-- Doing a class read-through of the Pardoner's Tale is not as much fun as the Nun's Priest's Tale, as it has Death instead of chickens. (But skipping the NPT did allow me to shave a day off the syllabus, so that's something.)
-- People who don't do organization and planning very well (such as me) probably shouldn't try to have field trips in their classes.
-- In particular, they shouldn't have field trips in their classes four days before SAA papers are due, and then commit to traveling two hours to the state capital for a fancy awards-banquet thingy the next day after the field trip. AARGHH. (It is, for the record, not me who is getting the award.)
-- Why are this year's SAA seminar topics always perfect for last year's paper, anyway?
-- I was going to try and see if I could go a whole three weeks without getting Thai takeaway, but it is SO not happening. (What did I ever do before the Thai restaurant came to Deep South Town? I can't remember.)
-- The new Norton Anthologies came yesterday. I got the package versions with the three smaller paperback volumes banded together, and the new covers are extremely pretty. There is something very nice about getting free books in the mail, even if one remains deeply skeptical about whether the world actually needs a new edition of the Norton Anthology
-- As You Like It this week. It is about right, I think, for the season when red buds are starting to come out on the trees, and the first blossoms are showing on the Bradford pear outside my office window.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
From the Porpentine Archives: In Which My 20-Year-Old Self is Anxious About Grad School
We're doing job and grad school applications in Advanced Comp, so I was just having a look through my applying-to-grad-school notebook from college and trying to get back into the headspace of someone struggling to write a statement of purpose. Well, apparently my approach to writing such a statement was to get drunk a lot and ramble at great length about my personal life in a little black notebook, which probably isn't a tip that I'm going to pass along to my class. But I came across the following List Of Anxieties, which I thought was amusing.
Questions so stupid that I don't dare ask my professors
1) How do you pronounce "prolegomena"? What's the difference between one and an introduction?
2) How important are clothes, styling gel, etc. for females in the academic world? Is it just me, or do a lot of young female profs dress to intimidate? (I could never, ever, in a million years look so polished; it's not my style. Will this matter?)
3) Do admissions committees really expect applicants to have developed specific research interests? How is this possible when you usually spend a couple of years figuring out what you want to study and a third getting your bearings? If you can't tell them specifics and you don't want to lie, what else can you say in a personal statement? (So far, we've established that they don't want to hear about your love of [field of study], your unrelated extracurricular activities, or your personal life unless you've overcome major hardships, which I haven't.)
4) Will there be a lot of boring, snotty people whose idea of good conversation is making everyone else (ok, specifically, me) feel like an idiot? What about uptight individuals who discuss Anselm's Proslogion at breakfast and still worry that they're not good enough to pass all their classes?
5) Is the [Beloved Alma Mater] English department a) really, really easy; b) out of touch and 30 years behind the times; and / or c) so stunningly good I'll be spoiled for anything else? At different times I have suspected all of the above.
6) Must applications be typed? Who the hell has a typewriter nowadays?
7) If they want to interview me, do I have to say yes? What would be the best excuse?
(In case anybody's wondering, the correct answers are: 1) Hell if I know; 2) They probably do matter, but you'll get by without them; 3) No, they don't, and in a couple of months you will get a summer tutoring job that will enable you to write a kick-ass personal statement, so don't worry about that. Oh, and you don't actually want to be a medievalist, so any research interests you make up now will be moot; 4) No, there will be really cool people who give good parties, and you will like them a lot; 5) None of the above; 6) No, your mother has given you a complex about your handwriting. Filling them in by hand will be fine; 7) YES, for God's sake, YES.)
Questions so stupid that I don't dare ask my professors
1) How do you pronounce "prolegomena"? What's the difference between one and an introduction?
2) How important are clothes, styling gel, etc. for females in the academic world? Is it just me, or do a lot of young female profs dress to intimidate? (I could never, ever, in a million years look so polished; it's not my style. Will this matter?)
3) Do admissions committees really expect applicants to have developed specific research interests? How is this possible when you usually spend a couple of years figuring out what you want to study and a third getting your bearings? If you can't tell them specifics and you don't want to lie, what else can you say in a personal statement? (So far, we've established that they don't want to hear about your love of [field of study], your unrelated extracurricular activities, or your personal life unless you've overcome major hardships, which I haven't.)
4) Will there be a lot of boring, snotty people whose idea of good conversation is making everyone else (ok, specifically, me) feel like an idiot? What about uptight individuals who discuss Anselm's Proslogion at breakfast and still worry that they're not good enough to pass all their classes?
5) Is the [Beloved Alma Mater] English department a) really, really easy; b) out of touch and 30 years behind the times; and / or c) so stunningly good I'll be spoiled for anything else? At different times I have suspected all of the above.
6) Must applications be typed? Who the hell has a typewriter nowadays?
7) If they want to interview me, do I have to say yes? What would be the best excuse?
(In case anybody's wondering, the correct answers are: 1) Hell if I know; 2) They probably do matter, but you'll get by without them; 3) No, they don't, and in a couple of months you will get a summer tutoring job that will enable you to write a kick-ass personal statement, so don't worry about that. Oh, and you don't actually want to be a medievalist, so any research interests you make up now will be moot; 4) No, there will be really cool people who give good parties, and you will like them a lot; 5) None of the above; 6) No, your mother has given you a complex about your handwriting. Filling them in by hand will be fine; 7) YES, for God's sake, YES.)
Monday, January 23, 2012
Tempestuous
So, slightly crappy used bookstores in towns where there is a Big Box MegaUniversity? It turns out that they are GREAT if you are collecting secondhand copies of texts that have been assigned many, many times at the Big Box MegaUniversity over the years. I'm now the proud owner of nineteen copies of The Tempest, assorted editions, at an average cost of around $1.50 a pop. Nice.
(And yes, the books are for my students, and no, I don't usually buy their textbooks myself! But I am directing a really exciting Honors project involving The Tempest in performance, and I realized rather late in the game, too late to order textbooks through the usual channels, that it would be a great opportunity to get her and her actors into the Brit Lit I classroom. The fact that the play is apparently subversive enough to be banned in Arizona is a nice little side bonus, although I didn't know about that at the time.)
Plus, I get to show them Helen Mirren as Prospero/a! This is going to be so much fun!
(And yes, the books are for my students, and no, I don't usually buy their textbooks myself! But I am directing a really exciting Honors project involving The Tempest in performance, and I realized rather late in the game, too late to order textbooks through the usual channels, that it would be a great opportunity to get her and her actors into the Brit Lit I classroom. The fact that the play is apparently subversive enough to be banned in Arizona is a nice little side bonus, although I didn't know about that at the time.)
Plus, I get to show them Helen Mirren as Prospero/a! This is going to be so much fun!
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
so it goes like it goes...
So, it's another new semester around here, and new semesters have begun to feel less like an exciting new adventure and more like an endless loop. (This is why I'm such a lousy blogger these days, by the way: it feels like I've said it all before.)
Some notes on the first three days:
-- I'm teaching Brit Lit I for the first time in more than two years. Wow, it's a LOT easier to get people to drop this class than Brit Lit II. Show 'em some examples of Middle English on the first day and have them read 1,250 lines of Beowulf for homework, and a third of the class vanishes. I think I like it. (I now think I need a new strategy for Brit Lit II. Maybe I should hit them with a whopping big chunk of the Prelude?)
-- I'm really liking my Shakespeare class, so far. There are a whole lot of them -- 19, up from 13 last semester -- and they are talkers. I hope they keep up this level of energy.
-- I have seven students in Basic Comp. Six of them failed it last semester. I feel really sorry for the other one, who seems like a nice, responsible kid, and I'm already starting to regret my decision to move toward more peer workshopping in that class. OTOH, I'm glad that we're starting over with fresh assignments.
-- This will probably be my last time teaching Advanced Comp, as we're replacing it with a two-semester freshman comp sequence. I think it'll be a good class. I've got a whole slew of theater majors (they seem to clump together and register for their gen ed courses in bunches), and I always enjoy the theater kids; they are not always the best students, but they're quirky and passionate and interesting, and they tend to genuinely like being in college, unlike the business / pre-nursing / occupational therapy / culinary arts crowd, who are usually just in it for the piece of paper. (I feel a little guilty about stereotyping students based on majors, and there are always ones who defy the stereotypes, but on the whole they hold true.)
Some notes on the first three days:
-- I'm teaching Brit Lit I for the first time in more than two years. Wow, it's a LOT easier to get people to drop this class than Brit Lit II. Show 'em some examples of Middle English on the first day and have them read 1,250 lines of Beowulf for homework, and a third of the class vanishes. I think I like it. (I now think I need a new strategy for Brit Lit II. Maybe I should hit them with a whopping big chunk of the Prelude?)
-- I'm really liking my Shakespeare class, so far. There are a whole lot of them -- 19, up from 13 last semester -- and they are talkers. I hope they keep up this level of energy.
-- I have seven students in Basic Comp. Six of them failed it last semester. I feel really sorry for the other one, who seems like a nice, responsible kid, and I'm already starting to regret my decision to move toward more peer workshopping in that class. OTOH, I'm glad that we're starting over with fresh assignments.
-- This will probably be my last time teaching Advanced Comp, as we're replacing it with a two-semester freshman comp sequence. I think it'll be a good class. I've got a whole slew of theater majors (they seem to clump together and register for their gen ed courses in bunches), and I always enjoy the theater kids; they are not always the best students, but they're quirky and passionate and interesting, and they tend to genuinely like being in college, unlike the business / pre-nursing / occupational therapy / culinary arts crowd, who are usually just in it for the piece of paper. (I feel a little guilty about stereotyping students based on majors, and there are always ones who defy the stereotypes, but on the whole they hold true.)
Sunday, December 4, 2011
musings on the new comp textbook
We're getting a new textbook in Comp next semester. This means overhauling the Basic Comp course, which might not be a bad thing because I don't think what I'm doing now is working very well. (I think I will have them write actual essays and business letters and stuff from the beginning of the class, instead of starting with paragraphs. Because really, who writes a paragraph in isolation? I also think I might scrap most of the rhetorical-analysis stuff, since I'm starting to feel like I don't even know why I emphasize it so much, except that it was what we did in Basic Comp at the University of Basketball. And the students have trouble analyzing how a newspaper op-ed piece works; half of them are at the point where they're still trying to make sense of what it says, and none of them are used to going that meta.)
But anyway: the new book. It's ... different. I'm used to teaching with a no-nonsense handbook, the sort of text that explains what thesis statements are, gives examples of every conceivable citation style, and has a handful of sample essays by strong student writers, but pretty much leaves professors and students on their own as to content. But this new book is kind of a semi-handbook and semi-reader; it has all of these essays on assorted topics by professional writers, everyone from Dave Barry to Amy Tan, and I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do with the essays. Presumably they are not meant to be used as models, since the writing is too polished to be a reachable model for most students, and neither the style nor the subject matter resembles a typical college paper. Are the students supposed to be writing about them, then? What are they supposed to be saying about them?
Also, I find myself vaguely distrusting the new book because it has too many colored pictures, the typeface is too big, and there are footnotes defining words like "literal," "ambiguous," "Rubik's Cube," and "horrific." It feels, in short, like a K-12 text and not a college-level one. (This isn't actually a problem in Basic Comp, which pretty much is a K-12-level course, but I feel like it would be vaguely insulting to spring this text on regular freshman comp students. But then, I was the sort of kid who habitually took offense at notes explaining the meaning or pronunciation of words, even when I was in elementary school, and I don't know that this is necessarily a normal reaction.)
Growf. I think I have a hard time coping with change.
But anyway: the new book. It's ... different. I'm used to teaching with a no-nonsense handbook, the sort of text that explains what thesis statements are, gives examples of every conceivable citation style, and has a handful of sample essays by strong student writers, but pretty much leaves professors and students on their own as to content. But this new book is kind of a semi-handbook and semi-reader; it has all of these essays on assorted topics by professional writers, everyone from Dave Barry to Amy Tan, and I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do with the essays. Presumably they are not meant to be used as models, since the writing is too polished to be a reachable model for most students, and neither the style nor the subject matter resembles a typical college paper. Are the students supposed to be writing about them, then? What are they supposed to be saying about them?
Also, I find myself vaguely distrusting the new book because it has too many colored pictures, the typeface is too big, and there are footnotes defining words like "literal," "ambiguous," "Rubik's Cube," and "horrific." It feels, in short, like a K-12 text and not a college-level one. (This isn't actually a problem in Basic Comp, which pretty much is a K-12-level course, but I feel like it would be vaguely insulting to spring this text on regular freshman comp students. But then, I was the sort of kid who habitually took offense at notes explaining the meaning or pronunciation of words, even when I was in elementary school, and I don't know that this is necessarily a normal reaction.)
Growf. I think I have a hard time coping with change.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
The Norton Anthology is dead, long live the Norton Anthology
So, it appears that yet another edition of the Norton Anthology of English Literature is on its way. I'm not too sure how I feel about that. Didn't the last one come out only about five years ago? I remember being taken by surprise when I started my first full-time job and realized the one I used in grad school had been replaced.
No more A Room of One's Own, at least not in its entirety. Hello Mrs. Dalloway, instead. No more bringing the Joan Baez CD to class so we can all listen to Mary Hamilton; no more comparing the lists of women writers included in three different editions of the Norton. I'm sure we'll find some other stuff to talk about with Mrs. Dalloway -- who is, for a moment, very nearly a stranger. I don't even remember whether I liked her or not when I was twenty. I suppose I will find out whether I like her now.
No more "Song: Men of England," another piece with a nice musical tie-in.
No more pairing Brian Friel's Translations with Eavan Boland's That the Science of Cartography is Limited. Both gone from the new edition, I shall miss them both. I remember the first time I taught them together, in a classroom with a neglected set of school maps from the mid-twentieth-century shoved in one of the corners. I remember pulling them out of the corner, on an impulse, flipping from map to map, English and French Colonies, Westward Expansion, and Civil War. Asking students what they noticed about the stories the maps told, and the stories they didn't tell. I will miss the end of Translations, with Hugh reading from the Aeneid as the lights go out: as powerful an argument for why stories matter as any I know.
My current Brit Lit II class seems to be left cold by most of these texts, by the way. (They were even left cold when I tried to repeat the map trick; maybe it has to be an ad hoc thing.) Maybe that's just as well; I would have liked my last time teaching them to be filled with fireworks and spark, but this way, I may regret the loss less.
No more A Room of One's Own, at least not in its entirety. Hello Mrs. Dalloway, instead. No more bringing the Joan Baez CD to class so we can all listen to Mary Hamilton; no more comparing the lists of women writers included in three different editions of the Norton. I'm sure we'll find some other stuff to talk about with Mrs. Dalloway -- who is, for a moment, very nearly a stranger. I don't even remember whether I liked her or not when I was twenty. I suppose I will find out whether I like her now.
No more "Song: Men of England," another piece with a nice musical tie-in.
No more pairing Brian Friel's Translations with Eavan Boland's That the Science of Cartography is Limited. Both gone from the new edition, I shall miss them both. I remember the first time I taught them together, in a classroom with a neglected set of school maps from the mid-twentieth-century shoved in one of the corners. I remember pulling them out of the corner, on an impulse, flipping from map to map, English and French Colonies, Westward Expansion, and Civil War. Asking students what they noticed about the stories the maps told, and the stories they didn't tell. I will miss the end of Translations, with Hugh reading from the Aeneid as the lights go out: as powerful an argument for why stories matter as any I know.
My current Brit Lit II class seems to be left cold by most of these texts, by the way. (They were even left cold when I tried to repeat the map trick; maybe it has to be an ad hoc thing.) Maybe that's just as well; I would have liked my last time teaching them to be filled with fireworks and spark, but this way, I may regret the loss less.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
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.)
(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.)
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