December

Final grades were due today at 9:00am. I turned in my last grade at 12:00am. I wanted to give my students as much possible time to turn in their work as I could.

This semester has been frustrating, rewarding, confusing, and other ing words (it can be described by most, if not all, of the modifiers you can think of, such has been this semester). Let me list some lessons learned (I hope you, dear reader, are a fan of alliteration):

1) Acting as though one is confident both inspires confidence in others and actually makes one become more confident (something I suppose I already knew, but never had to put into practice as often before).
2) Anxiety will not kill a person, it will, in every cliche way, actually make one better (better as in a better person, teacher, discussion leader, adivsor, etc etc).
3) Students do not see their teachers as people.
4) The fact that students don't see their teachers as people is both helpful and not; it helps with the whole acting as though one is confident, but it can lead to students' disillusionment if they see through the teacherness to a human being.
5) Teaching is the best job for me.

Although I am certainly ambivalent about this semester, it did show me how much I love teaching. I mean, I suppose I already knew that, but now it's cemented in my brain. That sounds dangerous. Hm.

Perhaps less frightening (and less cliche, maybe?) imagery is in order. This semester has made real to me in a lucid and compelling way that teaching is my calling; it's like when I'm riding my bike to work and it is 90 degrees in December, and I have been riding standing up because the road is uphill, then there's a turn and I'm coasting fast down the sidewalk, everything green and thrumming around me, the breeze in my face making it seem ten degrees cooler.

Tis the season

Oooooh this semester! Quelle suprise, quelle horror, quelle....

Am I even using the correct form of quel? Oh well. Hey, listen! This semester is nearly over. Very quite nearly. It's close, okay? Final grades are due 12/14.

This is both good and bad. I have loved this semester and my kids very much, but it has been a lot of work. Grading 75 papers just about every other week has been something else.

I'm not complaining though. I love this job and I'm lucky to have it. A job I have that I'm not happy about? Being my parent's computer guy sometimes. I was just on the phone with them, trying to help them upload a picture or something. That kind of stuff, especially over the phone, with the added soothing quality of our neighbors' hammering and hammering and hammering, can make one despise computers. I'm talking the deep seated urge to throw all computers within reach into the walls, windows, or to the tile. Dash their motherboards to pieces.

Grading sometimes inspires the same feeling, however not as often. The kids are endearing in ways computers fall short of, somehow.

I'm looking forward to winter break. I need to plan for my classes next semester, read more books, and write. I have fallen incredibly short of my writing goals this semester. For which, I think, I can give myself a pass (adjusting to teaching new classes, taking on the extra class), but that seems a bit dangerous as making excuses seems to lead one to making more excuses. Snowballing excuses.

A lot like the kids as well, really. I think I could relate nearly everything in my life right now to some situation in one of my classes, or to particular students. They have the strangest and most interesting excuses for everything. Sometimes they are late, absent, or don't have a paper for mundane reasons, but other times they are brilliant. Simply brilliant.

Example one: I open a student's paper (they turn everything in online) and find they (I'm being grammatically awkward to preserve anonymity) have changed the font to symbols and numbers. I know that there is no way this would happen except on purpose (or that they at least must know the paper "is corrupted"). They think I know nothing about computers.

Example two: "I'm sorry, Ms Sheffield, but I don't have my paper because I have my sister's laptop? And it has a really bad battery? Like the battery doesn't work and I was working on my paper and the cord got unplugged and I lost everything that I was working on except for what I sent you earlier."

Example three: Attached to this email, please find my doctor's note excusing me from class today.

Really? Do they do that now?

Anyway, that is just a sampling. They totally know when I don't believe them and then they get all defensive. It's kind of cute.

Midway

I just collected an orphaned class of ENC 1101. My kids lost their teacher due to a medical issue. Now they have me.

And apparently it's a good thing they do. They were only on their first paper (it's half way through the semester!) and hadn't yet received a grade.

Well, they hadn't received a grade until yesterday when I sent them back their papers with my comments. Things are going to be quite different for them from now on.

For example, they'll have to have a paper due every week in order for us to catch up. Our class is going to be a lot more like a summer session class than I'd like. And I have to pretty much instantaneously learn 22 more names. I now have a total of 75 kids. 75.

I love how different they all are. Within each class and when compared to each other, each student has an entirely unique personality (oh man, am I going to counter to my own special snowflake argument?), but at the same time, they have similar attitudes, ways of communicating, and perceptions. For instance, I can tell when I'm reading a paper about what grade level the student is. Most freshman write an awkward version of what they believe to be academic sounding language. Usually by sophomore or junior year (hopefully by their senior year at least), they have either fully adopted academic language, or have moved beyond academic language altogether and into something really authentic (their own voice).

The difference in age and maturity between 1101 and lit classes is really interesting. ENC 1101 kids are softer, more like actual kids. My lit kids have been through this before. They have expectations about me and their class. The 1101 kids, well, they still have the blush of high school.

It's sweet, but it can be frustrating to work with them. They have more trouble seeing the worth of complications in arguments. They mostly prefer absolutes. But then, I know many adults who feel the same way.

I brought the 1101 kids candy the other day. I mostly brought it because their old teacher had kept promising and then forgetting to bring it in, and I wanted them to know that I'm not like that. That I'm totally committed to them. That I'm thinking about them and want them to succeed.

But I also brought them candy because they are kids. And I'd forgotten how much so freshman are.

Pluots in space

I wanted to start off with a psa about a really great organization which distributes organic vegetables within South Florida. It's not too expensive, and the variety is great. Here, have a Web site: http://www.anniesbuyingclub.com/

We just started getting it every other week. The best part is figuring out what to do with ingredients we've never cooked before (I say we, but really you know I mean Bobby).

All the vegetables must be helping my brain because teaching has been going wonderfully so far. I think the kids are really into reading the stories. It's such a difference after teaching Composition.

Now this isn't to say I dislike teaching Comp, actually I quite enjoy it. It's interesting and challenging and rewarding watching students learn how to write and find their own voices. But I must say, fiction is a lot of fun. We have debates. It's easier to get them to talk. They seem to care about what we're reading.

The two classes have ended up having two quite separate dynamics. My technology class is quiet, it can be more work to get them to speak (although I can usually accomplish this; it involves a lot of jokes and moving around. I find that if I stand in the same place, they get bored). The other class, the late in the day, dingy classroom class, is far more passionate and talkative.

I know that there are many factors which contribute to their behavior. Sure, technology is an issue, but then so is the class time, the student population in the class, and my own energy level.

This is actually the first time I've taught more than one class at a time, and I have to say I'm really enjoying it. I feel like I learn more and teach better.

The silly thing about the organic vegetable buying club thing, if you'll allow me to spin back to where I started, is that we just got a half share on Tuesday. Do you know what that means? It means we have to move with all these vegetables. I like to picture a U-Haul full of them, broccolini and asparagus rolling around and around the pints of strawberries and pluots (no joke, the Frankensteinian plum/apricot is delicious).

I think, and someone else mentioned this to me, that the key here, the solution to my moving troubles, is to get my kids to do it. That's, like, 50 people! Imagine the breath-taking speed. Vegetables flying into boxes, boxes flying onto U-Hauls, pianos zipping through the air....

It is a beautiful dream, isn't it?

Running just as fast as we can

We found a new place to live. Maybe I didn't mention that we're moving, but we are. It's just about a mile south, but it's oh-so-nice to have everything set in stone.

What is not, however, oh-so-nice, is moving in the middle of the semester. I've done it before and so I know. I know I know I know how difficult it will be. Moving is, as I'm sure we all know (although most would probably rather not), one of the absolute worst things a person can do. No one should ever move. It is a terrible, terrible affair.

Plus I have a piano.

Anyway, so I need to be extra special organized this semester. The kids seems to be doing well so far, but I think I'm going to have to give them more quizzes. One kid admitted today that he didn't read the story. I called on him in the first place because he was sitting with his head resting on his hands, nearly asleep. "What do you think about this?" I asked. "I'm sorry, I didn't get a chance to read the story," the student said.

So I continued, trying to appear unfazed. At least the kid was honest, right? After the lecture I informed them they'd be having a reading quiz next class. A good move, I think, but I hate to do it. It seems so high school.

Then again, this is a 2000 level course. Probably this is to be expected.

The fiction of fiction

I've had my kids read two short stories which are accompanied by interviews with the authors in which the authors say, basically, that people read too much into their stories.

One of my classes, the technologically advanced one, ps, is okay with this. I've stressed to them that authors are people, and that unless they are super-brilliant-geniuses, there is no way they could have planned every theme and metaphor.

The other class, the one which has actually turned out to be more talkative and involved, was less impressed with these authors' statements. "Why do we do this then?" A student asked me. "It's a waste of time, none of this is real. We're reading too much into it."

We got into a discussion of literature and the nature of literary endeavors, but I'm not sure I've convinced them. This one student in particular seems to feel quite disenfranchised with literature at the moment.

I've been trying to think of other ways of approaching this problem. Other ways of getting to the students. I want them to see the authors as people, for sure. I think it's important to look beyond the idols we have made of authors and see that at heart we are more alike than different. Kind of like my special snowflake rant.

Although, of course, brilliant genius authors exist. I just don't think students should be taught to blindly venerate them. I want to have them question authority, literature, the cannon... But perhaps this is too radical a challenge for people new to literature. Maybe the questions should be reserved for people who are really steeped in the academic culture. These are sophomores, mostly, and many of them definitely are not readers.

However, I somehow just can't stomach the idea that I shouldn't challenge them because they are, in the parlance of our times, newbs. I want to pull down curtains and all that. And I want them to come to love literature despite its origins. Or perhaps more honestly, I want them to love literature because of its origins. I feel as though if I can take literature down to them, to the level of real-human-people-like-us, then they might in the end feel its force all the more powerfully.

A girl can dream, right?

First week

Today I will meet my second class. Yesterday's class went well; we went over the syllabus and course expectations. I tried to make them laugh.

I teach one of my classes in the most technologically advanced classrooms I've ever seen. It's amazing, and a little intimidating. There is even a remote control laser pointer. Okay, I know, not the most technologically advanced article in that classroom, but really the strangest and most foreign to me. Not that I've never seen a laser pointer, I totally have (my sister's dog goes nuts for them), but I've never seen one in a classroom.

Think of all the things I could do! I could stand in front of the students and laser point at the projected computer screen. I could point at the white board thing I have. I could point at the mysterious boxes of bottled water in the corner of the room (I told the students that the water is for us, in case of emergency; we'll all hunker down). Technology is. Something?

Well. I'm not sure, but the class is also unique in the way it's set up. Two rows of connected desks, stadium seating, swivel chairs. It all feels very, very professional.

This, however, makes sense, as my classroom is in the College of Business building.

The class I teach today is in GS (General Classroom South), a decidedly older building, with technology an unlikely affair. It's going to be interesting to see how my two classes are affected (or not) by technology this semester. I'm interested in whether the technology will help them pay attention more, help them become involved in discussion, and generally feel more at home in the classroom, or if it turns out to be a hindrance.

I know I'd need many more classes and much more time for my investigation to be anything but anecdotal, but still.

Somehow

I've been thinking about how to post this on here, partly because I've been so nervous about getting a job, and partly because I'm just sort of afraid I won't say it the right way, but I got a job!

Yes, it's true. I somehow managed to wrangle an instructor position in this scary economic quicksand we're all sort of sinking in.

Evidence of the quicksandiness of the economy? Bobby is being replaced at his job by a computer. No lie. Let me say that again, because it just sounds so ridiculous and so sort of zeitgeisty (please allow me zeitgeisty, thanks). He is being replaced by a computer.

Because of this absurd, hilarious, and sad event, I really really needed to get a job. I'm happy to say I'll be teaching interpretation of literature and continuing as an adviser. It's possible, however, that I've started taking my advising position too seriously. Out with friends I'll nag them about documents they need to turn in and deadlines that are coming up.

Okay, I don't think I can say anymore about this. I'm too nervous/excited about the coming semester. And actually, writing this little blog right now is a distraction. I'm supposed to be working on a story.... Away I go!

Something something do not good neighbors make

So, I suppose I didn't realize until I started writing this blog that I love the phrase do not good neighbors make. In honor of my new found appreciation for this phrase, I thought I'd list some things/people/ideas/whatever that do not, in fact, good neighbors make. Here we go.

1) Dogs with separation anxiety and owners with eight hour work days
2) Any kind of large bird, but especially macaws (although I love them, they are the nosiest)
3) A busy bakery (well, if it opens early, probably the customers would be loud, and wouldn't the smell of fresh bread wake me in the morning, like way before the alarm? Yeah, thought so)
4) Wal-Mart
5) Young adults living on their own for the first time
6) Young adults living on their own for the first time in a band
7) Young adults living on their own for the first time in a band that practices at odd hours
8) Anyone that you don't want to love the way you love yourself (thanks Bobby)
9) Mosquitoes
10) People who think they are delicate and unique snowflakes
11) My own growing awareness of my own mortality
12) One of Bobby's exes

So there is a short list. I'm sure, very sure, that there are many more. But hey, let's do one more, since it's the fourth of July.

13) People having firecracker fights and drinking heavily

And there you have it. 13 things which do not good neighbors make.

Walking a dog

We are house-sitting for friends in one of those neighborhoods where everything looks the same. It's quite pretty and it was especially so today, everything sort of drenched and lush. Greener and more vibrant than you'd imagine.

But it's weird walking around with each house looking identical to the one we are watching. I keep thinking I could just walk up any one of the tiled driveways and use my key to open the door. Probably there are only four or five different floor plans. What are the odds that two of these maybe 300 hundred houses have one room decorated in the exact same way? Maybe both families went to Ikea; maybe both appreciated modern, concise design.

I think I'd love to be a realtor because then I could go into so many different houses.

It's also strange walking around because to me there's something about the kaleidoscopic effect of so many identical houses that makes it feel as if no one else is home. Like some kind of post-apocalyptic movie where the dog and I are the only ones left. We should gaze into each others' eyes, the dog and I , and then look to the sky, searching for life.

If the dog we're watching and I were the only living beings left in the world, here are a few things we would do:

1) We'd drive everyone's cars and park them in interesting formations. I'd tell the dog that this is a new art form, and he, being a dog, could do nothing but heartily agree. I'd create a little magazine about the movement and deliver said magazine to my own mailbox once a month.
2) We would break into the mall and pretend that zombies were attacking us. If zombies did attack, we'd move our operations to one of those super stores, preferably Target because I like their dishware.
3) The dog and I would have to learn how to cook. We'd just have to.
4) Go into everyone else's house. Like realtors.

There really is nothing quite as lonely as walking through a neighborhood seemingly devoid of all other life. Save, I suppose, the lawns and the trees and the flowers and the mosquitoes. But mosquitoes, as we all know, do not good neighbors make.

Walking around with the dog, I find myself thinking a lot about the future. I don't know if it's all the post-apocalyptic imaginings or something else, but I can't seem to help it. I haven't heard yet whether or not I got a job. Waiting like this is like slowly stretching your spine until it cracks, or like hitting the snooze button and going right back into a dream, or it's like letting the facet drip water into the sink until the sink is full and it overflows.

Paradigm shift

I'll be the very first to admit that I'm a bit of an idealist. I've always had a strong sense of the importance of justice and empathy. I defined myself and my life based on the value I placed upon these concepts and I expected the world to do the same.

Whenever I was made aware of something horrific I was filled with a sense of outrage. How could we let this happen? How could we deviate so far from the norm?

And then I realized this weekend, just this weekend (and I want to say here, although it might not reflect well, that I'm 29 years old), that there is no sort of "good" norm that we're deviating from. That actually a world of justice and equality is completely abnormal.

I don't want to sound like a kid here, but this thought, this revelation, well, it kind of stopped me dead. It sort of struck through me with a force I'm still reeling from.

And it got me thinking about the values that are instilled in us, about the morals we are raised with, and about how these affect us as people and as a society. Raising children to believe that they are unique, perfect snowflakes unlike any other person before or after them is wrong. It creates selfish people with an exaggerated sense of their own worth (please pardon my grammatically incorrect [or at least grammatically awkward] gender neutrality here). Selfish people who have an exaggerated sense of their own self worth do not good neighbors make. Try asking to borrow a cup of sugar; they won't answer the door.

More than that, raising children this way is alienating. It forces divides between and among us at a time when we should be recognizing our commonalities. How else can we face the challenges created for us, by us? How can we deal with a swirling trash vortex twice the size of Texas, global warming, war crimes, starvation, and poverty (just to name a minute amount of the daunting issues which we now find ourselves confronted with) with this individualistic, cowboy, Manifest Destiny perspective?

We can't, that's the thing. Our world today has become so small and its problems so big that we cannot afford to perpetuate the myth of the perfect snowflake.

Anyway, apparently my epiphany is that life is not fair, there are many people in the world who work to make others suffer, and it is difficult to call attention to this because these are things that are painful. These are things which are better tolerated with ignorance.

But that ignorance, although soothing, is dangerous. That cliche, ignorance is bliss, is correct in one sense, because yeah, it's easier not to know where chicken sandwiches come from and it's easier not to know how many people die daily from preventable diseases and how could we live with ourselves, for example, if we truly understood the human suffering behind statistics?

This kind of ignorance numbs us to other people's suffering; we don't care because it's too difficult to be cognizant. It's simply too hard to know. And yet, through our ignorance, selfishness, graspingness, and self entitlement, we create (or at the very least tolerate) more suffering, and more than that, we are in a major sense responsible.

Because although we act like we don't know, we know. It's like how people say they don't want to know what's in their hot dogs. Why not? Why is it okay to turn away?

It's okay because each snowflake values itself so highly that it becomes blind to the vulnerabilities of everything and everyone else. How else can we make sense of our ability to ignore reality, or worse, our sheer lack of empathy in the face of human suffering?

Swirling Trash Vortex Twice the Size of Texas

I'm sure you know about this. Apparently everybody already knew? My sister said it was even on Ellen the other day.

I, however, was unaware of it until someone mentioned it in passing on NPR. That's not to say that I'm, like, not into Ellen, because I am. I love Ellen. It just so happens I missed that day's episode (this whole thing here, this whole Ellen vs NPR thing I'm doing, it's caused by a compulsion I have; I must be absolutely honest 100% of the time. This compulsion is due to some teenage trauma and sundry other experiences, and it can be detrimental to my writing at times, but I just can't not do it), but I heard some dude on NPR saying "there is a swirling trash vortex twice the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean oh my god."As if one could say that in passing.

Because, like, no one is really talking about this? Or if they are, they aren't talking to me. When I mention it to people, usually one in three will know what I'm talking about. The other two go like "No way. Really? No way." And I'm all like "Yeah, uh huh," and then I convince them with my powerful rhetorical skillz.

Or not. But either way, I feel like this swirling trash vortex is a perfect metaphor for, like, so many things.

And I also feel like it's cheap, you know? Like it's cheap to make the swirling trash vortex a metaphor. Because, come on, it's already so big. Does it really also need to be a metaphor?

But yes, why not, sure it does. It does need to be a metaphor. A metaphor for, like, all the things we are unaware of. All the poison and trash and utter nonsense that we condone without realizing it.

As a teacher I want to help instill in my students an ownership of the swirling trash vortex. I don't want them to think of it as something outside of themselves. Because, and this is me being so honest I can barely stand myself, the trash vortex is us, right? I mean, it is.

And that's really the metaphor. Whether or not you add the imagery of water swirling down the drain or not.

We, and I mean we as in humanity here, we have a problem. And really, not only do we have a problem, we are the problem.

I'm trying to get a job now. Things like this, things like the swirling trash vortex twice the size of Texas, things like this kind of sidetrack me, at least a little. Things like this make me wonder about how much of what I consume is composed of plastic. How much of me is actually, at this point, totally plastic.

And partly this, like, makes me want to inform the next generation, and it partly makes me want to hide underneath my bed for the rest of my life (plastic Armageddon can't get me there, right?). Because learning about a swirling trash vortex twice the size of Texas is more than a little intimidating. It's more than a little sad and awful and horrific. It's in point of fact absolutely ugly.

And it makes me question my desire to educate. Because learning about this makes me feel so small and impotent.

Although perhaps that's a very good lesson for the kids to learn.

Introductions

Hello! I am an MFA graduate student who is graduating this semester. I actually defend my thesis on Tuesday, 3/10. It is frightening, sure, most definitely so. Thanks for asking.

But what is scarier? Trying to find a job after I graduate, of course!

Everything I've been hearing lately regarding job prospects in general (much more so for an MFA recipient, sheesh) have been quite dire, as I'm sure you're aware. And I want to teach, write, and keep up my band, Zombies! Organize!!; although perhaps it is unfair to call it "my" band.

It is more fair, certainly, to acknowledge my husband and sister as also owners of the band, if a band can be said to be comprised of people who own it.

Regardless. This blog will be dedicated to my search for meaning, job, happiness, security, health insurance, etc etc, after graduation.

It is not enough, friends, to have survived graduate school. One must then rocket into society, whirling through walls and debris and people; one must contribute! One must, certainly, do something with education. At the very least.

Please note:
1) I'm quite fond. Of sentence fragments.
2) I cannot promise this blog will be captivating in any sense of the word, and please do not think this false modesty; I've had a friends' only online journal for years now because I'm terrified of what non-friends, people I don't know (gasp!) will think of my writing. There. It's been said. So this number two here, this little statement about the lacklusterness of my writing is to assuage my own fears.
3) I live in Boca Raton, FL, am graduating from FAU; I teach and student there (please allow student to be a verb, thanks!).