Review Letter

It's time for the annual faculty review letter! But this time, we're in for a reversal. Yes, instead of my supervisor reviewing me, I'm going to review the university.

Dear University,

Once again, you've admitted a full class of first year students! Good job admissions folks.

And, somehow, against the odds, you've managed to retain a record percentage of students between the first and second year. Well done, people who've worked with first year students.

We remain an accredited institution of higher learning, though things were iffy for a bit there, related to, well, some iffy behavior in a specific area.

You've cut the employee pay raise promised six years ago, and in addition put everyone on a more than 3% furlough pay cut combo. You've also managed to cut funds for faculty/staff development, travel, etc. And you're continuing to up the ante for tenure and promotion in a mode of "continuous improvement."

And yet, our headmaster made a strong statement about loyalty by continuing the university's contribution to the specialized athletic area owned primarily by the city. Thank goodness the area serves the headmaster's favorite sport!

You've raised the numbers of students in classes by about 5% in my departement except for first year writing classes.

You put everyone in the university through a grueling one year evaluation and self-improvement process. The result for my department is that you think we should combine our linguistics and sci/tech writing majors. I hope the results for someone's area in the department was actually a little more useful.

You've cut tenure lines in most departments, and pulled searches even at the point of verbal commitment. You've hired more adjuncts than ever before, and given them less real job security.

But you've added a couple important administrative positions, including an alcohol awareness educator; this is especially important because our students aren't aware of alcohol, despite the fact that adults in our state have a higher rate of binge drinking than any other state. Go us.

We now serve coffee and have exercise machines in the library. We've cut almost all our journal subscriptions, haven't hired new librarians to fill empty positions, and are continuing efforts to clear our shelves of books so there will be more room for exercise machines. But you did recently decide to go back to buying reserved textbooks so that students who don't have the money to buy their own can read reserve books.

You've managed to hire men to interim serial positions despite their inexperience. For example, the headmaster's drinking buddy became assistant headmaster for a year, and is now filling another administrative position. It's supposed to be for two years, but seriously, who's counting when it's the headmaster's buddy, so you've dropped the "interim" from the title.

In summary, if you were a faculty member, you'd be on the brink of losing your job for incompetence. Thanks for playing.

Dances with Avatar

I finally saw Avatar this afternoon. I'm a couple months behind everyone else, but since I'm 400 years behind in my reading, I wouldn't worry about a couple months.

A couple things struck me. First, it felt like a movie that knew colonialist fantasy narratives are a problem, and yet it just has so much desire that it does colonialist fantasy anyway. It's like when you're hanging out with someone who doesn't want to be a sexist, and doesn't think of him/herself as a sexist, but just can't resist telling sexist jokes. And then s/he excuses the jokes, because they're just jokes, and so on.

The colonialist fantasy narrative is powerfully appealing to white folks, isn't it?*

(*And by "white" here, I mean dominant white Anglo-American culture, though there were some people of color represented within that dominant culture.)

So we get the white guy who goes native and becomes a better native than the natives, and so can save them, but look, there's a strong female native character who just happens to want to mate with the white guy who is now better at native stuff than the natives, but look, it's not all about high tech because she saves him at the end with a bow and arrow, just moments before she figures out to get his mask thing on just in time, but look, the spirituality stuff here is really real so he can get his fantasy body better than the old one, leadership of the group (since the old chief and next in line guy are dead), and the native woman.

The return of the repressed ghost of Rudyard Kipling.

The movie could have been a whole lot shorter, and a whole lot different if the helicopter pilot (imdb gives her character name as Trudy Chacon) had, at the moment of deciding she wouldn't participate in shooting up the hometree, also backed and raised up a tad and shot down the big helicopter ship and as many of the others as possible. She could have taken a lot down before they got turned around to fire back. Game over. Or if not over, seriously shortened. Take out the big gun helicopter things, and the indigenous folks could have taken out the rest in short order (because they'd have been convinced of the need, even with the big helicopter thingies down).

What would happen if a woman of color saved the day, and it wasn't the one the white hero is having sex with?

But then what would have happened to the white colonial fantasy? The white guy wouldn't have been needed to save the day by mastering the universe. And there wouldn't have been the need for the big fight at the end. And he wouldn't have gotten his temporarily-abled life with the indigenous folks back.

Speaking of the big fight, all I could think of, for both sides, was

Half a league, half a league,
  Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
  Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
  Rode the six hundred.

Yes, someone had blundered, on both sides. You just knew there was massive death in the making, but unlike the disastrous Ewok battles in whichever Star Wars film, I felt enough identification with both the white folks and the indigenous folks to think about hell and the jaws of death. That's something I never felt about the Storm Troopers, so maybe that's a good point about this film?

I went to the film with a friend from the Indian sub-continent, whose experiences of the world are really different from mine. My reaction to the film was sort of as a Native American allegory; she read it more from a world colonialism point of view. So, at the end, when the colonists were being kicked off, my reaction was that no amount of kicking white's out would work for very long; there's no way that a bigger, badder white army isn't coming back. That's my reading through Native American history. But, from a world colonialism perspective, if WWII messes up the European powers enough, one can end colonialism (even if just to morph it into imperialism).

The naming was interesting. There are two names for the indigenous folks in the film, Na'Vi, which is what the whites use, and the other name they use for themselves, Omaticaya (I think; I found something on the web that looked right). Is Omaticaya the name for the beings, or a subgroup? I could only remember "Na'Vi" when the film finished.

It felt to me like the way some indigenous groups have an outsider's name that's in common use, and may or may not have anything to do with what people call themselves. For example, if you were studying anthropology in the 60s, you might have learned about the Jivaro. "Jivaro" is a Quechua word that means basically "barbarian" and not what the Shuar call themselves. But because westerners had contact with Quechua speakers, and through them with the Shuar, they used the Quechua name. (Most now use Shuar, I think.)

How come the dragon thingies can only have one rider, but apparently a rider can have multiple dragon thingies? Seriously, if the bond is all that, shouldn't the rider feel something about his/her dragon thingy? (Yes, I realize, we had to have the very special dragon thingy to demonstrate just how much better than almost all the natives the white man is at doing native stuffs.)

There were points where the mechanics of the movie jumped out at me as very mechanical. It's like reading Titus compared to Lear. With Titus you can see the strings being pulled; that makes it easy to teach, because if you can teach students to see how the strings work in Titus, then they'll get Lear in a deeper way.

We get to meet the dangerous hammer beasties, big black scary beastie, and wolf pack-ish beasties because we'll need them later. But then they never figure into anyone's wanderings around the forest. Seriously, if there were big scary beasties wandering around the woods where I snowshoe, I'd make sure to mention that to my friends when we went out, and we'd keep our eyes open and not rub our braids together in the woods. (So watch, suddenly a grizzly's going to show up in the woods near my house having decided to vacation instead of hibernating; black bears are around, but not during winter!) It's the same thing with the very special dragon thingy, which jumps in as a concern only so we'll get the story of the five super special dragon thingy riders, which will matter later, because it's oh so important that the white guy can ride the biggest, baddest dragon thingy. Then, all the rest of the riding, no one ever bothers to watch out for them.

Another thing about the big predators. Why is it in films with big scary predators that the predators are just about to catch the hero when they get stuck in a tree because they're apparently too lousy at being predators to realize that trees have branches? (I'm looking at you, Jurassic Park.) Have the people who write these films never seen a dog go through the woods? And dogs, dogs are lousy predators compared to predators that actually have to kill to get a meal every single time. I bet no leopard ever has been slowed for a moment by a fork in a tree, certainly not when pursuing a slow humanoid.

I did enjoy Sigourney Weaver playing the role she did. I also thought she had one of the best lines about not playing with his braid or he'd go blind. Which made me wonder, shouldn't there be a whole braid thing instead of humanish kissing? Wouldn't you think these folks would rub braids or link up or something, instead of kissing and getting in a sort of hetero-human sexual position?

As long as I'm going scientific on you for a moment, did you see how the creatures tended to have two sets of front limbs, but the indigenous folks only had one set? Humans and others in our evolutionary line (say, vertebrates) tend to have a one limb set up front, one limb set in back, with a general tendency to one, two, many bones as you look at the limbs away from the main body. So, take our arms, one big bone at the top, two biggish bones at the next area, then a whole bunch of bones. That's the general form vertebrates have on earth. Now there's no reason to think that another planet might not evolve along a different model, but would two very different models happen to animals that are similar enough to do the link up thing? It's like if we were to be linking up with molluscs or something with a radial organization, or maybe insects with a bilateral organization, but really different segmentation evolution.

So, anyway, like everyone else, I thought the visual was pretty amazing (though the three D thing gave me a bad headache) and the narrative clunky with some serious colonialist narrative fantasy problems.

One Step Closer or Further Away

The powers that be in the Great State of the Northwoods gave NWU permission to raise our tuition/fees. The funding the state provides to our state system and our campus in particular has been dropping for a good long time. As far as I know, most state university systems have experienced the same sort of drop in funding.

In the late 70s, state funding paid for about 75% of a given student's eduction. Now, state funding pays for something like 22% of a given student's education. (Your state, system, or campus will probably be different, but it's likely to have experienced a massive drop in state funding for colleges and universities.)

Our plan is to raise tuition an additional chunk (over $1000, but under $1500) for each student; a fair portion of the additional funds will go to aid people with economic need. We'll move from being pretty much the cheapest four year school in the region to nearer the middle of the public pack at about $8000/year for undergrad tuition. If our students were already paying $30,000/year (as they do at Marquette), the additional money wouldn't seem like so much, but it's a huge jump for our students.

Basically, we're recognizing, accepting, and reacting to the long process of reduced state funding by asking students to pay more.

Some public universities have moved towards being private universities in all but name, I'm told. We're not there yet, but it seems like the pendulum is swinging pretty far that way.

For a while, the pendulum was more towards public funding. Programs like the GI bill (which helped pay for my father's education, along with my Mom working), grants, and so forth recognized that education is a public good, that having an educated citizenry helps us in all sorts of ways. You can be totally pragmatic and say that an educated citizenry is more economically productive, or you can be more holistic and say that an educated citizenry is more democratic.

But the pendulum's been swinging the other way for a while now, and the public believes that education is only a private good; we (the public) vote for people who promise to limit funding for the "undeserving," creating welfare queen nightmares, when in truth, the funding limits are for everyone who can't afford better, and to be honest, that's most of us.

To paint it with a broad stroke, I think private education is unethical. I know a lot of people go to private schools at some point, but I think (broadly speaking) if wealthier folks sent their kids to public schools, public schools would be better funded, because those wealthier folks would be willing to pay taxes to give their kids those opportunities. And they'd be arguing publicly for better school funding. And their arguments get heard.

Now my own NWU is taking a step closer to being private. Yeah, we've got a long ways to go, but there's another school down the road that's doing very well stepping ahead of us there, and our administration looks longlingly at them.

To be totally self-centered about this, the additional money should be good for me. There's talk of reducing comp class sizes from a standard 28 to 20, for example. That would reduce my grading load by a nice chunk. I still won't get the 3%+ "furlough" paycut back, nor will I get the 2% raise I was promised six years ago, that kept getting put off.

Unfortunately, I don't see how we can afford to do that without hiring ever more adjuncts. We treat our adjuncts with minimal decency; there's health insurance most semesters, because we try to put together full loads. But the pay's worse than it should be (as it is for we humanities folks here), and there's not even minimal job security, except that we keep hiring the same people. So maybe there's about the same job security as anywhere: we need warm bodies, and if you're moderately competent, you'll get rehired.

My department is already more than 50% adjuncts. So maybe the funding will help us hire some tt folks for lines we've lost in the past several years?

***Edited to add***

I should probably acknowledge that I taught at a private SLAC for three years. There were good folks there, faculty, staff and students. And there were some folks I don't miss at all, pretty much as anywhere. So, there's a level of hypocrisy, perhaps, in my saying I think private education is unethical. I'm not the first person to "sell out" because I needed a job.

I certainly don't think we're getting rid of private education, just the opposite. But I think we'd be a whole lot better off without it.

Relief and Generosity

I just finished facilitating that meeting. I guess I was really nervous about it, because I'm wiped now.

Sometimes, I really love my colleagues. Even the most cantankerous were thoughtful and generous. People listened to each other and responded with further thoughts. I looked around at the end (and we ended exactly on time) and everyone looked tired, but I sure learned a lot.

And I have hope for our future in a way I haven't much lately, hope that I'm really not the last generation of folks in English studies, hope that English studies will morph in ways I'll be proud and happy to be part of, even though I'm one of the most cantankerous.

Several people have stopped me in the hall or dropped by my office to say they thought the meeting was really good and even to say that I did a good job.

I have almost NO grading this weekend, but I am expecting the neighbor's pup to spend the day on Saturday, which should give me a reason to go try out the new snowshoes. I have things to read and a paper to work on, but it's so nice not to be staring at a stack of papers. (I have a partial stack of short paragraph assignments, but even that is partial.)

Now I'm going to go home. Maybe I'll take a shot at making fudge again!

Special Snowflakes: Senior Edition

I'm supposed to facilitate a meeting today in the department; it's a fairly important meeting, and comes right after our regularly scheduled department meeting. And since we're all supposed to attend department meetings unless there's some really important reason not to, it shouldn't be a difficult issue for folks to attend. They also had notice of the meeting a fair time ago.

That is, it's sort of like classes for students; you know when they are, and you attend unless something important comes up.

Why is it, then, that several colleagues have stopped me in the hall to let me know they couldn't attend because something important came up: a birthday party, an arts festival in the another town, etc.

One, I'm not taking roll and I'm not your mommy. Two, I know at least one of these people is going to want a "full report" about what happened, and you know what, I just may have something more important to do than take the time to give them that report.

It's not that I think choosing not to attend is a problem, but they really do sound a lot like the very special snowflakes who think I should make accomodations for their choices.

Grateful

I came home to a warm house this evening. It was totally wonderful to walk into the house and know immediately that the heat was working.

The furnace blower was out, and it seems like that's a sort of expensive part. At least I hope that's a more expensive part, because I don't want to see when a more expensive piece goes out.

And so, I'm grateful that the furnace company was able to send someone today, and that the furnace repairperson was able to figure out the problem, get the part, and repair things. And I'm especially grateful to have rejoined the middle class some years past, so that I can afford to pay for the repair without struggling.

I'm grateful that there's a minimal bump on my head, unworthy of all the whining I want to do about the door falling on me. As much as having the door fall on me hurt, I should have a bump the size of a melon to be convincing.

Amusingly, one of our office staffers ordered a new color paper; it's violet, and pretty much everyone is having all our copies made on violet right now, and there is much oohing and aahing about the lovely violet copies. We are all way too excited about this new-to-our-office paper color.

Irony?

Yesterday, I clicked and sent some money to the folks at the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota because they've had ice storms and lost water and electric systems pretty much. I've lived without potable water and without electricity for short times, and it's not great, but I was living in a warm, rainy area where I could boil my water and get some from the town water truck if the water system wasn't working. In South Dakota, in the middle of winter, though, that's a whole 'nother story. That's dangerous. So I clicked.

This afternoon, I got home around 5:30, ate, took a picture of my new snow shoes and got all excited about the prospect of going snow shoing maybe tomorrow afternoon, if I get home before dark.

Then I went and did the third of my four Chaucer discussion sessions at the library, and it was lovely. The folks there were great, the discussion fun. And a few stayed after to ask me if I would be doing more, because they were enjoying this, so we talked about some possibilities. It's very nice to feel appreciated.

Then I got home, sat down for a sec to check facebook and put a picture of my snowshoes up (because that's the sort of exciting update my friends get). And dang, it's cold. But unless I'm actively running around or teaching, I'm pretty much always cold in winter. My hands get cold typing, even. But boy, it really felt cold, so I thought, hey, I'll go to bed early and get warm!

And for a change, as I passed the thermostat in the hall, I bothered to turn on the light to look and make sure I hadn't screwed up the temperature, and it showed 56F. Now usually I set it to 67F, so it's not like I'm living in a sauna, but 56F is cold for inside my house! COLD!

I went down to look at the furnace, which is sort of futile, because I don't think Shakespeare ever wrote about furnace maintenance. There, on the furnace, is the instruction book that goes with it. At least that's something. So I try to figure out and remember where the pilot is supposed to be, and I think I found it, something that said "pilot viewing window" at least, and I didn't see a little person in a plane, so I think that was it. But there wasn't any light there.

I looked at the furnace "if this isn't working" instructions. Check the breaker switch or fuse is the first thing. The circuit breaker box is in the back bottom bedroom, in a corner of the closet behind a plastic organizer, so it's nigh unto difficult to see at best. I opened the closet, looked in, and the heavy oak folding closet door fell, hitting my head. That made me extra cheerful about the stupid builders of my house. (It was a folding door that hung from the frame on a sliding thing. Now it's a folding door that's sitting on the floor where it can't hurt anyone for the time being.)

But I didn't fall or lose consciousness, and there's not a spongy spot where it hit on the skull, nor do I even have a headache, so I don't think it's too bad. But if it were, I wouldn't be found for months, you know.

Have I mentioned that I had a detached retina once, possibly from a fall with a load of books while I was helping a friend move after her apartment tilted badly in an earthquake? I don't know for sure that's when it happened, but that seemed the most likely thing. Anyway, when I had the silicon "rubber" band put in (lots of fun that was, only NOT), the doctors put a lot of emphasis on my need to not take up boxing and not get hit by my boyfriend. (That seemed to be their theory of how I'd done it, although I told them it wasn't. They kept asking, though, because really, I guess they couldn't imagine a woman not being attached to a man who could beat her.) I mention this because I'm sort of paranoid about whacking my head, getting punched, or falling really hard. (Yes, I know the paranoia there isn't strong enough to keep me from jumping out of an airplane on purpose, riding my bike around, or trying to learn to ski. It's not logical. But I've been very careful not to pursue a boxing career.)

I found what turned out to be my retina detachment by realizing that I had a blind spot in my eye at the upper inside corner, which I figured out because I'd learned about the Hinman Collator, and how differences between what the two eyes saw would flicker. And then I was able to check by waving a finger up where the blind spot was, and seeing it disappear. (This wasn't the normal blind spot we have in each eye.) So you have to understand that I've been waving my fingers around the edges of my eye to see if I've suddenly developed a new blind spot. See, early modern text studies arcana has a purpose!

I pushed the door aside, negotiated myself around to try to see the breaker box door to find out which circuit breaker to turn off and on again for the furnace. It's #26, in case you were wondering, four up from the bottom of the unnumbered switches on the right. At least I hope so.

I went back to the furnace, and it made a little sound and then stopped.

Next on the list is to check the filter. I changed the filter in September, but I checked it, and it's dirty grey, and I had an extra, so I changed it again. Nothing.

There's a switch on the side, that looks like a light switch, so I tried flicking that on and off, and it did the same make a sound thing and then go off.

I called the emergency number of the furnace installers from when the house was new in 2000, and decided that 56F was not actually an emergency worthy of getting someone out of bed for, with the help of the answering service woman, who was kind and helpful. $200 minimum charge might have played into that decision. But also, 56F isn't likely to kill me when I have blankets and stuff.

It was cold when I got up this morning, and maybe the morning before, but I haven't been really at home enough to think about being cold since Sunday, so the furnace could have gone out whenever, and I might not have noticed for a day or two. Which is to say, it seems unlikely that a house would drop another 15F to something really unbearable in 8 hours, right? (Please tell me that's right!)

Have you ever noticed how all sorts of services assume there's an adult either home or who can easily come home whenever to take care of furnace stuff? It's a pain a lot of times for me as a single person, but at least I don't have the added responsibility of a little kid. I don't know how single parents manage. But I know a lot who do.

Tomorrow, I'll call my neighbor and see if she's going to be home, or have a friend who's either retired or likely to be free, to see if s/he can let in the furnace service folks if I can get an appointment tomorrow or Friday. If I can't get something tomorrow, and it's getting colder, I may stay with a friend for the night or get a hotel room. Brrrr!

I still haven't lost consciousness or gotten a headache, so I think I'll go try to get warm in bed and figure it's likely I won't die of a bad brain injury in my sleep. Nor do I seem to have a new blind spot.

So, is it ironic, or just pathetically stupid?

By the by: Here's the official website of this Lakota Nation, and the Disaster Relief information page they've set up. There's a donation link at the bottom of that page should you have resources to share. They sent me a nice email for my tax returns next year.

***

Addendum: When I checked this morning, the thermostat said it was 60 in the house. But there's still no pilot light or anything.

And my neighbor isn't home, and it's too early to call another person I know who could go.

AND, I read over the website of the local heating company that I would call, adn they have a trouble shooting thing that says if you have a self-igniting furnace you should turn the thermostat off for five minutes, then turn it on again and it should reignite.

Yay, my neighbor just called back and she's going to do that test, so maybe we can solve it!

In a final bit of news, I survived the night without further evidence of head injury, so I think that's okay.

It's Only Wednesday

It's been a sort of frustrating day. Some of that's my fault, some not.

I have a junior level class, and they had an assignment today. About a third of the people said they didn't know about the assignment because I hadn't mentioned it the class session before. It was on the syllabus and we had discussed it on the first day of class, just over a week ago. But I hadn't reminded them.

Other people had lineation problems. I should have foreseen that, because I know different people are using different editions (from the library to save money and such), but I didn't.

Then there's the line of people after each class who need to tell me about their special individual problem that prevented this or will prevent that and they didn't do the assignment due today, but can they make up the quiz if there's one tomorrow even though it says on the syllabus that they can't make up quizzes except in exceptional circumstances but they have a job interview and it's important and they didn't check their class schedule when they scheduled the job interview on Monday and doesn't that count as exceptional even though they didn't do the assignment for today?

Mostly they're patient and explain the issue, and not at all unreasonable, but at least a quarter of each class seems to have basic issues with something and needs special consideration, which means some 20 people a day want me to remember their special circumstances, which they've told me as I'm erasing a board and trying to get to my next class.

But there's inevitably one student who just barges into another student's explanation because he's so important that he just can't wait. (So far today, those have all been men.)

Students are sick, too. One is supposed to be out for two weeks, and wants to know what he should do to keep up. That's ten hours of class missed. I don't know if he's too ill to work on class stuff now or not. (Is this two weeks of keeping an injured limb still but okay to write, or two weeks of throwing up and sleeping a lot?) I suggested if not getting notes from classmates and then going over what we'd done, and contacting me with questions, but I sure don't want to have to reteach ten hours of class. Nor do I blame the student for getting sick. But I also know that student notes might not be sufficient to help a sick student keep up. (It's a writing class; how many students take notes about the freewriting and other stuff or would remember what they did freewriting about? How do you reproduce group work?)

We had the third quiz in my comp class today. The quizzes are open notes, closed book. It says so in the syllabus. When I gave the first quiz, I told them that, then didn't collect the quiz, handed out a copy of my reading notes and talked about notetaking. The second quiz went fine. But today, a student complained that he'd taken notes in his text and JUST NOW realized he couldn't use his text and could I just tell him this one thing from the quiz?

We're halfway through the second week of the semester. Are other folks having a crazy time still/already?

Trouble Closer to Home

I haven't heard about it in the news, but the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe members living on the Cheyenne River Reservation are facing a state of emergency due to ice storms that hit recently and previously this winter. Water and power have been systems are mostly down, and people are at risk. It's worth remembering that Native American communities are among the poorest in the US, and those of us whose lives are more advantaged should reach out a hand to help.

Here's the official website of this Lakota Nation, and here's the Disaster Relief information page they've set up. There's a donation link at the bottom of that page should you have resources to share.

Here's the Huffington Post article on the disaster.

And here's an article from KTVU in Oakland, CA.

Why aren't the mainstream media folks at least mentioning this? It doesn't affect as many people as the disaster in Haiti, but the people it affects are in trouble, too.

Advising Arcana

A few extra folks in my department have been "asked" to advise English ed students. Today we had a meeting to teach us the basics. I took a page and a half of notes, as well as writing extensively on teh 8 pages of handouts.

There are a lot of special rules, all of which make sense to someone and a few of which make sense even to me. But dang, there are a lot of rules. I live in a letters and sciences sort of world, but the ed students live in an education world, and the rules are different at that level, so it's not just learning a different major or emphasis, but learning different general education type requirements, too.

The powers that be have assigned me four ed majors. It seems like a lot of work for four students, doesn't it? I mean, why don't they take one or two of us and have that one person (or two people) learn and advise all the extra ed students?

Because of the structure of the university and department, and since we all teach composition and the lit folks teach a lot of GE, we have a substantial number of lit faculty for the number of lit emphasis English majors, so my advising load isn't huge. (Compare that with, say, business, which serves minimal GE or university-wide requirements, and has a lot more majors per faculty member; they have more advisees per person.)

I hope I don't mess up someone's life with bad advising!

Beginning of the Semester Blues

I'm grading some basic assignments before classes this morning. I'm frustrated.

I used the word assignment Sisyphus shared a while back; in the instructions, I specifically said to cite the text they're using. Almost no one did. I'm guessing they'd blame this on their other instructors and claim that no one ever told them to cite their texts before, except someone who's taken two classes with me before, and who's certainly heard me rant about citing also didn't cite. It's frustrating when someone who's an attentive student doesn't retain that much between classes.

Please dog, if a student is going to do internet "research" to find out what a sonnet means, make him/her actually cite the source rather than just claiming to have done extensive "research."

I got some emails about assignments, usually about something like whether an assignment should be double-spaced. Yes, it's good to double-space. And usually the student who sends these emails is at least doing the assignment more than 10 minutes before class. It's the students who don't actually respond to the assignment that get to me. I don't care how brilliant your analysis of the whole of Shakespeare's sonnets is, the assignment asks you to choose one word from one sonnet and write about that. (And that analysis, not really brilliant. And certainly not original.)

And finally, the most important issue of all. Who is stupid enough to give herself grading during the first week of classes?

On the other hand, we're doing this sonnet today!

Out of Step - More on Salinger

I really appreciate the comments people have made, thank you.

Several folks talked about being asked to identify with protagonists, though What Now? points out that she doesn't ask that of her high school students. So I was thinking about that, and trying to remember back to my high school experience.

I don't remember any of my HS English teachers pushing identification, to be honest. We read a very white, male canon. As I recall, my high school teachers included Dr. Vaughn, an African American woman who had the misfortune to teach me twice! Ms. Jackson, a young, quite hip white woman, and Mr. Robinson, an African American man. I'm guessing they didn't get a lot of choice in the curriculum.

I think they were pretty sophisticated teachers, and handled pretty big classes with a good deal more kindness than I certainly deserved.

So, why do I remember my high school English classes with such dissatisfaction?

I think I was just a cranky, unhappy in the most petty and boring ways teenager. Anything I was made to do, I pretty much resented. I liked band the things I chose more because I chose them than anything else.

And the more I thought about Salinger (which I think I read in Ms. Jackson's American lit course, as a junior), I wonder if the whole "oh, this is so risque" attitude didn't feel flat to me, since I grew up in an era and area where a high schooler running around NYC wasn't nearly as scary as Zodiac or the Manson family, nor as exotic as the Haight, nor as challenging to my basic ideas (white, middle class) as the Black Panthers. Disaffected in my world might mean the SLA, and wasn't something that seemed the least bit attractive to a white, middle class girl.

The kids who were angry at my school were angry at real things, racism especially (but also relieved not to be worried about the Vietnam draft); some of us, and I was one, were biding our time, knowing we'd go away to college soon and get out of the suburbs.

Also, New York didn't have my attention; it wasn't on my radar. I wonder if that's a regional or experience thing? I've still only been to NYC once. It's a great city, as is Tokyo, for example, but it's not my City.

So then I got to thinking about the books I was reading that really grabbed my imagination. And I realized that I read very much for plot and setting, and with absolutely no appreciation for style. Maybe that's why Hemingway didn't grab me? I wasn't ready to appreciate style? Would I enjoy the books for style more now?

I loved books such as Paddle to the Sea (I know, it's a kids's book, but still), Island of the Blue Dolphins, My Side of the Mountain, Never Cry Wolf, In the Shadow of Man. I see a pattern here: I liked books that were about people striking out on their own, even though (or because) I had absolutely no wilderness experience. And I wasn't being told to identify with them, but was choosing to read and reread them because I did identify, and gender didn't much matter to me.

I was also starting to read books my neighbor suggested, Leon Uris, James Michener, big epic type books that took on more than a kid being cranky. Those books led me to Cancer Ward and A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and those led me to The Gulag Archipelago (I know!) and into my depressive Russian lit era.

I think Holden Caulfield just couldn't compete with that sort of stuff in my adolescent imagination, and I certainly wasn't really aware of style or anything, so I wasn't "getting" his voice.

I wonder if, growing up in the suburbs, I felt an urge to turn one way or the other, toward urban or rural life, and at that time rural life seemed better? So my reading choices were often moving in a direction opposite to Holden's. (If so, that's amusing because now I'm more comfortable in urban settings, though I live in a semi-rural one.)

Decision 2010 - Snowshoe Edition

You're thinking this is some big thing. But it's not. It's probably not even the biggest decision I've made this month (though it might be).

I'm thinking about buying myself snow shoes. I think if I do, and stick them in the car with my skis, I'll use them the way I do my skis, which is fairly often and happily.

Here's one recommendation, which I can't find in my area: Denali A friend whose family member does ski patrol and snow rescue type stuff says they're great, and should work well for me. They're small and light, looks like. But they're not sold locally that I can find, so I'd have to do the internet purchase thing. (I'm an REI member, but there's no outlet near me. I don't want to drive 90 miles to go shopping.)

In the high techish area, these also seem to fit my needs: Tubbs Flex They flex, they're cool. They're available at a local medium box type store on sale, so about the same price as the ones before.

In the more traditional look area, but also seemingly appropriate to my needs: Tubbs Venture They're made by the same company as above, but an older sort of thing. Does that mean the new one is "untested" or that the old one has been surpassed. And really, truly, for my needs, would it matter one way or the other? They're available at a local bigger box store, not on sale, and more expensive. So probably out.

And finally, these are also fairly traditional ones: Atlas They're available at a truly local bike, ski, and stuff shop in the next town up the road, at about the price of the first two. It's the shop where I bought my skis, and I like them and their service.

All three companies seem to get good reviews on the web. All three seem to make good snowshoes, and all are comparable (basic snowshoeing needs covered). I'm not going up Everest (trust me on this), just goofing off in local parks, so I'm pretty sure whatever I get will be fine.

***

Edited to add: I finally got over my indecision and decided any of them would be fine for my needs and ordered the red ones (the first ones)!

Out of Step

I was watching PBS last night, and they had two white men on elegizing about J. D. Salinger.

I wonder, seeing some of the tributes, if I'm the only person who thought The Catcher in the Rye was a waste of my time in high school.

I have to admit, I haven't reread it since. Nor have I reread the Hemingway books that irritated me. I swear, I counted and he said on the first page of one book that it was raining six times. Six times. Yeah, I figured it out. It's raining. Six times.

It's not that I didn't read sexist stuff a-plenty back then (and now), but those books especially, just irritated me. I remember my friend Eric and I mocking tyhe BS slang. Being high schoolers, we just mocked and didn't really analyze our response to the book or characters. Retrospectively, for me, a lot of the response had to do with gender. Really, we were asked to identify with this privileged white male running around New York City in the 50s. But Eric was Chinese-American, so maybe his response had something to do with the racism I vaguely remember in the text? Maybe ours was the reaction of suburban kids for whom New York City was someplace unimaginable and (to be honest) just not that interesting compared to the city near us. Maybe ours was the reaction of kids who'd grown up in the 60s/70s and weren't nostalgic for the 50s?

And as long as I'm thinking back, I want to apologize to Ms. Jackson for being a rude teenaged idiot in class. I'd want to smack myself.

J.D. Salinger may have been a wonderful person (or not), but that book was pure torture for me.

Today

I had that really poor class discussion.

I chaired a meeting and did a clumsy job. Bleargh.

After work, I went around to a couple stores in town trying to look at snowshoes. One store has a couple of this type, and says they're far superior. Another store has a lot of another type (from the same company), and has never heard of the other type. The other store doesn't carry snow shoes anymore.

It's evidently time to buy swimsuits, not snowshoes, this despite the fact that the wind chill took us well below zero today.

And when I got home, I got the final (second) notice that despite my digging and yesterday's apparent okayness, my mail box isn't accessible enough, so I need to pick up my mail at the post office.

It's so cold outside that it's just... cold.

I think to the future, and I can't imagine surviving here another nearly 20 winters until I might be able to retire.

Fail: Discussion

I just tried to have a discussion with one of my classes that was absolutely ugh. Only a few people spoke, and I wasn't leading well, and just ugh.

Partly, it's the beginning of the semester thing where some people are intimidated now, but will be able to contribute in a week or two.

Partly it's the beginning of the semester thing where some people just aren't used to reading carefully yet, and so disagree with something the author didn't actually say, and want to talk about how wrong the author is, except s/he didn't say it anyway.

Partly the room is a really bad configuration for good discussion, and way crowded, so circling up isn't really an option. It's a long narrow configuration with a lot of bodies stuck in.

And partly I just stunk at leading today, despite being pretty well prepared.