Burnt out on Basic

I know I suck at blogging lately. I think this is just not going to be a very good year. For the first half of the semester, I had five different classes to juggle. Now I have only four, but one of them is a section of Basic Comp with twenty-five students. This class is a complete time-and-intelligence suck, and I don't feel like I'm even doing anything useful. Mainly, I am repeating myself over and over for the benefit of people who cannot seem to figure out the bleeding obvious.

(For example: You should staple or paper-clip your papers instead of turning in a bunch of loose sheets. You should put your name on your paper. You should turn the paper in at the beginning of class on the day when it is due. You can find out when it is due by checking the syllabus. If you don't have the paper with you during class on the due date and you decide to bring it by the professor's office two hours later, only to find that she is teaching another class, DO NOT INTERRUPT THAT CLASS. Don't be rude to the person who gives out grades. Do not put your head down on the desk and suck your thumb during class. Do not type your papers in ALL CAPS. If the assignment asks you to evaluate an op-ed article from a newspaper, addressing how effectively the author makes his or her argument, and we have spent the last three days of class talking about what this means and looking at examples of possible thesis statements, do not simply summarize the article. Do not write about an article with words you don't understand in the title, unless you are prepared to look them up. Do not write about a news article that does not take an argumentative position. Do not write about an evangelical Christian web site. Do not write about a blog entry about a culinary gadget that electrocutes lobsters.)

Seriously. I feel like I'm spending my entire life telling people what not to do, and if I do this for another fifty years I still won't hit all the things they shouldn't do. I mean, it would never in my wildest dreams have occurred to me that someone would try to turn in a paragraph about a lobster-electrocutor. (Cue this classic bit of snark from Rate Your Students. This, friends, is Basic Comp in a nutshell.)

So, yeah, feeling pretty burnt out right now. (It will be better in the spring, when this class is tiny and I usually get to know the students well enough to be generous with them. It takes time to be generous.)

How it went...

Wow, time is passing quickly this semester. We just had our last small-group meeting in Intro to College life. They have one more session in the Big Auditorium, and then final grades are due, and we're done.

It was OK. I'm not sure whether I'm going to do it again. The students were fine, all five of them friendly and participatory. They did most of the extra reading I assigned even though it wasn't tied to any quizzes or papers (although I think I will ask them to respond to it in their journals if I teach this course again -- I don't think they really got that a reflective journal for a class is supposed to be different from a personal diary). They had a bit of a tendency to talk about their personal lives a lot and go off on random tangents, but I think there's supposed to be room for that sort of thing in a course like this, so no worries.

The large-group sessions were ... bleah. I guess the kindest way to put it is "varied," since there were some speakers who were genuinely informative about useful topics, and one or two who managed to be informative and entertaining. But there were also some speakers who were patently disorganized, inept at communicating, or just plain off the rails (as in, presenting as fact a pop-psychology "personality test" with about as much as scientific validation as astrology, and pretending that this was somehow educating students about diversity).

More generally, I'm concerned that the whole slate of presentations seemed to emphasize student life at the expense of saying anything about the university's intellectual mission. I mean, it is important for students to know where to find the counseling center, and how to get their financial aid checks, and what to do if they think one of their friends has alcohol poisoning. No question. But shouldn't someone, at the very least, also be telling them that they should plan to spend a couple of hours outside of class for each hour in class, and that those required gen ed courses can illuminate one another in surprising ways, and that they shouldn't be afraid of going to a professor's office hours? I want someone to tell them, too, that words and ideas matter, that slow reading and deep thinking have value, that skepticism and critical inquiry are necessary tools for living in the world, and that if universities were really ivory towers closed off from the real world, people wouldn't get so damn angry at them.

(I think I may have told my little cohort some of these things. I think I do want to teach this class again.)

Oh yeah, and we talked about the university's common reading book, which was both enjoyable and a little weird. I have a whole different set of reservations about campus-wide common reading programs, but those probably belong in an entirely different post.

I don't think I like courses designed by committee

I'm meeting with my Intro to College Life freshmen* for the first time tomorrow. Well, we met for a hot second last week, but since the mandatory presentation in the Big Auditorium took up 35 of the 50 minutes of class, and then I had to find my students in the crowd, we didn't really have time to say much to each other.

Anyway, I have been reading over the syllabus and now I kind of want to shoot it. There is a half-page-long list of Course Goals and Learning Objectives**, including such items as "Students will clarify their values about cultural and gender diversity" and "Students will manage finances, time, and stress effectively" (is clarifying values like clarifying butter? and has there ever been an eighteen-year-old in the entire history of the world who has managed finances, time, and stress effectively?) Good God. I hope they don't think I wrote this stuff.

The course is described as "a series of freshman seminars focusing on a variety of topics," although in fact more than half of the meetings are being held in the Big Auditorium with speakers who talk at the entire freshman class for fifty minutes and show powerpoints. Which kind of makes me think the person who wrote the course description doesn't know what a seminar is.

But! The rest of the class meetings are mine, and I think we can dispatch the official topic for tomorrow's session ("Navigating College Online") in about five minutes, which leaves us loads of time to talk about why we have college and about enlightenment. (Why yes, I did sneak some actual reading assignments onto the syllabus.) And maybe the students will get to, you know, say stuff, as should happen in a seminar.

I feel so subversive. Don't tell the administrators.

* Freshwomen, actually, since all five of them are female. This isn't particularly unusual given Misnomer U's demographics, but I do wonder if it's a sign that we're having trouble recruiting men to the humanities.

** What is with the fad for including Learning Objectives on everything, anyway? Do students actually want them? Do any of them read that part of the syllabus? For whose benefit is this supposed to be?

Sonnet for a new semester

Some time back, I asked my lit survey students to define a sonnet on the final exam. One of them wrote -- this was her entire definition -- "Fourteen lines syllabus."

So I wrote a poem. Which I would now like to share.

Fourteen Lines Syllabus

Come to class – or not – but if you come, stay seated.
You with the iPhone, time to get offline!
The revolution, folks, will not be tweeted;
There are no phones in 1789.

Well, yes, you really have to buy the book,
And read, and think ... Why, yes, I am a nerd.
Hey, business major with the pissed-off look:
The Blessed J. H. Newman wants a word.

Exams, grades, course goals, papers, all that stuff:
Please read those sections over at your leisure.
“There will be time indeed, and time enough.”
For now? I’d have you take some time for pleasure.

Oh! Welcome, all, to English 202.
That’s it! Read Blake before we meet anew.

Unfortunately, I think this might be better than my actual syllabus.

Announcement

Attention, students. This section of English 100, Basic Writing, is currently in an oversold situation. We are looking for twenty volunteers willing to take a later section of the course. You will receive a voucher that will entitle you to sleep in three days a week. If your educational plans today are flexible, please speak with a gate agent professor at once.

Attention, students. This section of English 100, Basic Writing, is currently in an oversold situation. You might have noticed that there are forty students in this room and ONLY THIRTY-TWO FUCKING CHAIRS. We are looking for twenty volunteers willing to take a later section of the course. You will receive a voucher that will entitle you to sleep in three days a week, as well as your own desk and chair. We'll even fill out all the add / drop paperwork for you. If your educational plans today are flexible, please speak with a gate agent professor at once. Also, please note that the word "Basic" in the title of this course is a euphemism. It means "remedial." If your ACT English score is over 18, or if you have already successfully completed English 101, YOU ARE NOT REMEDIAL. Please get out of the way so people who actually need this course can take it.

Attention, students. This section of English 100, Basic Writing, is currently in an oversold situation. Meanwhile, the section of Intro to College Life for prospective humanities majors has only FIVE students. No, I don't know why the admissions office thought we needed forty remedial writing students and only five freshmen interested in majoring in the humanities. Maybe that was all they could find. Anyway, it isn't your fault, but it depresses me. Meanwhile, we are still looking for twenty volunteers. If your educational plans today are flexible, please speak with a gate agent professor at once...

Sigh...

Voyage to the Antipodes, Part Two: Awesome Australian Animals

Of all the things I saw on my voyage, I liked the kangaroos the best. This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, as kangaroos have been my favorite animal ever since I first had Winnie-the-Pooh read to me at the age of three. So I was pleased to discover that they are, in fact, very personable animals, and curious about people.

This is the "Yeah? What are you staring at?" stare, which they have down to perfection.



Grazing on the lawn:



An emu. Emus, I can confirm, are not such nice animals, but they're fun to stare at.



And here is a koala, doing what koalas do best:



There were also many, many gorgeous parrots of various kinds. It was really amazing seeing all of these birds that I'd never seen outside of a pet shop.

A Voyage to the Antipodes, Part 1

Hi, everyone! I haven't abandoned this blog. I have been on a Voyage to the Antipodes.

I saw lots of pretty rocks:





I even brought home one of my own:



(More pics to come; Blogger seems to be acting grumpy when I try to upload too many at once.)