Swoosh

Hello there, trusted and admired friends of mine. This semester is coming to end, and as such, it's also speeding up. It's funny how that works. My classes are nearly in fast-forward right now, and I feel like I have to run to keep up (metaphorical running, of course... Although honestly a rather embarrassingly hefty amount of literal running is also involved).

Which reminds me. Yesterday or the day before or maybe even the day before that, I was riding my bike to school, and as I started going down that little hill that means I'm nearly on campus, I realized that that rushing-down-hill-feeling is something everyone should feel every now and then. I think it's good for people. It's good for me, and I'm a person, right? My logic is infallible, admit it.

Well, it really kind of is. My kids are reading an essay called "Reporting Live from Tomorrow" from the book Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. The essay is about how in order to accurately predict how you'll feel in any given situation (for example, how happy you'd be as a train conductor), you should ask someone who's already doing that.

He goes on to talk about how we are much more alike than we are different. This is in a section of this essay titled "The Myth of Fingerprints," which is really a lovely title, eh? But anyway, he describes his idea in a funny and engaging way, so I'll quote him here. "Because we spend so much time searching for, attending to, thinking about, and remembering these differences [between people], we tend to overestimate their magnitude and frequency, and thus end up thinking of people as more varied than they actually are. If you spent all day sorting grapes into different shapes, colors, and kinds, you'd become one of those annoying grapeophiles who talks endlessly about the nuances of flavor and the permutations of texture. You'd come to think of grapes as infinitely varied, and you'd forget that almost all of the really important information about a grape can be deduced from the simple fact of its grapehood."

I love that explanation, and the kids really grasp it as well. In addition to these two lucky little facts (look, in CRW we're talking about sound in poetry, so if some alliteration, etc, sneaks in here, you just have to bear with me), the quote above serves to substantiate my claim.

We are, dear reader, quite more alike than we are different, and if this fast-swooshing-down-a-hill-thing can make me so happy, I humbly submit that it will affect you in a similar way.

So what I'm suggesting, really, is that you, from time to time, get on your bike and ride down a hill. The feeling is luscious. If you are one of the poor unfortunates who has is lacking access to a bike or a hill or (gasp) both, just roll down the window next time you are on the highway, preferably while someone else is driving, and put your head out the window, at least a little.

I think it's necessary for survival. It helps me feel like I can keep up with the fast-forwarding of this semester anyway.

Burgled

In other news, this week has been interesting, in like, a bad way. Our house was broken into on Monday. It was scary, but everything is fine. They didn't even let the cats out. They only took a couple laptops, my sister's Ipod, and our digital camera, so it could have been way worse. I was the one who discovered the break in. Let me break it down for you.

These are the steps I went through to realize we had been burgled. Please note that the entire process probably took less than five minutes, but it seemed much longer than that.

1) Upon opening the front door, I realized that the house smelled like beer. "That's strange," I thought, "maybe Bobby spilled when he took out the recycling last night?"
2) Opening the sliding glass door onto the porch I noticed a piece of cement brick on the rug. "Huh," I thought, "now why would Bobby leave that there? That's weird."
3) Upon discovering the utility closet door was closed, and so the cats wouldn't have been able to get to their litter boxes. "Why would Bobby leave that door closed? What a jerk! What about the poor kitties?"
4) Going over to the door to get my bike, I realized the door is not locked. "Oh man, that guy's on a role today! Bobby was supposed to lock this and he didn't. Man."
5) Upon turning around and realizing there is glass everywhere and the cat door is shattered. "Ohhhhhhhh. Not Bobby. Ha. Burglar."

The whole time it was Bobby's fault. I just think that's funny. But anyway, the cops came with the crime scene guy. The most annoying part was cleaning up the broken glass. Bobby makes home brew beer, and he had some in the closet. Apparently when they were rifling through our stuff, the burglar knocked a big bottle of home brew down and it shattered all over everything. There were even pieces of glass in my shoes.

So. I'm about to go teach my last class before spring break. I'm trying to think how I can incorporate this whole burglary into my lecture. Because I think it might be funny. And it speaks to the importance of point of view; imagine this story from my point of view, then from Bobby's, Laura's, the cats, the hamster, the burglar....

Okay, you win this time, Dentist

So, it's been awhile, eh? So sorry about that, things have been very busy here for me. I know you've been on the edge of your seat, wondering what I have to say about teaching in a circle? Am I right?

I'm right, right?

Thought so!

Or not, but either way, dear reader, please forgive my inattention to this dusty little blog. Okay! For the record, teaching in a circle is interesting. I think it's better for workshopping (yes, it is a verb, you must, you know, learn to deal with that) creative writing than it is for actual lecturing. And it's funny, my kids said as much. We'd been workshopping their creative nonfiction essays for a couple weeks and were returning back to lecture. "I like it better in rows for this," I heard one of them say to another.

And you know what? I agree. It's easier to command their attention, I think, and to get them to focus. This is a bit of an unhappy realization for me, however, as my favorite classes as an undergraduate were taught in a circle.

Maybe after teaching for a few more years.... So, why the weird subject line? It's because today is Bobby and my three year anniversary, and we celebrated in the time worn fashion of getting cavities filled together. So romantic. But now my mouth is k-i-l-l-i-n-g (it's more dramatic spelled out I think) me. To death! So I called my dentist, and he said I might need a root canal instead.

Oh brother. Does he know that next week is spring break? That I hate dentists? That I have so much work to do and no time for mouth pain to distract me? What about me, dentist? Why don't you ever think about my needs?!

Ahem. But yeah. If it's this pain now verses a root canal which will hurt like crazy and then actually stop hurting, then I'll take the gosh darn root canal.

Really, Mary? Really? Gosh darn? So that's where we're at today. It's good that I know this now. You see, it's the mouth pain. It' s worming its way into my brain.

Guess what! I get to teach creative writing again in the summer and then in the fall. I am so happy. And I continue to be happy and grateful every day that I have this job that I love so. Yesterday I was talking to my creative writing kids:

"Are you excited to be going back to the workshop format?"

They all express differing levels of delight and apprehension.

"But, like," one of them says to me, "can I write something weird?"

"That's what we've been talking about, remember? Nontraditional stories and more traditional ones? You can do whatever you want in your short story, as long as the story has earned it."

"What if I want to change the perspective half way through?" another asks.

"Same thing. We learn the rules to better understand writing, but it doesn't mean you can't break them."

"And do I have to, like, use dialogue if I don't want to?" asks another.

"For heaven's sake. No, you don't have to, you can pick from the narrative modes that you want to incorporate, and dialogue doesn't have to be one of them as long as the story works without it."

They are so afraid to break the "rules," and at the same time so excited. I'm looking forward to this second round of workshopping. I know that many of them took the class because they want to write fiction. It should be fun.

That is, if I can enjoy it. If this pain would please-and-thank-you-very-much go away.

In the middle of January

It is the second week of classes. Funny how much it feels as though we are much farther into the semester than just two weeks. I guess it's easy to get back into this routine. Well, hell, I've been in school longer than I haven't by now, so I suppose it ought to feel fairly familiar, even though I'm on the other side of the desk.

My creative writing class is more fun than any number of adjectives I could use to describe it to you. It is wonderful to teach students so interested in learning. My 1102 class is also quite good; they are more willing than most composition classes I have taught to engage in class discussion. I'm not sure why this is, and it puzzles me because last spring (2009), I taught in the same classroom I'm teaching in now. That class was one of the least responsive I have ever taught. I thought that this was due in large part to the way the classroom is set up.

It's a computer classroom with attached desks arranged so that two people sit facing me and two sit facing away; a square cut into four parts. This works well mostly, except for the students in the back who face me, but who also face computer screens that I can't see unless I hike back there and peer around their desks to find out what they are looking at (or who they are friending on Facebook).

So last year when my class wouldn't talk, when I had to basically beg them to discuss, I blamed the room. The unfettered access to Facebook. My inability to monitor them. The fact that half the class was facing away from me.

But, apparently this was not the case. Because my comp kids this semester do not suffer the same room related malaise. This is fantastic, but it also makes me realize how much the composition of a particular class affects how and how much students learn and interact. A quiet, distracted bunch will encourage each other to remain quiet and distracted. A loud, passionate group will also affect (and infect? Like with passion? Is passion communicable? I'm arguing yes, I suppose) each other. Huh.

I guess I knew this, but it still seems strange to me. Next up for mediation: how classroom dynamics are changed by putting everyone in a circle. Sounds exciting, right?

As a brief note, the soup I made was quite okay. It was even quite possibly good. Thank you for your interest in my culinary (lack of) skill. Also, Bobby is better. I think he got better, ps, by infecting me with his cold.

Trying to make a soup

School begins on Monday. Well, it technically begins this Saturday, but happily I am teaching no Saturday classes. As such, today is my last weekday off. Bobby is working, and I am home alone, trying to make a soup.

I say trying to make a soup instead of just making a soup because I am not a good cook, for one, and for reason the second, I've been having issues with said soup. The first, and most pernicious, issue I've been having is that I don't know how to cook. Okay, so I looked up recipes online. The difficulty with this is that I did not find one that I liked, I found several, so this leads me to issue number two I'm having, which is that I'm combining several different recipes, oh! And the third? I'm using different amounts of ingredients than any of the recipes call for. Plus I added too much cayenne.

Okay. So, now you see my struggle with the soup? It's been interesting. It smells good, and I think it's possible that it tastes good, but I'm not sure. I've tasted it too many times to be able to tell.

I need to make this soup because Bobby is sick. I also want to make the soup to prove to Bobby that I can make the soup (there has lately been some questioning of my soup making abilities). Another reason I'm making the soup (today is a day of lists of reasons, apparently) is that it's my last real day off, like I said, and making soup is so opposite teaching that it seemed appropriate. It is also something that I would not have even been able to conceive of doing ten years ago.

Ah, yes, here we come to the drive of this blog for today. It's tiny, pulsing heart, if you will. Never, ever did I expect to be where I am today ten years ago. To be completely frank, I was an entirely different person then. And I think (this is actually something I've thought about a lot, so it's probably more true than you might believe) that if I had been going for my life right now as a goal ten years ago, I would have failed and failed and failed.

What I mean is, if I had had this career and life in mind, I would not have been able to achieve it. Ten years ago I would have totally messed up my chances for it, somehow; this is the kind of girl I was. I'm happy to say that I have morphed or changed or perhaps transformed into someone who isn't constantly shooting herself in her own feet, tripping over her own idealism, and generally working on failing at life. That sounds harsh, maybe, but I think a lot of people go through that phase.

In fact, I see it in my kids all the time. Really smart young people who seem to do everything in their power to fail. I've even talked to them about it before. But then, I think when someone is at that place in life, there is really no talking them out of it. They have to want to change.

So, for what it's worth, my soup (whether it actually tastes good or not, I'm just working on actually getting the soup finished here) is evidence of my own butterflyness or however you would rather imagine this whole transformational thing that happens to people, and which has happily happened to me.

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.