Only the strong survive.
In spite of the looming business of the depressertation, I am taking the weekend off. Clarabella is coming to town for a weekend visit, and therefore my schedule is completely packed with plans such as “relaxing” and “having fun.”
Bill Faulkner, have some patience, already. I will will deal with you next week.
I hope you all have fabulous weekend plans, too. In fact, let me copy Sundry and ask: what are you doing this weekend? I must know!
In spite of the annoying feeling of incompetence I felt when having to deal with the troubling papers my writing class turned in, teaching on the whole is going really well here.
I mentioned before that I am doing a couple of survey classes that focus on texts from way, way outside the Modernist period that is my field of specialization. It can be very intimidating to be faced with teaching a 16-week class in a subject you have never taught before and have, in fact, planned specifically to avoid. I mean, I studied Comparative Lit, not English, which meant that I never had any graduate-level courses in ancient, medieval, or renaissance literature — instead my courses were all in one of my three areas (Modern Anglophone, Modern European, Modern Travel Narratives). The last time I have read many of the texts I’m teaching was in my own undergraduate survey courses, and some of them I have never read at all.
Nonetheless, I am feeling really, really good about the literature courses I am teaching. I am honestly enjoying the readings and I find I have more than enough things to say about them. I have things to say! About stuff! Many, many things to say. The students ask questions and I know the answers — a situation which baffles me endlessly (I didn’t know I knew this much about ancient Greece, for example), but I’ll take it. I’ve been very comfortable in the front of the room, and not once has my face turned a splotchy tomato red in anticipation of stepping in front of the class. In short, I am feeling competent. This is good.
And surely I will not live to eat these words, right? Surely.
If you thought “would of gave” was bad, then sweet fancy Moses, you should have seen the assignments my writing students turned in last week. There was a near complete failure to understand the directions — many of them attempted to write about descriptive language without quoting any examples from the text, because apparently writing “he uses a lot of language that is descriptive, which helps to describe things” will suffice. Why bother citing the particulars, right? I’m sure your readers will take your word for it.
Worse than that, they made no attempt to disguise their prejudice against the particular ethnic group being discussed. They were all “these people” and “these neighborhoods,” talking out of their asses and eventually implying that anyone from outside the suburbs is engaged in “criminal activity” and “illegal situations.” Lord, how I dreaded going over the papers with them the next day. I think my response to the whole thing started somewhere around “Be careful of the cultural assumptions you are making” and warmed up to “This is something I take very seriously,” finishing with a resounding “You just…can’t say that.? It’s not cool.” The whole thing was horrible and awkward, and I am not entirely sure I handled it right. Damned chowderheads.
In other news, I spent Labor Day weekend buying new furniture at Ikea and then putting it together, and now my house has a bedroom and a coffee table. It is like living in the lap of luxury, I tell you what.
In still other news, it seems like I am only getting my comment-notification emails about half the time. Since I don’t always check this site itself, I have been missing some comments. Poo. Click that “Submit” button with extra enthusiasm, then. Submit!
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