Administrative Priorities

I had a final this afternoon in a classroom building with halls full of classes for 20-30 students each.  During the semester, the class happened at 1pm, so during the semester, there are a fair number of classes happening at this time.

As is my practice, I got to the final a few minutes early and let students start early.  Time usually isn't an issue with this exam format, but it helps students feel a little less stressed if they have more time.

And then, about five minutes into the exam time, there started to be increasing noise in the hallways.

So I went out and asked people to be quieter.

A few minutes later, way more noise.  Again, I went out.

And a few minutes later, more noise yet.  And again, I went out.  I suggested that the people in the hallways might go elsewhere to chat, and that's when they told me that they had to be THERE because they were told to wait in this hallway for the graduation rehearsal.

After that, mostly the people right outside the room were pretty quiet, but there was a lot of loud chatter from down the hall.

The last time I went out, I asked people to be quieter, and the person who was being loudest told me that they had to talk because it was for graduation rehearsal; she had some handout thing, and seemed to think she was in charge.

And finally, after a half an hour into the two hour exam, things quieted down.

In the meanwhile, I contacted my chair, the two people listed as contacts for the graduation rehearsal, and my university senator.


I don't blame the students; they're graduating seniors, probably all done with finals, and excited, and of course they want to chat.  But holy cow, who over in the Fort thought it would be a good idea to gather all these people in a classroom hallway during the last afternoon of finals?  (And really, do people need to rehearse to walk in line, sit down, stand up, walk across a stage, walk back, and sit down, and then walk out?  Really?)

A Real Question

Serious question here.

Why is grading so onerous?

I'm sure everyone else tries to write assignments that will lead to interesting projects and papers, but still, grading is onerous.

Grading is so onerous that we make jokes about cleaning houses as procrastination and so on. 

But I really want to think about why it's so bad.

That and I'm procrastinating.  Are you?

Countdown

I have about 50 projects to grade, three exams to write, three exams to proctor, 50 exams to grade, and then the semester's done.

If I grade about 13 projects each day, and write one exam per day for the first three days, then I should be on track for handing back projects for finals and being read to grade finals after they come in.

I had a lovely weekend, involving a picnic, birding, biking, and a native plant sale, but not grading or writing exams.  So now the push is on.

Birding this weekend? 

I saw my first ever Swainson's Thrush.  (The local facebook birding group helped with the ID, because I thought it might be a Hermit Thrush.  But no, it doesn't have a white eye ring and does have a buff cheek.)

And my first ever Sora.  That was weird, because it's not like I study shorebirds, but I saw it and thought, hey, a Sora, and looked at the book, and that's what it is.  So for some reason the image and name stuck in my head from just perusing, I guess.  anyway, it was way cool.

And continuing my fascination with the Yellow-headed Blackbirds!

Rethinking Goals

I thought more about the goals, more about the class, and more about stuff last night, and realized that I hadn't put in some of the stuff I think is really important.

So here's some more brainstorming for Shakespeare:

1.  I want students to get better at reading and writing about difficult texts.  (Reading in terms of strategies for reading: looking up words, thinking about sentences, reading aloud, and so forth; writing in terms of putting the reading skills into words on paper.)

2.  Develop understanding of Shakespeare's work in relationship to standard literary genres, techniques, and style (Thanks, Sapience!)

 3.  I want students to get a sense of the historic, cultural, and social contexts of early modern theater. 

4.  I want students to begin to learn research (asking questions, finding information, reading critical articles for the argument).


One of the problems I have with these sorts of exercises is that over the course of 15 weeks, I want students to learn a lot, and to think hard, and to begin to put things together, but I know different things will stick with different students, and that I can't do everything, but that there are probably 20 things I want to stick with someone in some way.

Goals, Outcomes, and Madness

In the ever constant race to update and revise and be prepared for our next departmental review, we're doing these projects to make our courses "outcomes based."   For every course, we're supposed to have goals (which, as I understand it, are supposed to have to do with what we want students to learn), outcomes (which, as I understand it, are supposed to have to do with what students produce to show that they've reached the goals), and sub-outcomes (which, as I understand it, is what students actually produce to show they've reached bits and pieces of the bigger goals and outcomes).  We're supposed to have between 1 and 4 goals, 1 and 4 outcomes (one for each goal), and for each outcome, 1-3 sub-outcomes.

I want to brainstorm a bit here, because I find this sort of stuff intensely frustrating and not fun, and I don't think I find it nearly as helpful as the edu folks keep promising I should.

Let's take, say, an intro Shakespeare course, a genre-based Shakespeare course.

What should the goals be?

1.  I want students to get better at reading difficult texts.

2.  I want students to get a sense of how damned good Shakespeare is.  (I think of this as building in an understanding of some plays, how genre works, how imagery and such work, how character development works, and on and on.)

3.  I want students to get a sense of the historic, cultural, and social contexts of early modern theater.  (Yes, that's huge.  HUGE!)


Do those goals make sense?  Are there better goals?  Are there more goals?

Edited to add:  There should be something about writing in there, maybe in the first one, reading and writing about difficult texts?

Yellow-headed Blackbird

Last year I saw my first Yellow-headed Blackbird.  This year, I saw about four all near by.


I also saw bunches of ducks, and a couple of Wilson's Phalaropes!

 

 



You may need to click on the pictures to see the Phalarope; they're the two smallest birds in each of the last two shots, floating lowish in the water.

Head Meet Brick Wall

We just finished an almost 2 hour meeting; we also had a two hour meeting of the same group last week.

We finally voted, after many hours of discussion.

The frustrating thing is that I don't think a single person changed their mind as a result of the discussion.

I need to go outside!

That Time of Year

It's that time of year when I'm really ready to be done with stupid excuses, both from students and administrators.

I'm tired of the same few students being regularly absent, and wanting to hand in work late, or to email it while class is going on.  It's not that I don't believe they're sick, because I do, but I'm tired of the extra work.  (And I'm sure everyone who's sick is tired of being sick; I'm totally tired of this stupid cold, even though it's almost all gone.  If even a little cold makes me cranky, what would I be like with a serious illness?  Worse, no doubt.)

I'm tired of administrators putting up hoops, and then saying that we have to make our hoops or someone else will make them for us.  And I'm tired of fellow faculty deciding to hold the hoops up as high as possible for other faculty so that they can look like proper hoop makers and holders for the administrators.

I need a serious break before I participate in even one more meeting about goals, outcomes, rubrics for programs of varying levels, and so on.

Retirement and Educational Opportunities

I was following link bait from effbee earlier today, and read an article about retiring near college campuses to communities with close ties to those colleges, including opportunities to audit classes and so on.

In the comments, people talked about wanting, during retirement, to audit for free, or take a BA for free, and complaining about the costs of doing so.  Some states do have laws that allow people over 60 to audit classes for free, just as some states have laws that allow veterans to take classes with free or reduced tuition.  (In my state, the legislature basically said, you have to have veterans, and provide appropriate special services, but you can't charge tuition, and no, the state isn't going to make up the difference.)

The long answer, at least for state schools, is that as state (tax) support for schools has gone down, tuition and fees have gone up.  The voters have long voted for politicians who promise lower taxes in all sorts of ways, and keep voting for those politicians.  They argue that education is a private good, and we state taxpayers shouldn't pay for it, and so we pay less for it (as taxpayers) and students pay more individually.  It's no secret that I don't like any of this.  I'd happily pay a lot more in taxes for well-supported schools (at all levels, from pre-school to graduate programs), universal health care, and better social services of all sorts.  And I vote that way when I can (though finding any politician to vote for who will promise to raise taxes to support schools seems pretty impossible).

So, should seniors get reduced or free tuition or auditing privileges at state schools?

I think no.  And I know not all seniors have had opportunities, and I want them to, but these folks have been voting for a long time, and their collective votes have put into office politicians who've consistently voted to lower taxes and lower the support for public schools (at all levels).  That hurts almost everyone who wants to attend public schools, and it especially hurts younger students who are taking on serious loan debt, even at schools such as my own, which charges under $10K tuition/year. (Yes, there are other fees, and no, that doesn't count housing, books, etc.)

What about you folks?  What do you think?

Spring Birding

I took my non-teaching responsibilities today and went birding. 

 I'm remarkably bad at IDing ducks.  Still, these are ring-necked ducks, though I'd be hard pressed to find the ring in these pictures.

 I love Northern Harriers; they're right below kestrels and white-tailed kites in my favorite raptor list.

 This is a trumpeter swan, I think.  If so, it's a first time seeing one for me!

Pied-billed Grebe.  Very cute, and a picture that's surprisingly sharp for me.

 American coots.  And you can sort of see that there's snow falling.  It wasn't a perfect day for birding, except that it was pretty darned good to see birds.

 Buffleheads!

 Blue-winged teal.

The same Blue-winged teal, and a female Blue-winged teal, too.

Another trumpeter swan.

 A Northern Shoveler.  I love the size of their beaks.  Those are serious beaks.

 And a female Northern Shoveler, with an equally impressive beak!

 This isn't a great picture, but if you look carefully about a third down and a third to the right, you'll see a duckish bird with a sort of horizontal stripe on its head.  That's a Garganey, a mostly Eurasian Duck that's been sited around this area lately, and which I was lucky to see.

There's the same Garganey in the picture below, maybe a bit easier to see.

It was hanging around with two female and one male Blue-winged teal.  (Not the ones pictured above.)  You can see the female teal in the lower picture, to the right of the Garganey if you look carefully.  It makes you realize how hard these guys can be to see!

 

Energy

I'm still slightly under the weather.  As I was walking to my 2 hour class today, psyching myself up to appear energized, I thought about how much energy it takes to enact "professor" in a classroom, and how absolutely vital it is to try to put forward the energy.  I don't think teaching and learning are all my responsibility in a classroom, but I think my trying to enact "professor" with good energy makes a difference.  And is difficult sometimes.

I've gotten hardly any exercise while I've been feeling under the weather, so finally, Sunday, I rode my bike on the trainer for half an hour.  It was fine, and I feel better for it, but I can't imagine trying to compete in any sort of real way while feeling under the weather.  I can fake my way through teaching a bit, but I couldn't fake my way on a bike at all.

Goodbyes

A couple I know who've been adjuncting at NWU are moving far away; this morning, they had a moving sale.  I'm sad for us to be losing them, though I don't know them really well, but I can't decide whether to be excited or scared for them in their new adventure. 

And then later, a colleague who left our department for another job last year was back in town to sign papers and such for the final sale of the house she'd bought here, and to move the last few things to their new home.  I think she's happy in her new place, but we're sad to have had her leave, of course.

Some folks met at a local restaurant to chat and say good bye, and another colleague was there who is leaving us for a better opportunity.  I'm excited for him, though sad for us, since he's an excellent colleague.

It feels like there are a lot of good byes happening right now.

Add a Paper?

I got an email from a colleague the other day, asking about a student who needs an upper division course, but also needs Shakespeare (which I'm teaching at the lower division next semester, as is usual).  The colleague wants to know if I couldn't just add a project or longer paper and make it so the lower division Shakespeare course can count as an upper division course.

1.  Guess what field this colleague is in.

2.  Guess how insulted this colleague would feel if I asked the same question about one of their courses.


How do your departments or fields think about the differences in lower and upper division courses?

Do you think of the differences as being primarily in one or another assignments?

Do you think of the differences as being more foundational and intellectual?

Happy Maybe!

398 years ago today, William Shakespeare died.  So says the parish record.  It's not a nice round number, but there it is.

Traditionally, it's said that Shakespeare was born on April 23rd, too.  The math is nice and round, and there's one less number for Shakespeareans to remember.

But the truth is, we don't know.  The parish record indicates that one William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26th, 1564.  And we know that in practice, in the area, babies were baptized within a few days of birth.

I find the obsession with Shakespeare's birthday a bit irritating.  For me, the baptism stuff is more fascinating, more cool because there are records to look at, and we can think about how we know what we think we know.  But for some reason, the baptism narrative isn't what makes it onto NPR this morning.  (The text version acknowledges the uncertainty, though I don't remember the radio version doing that.  The lack of memory may be my morning fog.)

Still, whether a day or two early or late, the exciting thing is, Shakespeare still rocks!

A friend asked me the other day if I thought that Shakespeare knew his works would have lasting impact.  It's an interesting question, isn't it?

I think he did.  He certainly knew that old works could have lasting impact, since he knew how important he found Ovid, Plutarch, and Homer.  Whether he thought about the ways their works had been made more and more available with the advent of movable print technology, I don't know.  I think he probably took printed books for granted, as we do.  But he knew that printed stuff gets reproduced again and again, and plays with that idea.

And he knew that in his theater tradition, plays got played again, came back into repertoire, even after they'd found their way into print.

At any rate, I hope he had some inkling of how good his works are, how utterly astoundingly good!

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.