Monday, February 9, 2009

apparently, I was on crack when I wrote these syllabi

Somehow, I scheduled student conferences with three of my four classes for Monday through Thursday of this week. Yes, those would be the three that aren't the medieval lit class. I shall be meeting face-to-face with all but FIVE of my students, having written copious notes beforehand. Or semi-copious notes. Or screw it, whatever I've got time for.

Luckily, the total enrollment in those three classes is around 45; had they been filled to the cap, it would have been more like 70. What the hell was I thinking?

Oh, and I have a paper for SAA due on Sunday, and an annual-report-thingy for the tenure file due Monday. (As a side note, I have never been to SAA before. Is it normal for the papers to list SIXTY-ONE items on the Works Cited page? 'Cos that's what one of the people in my seminar has done, and I was under the impression that these were supposed to be, you know, works in process, and not necessarily exhaustively detailed and polished pieces of scholarship. Also, I'm not sure I cited sixty-one works in my entire dissertation. It was a short dissertation. But I hope not to completely humiliate myself.)

Blogging will be light while I have a nervous breakdown. See y'all on the other side.

7 comments:

Susan said...

Don't worry about the nuts who are in to defensive footnoting. Console yourself with the thought that with bibliographical software, none of this is really meaningful.

Happy nervous breakdown! Or, as my word says, Sante. And we can all use that!

Anonymous said...

I also always have that moment when I stare at my syllabi and think "what was I smoking?" I can't tell you how many times I have re-issued "syllabus as I actually taught the class" sometime in mid- or end-term.

Anonymous said...

I've been to SAA before. My group had some pretty heavy hitters like Karen Newman, so as the "junior" colleague, I didn't feel bad about having fewer citations. Besides, they barely had time to even talk about my paper.

You'll have a good time, though!

Fretful Porpentine said...

Susan and roaringgrrl -- I have to admit I was hoping against hope that the Defensive Footnoter would turn out to be an over-eager grad student and not a heavy hitter, but a little Googling reveals that he / she is rather terrifyingly senior. Oh dear. I hope allowances will be made for my own youth and cluelessness.

dance -- Indeed, I see a few Departures from the Original Schedule on the horizon...

Susan said...

SAA is really a pretty kind place, in my limited experience (always as an invited outsider, but still...) And the papers always vary in length, development of ideas, etc. Some are indeed preliminary, others better developed.

Sisyphus said...

Good luck!

I just came to the realization in one of my classes that I put the papers too close together and they don't really have much to say for the second one, oops.

I was so busy trying to stagger due dates across the classes that I didn't really think about them within each class.

Live and learn! Next time will be brilliant and perfect, I'm sure.

:)

Anonymous said...

That is one of the *best* post titles I've ever seen! (And I have felt that way before, too.)
Good luck with everything...