Lesson from the Humanities

Literature provides myriad examples of people and cultures at war or in fights, often to the death.  It's pretty clear from most of these examples that people are capable of great hatred, cruelty, and violence.  In literature, those are pretty common and, for want of a better word, acceptable.  We don't think less of epic characters for thoroughly killing their enemies.

That changes the moment the enemy is dead, however.  At that point, we see a split.

There are characters in literature who, once the enemy is dead, stop and allow whatever funerary rites are culturally appropriate, either doing these rites themselves, or allowing the dead characters family or people to perform them.  Consider, for example, Hal in 1 Henry IV, treating Hotspur's dead body with respect.  It's one sign that Hal has what it takes to be a real king (in an age of violence).  Compare that to the ways people on stage react to the reported mutilation of the bodies of the English by the Welsh women at the beginning of the play.  Think then of how vile Falstaff becomes in the moment when he mutilates Hotspur's body by wounding him in the thigh.

Or think of the beginning of "The Knight's Tale," when the mourning widows stop Theseus mid-march and ask him to make Creon allow them to bury their dead properly.  Theseus immediately goes to war and defeats Creon.

These examples are from earlier English lit, of course, but world lit is full of examples: one of the basic lessons from the humanities is that you treat the dead, even of your greatest enemy, with care and respect.

So when I read about the resistance to burying the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, I think about how little we (as a culture) have learned one of the basic lessons of the humanities.  (Here's a link to the Washington Post article.  In contrast, the funeral director who's taking care of the body, and his uncle  who washed and wrapped the body, these people have somehow learned that lesson.

It's not just ancient history that teaches this lesson, either.  US people get rightly mad when our dead are dragged behind trucks or mutilated, too.

I wonder when we in the US became so out of touch with basic humanity?

Special Adjuncts?

Ariel Kaminer has an article in the New York Times, "The Last Refuge from Scandal?  Professorships," about high profile political and military men (at least I think they're all men) who get hired as adjuncts to teach one class (a year?  a semester?) for some colleges.

I knew some famous folks got hired to teach classes, but I guess I thought they'd be making a whole lot more money than this article suggests.  It says, for example,

for Mr. Spitzer’s weekly seminar, which he taught from fall 2009 to spring 2012, he was paid slightly less than $5,000 a semester, which he donated to the school after other professors said it was on the high side of what adjuncts earn. Mr. Spitzer, who said he sought to make his students “both enjoy and learn how to think about questions at several different levels,” described the experience as a “huge joy, every week.”

That's high for an adjunct, certainly, but a drop in the bucket compared to what he's used to earning or earns if he takes a high level law firm job, no?

I was interested in how students found the teaching.  Here's what one student had to say about Spitzer:

One of his students, Melissa Lynch, said he was one of her best teachers and he encouraged the class to call him on his cellphone if they had questions about readings. When it came to the mechanics of running a class, however, “he didn’t really seem to know what he was doing.” The class required one writing assignment, “but he didn’t know if it should be 2 pages or 30 pages,” she said, adding, “He kept asking us, ‘What do other professors do?’ ”

I think it's telling that he didn't have a clue about how to run a class.  It's one thing to talk or lead a discussion about something you know well (and I'm guessing all these folks know their old business well, even if they made stupid mistakes to cause whatever scandal).  It's amusing that he invited them to call him on his cellphone.  I'm guessing he's not doing a 200 person lecture, eh?  Or teaching four classes at a time.

The schools inviting these folks to teach make sense; they're mostly in or near New York or some other big city, which is where these folks are likely to be living anyway.  (Yeah, it would be fun to see the Compass Point State in the Upper Midwest convince one of them to come as an adjuct.)

David Petraeus will be teaching in both New York and LA.  I'm guessing that his adjuct salary wouldn't even cover the semester's airfare in economy, and I'm guessing he doesn't fly economy.  Special arrangements?

I'm sure students are pretty excited to be taught by famous instructors.  And I'm willing to bet in some cases they're getting a really great experience.  I'm not sure that's always the case, though, and I wonder how the grades these instructors assign compare with grades in similar classes at these schools?   I'm guessing even without terminal degrees (and some of them certainly seem to have terminal degrees), their experience makes them qualified to teach within their specific areas.

It would be weird beyond belief to be in a faculty meeting with someone like that, though, wouldn't it?  I mean, we have a few sleeze cases, but they aren't sleeze cases whose sleeze has been publicized widely.

Suddenly, Green

This last snow has melted quickly, and the revealed grass and such is suddenly much greener than before.

I'm told (well, one hears on the local news and such) that when the snow first melts in early spring, the ground is really frozen and so doesn't absorb much of the water, so it runs off.  But once the ground is mostly unfrozen, then new precipitation gets absorbed much more.  So maybe the ground is all getting a nice, slow, thorough watering?

I've had my first Red-breasted Grosbeaks (two males) at the feeders, and the regulars continue, though it looks like the Juncoes are mostly gone, and I haven't seen the Tufted Titmouse around, either.  (They may find other preferred food in the area, or migrate elsewhere for breeding?)  The Orioles are really going at the oranges.  That usually changes once more native fruits become available, it seems.  Or they leave my neighborhood for actual breeding.


I'm thinking of planting an apple tree.  One of my neighbors has a couple planted (across the street and on the back side of his house).  Another neighbor is thinking of putting one in, too (a bit nearer).

The question is, how close is close enough for pollination with another tree?


Perhaps the title should have been "Suddenly, Pink"?  The second stage of the Giro is today!  The first stage was a sprint stage, which means it's mostly exciting for the last few minutes.  Today is a team time trial, which means it's really not all that exciting to watch.  (I'm sure it's pretty cool if you're there, since anywhere you are, you'd get to see teams woosh through every few minutes for a long while.)

Oriole in the Snow

I got home this afternoon a bit late.  It had been snowing all day, and it showed.

I went to take a couple of pictures on the deck.  This is a half an orange that I'd put out that morning for the house finches.    You can tell that it's got a lot of snow piled on it, but where the snow isn't, the birds had eaten a bunch of the orange.  So I cleared the snow off it, and took a couple other pictures.

This is basically the same picture I took earlier today out the back of the deck, but as you can see, there's considerably more snow, and it's heavy, wet stuff that's sticking to branches.  (Trees are falling, I've heard, and power's out in some parts of town.  Ugh.)

Then I went back out the front of the house and dug the driveway out wide enough so that I can get my car in and out.  I'd gotten it into the garage, but figured if it snowed even two or three more inches, I'd have trouble in the morning.  So to avoid that possibility, I dug out, but it was heavy stuff, so I dug a bit wider than my car rather than trying to dig the whole driveway.  It's heavy, nasty, wet snow, but it went fairly quickly.

And when I went in, this is what I saw out my back sliding glass door!

It's an oriole!  In the snow!  I put out more suet, too, and before long, I was able to see two orioles in the yard (both male), a pair of cardinals, several tufted titmice, a chickadee, a brown thrasher (I saw one earlier in the week, too), and a couple of song sparrows.  Weirdly, I didn't see the usual house finches, goldfinches, or juncoes.  (It was getting late, though, so maybe they had already eaten their fill.)

I'm pretty jazzed to see the orioles up here already!  (I made a new orange holder this year.  It's a thin piece of wood with three nails through, sticking up, screwed to a big block of wood with some nails in there on the sides to tie it down.  It seems to be working pretty well.)

Now is the Sprinter of our Discontent...

Over at Historiann's place, it's "wring."  Here, folks are calling it "sprinter."

Here's what it looks like out my back this morning.

It wasn't a lot of snow when I took this, but more is falling, and we're due for a fair bit.  (And when I say "fair bit," remember that the upper midwest doesn't usually get anything like the snow mountainous areas do.)

Still, it's May.  May.  MAY!

I like "sprinter" more than "wring" for a couple of reasons.  First, it sounds more hopeful.  Instead of wringing my hands in frustrations, I'm sprinting towards summer.  Second, it fits rhythmically into all the "winter wonderland" and other winter verse stuff.  That's important!

There's even a bit of fun to the sprinter craziness around here. 

Someone has put up a poster of a beach scene in one of the elevators, and people keep adding bits to it.  So the original poster was just there, and then there was a "Nemo" type fish, and a beach blanket, ball, and so on.  My favorite is the blue-footed boobies.  Or maybe my favorite is Adam and Eve lying together.  If you embiggen the picture, be sure to look at the white bit on the island off in the distance.

I'm sure putting up big posters in the elevator is somehow against someone's rules.  But people just keep adding, and it's been there a while, so I think the powers that be are in sympathy.

Outside my office, though, there is snow, and it's at that beautiful sticky point.

If this were January, I'd be enchanted by the way it sticks to the trees and such.  It's really beautiful in a stark winter way.

In a spring way, though, it's something all together different.

Back to grading.

This post brought to you by the letters W, T, and F.

Rays of Hope

In preparation for the final exams in my literature classes, I have students work in a variety of ways to write essay questions for the exam (there's an essay portion).  

We start by doing some thematic brainstorming in class, and then students can write questions individually, and then they work in groups to take the feedback I've given to individual questions and write questions, and so on.

It's not just that I'm lazy and don't like to think of essay exam questions.  Rather, I do this because I think students learn a lot by thinking about questions that will allow them to demonstrate that they've learned a lot over the semester.  They start putting things together, and then put them together in small groups, and so on.  (At each stage there's sharing both of their ideas and my responses, especially in terms of whether I think I could write a really good essay about it.)  So once they're putting together things across the semester, they're actually learning stuff more fully.

Anyway, in my two lit classes this semester, we're at slightly different parts of the brainstorming process, and the potential essay questions I'm seeing are really good ones.  The questions give me hope that at least a good proportion of the students are putting things together and making connections between the texts and learning something in the process!

Words Fail Me

I'm so ready for the semester to end, and I'm not the only one.  I think the whole state is in a grand funk.

And we're expecting more snow. 


I'd put some seeds in small starter planters last week, including sunflower seeds.  They were doing that sprouting and growing with the seed covering still on the initial leaf things.  (I think there's a technical term for those, and it's not quite the same as leaf.  But I can't really remember now.  I'll be sure to call at 2am when I do remember.)  Anyway, yesterday while I was home, I thought that it would be a good idea to let the new seedlings be outside so that I could transplant them once we get out of snow season.

So I put them outside.

And about half an hour later, I glanced out, and they were all gone, with just the seed coverings left.  I'm pretty sure some bird came by and got a lovely snack.  [expletives deleted]


I handed back papers today in one class.  I was feeling a little bad because several students really bombed the paper.  I was less sad when those same students didn't bother showing up for class.  And less sad still when one of the bombers complained about hir grade.  I actually used the word "crappy" to describe the work.  I could easily have used a worse word, but I was trying to be gentle.


Several students, however, did absolutely beautiful pieces of work.  Some more did good, solid work that really showed they could do good, solid work.  Sometimes, that's as good as my day gets.


Did I mention I'm ready for spring?

One of my friends was complaining about the snow on effbee, and another friend consoled by offering that we'd had good news: Summer is supposed to fall on a Saturday this year.

Please, please let it be spring and let the semester end!

Dreamy!

Text o' the Day!

Not quite stick figures, but...

Light, Camera, Spring!

It's sunny out, and the first morning I've been here to really enjoy spring feeling like spring.  It wasn't quite warm enough for coffee on the deck (though, now that I think about it, with a blanket it probably would have been fine).

I have a small patch of front yard near my mailbox where I've put crocus bulbs in a couple of years ago.  And finally, they've totally taken off.  (I should probably dig them up this fall and move some around so they don't get over crowded.)

This spot gets morning light and light through most of the day, so it's early for my yard, once the snow starts melting.

Today, because I was out and about in midmorning, the sun was playing on the colors really beautifully. 

So I took a bunch of pictures in various ways trying to capture some of the ways the light was coming through and the shadows were working.

I was out there, lying on the ground, taking photos and a guy jogged by on the other side of the street (running against traffic, except it's a cul-de-sac, so there isn't much traffic).  I didn't even realize he was there until he'd gone by, so I didn't say anything.

And then he circled around, and came back on my side, and I said hello, and he practically jumped out of his skin.  I guess he'd been focusing on his running and hadn't noticed me lying there when he ran by on the other side, and then I was sort of behind a plant and the mailbox as he came on my side.

So these are my favorite of the morning pictures.  I like the first one because it captures a sort of glow look (it's a bit more in the shade), and you can also see some of the veins in the petals.

The second one is more because it's a beautiful flower, with lovely darker coloring coming up.

The third one I like for the way you can see shadows of the stamen in one flower, and the stamens of other flowers.

The fourth one (just above and to the left), I like because the pollen on the inside petals really appeals to me.  It's like delight in disarray, perhaps, except the flower version.

And this final one just seems like such a perfect flower, and a perfect show of threes and six in the flower.

So finally, it seems to be spring, and all I want to do is go play in the garden or (when it's a bit warmer) take a bike ride.  But what I really, really need to do is grade!

Grading by the Inch

I wasn't behind, but now I have two big stacks of papers to grade.

And a thesis prospectus to work on.

And another student asked me to read and give him some feedback on a project.

I don't know which way is up, but since time is linear, things will move along and end at some point.  Hopefully, by that point, I will have turned in all the grades for the semester. 

But for now, well, put me at overwhelmed.

And secretly laughing at someone here who's a bit of a jerk for being a jerk and creepy.  They're separate, jerk and creepy, but this person is managing both.

I heard another person in a meeting today say these improbable words, "I'm looking forward to assessment."

I was rude enough to actually comment on the uniqueness of the statement aloud during the meeting.  It's obvious that I'm not administrative material, I think.

I was in another meeting this week where an administrator actually acknowledged that our [campus group] had been forcing faculty to collect a huge bunch of data and had never used it and had no intention of ever using it.  The administrator didn't, however, acknowledge that the collection of all that data might have been a waste of faculty time.

SD

Let it Rain

We have a lot of activity around here for the next several weeks.  Everything pretty much happens at once.

On Tuesday, there was a really great poetry reading.  There was another poetry reading yesterday, and another after, and also a superb concert (which is what I attended), and then another concert and a play.  And that's only the things I know about.

There's another concert today, which promises to be great.  And then tomorrow, I have dinner and theater plans with some friends.

So if I go to the concert tonight, that will be four nights out this week.  That's fine for some folks, but I'm not sure I'm going tonight. 

Next week looks just as busy, with campus research day, and all sorts of other activities.

And naturally, for all of these activities, folks expect faculty to go be supportive (or to participate in other ways).  And they're all on top of all the other things, and end of the semester grading.

Can you tell I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed?

It's supposed to get warmer, significantly warmer, this weekend.  I'm hopeful. 

Last night, after the concert, I was walking to my car in a light rain, and it smelled like a spring rain, with the fresh dirt smell and all.  It's the first spring rain smell I've had so far this year, and it was very good. 

You know how dogs will dig into a roll with their shoulders?  I sort of wanted to do that, but I didn't want to be went and muddy, so I didn't.  But the smell was so appealing!

Looking for Brilliance, CT Edition

I'm teaching "Sir Thopas" for the first time in either a long time, or a really long time, I think.  Long enough, or poorly enough, that I can't find my usual folder of notes, so I've been spending time today prepping, reading up, and so on.

It seems like there's a lot to pack into 50 minutes from a very short text, no?

So, what would you absolutely want to include?  What should I just not dare forget?

How do I get across to my students who haven't read tons of romances how absolutely brilliant this is?

And soon, I'll be teaching the "Canon's Yeoman's Tale," and I'm in the same boat, except it's a lot longer.

Suggestions?

(I think I end up cutting stuff from the CT class for time; but I put these in this time, and especially the CYT seems really important to me, or at least it did when I made up the syllabus.  Not being a real medievalist, I sometimes wonder if I've made the best choices in what to teach over the semester; maybe I'll try to go faster over the KT next time?  It seems like I take a good long time trying to get them to read and get the language and such, and it seems necessary.  Would any real medievalist be up for sharing their CT calendar/syllabus, please?)

I'm at that point in the spring and the semester when it feels like I should be desperate, but somehow I'm not.  I'm reasonably caught up on grading, and while spring seems especially slow, I'm less cranky about it than a lot of folks I know.  But I'm sort of plugging away at work and life, and doing some birding more than most springs, but I don't have much to write about that's really exciting.

I did see my first ever Yellow-rumped Warbler in my yard (I've seen them elsewhere, just not in my yard), at my suet feeder.  I'm guessing it was hungry and that was better than nothing.  I saw it for a short bit the other day, long enough that using my binoculars (pretty much always at the ready next to this window) to identifying a relatively common, distinct bird was good, not long enough to dig out the camera and take a picture.  But I haven't seen it since.

I also saw the first Brown-headed Cowbird of the year in the yard this morning.  So I do think spring is on the way.

But there's not much else to say about it that isn't complaining about the cold.

Crocuses are Tough

It's the first crocus of the season, blooming in my yard!  You can see not far behind it, just out of the little bit of snow, the daffodils coming up.

There are other crocuses up, but they aren't blooming yet, just this extra tough one that came up through the snow.

I was out walking around after going to a pow wow and saw a couple of Yellow-rumped Warblers, the first I've seen this year.

My very cute houseguest is back for a short visit.  So cute!

Spring Hopes Eternal

Here's the greenspace behind my house, taken from inside, because I sure as heck didn't want to go outside yet.

I'm so ready for a bit of warmth.

(The good news is this will probably melt soon.  The bad news is this will probably melt soon, and a lot of rivers are already at or near flood stages.)

Life After Tenure

Dr. Crazy over at Reassigned Time 2.0 has a fine post up about life after tenure.  It's really smart (as usual) and also gives a strong sense of some of the things people should know and look forward to (with longing or dread).

I think her points about feeling pressure to contribute to the community (rather than trying to establish oneself) and about feeling pulled by different demands so that she has less time/energy to work with and teach her own ideas/research are especially useful.

Recently, too, Dr. Virago over at Quod She 2.0 had a post about the difficulties of feeling like she was in a "mid-career rut."

Both of these posts really resonated with me.

I'd add to Dr. Crazy's post about being pulled by different demands that one of the biggest demands I feel is the work on department and university personnel committees and such.  Those tasks seem to take up a huge amount of time, and while they can feel rewarding, they can also feel unrewarded, if that makes sense. 

Now, back to our regularly scheduled grading.

Disconnected

I've felt a bit disconnected of late.

The day of the Boston Marathon, I didn't hear about the bombings until late.  I was in the office, and no one mentioned them.  That either means that no one knew, because we were all busy at work and not watching TV or whatever, or no one told me for whatever reason.

That's sometimes how it feels here, not only here in my office, my little silo room, but here in the midwest, where the happenings on either coast sometimes seem very far away.  But then, happenings over in the Fort also seem far away.

It's like here in the middle of the country, we're actually on the margins of the places that really matter to most of the people in the country.


Anyway, a friend of mine recently showed me this poem by Tom Wayman called "Did I Miss Anything," and it's wonderful, and I want to put it on my syllabus for next year.  You should go read it immediately.


On a blog I read sometimes,  young person is complaining about looking at jobs and not feeling like any of them are totally inspiring and wonderful, and I feel impatient, beca

Cat Blogging

You know how some people post endless pictures of their cats and how there are endless memes and such devoted to this or that cat approach or whatever?

I thnk William Baldwin was probably several centuries before his time.  He'd totally have a best seller now with Beware the Cat. 

Birding on Saturday

Canvasbacks, Canada Goose, Ruddy Duck

I joined an effbee page for state bird stuff; most of the posts are from another area of the state, alas.  But the other day, there was one from right near, with some cool birds.  So I asked for directions, got them, and went out today with a friend.  (Yay for a friend who will go running around to look at birds!  Life is better with friends.)

Behind the big Canada Goose, there's a little Ruddy Duck with a white blotch on his face and a blueish beak.  How cool is that?  And Canvasbacks!  (There may also be Redheads around; I'm not sure.)

Horned Lark

We saw this little guy hanging out near a Killdeer (the picture of which is too blurry for even me to post).  So lovely!

Snow Bunting

The Snow Buntings were our main attraction, and we finally found them.  They're surprisingly tiny. 

And look, mostly white birds against mostly white snow and some muck.  Yep!












Lapland Longspur


And the Lapland Longspurs were our second main attraction!  What lovely birds.

It wasn't badly cold this morning when I was digging out the driveway.  It was warm enough that I took off my coat, even.  But out looking for the birds, holy cow!  That was COLD!

So then we went and had hot Thai curry for lunch.  And lived happily ever after.  Or at least until dinner, when I have to forage again.  (In the refrigerator, not outside!)

And Just in Time: It's Friday!

I don't greatly mind a student asking if s/he can turn something in late.  Some assignments I accept late (with a penalty), but some I don't.  Journals and such, where they have many opportunities over the semester to do the assignments, I don't accept late.  It says as much in the syllabus.

But still, I don't really mind a student asking, even if after the fact.  I point to the syllabus and say no.  And the second time, the same. 

I've got a student who has asked three times by email and twice in person, and now I'm getting to the point where I do mind.

Adding to the frustration, the student just doesn't seem to comprehend how deep into failing s/he is, even though I handed out a sheet for each student and went over in class how to do the math.  But oh, the student was absent that day, and when s/he finally reappeared and I gave him/her the sheet, s/he didn't bother to do the math. 

We did the math together today.  That one journal won't save the grade.  Unfortunately, the student still seems to think that getting partial credit on that one journal will bring things up from F-land to passing. 

So, yes, I'm very ready for Friday.

Memory?

You know how sometimes you respond to a post on someone else's blog, and then you want to go back and see what else other people have had to say in that thread, because it was lively and interesting?

But then it's been maybe a few days, maybe a week, and you remember about it, and think about going back.

But you can't remember whose blog it was on.

Like that.

First Semester, Second Semester

I teach a lot of first year students, pretty much every year, and in fall, I take a bit of time to talk to them about being students, to make my expectations extra clear, and so on.

I guess I'm not that extra clear in the spring semester.

I've had a number of students this spring who've revealed to me--in those meetings you have after they realize that they've missed impressive chunks of class and haven't turned in work and are failing--that this is their first semester of college and they were unprepared, not well counseled, and really didn't know what to expect.

I think I've got a lot more new mid-year starting students this year than I remember from before, perhaps?

But it's definitely a problem for these students.  There's been some real gap.

One part of the gap is that students who start mid-year may already be a step behind just starting.  If they aren't transfers, then something happened (or didn't happen) that meant they didn't start at the usual time.  My guess is that something is related to their unpreparedness or lack of cultural knowledge about college stuff.  Maybe they didn't really understand how admissions work in many colleges and so didn't get their stuff in on time.  Or maybe they didn't have the finances together to pay the fall deposit.  Or whatever.

My guess is that a lot of the stuff that may cause these students to be a step behind are first generation student issues?

My second guess is that our admissions folks were slightly under their enrollment goals for fall, and so admitted more new students in spring than they usually do.  Or they admitted the same number, but a lot ended up in my class somehow?

Another part of the gap seems to be with new student advising at mid-year.  In fall, there are loads of meetings and activities aimed at getting new students adjusted to being new students and informed about resources on campus.  But we don't seem to have many of those same meetings and activities in spring, and what we have might not seem important to students who are a step behind just starting off.

The third part of the gap seems to be that I didn't do (and probably haven't generally) as much to help students understand my expectations.  I think typically I've expected that students have learned from their first semester in college and they don't need so much to hear my underlying expectations.  I don't think I've changed or dropped a lot of this from one spring to another.  It's more that I haven't seen so many new spring students, I think.  I'm not sure.  (And by my expectations, I don't mean what I'm expecting for a given assignment, but that I expect students to do 2-3 hours or work outside of class for every hour in class, and that I expect students to be in class, on time, even though I don't "count" attendance as part of the grade, and that I expect students to do their work and keep track of it when I hand it back, and so on.)

I don't think there's an easy way for me to look up when students are starting at the university, and I haven't made a habit of looking for that information.  I also haven't asked students.  I suppose I might start asking in spring, though that seems a little odd, doesn't it?  (I might couch it as something like "How was your fall semester?")

I think a way larger percentage of my first year writing students will fail this class than usual, and I feel partly responsible because I didn't do as much as I usually do in fall to help them with expectations.

Have you folks ever noticed this sort of phenomenon?  What to do?

Spring Birds!

It's that time of year again, the time when I've seen Tundra Swans out in a wet area in a big field near a town near here.  (It looks like I first posted pictures of these swans at this area in March 2010, and then again in April 2011. 

It was raining all morning, but I had no classes and no meetings, and it's supposed to snow again soon, so I decided to live the wild life (get it?  HAH!) and go see if the swans were there.  And they were!

Tundra Swans!

I drove out, and they were mostly in the field itself, rather than in the water.  And it was rainy, and I didn't want to get my camera wet, and I put on my doubler, which means I have to auto-focus myself, which is both slow and inexact, especially if I'm trying not to get wet, so this isn't the greatest picture in the world.  The cool thing about this picture, I think, is that you can actually see the yellow above the beak on the nearer bird's face.  I don't think any of my other pictures ever captured that.


I didn't stay long because of the rain, but I found another place with more swans (which is actually where this picture's from), across the highway and on a mud road.  And then I saw an eagle, but it was uncooperative and took off as I stopped to take a picture.

Red Winged Blackbird

I also saw another sign that spring's on it's way, red winged blackbirds, all staking out their space, trying to look hot and sexy for the females.











Having had success with the swans, I decided to go have a look at some of the biking roads, just to check out how they look (potholes and also gravel being my concerns).

Hooded Mergansers

And there, in a pond I ride by and where I've never seen ducks before, I saw my first really clear Hooded Mergansers in breeding plumage!   (I've thought I've seen them before, but never this sure or well.)

They're eye stopping, for me.  (I guess wood ducks are even cooler, so maybe someday for them.)

Blue-winged Teal

I also saw my first Blue-winged Teal!  I really appreciate when ducks are cooperative and show clear markings, and these guys really do.  The big markers are that white stripe on the face (smaller, but still visible on the female), the white hip patch, the darkish head, and the beautiful brown sides. 

Aren't these beautiful?  I took about a dozen pictures in the rain, but this is the only one that came out close to decent.




Do you notice how these pictures seem to show two male ducks hanging out with one female?  I guess it's that time of year for ducks. 

The American Goldfinches in my yard are quite suddenly sporting almost full breeding plumage, only the bright yellow still looks a bit dingy in patches, but the black head patch is now looking very sharp.  And there are robins in my yard again.

So maybe it is spring after all?

I'm sometimes fascinated by trying to figure out spring.  Last year, I posted about full blown (literally!) crocuses in mid march.  In 2010, I showed daffodils in early April and Crocuses in late March.

In 2009, it looks like I had crocuses up by April 16, which seems likely this year, too.

High School Chaucer

My Chaucer students are doing stepping stone assignments for their research project, which is basically a lit review about some topic or question to do with Chaucer.  So I've been reading their reports on what they've been reading, and also reading some of the articles they've been finding.  It's pretty interesting, to be honest.  And it's certainly helping me catch up a bit on the Chaucer lit.

Several of the students are education students, and a few of them are interested in how Chaucer's being taught in secondary schools. 

I, too, am getting a sense from these articles of how people are teaching Chaucer, and it seems cointerintuitive to me.

Mostly, it seems from the articles I'm reading, high schools are doing projects on the various pilgrims, perhaps also reading the General Prologue. 

I think the General Prologue is a pretty amazing piece of writing, but the amazingness isn't readily apparent unless you've read a little estates satire and probably some historical contexts, especially about religious folks.

So I'm wondering what other folks have either experienced or done with Chaucer in high schools (I never read Chaucer in high school, not a word)?

***

I've never taught high school, but I think if I wanted to do a Chaucer unit in a high school class, I'd teach one of the tales, and then only teach the description in the general prologue of the pilgrim teller.  And the tale I'd teach?  Totally The Franklin's Tale.

And I have to admit, I'd teach Gawain and the Green Knight rather than most of the other tales.  Then, um, probably the Pardoner's Tale.  Or the Summoner's Tale, or the Friar's Tale.  (I guess I'm confessing that I'd try to avoid some of the more sexally disturbing tales.)

Begin Again

There's another new article on Slate about how one shouldn't go to grad school.  Despite what the author, Rebecca Schuman, says about the "boom" in jobs in the late 1990s, as a survivor of that time, I'd like to say that things were bad then.  They're worse now, with the recession and all, but they were plenty bad then.

It's like every year someone new realizes for the first time that the job market for humanities sucks, and they think because they've just noticed it that the suckage started recently.  It didn't.

Yes, grad school is hard, and the rewards uncertain and often not nearly enough to make up for the opportunity cost.  Don't go.

Schuman builds off a nice analogy with smoking when she notes "In 2005 when I began my own Ph.D., I should have known better, but I didn’t. Now that you know better, will you listen? Or will you think that somehow you can beat odds that would be ludicrous in any other context?"

Yes, she in effect says, we all know smoking is dangerous, and we should know better than to do it, yet people still smoke.  And people should know better than to go to grad school in the humanities, but people still do it.

I'm not actually sure most of my students have heard anything about the job market or grad school in the humanities, though.  Most of them don't come from academic backgrounds or have much experience with academics until they get here.  About 40-50 percent of our students are first generation college students.   They don't know about academic stuff until and unless someone teaches them, pretty much.   I don't push grad school, but when a student asks, I try to be honest about the difficulty and the potential rewards, and about their potential.  (Usually, the students who talk to me about it are excellent students and fine people, so I get to tell them that even as I warn them.)

Three things about Schuman's article stood out to me, one only tangentially.

The more important was the dig at "satellite campuses of Midwestern or Southern universities of which you have never heard."  Yes, here I am, at a regional midwestern school, right in the middle of the target of scorn.  I am indeed sometimes frustrated at living in the land of long winters and at the distance it takes to go pretty much anywhere.  But there's no need to diss us from the privileges of Vassar, NYU, or even Irvine (See Note).   If you've never heard of us, perhaps you need to get out more and take that responsibility yourself?  There are these whole parts of the country that aren't just for flying over.  (Maybe, though, that attitude accounts for her sense that she "should have known better," and my sense that my students don't just know, about the difficulties of the phud market in the humanities?) 

Which brings me to the digs at theory.   Yes, it's specialized language.  So is medical language, and the language of physics.  We use technical language to talk about sprezzatura and metonymy, why shouldn't we use technical language to talk about difficult concepts such as deconstruction or differance?  (And by the by, why would someone choose to go to a phud program at Irvine [or Duke, for that matter] if you don't find theory interesting and exciting?  Okay, I'm assuming that the strengths in Irvine's English and Comparative Literature area also strengths in other areas.  Maybe I shouldn't.  Still, there are some darned smart people there.  Cough *Julia Lupton* Cough)  

Now for the tangential amusement.  Schuman's article links to another recent Slate article, this one by Ron Rosenbaum (who writes, we learn, about Shakespeare).  Like Schuman, Rosenbaum, too, argues that folks shouldn't go to grad school, especially not in English.  Except he relates his decision to leave his grad program in English at Yale in 1969.

If you're (as I am) even the slightest bit aware of which Shakespeare folks studied where, then Yale in the late 1960s is one of those places you're aware of for the impressive scholars who came out of that program.  (I'm not saying they're all perfect, by any means, but I can name some pretty darned smart scholars who did phuds there in the late 1960s, and they're an impressive set.)

So, yes, the job market sucks.  There's a crisis in education.  In other news, war is hell.  Each of these seems to need rediscovery often, alas.


Note.  Schuman provides a link to her dissertation.  I didn't go searching.

Ride!

First (outdoors) ride of the year!

My rear got wet, so did my feet a bit (from the spray), but it was GREAT!

News from the Professing Front

I went to an awards thing yesterday because one of my students had one an award, and so I was sort of obligated to go.  And I was feeling sort of resentful about it because it's two hours out of the day after an otherwise already full day.

And then I got there, and sat with a colleague and an advisee of mine who also won a prize, and best of all, the advisee's family, dad, grandfather, sibling, and partner.  And it was just delightful how completely proud the dad was, and how the grandfather was close to tears when she accepted her award and spoke about how her project was inspired by her family.  It didn't take long with these folks to change my mood much for the better.

I was proud of my own student, too, and I think I did an okay job explaining her project and the award.  (It wasn't the easiest project from my end, but she really came through with it.)

***

Two of my other students got projects accepted to the student research day presentations.  I'm happy for them, but secretly also thinking about my responsibility to go to another activity.

***

I got several bits of good news the other day, of import mostly to myself, I think.  I had my eyes checked, and they are healthy.  But, I also asked about whether I would be a candidate for Lasik, and the optometrist almost laughed in my face.  She didn't, though, and kindly explained that Lasik is most effective when someone's eye prescription is no more than a minus five.  Mine are around minus ten.  So I guess that's a hard decision I won't have to make.  (I've hesitated totally about the idea of eye surgery, but I was beginning to think that it would be really amazing to go camping and not worry about dealing with contact lenses and also be able to see the stars without then taking my contacts or glasses off.)  Still, I'm stressy about my eyes, and having a positive report on eye health is really great news for me.

My bike is back from the shop where it got its spring tune up, but I haven't gotten out on a ride yet.  It's cold, and there's this job thing, and the awards thing, and so on.  But soon, I hope.

***

I can report that our department search(es) was/were successful, and that we'll have a/some fine new colleague(s) joining our department in the fall.

***

There's this person I know, not really well, but we have contact sometimes in various ways.  The thing is, I keep hearing/reading X complaining about this one sort of problem, and then three months later, I hear/read X complaining about this same sort of problem in a different context, and on and on, for a while now.  And I wonder, hmmm, could it be that X is somehow the source of this sort of problem? 

And then I immediately wonder if I do the same thing myself, complain again and again about a problem and not see that I pretty much bring it on myself?  (I know I've done it in the past, in a pretty serious way.  But I hope I've grown in awareness.)

(Okay, true confession here: I still procrastinate about grading more than I should.  I should have gotten over that by now, right?  Yeah.  Like that.)

Voting Strategy?

There are a couple of local elections that allow multiple votes because they're for seats on this or that committee or board. 

Let's imagine there are three open seats, and everyone gets to vote for three seats.

One of my colleagues suggested that it would be best to vote for just the one person you most wanted, and because there would be fewer votes cast, then that would mean the one vote would be more important.

On the other hand, I thought that I should vote for the three I want, since they're not so much in competition with each other (someone who votes for a candidate with known views is also likely to vote for a candidate with similar views, no?) as with other folks.  If enough of us vote for the same three like-minded candidates, then the committee is more likely to move in that direction over all.

And since I can only vote once for each person, the person I most want has my one vote and can't have a second one from me.

I guess the big thing is, I voted.  I was #15 in my voting area, and I went mid-morning, so I suspect my vote is important.

Good luck to my candidates!

Local Politics

We have an election coming up.  It's off-season for elections, with none of the biggest offices being contested, but there are important local offices being contested.

And since I'm registered with a party, and since I vote in pretty much all the elections, I'm on the target lists for my party.  Over the weekend, I had a visit from a door to door person (canvasser?), encouraging me to vote on Tuesday and offering me information about the party's candidates.  I was glad to see her, and we had a nice chat. 

This evening, one of the candidates was going door to door.  I was happy to meet him, and I have to say, it still blows me away that candidates walk door to door and talk to people in the community.  It's not something I can imagine from the larger cities and suburbs I've lived in.  (He also had voter information about some of the other candidates, all of whom, I gather, are mutually supportive.)

I guess in off-seasons elections, especially in a smaller community, getting out a few more voters can make a big difference.

Pop

And just like that, it feels like spring.  (No fear, though, we're supposed to get colder temperatures again in the coming week.)  The neighbor's birch trees are starting to swell at the tips, though my own (a river birch, so not quite the same) isn't yet.

Out walking the guestdog yesterday, I saw what I thought were two brown thrashers.  Except they were in the company of a male cardinal, which makes me wonder if they weren't female cardinals (or an immature?  I'd have to look up first year cardinal plumage).

I'm feeling distracted.  I'm weirdly worried about North Korea.  I know so little about North Korea (and only marginally more about South Korea, admittedly), and I think that contributes.  And not long ago I listened to an audio book called The Orphan Master's Son, a novel which is set in North Korea, mostly, and very dark, though also witty and really interesting.  But in that way that if I know very little about something, and then read one thing, I can't judge if that one thing is accurate at all, so I'm hesitant about how the novel contributes to my thinking about North Korea.  It's not that I think North Korea is really going to attack South Korea or Japan (or US bases there), but I'm worried that something's up, and I'm clueless about that something.

I'm torn about the Supreme Court cases involving marriage equality.  On the one hand, I think marriage (in the west, at least) is a patriarchal organization, and we need to rethink our relationships and not base important ones on patriarchy.  Further, I'm tired of married folks having a lot of advantages over unmarried folks.  (Socially, benefits at work, cheaper prices on multiple phone plans, and so on.)

On the other hand, if we're not going to change the structual basis of marriage (and I don't think we're going to challenge that in the near future at all), then marriage equality is important.

And I know lots of married people for whom that marital relationship is meaningful and important, and it would hurt them to challenge it, and I don't want them hurt.

And then we move to the third or fourth hand, and you see where this is going.

I'm mildly frustrated at my students inability to understand basic math.  I used mail merge (and I'm proud of myself for remembering how to do it!) to put together letters to my students giving them their current grade status based on their grades (all in the letter) and percentages.

And I wrote a note about the problem with the math.  You see, in each of my classes this semester, students have to complete ten short assignments (journals type assignments), and have 15 choices to pick from in completing those ten assignments.  At this point, most of the classes have had ten of the choices so far.  But I had to divide by something, so I divided by the number of choices they've had so far.  So for a student who has done all ten already, the grade estimate is fairly accurate.  A student who's done only five, though, looks like they're failing the journals, even if their five journals each earned full credit.  (And they have five more opportunities to finish all ten journals.)

That's compounded by the fact that the journals are worth 15% of the final grade.  But since they've only turned in 45% of the total work so far, the journals are worth about one third of the estimated grade.  Thus, they seem way more important than they are.

Now the grade worriers are concerned, and one of them asked me to let them drop the lowest journal and do an extra.  That means, for me, an extra set of journals to grade.  Not huge, but still, a pain.  But mathematically, the difference at the end of the semester for a student who's lowest grade is, say, a C, is less than one point on a hundred point grading scale.  That student would be better off putting more effort into studying for the final.  (And then what to do about the student who, following the rules, figured out which ten they needed to do, and wouldn't be able to fit in an extra at this point?)

I had a couple of garlic cloves that were showing green sprouts, so I planted them in a container in the kitchen.  I've never grown garlic before (though I have been to Gilroy!), so this should be fun.  Any ideas of what sorts of soil they do best in?   Now I have to control myself and not plant the sunflowers for at least another two weeks (they tend to get sort of stringy and weak if they're inside too long).   And marigolds!  I have a huge bag of marigold seeds from last year's plants.  I think I'll take them into the office with some tiny bags and invite people to plant their own.  (Maybe I should check to make sure they'll germinate first?)

It's the weekend, and it's raining.  I was going to try a bike ride, but now I'm thinking maybe I should take my bike in for its spring tuneup instead.

And pop!  Time to get going.

Spring May Come, Or, When Good Dogs Photobomb

The snow is beginning to recede, and as it receded today, it opened up a patch of dirt near the driveway where I have a bunch of crocuses in.  So I thought I'd take a picture of the crocuses to celebrate.  But I'm dogsitting the neighbor's dog, and she decided that if there's a picture being taken, it should be of her.  You can get an idea that there's still plenty of snow on the ground (there's a drift behind her from where I put snow I dig off the driveway, so it looks higher than it mostly is).

She's very curious about what I found so exciting.

You can see here that the crocuses are coming up!  There's still snow to melt, but this looks like spring may really be on the way!  Get up those stairs, Persephone!

Northern Flicker and Spring!

One of the fun things about keeping a blog is that I can look back and actually see when I was posting about this or that, rather than trying to remember.  I can see that in other years, I've been out biking in March, but there's still a lot of snow on the ground, and it's still cold, so I haven't gone out this year yet.  (I know some friends have, but I'm a whuss.)  The roads are probably clear enough to start riding outside.

Today, I saw a Northern Flicker on the neighbor's tree (I got a pretty good look with the binoculars, and had my bird book handy).  I rarely see these around here, and it seems early (though I'm near the northern boundary of their wintering line, according to the book, so they may have been around all winter and I just didn't see them, or it may not be especially early).  Unfortunately, it flew off before I got my camera.  The flicker gives me hope for spring.

In looking over past springs, I can see that by March, I've often had crocuses up.  Not this year, though.  Where they are is still covered by a goodly snow pack.  (We really need moisture here, so I shouldn't complain.  If we get a nice, slow melting spring, that supposedly will help with our soil conditions.)

I think the first chipping sparrow might be about, and there are a couple of redpolls (common) at the feeder today, as well as the usual suspects (a tufted titmouse, juncoes, house sparrows, downy and hairy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, white-breasted nuthatches, American goldfinches).  The goldfinches aren't molting yet, so far as I can see.  (The Sibley Guide blog has a fantastic post about goldfinch molting patterns here!)

Fonts

I'm on a committee that involves reading lots of course materials from across campus, so I see lots of what people are handing out.  Last night, I was preparing for the meeting, doing my pre-reading, and one of the sets of materials (a syllabus and calendar) used at least two different fonts (a serif and a sans serif, though maybe more, because I find it difficult to tell some sans serif fonts apart when they change sizes), at least three sizes of each of those, plus bold, underline, italics, and ALL CAPS!  (And SOME BOLD ALL CAPS!)

You know those mocking websites that used to be (still are?) around, making fun of the bad web site design with lots of moving stuff, bad color choices, and bad font choices?  It felt like I was looking at a mocking of bad syllabus design.  There were so many changes designed to get attention that it felt frantic and unorganized, though on closer inspection, there were obvious signs of organization and planning.

I'm way too lazy to do font changes or size changes, though I admit to using boldface on occasion (for headings, mostly), and to italicizing book and journal titles.

We've gotten way more legalistic in our syllabus language around here.  When I first started teaching, I used to hand out a one page, double sided syllabus and calendar (admittedly, I was on a 10 week term system).  Now, I take up two pages double sided, and sometimes three.  And I'm not the wordiest.  (I have a colleague whose course materials read like a Dickens novel.)

(But honestly, if I could find an early modern Roman type face, say a beautiful Garamond, I would totally use that in my course materials!)

And We're Back!

Our break is now officially over.

I traveled and visited family, and that was great, but tiring.  Then I traveled back, and did home stuff, and graded a lot, and that was tiring.

So now I feel like I need a break.

My neighbor dog is visiting, which is lovely.  She takes me out for a walk whenever she can convince me, and I much appreciate her enthusiasm.  And when she gets up in the morning, she's already wagging and throws herself into that big stretch thing with her tail going so hard it wriggles her whole rear end. 

So, I have a few things still to grade, but no huge piles.  I got a goodly amount of work done over break.  And I got some sunshine.

Next up, midterm reports.  I am amused to see that I blogged about midterm grades before.  What's changed for me is that last semester I went to the computer help folks and got a lesson in using mail merge for excel and word, and now I can put things together.  Well, assuming I can either find the directions I wrote myself or figure it out by playing with it, I can put things together.  That should help!

I started the process with my first year writing students today, by giving them copies of their grade sheets and going through the math with them.  It saddens me that some of them can't add a few single digit numbers in their heads (or so it seems: they pulled out calculators). 

And there is also snow

I'm back in snow country, having enjoyed visiting family in the green world.

Now to grade all the stuff that must be graded.  I'm figuring there's 8 hours of work, so if I do it, I can get it done without being tortured.

I did do some reading on the plane trips, and that puts me ahead for some things.  So there should still be time to go out and enjoy some snow activities.

There is Green in the World, and Other News

The world is not actually covered in snow.  I'm thrilled to have rediscovered this.

I went to a big family thing, and one of the cool things is that my many cousins seem as happy to see me as I am to see them, and as happy to chat as adults as we were to hang out as kids.

There are things that really irritate me, but I'm happy to say that I seem to let at least some of these slide by.

Meeting Fail

I was in a sort of important meeting today, and just when it was most inappropriate to interrupt someone, I got a loud case of the hiccups.

I did have a cup of very hot drink with me, but it was too hot to drink right away, so I sipped and burned my tongue, but that wasn't enough to get rid of the hiccups.

Yeah, that made a good impression.

Despair in Grading

I'm grading some papers, and so far, they're really poor.

We did a preparatory assignment (reading and discussion together), and these papers are the next step in the way to a longer, semester-capping assignment.  That, at least, means there's time for students to learn from this set.

But, damn.  The level of vacuity is high.  There are all these empty words.  It's like reading a political speech, except they're supposed to be writing about something they've written.

I find responding to poor quality papers really hard.  But I need to respond well, because they'll have a very similar assignment as the next step, and I want them to really improve.  And if they improve there, then I'll have some hope for the final assignment.

Until then, though, I want to scream.

The World Grows Smaller

I don't remember seeing much on line about the last papal conclave.  But today, I got back from my last class of the day, looked at effbee, and saw that someone had posted that there was a new pope, pulled up the BBC website, and saw the live announcement.

It's amazing, isn't it, that I could watch that from halfway around the world, with as much ease as anything.

I have the same sense of awe when I watch a bike race streaming (I pay for a subscription thingy).

Okay, back to grading.

(One last thing:  I was surprised that I could sort of make out the basics of the Latin.  And I liked that he spoke in Italian.  That seemed friendly and pastoral, and I mean pastoral in a positive sense.  And, I could get some of the Italian, too.  Is that from a summer spent learning to read Italian, or from listening to bike races in Italian?)

Inured

In fall, when it hits 45, we all talk about how cold it is.  In the spring, when it hits 45, we're out in shorts (well, many of us) and thrilled with the warmth.  Somehow, we get used to being cold and dealing with it, and even if I'm wearing the exact same clothes in fall and spring (because my wardrobe is that boring), I feel very differently in the same temperatures.

It occurs to me that this explains a lot about why I always felt cold in the winter as a kid, even though I grew up in a moderate climate where getting a freeze over night was newsworthy.  Unfortunately, it also suggests that if I move back there somehow, I'll still feel cold in winter, since I manage to lose whatever cold endurance I acquire over the winter by the next fall.  A few short and glorious months of warmth and I'm a beginner at the cold once again, every year.

We look to be having a later spring than last year, with more snowfall.  That's great and important for our agriculture, and a little frustrating for everyone who's impatient for spring.  It's hard to believe that spring will ever really come when my yard is covered in snow and the shovel piles are chest high.

Job Search: The Watch and Wait

Flavia, of Ferule and Fescue, reports that her department has successfully concluded its search.  Congrats to her and her department.

It's this time of the year when the search process turns, when search committees have interviewed, brought candidates to campus, and had yet more meetings.  On my campus, everyone in the department community is welcome to give feedback, and then the search committee makes a recommendation to the chair, who makes a recommendation on up the line.  (I think it's theoretically possible for a chair to recommend a different candidate than the committee recommended, but I don't think that's happened while I've been here.)   Then, if all's well, the nod comes back down to the chair, and the chair makes a phone call and starts negotiations.

At this point, the search committee pretty much waits.  We don't get to hear much about the communications or negotiations, and that makes sense, but it's also anxiety producing.  Will our chosen candidate accept our offer?   Sometimes candidates ask for a week or two to decide because they've got other campus visits lined up.  So we wait.  Once the chair knows, then we know.

And if not, what do we do?  Is there another candidate who has visited that we'd like to make an offer to?  Or do we need to go further into our pool?

We may have had an easy time deciding which candidates to invite to campus, but if we have to choose one more candidate, we may have less agreement.

Flavia mentioned that in past searches her department has had candidates turn them down and has hired a second candidate, but that once the new candidate is hired, the department members are pretty happy and think about the person they have, rather than worrying about the person who didn't accept the offer.  That's also been my experience.  I know we've hired candidates after some offers were turned down, and the people are excellent colleagues.

One time, we had someone sign the contract and then back out, so we had several weeks before we had to go back to the candidate pool and try again, by which time some other folks already had jobs.  (No one here had a bad word to say about the person who backed out; we totally understood that we're not the most desireable job.)  We ended up hiring a superb colleague.

If we need to go back into the pool, we're still bringing in excellent candidates, but we and our colleagues are feeling search fatigue.  In an average hiring year (we aren't allowed to hire every year, but when we are, we often have 2-3 searches), for example, I'm likely to have gone to 5 or 6 job talks, meals with candidates, maybe additional receptions.  If I'm on a search committee, I've probably done more.  So when I see the call go out weeks later for another job talk and meals, I know we'll have trouble with attendance.  I'm not trying to excuse faculty members for not wanting to attend more candidate events, but to acknowledge how tired we are.  Not so long ago, I was at one of these events, tired and grumpy (and very much wishing I had never gone to grad school), and trying not to show it, and the candidate asked about living in the community, and one of my colleagues said, "Oh, Bardiac, you love living here.  Why don't you talk about it?"


Let's imagine a search for a brackish water basketweaving theorist.  There are, say, 150 candidates who are applying for, say, 10 searches in the field.  Of these, 25 stand out on paper as strong candidates.  Of this number, we select maybe 10 for initial interviews.    Maybe 6 or those really stand out as stellar.

The thing is, I have a feeling that if there are 10 job searches in the field, we're all looking at about 15 or so candidates in common, and maybe 8 who impress greatly in interviews and campus visits.  Those 8 will likely get several offers, with two others getting a secondary or tertiary offer.

From the candidates' points of view, there's massive competition for very few slots.

For the search committees, there are relatively few really qualified candidates who give stellar interviews, so we feel like we're also experiencing serious competition for those candidates.  (Yes, it's still way better to be on the search committee than in the candidate pool.)

A Bit of Panic

As I'm thinking about next year's classes, I'm in a state of semi-panic.

It looks like I'll have a number of new class preps.  Some of these are my own fault.

Fall
Majors' Gateway Course (I've taught this before, something like 8 years ago?) (This is instead of comp, and like our comp, a course that meets for five hours a week.)
Lower Level Early British Course
Senior Seminar (Comedy, with lots of ideas, thanks to you folks!  I'm looking at texts now, and thinking about how to integrate some of the ideas you've shared.)

Spring
Majors' Gateway Course (repeat!)
Shakespeare
MA level grad seminar


I may end up with another partial assignment and drop a course.  If so, I'll likely either drop the lower level Brit course or the grad seminar.

I was thinking about using the Routledge Romance of Arthur anthology (Eds. Norris J. Lacy and James J. Wilhelm) to do an Arthurian lit course in the lower level Brit course.

Pros: It would be potentially very fun, and students would be likely to find it so.
Cons: I'm not really up on Arthuriana and would need to read a lot during the summer.

 Or, I could do a Liz/Jac lit course from an anthology, and give students a taste of lyric, non-Shax drama, some prose fiction, and maybe a romance or two (or even end into Paradise Lost). 

Pros: The prep would be a ton easier, and I could choose from a lot of great lit.
Cons: A bit less popular with students.

What are your thoughts on the joys of either sort of class?  (In neither case would I do a rush through 200 years of lit thing.)


The Majors' Gateway course is mostly aimed at trying to get students to think like English majors, but inclusive of all our different sorts of majors (we have five sorts of majors, at least).  So we think about texts, metaphor, and so on.  Last time I taught it, I used a sort of questy theme, starting with Chretien and Perceval, and ending with Winterson's Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Monty Python, and Indiana Jones.  I may rework the theme, or come up with something different.

I would like to have more variety: a non-fiction sort of text, more lyric poetry.  Those are sort of hard to work into the questy theme.  (I'd happily take suggestions.)  I did like it for the variety (Marie de France!  Monty Python!)

Now I'm trying to think of other themes which would play to my strengths and be interesting to students.


One of the things I really like about my job is that I don't have semester after semester of the same thing, endlessly.  (But then with lit, it seems like even a basic intro to lit could always be different.)

The flip side, though, is that I'm always thinking of new courses, prepping new stuff, sometimes giving myself more work than I should.

If I end up teaching the grad seminar, then I also need to do most of the prep for that over the summer.  (Our MA program students can take our senior seminars, so I need to offer something different for the MA program than for the senior seminar.)

Comedy?

Book orders for another semester are bearing down on me.  Again.  It looks like I'll be teaching two new courses next semester.  One is our senior seminar in earlier British lit, which I could revamp a previous course for, but I want to do something different.

In recent years, I've done a course on the Other in EME Drama, Marlowe, and Witchcraft in EME Drama.  And while I really enjoyed each of those, I'm ready to do something different, and then maybe come back to one of the topics I've done before.  (I need enough space to feel like I'll rethink the readings and see what's new, and also enough time for students who want to take a second EM seminar to have a choice that's significantly different.  That's not a huge population, but it's a few students a year, probably.)

So, I'm thinking of an EME comedy (plays, primarily) course.

On the for sure list so far is Epicoene.  Other than that, I'm pretty wide open.  I am thinking, however, of finishing the semester with Emma with is neither early modern nor a drama, but would, I think, be a delightful finish to the semester for students and me alike. 

So, here goes.  What plays do you think should I teach?  (I'm willing to go to EEBO if I have to, so it doesn't have to be just widely in modern editions, but modern editions are helpful!)

The Knight of the Burning Pestle  (I have a copy of an 18th century edition, so that would be extra fun for show and tell.)


What theory and criticism?

I can't wait to hear your suggestions!

Students

I had a student last year who was really into a performance thing.  And this weekend, I went to a campus event, and that student was doing the performance thing.  And it was so very cool!

And today, we were reviewing for the midterm in my Shakespeare class, and putting concepts up on the board.  One of the concepts, when I introduced it, I drew a picture, and during the review, one of the students drew a better picture for the concept.  I'm so impressed that she could remember it well enough to do a picture on the board, and that she was willing to as well.  (If you can teach a concept, then you've learned it, right?  And being able to draw it means you get it.  And given that you've seen some of my best art, you can imagine many students can easily do better.)

It's always cool doing this sort of review day because the students just cover the board in stuff, and it's very visible that they've learned a lot in the class.

Animal Names

My last stick figure lit post had the two Cambridge students running after the borrowed horse, Bayard.  I love that we know the horse's name.

Bayard seems to be a name for a bay horse.  I feel like I've read it before, in other pieces of lit.  Have I?  Do you folks know other Bayards?

I like that medieval writers give us names for animals.  Horses seem especially important.  There's Gringolet, for example.

What other famous horses do we know?  (The other two I know are Traveler, Robert E Lee's famous and beautiful gray horse, and Comanche, the US cavalry horse that was found at the Little Bighorn battlefield after the battle.)

Dogs?  Asta in lit, and lots of historical dogs from fairly recent history.  But I don't remember any dog names in medieval lit.  In fact, I don't remember any dog names from early modern lit (other than Cub and Tom), either.  Nor, does it seem to me, are there many dogs.

In contrasts, we have Greymalkin and Malkin for cats, no?  Other cats?

Chaunticleer and Pertelote, but other poultry?

Don Russell or Reynard, but other wild animals?