Archive for the 'Paedagogy' Category

Fall Back

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on November 2, 2008
in Academia, Cheese Sandwich, NaBloPoMo and Paedagogy
. 6 Comments

I used to really love the Fall change back from Daylight Saving Time (which really seems like it should be hyphenated, like Daylight-Saving Time, but let’s not get into it) to regular old daylight-wasting time. It was particularly fun when we happened to be out at a bar that would normally close at 2:00 Sunday morning, but after 1:59 we went right back around to 1:00 and had another hour of dancing. That was fun. Last night, unfortunately, I was already long in bed by that time and when I woke up this morning all my fancy clocks had already reset for me, so there was basically zero fun to be had. Now all I am is an hour more tired than I should be and feeling like getting in bed with a book. It sucks to be all old and responsible and professional and stuff, man. Sigh.

Speaking of professional life, I have been DEEPLY FUCKING ENSCONCED in the world of job applications lately, and man oh man is it a self-involved process. Today, for example, I had to prepare a statement of my teaching philosophy, which I have been unable to complete to my satisfaction for the past three years, making it the focus of the worst case of writer’s block I have ever had. All the agony was for nothing, of course, as it wound up being not much more than “Blah blah blah active learning blah blah peer collaboration blah blah close reading blah blah critical analysis blah gag gag puke” — not exactly the boldest statement I have ever made, but at least it’s done. I also had to come up with a statement of my research program (”Blah blah dissertation blah blah book manuscript blah blah future plans blah methodology blah wank wank”), which was similarly awful as I basically only have a research program in the most nebulous and hypothetical sense.

Even for a person as self-involved and introspective as I am, it gets more than a little nauseating to think about myself this intensely and this much. I suppose we should think of this process as a “great opportunity” to think about “who we are” “as academics” and what we “care about” and what kinds of “contributions” we want to make “to the academy” and the “classroom” and all, but let’s face it: writing these documents is a giant pain in the ass. I can barely even stand to proofread them because the onanistic ourobourosness of it all is just too sickening. It’s good I usually get things right on the first draft. (HA.)

After having done all that and gone to the gym today (I am so virtuous and good), I am enjoying an evening of vegetating, staring at the wall, and listening to the new Jenny Lewis. After all, tomorrow comes all too soon. When it gets here, I will be spending the day in the office conferring with my freshmen whippersnappers, all of whom are agonizing about their current essays because they “just can’t think of anything to say.” TELL ME ABOUT IT, YOU WHINERS. FUCKING TELL ME ABOUT IT.

Halloween Weekend, I am Almost There.

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on October 31, 2008
in Cheese Sandwich and Paedagogy
. Closed

Oh my god, y’all, I am up in my office right now and I actually have thirty minutes to myself, due to a couple of last-minute cancellations in my packed schedule of student conferences. This week has been one of those weeks wherein every single spare second of my time has been planned, plotted, and scheduled to death. I have barely been able to check on the internet every now and then, and let’s not even TALK about how behind I am on television watching, butt scratching, and whiskey swilling.

Actually, hold on a second. I have to go take a minute for myself.

Okay, I am back. If you MUST know, I had to go to the ladies’ room. It was a really special moment in there, too, as it’s the first chance I’ve had to go since I left the house this morning.

Sweet sesame cracker but I am busy lately. Part of it is that it is late in the semester and the school duties are piling up; part of it is that its job application season; and part of it is my own damned fault (as usual). See, I have canceled classes next Wednesday, because I plan on staying up late on election night and either celebrating my butt off or weeping myself dry — either way, I won’t feel like school the next day. This is all great and fine, except it means that all the student meetings and things I would normally put on the schedule for Wednesday had to be done this week, or Monday. (I don’t even want to tell you how horribly busy my Monday is going to be. Shudder.)

On the one hand: day off. On the other hand: you never get a day off without paying out the nose. This is science.

After my conferences are done today, I blazing out of here so fast there will be a trail of dust behind me. It’s not just that I’m so eager for the weekend (I AM), but I also have to run a whole bunch of errands before my Halloween party — including buy the remaining pieces of my costume! Of course I did not obtain them ahead of time, despite the fact that I have known what my costume would be for ages now. What would a holiday be without frantic last-minute planning, I ask you?

And what are you doing for Halloween?

A Festive Airing of Grievances (Part 2)

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on October 13, 2008
in Paedagogy
. 2 Comments

The Dickcheese I mentioned previously isn’t the only student here at Wordsmith who has threatened to file a grade grievance against me — let me tell you about a student I had this summer.  I think I will call him Bubba.  “Bubba” sounds like the name of a crazy-ass redneck, right?  That’s what I’m going for.

So, Bubba plagiarized his final paper for his literature class.  He just straight up googled, copied, and pasted.  (That’s what we call the old “Google, Copy, Paste,” in the academic parlance.)  It took me about five minutes from the time I began reading “his” essay until I had not only noticed it was plagiarized but had also found, bookmarked, printed out, highlighted, and cross-referenced the three websites whence the stolen material had come.  It was an open and shut case.

Unfortunately, the process for dealing with such matters is not open and shut.  It requires the sending of eighty-seven letters to eighty-seven different deans and vice presidents, the sacrifice of a Christian virgin, and the performance of certain other sacred and indescribable academic rites at the altar of the god of student judicial affairs.

Before any of this could happen, though, I had to make a legitimate effort to meet with the young whippersnapper.  This is one of the rules. In my communications with the Bubba, however, things got a little bit crazy.  I had asked him to let me know when he could meet me, but I didn’t say why I needed to see him.  The first thing he did was start sending me a series of crazy emails demanding to know why he couldn’t have his paper back like everyone else and oh, by the way, no one has mentioned it, but he sure as shit didn’t PLAGIARIZE anything, oh no. Alls he DID, see, was use a thesaurus to come up with some better vocabulary, which he THOUGHT I would appreciate, but he GUESSED he was WRONG ABOUT ME.  Also, Bubba wrote, he was willing to “fight to the death” over this issue, if it came to it.  The series of emails (SERIES!  Like, sixteen of them!) kept trickling into my inbox, and all the while he never answered my question of when we could meet.

Finally, exhausted by the whole endless game, I just told him via email that I would be submitting his crazy, redneck ass to the proper authorities.  It was at this point that Bubba wrote back, “I am glad you are submitting this to [The Proper Authorities], because otherwise I was going to have to take it to the Dean myself!”  And then I realized, without a fucking doubt, how crazy the kid actually was.  Did he honestly believe he could file a grade grievance over this matter?  Over a blatantly (and poorly) plagiarized essay?  What the everloving fuck?

Things eventually began to wind down, though.  I suppose Bubba either came to his senses or his parents gave him a talking to, but he decided to confess — via another series of crazy emails, of course.  When the hearing finally came around, I was armed with a massive folder of evidence: not just his essay and the three plagiarized articles I’d found online, but also the series of crazy email denials, crazy email confessions, and desperate email apologies.  Bubba didn’t even show up to the hearing.

After having to go through that endless, stressful, sanity-defying process (which stretched throughout the summer and into this Fall semester), I am no longer worried by the prospect of a grade grievance.  I doubt old Dickcheese will even go through with his threat — surely he’ll see the futility in it, right?  But then again, Bubba never saw that futility until after I had had to jump through all of the eighty-seven procedural hoops. I suppose relying on a student to see common sense is like waiting for help at the DMV.  You may as well just pour yourself a cocktail, put up your feet, and get really good and damn comfortable.

A Festive Airing of Grievances (Part 1)

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on October 11, 2008
in Cheese Sandwich and Paedagogy
. 5 Comments

It’s been another horrifyingly long week - so long, in fact, that last night I was too tired to finish the one bottle of light beer I had opened, and instead I trundled off to bed at 10:00.  THE SHAME.

I spent the week conferring with my writing students about their essay revisions.  As much as I love my writing students this semester, it’s still a rather daunting task.  I believe I have bitched about the mental exhaustion it entails before (and probably several times), so I’ll leave that off now.  You’re welcome.

The best part about my week of conferences, however, was the chest-blistering heartburn and skull-crushing, eye-watering headache I acquired after a night of pub trivia and beer consumption.  There is something magical and evil in the draught beer at our trivia bar: every time I drink more than one glass of it (which, let’s face it, is every time I go there), I get a rip-roaring hangover (migraine?) headache like you would not believe.  Every single time.  I don’t even have to get drunk there to get one of their patented death-grip headaches.  Science cannot explain this.

I suffered through the next day, which involved teaching two classes and conferring with about 18 students, by sheer force of will alone.  It is lucky I did not murder a person.

To be more specific, it is lucky I did not murder this one student from last spring, let’s call him Dickcheese, who came by to complain about his participation grade.

Here’s the deal with Dickcheese: He spoke up in class almost every day.  He was a real participator!  And yet, I gave him a middling grade for participation.  I had to.  He almost never had his books or a notebook in class (which, in a literature class based on close reading, is a serious problem), and I busted him using his cell phone in class on several occasions.  Both of those crimes lower the participation grade, as clearly indicated on the syllabus.  Simple.  Clear.  Those are the rules of the game.

But good old Dickcheese, he cannot accept this.  He is not even interested in the fact that my (hypothetically) raising his participation grade to a B, an A, or even an A+, would not change his semester average.  He barely even got a B in the first place.  Some might call that a generous B.  Dickcheese does not care.  It’s the principle of the matter for him, see.  (And here, I agree.  It absolutely is the principle of the matter.)

Dickcheese, after the discussion on this issue had pretty much circled around as many times as it could, decided it would then be appropriate to berate me for my syllabus.  He did not appreciate the fact that we had spent more time on literature he didn’t like than on literature he did like.  His favorite poet had been discussed for only one day, whereas a long novel he did not like (but couldn’t be bothered to remember, because if it wasn’t Favorite Poet, it wasn’t worth his time) was discussed for several days.  Never mind the fact that he was comparing a 50-line lyric poem with a 300-page novel.  Never mind THAT, because THAT would require sense and LOGIC, FORTHELOVEOFDOG.

Dickcheese has told me that if I do not change his grade, he will file a grade grievance against me.  Bring it on, I say. The way the school works, they cannot actually force an instructor to change a grade.  They might recommend it, but I doubt they will even do that once they hear both sides.  I am not even concerned about this.  I will, however, be GREATLY FUCKING AMUSED at his imminent disappointment.

The fact of the matter is, the dude did speak up a lot in class, which — IN THEORY — instructors appreciate.  However, most of the shit he said in class was either incomprehensible or just incredibly far off target, due to his likely being high all the time. (He was even high, I suspect, when he came by my office, if I know anything about what people’s eyes look like after they burn one, and I think that I do.)  In class, I usually had to find some way to transition from what he had said back to the true thread of discussion, which was not ever easy. I would have been happier if the poor bastard had kept his mouth shut, is the sad fact.

Whippersnappers for President!

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on October 1, 2008
in Grammar and Paedagogy
. 5 Comments

So far, this week has been one magical moment after the next, most of which have involved grading.  I know, you are all incredibly jealous of the fact that every couple of weeks I have to read, analyze, grade, and comment on hundreds of student essays that demonstrate only the most minimal understanding of English language or literature.  I know I shouldn’t boast, but, hey, sometimes I just can’t help myself.

It’s a good thing, though, to know that my students are all Regulars, not those pesky Élites we all love to hate.  (And for a hilarious/terrifying look at the gap between the Regulars and the Élites, please to see this piece by George Saunders in The New Yorker.)

Here’s an example of just how Regular they are:

In the enlightenment era there were many of fascinating writings all with many different meanings.  When thinking about enlightenment and readins of that nature we tend to think of letters and poems during the 18th century and dates prior to the French revolution.  This era by some is even known as the Age of Reason.  One writing that I am going to focus on and translate in depth to what is really being said is a piece by the famous writer [redacted] titles [redacted].  This poem goes to show a controversial way of stating that beauty is above all.

This story which was written by the inspiration of an actual event carries many messages and a lot of humor in it. [Redacted] takes a look at the situations that are raised by the takings of a lock of hair from a young woman.  The passionate theft of this young woman caused a small feud between the two families that were of the passionate man and the family of the young woman.  The lock that was clipped from the young woman’s head who is named Belinda is now sought after by the families in feud.  This poem then goes on with an abundance of drama and persistence of the passion of love and with that embedded in the story brings out humor and hatred in the poem and makes it a good read.  The two major themes from this poem though are up for debate is lust-obsession and morality.

[And yes, before you ask, this writer is a native speaker of English.  He's from the area and I'm betting his daddy owns either a lot of land and/or a really pretty sailboat.]

[Also, I'm not trying to hide the name of the text from you, but I don't want people searching the title to wind up here.]

Even beyond the appallingly incomprehensible way in which this is written, there are almost too many factual inaccuracies to count. Beyond all that, what’s the thesis?  “These are two themes?” THAT’S ALL YOU GOT?

I am pretty sure this dude would make a great president!  He’s approximately as coherent and correct as Sarah Palin is, right?  Let’s hear it for the Regulars!