-- I like teaching Agamemnon, but then I've already done it twice, and this year someone has uploaded an entire production to YouTube. Woo hoo instant lesson plan!
-- I'm not sure how I feel about teaching Beowulf. This is my first time, and I haven't studied it since my first year in grad school. My sense is that today's class felt a little flat and disjointed, despite all the pretty pictures of items from the Sutton Hoo ship burial, and I'm still struggling to frame provocative discussion questions. (Then, too, it's damned hard to talk about the poem when the students have only read a third of it.) Those of you who have taught it before, what's worked for you?
-- There are only three men in the Brit Lit class and only three women in freshman comp. Well, there might be a fourth, but she hasn't shown up yet. I'm not sure I like either of these ratios (though two of the best comp classes I've taught in the past have had only three or four guys); that sort of thing makes a class feel unbalanced, somehow.
-- I am SO not used to the two-hour marathon comp class. Yikes, what do you do with that? Out of desperation, I ended up passing out a bunch of index cards midway through the first hour and asked the students to write down any questions they had about the class -- anonymously. Somewhat to my surprise, this worked like a charm -- all but two of them asked something, and they were mostly good questions, stuff that I'd forgotten to clarify on the syllabus. I should do this again. I hope I remember. Unfortunately, most of them said they didn't like to write (this was one of the questions I asked them to address in the diagnostic essay). This could be a very long semester indeed. Or I could convert them. I hope I convert them.
So yeah, over the hump, less than half of the first week to go.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
First day of classes...
An acceptable first day. Not a brilliant first day. I probably shouldn't have decided to spend the last half-hour before class reading research about student evaluations, because damn, that stuff makes you feel like there's a lot riding on the first day. It also makes you feel totally inadequate if you're a not-very-expressive introvert who has difficulty pulling off comedy or dynamism in front of a crowd of strangers.
Right, so trying not to think about research on student evaluations, or about the thread on the Chronicle forums last week where there was a general consensus that letting class out early on the first day is Bad, Bad, Bad. Trying, also, not to think about the fact that I'm a VAP in a department that will be running a tenure-track search this year, and so this is in effect a six- or seven-month-long interview. Or about the fact that I totally forgot to tell the Brit Lit class to read the introduction to Beowulf in the Norton anthology and not just the text itself. Oh, and I lent my anthology to a student whose financial aid didn't come through in time for her to buy books, and I fear I may never see it again. Eeep.
It will get better. It will get a great deal better as early as Wednesday, when people will have actually read the texts and we can talk about them. Still, I would like for just once in my life to have a first day that isn't dead awkward and doesn't make me feel like an impostor (though I have no rational reason to believe that the students will think I am an impostor, and I need to remember that).
In other news: I dislike whiteboards. I've bought my own markers because the ones at school barely write, but really, what's the matter with good old-fashioned chalk?
Right, so trying not to think about research on student evaluations, or about the thread on the Chronicle forums last week where there was a general consensus that letting class out early on the first day is Bad, Bad, Bad. Trying, also, not to think about the fact that I'm a VAP in a department that will be running a tenure-track search this year, and so this is in effect a six- or seven-month-long interview. Or about the fact that I totally forgot to tell the Brit Lit class to read the introduction to Beowulf in the Norton anthology and not just the text itself. Oh, and I lent my anthology to a student whose financial aid didn't come through in time for her to buy books, and I fear I may never see it again. Eeep.
It will get better. It will get a great deal better as early as Wednesday, when people will have actually read the texts and we can talk about them. Still, I would like for just once in my life to have a first day that isn't dead awkward and doesn't make me feel like an impostor (though I have no rational reason to believe that the students will think I am an impostor, and I need to remember that).
In other news: I dislike whiteboards. I've bought my own markers because the ones at school barely write, but really, what's the matter with good old-fashioned chalk?
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Went to New City this morning with a bunch of students and a couple of other faculty to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. Apparently this is required for first-year students, part of freshman orientation. I'm not entirely down with the concept of mandatory volunteering (isn't that some sort of oxymoron?), but it is a neat idea. I didn't really have a clue what I was doing, so I just did what people told me to, but I helped plant some trees and inventory the building equipment, and put down lots and lots of sod. They were just about finished with the houses (families moving in this afternoon), so there were just the yards left to do. Amazing how much difference a little sod and a few bushes can make -- it turns the place from a construction site into a real yard more or less instantly.
Overheard, from one freshman guy to an older volunteer: "Why do people do this when they don't have to?" OK, maybe not everybody thinks it's a neat idea.
Approximately forty-two hours left until I teach my first class here. Eeep!
Overheard, from one freshman guy to an older volunteer: "Why do people do this when they don't have to?" OK, maybe not everybody thinks it's a neat idea.
Approximately forty-two hours left until I teach my first class here. Eeep!
Thursday, August 23, 2007
New Faculty Orientation
There was free food, and lots of it. This is always a desirable trait in an orientation.
***
There should, however, be bingo cards. Seriously. It would be a lot easier to stay awake if you got to check off a space every time somebody said, "New SLAC is just like a family!" or "... College, I mean University." (New SLAC has technically just become New SLAU, although I'm going to go on calling it New SLAC because I'm a contrarian. Besides, the Beloved Alma Mater is three times as big and still calls itself a college, although the Beloved Alma Mater has never been one to allow minor incidents such as the American Revolution to force a name change, so it might not be the best example.)
***
We got to Process in Regalia for opening convocation. This is still a novelty to me, so I enjoyed it, although Lord knows those costumes were designed for medieval Europe and not the southern end of the Midwest in the middle of August. Still, there is something irresistably charming about being paid to dress up like you're at a Renaissance Faire from time to time. Of course, one could always just get a job at a Renaissance Faire and skip the Ph.D. Damn, why didn't I think of that nine years ago?
***
Just before convocation, in the little anteroom where people put on their robes and leave shoulder bags and such baggage, an older gentleman whom I don't know approaches me.
"Are you going to carry the mace?"
"What? Er, no. Not that I know of."
"Oh. Are you going to make a speech, then?"
"Dear Lord, I certainly hope not!" (A speech? No one told me anything about a speech. Are they in the habit of tapping junior faculty for surprise convocation speeches? Um, help?)
All Becomes Clear when the convocation itself is in session, with an undergrad carrying the mace, and another one making a speech. I guess I should have put the robes on sooner, because they do at least make it clear that I must be over twenty-seven and probably closer to thirty; apparently I can't rely on my face alone to give this impression.
***
Convocation began and ended with a prayer. Having attended public schools from kindergarten straight through grad school, and having no particular religious faith of my own, I wasn't sure how I felt about this; but this seems to be the right sort of Christian-affiliated school, the kind that respects its employees' freedom to believe and teach as they choose and channels its religious mission into doing some good in the world. I'm probably going to join one of the groups doing volunteer-ish stuff in the community on Saturday, and I think, on the whole, that I will like it here.
***
There should, however, be bingo cards. Seriously. It would be a lot easier to stay awake if you got to check off a space every time somebody said, "New SLAC is just like a family!" or "... College, I mean University." (New SLAC has technically just become New SLAU, although I'm going to go on calling it New SLAC because I'm a contrarian. Besides, the Beloved Alma Mater is three times as big and still calls itself a college, although the Beloved Alma Mater has never been one to allow minor incidents such as the American Revolution to force a name change, so it might not be the best example.)
***
We got to Process in Regalia for opening convocation. This is still a novelty to me, so I enjoyed it, although Lord knows those costumes were designed for medieval Europe and not the southern end of the Midwest in the middle of August. Still, there is something irresistably charming about being paid to dress up like you're at a Renaissance Faire from time to time. Of course, one could always just get a job at a Renaissance Faire and skip the Ph.D. Damn, why didn't I think of that nine years ago?
***
Just before convocation, in the little anteroom where people put on their robes and leave shoulder bags and such baggage, an older gentleman whom I don't know approaches me.
"Are you going to carry the mace?"
"What? Er, no. Not that I know of."
"Oh. Are you going to make a speech, then?"
"Dear Lord, I certainly hope not!" (A speech? No one told me anything about a speech. Are they in the habit of tapping junior faculty for surprise convocation speeches? Um, help?)
All Becomes Clear when the convocation itself is in session, with an undergrad carrying the mace, and another one making a speech. I guess I should have put the robes on sooner, because they do at least make it clear that I must be over twenty-seven and probably closer to thirty; apparently I can't rely on my face alone to give this impression.
***
Convocation began and ended with a prayer. Having attended public schools from kindergarten straight through grad school, and having no particular religious faith of my own, I wasn't sure how I felt about this; but this seems to be the right sort of Christian-affiliated school, the kind that respects its employees' freedom to believe and teach as they choose and channels its religious mission into doing some good in the world. I'm probably going to join one of the groups doing volunteer-ish stuff in the community on Saturday, and I think, on the whole, that I will like it here.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
beginning-of-semester stuff
Have finished this semester's syllabi. Six pages of fine print. Five pages of fine print. Another six pages of fine print. I know this is mostly down to the fact that I've finally gotten organized and included detailed directions for the written assignments in the syllabus, instead of making them up at the last minute, but it still feels slightly excessive.
I had a vague recollection that most of my undergrad profs just handed us a list of readings and dates, but now that I think about it, this isn't strictly accurate -- or rather, they typically handed out other stuff with the list of readings and dates. Favorite Undergrad Prof Ever had a six-page document full of guidelines for writing papers, ending with a page-long rant on Why Grades Serve the System and Not the Students. I've adapted and imitated freely, although I don't think I could bring off the bits that could only have been written by an old New Yorker with tenure and an attitude ("You would have to be a fool, in any case, to think you had to tell me that Shakespeare's first name is William...") I kept the grading rant, or rather wrote my own gentler Southern hippie-chick version, complete with quotations from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Maybe it is better to front-load one's philosophy, opinions, and quirks, even if it takes six pages to do it. Students have a right to know what they're getting into.
So much for the two literature classes. For the comp class I have the luxury of actually assigning a chunk of ZatAoMM a bit later in the semester, as well as a charming article that appeared in the Washington Post in 1993, Robert Day's "The ABCs of Enlightenment." I was a senior in high school when it came out, and my AP English teacher liked it so much that he ran off copies for the whole class. (He was an older guy with a cop mustache who referred to the entire Romantic movement as "a load of crap," and he pissed me off no end by giving me a C on a paper because I said Clytemnestra was the most sympathetic character in the Oresteia. He was also the most brilliant teacher I've ever had the privilege of seeing in action. I'm not a worthy successor, and the prospect of teaching the Oresteia next week brings that home acutely. But I like sharing the article when I can.)
Anyway, some excerpts:
Alphabets. In themselves they are interesting. So is college interesting in itself: as in learning for its own sake. You don't need to go to the Career Placement Office your first week on campus. Yes, you'll want a job when you graduate. But you'll need an education first, and the kind of education that awaits you will light up the job search in ways you cannot now imagine. If you think you need to be something by the time you graduate, tell youself you want to be enlightened. If you don't know what enlightened means (exactly), look it up (do that now to get in practice for those term papers). You might also want to keep the idea of enlightenment (or the 18th-century European philosophy of the same name) in mind: It's a good North Star for any student lost in a sea of academic requirements.
In the meantime, did you know that the world "alphabet" is a combination of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta -- thus, in Greek, "alphabet" stands for the whole collection of Greek letters, just as our "ABCs stands for A through Z -- not to mention a number of other concepts of completion. Language is lovely. The history of language is inexhaustably lovely. Trust me. I am your first professor.
...
French. Did you pick a college or university that does not require a foreign language? Then require it of yourself. Whose education is it, anyway? Bsides, how do you expect to spend August in Paris if you don't know "une fleur" from "une mauvaise herbe"? Miss Stein (at 27 rue de Fleurus) would be disappointed.
...
Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by the Philological Society. It was the poet W. H. Auden's favorite book. You might get over a fascination for alphabets, but no well-educated person ever gets over a fascination for dictionaries. Keep one open in your dorm room at all times.
...
Question. Of course. And often.
...
Why? Almost always a good question.
...
Zeal. Somewhere I read a definition of a student as a person in zealous and voluntary pursuit of language. That's you.
I had a vague recollection that most of my undergrad profs just handed us a list of readings and dates, but now that I think about it, this isn't strictly accurate -- or rather, they typically handed out other stuff with the list of readings and dates. Favorite Undergrad Prof Ever had a six-page document full of guidelines for writing papers, ending with a page-long rant on Why Grades Serve the System and Not the Students. I've adapted and imitated freely, although I don't think I could bring off the bits that could only have been written by an old New Yorker with tenure and an attitude ("You would have to be a fool, in any case, to think you had to tell me that Shakespeare's first name is William...") I kept the grading rant, or rather wrote my own gentler Southern hippie-chick version, complete with quotations from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Maybe it is better to front-load one's philosophy, opinions, and quirks, even if it takes six pages to do it. Students have a right to know what they're getting into.
So much for the two literature classes. For the comp class I have the luxury of actually assigning a chunk of ZatAoMM a bit later in the semester, as well as a charming article that appeared in the Washington Post in 1993, Robert Day's "The ABCs of Enlightenment." I was a senior in high school when it came out, and my AP English teacher liked it so much that he ran off copies for the whole class. (He was an older guy with a cop mustache who referred to the entire Romantic movement as "a load of crap," and he pissed me off no end by giving me a C on a paper because I said Clytemnestra was the most sympathetic character in the Oresteia. He was also the most brilliant teacher I've ever had the privilege of seeing in action. I'm not a worthy successor, and the prospect of teaching the Oresteia next week brings that home acutely. But I like sharing the article when I can.)
Anyway, some excerpts:
Alphabets. In themselves they are interesting. So is college interesting in itself: as in learning for its own sake. You don't need to go to the Career Placement Office your first week on campus. Yes, you'll want a job when you graduate. But you'll need an education first, and the kind of education that awaits you will light up the job search in ways you cannot now imagine. If you think you need to be something by the time you graduate, tell youself you want to be enlightened. If you don't know what enlightened means (exactly), look it up (do that now to get in practice for those term papers). You might also want to keep the idea of enlightenment (or the 18th-century European philosophy of the same name) in mind: It's a good North Star for any student lost in a sea of academic requirements.
In the meantime, did you know that the world "alphabet" is a combination of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta -- thus, in Greek, "alphabet" stands for the whole collection of Greek letters, just as our "ABCs stands for A through Z -- not to mention a number of other concepts of completion. Language is lovely. The history of language is inexhaustably lovely. Trust me. I am your first professor.
...
French. Did you pick a college or university that does not require a foreign language? Then require it of yourself. Whose education is it, anyway? Bsides, how do you expect to spend August in Paris if you don't know "une fleur" from "une mauvaise herbe"? Miss Stein (at 27 rue de Fleurus) would be disappointed.
...
Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by the Philological Society. It was the poet W. H. Auden's favorite book. You might get over a fascination for alphabets, but no well-educated person ever gets over a fascination for dictionaries. Keep one open in your dorm room at all times.
...
Question. Of course. And often.
...
Why? Almost always a good question.
...
Zeal. Somewhere I read a definition of a student as a person in zealous and voluntary pursuit of language. That's you.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
On bread, and other foodstuffs
I went to Panera this morning. Mmm, good bread. I haven't had any since I left University of Basketball town, where we had a co-op that made terrific bread (and terrific scones, and cherry-almond tarts and ... yum.) It's funny how you take little stuff like that for granted, until it's gone.
So far, much of the stuff I miss about U. of B. Town is food-related -- milk and ice cream from the local dairy, the Middle Eastern deli where you get an enormous plate of food for $6.99, the Mexican place with six different kinds of homemade salsa, barbecue. I found another dairy here that sells milk in glass bottles, and there's a place in New City that can satisfy the falafel cravings, but I don't think there's much to be done about the barbecue. It's really the department pig pickin' that I miss, because there's nothing like sitting out under the stars with a bottle of bourbon and the smell of slow-cooking pig in the air.
Come to think about it, memories of my favorite places are nearly always intertwined with memories of food -- nothing says "childhood beach vacations" to me like corn on the cob and fresh tomatoes and a whole heap of blue crabs with Old Bay. And studying abroad? All about the paella and oranges and the Serrano ham and oh my God, the coffee. I've been back to Spain twice since then, and just going to the bar for a sandwich brought the memories flooding back. Good stuff.
I'm sure I'll miss a lot of little things when (and if) I move away from here, but I don't know what they are yet.
So yeah, food, a good thing, especially when shared with other people. Don't you agree?
So far, much of the stuff I miss about U. of B. Town is food-related -- milk and ice cream from the local dairy, the Middle Eastern deli where you get an enormous plate of food for $6.99, the Mexican place with six different kinds of homemade salsa, barbecue. I found another dairy here that sells milk in glass bottles, and there's a place in New City that can satisfy the falafel cravings, but I don't think there's much to be done about the barbecue. It's really the department pig pickin' that I miss, because there's nothing like sitting out under the stars with a bottle of bourbon and the smell of slow-cooking pig in the air.
Come to think about it, memories of my favorite places are nearly always intertwined with memories of food -- nothing says "childhood beach vacations" to me like corn on the cob and fresh tomatoes and a whole heap of blue crabs with Old Bay. And studying abroad? All about the paella and oranges and the Serrano ham and oh my God, the coffee. I've been back to Spain twice since then, and just going to the bar for a sandwich brought the memories flooding back. Good stuff.
I'm sure I'll miss a lot of little things when (and if) I move away from here, but I don't know what they are yet.
So yeah, food, a good thing, especially when shared with other people. Don't you agree?
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Office!
I have an office! It's all mine! It's not the one that it looked like I was going to get when I visited in June, because apparently the department has been playing Musical Offices, but this one has a view of trees too, so it's all good. They are dogwoods, and they will be pretty in the spring.
There's still a bunch of stuff left over from the previous occupant -- some files with student work, a bunch of literature anthologies and a science fiction novel that looks like it might be interesting, and a Canadian flag over the door (I may have to do something about that). The computer is his, too, and so far it refuses to acknowledge me as its new mistress. The A/C window unit is entirely too feeble to make a dent in the heat. Still ... office! My own!
I've been thinking a bit about office doors. Back when I was an undergrad, I used to like to look at them when I signed on for a class so I could get a feel for the instructor's personality. One of my favorite profs had Doonesbury cartoons about grade inflation. I went back for a visit in February and they were still there -- a little older and yellower, and they had been very yellow even when I was a freshman. The children's lit specialist in my grad department had a brightly colored poster titled "Telling About Books," with lots of happy multiracial children lounging around reading, and a list of questions: "Who was your favorite character? Which picture in the book do you like best? How did you feel about the end of the story?" Ah, if only things stayed that simple...
So anyway, I think office doors are important, for the same reason that the title of a paper is important -- you don't want your office to be the equivalent of one of those freshman essays entitled "Analyzation of a Poem" or "Essay #3." So I thought I'd do what one of my office-mates did when I was in grad school, and put up poetry. There needs to be more public poetry in the world. I've been going for a universities-and-teaching theme, like this:
In a Classroom
By Adrienne Rich
Talking of poetry, hauling the books
arm-full to the table where the heads
bend or gaze upward, listening, reading aloud,
talking of consonants, elision,
caught in the how, oblivious of why:
I look in your face, Jude,
neither frowning nor nodding,
opaque in the slant of dust-motes over the table:
a presence like a stone, if a stone were thinking
What I cannot say, is me. For that I came.
And like this:
Turning Thirty, I Contemplate Students Bicycling Home
By Rita Dove
This is the weather of change
and clear light. This is
weather on its B side,
askew, that propels
the legs of young men
in tight jeans wheeling
through the tired, wise
spring. Crickets too
awake in choirs
out of sight, although
I imagine we see
the same thing
and for a long way.
This, then, weather
to start over.
Evening rustles
her skirts of sulky
organza. Skin
prickles, defining
what is and shall not be....
How private
the complaint of these
green hills.
There's still a bunch of stuff left over from the previous occupant -- some files with student work, a bunch of literature anthologies and a science fiction novel that looks like it might be interesting, and a Canadian flag over the door (I may have to do something about that). The computer is his, too, and so far it refuses to acknowledge me as its new mistress. The A/C window unit is entirely too feeble to make a dent in the heat. Still ... office! My own!
I've been thinking a bit about office doors. Back when I was an undergrad, I used to like to look at them when I signed on for a class so I could get a feel for the instructor's personality. One of my favorite profs had Doonesbury cartoons about grade inflation. I went back for a visit in February and they were still there -- a little older and yellower, and they had been very yellow even when I was a freshman. The children's lit specialist in my grad department had a brightly colored poster titled "Telling About Books," with lots of happy multiracial children lounging around reading, and a list of questions: "Who was your favorite character? Which picture in the book do you like best? How did you feel about the end of the story?" Ah, if only things stayed that simple...
So anyway, I think office doors are important, for the same reason that the title of a paper is important -- you don't want your office to be the equivalent of one of those freshman essays entitled "Analyzation of a Poem" or "Essay #3." So I thought I'd do what one of my office-mates did when I was in grad school, and put up poetry. There needs to be more public poetry in the world. I've been going for a universities-and-teaching theme, like this:
In a Classroom
By Adrienne Rich
Talking of poetry, hauling the books
arm-full to the table where the heads
bend or gaze upward, listening, reading aloud,
talking of consonants, elision,
caught in the how, oblivious of why:
I look in your face, Jude,
neither frowning nor nodding,
opaque in the slant of dust-motes over the table:
a presence like a stone, if a stone were thinking
What I cannot say, is me. For that I came.
And like this:
Turning Thirty, I Contemplate Students Bicycling Home
By Rita Dove
This is the weather of change
and clear light. This is
weather on its B side,
askew, that propels
the legs of young men
in tight jeans wheeling
through the tired, wise
spring. Crickets too
awake in choirs
out of sight, although
I imagine we see
the same thing
and for a long way.
This, then, weather
to start over.
Evening rustles
her skirts of sulky
organza. Skin
prickles, defining
what is and shall not be....
How private
the complaint of these
green hills.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)