Overwhelmed by beauty

We know that April is hard in academia; I don't deny it. And I don't want to diminish the suffering of others, and of myself (I was appallingly cranky yesterday, in fact, for no discernible reason). But perhaps a distraction is okay?

I always feel that April shouldn't be so hard: Spring is (finally) here (for most of us; sorry, Bardiac!), summer is nigh, and the world is suddenly blindingly green and full of flowers.

Also, I get to have this outside of our living room and dining room windows for a good three weeks:

So, as I try to buckle down to the last batches of papers--and can I say that, while I have some very good students, especially in composition, this is a year in which, for some reason, I have quite a few students who really struggle with writing, more than usual? (That was a far from exemplary sentence, actually. Perhaps it's infectious)--I'm going to pause to reflect on some good things:

*I just took my Ancient Greek exam. Somehow we were able to host a 3x/week Greek class in our dining room for both semesters, and I have temporarily (thanks, cramming!) mastered histami verbs and the aorist passive tense.

*I have no idea when I'll actually use my Ancient Greek, other than to be able to pronounce Greek words when they come up in older literary criticism. But it's great to be able to pursue an intellectual hobby for fun.

*Bonaventure continues adorable and is the most outgoing baby I've ever met. We don't know where he got it. I mean, he's ten months old, and he totally knows how to work a room.

*Here's a cute picture of Bonaventure:

*Kalamazoo is next week! I'll miss the meet-up, but I'm taking the whole family, which should be fun--and I'm looking forward to the book exhibit and what looks to be nice weather. And, of course, to thinking about the Middle Ages again.

*This semester, I managed to write my conference paper and redraft an article that I made a mess of two years ago. The article needs work, but, last I looked at it (some weeks ago, alas), it is much more interesting than the original mess. I mention this by way of acknowledging to myself that I did, in fact, get some writing done this semester.

*At the end of May, my good friend H. from grad school is going to visit for the weekend. We plan to watch a lot of Doc Martin and catch up.

*In June, my dad and stepmother are coming to visit. Hooray!

*I'm sufficiently green to actually be excited about chairing the Humanities division next year. Don't throw this back in my face when I'm bemoaning the task come October. I'm even excited about running a search in the fall. What's wrong with me?

*It's May!

A sign of spring?

A rabbit just gave birth in our backyard.

I missed the birth itself, but saw her just a minute later, digging around and covering the babies all up. Yes, there is now a hole full of baby rabbits in our backyard.

In the middle of the yard, I should add: unprotected by shrubs or trees. I'm worried about them--especially because the mother is now off careening around the neighborhood, being chased by two other rabbits (one of which chased the other for a good fifteen minutes while she covered her babies. It was pretty comical, actually).

However. This is Nature, after all. I'm sure that mama rabbit can take care of her baby bunnies without our intervention. Right?

We are, of course, keeping the cats inside for the near future.

What would *you* do?

For some reason or other, I qualify to renew my driver's license--which expires in six weeks--through the mail, thereby avoiding a trip to the DMV.

However, I loathe my driver's license picture. I look like a murderous hippie.

Is it worth a trip to the DMV to get a new picture? (If it helps: The agency is about 15 minutes away, and it's in a miniscule town, so the lines aren't too horribly bad. However, I am just about as likely to get another ghastly picture, so....)

Yes, I'm breaking a 33-day blog silence to ask this.

Inbox 9

I don't seem to be able to get to Inbox Zero, a concept to which I read a reference and have latched on. I haven't actually read about this concept, but from its name I assume that it means keeping your inbox empty. Sounds good to me, as I'm just a disaster when it comes to email.

So on Sunday, the last day of Spring Break, I did a pretty substantial inbox purging. It didn't actually take all that long. The worst of it was having to apologize to so many people for having taken such a very long time to answer (in one case, TWO AND A HALF YEARS. It was a social email, so nothing work-related went awry, but nonetheless very embarrassing).

And since then--all of three days!--I've been able to stay at exactly 9 emails. Not the same 9 emails, though, which is a little weird. It just seems that there are always 9 things to which I am unprepared to reply (or can't face, or whatever).

Still, it's pretty close. I feel absurdly virtuous.

(OK, I must answer one of those messages tonight, too. Inbox 8, here I come!)

If

If I grade all the papers, I can have ice cream (non-dairy, because of B's stupid allergy, but it's still pretty tasty).

On getting out of the way, or, What to do with a boring class

I'm in my (gasp!) 6th year of teaching the Brit Lit surveys--both halves. And, dare I say it? I'm getting bored.

This was my fun class for my first few years at Field College. It was a lot more engaging (and engaged) than comp, and less daunting than my upper-level seminars. I relaxed into it; discussion was pretty good, and I got to know the readings very well.

But now--well, I think that my standards for a good discussion are higher, to be honest. And my notes are, for the most part, 5 or 6 years old (and I just don't want to take the time to take a whole new angle on prepping the same texts!). I've changed up a few of the items on my syllabus, but with a 4/4 load, I need to keep this class pretty much ready to roll.

So I've been bored and mostly unimpressed with student participation, even though it's a smallish class--usually no more than 20 students (which is still my biggest class). I largely (if not entirely) blame myself for the middling participation; I'm pretty directive in my comments and questions, and EVERYthing that they say passes through me, in true Lame Discussion style (where the professor comments on every single remark that students make, and they only ever look at the professor as they speak).

The other day, sitting on the bed watching Bonaventure play with his xylophone, I decided to try something new. And today I took the first step towards what might be an improved survey experience.

Inspired by What Now?, this morning I tried something like the "written discussions" that she's written about on her blog: I put a question on the board asking them to compare and contrast an issue in a couple of texts, told them to write about it for 5 minutes to get their thoughts organized, and then told them that I wasn't going to speak for the next little while. Instead, one of them would talk about what she/he had written, and I expected others to jump in when something in the discussion connected with what they had written or gave them a new idea.

What took place over the next twenty (!!) minutes was the best discussion that they'd had all semester. It was great! I took notes, so that when they finally ran out of steam I was able to go back to topics that I thought we could look at in more depth. They had excellent things to say. They argued. Nearly everyone spoke, including a couple of students who never speak. And they talked to each other, not just to me.

So next week, we're rolling out Phase Two. I've asked them to keep an eye out for things that interest them in the reading and to think about what kinds of interpretive questions we might ask of the text. Then--I've warned them--we'll start with a 10-minute period in which I will not speak, and they will be responsible for discussing their impressions and coming up with some critical questions for discussion.

This probably isn't radical in the least, but it feels vaguely scary to me--to step away from my tried and (sort of) true agenda. But it might really inject some energy and life into a class that was feeling a little dead, without requiring me to actually do more prep work (although it will mean that I'll have to be more on my toes in class--which is great! An end to the boredom!). I'm sort of absurdly excited about this.

The thing is, as I told my students this morning, one of the main goals of the course is to help them develop the ability to have interesting discussions about literature and ask good interpretive questions about texts. I haven't been letting them do this. By getting out of the way, maybe I can create the space for them to really learn.

All power to the Mihis!

(I am, by the way, aware of the grammatical problem with that title.)

In my last post, I hinted at a few grand things that were happening at work.

Well, #1: As of yesterday, TM and I have tenure. This is kind of weird, since "tenure" always seemed like something that was only held by people who'd been professors for ages and were hopelessly ahead of me. And yet, here we are.

#2: Last month, in anticipation of his receiving tenure, TM was voted faculty vice president for next year, which means that he'll be faculty president in 2014-15.

#3: And then I was asked to chair the Humanities Division. I'll keep directing the Honors Program for at least one year, too, which means--wait for it--a 3/2 teaching load! Woo hoo! (And I never say "woo hoo.")

#4: In an effort to totally concentrate power over Field College within our household, we have arranged to have Bonaventure named Vice President of Academic Affairs, and the cats are now Associate Deans (Student Life and Admissions, respectively). That's right: We now run everything.