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.