Today I am lucky enough to shirk the duty of teaching my first two classes. Instead of listening to me yak on about the pleasures of enthymemic logic, they will get to listen to some “instructional” librarian tell them all about the different databases that could help them with their current research project. I, for one, am actually pretty excited about this, as I hope I’ll be learning about some new databases that I don’t already use, but I can bet that the kids will be a little less “amped” about the whole thing. I do hear that the librarian brings candy, usually, so that could be good. Too bad I can’t just have my friend Sho come do the talk; the kids would totally dig him, because he is cool and stuff.
In other news, I am doing The Death of Ivan Ilyich this week, which I love even more than I remembered I did (in contrast, for example, to last week’s The Cherry Orchard, which, it turns out, I love significantly less than I remembered I did). Parts of that thing were simply perfect. Lately I have been finding myself more completely absorbed by the reading for my class than I usually am by things outside my field of expertise. A couple of weeks ago, for example, I practically had to go find a new pair of pants after I read Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” and Shelley’s “Defence of Poetry” in one sitting.
This is all excellent for me, but my spirits admittedly dampen when faced with a room full of undergrads who “just don’t know what to do with poetry,” because, I assume, they only know how to talk about plots and characters and heroes. (Nevermind that poetry often has all of those things; they are convinced that it’s nothing more than a complex web of “symbols” out to snare them at every turn.) I still say the simple act of opening a fucking dictionary would put them miles ahead of where they currently are. Today, for example, I plan on asking them why it was so important to Ivan Ilyich that his life be “decorous.” How much you want to bet that they launch some argument about his obsession with interior decorating, and oh! the irony of the curtains for which he sacrificed that decorous life.
Man, I don’t know if I could make databases sound cool to freshmen, but I think I could explain to them that Google is not the be-all and end-all of research tools. I guess candy would help too.
Yeah, but because you are young and cool, they would, like, identify with you, and they would be all, “HE thinks databases are cool, SO….”
Anyway, the lady we had for our session, whom I had never met before, apparently had a voice “like that one neighbor on Family Guy,” or so one of my students confided in me. Seriously, so so boring a presenter. Augh. Anyway, I learned all about the databases.
Also, I seemed to be looking at this right when you were commenting!
I was searching for information about \’How To Be An Interior Decorator\’, and this your page (\’dulce et decorum est / pro cortina mori\’) was in search results. Not sure why it appeared, but your site is still interesting to read :)