On the other hand...

Because there's always another side to teaching:

Last week, I was in a panic about all three of my classes, and this week, somehow, they've come together, mostly.

My Chaucer students seem to be picking up the language more quickly than other classes I've taught before. Today, after just over a week, or, say, four hours of total class time, they already started asking content questions (as opposed to translation questions). Several are reading aloud pretty well, and most are able to do a rough word for word translation well, with occasional smart questions about words that seem odd.

So, I'm trying to figure out why they seem so apt with it in class, or at least willing to give it a shot and trying hard. Here are my best guesses:

1) They've been listening to the Chaucer Meta-page audio selections that Dr. Virago so kindly pointed me to a bit, and so the pronunciation is getting reinforced. (Thanks, once again, Dr. V. And for those who haven't had the pleasure, take a listen over there. It's such a treat to hear different voices and accents reading Middle English.) Indeed, I asked my students, and about half seem to be using the Meta-page audio selections, at least a little.

2) They're just smart, luck of the draw. No way to test this so far. If so, I'd love to take full credit, since about 2/3rds of the class have had classes with me before, AND been pretty darned good students. They told me the primary reason they were so good with the language is because they're just that good.

3) Our program has gotten more rigorous since the last time I taught a Chaucer class here, and the result is that the students in this senior level class are more prepared to deal with the language and literature. That's a possibility. When I taught Chaucer elsewhere, it was basically a junior level class.

Heck, I shouldn't really care. I'm just going to bask in the pure pleasure.

My Theory class seems to be reading carefully, and coming to class prepared to ask questions, and is making connections already. Today, Hegel ALMOST made sense! They were able to tease out the Master/Slave narrative, and then connect it to what they'd read about Marx. I love when they ask such good questions that I don't really have to lecture, but can get pretty much everything out through answering questions and guiding a bit of discussion and feedback.

And my first year writing class... Okay, they seem a little shell-shocked by the quizzes, but they did a really good job actively reading the texts for last night and were able to talk about them in terms of essay form we'd read about earlier.

So, maybe I can actually do this teaching thing alright after all!

It's like a rash...

Ancrene Wiseass posted just recently about a student who wants AW to basically plan class around her absence, implying, among other things that other aspects of her life are just way more important than attending class, and that class is boring anyway. (Be sure to read the comments. And if you're a student, and have any doubts about how your professors feel about this sort of behavior, they'll clarify things.)

The Cheeky Prof, too, relates an email from a student she considers "cheeky" (which only makes me jealous that I can't just use it too, because it says so very much). Cheeky Prof's student assumes that s/he can just transfer from one section of a class to another.

This is all beginning to feel a bit like a meme, isn't it? (And is "meme" pronounced "me me" or "meem," as I'd pronounce it from anthro and stuff?)

I've had one extraordinarily amusing (see, I wish I could say "cheeky") student email this past week. Disguised to protect the innocent (yeah, the innocent), here's the basics:

Dear Professor Bardiac (yes, when students want something, I suddenly acquire a title),

I was just informed that the grade I got in your class means that I'll be forced to retake the class again. Was my work really that bad? Couldn't you just change the grade so I don't have to take the class again? If not, could we get together to talk so that I could do something to get the grade changed so that I wouldn't have to take that class again?

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely, /s/ Student

My mind just boggles. I'm supposed to change the grade? Does she think I didn't realize that the grade she earned which I put into the system meant that she'd have to retake the class? (as she would have known if she'd read the university requirements.)

And what "something" does she have in mind? Is she thinking she can write an extra journal or essay or something, and I'll be thrilled to read more not very good work and raise her grade? (Because, realistically, she earned the grade she got through doing not very good work; why would I want to read MORE not very good work, or how would that possibly raise her average meaningfully?)

OR, could "something" have been meant to imply something a little more, errr, interesting? Is she, to recall that OLD joke about the prostitute who offers to do "anything" a guy wants for $200, going to "paint my house"?

To be honest, I think she just hasn't thought through the implications of what she said on that kind of level (and would probably be shocked that I might see implications there, but then, I'm pre-reading the "Miller's Tale" so my mind is just right there). She certainly hasn't thought about the practical implications: imagine if EVERY student who wants a higher grade were allowed to do additional work AFTER a course ends. Heck, even I'd have managed decent grades as an undergrad with that sort of system.

And then, of course, there's the troubling ethical thing, but I'm sure she didn't even imagine that.

Nope, she imagines that it will be TORTURE retaking the class... Thanks, I'm so very glad to know you felt that way about the semester.

Writing Basics - Proofreading

I'm lousy at teaching proofreading. I'm not the best proofreader in the world myself; I especially can't spell well. (I'd like to blame Chaucer, but I think it's more a factor of reading tons of student papers.)

So, here's the question! How much do you teach proofreading skills in general writing classes at the college level? And how the heck do you do it?

I don't teach a lot of proofreading skills. What I do teach I try to do through group work in a way that reinforces peer review group skills.

On the day an essay's due, I take a BUNCH of small sticky note pads to class. I have students get back in their peer groups, and exchange papers. (I pass out sticky note pads to everyone.) Then I ask the students to read the papers backwards, sentence by sentence, and to put a sticky note wherever they think there's a grammatical, spelling, or other proofreading error. They shouldn't write on a peer's paper, but rather on the sticky note, indicating the problem they see.

When they finish, they should read the paper forwards, too. And if they have time, they should trade papers again.

After they've finished reading their peers' papers backwards, they trade back so each has his/her own paper. At that point, they work through the sticky notes. At that point, they can make a change neatly in pen or pencil on their paper. Or, they can decide not to make a change. Or they can ask me about the problem, or look up spelling in the dictionary. And again, they can make any corrections in pen or pencil.

Then they take off the sticky notes, and I usually have them write some stuff on the back of their essay; since the peer groups have now had a look at the final draft, I'll often ask them how well their peers did at doing real revision on their essays, what they think this essay does well, and so forth.

The big benefit is that I don't have to stand up and try to lecture about grammar or punctuation problems. Students learn a bit about proofreading and practice. They learn about the specific mistakes they've made, rather than having to worry about problems they don't have. And the whole process of teaching and proofreading takes about half an hour for each essay.

Finally, the corrections mean that I don't have to mark as many proofreading problems on essays, which saves me time, and also means that the student may actually LEARN something from his/her peer, which I KNOW won't happen much from seeing a bunch of "tick marks" or quick notes from me.

On the other hand, they often make the same kinds of mistakes repeatedly, and I still end up making more proofreading marks than I know I should, so it's sure not a perfect system.

Who's got better ideas to share, please??

The signifying disconnect

So, as I was prepping class wandering through the internet between classes earlier today, desperately wishing I didn't have anything to do with Hegel on the theory calendar, I came across an interesting post: Doctor: Perhaps We can All Work Towards This on a blog called, simply enough, Doctor. Doctor's post begins as a response to a journal in the New England Journal of Medicine about physician's committing suicide. Bummer, I thought, and read on (because, really, I'm a cold so and so; did I mention how much I like Titus?).

Doctor then talked about an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association, and it was then that something stuck my Hegel-benumbed eyes. First, (and I'm copying from Doctor):

Thirty-five percent of physicians do not have a regular source of health care, which is associated with less use of preventive medical services supporting the observation that the medical profession does not encourage physicians to admit health vulnerabilities or seek help. [Emphasis mine]

Now, I'm going to lay out my assumption about physicians. Assumption: Most can afford health insurance or health care, or have health insurance/care through a job.

So, why do more than one third of physicians NOT have a regular source of health care? After all, these are the people who tell us to have this or that test taken at this or that age, have screening procedure X done every year, or every third year, blah blah.

But more than one third choose NOT to have a source of regular health care. Why is that? Okay, a FEW physicians are no doubt the only health care provider in a rural area, and there's just no one else. But if my assumption holds, then the choice IS a choice, and NOT about lacking money or health insurance.

What is it about? Do 35% of physicians not believe the stuff they insist on about tests and preventative medicine, wellness, and such?

Do they think that being asked if they wear a seatbelt is inane as I do? (Really, I've jumped out of an airplane in flight on purpose, and not because it was falling out of the sky. My seatbelt is the least of anyone's worries. And yes, thanks for asking, I do wear my seat belt. I'm nuts, not stupid.)

Or is the decision not to have a source of regular health care about other things? If so, what?

If so, here's one possibility from the first article Doctor quotes, "Taking their own lives--the High Rate of Physician Suicide" (NEJM), which says,

It has also been noted that physicians tend to neglect their own need for psychiatric, emotional, or medical help and are more critical than most people of both others and themselves. They are more likely to blame themselves for their own illnesses. And they are apparently more susceptible to depression caused by adverse life events, such as the death of a relative, divorce, or the loss of a job. [Emphasis mine]

Maybe it's because they think their peers will be critical and judgmental about their own foibles, perhaps because they themselves are critical? And just don't want to hear the criticism from someone else? They don't want to feel that they're to blame for their own illnesses?

Back to the JAMA article, "Confronting Depression and Suicide in Physicians" (the link is to the abstract), which argues that

It is reasonable to infer that physicians' concern about disclosure of mental health records is widespread, although studies are lacking. Breaches of confidentiality also are believed to harm openness between the physician (as patient) and the treating clinician and may result in needless disclosures to coworkers. Those concerns, coupled with professional attitudes that broadly discourage admission of health vulnerabilities, are likely the driving forces behind physicians' disinclination to seek mental health care.

So, physicians are worried about breaches in confidentiality. Do they know something about the effectiveness of HIPAA confidentiality rules that I don't? Like that they're not respected?

Doesn't this strike you as a bit of a disconnect? Physicians (who tend to tell the rest of us to get regular preventative health care) don't get it themselves, at least 35% of them don't.

Perhaps, they don't get it because they're already critical, and, perhaps, don't want to open themselves up to the criticism of others? And/or, they're worried about breaches of confidentiality. Or there's some other information they have that they're not sharing.

I'm trying to imagine a parallel in my own field: don't encourage your own kid to go to college because college is useless? Maybe a better parallel would be don't subject your work to the scrutiny of others who might be critical because you are?

I don't know. I do know that I see a disconnect between what people in the medical profession SAY and what they DO themselves, and the disconnect is statistically significant, and, according to these articles, significant enough to affect depression and suicide rates among physicians.

Now, I'm reading against the grain here, obviously; Doctor wants his readers to be concerned about physician suicide, and more specifically, wants to encourage his physician readers who are depressed to click on his link to the Physician Suicide Project.

In reading against the grain, to try to understand something else about the community textually represented in this study, I'm not dismissing the articles' or blog's concern about physicians committing suicide. But it does make me wonder why.

I know the stereotypical college professor gets up with caffeine and starts in on alcohol at 5pm, but I have to admit that I don't know any college instructors (at any level) who've committed suicide. (I know one grad student who committed suicide.) I know plenty of college instructors (and grad students) who seem depressed, though. Certainly, anyone without tenure might reasonably be concerned about breaches of confidentiality, especially about depression or suicide attempts.

We're a pretty self-critical bunch, and we, too, experience a serious level of disconnect between what we say and what we sometimes do: I teach Marx, but I have retirement "savings" in mutual funds which invest in the stock market. We're supposed to respect and care about our students, but every instructor in the world has complained about students at some point.

But the disconnect isn't quite the same as it seems in the article above; I think I have a strong sense that what I do is meaningful enough that I want to participate in it, teaching, learning, studying, contributing to understanding, knowledge. And I think most college instructors share that same basic sense that what we do really IS worthwhile and meaningful.

I guess that's where I see the significance of the disconnect I've been pointing to in those articles, and in the blog: if 35% of doctors don't see regular health care as worthwhile and significant, then at least some of them don't see what they do every day as worthwhile or significant.

I don't know if I could get up in the morning tomorrow, and face Hegel again if I didn't think doing so was worthwhile and meaningful, that it mattered. (And that's JUST Hegel! Imagine facing people who haven't been dead for 100+ years if you feel that what you do doesn't matter!)

It sure would be interesting if the researchers who wrote those articles, or if Doctor, himself, were to figure out if there's a correlation between the 35% of doctors who don't get regular health care and the doctors who experience depression or commit suicide.

(Okay, and because I can't resist the irony: Doctor says that physicians are more successful than most when they try to commit suicide.)

Chaucer: "raptus" vs "stuprum"

My Chaucer class read "Adam Scriveyne" (text and audio at that link, via the Chaucer MetaPage) last week; we got through a bit on Wednesday, and I asked them to think about the "rubbe and scrape" bit for Friday.

Before I sent them off Wednesday, we talked a little bit about writing on parchment, and making corrections. As I understand it, when you make parchment, you stretch it lots, and then you rub it to "polish" it, preparing the surface to take ink without blotting it all over the place.

When you make an error in writing on parchment, you take a knife and scrape away the inked layer of parchment, and then you rub the parchment again to polish it. If you leave it as just scraped, your ink will tend to blob and run on the uneven surface.

So either Chaucer is an idiot and can't remember how to correct a manuscript mistake, or he's a lousy poet and couldn't think of a rhyme for "rubbe," or there's something interesting up in the order he chose.

So, Friday, I reminded them of the release record their biographical introduction talks about, the May 4, 1380 entry where Cecily Chaumpaigne releases Chaucer from everything related to his "raptus" of her. (The original's in Latin, of course.) And then I introduced them to Chris Cannon's finding of a second release, dated May 7, 1380, on the public roles [see: Raptus in the Chaumpiegne Release and a Newly Discovered Document Concerning the Life of Geoffrey Chaucer By: Cannon, Christopher; Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, 1993 Jan; 68 (1): 79-94. (journal article)], and so forth.

I want to get them thinking about how "Adam Scriveyn" imagines Chaucer's text as raped, and metonymically, perhaps, Chaucer as rape victim, so that when we get to "The Wife of Bath's Tale" and such, we'll have a better starting point.

But, as we were talking, it occured to me that in Shakespeare's Titus, "stuprum" is the word used to describe a sexual violation, Lavinia's rape, not "raptus." I looked it up in my English/Latin dictionary, and it suggests that "stuprum" has more the meaning of sexual violation, while "raptus" is more about abduction (which is one of the meanings Cannon talks about, of course). But, my little English/Latin dictionary is pretty basic, and certainly not going to be specific about medieval legal terminology.

So here's my question: any medieval or early modern Latinists out there have a sense of whether "stuprum" was or wasn't used in legal writings?

Thanks, o great scholarly community!

A joke from my friend

With K's permission:

(Background information for non-English buffs: Before inventions like printing presses, all books had to be hand copied. In times before paper, books were written on thin animal hides with ink. If you made a mistake while writting (white-out not being an option), you scarped off the first layer of skin to remove the ink. As you can tell books back then cost a good deal of money and most people that had 1000s of hours on their hands to make books were the more religious types.)

Teh joke: One day a young scholar decided to visit the Vatican because he was bothered by the accuracy of translated texts. He was speaking privately to the priest about his concerns.

"Father, I just dont think that ever word could have been written down exactly as it was first scribed. Not after several hundreds of years and several different monks making copies."

The Father assured him that the priesthood takes great pride in exactly every word being identical as the original. To prove his point, he offered to let the young scholar view the original copy of the church rules (on of the few originals they still had on the grounds) and today's version.

The Father stepped back into the archive room and left the young scholar to wait in the library for him. The scholar waited....waited.....waited... seems that the priest had gotten lost at this point. When all of the sudden he heard someone crying out in great agony.

The scholar jumped up and ran in the direction of the noise. When he arrived, he saw the priest curled into a ball rocking back and forth making a horrible pained noise.

"What's wrong, Father?"

"It said 'Celebrate.'"

Writing Basics - Peer Review/Editing

It's that time of the semester, coming up quickly, when I'll have my first year writing students do their first peer review/editing session together.

Most writing instructors at the college level that I know use peer review/editing with our typical first year writing classes. It's part of the process oriented teaching of writing that most of us do. And it can be great. Or it can be useless. It all depends how much the students put into the effort, and what I can do to encourage their efforts.

I use peer review for four basic reasons. First, I think students benefit from having feedback on their papers, especially feedback from peers. Second, I think students learn about writing and communication by practicing critical reading and response skills. Third, even if they do a lousy draft for peer editing, their final draft will be a lot better than without. And finally, by making peer reviewing an integral part of the writing process, I can make plagiarism less attractive than otherwise. (In an ideal world, I'd have time to sit with every single student to give feedback on drafts. Alas, I don't live in an ideal world. I do give feedback to students who come to my office hours as much as I can.)

I think students figure out quickly that getting good feedback on their work helps them write a better paper. The difficulty is that many students don't quite understand their responsibility to give good feedback to their peers, or they're not sure what useful feedback is or how to give it. Nor do they realize how much they stand to benefit from practicing critical reading and response skills. (I think they understand that even a bad rough draft will make their final draft better; and I don't really worry about whether they realize that part of the purpose for peer review is to discourage plagiarism.)

What I want to focus on here, therefore, is how to encourage students to take the critical reading and response responsibility seriously, how to get them good feedback about their responses, and how to help them learn to respond more usefully.

Typically, my peer review days work like this: I group the students into small groups, preferably with three or four students. The pure numbers mean I couldn't sit with every group even if I wanted to, and I'll admit that I don't generally sit in any groups, unless a group seems to be having great difficulty.

Students must bring a copy of their draft for everyone in their group. Each student has a turn, and each student begins by reading his/her essay aloud while his/her peers read along on their copies, making marks or questions. Then the peers provide verbal feedback (I hope) using the form I provide ahead of time which asks them to focus on the big picture, on areas where their peers can develop ideas further, and on areas they find confusing. (I specifically ask them not to worry about grammar or spelling issues, after explaining that if they do their job, their papers will change in such large ways that sentences will change; I also set up proofreading before they turn in the final draft.)

So far, I think what I do is pretty much what most of us do. Here's where I've found an additional twist: the next day, each peer must bring in two copies of a written review which focuses on the big issues again, and gives specific feedback.

When they arrive in class, they give both copies to their peer. The peer reads the review, and on both copies, underlines the parts that seem most useful, and then numbers those parts most to least useful. On ONE of those copies, the peer writes a response to the peer reviewer, explaining what s/he finds most useful, and making suggestions for what would be more useful. They hand that copy into me. They take the other copy home to work on their revisions.

This is where I end up with some extra work, but the extra is manageable, and pays off.

I basically read quickly through responses. I make checks or write "good" or "good point" in the margins as applicable. During the early part of the term, I tend to write a quick note asking them not to focus on spelling or grammar if they're doing that, or suggesting that they make specific suggestions (in other words, say which paragraph needs work), and noting that asking questions may be a good way of helping their peer. Then I take a quick glance at the peer's response, focusing especially on the suggestions, underlining the best ones and writing "yes!" or "good idea" where that makes sense. Finally, I grade them on a 1-10 scale, and record those grades for each student.

I return the graded response to the peer reviewer. The upside is that s/he gets usually pretty good feedback about his/her response from the peer, with a little additional feedback from me. That gives them a good opportunity to learn about giving better responses. They also receive a grade, and for students motivated primarily by grades, that provides an incentive.

The next upside is that I learn something important about my students as reviewers and responders, and I use that feedback to help me set up peer review groups for the rest of the term.

Here's how that works: I don't have much clue about my students' writing skills before I grade the first essay; I read a diagnostic, but when I do, I'm worried about BIG problems, dyslexia, sentence structures that just don't work, and so on, so I can refer those students for specific tutoring. So I randomly assign the first peer review groups.

For the second and third essays, I make a quick chart ranking the students' previous peer reviewing grades, and organize each group so that each has one strong, one moderate, and one weaker reviewer. (These grades usually match essay grades roughly, but there are enough surprises that it's worthwhile to use the different grade.) I also change the groups with each essay. My goal is that the strongest reviewers will get some leadership opportunities, and the less strong reviewers will get some good modeling.

For the fourth essay, I again make a quick chart ranking the students' previous peer reviewing grades, but this time I organize the student so that the strongest reviewers are working together. That rewards the students who've been giving good feedback with equally good feedback on the paper which is more heavily weighted in the grading scheme. Students who've become better reviewers get matched with students who are doing a similarly good job reviewing. (Most students do a good job by this time of the term.)

By this time of the term, the people who aren't doing a pretty good job reviewing are generally the people who aren't making a real effort in the class. Often, that means they're missing class, or not bringing in real rough drafts. And grouping those students means that the people who are making a good faith effort don't have to deal with missing peers on editing days, or peers who don't bother to bring in a real draft.

For the final essay (I assign five during the term), I ask for student feedback by email about anyone they really want to be grouped with, or anyone they don't want to be grouped with. The emails are confidential, and they don't have to give me a reason. Most students don't provide feedback, but I try to use the feedback I get as I start making up groups. I finish by using my chart and putting the strongest reviewers together. This is their final essay, and I really want the people who've put in good effort at reviewing to benefit from the good efforts of their peers. By this time, most students have been grouped at some point with everyone else in the class, so they've had a chance to get to know each other and form a sense of community.

I arrange two peer review sessions for the final essay because it's a research essay, quite a bit longer than the others they've done for class, and a major part of their grade. I think it pays off. But I don't have students hand in the second written response.

The coolest email feedbacks directly refer to what a good job a peer does reviewing essays; and very often, two peers request to be in the same group for the same reason, even though I don't have much sense of them being pals or friends outside of class.

At the end of the term, I average the response grades, and make a small adjustment for anyone who's dramatically improved. In general, the only time response grades "hurt" a student's overall grade is when the student has missed peer review. Those who've done a seriously bad job as reviewers usually have similarly less than stellar essay, quiz, and journal grades, so the review grade just reinforces the sense of their lack of effort. Some weaker writers do a surprisingly good job peer reviewing because they willingly ask questions about their peers' work, and thus provide really helpful feedback.

At this point, I'm sort of happy with the way my system works. Students find it confusing at first (especially the two copies of their review bit), but most do improve as reviewers. Mostly, I don't like having to read an extra 30-60 pages of student work (including handwriting) for each essay assignment (though I am pretty fast about them).

Still, I could use better ideas! Got any to share?

A new vacation destination

Yes, over on Creek Running North, news of a new vacation destination.

I wish I had half the wit there. Just one half... is that so much to ask? Yes, apparently, it is.

Job Talks from the Other Side

I've spent a lot of time lately listening to job talks. Trust me, it's an education. And since I've learned a few things, I thought I'd share.

1) Time. If the committee doesn't give you a time limit for your talk, look at the time alloted in your schedule for the talk. Split it in half, so that your audience will have time to ask questions. Then cut that by one third, and write up your talk. Everyone in the ed biz knows that once you "know your stuff," you can elaborate on things, and will tend to add in as you talk.

Corollary: if you are asked to give a 20 minute talk, and your talk runs 19 minutes, no one will complain. This is especially true at MLA.

2) Structure your talk. Make your points, and make your points clear. You can't teach an audience everything you know in 20 minutes, or 200 minutes. And that's not your job on the job talk. If we've invited you for the job talk, we KNOW you know your stuff. We want to know that you can communicate, that you can bring forward the most useful points in a given situation. Choose what you think are the mosts important 2-4 points, and make sure you communicate them clearly to your audience.

3) Know your audience. If you're talking to an English department, you can assume everyone's read Hamlet, perhaps. You can't assume we've all read The Spanish Gypsy. So fill us in where you need to in order to make your point. Pay attention to your audience: if everyone's squirming, you've either gone on too long or there's a flea infestation. In either case, you should finish up fast.

4) After one or two job talks, it becomes really apparent that everyone in the field has read the same several books. Some job talkers teach me to think about the issues in the books in more interesting ways, perhaps even critiquing something important. Some job talkers refer to the books as if they're doing a high school book report. Do the former, not that latter.

5) Don't undercut yourself. You can say all the nice words you want about appreciating diversity in the faculty/staff, student body, and curriculum, but if all your examples of student interactions come from the men's glee club, or your sole example about teaching comes when you say "we all have kids" and then talk about coaching the boy's sailing team, you're hurting main argument.

6) Humor. If you're going to use self-deprecating humor, it works best when you play with an obvious strength. Chaucer making fun of himself as a narrator is funny. Making a joke about how you always talk too long after talking for 45 minutes isn't nearly as funny. But unless you're doing a job talk for a comedy club, it's not really about the humor. Or the powerpoint. (Leave it at home, PLEASE!)

That's it, folks! Bardiac's rules for not losing yourself the job at the job talk.

Am I a "nice" colleague?

One of my colleagues (not an early modernist or anything near) told me recently that s/he wants to teach a course in the coming year using early modern British text X as a central text.

Cool, I thought. The more early Brit lit people learn to love, the better. (And, hey, around here, we early lit folks who teach intro classes often teach weird and unusual stuff, you know, like novels and films, so I'm used to asking for a bit of help or advice about those things. I'm also happy to help a colleague teach their first Shakespeare play or old poems or whatever in intro to lit type classes. We all learn, including the students.)

Then s/he asked me which passages I thought would be most appropriate for the class.

Turns out s/he's never actually read text X.

That should be interesting, eh?

In telling me why text X was perfect for this class, S/he informed me that a specific word wasn't used before some way too recent date. I said, but, wait, of course it was used, and proceeded to start listing various examples off the top of my head. (This is a VERY common word, but one which would give very specific information about this colleague, and so I'm not going to say.)

S/he said but it doesn't mean the same thing it does now.

I shut my mouth. Neither does "nice."

Viva la differance!

The difference between a stack of 20 and a stack of 30 assignments from my first year writing class lies in how appealing the bottle of bourbon on the shelf at home seems in my imagination as I sit in my office reading.

At least these are just quickie diagnostics. I'm not grading them, just making some friendly comments and noting anyone I need to point in the direction of some kind of help with disability or writing or language.

Just so you're clear, the fact that I'm THINKING about how appealing that bourbon is means I have 30 students in my first year writing class this semester. Thirty.

So far, the diagnostics aren't bad.

AND, Chaucer and Theory both went swimmingly today. Even if I've totally forgotten how to teach, at least a few of them remembered how to be students, and that makes all the difference. Thank goodness for real students with good questions!

Which Chaucer tale?

Yesterday, I wrote a rather long post about Chaucer editions, derived in large part from what I found on Amazon or had lying about the office.

Happily, Dr. Virago of Quod She suggested that most Chaucerians prefer the Coghill translation (which was my second choice), and also suggested that the newer Norton Critical edition (ed. V.A. Kolve and Glending Olson) has more tales and much newer critical essays, making it a really good choice, too. I'll have to ask for a review copy or something!

Thanks, Dr. Virago! I appreciate your help.

The next question I'd take up with someone wanting to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales just for the joy of reading them (and it is, indeed, a joy), would be about the order. For those who haven't read the CT, it's a collection of tales headed by an introductory section called "The General Prologue," which describes a group of pilgrims on a trip to Canterbury and sets up a story-telling contest in which each pilgrim is supposed to tell a story along the way, and a story along the way back. The "GP" ends with an invitation to the Knight to begin, and off he goes.

Like so many medieval texts, the CT doesn't exist in a single, authoritative manuscript. Rather, there are manuscripts of varying quality, scribed at different times, with different (overlapping) tales, and with the tales in different orders. Between most of the tales, in most of the manuscripts, there are bits of dialogue and response between various pilgrims, sometimes with one pilgrim claiming the right to tell or being assigned the next tale. Usually these bits are called "prologues" or "introductions" to whichever tale.

From these bits, Chaucerians (ie. People smarter than me!) have put together a couple tentative orders for the text. There are, of course, problems with these orders and groupings, but most of us can enjoy the basics of the tales without worrying too much because the Chaucerians are hard at work figuring things out.

The first option, therefore, would be to read the tales in a generally accepted order, such as the order within the Riverside edition.

The problem I see with this for the casual reader is that the "General Prologue" and "Knight's Tale" are pretty dense reads, and not as immediately rewarding as some of the other tales. I think most readers would get more out of the GP and KT if they had either someone else to talk about the issues with (a class, for example), or if they came to those tales after getting more into Chaucer overall.

So, what would I suggest the casual reader read first?

"The Franklin's Tale." It's not the funniest tale. It's not the most perfectly structured tale. But it's an amazing and beautifully told tale, and it's my favorite, so there. I think it introduces some of the issues common to many tales, especially those within the so-called "marriage group," and as such, it would make the "KT," for example, make more sense. (It's also optimistic, and after the despair of yesterday's classes, I'm in need.)

Next? "The Miller's Tale." Okay, so I'm sure Dr. Virago likes this one, and those of you who know it now know exactly where in the gutter my mind lives. Structurally, I think this is about as perfect a story as can exist. By the time Absolon gets "revenge," I've forgotten about John. No matter how many times I've read it, the structuring gets me every time.

One might read "The Reeve's Tale" next, but I'd skip to the "Nun's Priest's Tale" and then "The Merchant's Tale," and the "Wife of Bath's Tale."

After reading those tales, I'd invite the casual reader to go back and read the "GP," and think about the representations of the story tellers s/he's seen so far, and to keep that in mind. And then, I'd invite the casual reader to enjoy the "KT." And then the rest of the tales, to his/her preference. (And yes, I'd warn him/her to skip Melibee, and even the Parson's Prologue and Tale.")

How about you guys? Which order would you suggest to a casual reader to get a taste of Chaucer's CT?

Despair

Three classes, three crash and burn sessions.

Theory (for which all students have a prerequisite class [aka PC] to be taken earlier or concurrently):

Bardiac (having ascertained that all but three students have taken PC already): So, let's review a bit. Who can tell me what a sign is?

Students: [that's the sound of silence]

Bardiac: Err, how about the three kinds of signs?

Students: [silence]

Bardiac: Okay, so let me remind you then, a sign is something that stands for something else. [This is NOT rocket science, people! How are you going to understand Lacan if you can't remember even the tiniest bit of Saussure?] [Writes, or should I say scrawls, the definition on the board.]

Students: [staring silently, motionless]

Bardiac: Umm, if you don't know what a sign is, you might just want to write it down.

Students: [sound of shuffling papers]...

And so it continued until about one third of the class said that they'd never heard these terms in PC. I'm guessing which of my beloved colleagues didn't introduce the barest hint of semiotics in PC. Except I really don't have to guess, and I'm not happy.

Either students learned nothing in PC, or managed to remember nothing, the two being the nightmare all teachers at all levels share, the nightmare of wasting our very breaths for a career marked by student forgetfulness. And one of my colleagues really shouldn't be teaching PC.

First year writing: There's nothing to say about this class, except that when you have students read the syllabus aloud, you can get a pretty good sense of their inability to read aloud. Someone who doesn't read in sentences, or can't accurately read basic college level words (like "attribute" or "baccalaureate") probably doesn't have college reading OR writing skills. I can teach writing, but I'm completely unequipped to teach reading.

Chaucer: The black death would have been more fun, seriously. And the supposedly technological classroom didn't work.

This is all to say that whatever little bits I once knew about teaching has completely disappeared over the break. I despair, and we haven't even started reading Marx yet.

Which Chaucer?**

A visitor kindly asked which translation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales I'd recommend (in the comments here). On the off chance that it's a real question rather than an internet politeness, I'll try to give an answer.

Beware, however, that I'm not a REAL Chaucerian, or even a real medievalist. I don't even play one on TV. (Though, seriously, how cool would a show like THAT be?) So if there's someone real out there, s/he will probably have a better, more informed suggestion. And if s/he shares, we'll all learn something!

I have to confess, I've never used a translation for reading Chaucer, though I understand why someone might want to use a translation. So it's a difficult question for me. (That and the "not a real Chaucerian" thing.)

Stage Whisper/Aside: Chaucer's Middle English isn't really horribly difficult for an experienced reader of English verse to read. There are some different words, but most editions gloss these and also explain more difficult readings. The word order of Chaucer's verse won't feel super strange if you're comfortable reading, say, Shakespearean verse. So, for someone who's comfortable with verse and looking at notes occasionally, I'd suggest going with an edition in Middle English. (If you're a lousy speller, you'll feel right at home with the orthography, too!) However, the question asks for a modern translation.

Here's what I think about when I consider a modern translation of Chaucer; I can't answer some of them for a reader, but his/her answers would guide my suggestions.

First, are you comfortable reading verse?

Would you prefer to read prose, knowing that it's not going to have the feeling of verse, or do you prefer a verse translation?

Do you tend to read introductory material to this sort of text, or do you tend to jump right in?

Do you like a more guided reading, or do you not want the feeling of an editor "between" you and the text? That is, do you like a text with footnotes, or do they distract you? Do you prefer not understanding some metaphors, or do you prefer foot or endnotes to explain things? (In other words, if you run across something about Zephyrus or Rams running, are you going to slide on by, or do you want to know what that means?)

Here, then, are some quick notes about what I found available on Amazon dot com. For most of them, you can look at some excerpts. You can compare the same stuff between different editions, so to get a sense of what you're most comfortable with. If folks have other suggestions I've missed, or considerations, PLEASE help me out here!

Caveat emptor: My personal preference would prioritize some notes or glossing; I'm neutral between verse and prose, except that I really like Chaucer's verse. I prefer notes in a text to having to run over to the OED or something. I also like information about cultural, classical, and Biblical stuff.

So, here are my winners:
First, in modern English translation: The Canterbury Tales in Modern Verse, Trans. Joseph Glaser.

Second place: Penguin Classics Canterbury Tales - Trans. Nevill Coghill

And, should you be willing to try a Middle English edition: Everyman Canterbury Tales, ed A.C. Cawley. In fact, I'd probably get this edition so that I had better notes and introductory material than any of the translations I found.

Bonus selections: On CD: The Canterbury Tales read in Modern English. I had this, but lent it to a friend. I vaguely remember enjoying it on a long drive.

And Helen Cooper's Oxford Guide to the Canterbury Tales is a helpful introduction, especially good at providing introductory material to the individual tales.

And the overall mini-reviews: NB. None of the modern translations has good enough notes for my taste.

Prose Translations:
Canterbury Tales: Side by Side - ME on the left (verso), Prose translation in italic on the right (recto). Few tales, and in a strange order in the table of contents. The prose translation seems okay, but the italics would get hard on my eyes quickly. No footnotes or vocabulary glossing. (I vote NO.)

Puffin Classics The Canterbury Tales. A "retelling" rather than a translation; the prose seems readable. No notes or glossing.

Verse Translations:
The Canterbury Tales in Modern Verse, Trans. Joseph Glaser - The verse feels very fluid and readable. There are a few marginal notes to help the reader. Some of the tales are abridged or summarized. Interestingly, the GP at least is in tetrameter. Maybe that's why it feels so light? My first choice for a translation.

Penguin Classics Canterbury Tales - Trans. Nevill Coghill; the verse of this translation reads very well for me; no notes or glossing. The table of contents gives a good sense of the organization of the tales, which I suspect reflects a good explanation in the introduction.

Viking Portable Chaucer - Basic verse translation, no notes or glossing. Some additional text excerpts, which might be of interest.

Bantam Classic The Canterbury Tales - ME on the left (verso), linear verse translation on the right (recto). No footnotes or glossary in text; glossary appended. The verse translation seems okay.

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales An Interlinear Translation - no images available, and I'm not familiar with this edition. Not the complete tales, and seems to miss some obvious winners (the "Knight's Tale" for example). I don't find interlinear translations readable for very long.

Editions in Middle English:
The Riverside Chaucer, Ed. Larry Benson - This edition has all of Chaucer's known works. It's great, but also expensive, and probably more than a casual reader wants. Footnote glossing, line numbers, glossary in the back of the text, introductory material about Chaucer, the tales, and individual tales. There's tons of textual information that most readers won't find helpful, and may find distracting.

Everyman Canterbury Tales, ed A.C. Cawley - A basic edition, and one I really like, probably because my first CT was an Everyman. Some footnote explanations, with marginal glosses for vocabulary. Less full introductory material, and not much for individual tales.

Norton Critical Edition Canterbury Tales, ed. V.A. Kolve and Glending Olson (no images available on Amazon, so I'm working from the copy I had sitting around). - Nine of the tales, including (with prologues) "General Prologue," "Knight's Tale," "Miller's Tale," "Reeve's Tale," "Wife of Bath's Tale," "Clerk's Tale," "Franklin's Tale," "Pardoner's Tale," Prioress's Tale," and "Nun's Priest's Tale." It also has excerpts from the Cook's, Friar's and Merchant's prologues. Not the complete tales, but the ones most people read, probably. Explanatory footnotes and marginal vocabulary glossing.

This edition has bunches of excerpts from source texts and culturally significant texts to give context. It also has critical essays, most are of the "classic" essay variety, rather than the "wow, this is new and cool" variety. (In other words, this is like reading Darwin vs reading a current evolutionary theorist.)

The Signet Classic Canterbury Tales - degree mark glossing (the kind with the little circle degree marks, which you then try to find at the bottom of the page, not really user friendly). Selected tales, including most of the usual suspects.

Editions Amazon lists but without textual images or much information:
Ed John Fisher and Mark Allen, The Complete Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer. This looks expensive.

Ed. Jill Mann. Penguin Original Spelling Canterbury Tales. I'd guess this a fairly good edition, but that's a guess.

Next time: Which tales should someone read just for the fun of it? [I realized doing this little post that I have at least 7 texts of CT (counting the Riverside and Major Poems, which include CT, but also other stuff, and not counting various anthologies which include a Chaucer text or two). I cleaned out a shelf of excess Shakespeare editions last spring; looks like I should have included some Chaucer, too.]

**My title alludes to the very helpful Which Shakespeare? a user's guide to editions by Ann Thompson with Thomas L. Berger. If you're interested in learning about editions and editing of Shakespeare, this is a great place to start.

Blog for Choice Day

It's Blog for Choice day. You can find out more about the, errr, movement, here.

I'm pro-choice. No ifs, ands, or buts here. I believe that if a woman doesn't want to carry a fetus, she should be able to get a safe, legal abortion; not only that, she should be able to get it within a reasonable distance (I guess in Alaska that's a lot further than in most places), without a 24 hour wait, without notifying her husband/partner or getting his permission. I trust women to make decisions for themselves.

(I'm not quite as certain about parental notification because I think we need to protect girls from coercive sex, and I'm not sure very many 10-15 year olds have non-coercive sex. But even in those circumstances, girls need to be protected from abusive family members. The primary focus in those cases should be on the girl's health and choice.)

I've been thinking a lot lately about what to post today, what to say that hasn't already been said about choice and women's rights, and civil rights in general. I'm sure other people will say things better than I would, anyway.

And I'm a bit ambivalent about the idea that blogging about something will change anything. Who reads a blog that doesn't have a set opinion about choice already?

On the other hand, I remember being a teen in the 70s, and people talking about abortion very differently. Yes, there were people opposed to choice, but the dialog seemed more open; even anti-choice people seemed to be thinking about the issue rather than rehashing the latest from some fundamentalist organization.

And that changed. At first the change was slow in coming, but I think it started in the 80s along with so many other social changes in the U.S.

I wonder how pro-choice people let anti-choice people take over so much of the rhetoric and poison so many people's thoughts?

I wonder how we can change the discourse again, not only about choice and abortion, but about other social issues?

As I look around the blogosphere, I notice that the Blog for Choice list shows a lot of academic blogs I'm familiar with, and lots and lots of general blogs. I'm disappointed that I've seen very little notice or response so far in the medical-blogging community. Those are the people who make the most direct decisions about access to birth control and abortion on individual levels, and most of them are either silent or at least vaguely anti-choice (and a few seem overtly anti-choice).

Or maybe they're afraid of what the anti-choice people will do to them? (After all, the fundamentalist nut-cases haven't been shooting random Shakespeare professors who support choice or talk about early modern recipes for "bringing on flowers.") On the other hand, I'm doubting that even pretty rabid anti-choice people will attack bloggers physically.

Or do they inhabit a blogosphere or blog-culture where one simply doesn't discuss choice or abortion? Is that also how they approach their practice?

And beyond the blogosphere:

Given my views on choice and such, I don't want to support businesses that are anti-choice. Nor do I want to have a physician who'd limit my access to contraception, emergency contraception, or abortion (at least information) based on ideas that have nothing to do with my health. So, how do we know what our pharmacies or physician's attitudes are up front?

Want to know about pharmacies' responses to pharmacist "refusals" of birth control? Look here.

On the subject of emergency contraception, did you know that:

“Every Woman, Every Visit,” the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ [ACOG] public education campaign, urges Ob/Gyns to provide advance prescriptions for emergency contraception at every office visit. (Source)

And look here for a statement from the ACOG about the FDA's refusal to license Plan B for OTC use.

For the women here, does your physician do this? (Mine hasn't; I just learned about it while doing some other blog reading. Somehow, I'm thinking this "public education campaign" isn't very succesful if this is the first I've heard of it.)

UCLA and current woes

It's been all over the news lately, and now it's hit the blogosphere in a big way: a UCLA alumni group is offering to pay students $100 (per course, NOT per class hour) to tape, take detailed notes (especially, it seems, notes about the reactions of fellow students), and to turn those materials over to the alumni group. They even have a list up of the professors who concern them most.

Most of the reactions in the blogosphere I read take a comic approach, and some of them (Pharyngula, who wants in on the action until he realizes its NOT $100/class hour, but $100 for a whole term's worth of work; and Michael Berube, who does a great question/answer entry) are downright laugh and thought provoking. The responses there make for fun reading, too.

Part of me wants to jump in on the laughter. In some sense, getting on that list has to be an honor somewhat akin to making Nixon's blacklist or McCarthy's investigation. Those people have it made in the shade for liberal leaning credentials. I want to write a couple people I know at UCLA and ask them why they didn't make the list, how they missed the cut, because, seriously, why not?

But on closer inspection, I don't want to make light of this. First, as I read the "radical professors" blurbs, I realized that this group isn't after professors for things they said in classes, or indeed, for things they said in classes that were off-topic or inappropriate given the class subject. This group wants to track professors based on letters to the editor they've written, petitions they've signed, parties in lawsuits they've professionally represented. That is, this group wants to attack basic civil rights of freedom of association, freedom of speech, fair trials, representation. That's just wrong on so many levels.

And it's upsetting to think of the good people I know on that list who now have to put energy into dealing with this stupidity. They can't just ignore it because it's going to come back in questions from students, comments from colleagues, BS from administrators, and second looks from random people who have their name and face. No, they aren't likely to lose their jobs, thank goodness. But the level of just stupid harassment that's likely just irks me.

On top of that, I doubt that professors have nearly as much influence as this alumni and other right wing radicals sometimes tend to think.

Here are things I've tried to convince my students of, time and again:

* Do the reading. (Yes, I know, shocking, aren't I?)
* Come to class and bring your text with you, along with paper and a writing implement to take notes.
* Do your homework.
* Come to office hours, ask questions in class and out, take responsibility for your education.
* Focus on your studies.
* Join a student or community organization and contribute actively to your community.

Do you think I've had one iota of influence? All of us wildly leftist professors who want students to study and such, all the conservative, even right wing professors who want students to study and such? One iota? I only hope!!

Yes, some professors DO have a political agenda, and do talk about politics, and sometimes add inappropriate political content in classes where it doesn't belong.

I had more than one professor who openly commented that women shouldn't be allowed into medical or veterinary schools because women just get married and have kids and quit working, so educating women is a waste of resources, or asserted that women just shouldn't be allowed in some professions or allowed to hold some jobs. I heard many times that women shouldn't be paid on the same scale as men because women's husbands were the primary wage-earners.

And you know what? By the time I was in college, I didn't believe them. I knew that what they were saying was wrong. I also knew that I'd better hunker down and keep my mouth shut, and just do whatever work was required. The conservative professors of the 50s and 60s didn't make the students of those decades into conservatives, and liberal professors aren't going to turn our students into wild radicals.

My students tend, by and large, to be more conservative than I am. Straight professors who talk about their spouses or kids, especially male professors who talk about their stay at home wives, don't get a second look from these students. That speech doesn't count as political for my students.

But a gay professor who mentions a partner or is seen at a local restaurant touching the hand of that partner across a candle-lit table? a straight, married female professor who doesn't wear a wedding ring? For some of our students, those are political statements; some students are shocked and outraged by such "radical" behavior.

Along with the sexist remarks from some professors, I heard lots of challenging ideas in college, ideas which made me rethink my assumptions from positions both left and right of where I'd learned those assumptions. Those challenges helped me become a better thinker, helped me get an education.

So, from me, a heartfelt thank you to all the educators who have challenged me (and still do) to rethink my assumptions, to support my positions with good arguments and logic, to understand different points of view.

And a heartfelt thank you and condolences to the UCLA professors now being harassed by that alumni group.

And another thank you to all the educators out there who get up in the morning and try to help their students get a real education.

And to all the students out there who come to learn, and I know it's most of you, thank you for getting an education, for thinking critically, for approaching questions with an open mind and a generous spirit. I'm looking forward to seeing you in my classes on Monday, and every class for the rest of my career, however long it may be. It's a privilege to know and work with you.

Sudoku and signification, and more Chaucer

Like so many others these days, I have to admit, I really enjoy playing Sudoku puzzles. (The site I've linked is the BEST I've found for playing on line. Whoever programmed this did a great job letting the player (?) fill in possibilities, take out possibilities, and so forth. It's SO much better than my messy erasure filled puzzles on paper. If you have other great sites, please please share!) I limit myself to three games a day (which is convenient at that site).

In general, I like logic puzzles. I'm the type who'd do GRE analytical sections for fun.

One of the things I most like about Sudoku is the way the numbers work as signifiers. The game's not about the numbers, if you know what I mean. You don't add them up or anything. The sign "9" doesn't signify the number 9 (as in xxxxxxxxx things) in any sense at all.

You could, indeed, use any nine signs for the puzzle. The only requirement is that the signs be easily remembered and recognized by players. You could use (*&^%$#@! and all would be well.

So, in fact, the numbers as signs signify primarily (only?) through difference. The player has to recognize only that 5 is not 4 and and that one 5 is incompatible in a row, column, or box with another 5. So, on some level every 5 is the same, but also different because of its placement. So placement also works as a signifier in the game, right?

Hmmm, I wonder if playing Sudoku would help my theory students get at the arbitrariness of signs at a different level, or in a different way?

In other news, I put together the Chaucer calendar (the parts about when to read what and all), in large part, of course, using the one from the last time for numbers of lines to read on a given day. I came up with a tight fit, so to speak, until I realized that I hadn't put in time for peer editing of their research paper. In the past couple years, I've become a HUGE fan of using peer editing at the upper levels; if it's useful in first year writing, it's WAY more useful for juniors and seniors. That shouldn't have been news to me, but it was.

And I want to fit in two hours for my linguistic colleagues to teach my students about Middle English and the Great Vowel Shift. So now I have to drop something. I thought for a moment about tossing The Parliament of Foules, but I really don't want to. I'm thinking "The Reeve's Tale" will have to go, and I'll have them read the link between "The Miller's Tale" and "The Reeve's Tale" along with "The Miller's Tale." (I don't by any means teach all or even nearly all of The Canterbury Tales (they aren't all in the text I ordered, so even if I wanted to, I couldn't).

I've got "The Franklin's Tale" down for three hours. Can I realistically cut it to two?

I've got what I think is a good list of words for an OED assignment: kind, ask, melancholy, romance, clerk, lady, wise, keep, default, game, lust, fowl, crafty, hound, sweven, rage, courage, sad, truly, beside, tercel, nice, rede.

That should be enough, too! YAY! (Have I mentioned lately what great colleagues I have?)

Carnival of Feminists up!

Here's the latest Carnival of Feminists. Lots of great reads in there. Hosted this week by Feministe. Gendergeek will be hosting the next CoF on February 8.

Trying NOT to explode... laughing and horrified

I'm almost laughing at myself because I'm completely astounded at this moment.

I got an email cc'd this morning from one of our Administrative Assistants, a person responsible, effective, efficient, and wonderful. She'd noticed some weird annotations on a printout the bookstore sent her (dot matrix printout, so very difficult to read), and asked the bookstore contact person about what she had listed. Here (roughly) is what she had emailed:

English XXX - Bardiac - Canterbury Tales (Sparknotes?? hard to read this word
on the report).

So I sent an email to the contact person basically reiterating what I'd ordered for the class, and wondering if instead of "Sparknotes" it should have said, perhaps, "seminar"?

Within a very few moments, I got a note from the bookstore contact person explaining that they'd

put in some "Bookstore Recommends" texts to be available as supplements for your
class.

And, apparently, what they recommend for my Chaucer seminar is, yes, you guessed it, the Sparknotes text for The Canterbury Tales. And the way the contact person worded his message is so innocent, in a sort of "look at this GREAT thing we did to help our students" kind of way.

I think that's why I'm laughing. He has no clue that the whole English department is going to be sending outraged emails shortly, perhaps even stomping down there for a personal visit. I imagine professors from a variety of disciplines will have similarly delighted reactions when they realize what the bookstore's done.

Bonus fun: The bookstore's apparently ordered such "supplements" for ALL of our classes, including not only the stupid notes books, but other texts as well.

Our Admin Asst didn't know what Sparknotes are, but (since she now knows) just sent out a department email so everyone knows what happened (she'd been sending them out one by one, but that would involve, apparently, one email per class).

Yes, since you're asking in your head, our NWU bookstore is now run by an outside chain. Not hard to guess, was it?

A pretty happy ending: I emailed the contact person again, and even had a colleague check to make sure my language wasn't too strong, abrupt, or whatever. I asked him to have the Sparknotes book moved away from the shelve to discourage students from buying it unnecessarily, and just got an email saying that he would take care of it, and even thanking me for my feedback, because they need to know if we don't like something that lots of other professors do.

Does anyone order Sparknotes for a Chaucer or other upper level literature class? Anyone? Bueller?


ps. In case it's not clear, perhaps I should explain why I object to our bookstore putting Sparknotes texts as "Bookstore Recommended" alongside the books I ordered on the shelves.

Chaucer, when you first encounter the language, is hard. It took me about HOURS to get through the "General Prologue" the first time, for my very first Chaucer class (five hours for 25 pages in that edition). My old Everyman paper edition of The Canterbury Tales is covered in inked notes, lots of glosses on words especially. (I made my own glossary in the front cover: the first word in it is "eke." It's VERY important to me to remember that I had to learn "eke" and had to write it down along the way. I keep that in the front of my tiny little brain when I teach Chaucer.)

There's value in working hard to read, learn, and understand a text. There's value in working hard to learn anything, pretty much.

Putting the Sparknotes text next to the Chaucer edition implies first that I've recommended it (yes, it may say "Bookstore Recommended," but many students will see only the "recommended" part), and I haven't.

The most careful and studious students are actually the most likely to trust the recommendation and spend the extra money (just under $5.00 in this case) to buy the extra texts. These students aren't rich: that $5.00 could be better spent in so many other ways. Yet the bookstore is misleading them into spending it on Sparknotes.

Sparknotes may be validly useful for some students, but in my experience, students use such "supplements" to avoid struggling with really difficult texts. They read the explanations, and then don't really work through the text.

With Middle English, especially, the language itself is incredibly wonderful; by working through it, you learn to read it (I find it takes most students 3-4 weeks to get a basic grasp), you learn to feel it in your mouth. In the process, you learn a lot about Modern English and something about medieval English culture, thought processes, and even some great stories. You also learn that you're capable of learning something if you work at it.

That very lesson is one of the most important things everyone should learn in their education.

What's your line?

There's a post at Intueri about having a conversation with someone and answering the "oh, what do you do for a living?" type question. Maria at Intueri , a psychiatrist, finds that the information pretty much destroys any conversation rather quickly. I can see that. It wouldn't with me, but then I'm too curious for my own good sometimes. (She also uses imagery in really strong ways, so I'd be asking about her writing all day anyways.)

I usually get one of two initial responses when I answer the question about making my living.

In a general (rather than academic) context, I tend to identify myself first as a teacher, because, saying I'm a professor just still sounds pretentious. And saying I'm a Shakespearean sounds even more pretentious. And what I actually DO, most of the time, is teach in some way or another.

How do other academics handle this one?

Sometimes folks let it drop at teacher, but there are two follow ups: what grade and inevitably, what subject. It's at the "what subject" question when the responses generally split off: if I'm lucky, someone tells me about their favorite teacher in high school or college, the English teacher who taught them so much, who cared about his/her students, who was funny, brilliant, all those things I'd like to be if only I had the brain cells left after being a young adult. These conversations are easy and fun.

If I'm not lucky, the person looks at me suspiciously, gets self-conscious, defensive, or offensive about his/her grammar or knowledge or whatever they think about when they think about English as a subject.

"So, I bet you're just cringing at the way I talk." Nope, not in the least. I like hearing variants in people's dialects, accents, usage.

"So are you going to correct my grammar?" Nope, I get paid to correct grammar. I don't do it for free. (Okay, I do on occasion help people with written stuff or grammar questions for free, but ONLY when they ask, or if it's a close relative under the age of ten.)

"I hated/failed my high school/college English class/teacher!" Gosh, I'm sorry to hear that. I failed my high school English tests on Julius Caesar and Macbeth. I hated Shakespeare in high school.

The absolutely most completely delightful reaction I ever got came from a couple friends of my great Aunt Em, when I was teaching my first Chaucer class some years ago. My great Aunt Em was supportive and fun; we were pretty close, writing letters back and forth while I was away, and she was very proud that I'd earned my PhD. I think she was also happy that we'd gotten close (for which I'm very grateful) and that we'd always get together for lunch or something when I hit the old hometown area. At any rate, I think she was happy because she gladly introduced me to her friends, and proud because she always told them what I was up to.

One day she told her friends I was teaching Chaucer. Her friends' reactions? They BOTH started laughing and joyfully reciting the "General Prologue" to me in Middle English. We must have chatted about Chaucer and other literature in various ways for a good hour. What a great way to spend part of my afternoon.

Let's do the math: These women were both in their 70s (at least), and neither, I'm pretty sure, had beyond a high school education, and yet they were having a great time reciting verse they surely hadn't read for what, 50-60 years?

Something, somewhere along the line, went VERY right in their educations for them to have such a joyful reaction to their experience with Chaucer and for them to remember lines 50-60 years later. Yes, so no doubt it was rote learning, but surely there's value in learning to memorize at some level?

Alas, my memory for recitation is best demonstrated by the now old Robin Williams bit where he's "doing" Hamlet, "To be or... damn!"

Anyone else have good "what's your line?" stories?