Syllabus Impossible

I've been agonizing over a revision to a course that I'm teaching this semester--a 100-level, Gen Ed, lecture-style course.

And this morning I realized what the problem is.

In revising the syllabus, I would like to change only two or so books, and somehow achieve a perfect balance of the following:

• male and female authors
• authors of different ethnicities (from all around the world--so including, e.g., African-American, African, Asian, Indian, white USAmerican, European, Latino/a, etc.)
• authors writing in different national languages
• authors writing from, or about, different religious perspectives or backgrounds--ideally including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, atheism, and Hinduism

All of this in no more than nine books, please!

Clearly, I have set myself an impossible task.

And so I release myself into imperfection.

Besides, I'll be teaching this course at least once a year forever. I can change it up.

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.

The Gift of Well-Earned Praise

My favorite thing about teaching is when I can tell a student that he or she has done something wonderful.

Three recent opportunities:

*Running into a student (whom I've had in lots of classes, and who's graduating soon) outside the library. I said hi and kept going, but then turned back--to tell her that she's doing terrific work in my seminar and that her writing and thinking have improved tremendously this year. What was even nicer was hearing back from the student, a few weeks later, about how she told her dad that afternoon that she'd had a good day because I'd said that to her. Best two minutes I spent all week.

*Congratulating a student who won first place in the all-College writing competition this year (for a paper that he'd written in my class!). This is a very bright student who's struggled a bit with his writing, and it was so good to see that work pay off.

*Honestly being able to tell the Honors students, when they've finished presenting their senior theses to a big crowd of friends and faculty, that they've done a beautiful job. Because they always do a beautiful job, no matter how rough the road to getting there has been. I'm really going to miss some of these people.

It's so easy to complain, complain, complain. Lord knows I do enough of it. And sometimes students--including the ones I just mentioned!--can drive me nuts. But it's wonderful to notice the good that they do, and to recognize them for it. College can be rough: commas are spliced, papers are late, students struggle with one thing or another. But every year I actually get to see a few of them settle into the mature scholars--and people--that they're capable of being, and it's beautiful.

When I get to tell a student that she's done something magnificent, I feel that I've given her a gift--and the pleasure I see reflected in her, the pride, is an even better gift that she's giving to me.

I'm such a sap. I feel teary just thinking about it.

This must be my fault

How many times this semester have I had this conversation?

Any student: "Can I come see you about [fillintheblank]?"

Me: "Of course. Why don't you stop by during my office hours?"

Student: "When are your office hours again?"

Me: "Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 9 to 10."

Student pauses, thinks, finally says: "Okay! I'll come by on Wednesday." Scribbles a note in his/her calendar.

Me: "Uh, actually--oh, all right. I'll see you then." (I'm in my office anyway, after all, and who needs the confusion....)

Favorite Writing Resources?

I was just glancing over the comments on Notorious Ph.D.'s/ADM's writing group (which I totally plan to join this fall, by the way--I just missed the first couple of weeks this summer and got out of sync), and something completely obvious occurred to me:

Writing an extensive, independent research paper without strong external direction/guidelines does not come naturally to (almost) anyone. (I expect that there are exceptions. Incredibly enviable exceptions. But we aren't going to talk about them.)

Now, I knew this from my own experience, of course. But I also serve as second reader on all those pesky Honors thesis committees (by which I mean, ALL of the pesky--and even the rare non-pesky--Honors thesis committees at Field College), and undergraduate students, quite understandably, haven't really figured this out. They've never had to write such a paper. They're used to deadlines and people making them do things, and then doing said things often in haste, at the last minute, and under tremendous stress.

As we all know, that system doesn't work well for...well, almost anything, but you can probably pull it off on a 5-page paper. Not, however, on a thesis.

So what I'd like to do is to compile a list of resources, websites, and tips for students who are struggling with motivation, scheduling, organizing, drafting, etc. etc. And what better place to go than to the blogosphere? Since so many of you have blogged so beautifully and brilliantly about such things in the past?

I ask, therefore, that you comment with your favorite resources, motivators, organizers, what-have-you. Feel free to just remind me of a post that you've already written on the subject, too. I do plan to look around and do some of the work myself, but I'm very likely to miss some things--so I would love love LOVE your suggestions! And my students would love them even more!

(And let's not forget the thesis advisors and readers out there, who are surely as frustrated as I am when students don't even start writing until December.... Think of this as service! Tenure file, here we come!!)

Sans Snark

My last post was, I know, rather embittered. I'm not entirely embittered, however (although I do kind of hate teaching statements, much as I recognize their utility and would ask for them were I to chair a search). But the first half of the week was long. And we're approaching the end of the semester. So sarcasm is easier to pull off than sincerity (isn't it always?).

So: Here are some better thoughts. I'm not going to put together a philosophy statement because, well, that's too much work. Instead, I'll aim for bullets of teaching goodness:

• This first-year bio student in Brit Lit II. He's taking the class for a gen ed requirement, and first-years don't normally do very well in the class, but, despite not being a brilliant writer, he works really hard and it shows. It delights me to consider this biology student who will go out into the world able to say intelligent things about Jane Eyre, Virginia Woolf, and Wordsworth. That's what a liberal arts school is for.
• The student who remarked, on leaving class on Monday: "Dr. Mihi, you're awesome. Just FYI."
  
• A student challenged her grade on the first paper that she wrote for one of my courses--I'm one of a team of instructors for the course, so challenges have a particular procedure that brings in a third party. The third party upheld my grade decision. The student then approached me to ask if it would be all right if she met with me about future papers (why in the world wouldn't it be okay?); she started participating much more actively and doing better on quizzes; she showed me a draft of her next paper--and she just got an A- on said paper. It's clear that she fundamentally didn't get the expectations for the first one, and now she does--and her work is actually good! So pleasing.
• Those moments in class--especially in the surveys, which is funny because they're the courses I've taught the most--when I suddenly realize something completely new about the text that we're discussing. It makes me realize how much easier it can be to generate new thoughts through a conversation than stuck on one's own.
  
• The fact that I am now able to go completely off script in class on a regular basis. In fact, there are days when I don't use my prep outline at all. And teaching is so much more fun.
• And honestly, sometimes, I just really love my students. All of them, more or less. Not for anything that they've done, but because they're there, and they're trying (or not), and going through all their stuff, and I get to play a part in that.

See? I can be lovey, too.

Sisyphus's Teaching Philosophy Meme

OK, so there's this.

In the spirit of P, however, I've got to go for snark. It is April, after all, and I've got absolutely no patience left. At the moment, my real life teaching philosophy is DO YOUR GODDAMN HOMEWORK AND GET TO CLASS ON TIME, I AM TIRED OF YOUR BULLSHIT.

So here's my world-weary, when-will-this-semester-end version, born of actually serving on search committees that require teaching philosophy statements.

My teaching philosophy centers on students. I believe in a dynamic classroom where students learn actively. I eschew all forms of sage-on-the-stage, chalk-and-talk, rhymey-blimey-whatever teaching. Eschew it! My pedagogy requires students to talk, to discuss things, to actually participate in the learning process. In this, I am refreshingly newfangled.

In my student-centric classroom, we occasionally sit in circles. This radically disrupts the power structure of the classroom, enabling students to take an active role in their own educations. Sometimes we also do group work.

Further, I am committed to developing critical thinking in my students by getting beyond the notion that learning is all about memorizing facts and regurgitating them at the professor's will. I know that this is a new idea, but bear with me here--as it turns out, literary study is not just about plot summary! I ask challenging and innovative questions to connect the material to students' own lives. I also use PowerPoint sometimes, because today's students are digital natives who learn best through visual stimulus and are excellent multitaskers. These are all very exciting new ideas that I came up with myself while I was TA'ing that course that one time.

Hm. That might actually be too snarky even for me. And truthfully, I can't say that my real-life teaching philosophy was that much better (content-wise, anyway; I had very little teaching experience when I first went on the market). I've tried my hand at writing more original teaching statements, and they all sounded just a little crazy. But "student-centered" has GOT to be the tiredest classroom-descriptor in the book.

At one point in the last committee I served on, I started fantasizing about receiving a statement of teaching philosophy that embraced straight lecture; at least it would have been different.

If I'm in a better mood later this week, maybe I'll take Sis up on her challenge for real and write about what does bring me joy in teaching. Up until about a week ago, I had plenty to say. And, okay, honestly, my seminar students are rocking right now, so I'll leave you with that bit of positivity.

My Biggus Dickus moment

Last week was a looong week, which, because of an overnight field trip, didn't really end until Saturday night.

And Monday was a loong day.

We had two candidates on campus on Monday, for two different positions: one in my department, and another which is not in my department but on whose search committee I'm serving. So, long story short, on Monday I got to campus at 7:45 and went home at 4:15. During the eight and a half hours that I was on campus, I taught for one hour, went to one meeting, and spent five solid hours with the two different candidates.

Then I had my Chaucer seminar from 6-8:45.

So I was tired when I got to class. I had changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and taken out my contacts, declaring a one-woman casual day (not that anyone, in class or on faculty, would care), and taken a little nap, but I was far from refreshed. We were reading MT and RT,* though, so at least the subject matter promised to be interesting.

And it was interesting. I was engaged in class, becoming more energized as the discussion went on; of course, given what we were discussing, there was also a lot of humor and some degree of silliness accompanying our Very Serious Exploration of the Literature. The class, I should mention, has fifteen students in it, nearly all of them very bright, talkative, and fun. (I'm lucky.)

But I do think that the fatigue, the lingering stress of driving a vanful of students around all weekend, the exhausting small talk with job candidates, etc., was still there, underlying my enjoyment of the class. And that it was these factors that contributed to my completely losing it about halfway through.

We were talking about female sexuality. One student had posited the possibility that these fabliaux are in some way affirmative of female sexual pleasure. But it's hard to say that this is what's going on in RT, which contains what we could call rape. So I asked them, What image of female sexuality does this tale present us with?

One student raised his hand. Slowly, thoughtfully, he began to speak. It seems like...women have sexual desires, but they don't show them. [I'm paraphrasing, badly, but it'll do.] And then these opportunities--arise, and they seize them.

A flicker of a smile, a smirk even, passed over my face. I quelled it. Immature! Get a grip! I quashed the giggle that I could feel brewing. But I also caught a smothered smile on the face of a student to my right...and across from me...and to the left.... So I did what was probably the worst thing that I could do, then, and forcibly arranged my face into a very solemn expression. If he doesn't say "arise" again, I'll be fine.

He went on, becoming more impassioned as he spoke. It's like the text is saying that they don't normally express these desires, but then these unexpected circumstances just...arise!

The laugh was there. I could feel it actually in my mouth. For a moment, I contemplated running from the room--but I wouldn't have made it. I looked at him, tragically, and managed to say, "I'm sorry," before bursting into laughter, laughter wild and uncontrolled, tears running down my cheeks. I covered my mouth, I looked down at the table, it didn't matter.

The class erupted, as you'd imagine.

Oh, my God, it felt so good.

*I'm acronyming these titles in the EXTREMELY unlikely event of a student's googling them + some other key words and finding this. Sorry for the obscurity, non-medievalists.

Friendliness

Apparently the Field College yearbook does these "superlative" awards for faculty and staff--who knew? They're mostly on things about sports team fan-hood and other stuff for which I wouldn't particularly want to be competitive, but they seem like a nice enough idea.

I know about this because I'm apparently a finalist for one of them--there's been a tie, so they're having a vote-off. I'm in the running for "Most likely to be a friend after graduation."

I surely do think that's sweet (though it must be said that my money is on the other contender.)

And you know, I don't think that my students' thinking of me as having friend potential undermines my authority. I am pretty much positive that my students respect me--and, if they don't, I don't know about it. My classes are difficult and my evaluations very good; many of my students work hard in my courses. I seldom get the sense that anyone is trying to pull one over on me; this is not to say that they never do, but I'm okay with letting the occasional con artist get away with something* if it means that, on the whole, there is trust between me and my students (as well as the peace of mind that comes with not looking for cons).

This is, by the way, a marked change from my first year or so here. I knew that a lot of my students liked me back then, but I knew that a lot didn't--and, more to the point, I felt highly embattled. I did have disrespectful students. They freaked me the hell out. And even when I didn't run into open hostility, I was highly alert to the possibility of disrespect. I think that a lot of this--and a great deal of my stress and unhappiness--came from being afraid of my students. That's a perfectly normal new-teacher feeling, I think, but it doesn't make for a sustainable career.

And now, you know, it's just a pleasure to walk around campus, especially because we're such a small school, and to have to pause every few seconds for a "Hi, Chelsea, how's it going?" or "Lou! Congratulations on the law school admission!" or "Hey, Veronica, you feeling better this week?"

It's nice. It's a community. And, in a weird way, it is precisely my position of relative power and authority (as a professor) that enables me to make all of these fond and dispassionate connections--to be friendly without judgment, as it were. I don't need to assess these people as peers; I merely need to be compassionate, and fair, and courteous, and somehow, that makes me love them.

*We're NOT talking plagiarism here--that's a different issue--and one that I do catch on occasion.

A Valentine's Convergence

I'm teaching a seminar on Monday nights this semester. The other day, I realized that this meant that I'll be teaching on the night of Valentine's Day. "Well, that's kind of too bad," I thought idly. I don't care deeply about Valentine's Day, but some students might care, a bit, and anyway, it could be an excuse for some candy. So I reflected further: "I should do something fun in class that day to commemorate it. But what?

"It should have something to do with what I'm teaching. Perhaps I'm teaching a love vision, or something. Hey, what am I teaching that night, anyway?" I asked myself.

I checked. And...lo! The Parliament of Fowls!

How weird is that, eh?

If you're not a medievalist, I'll tell you: The Parliament of Fowls contains the first known English reference to Valentine's Day. HOW WEIRD IS THAT????

Also, I consider that in itself to be sufficiently celebratory, which means that I'm off the hook for bringing candy. Sweet!

New Year, New Feeling

Well, this is different.

My first year of teaching, I started every semester--nay, every day--quaking with dread. Okay, that's an exaggeration--but a really slight one, honestly. I feared teaching. I looked forward to its end. Sometimes, during class itself, I liked it all right...but I inwardly rejoiced at the end of every hour, every week, every semester.

That's no way to live a life, right? Just waiting for it to end?

As it happened--and as typically happens, and as I expected to happen--the dread and the fear diminished with time. In my second year, I noticed that I did not actively dread each class; I even seemed less sweaty. By last year (my third), there was little or no anxiety most of the time; I no longer feverishly reread my notes right up until class time, and I had figured out that just being, you know, a mostly-normal person in class, one who talks to students and pauses and makes jokes and whatnot, made teaching feel almost natural. This year, I'm feeling even more at my ease, and I like getting to know my students and interacting with them in class (for the most part).

Today was our first day back; I just had one class, at 9:30. I wasn't nervous (not consciously; my body does persist in having some first-day-nervous-symptoms, but I don't actually feel it in my brain, which is where it counts) (if that makes any sense) (okay, to give you an example, at one point I just kept dropping the caps of dry-erase markers on the floor, and I noticed that my hands had a little shake to them, which surprised me, because I didn't feel nervous. That's what I mean) (I also like completely lost my voice about 10 minutes in to class--which is something that I think happens in the first class of every semester, now that I think about it! I'm going to need to start carrying water on Day 1) (and I'm going to end this sentence now because it's way too long).

(Let's start again.)

I wasn't consciously nervous (how's that?), but neither was I, like, thrilled to be back in the swing of things. When people say that they're eager to get back intp the classroom, I don't really know what they're talking about--as much as I like my job, I would always rather be able to stay home and read some interesting books than to have to go someplace, and be prepared, and talk, you know? But today, about 20 minutes into the class, I realized that I was having fun.

And even when I first walked in, I said "Good morning!" with more real enthusiasm than I think I usually do. And I was happy to see the students whom I've had before.

And, as I was leaving class and a new class was filing in, several of the students in the new class waved and greeted me cheerily. One did pretty miserably in my class last year--but it was good to see her. I felt...happy.

So, um. This probably makes it sound like I'm normally a miserable wretch who hates teaching; such is not the case. Teaching is pretty fun. But, again, I'd always rather be on vacation. But today? For a little while? I was happy to be back in the classroom.

How freaking weird is that?

No Pictures of the House Yet

But between the Wife of Bath and "Batter my heart, three-personed God," my Brit Lit survey has become an apologia for domestic violence.

(I actually prefaced my concluding comments last week with, "Ignore the justification for domestic abuse that is about to come out of my mouth." And, when a student said, "But I just don't like the idea of it; I wouldn't want to be raped by God," I at least had the wherewithal to add, "Good! I don't want you to want that.")

Feminism in the Fields

Dulles terminal (1)

I've not been online much lately, other than for work-related emails. I do occasionally read y'all's blogs, but haven't even been doing much of that, to be honest. Here's the thing: I had bloglines bookmarked on my work computer. I have now switched to Google Reader (which I like less, but eh, who cares), and have not bookmarked it on my work computer. Lo! I spend a lot less time reading blog posts, and correspondingly less time writing them.

Although I would dearly love to muck around on blogs while I'm in the office, I think I'm going to maintain the current system for as long as I can stand to do so.

What I need to post about, really, is the whole committing-to-Field-for-real-at-least-for-now thing that buying a house seems to entail, but right now I'd like to just say a few words about teaching a course in feminist theory at a small college in the middle of the most conservative county in midwestern Field State.

It's weird.

First, a bit of context: My feminism seminar is required for senior English literature majors. OK, feminism per se isn't required for them, but we have a senior capstone course with a changing topic, and I have taught it for the last three years (and will continue to teach it until we either get a new hire or I decide that I don't want to teach it again and find someone else with the room to pick it up--hooray! I love this course). In the past, I've done gender in medieval literature and literature and technology (from manuscript to the digital age, essentially--I'm trying not to use my real course titles), and this year it's feminism. So the thing is, most students don't get a choice: They take what I offer in the year that they're up.

For the most part, feminism isn't a problem for this year's batch. We have five senior English (literature) majors this year who are required to take the class, and then two English (writing) majors and a literature minor who are taking it either because they need another literature seminar or because they just wanted to take it. All of them are seniors. And, of the eight, seven are apparently digging it (even though one is a little hung up on the whole thing of not saying she's a feminist because of all the mean feminists, despite the fact that she is SO A FEMINIST oh my god, she just needs to own it, seriously). Oh, and all of them are women, which was pure coincidence but probably does affect the course content (I had to talk about clitoral pleasure the other day, for example; I would have done so with men in the room, of course, but I can't pretend that the audience doesn't make a difference).

But there's one student about whom I worry. She's lovely--wicked smart and sweet, and about the hippest dresser on campus (I love her style). She writes beautifully, is kind and conscientious, and is a generally delightful person. And she is very religious, and quite conservative. And, oh yeah, shy--I think that, in the 2.5 semesters that I've had her, she has voluntarily spoken in class once.

I know from her response papers that the material in this course is problematic for her. She writes thoughtfully and well, but poses questions like, "Is the patriarchy really such a bad thing?" This, of course, from a bright, strong young woman (and she is strong, even if she's quiet). And she never says a word in class unless I call on her directly.

The other day I had her in my office for a different reason and took the opportunity to talk to her a bit about the course. I figure that this is the most I can do right now: I told her that I appreciated her comments, that she's not obligated to agree with everything (or anything) that we read in class, that she is welcome to push against them and measure them against her own views, and that she should know that she's not the only one who finds some of the readings troubling. In class, I try to present her point of view whenever I can (since she doesn't speak and I don't feel that it would be right, in this case, to single her out to voice her view--particularly because some of her objections are on putatively religious grounds).

It's hard. I worry about her when I prep.

And it makes me hyper aware of how much I do embrace feminist theory, even though some of it is, in fact, a little divorced from reality (ecriture feminine, I'm looking at you), and how hard it is to feign neutral objectivity when presenting material with which I am on board to a group of students who are--all but one--vocally in agreement with me on at least a majority of points.

Still, it could have been worse. English majors, at least, tend to skew progressive, whatever their professed political beliefs.

When you don't really see your students

Las Vegas airport (3)

You know how, sometimes, you're looking at a student in class and listening to what she's saying, and then you realize that you're not really listening at all? And yet you're doing all the nodding and eye-widening and everything else that goes into managing a class discussion?

And you know how, sometimes, your eyes cease to focus at all? Sometimes you can't even make your eyes focus, which is a little troubling--with the result that you start thinking more about how there should really only be one Cody instead of three than about what Cody is actually saying.

(No offense to Cody. I find that this is more typically the result of fatigue than it is the result of anything that Cody may be saying.)

Well, I can do you one better.

Last year, I had a student in Comp named (for the sake of argument) Susan. Susan was a hard-working but fundamentally unprepared young woman who struggled quite a bit with the basics of writing--her papers had a lot of grammatical errors and tended to be rather ponderous, heaving along without ever saying very much. But Susan was conscientious about meeting with me to talk about her work.

One day, I was headed over to my office for a meeting with Susan. It was very bright and sunny out, and--a propos of nothing, of course--I had just started taking a new heart regulator (this was prior to my surgery--I'm no longer on any meds). I stopped in at the mailroom first; the building that it was in was dark compared to the brightness of the day outside, so I wasn't too surprised when, as I looked at an envelope from my mailbox, I saw one of those little squiggly sunspots that you sometimes get when you've been looking at a bright light.

I went back outside and entered my building. The sunspots were still there, but whatever--they happen.

Susan is waiting for me, and we enter my office. She sits down opposite me. I'm having trouble seeing her clearly, what with the sunspots and all, but they'll pass, right? She gives me her paper and I start to look at it.

[I just noticed that I've just switched to the present tense, but fixing it would be such a bother. Please bear with me--it's been a long day!]

Something is wrong. The sunspots are growing and seem sort of...striped? In a vibrating, zig-zag way? It's hard to describe. I'm having a tough time reading her paper. I look at Susan, and I can't see her face.

Now, despite the fact that this is something I've never experienced before, I don't actually panic, because my mother gets ocular migraines pretty frequently and has described them well enough that I can immediately identify what's happening. I know that it should pass in about twenty minutes, and there's no discomfort--but it's so weird; it's like my brain isn't registering anything where her face is. It's a gap, a hole, a shimmery...deflection. Susan is talking about her paper; I listen to her, sort of, but I'm also pretty preoccupied with marvelling over the nothing that is where her face should be. I can see her hair; I can see everything else--at least, in my peripheral vision; wherever my eyes focus, there is nothing. Just a...lack, a lack that is also somehow full of vibrating light.

I look back at the paper. Obviously I can't read it. Well, I mean, I can read the words at the edges of the pages, but only where my eyes aren't focusing. I can't read the middle of any lines. I can't read where I'm looking.

Clearly, what I should have done at this point was to tell Susan that I was experiencing a bizarre neurological phenomenon and could she please come back in fifteen minutes. I should have said, "Although I appear to be completely normal and am, in fact, entirely calm, I can no longer see your face nor can I read. But I'll be fine in a quarter of an hour, so can you hang on until then?" But it seemed so preposterous and above all alarming that of course I said nothing and somehow managed to piece together enough of a sense of the paper out of the corners of my eyes (which is really hard, if you've never tried it) to give her some kind of advice (God knows what I said) and send her on her way.

The ocular migraine passed in a predicatable fashion, and I was fine.

I then promptly called the doctor and he changed my prescription.

(It really is a coincidence that the carpet looks like some kind of crazy eye.)

Working Weekend

I'm just back--well, I came back last night, technically--from the annual undergraduate conference to which we always take 12-20 of our majors. This year we had about 16, I think, although a few drove up on their own just for Saturday (we drove the majority up in a couple of big vans Friday night; it's only two hours away). Three of them were reading papers that they'd written for my seminar in the Fall; of these, two are currently student teaching, and it was really nice to catch up with them, since they're not on campus this semester.

This is my third trip to the conference, and it's an exhausting affair, with an early Saturday morning, a lot of stressful driving, and meals taken in dining halls and fast food restaurants. I only went to the panels where our students were presenting--for really, I do not need to hear any other papers--so I was able to spend a good chunk of Saturday afternoon reading a novel that I'll be teaching soon, and the plenary speaker (a creative non-fiction author) was excellent, but it's still an event that inevitably wears me out. There's a lot of talking. That's a big part of it. Because many of our students--and I love them for this--like talking to us. They're comfortable. They'll sit around and chat.

It is a thing that I love about Field, the way that students and faculty get along. I know my students. Even in the survey, I know many of them pretty well by now (all 22 of them or whatever it is). Yesterday I had lunch with a very quiet first-year who's in that class and now I know about her reading interests, her cat, and how she feels about cities. I had a long talk on the drive back with a junior transfer that made me much more sympathetic to her grad school aspirations and the difficulties that she'll have to overcome to get there. And I found myself, in many of these conversations, forgetting that they're the students and I'm the professor and thinking of them just as people--as friends, almost.

This is what I love about teaching here: that, while I am teaching and grading and guiding and so forth, I also get to care about and even--in a non-creepy way--love my students, love their individual humanity and their brand new thoughts and their difficulties and enthusiasms. It doesn't hurt that the culture here is overwhelmingly nice; my students are nice people, for the most part, too.

It's a good thing, this conference. It shows our students a broader world of academic discourse, it lets us get to know them better, and it gives them some nice English-major bonding time. But it does mean spending essentially an extra 24 hours on the clock. So today, I think that I will chiefly read the novel for seminar, do some laundry, and Cuddle Kitties. And go to the gym. And we have fun dinner plans.

But the R&R, and the articles I want to read, and everything else, might just have to wait for the upcoming very busy week to get done. Perhaps I can allow myself that.

On the other hand, my students rock

I appreciate the commiseration on the previous post! I love my bloggers.

So here we are on the first day of Spring Break (WOO HOO), the sun is shining brightly, the snow is still melting, TM made dutch babies for breakfast (delicious and not at all cannibalistic), and away we go. Plans for the week include getting the garden organized, a two-night stay in New Northern City (which is not actually new, but new to us, because we've never been there, but I've only ever heard good things about it), and reading Crime and Punishment so as not to be prepping by the skin of my teeth for the rest of the month.

And, to counterbalance yesterday's moroseness (morosity?), here are three nice student-related things that happened yesterday.

1. Class went pretty well. We were on our last day of Jane Eyre, and we had a good, energetic discussion--at least, the 80% of the students who showed up (the Friday afternoon before break) and I did.
   
   
2. I am now the Faculty Advisor for the newly formed Field College Pagan Society. Yes, that's right: a Christian college in the most conservative county in Field State now has a Pagan Society. I am, may I say, touched that the organizers thought of me when deciding whom to ask to be an advisor. I'd never met one of them, though she's tangentially in the major, but the other is a first-year who was in my comp class last semester, and...yes. I'm touched. (Also, they told me that I don't have to attend their Sabat and Esbat rituals if I'm busy, so the time commitment should be pretty minimal.)
   
   Apparently my weird-kid credentials haven't all abandoned me. I'm pretty happy about that.
   
   
3. I had a really great hour-long talk with one of my advisees after class. She's cool--very bright, loves English, very...overcommited. That was the main point of the conversation: whether or not she should stick with secondary ed certification, since what she really wants to do is to go to grad school, not to teach high school. Yes, I know. But what she seems to want--now--is to take more English classes, to pursue an Honors thesis, to study art and foreign languages, and from my point of view, anyway, sacrificing those things to get professional certification in something that you're not very interested in is a waste of college. Perhaps I'm overly committed to the ideal of a liberal arts education? At least she doesn't have parental pressure to stay with Education. But I told her to think hard about it over the break and see how the decision to give up one thing or another felt. And then we just talked, about travel and what it's like to live in different places, and it was lovely--maybe in part because so many of our students are reluctant to think about moving out of Central Field State at all. It's exciting to have a student who wants to travel abroad and live all over the place.

Anyway. The point is that it was, in the balance a good day, capped by the pleasure of a dinner out with TM.

And now I'm off to get started on some Spring Break activities. First up: Laundry!

Student! Why?

Oh, my Student! I know that you're having personal problems of an entirely legitimate nature. We met to discuss them. And I know that you are now supposed to be all better, and yet you continue to miss classes. Student, you have now missed eight classes, and according to the policy stated on my syllabus, that entitles you to an automatic F.

Student, you have also failed to turn in any of the four papers that have been due in the course. Remember that alternate schedule we came up with, Student? Remember how you said you were already working on one of the (two-page) assignments? Well, Student, I have read neither hide nor hair of you. What's happening?

I emailed you, O Student, recommending that you withdraw from the class. To me, this seems obvious. You will get an F, no matter what, unless you withdraw. You must be clear on this, O my poor beset Student! For I know you from before, and you're pretty sharp. In fact, you're not only sharp, but interesting, and have a mean sense of unconventional style. You are intriguingly arty, O Student, and let it be known that I do in fact really like you.

But Student! Why, given that I emailed you with the inevitable outcome, and that you have read your email (for lo, I can check these things), why did you come to class today? Are we going to draw this out into a protracted negotiation that will only end in misery, despair, and/or the breaking of my perfectly reasonable policy?

Why, Student? Why can't we all just accept the world the way it is?

And why do I seem to have one of you every single semester???

Things, Glorious Things

• After a very poky Monday and a "stern" (= kind and smiley, for I am seldom stern) lecture about participation on Wednesday, Brit Lit has become much livelier and more fun. We had a very good discussion on Wednesday, and today I organized them into four teams to stage two debates onByron (we just finished DJ Canto 1) and some of the other texts we've read. The debates were, in brief, the following: Byron vs. Wordsworth ("The Death Match") on the purpose of poetry, and Dona Julia vs. Elizabeth Bennet ("Head to Head") on sexual morality and the role of women. To tell the truth, I was really nervous about this activity, because it unlike anything I had ever tried before and I was afraid that they wouldn't be willing to be a bit silly and get into it. But lo, get into it they did, and we had a fabulous time that actually yielded some very interesting insights.
• Insight: Willingness to be a shameless ham is helpful when one wants one's students to get into the silly activities that one has planned.
  
• I have to spend all day on campus tomorrow for a big recruiting event. We start at 8 am. Why in God's name do we start at 8 am? Why in God's name do people in the Midwest do everything (like get up, eat dinner, EVERYTHING) so damn early???
• My copy-edited manuscript came in the mail yesterday; I have less than three weeks to turn it around. I am reading it, but oh, it is not a fast process. No it is not. When do I get to retire these dusty old paragraphs?
• I ought to be grading. It would be very very good of me to grade four seminar papers this evening. Yes. I would be very sage (in the French sense of the word) if I were to grade these four papers. Perhaps I shall dwell on that for a while.
  
• The cats have been reasonably well behaved lately, although Priscilla meowed at the door at 3:45 this morning and Pertelote vomited up her breakfast in a particularly disgusting fashion on Wednesday.
• Priscilla has a new nickname. Medievalists, rejoice: Henceforth, the talkative and MOST melodramatic cat in our house shall be called Constant Mews.
• I laugh every time I think about it. Constant Mews!
• Ha ha ha ha!
  

Improbable Questions

Brit Lit II this semester is taking an odd turn.

Things are going well, overall--don't get me wrong. We've analyzed Romantic poetry half to death and are on to Pride and Prejudice (although I always find the first day of a novel difficult in the largish survey--it feels like we're leaving so much out, and it's hard for me to be organized. Whatever, though; it'll sort itself out).

But it seems like every day I get one of those left-field questions. Or at least quasi-left-field. Like, okay, I can see why you'd want to know that, but I don't know everything, people.

This isn't necessarily a problem. But someone in Brit Lit I wrote on hir evals last semester that "sometimes when a student asks a question, [I] say 'hm' and ask the rest of the class what they think, which makes [the student] think that [I] don't know the answer" (not hir exact words, but very close). So, pedagogical blindness of the comment aside, I'm feeling a little sensitive about revealing ignorance.

Examples:

• What, exactly, does the word "plastic" mean in the context of [a particular Coleridge poem]? Yes, I should know this. But we read like ten pages of poetry for that day, and I read past the word with a sense of what it means, and it didn't occur to me to look up exactly how he was using it. In hindsight, I should've used this as an opportunity to demonstrate OED online, but they were in small groups and time was almost up. I should also call myself out on having a "sense" of something's meaning and actually look it up, especially when I'm teaching close reading. Lesson learned.

• To what extent is [that recent quasi-biographical movie about the author we're currently reading]* based on her real life? Dude, not much, I expect, but maybe a little. It doesn't really matter. I don't go in for biographical criticism, okay? And you shouldn't either.
  *edited to avoid Googling, since I did tell the student to find out and let us know.
  

and finally,

• How common was wolf's-bane in late eighteenth-century England? I sincerely hope that my ignorance of THIS doesn't reflect badly on me, but who knows.

Anyway, I'm actually NOT an 18th/19th-century specialist, and I wish that I could tell them that, sometimes, without totally undermining my legitimacy. Because really, I am legitimate in here, even if I don't know [author's] biography in full and don't know the etymology of "plastic," or have a working knowledge of pre-Victorian botany. And yes, I will admit that I don't know, but it'd be nice not to have to do that like every day, right?

Teaching Update

This week, I am teaching Wordsworth and Coleridge and Keats and Lermontov.
Next week I teach Austen and Turgenev.
Then we're up to Byron and Stendhal.
Still on deck for the FIRST HALF of the semester are (C.) Bronte and Dostoevsky. For, across my two courses, I am teaching 7 novels in the first 8 weeks of the semester, along with a pile of poetry.

And yes, I am a medievalist, thanks for asking!


Dude, none of this is a complaint. It was lovely to lie around reading Pride and Prejudice all weekend. I've managed to work up a couple of syllabi that, while entirely outside "my" field, mean that I get to engage in sustained pleasure reading all semester. (And much as I love medieval literature, it isn't...pleasure reading. Sorry.)

It helps that the seminar is terrific fun. I've got ten students, and fully seven of them can be counted on to talk at length about interesting things--to ask questions, answer questions, get frustrated, argue. There's Off the Wall Question Guy, Snarky Aside Girl, at least two Very Hardworking And Industrious Women, a couple of Rank Geniuses, more than one Poet, and plenty of Interesting Brains. They talk to each other, saying things like, "I appreciate the way that you phrased that, and that helps me to understand what you're saying, but I think that Emily was right when she said [X] because of [Y]." They're the kind of class that comes with pre-established inside jokes, who already know and like each other (and me, which helps), who are (for the most part) not at all shy. And now, a couple of students have volunteered to bring us food and/or coffee once in a while. So there's a little silliness, plenty of laughing, and a good bit of very smart discussion. Every meeting leaves me joyful. It's a pretty sweet business, indeed.