I talked about it a bit today, and we looked at the actual contract language, which seems to limit us a great deal more than she or I find comfortable. We'll see: the work of that committee will be pretty fascinating, I have to say. But the main thing for the moment is to keep tomorrow's meeting from turning into a melee; it's supposed to be a party, though it will start with Bruce talking about how narrowly we missed getting stuck with that 5-5 load.

Shifting back to the feeling of accomplishment, I also knocked off a few more of those year-end evaluations today. I have three more to do--one of which I need to talk to Bruce about--and I think we've decided to let the fourth one go, as the faculty member in question has been dealing with a difficult situation in his personal life, has even only been working half time this semester to manage it, so it doesn't seem fair to force him to do an evaluation when he probably doesn't have anything to evaluate. I will, by God, get those done tomorrow--and done before I do any more grading. I do not want that mess hanging over my head.

In fact, I'd finish them up tonight, but I have run full tilt into the metaphoric wall. William and I still have some time to fritter away until we head off to meet Paul for dinner, but I can say definitively that the time will indeed be frittered: ain't no more work coming out of this woman tonight. I am in need of a drink, food, and sleep. I don't even need the company and conversation, though it will be lovely. And I profoundly look forward to crossing today off the calendar: that much closer to finished.

The turd in the tureen--and a little bit of sweetness and sunshine

I confess that I get systemically annoyed with several of my colleagues who are gadflies--or, in some cases, metaphoric bomb throwers, the kind of people who like to say something explosive and watch the sparks fly--but I've discovered the issue where I might well turn into one of them, or, as I just said, I may become the turd in the tureen. The issue arises from the provision in our new contract that in some way, in lieu of teaching a fifth course, we in the English department need to clearly demonstrate to the administration that we're doing an equivalent course load. We are, we know we are--I'm not going to get into that argument here--but the ideas that have been floated regarding things we might do in order to put in those extra hours are absolutely not going to fly with me, and I will fight tooth and nail--and not stop fighting--to make sure what we do works for us and for our students.

Specifically, among the ideas that have been floated is that we could be conversation partners with the students who are in the pre-college ESL program (as I've been doing this semester), or that we could advise liberal arts students--and I refuse to consider such options, for two reasons. The first is that those are things for which we have always gotten promotion credit: they are service to the college, not our specific students, and if those become something that is required of us, it has just become much harder for English department faculty to get promoted, as things that other people get credit for doing, we won't. The second is that the whole point is we are supposed to have the same number of contact hours as our colleagues: that means contact with our students. Our students, not the general student body.

The tricky part is going to be to find a way to make sure A) we are serving our students in a way that actually helps them (and, incidentally, alleviates our paper-grading load), B) that how we do that is flexible enough that different professors can determine how best to go about it and C) that whatever we do is documented well enough to satisfy the administration.

As I write this, Paul is at his computer, writing up an e-mail to Kristin about how he does conferencing--and why it's important for him to be able to do his conferencing in two big chunks rather than in little bits throughout the semester. However, some professors may prefer to meet with students in a way that is spread out more evenly through the semester. But the point is, we meet with our students. We conference with them. The language in every contract up to this point has been that we have conference hours that are not scheduled but are nevertheless kept: what is now required is that we at least prove that we're keeping them.

I have to say, too, that I'm relatively pissed off by Bruce that he simply appointed one of his favorite faculty members to chair the committee--I don't necessarily have a problem with his choice, but I think at least P&B should have been involved in that decision--and he has determined by fiat who will be on the committee itself. I can't bitch too much about that, as I'm one of those people: those of us who worked up the rationale about why we need to keep our current work load are on the committee, plus one other faculty member who has been deeply involved in union issues.

We'll be meeting in June, and I'm not entirely thrilled about that, but this is too important to whine about too much. I'll give up my June--and more, if need be--to make sure we don't get fucked on this one. My little bulldog teeth are clamped onto this issue, and I ain't letting go.

Cleansing breath.

On a much different level--getting to the sweetness and sunshine part of this post's title--I had a lovely meeting with a student from the Nature in Lit class today. I don't think I've talked about him, or not much, but I truly see him as a success story. When the semester started, I'd have taken even money that he wouldn't make it to the end. He looked so dubious and borderline hostile about everything I said--but I've come to know that this is simply his expression when he's thinking hard, trying to make connections. He does challenge but in the best way: he is challenging in order to learn, genuinely working to understand. I remember the first time he smiled in class, and he has the sweetest, most lovely smile I've seen on a young man in a long time. I can't quite categorize his type: he's not exactly preppy, but he's definitely not a stereotypical Lawn Guyland "lunkhead" (and thank you, Paul, for the term)--and he's really learning this semester. Going over his paper ideas with him was great. When I pointed out to missing connections, or places where the ideas didn't quite add up, he saw what I meant, and I could hear the mental motors revving as he worked to reach the ideas he has almost but not quite nailed down. I'm truly looking forward to reading his final paper.

At the end of our conference, he expressed his surprise that no one else had shown up--but I wasn't surprised in the least. I said, "Well, it's early yet; someone might still show--but I doubt it." He laughed, but he also told me that the session had been very helpful.

I find it beautiful, there is no other word, beautiful to watch a young mind suddenly start to get a sense of the power of ideas, the difficult and rewarding work of finding something big and expressing it clearly. I'm not doing any of that very well at the moment, I feel--the language I'm using isn't quite capturing what it is I see happening in students when they suddenly latch on, but it's a lot like the coming of spring. Everything looks grey and lifeless--and then there is a little hint of life, and a little more, and suddenly everything is filled to overflowing with aliveness. Sometimes, in the best of cases, it happens in student minds, and when it does, it's literally awesome. I feel honored to witness it.

And that's essentially the note I'd like to leave on for tonight. I have collected all the papers from 102 students, but I won't start reading them until I'm absolutely sure no one wants comments. No one asked for them in writing, but they may have forgotten. I could simply tell them that it's too late to suddenly say, "Oh, yeah, and could you give me comments?" but if they want the comments, I want to give them. On the other hand, I really don't want to have to go back to re-read a paper I've already finished in order to provide comments. My sincere hope is that no one forgot, that no one wants comments--because then my life becomes infinitely easier over the next few days. I got through a couple of year-end evaluations today, too, and may get another done before I leave today. I'm still waiting for a few, but if I get one more done tonight, I'll be caught up with everything I have in hand, which would be sweet. Whether I'll have the energy to get to tango tonight is an open question, but I hope so. We'll see. And tomorrow is another day.

It's not the kids, it's the committees

I am not in the least concerned about getting all the papers marked and the final grades crunched for my students--if I can only find the time around all the committee stuff that's piling up around me. Even as I cross things off the list, it seems more gets added to the bottom. In addition to everything else, I'm trying to ensure that I have documentation of my college-wide committee service for my application for promotion, and in a few instances, that's proving a bit of a challenge. Also, of the nine year-end evaluations I'm supposed to handle, writing the P&B evaluative statements, I have finished one (the one that was messed up but which I decided to submit as is); four are in a holding pattern as I clear other stuff off the triage list; two that should be fine--as they're from members of P&B--are still AWOL; I should get another one soon but it's being done by a recalcitrant old fossil who doesn't know how to use a computer so I'll get some mess of a hard copy (and I'll have to talk to Bruce about what to do with it); and the final one I wonder if I'll get at all. It would surprise me if I did. I feel a definite log-jam forming here.

On the other hand, I finally wrote the last observation of the semester--and wrote the letter of recommendation for a former student--so that's two things off the list for today.

I collected papers from today's 102, and we ended up in the kind of conversation we usually have on the day their self-evaluations are due--but we'll simply get into it in more detail on Wednesday. I'll try to remember to take my dissertation with me, too; I rather love blowing their minds with that. Even the little reduced-size paper-back version is impressively thick, at least for students who struggle to write a five-page paper. I'll be sorry to say goodbye to them, and I think the feeling is mutual.

I'm actually rather surprised that none of them have signed up for the fiction writing course. They may not need a Fine and Performing Arts credit for the specific degree programs they're in, but if they're in general liberal arts, they do, and it qualifies. I am, however, delighted to see that the student who was in last semester's 102 and is now in Nature in Lit has signed up for it: that will be fun.

She's been blossoming beautifully this term. She's still shy about talking in class, but she's talking to me more than she did last semester--by several orders of magnitude--and I feel like I know her a great deal better as a consequence. She's a lovely young woman; I think she's heading into some kind of medical profession (she almost certainly told me what but, with my swiss cheeze brains, I've forgotten), so I know that the humanities stuff does not come readily to her, and yet she does a fine job. I have no complaints on that score.

I'll be interested to see which students from the Nature in Lit show up to the office tomorrow to talk about papers. Several have said they will, but one never knows: when it comes right down to it, they may decide it's more important to study for a chem final or something--which I fully understand. I will say that suddenly, for many of them, their last few logs have shown a sudden shift of gears into something much closer to what I consider appropriate. I wonder how much of that came out of our discussion about papers and what they need to include: note to self, to repeatedly point out not only the connection between logs and papers but also remind students what papers are meant to do.

I had a sudden realization on that front this weekend, in fact. The poor beleaguered student who's struggled all semester wrote me an e-mail asking how she could approach the idea of war in her paper and told me she was thinking about whether it requires physical strength--and suddenly I realized that she was still trying to write about an idea she has about something, using the book to illustrate her ideas, instead of writing about what the book has to say. The way I explained it to her is, "There are times when the focus can be on your own idea, and you can use anything you like to help you talk about your idea. But you also need to learn to clearly understand and explain someone else's ideas." I don't thing students have been taught that that is something important to do, never mind how to do it--which gives me a good sense of how I'll need to set things up for 101 in the fall.

I'm coming up with all sorts of ideas for 101 in the fall--and I'm trying to remember to write them down as they occur to me so I don't lose them. In the end, I probably won't use the vast majority (I usually come up with way more ideas than I can squeeze into the semester)--and I'm still trying to figure out how I want to work through various versions of papers: the current system works better than what I did in the past, but it still is in need of vast improvement. But I got a great idea from one of the adjuncts I observed: she kept reinforcing that students needed to make a claim first, then provide a quotation or paraphrase to support the claim, and I came up with a new acronym to use to describe the process. Paul and I have used "ICE" for a long while now: it stands for "Introduce, Cite, Explicate" (Paul may use "Explain" instead of "Explicate," but I find "explain" leads to paraphrasing, and although students have a very hard time holding on to the term "explicate," at least I can keep pointing back to it). But instead of that, I'm now thinking I might use CLICC: CLaim, Introduce, Cite, Connect. For some reason, Paul doesn't have the experience of students starting a paragraph with a quotation, which I encounter far too frequently, nor does he seem to struggle with getting students to understand that quotations need to actually follow and elaborate upon an idea.

Well, we'll see (that mantra again). I have a lot of thinking to do about it, and although I have starry-eyed fantasies about how much preparatory work I'll get done over the summer, in sober fact, after next week, I'm probably not going to want to think about teaching again for a long while--and then will suddenly find myself in a flat panic about the fact that the new semester is about to start and I have no clue what I'm doing with the 101s yet.

So now the mantra is "Ah well." (The two do seem to go together.)

For P&B, we have interviews 11:30 to 2:15 tomorrow, but around that, I'm hoping to get a few of those year-end evaluations knocked off. The actual write-up doesn't take very long; what takes time is reading over the document to decide what to highlight. Still, I know it will get done, and soon. Not much choice in that. I'm already getting primed for Wednesday morning's Assessment meeting, too--but I'm palming off as much of that work as I possible can. I feel I've done my share for this semester.

Now, however, it's time to toddle away and begin the wind down process. And not only is tomorrow another day, it also brings me one closer to the end of this madness.