Teaching Sick

I've had a cold this week, not serious, but coughing, hacking, and sleeping a lot.  And yet, I've taught all my classes.  I wasn't nearly as good teaching as I usually am, but they were okay.

It got me wondering, though, how other peoples' schools handle short term instructor illnesses?

Here, you can just cancel classes.

Or you can email the department and ask someone to cover the class.  (It seems to me that most of those emails are more for planned absences, such as for conferences, rather than for illness.)

I have cancelled classes in the past rather than try to find someone else to teach them, mostly because we teach an 11 credit load (with adjuncts teaching a 15 credit load as full time), so it seems harder to find someone with free time than it would if we taught 6 or 9 credit loads; easier than with 12 credit loads, though.  But usually, especially with a cold, I just muddle through, do the best teaching I can, and that's that.

With a cold, I don't think I'm extending the cold.  It's usually a week to two weeks, or, if you don't teach, 7-14 days, right?

But I feel bad about probably sharing germs with students and others.


I was amused, on Friday, though, when I taught with a really ragged voice (mostly trying not to talk), and after class, one of my students came up and did that thing where they apologize for missing class because they didn't feel well, and you could tell as the words were coming out of their mouth, they realized that not feeling well hadn't kept me in bed.  On the other hand, if we all stayed home when we got a cold, we'd share them less, but my students would also have missed two weeks of classes this semester from my absences.

Crocus Smile

Last fall, I was thinking aloud (in the company of friends) about doing that thing where you put crocus bulbs in your lawn, and then in the spring, they come up, bloom, and die back before it's time to mow.  One of my friends suggested I do a pattern.

So I did.  Or at least, I tried to.  Using some wrapping ribbon, I laid out a smiley face, and then worked around it planting the little bulbs.

Behold, smiley face.

Then I took away the ribbon and we had that little winter thing.  You know, with the cold and arctic blasts and such.

And now, the snow's gone, and things are starting to come up.  But, naturally, not all at once.

So here's the same patch of lawn:

If you embiggen seriously, you can see three very tiny bits of yellow.  On the left, just a bit directly towards the camera from near the tip of the shadow, there's a tiny spot.  On the right, if you work forward from the tree in the back, there's another spot, and then forward more, another spot.

I had bags of mixed crocus bulbs, and it looks like the yellows came up first.

You can also see that I pruned some of the lower branches of the tree (it was getting too difficult to mow near it, and getting in the neighbor's way, too).  But mostly you can see that the tree isn't leafing out yet.  Nothing is.

And do you wonder, as I do, what caused the optical illusions of curves in the vinyl sidings of the houses?

Edited to add:  I took another picture this afternoon, and there are a few new blossoms showing up!

SAA Conversation

I asked some of the folks I know who teach at R1s about their PhD placements.  All but one assured me that all of their grads get jobs.  One of these folks said that their students get jobs because their PhD students are even willing to go to places such as the U of North Dakota.  Yep, in his mind, that's the worst thing possible.  My sort of school isn't even on his radar of horrors. 

The one who didn't assure me that all their grads get jobs talked about the ethical dilemma of teaching grad students who probably won't get jobs.  And yet, he teaches where he teaches because he took the best job offered in a tough market. 

Overall, though, the job market difficulty was passingly acknowledge in the presidential address, where Diana Henderson talked about how her connections helped her get a near Ivy job after she didn't get tenure at her first job.  It's good to have connections, no?

I know the folks involved would be horrified to realize this, but to me, SAA often feels like an insider crowd from all Ivies or near Ivies, and the rest of us who exist to buy their books and teach at places they don't really quite believe exist.

Back to the Fifties

My students are working on a project where they pose a question having something to do with our class, and then try to find an essay published in a peer reviewed journal that helps them understand the question or an answer to some extent.  They read and write an analysis of the essay.  It's a stepping stone (see, I chose a different metaphor) along the way to other research.

We're talking through the questions now, and I'm struck again (as every time I've done this) by how often their questions feel very "fifties" to me, where "fifties" means that it feels critically old fashioned.

They tend to want to know if Hamlet is really crazy, for example, or if Lady Macbeth had kids.  These aren't bad questions, but they feel out of step with questions most critics these days are asking and pursuing.

My goal is for them to be able to find a useful essay, so I help them modify and look for stuff, so things usually turn out okay.

Some of them are carrying over from high school questions, it seems.

Others, of course, are asking much more fun (from my point of view) questions.

What sorts of questions do your students ask?  How do the questions change across course levels?  (These are first and second year students, mostly, so they really are early in their development as college students.)

My SAA

Ups and downs.

I was in probably the most useful seminar so far as specific feedback for everyone's papers that I've ever been in.  It was really great that way.

I got to see good folks, from grad school and elsewhere, and that was great.

I felt ever more alienated from Shakespeare stuff here in my NWU home, where I teach more comp than early modern by far.  But where there are other good things that I appreciate.

I planned poorly, I think, and rushed in and rushed out.  The bad in that is that I spent the whole visit tired.  The good in that is that I'm home and got a good and full night's sleep last night, and I get to go to a friend's concert tomorrow which I'm very much looking forward to.

Branding

NWU is going through a thing with an ad agency or something to establish some "brand" so that students in the area will want to come here (and, I hope, so taxpayers in the state will want to support state education, but here I am all naive and everything).

They're having some fancy thing where they're going to unveil "our brand." 

You can imagine how much fun some of us are having with the brand thing. 

But even more now, since they announced the fancy thing to announce our brand via an invitation in a small envelop.  The invitation is a once folded piece of cardstock with the information about the event.  Fine so far.

But also inside, on the same cardstock, are small colored rectangles, each with one or two words, each of which is supposed to make us think of NWU or of the brand or something.  (The fact that it's not quite clear what we're supposed to make of these is all the more amusing.)

That's right, we've basically been sent an envelop with fancy confetti.

You can guess that none of the inspirational words is "sustainable" or "environmentally conscious," can't you?

Alas, none is "snowy," "pays well," or "education," either.  Nor is "change," "feminist," "justice," "work," or "diversity" among the choices.


So my question is:  did we pay these folks more or less than we pay our athletic director?


And also, have your schools been doing "branding," and if so, what's your "brand"?

Growing Up

I was in a meeting the other day, and it really struck me how difficult I find it to say to someone in a meeting situation that I think their idea, however good, won't fly, and that we should do something different.

And then today, I wrote a note to a student to tell hir that I think the project they've been working on doesn't pass muster, and either needs a lot more work, or needs not to happen.

I'm sure I'm not the only person to find these sorts of conversations difficult.  Heck, I'm sure it was worse for the person at the meeting and the student than it was for me.  And I'm sure it would be way worse if I were actually giving life-changingly bad news.

Still, it's something I'm weak about, and I need to think how to do it well and better.


On the other hand, I also realized at that meeting, and writing to the student, that I've gotten a lot better at not feeling personally hurt when certain things just don't happen.  Yes, I still feel invested, but I'm better at realizing that I should worry about the things I can do something about, and worry less about the things I can't do something about.  Or something.

And I can't be more invested in a student's project than the student is.

And I have to recognize that I make choices about what's important and what I put my energy into, and that other people make choices, but that our choices aren't going to be the same.  And I'm mostly better at respecting their choices.  (Though not always, true!)


I think everyone here is feeling beaten down by the long, very cold winter and by the semester and by constant budget cuts and administrative additions to the work.

Of course, from administrators' points of view, the work they want us to do is really important and they want us to be totally invested.  For most of the faculty, though, the work is make-work, and we don't see that it helps us teach or research or advise or anything else.  It merely provides more fodder to hire more administrators, it seems.

Bucket List

You know how there's that movie, and now people have a "bucket list" of things to do before they die?

I don't really have a list, but I do have some ideas of things I haven't done that I'd like to, and of things I've done that I'd like to do again, or more often.

So this morning, with wet and heavy snow on the ground, I built my first ever snowman.  Picture or it didn't happen, right?

The snow is super melty, and I'm not that strong, and I'm no engineer, so it's not a great one.  But it's taller than I am.  (Note to self: build with someone stronger so that you can make the first two snowballs bigger.)

Swans!

I happened to be chatting with a friend yesterday, over coffee at a little coffee shop; we'd gone out looking for the snowy owl before, and then I thought of the swans that come through, so we went out to look, and sure enough, there's a gathering of swans in the field pond by the highway!  I counted 40.

(I like to be able to look back and see how the seasons go, and it looks like this is about average for swan sightings.  I did see them in March of 2010, looks like.  But other years, it's been April.  It's cool to be able to use a searchable blog to think about seasonal stuffs.)

Bad Timing

I've posted before about some frustrations I have working with some of our tiny MA program students.  I posted here about some students I had who were rushing to finish after getting extension, and here about a student whose work didn't quite have a thesis.  That last was back in December, and now suddenly, after relatively little contact, only one revised chapter (which still wasn't quite a chapter), the student has sent forward a complete thesis, expecting the faculty folks to read and approve it really quickly.

I really did my best to explain to this student that zie needed to be in regular contact and working along, but I've pretty much had to initiate contact and ask for thesis stuff.  I did that earlier this week, sending information about the last dates to do what needs to be done this term, and a day later zie expects us to take this on.

Every time this sort of thing happens, I want to never work with another MA student.  And yet, I didn't turn this one down when zie asked.  And I try not to take out my frustrations with one student on other students.  But right now, I'm really irritated.

Political Discourse in the Midwest

We've got an important local election coming up.  There are a couple of referenda (is that the plural?) and city council stuff.  But the political discourse, even of the candidate I favor, is all about growing up in the area and family.  At least I didn't see the church reference.

The candidate I don't favor adds a bit about making the community "safe" (for raising kids) and "affordable."  Now we all want people to be safe in our communities, but I think this is coded.  And the "affordable" is about lowering taxes even more.

How can our communities be "safe" in the long run if we don't tax ourselves to support schools, roads, parks, and so forth?  Yet another reason why I will never be in politics!

The Power of the Internet

When I posted about trying to make Hamlet unfamiliar to students who think they really know it, Fie upon this quiet life shared an idea about having students trace a few words through the text.

It sounded like a good idea, but it wasn't.  It was a GREAT idea!

I did it the next day, using "fear," "revenge," "sleep," and "noble" (and asked them to also look for other forms).  It gave me the chance to talk about concordances, and on-line concordances, and to show them how to look stuff up.  It also reinforced their sense of the instability of the text as a text.

And they mostly did a fine job teasing out how their word worked, and how it changed.  The best was the "fear" group; "noble" worked the least well, I think.

So, thanks, Fie!  You made my day way better!

Midterm Grades

We're required to give students a midterm grade report here at NWU.

So I use mail merge to write a short letter showing what grades they've gotten for what assignment, and putting it all together.  Handily, this time it worked out so that they've done just under 50% of the total graded work for the class already.

I'm filled with despair at how many students can't figure out basic percentages.

And I'm filled astonied at how many students are totally and completely flabbergasted at where their grade stands at this point, even though I've given back every single graded piece of work and my syllabus lays out how much each assignment is worth.

The good thing is that the estimate right now tends to underestimate their grade a bit, so they can improve if they finish the short assignments well.  So I can reasonably comfort some of them who are aiming for As and will probably get there, and some of them I've given a realistic sense of alarm, so maybe they'll work a bit harder.


I'm also irritated that our administration doesn't think our students are capable of keeping track of their grades.

(And yes, I know that some instructors are woefully bad at returning graded work in anything like a timely manner.  I do indeed think that students need to get back work reasonably quickly, and that instructors need to explain how they grade.  I just think it's not unreasonable to expect college students to do percentages.)

Teaching Hamlet

I'm teaching Hamlet for the first time in a while, and yet again it strikes me how difficult I find it to teach Hamlet.  It's a huge play.  There's so much going on, so much to it.  But the bigger problem is that a lot of students have read it in high school, and thus seem to think that they have the final answer, and so, to every question, they want to answer whatever thing they learned in high school:  it's passion!  it's Oedipal!  it's all soliloquys all the time!

This time around, I've been trying to start by defamiliarizing the play (I'm teaching it in two classes right now, by odd luck and careful planning, but I have a couple students in both classes, so things have to focus differently for each class).  In one class, I'm trying to defamiliarize by having them talk about Q1 and Q2 parallel speeches (the opening works!), as do some more famously different bits (there's the point!).  In the other class, I've started with more historical and generic contexts.

In both classes, only about a third of students raised their hands when I asked if they'd bothered to reread the play.  And then I encouraged the others to reread because what they'd learned in high school wasn't going to cut it.

How do you find teaching Hamlet (or other super familiar texts)?

What do you to do get students to take these texts more seriously at the higher level?

The Piano Lesson

On my facebook feed, someone I know posted this weekend about how disagreeable it is to make their kid practice piano.

I know a number of people who insist their kids take up an instrument and keep at it, though the kid doesn't seem to enjoy it at all.

And the parent doesn't enjoy nagging the kid to practice.  But then the parent relates that they were forced to practice as kids, too.

And then you learn that no, the parent never plays now, doesn't practice, nada.

Why are they so invested in their kid's playing if they had lessons and could practice and play if they wanted to?  I mean, I understand that practicing isn't fun, and that it takes a lot of time.  But if the music's important enough to you to spend all that energy nagging your kid, why isn't it important enough to you to play yourself?

At what point do you let the kid decide not to play the piano (or whatever) anymore? 

(I think getting an opportunity to learn an instrument is great, and certainly learning to read music is good in all sorts of ways.  Even better is the subtler learning that focused practice leads to improvement.)

(Disclosure:  My parents took me to community music stuffs from the time I was little, and I wanted to learn an instrument, so I was given lots of opportunity.  But my parents didn't much consider it their job to tell me to practice, nor was I a great practicer, nor a great musician.  But I did enjoy a lot of my experiences in high school band, which made the whole high school horror a bit less horrible.)


Meanwhile, break is over.  Back to classes!  I got a lot of stuff done, though not everything.  I did relax a lot and rode my bike, even (outside!).

If Our Minds Be So

Last night, I was sort of in a panic about how fast break has gone by, and how little I've gotten done.

This morning, things look brighter.

I've finished all the grading, and entered grades.
I've done my taxes.
My bike has had its spring tune up and is ready to go.
My car's in the shop for its 100K tune up stuffs, and to fix a small oil leak (before it gets bad).  But I have a loaner.
I'm about half way through rereading Hamlet (which I don't teach often, because it's so darned huge), and thinking about how I want to teach it in class this semester.  (I'm using the Arden 3 edition, and it's masterful, very smart, very interesting and well-explained.)

Still to do:  errands: hair cut, etc

Choose texts for fall courses.  Holy cow, how can that be?

I'm teaching an Ecocriticism based early modern seminar next fall (at least, that's what I'm thinking), but still have to choose texts.  What texts would you teach?  (It can be anything early modern.  This is going to be a challenging seminar for me!)

I also have to figure out my theme for the composition course.  I'm thinking maybe "liberal arts."  Thoughts?  Suggestions?  Other ideas?


I went birding a tad while I was away for a couple days, hoping to see a gyrfalcon reported.  But I've examined my pictures, and the bird I was hoping might just be the gyrfalcon is a rather beautiful Northern Harrier.  I saw a bunch of Northern Harriers, and it's good, because I've got a much better idea of what to look for beyond the white rump.


Four more days (including today) of break!  Off to get stuffs done and ready!

Nearly Perfect

So far, it's a great start to the break.

I went for the first outside bike ride of the season, and it was great.  I was slow as molasses, but it was great because I was outside, and pedaling.  It was just about freezing, so with good clothes, I was pretty much warm enough.  And did I mention, it was GREAT!

(You'd have to try hard not to be aware that riding a road bike in biking gear is a pretty privileged thing, but it's especially noticeable in colder weather when the homeless folks are out during the day trudging, wearing many layers, and I'm out in the cold for fun.)

I tried to take a nap, but didn't fall asleep.  Still, being able to take a nap is pretty luxurious.

And now I've just about finished grading a set of midterms.  That means I won't have to grade this set of midterms later in the break!  I still have a makeup set to grade (some students needed to take it earlier), but that's only three exams.  That means, yes, I have almost no grading to do for the rest of the break!  For once, procrastination didn't win!

A nearly perfect start to spring break today!

The Place of Shakespeare

Some of the responses to the last post got me thinking about how different departments organize curriculum, and how differently we Shakespeare folks teach in response.  And that got me thinking about Shakespeare in the curriculum.

When I was interviewing for this job, one of the interviewers asked me if I thought that Shakespeare should be a required course for English lit majors.  Now there was a time when the vast majority of English phuds would probably have answered with a certain and sure "yes, of course!"  But that time is not now, and that time was not even then.  At least not for me.

I answered that I didn't think it should be a requirement because there were lots of good literatures and texts, and that what we should focus on was helping students learn to really read and analyze texts, and understand them, and that students could learn those skills well with Shakespeare, certainly, but also through lots of other texts and literatures.  I still feel that very strongly.

I can't speak to the situation at very elite schools, but for our situation, we really aren't preparing our majors to be graduate students in English literature.  And we shouldn't be.  What we're preparing them for is a lifetime of being able to read critically, to analyze, to solve problems, and so forth, and hopefully, also, yes, to find joy and pleasure in literature.  Our majors graduate relatively poorly prepared to take on graduate work in earlier British lit.  We just don't have many opportunities for them to take earlier British lit courses; a lit major might, with real care and luck, be able to fit three earlier British lit courses in a curriculum here, but it wouldn't be easy.

Partly, this is a matter of curricular design.  We don't require many specific courses, and those we do are skills and theory focused rather than focused on geography, chronology, or specific authors.


When I got here, I learned that the department had made two hires in Shakespeare/early modern, to replace two retiring faculty members.  Those to faculty members had pretty much divided up Shakespeare (which was required of all lit majors) into two courses based solely on which plays each person like to teach most.  (Evidently they'd gone through the canon together and chosen their "teams" and that was that.)

Among the first votes taken when we got here was a curricular question about whether we should require Shakespeare, and that requirement went away with overwhelming support.  (I sometimes felt, when I'd see one of the retired folks, that they were both very disappointed that we new Shakespeare faculty hadn't fought tooth and nail to keep the requirement.)

We two set about revising the Shakespeare courses, and made one a sophomore level surveyish course, where we agreed to teach across genres, 8 or so texts, and another junior level topics course, where we would teach some topic in Shakespeare.  That was almost 15 years ago now, and I've taught the topics course I think twice, once Roman Shakespeare and once Shakespeare's and history.  (I thought I'd get to teach it more, but things haven't shaken out that way; my colleague has taught it maybe one or two more times, but certainly neither of us teaches it very often.)

At about the same time, the department as a whole worked through a massive curricular change. 

And now we're thinking about some new changes.

And as a Shakespeare person, I'm thinking about how Shakespeare and earlier British lit might fit into those new changes.  So I'd love to hear from others about how Shakespeare fits in their curriculum.  Is it required?  Do most students take it if not required?  Is it mostly thought of as a general education course or a strictly majors course?

And broadly speaking, how do you think of a literature major?  What's the point of a lit major?  And how does Shakespeare fit that point?

And Then There Was One

I just finished teaching Troilus and Cressida today.  That leaves me with one Shakespeare play still to teach to reach my goal of having taught all of Shakespeare's plays during my career.  That one play?  Timon of Athens.  It's been ages and ages since I've even read Timon, but I may just put it on the syllabus for next year, and then I can retire!  Well, not really, but still, that goal will be done.  (I've even taught the maybe but probably not by Shakespeare Edward III.)

I'm not especially happy with how I taught Troilus this year, but then, when I think about it, I usually take at least two goes teaching a play before I feel like I've really done a good job with it, and the plays that I've never seen someone else teach seem harder that way.

I feel like I couldn't really make it cohere, either for myself or my students, so it was sort of jumpy, between camps, between thematic issues, between plot lines.

Any thoughts on teaching Timon to help me brave that?  It's sort of hard to imagine teaching Timon in a Shakespeare surveyish course, since there are so many very fine tragedies to choose from. 

It might be fun to teach a Shakespeare representing war sort of class; I think I could make Troilus fit well in there.

Spring break is almost here!  The professional bike racing season is well on, with two fun stage races this week!  And everything in the upper Midwest is melting!  (Which may bring floods, alas, but it's so good to feel that spring may someday come!)

Check This Out!

Jonathan from the Shakespeare Prison Project commented on the last post, and as usual, I glanced over to see his blog, and it's really, well, interesting and great stuff!

You should all go visit:  The Shakespeare Prison Project.

Watching the Old Doctor

Since I subscribed to streaming tv, I've been watching different programs folks have recommended, or that I'd gotten interested in.

I've watched all of the Portlandia episodes, and really enjoyed them.

And yesterday, I finished all the rebooted Dr. Who episodes.  So I started on the classic episodes.

There are maybe four or five episodes on the service with the first doctor, and boy is he creepy; but he really doesn't seem to dominate the screen the ways the rebooted doctors do.  I started into the second doctor; I'm afraid he reminds me of Moe in the Three Stooges, so I keep expecting him to smack one of the sidekicks.

Color and better special effects in the rebooted version make a big difference.  I wonder what the heck people thought of the originals right off.  But then, I also wonder that about The Prisoner, which confused the heck out of me as much as it fascinated me when I accidentally found it on tv as a teenager.


Meanwhile, watching one of the last of the #11 episodes, which was sad ("The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe"), I went to wipe my eye (which, you know, had gotten a speck of dust in it!), and popped out my contact by mistake.  And lost it.  Doh.  Fortunately, I have an old set, so I put the contact from the old set to soak over night, and used my glasses.

But it did get me to thinking.  I think in 33 years (about) of wearing contacts, I've lost maybe two lenses.

One I lost at home, and then (after I got a replacement) it was in the dryer, sparkling in the lint.

One I lost in a swimming pool (because I thought I'd been told that they'd stay on.  They didn't.  Don't try that at home).

If I've lost others, I don't remember doing so.


Meanwhile, what tv series should I think about watching (that's available streaming), or even relatively recent films?

Disappointed

You know how when you discover something about yourself, maybe something you should have discovered a long time ago, but didn't,you may be really disappointed?  That's me.

I like to think of myself as reasonably able to cope with things not going to plan, but I'm beginning to think I've been deluding myself.

It wasn't like there was horrible stuff, but little things just disrupted me yesterday way more than they should have.

The copier for the departments (we share) wasn't working.  So I had to put off trying to prepare my exam.

A colleague who was supposed to have completed something by Monday hadn't, so I sent a reminder, and finally, zie did the thing, but with a bit of condescension thrown in for my benefit.

And then the printer wasn't working, and the other printer wasn't either.

And then the copier was, but someone was copying a ton from a book.

And then a notebook I need for a committee job was missing, and no one seemed to know why or where.  (It still hadn't turned up this morning.)

And then the copier was free and working, so I made my copies. 

And I contacted someone and got the most vital stuff that had gone into the notebook emailed to me, and made that available to the committee in another notebook.

But seriously, I shouldn't have been so disconcerted by a few little things, and I was.  Maybe I'm more a person who's disconcerted by little things than I like to think?  (Maybe my friends could have told me that 20 years ago or more.)

Winter Art!

Grumpy Eleanor of Aquitaine (look her up on effbee) has posted some art; I looked it up, and found a new favorite procrastination tool!

Look:

You can play, too, at the Bayeu.datensalat.net.

I want to see some grading ones!

Perquisite

One of my Spanish professor colleagues was passing in the hall a few minutes ago; we're friendly, though we don't know each other well.

I took the opportunity to ask him for some help understanding what's happening in Venezuela, and he explained a bit, which really helped me.  (My Spanish isn't good enough to follow a political discussion in print, even.)

I think that's one of the best things about being at a university: there are lots of smart people who know stuff around, and they're often very willing to answer questions, and they're often very good at explaining things.

THAT Student

I got an email from one of my advisees today, one who's pretty much that student.  By "that student," I mean the sort of student who isn't horrible, but who's an energy sap, who always wants some special thing done, but who, at the same time, does minimal work with minimal (apparent) effort, and doesn't seem to care much, that is, until zie needs that some special thing, and then it's all about hir.

We have this requirement, a sort of outcome based requirement where students are supposed to figure out the outcome they want, and then do something, and then demonstrate that they've achieved the outcome.  Most of our students just do it.  Some do it in extraordinary ways.  Most do it, and they learn something, and it's done.  But not my special student.  Zie wants to designate something zie did a while back for the requirement, and then do the paperwork backwards, I think.  I don't know if the office of the special requirement will allow that.

And then zie has another graduation requirement problem.  That's mostly what zie emailed me about today.  So I looked in hir folder, and lo and behold, in my advising notes, I have that specific issue at the top of the page as one of three things zie needed to take care of.  But I think zie is going to try to blame me, or some other advising person, or graduation requirement person.

And yet, if zie weren't the sort of person who does the minimal for everything, there'd be no problem.  This just isn't the sort of graduation requirement that most students ever even notice because they fill it without thinking about it, just by doing more than the minimum.

Sunday

Sunday, the day to prepare for Monday.

There's steel cut oatmeal to premake.

And a roast to roast so that I have lunch stuffs ready to go.

Cleanup.

And grading.

And class prep.  We're starting Troilus and Cressida tomorrow, and I've never taught it before, though I reread it over break to be ready!

So much for a day of rest, eh?

I have another ten papers in this pile to grade, and if I finish, I will nearly set a record (since I collected them on Friday), and make my week so very much better than it would have been.

I really, really need to finish this pile.

At the same time, I'm tired of grading this pile.  At least the talking to on Wednesday seemed to have made them aware that they did need to dig in on this paper.  Only one has been really poor, but that's poor because it doesn't really address the assignment.

Avoiding Despair

I'm teaching an intro to the major course this semester, and one of the small assignments I've given involves asking individual students to each do some minimal research and write a short (like a page) paper explaining a particular period or literary/intellectual movement.  And then they do a short presentation in class, so that everyone gets the idea.

I made up a timeline that we're filling in, and gave each student a copy to fill in as we go.

The idea is to give them the beginnings of a framework about literary movements and such.  So, for example, they should know that the Romantics didn't just pop up out of nowhere, but responded to industrialization, the Englightenment, and so forth.  If they have a basic, rough, narrative, they can learn more start to understand more subtle ways of seeing things in other classes.

So, they handed the printed versions in, and I started grading them on Tuesday, thinking I could get through the pile in a day, since they're fairly short.

I got through about a third of the pile before I was driven to despair.  Some were confused a bit, but mostly my despair was driven by the almost complete lack of acknowledgment or connection between what they'd gotten from their sources and what they'd written.  So, for example, there'd be a paragraph about Romanticism (I don't think I actually read the Romanticism one, so I'm making this up), with now acknowledgment of sources, and then at the end, a numbered list of sources.  Or maybe a "Works Cited" section with two URLs.

I couldn't even bear to read further.  That doesn't often happen to me with grading, but this just really bothered me.  I think of the third of the pieces I read, one earned a passing grade.  (Because I can't in good conscience pass a written piece of college work that uses sources without acknowledging those sources.)

This wasn't plagiarism in the sense of stealing ideas, but, I think, plain confusion about how to acknowledge sources for this sort of assignment, or laziness, or something.  That didn't make it acceptable, though.

I spent a lot of time Tuesday afternoon pondering, and being frustrated, and by Tuesday evening, I came up with an idea.

On Wednesday, I started our two hour class session by asking them to freewrite about why we cite sources, about what the point is.  And then I had them take their freewriting to groups, and they made a list, which we compiled onto the board at the front of the class.

So, I did my best to make sure that they had good reasons why we might want to cite sources, and that they knew they knew the reasons (at least collectively).

Then I talked about my despair at reading their papers.  And then I asked them to help me avoid further despair by revising their work and turning it in again, with full and appropriate citation, which I would then grade for real.  And I wouldn't look at what had been turned in, or count it, unless they felt they'd already done so well on the assignment that they didn't need to revise, in which case they could let me know.

We spent the next chunk of time working out how to resolve specific citation questions or problems using OWL at Purdue and examples.

They agreed.  Next Monday I'll get the results, and I sure as heck hope they're much better.

More Tales from Ski Lessons

The same kid was there from last week, and even though it was colder, she was relatively uncomplaining, and skied happily along.  I think because it was colder a lot of kids' parents had put the little hand warmer packets in their gloves, and those help TONS.

(Yes, I had them in my gloves and the toe ones in my shoes.)

I feel sort of useless at ski lessons this year.  I think the teacher leader (I'm a helper) of my group last year got the helpers more involved, maybe?

Or maybe it's because I'm with a younger group this year?

One good thing is that I'm such a poor skier that any time spent on skis, even if it's doing warm ups (stretch, crouch, touch toes, twist, hop, and so on) helps me feel better on skis.  I think it's partly just feeling like I can balance and trust my legs, or something.

The other good thing is that seeing little kids waving their arms around makes me think about how I'm learning to keep my hands closer to my body.  Seeing little kids try to double pole by putting the sharp part of the pole in front of them helps me realize why that's counterproductive.  And trying to do both things right is good practice!

Now, if I can make myself grade a bunch today, I will be caught up, and life will get better!  (I hate having grading hanging over my head.)

Trying Something New

The local curling club had an open "try out curling" day today, so I went.

It's WAY harder than it looks!

I guess that's another Olympic team I won't be on!

It has the disadvantage of being on ice, so it hurts when you fall (often snow doesn't hurt to much, at least at the speeds I go cross country at), and being indoors so you aren't getting sunshine.  (At least this club is indoors.  I guess you can curl outdoors, too.)  And yes, I fell.  A lot. 

I fell face forward (more than once) when I was trying to throw the stone (which is pretty heavy, by the way).  And I fell on my bum when I was doing the brushing bit.

The teachers had groups of beginners, and then had us do a game of sorts.  The highlight of my four throws was that three of my stones went into the area that's "in play" at least.

Remind me that spring will come eventually, please.

Snow!

No, of course we didn't have a snow day at school.

Committe(e)d

I'm chairing this one committee this year.  It's a big job, but someone has to do it.  I've been on the committee before, but when you're chairing, it's different, I think.  Or maybe before, I didn't quite get it?

It takes me 3-4 hours to prep for a meeting, sometimes more (this is outside of some bigger prep issues earlier in the year, which took a whole lot longer).  When I do that, though, I feel like I really have a handle on things, and can make it work really well.  I tend to send out some notes ahead of the meeting.  My hope is that these save the rest of the committee some time, highlight things that we need to pay close attention to, and offer potential solutions if need be.  And it's better to have one potential solution, I think, and work with that (even rejecting it outright) than to have everyone on the committee try to make a solution and then cobble them together.

But when we have a good meeting, we do good work, and it gets done, and I feel really good about it.

Working through a Question

The other day I helped teach little kids cross country skiing.  I'm the third adult, a helper, with a group of about 11 kids, all about 5-6 years old or so, I guess.   (There are four little kid groups, and I don't know how many older kids speeding around in groups learning higher level skills.)

Mostly, the kids have fun.

There's this one little girl, though, who just couldn't stop saying how cold she was.  And I believed her.

Now, the first thing we do is try to get the kids moving, because that gets them warm.  And we figure that sometimes a kid starts out whiny, and then forgets about being whiny because they're having fun skiing.

But this little girl just kept saying how cold she was.

I asked the other teachers if I couldn't take her back to the warming hut, because I thought she was just being miserable, and that being miserable would make her hate skiing.  She was so upset she was holding up the group, not learning, and so on. 

One of us (me) would have had to stay with her at the warming hut, of course, but that still would leave two adults with ten kids, and that seems pretty reasonable, doesn't it?

Anyway, the teacher and the other helper overruled me.

And I really think I should have just taken her back anyway, and apologized later to the main teacher.  I'm ashamed that I didn't, in fact, because I could have helped her be a lot less miserable, and being miserably cold is horrible.  Why didn't I stand up for her better?

Just Me?

Do you ever, when you sign into Blogger, which makes you (or me, at least) use a Google password thing, see the "One Account" thing and think, "one ring to rule them all" or maybe more, "one account to rule them all," which I'm sure is more what Google is hoping for.

Snowy Owl!

 

 

I finally got a good long look at the snowy owl that's been hanging out around here.

 

 

I know the last one doesn't show its face, but I really like the way you can see feathers on it.

 

 

It hung out on the pole a good long while, and I was able to get fairly close, cross the street, pass to the far side, and recross the street.  I tried to walk a bit towards the other side, to see how it was facing, but it was a field and the snow was too deep for me to get far.  (I didn't have snow shoes on, but even with snow shoes, it would have been difficult.)

 

 

It was getting dark really fast, so I was really happy that I got a few good shots.  (I took about 50 shots.)  Winter isn't so bad today!

Hope for Spring: the Artichoke Saga

Back in October, I posted a couple pictures of artichoke plants I'd brought in, hoping to keep them alive for the winter.

Poor artichoke plants!

In November, suddenly a bunch of the outer leaves died off.  I was sad, but hopeful that the rest would survive. 

And then in late December, the rest of the leaves started to die off.  Happily, in early January, the friend whose expertise with plants made growing artichokes in this climate possible was by, looked at the plants, and diagnosed them with spider mites!  SPIDER MITES!  Ugh.

So, in desperation, I went to the local little hardware place and the hardware person helped me get a dormant plant spider mite insecticide, which I sprayed.  And then I waited.  And things seemed a bit better, so I waited.  After a couple of weeks, there were little leaves starting from the center again, so I cut away the deadest of the old leaves and sprayed again.  And then I waited some more.

Today, I cut away the last of the dead leaves and took a couple of pictures.

Now if you compare them to the October pictures, they look awfully pathetic and sad.  But if you compare them to how things looked in early January, then they look pretty hopeful.

As my friend pointed out, it's a good sign that they're putting on new growth.

She also pointed out that since the other artichoke plants we've grown have been first year plants tricked into thinking they're second year plants, if these plants make it into the spring looking this good, then I'm way, way ahead of the game.

Looking at the October pictures, I realize that I didn't take a picture of the light set up.  In those, there's one bulb.  But early on, my friend suggested that one wouldn't provide enough light, so I moved a different lamp there, one of those lamps with five bulbs on sort of moveable stem things, all of which are now lined up and pointing down at the plants.  They're also right in front of a big window which does afford some natural light, though it being winter, not much.

Back a couple of months ago, my neighbors were going to drop off their dog for the weekend; usually, in winter, the dog's crate goes right in front of the picture window where she can see out at the birds and the neighbors.  But because the plants are there, I asked them to put the crate in the summer spot (which is fine, but doesn't have birdTV and isn't in direct, hot sun to keep her from overheating in summer) because of the artichoke plants.  And she was so funny about asking if that was the light that's always on in that window. 

Yep, I'm growing artichokes, but I think my neighbors thought I was much more interesting agriculturally.

As you can see in the background of the first picture, I've also forced a couple of bulbs.  The hyacinth did great, one is pretty much done flowering, and the other is in full bloom.

The crocus seem to have died, but the daffodils seem to be starting.  Here's the currently blooming hyacinth.

I'm at that point of winter where I can't quite believe that it will ever be warm again.  But yesterday, I went out in the afternoon (about 4pm) to try to see the local snowy owl (no luck), and realized that it was light until WAY later than it had been in January when I went out to try to see it and it was getting dark by 4:30 or so.  So there is hope, right?

Juggling

I feel like I'm always dropping one ball, you know?

And the ball I drop too often is the one that matters to me, but isn't teaching or service related.  So I get the service done, I prep and teach classes, grade, I advise, and then, yeah, that other ball gets dropped.

I need to stop dropping that ball.

That Jerk?

I just did etymology on effbee at someone.  I hope I wasn't too jerky about it.

A friend who speaks English as a second language asked about a word, someone answered, and I responded too, and then this other person "corrected" me with a sort of pedantic tone saying that we should look at the root, and then I pulled the OED. 

The PBS Article on Faculty Non-Retirement

I did that web thing where you read effbee, and follow a link, and then follow a link, and found myself reading a PBS article "Colleges and Universities See Graying Workforce Holding onto Coveted Positions."

In the article, a small number of faculty members from pretty elite schools on the east coast are interviewed, including Claire Potter of Tenured Radical, about faculty members working into their 70s and problems with that for younger scholars and scholarly work.

In my small experience here, things look very different.  I see most of my colleagues balance the financial realities of starting late after years of grad school, low pay, but a (so far) decent retirement with the difficulties of the teaching load, constant demands for more administrivia, health problems, and rough weather; most that I know seem to retire in their mid-60s, which, for this generation means they can get Social Security and Medicare to cover health insurance.

And then, in the press, on one side we have young folks saying that we're staying too long, and on the other side, the government saying we won't have access to Social Security until later, so we need to work longer.  The Affordable Care Act MAY make earlier retirement plausible for some folks.


I'm reminded of Hal wanting that crown, being impatient for it, though I don't think of my job as a crown, exactly.  When haven't younger folks wanted to shove out the older generation for being old and greedy, and take over themselves?  I'm pretty sure my generation was plenty impatient. 

The difference, I think, is that for people in the US, since, say, the 40s, we've had this idea that there should be a retirement, a period of relative leisure to grow old, even for people who aren't among the very wealthy.  But I think historically that's a pretty rare thing.  Most people through history have struggled to eat and keep reasonably sheltered until they died.  They didn't retire and leave the land lease to their kids because they needed to keep working as long as they could, and when they couldn't, well, that was pretty soon going to be it.

I wonder if my impression that faculty at schools with higher teaching loads tend to retire a bit earlier is accurate? 

I wonder if there's also a regional aspect to that?  Are there incentives to work longer if you're in a big city?  (I know that's a whole complex can of worms; most faculty members here come from at least moderately privileged backgrounds, and a fair percentage from larger cities, and many of those folks move away when they retire.)


One of my department colleagues and I, trying to figure out if we're likely to ask for another TT search in the near future, and knowing that out budget makes it unlikely that we'll get a new line or get to search for one of the lines we had that was put on hold, ran down roughly our TT faculty ages a bit back.  I'm probably not 100% accurate in my count (or in estimating some peoples' ages), but here goes.

60s - 3 all men
50s - 9, 8 women, 1 man
40s - 10, 5 women, 5 men
30s - 6, 3 women, 3 men
20s - 2, 1 woman, 1 man

Of the 40s and 50s groups, a fair number were hired during their 40s, a couple quite recently.  (That is, we've hired people who were in their 40s.  They're new TT faculty at 40+)

So, at least in my small department, we have a reasonable balance, I think.

Time Time Ticking...

I'm about to head off to a meeting which, based on the agenda distributed, looks like it will be a bit of talking, more talking, and no decisions needing to be made.  I hate these sorts of meetings generally, but I will go to this one because it's in the job description.

We've been working on assessment stuffs, mostly on doing stuff that says we'll assess our courses in this given way for these given assessment points, which all include at least three subpoints.

I've spent probably a couple hours on this for the class I was supposed to do (and did).  If everyone in my department spent just about two hours on theirs (we pretty much all had a class to do), then we've wasted two weeks of work.

Wasted?  I'm sure the latest assessment guru would tell us that this is vital work, and that it's all important for making sure that we teach what we've decided is worth teaching, and that our students learn what we've decided is worth learning.  And by the way, there's that ever present threat that if we don't do it to ourselves, "they" will do it to us.

And in three years more, having done these and many more, having filled out assessment bubble things, and written reports, all of which will show that our students aren't learning as much as we think they should, but some of them are, and some not at all, the assessment guru will tell us that no, we've been doing it wrong, and now there's some cool new way to do assessment, so we should start over again.  And it will be treated as practically an emergency situation, so we all need to do that new thing lickety split.

And then we'll need a new assistant to the recently hired assessment guru, because there will be ever more work to do in assessment.

One of my colleagues and I were chatting today, and she expressed her frustration at the constant near-emergency attitude from the administration, and at the ways that this assessment work takes time away from other work we need/want to do, work such as, you know, teaching, prepping classes, designing courses, and so forth.

Cold

I taught cross-country skiing last night.  Those of you who've seen me ski are either laughing or bewildered at this point.  I'm not the most graceful or easy or even half-way decent skier you've seen.  Put it this way: whenever the woman in charge of the lessons sees me, she can't help herself but try to give me some helpful pointers.

But I'm still better than most of the four or five year olds I was helping teach.

The kids were really all over the place yesterday.  We were trying to teach them basic double-poling, and it was tough.  They couldn't seem to pay attention, and some didn't have poles, and so forth.  Chaos!

And it was cold.  I resorted to the chemical toe and hand warmers, but I gave away my hand warmers when one of the kids said she was super cold.  Still, my hands were warm enough by then and didn't get cold again.

The great thing about trying to teach the kids is that I also get in little bits of practice, and for me, just being on skis and sliding around, trying to do stuff (stop, turn and help a little kid, pull up some kids' britches), all that helps me be a bit better on skis.  (And reminds me to be grateful that I don't have to pull up my students' britches!)

The ski club also has lessons for older kids, mostly kids learning to skate ski, and it's surprisingly helpful to me to see them start off on the trails (they quickly surpass me), and think about what I'm doing.

I think I'm BEGINNING to get the hang of pushing off with my feet.  I can do it sometimes, on level areas, when the snow is just so.  And then, of course, I also lose it and fumble around.  Still, it's way cool when I can get it.

After the ski lessons, I called a local Thai place for take out, and went and picked it up on my way home, changing my ski boots for regular boots while parked outside the restaurant (because ski boots are more slippery).

And then I went home!

At which point, I'd inexplicably gotten cold to the bone.  I ate hot food, in front of a little space heater, with bean bag buckwheat heater bags on my shoulders (you microwave them for 3 minutes, and they're nice and warm), and I was shivering.  I hadn't been that cold while I was skiing, but holy cow, I was cold.

So, by 8pm, I took my bean bags and went to bed, wearing my bright orange "I'm not a deer, please don't shoot me" knit hat.  (I don't think I've ever been so cold that I needed to wear a hat to bed here.)

Sometime in the early hours, I woke up again, warm and cozy, took off the hat, and fell back to sleep.

And woke up early, feeling GREAT!  There's nothing like going to bed, well-fed and getting warm, at 8pm to make the morning feel GREAT!

It's pretty bright out, and I have work to do at the office (which I've already started on), and then this afternoon, I may go out skiing some more or go look for the snowy owl(s) that's hanging out locally.

Things are busy here, mostly in good ways, but busy!  Soon, more posting.

Enthusiasm

I have one of those really enthusiastic students this semester.  On the one hand (and this is most important), student enthusiasm is wonderful.  It makes me happy.

On the other hand, sometimes, this student needs to share something, and it's way out from left field.

I think one of the signs of a great teacher is that s/he can take student comments from left field and 1)  make them useful to the class, 2) make the student feel that s/he contributed well, and 3) help educate the student to make more useful comments.

I'm just not there yet.  I try, but I don't seem to pull that off well.

Speaking of enthusiasm, I'm losing count of the number of people who've told me about the Star Wars/Shakespeare mashup, and told me that I really need to read it because I'll love it.

I haven't looked, but I admit I have some doubts.  First, the power of Shakespeare isn't just that he wrote early modern English.  That doesn't make verse automatically amazing and wonderful.  Trust me on this; there's a whole lot of not so amazing early modern verse.

And fake early modern English (which is what I imagine this is) probably isn't automatically amazing verse, either.  I'm totally willing to bet someone with good linguistic skills could write early modern English that I'd be completely fooled by, but that doesn't make it great verse.


So, I have my doubts that the fake Shakespearean verse is worth reading as verse, if that makes sense.  I mean, it's worth reading a retelling of an old story if it's written really well.  It's worth reading, say, Hero and Leander because Marlowe's a great poet and does something amazing with the old story.  But reading someone's new version, unless written with great skill, probably isn't worth it to me.

There are people who are writing powerful and amazing verse right now, and their work is thought-provoking, stunning, amazing, and sometimes beautiful, all things that great verse can be.  They are working hard on their verse, and crafting it, drafting and redrafting it. I'm willing to bet that if the author of the mashup were capable of writing verse with that power, that beauty, that depth (etc), s/he would already be a well-respected poet.  I'd rather spend the time I give to new writing to those poets' works.

(It's worth noting that I love and adore Chaucer Doth Tweet, but part of the fun is that the bits are very short, and don't take the attention that retelling a movie would.)

In Praise of Triple A

I've gone several years without needing to call Triple A, but I've called twice this month.  Once when my car died on the freeway earlier this month (I was able to get well off to the side, and the wrecker came and towed it to the dealership, which was able to fix it in a day), and yesterday, when I went out owling (we DID see a snowy owl, too!).  The owl flew as soon as we saw it, and I thought I'd do a U-turn (on a quiet road, with good visibility), but what I thought was an okay drive turned out to be not so okay, so I ended up stuck.

I have this to say: the sheriff officer was pleasant about it, and helpfully hung out with his flashing showing (helpful especially as it was getting to be late afternoon), the Triple A wrecker was pleasant and pulled us right out.  And best of all, the friend I'd gone birding with was, as usual, just wonderful company, and kind about my mistake. 

If you're going to drive off the road, do it as I did: at a very slow speed, not too far off, with soft stuff around, in cell phone reception, and with a good friend around.

More than one person stopped to check that we were okay and offer help, too, which I greatly appreciate.  It's really helpful to feel like people have your back even if they don't know you and you're a crazy birder.

New Start

The semester began here yesterday, but since I don't have Tuesday classes this semester, today is my first day of classes.  Yesterday I finished off the syllabi and calendars, had copies made (have I said lately how much I love our office staff?  They're so good at taking care of us and making things run smoothly.  We instructors get credit, but they make things much better.)

My office is a mess.  I'm slowly bringing things in, and putting things in place, but since I hardly got to campus last week (my guest has a reputation for chewing things, and I didn't want to leave him too long alone).  Starting with a new office at the new semester is a double whammy.

And now, more prep work!

The E Text Question

As most semesters approach, I get several emailed questions asking (politely) if I'm okay with students using e texts in my classes.  This is especially common with Shakespeare.

I hate them using etexts for Shakespeare.

First, they want to use the totally free etexts, which seem based on 19th century editions (they're free because they're long out of copyright).  But they don't really get any information about the 19th century editions, which often come with no glossing, no line numbers, and editing choices that made sense in the 19th century, but which are very different from the choices editors make now.

So there's always that delay of a few seconds while the etext folks try to figure out where we are based on asking someone to read them a line.  (Thus, everyone with regular texts looks, finds the line, and then the etext people start doing their search thing.  And we hope that the line is the same.)

Second, I think they should write in their Shakespeare texts so that when they study, they see the notes they've written, and it reminds them how to read those lines or that scene.   Within their lifetimes, that same Shakespeare text should be pretty good, so if they choose to keep it, they may glance at it again, and the marginalia they've put in will help them remember stuff.  (I know not all students keep the texts, but I know some do.  English majors tend to like books.)  That makes Shakespeare (and other lit, for example) very different from, say, Genetics textbooks.   But notetaking in e readers looks clumsy, and the likelihood is that they won't have easy access to that text/reader in ten years.   They won't, I don't think, pick up the play and reread it the way folks pick up books on their shelves.  (And worse, their future dates won't be able to tell what they read by a glance at their shelves from the couch.)


How do you folks feel about e texts? 

Do non-English fields, say Chemistry, or Econ, need students to bring the text to class meetings?  (I honestly don't remember taking my texts to most classes, though I was a pretty obedient student.)

Observation?

Like, I'm willing to guess, most people on effbee, I'm "friends" with a variety of family members, both pretty darned liberal and pretty darned conservative.  And I think I've observed a difference in the sorts of items and links they share.

My more liberal family are more likely to share links to more liberal news sites such as the H*Post, and so forth, especially posts about income inequity, racism problems, bank fraud.  My more conservative family members are more likely to share links that are cautionary in nature, the sorts of ones that warn women not to get into their car if a van is parked next to it (that one was part of a list my cousin shared this morning), and so forth.

In both cases, a lot of the shared stuff says that the world is a very dangerous place.  But the source of the danger is different: in the liberal sites, the source of the danger is usually corporations, and sometimes policing agencies.  The danger's there, but hard to defend oneself against as an individual, and the danger isn't as overtly violent, but more systemic.  In the conservative sites, the source of the danger is a bad person who's aiming to violently attack, and especially to violently attack women.  The danger can be avoided or prevented, if just the woman (almost always) is careful and alert.  She can keep herself safe.

Have other people noticed something similar?

(And both sides share lots of cute animal pictures and rescue animal stuff.)

Guest Pup

My guest is quite photogenic!

An Analogy

Let's imagine I have responsibility for taking care of a cycling team's bikes and kits.

And I have a staff of, say, ten people who work on various aspects, mechanical stuff, driving, laundry, and so on.

Of these ten, a couple talk a lot about how much they love the work, and how important it is that the bikes they take care of get the best care and treatment so that they're perfect for their riders.  And there's one person who theorizes about the relationship between bikes and riders and says that's central to hir existence.

Why is it that these are the people I have to constantly remind to check tire inflation?

Why is it that these are the people who forget to lube the chain after they wash the bike?  Or maybe they didn't bother to wash the bike yet, because they figured it could wait until the next race was about to start.

The people who don't wring their hands about riders training in wet ruining the carbon, who don't wring their hands about having the new brake pads and the best paint scheme, those are the people who show up on time with the bikes in perfect working order, tires properly inflated, chains beautiful, brakes cleaned and checked, shifting smooth and light.

Makes Me Wonder

All during my college and grad school years, I can't remember a single instructor leaving the room to go to the restroom.

I can't remember ever doing it myself.  (Not as a student nor as an instructor at whatever level.)

That's not to say it couldn't happen, or that there's anything wrong if it does, because sometimes you gotta go.

But it seems that we instructors plan ahead when we can.

So why is it that so many students seem to need to go?  I mean, I probably average 1-2 students a week who leave class to use the restroom.  Is it just the odds?  Or the occasional poor planning?

Distracted

I'm dog sitting again, a different dog, for a different friend.

The dog's very sweet, and very needy. 

And I'm too willing to be distracted from the 30 or more things I really need to get done.  As in now.

Doh!


Here's how much of a dog person I am.  I made a play date and brought my neighbor's dog (my guest, often) over, and the two played hard for about an hour.  They'd slowed down considerably after about 40 minutes; I'd brought them inside and they'd wrestled, and then they'd slowed down.  So I took them back outside and that reenergized them both.

They're both biggish and active dogs, with good outdoor coats, so they were doing that submarine in the snow thing, rolling around.  It must feel good on their coats.

And now my current guest dog is having a nap beside me, and I'm goofing off, but I need to stop and accomplish some real work today.  Now.

New Digs, Moved In

I spent a large part of the day unpacking books and files, and I'm pretty much moved into the new office.

Here's what it looked like this morning, full of boxes.

Naturally, the boxes of books are pretty much in front of the bookcases.  (There's not much space anywhere else for them, though.)

 I went from having no office chair chosen a few weeks ago to having two in my office.  I have to try them both out for a bit and see which one I prefer.

I checked and there's no way to change the positions of the desks.  They're not really modular.

I got a filing cabinet!  YAY!

There are also chairs for office visitors, too.

And now, with books!  Mostly organized, too!  These shelves are taller, so my books have lots of space.  I only had to move shelves for the Hinman (it's the brick colored book that's really tall, a facsimile edition of Shakespeare's First Folio, prepared by Charleton Hinman).

While I was unpacking my books, a guy came in who said he's a photographer for the school, and that the deanling in charge of such things (whose name he used) wanted him to take pictures to document the moving in process.  So he asked if I would mind, and I let him take pictures.

So now there will probably be a publicity sort of picture of my office in the unpacking stages on our webpage or something.  My moment of fame.

Look ma, only one box left (with files).  The new file cabinets all require hanging files, and I didn't have hanging files, so I got some from the department, and then still had files left over when the department stock ran out.  I think we need more file hangers.

 There are no nametags yet, so I put a rainbow in mine.  At least I'll be able to find my door now.  (The numbering makes no sense at all in this building.  It's not just me being an idiot, either.  Everyone's confused.  Trust me, it's big, but we don't have 500 offices on my floor.)

The computer works, and there's already stuff piled on the filing cabinet, naturally.  I've asked for one of those computer keyboard drawer things.  Otherwise, I'm going to get wrist problems fast, I fear.

The hallways feel sort of endless.   This is looking left from my doorway.

When I was a kid, I had a nightmare that I was walking in a long hallway like this, and a man was at the other end, and shot me through the head, face on.  In my dream, I somehow was also watching a little hole appear in my head, and then watched me drop to the ground.  It was a strong enough image that I've never forgotten it.

I hope it wasn't some weird premonition.

And this is looking right from my doorway.  The double doors on the left are an electrical closet thing.

Not only are the halls endless, it's a rectangle and there's really no way to tell easily which hall you're in.

North seems to be odd numbers, and south even numbers, but I'm not sure about east and west.


This ends the tour of our new building, which probably needs a nickname.  Thoughts?

Making Snow

If you grew up in the upper Midwest, as a child you undoubtedly threw a pot of boiling water into the very cold air to see it turn to insta-vapor-snow.

If, like me, you grew up elsewhere, you might have to do that as an adult.  As I did this morning.

It worked!  Very cool. 

I thought about doing it yesterday, after talking with a friend about her kids doing it, and wanted to try it before it gets warm.  Apparently, we're due for some warming now.  Thank dog.

I've never built a snow man, nor have I done the frozen bubbles thing.  It's too cold for a snow man (supposedly, it works best with fresh, slightly damp snow), but I'm going to go buy bubble stuff today to try the bubbles before it gets too warm!

And Now, the New Digs

I thought I'd share a few pictures of the new office.

 

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That area on the lower right is the extent of file and drawers to the desk.  They plan these for people who don't keep nearly the stuff I do in desk drawer and file cabinets, don't they?

Still, look at how high the ceiling is!  And how bright the light through the window!

I have a bad clutter habit with horizontal surfaces.  Danger, danger!

Carpet.  And a big window above the door!  Light!  And bookshelves!

At almost every college/university I can think of, faculty office doors have windows, and faculty block them off so that people don't stare in while we're working.  (The exception was when I had an office in a defunct frat house; the offices were in old bedrooms, and the doors were solid.)

Here's the coat hanger.  Not wide enough to fit the regalia, which lives on a hanger.  Too bad they never thought to ask faculty folks about what we need, isn't it?
















I went to the bathroom in the new building today, and weirdly, the way the toilet paper is set up, you have to reach down to about six inches off the ground to get at the paper.  All wrapped up for super cold weather (think of the stay pufft image), I could barely get at it.  Doh!

Shrike!

I was sitting in my sun room, looking at something on the laptop, when I heard a thunk outside.  I looked, and there was a shrike (a northern shrike, almost certainly) on top of a bit of awkwardly waggling feather.  And then a moment later, the shrike picked up the junco (which was identifiable at that point) in its beak and flew off.

My first ever shrike, and holy cow, what a sighting!

I'm amazed at how apparently easily that shrike took off with the junco in its beak, since the junco is pretty big looking.  (That is, the junco looked almost half the size of the shrike.)  (Also, most raptors seem to carry prey in their talons, so the beak thing was interesting.)

And, of course, it adds meaning to my "bird feeding."

Refrain

"But he works/ed hard" (emphasis in text).

Said several times over the last week.

Chores

I have a few days to myself, and I've been getting stuff done in a relaxed way.  And somehow, more gets done when I feel a bit relaxed.

I've done banking sorts of chores, and tax prep sorts of chores, cleaned my home office, started one of my course calendars for spring semester, replied books in better ways, and so forth.  I've done some reading, too.

I'm about ready to do more work on the course calendar I've started, and probably soon ready to start the next one.

In the coming week, I start a four week series of sessions at the local library on early modern lyric poetry.  I've selected the poems, but have work to do prepping for the first week.

On Monday, I'll start an 8 week commitment to teaching little kids cross-country skiing.

And later in the week, a friend's dog will come to stay with me for a couple of weeks while my friend is away.

Meanwhile, I saw my first snowy owl on the 1st, which seems like a good way to start the year.  Just before dusk, I was driving along a backroad slowly, looking, and it flew across and landed in a field far away.  The light was dim, and it was FAR away, and it was cold, but I took a picture anyway.  And the picture is predictably blurry, but I think good enough to be pretty sure it's a snowy owl, anyway.

The owl is just to the left of the irrigator tire, which at least gives you an idea that it's a darned big bird.  And it's the right coloration.

Happy New Year

Because I seem to do this, here's the bike run down:  9734.7 on the odometer, which means I rode just over 700 miles this past year, a miserable number.  (726.9 to be more exact.)  I fell totally short of my goal for the biking year.

This year was a fairly reactive year, rather than a proactive year in many ways.  I hope to make 2014 more proactive.

More biking.

More skiing.

More good times.

Less crankiness.

Within a few days, I should be able to get they keys to the new building, and get started getting my office ready sometime after the 10th or so.

This past year, I spent pretty much all my time out of town visiting my Mom.  That's good, and all, but also not good.  I need to get away and do other things, too.