Whew

It's been a little chronologially jam-packed over here lately, and I've been going into everything (particularly teaching) a little unprepared.

Thing I've learned this week: My second section of WRIT 111 has Mac enthusiasts. They were ridiculously offended when we read a rhetorical analysis critical of Mac commercials. The following class, I tried to play them this clip (thank you, Jo!) as an example of nontextual rhet-an, but I couldn't get Natasha's laptop (I don't own my own, so I tried to borrow hers) verified on the school's wireless network because they wanted her to've installed Service Pack 2 first. The Mac kids smugly informed me that they don't have to do updates, that they can get right on the wireless. Uh-huh. (We ended up watching the clip on one girl's iPhone, projected to the class via our ELMO, which I forget what that stands for. It's like an overhead projector, except a dozen times more convenient because you don't have to make transparencies, you can just put whatever you want on it and it'll project it.)

Also learned: it's really spiritually dangerous to remember that you, as a Christian, are called to devote your life to the joyful service of God and others...because renewing your sense of calling in the world is nearly invariably followed by a really bad day in which everything goes wrong, which makes cheeriness and joy about five hundred percent harder and the whole thing very discouraging.

However: I found half my printer cord (or maybe this is the power supply...there's a difference, but I'm not entirely sure what it is). The other half is still missing, but hey. Maybe I'll find it and then have a printer that's more than a paperweight so I can print out things for my students here, instead of on campus with PODS quota money I'm not even sure how I got (let alone why I'm not being charged accurately, though it's in my favor...I'm pretty sure I owe the university several bucks).

Really, what I ought to do is to get Barb the Secretary to copy things for me, since that's available to me as a faculty member. The problem is, she needs two days' notice, and I never have two days' notice because I'm not all organized like that. I mean, crud, I'm in pretty good shape if I know by classtime what I'm assigning for homework that day - half the time I have to just post it on Blackboard that evening.

Okay, it may be time to go to campus anyway - I should find some good not-online examples of rhetorical analysis, since my students need them. Though I have to say, I think I'd really rather go to bed.

On Reading the First Hand-In Assignment (Which I Originally Thought Had Gone Badly But Maybe Mostly Didn't)

Many of my new students are laugh-aloud-funny people. It's going to be almost intimidating making jokes with them now. I can't match them.

Also, they seem to really like bottled water.

We what?!

Sentence received over e-mail tonight:

Oh, and you know Alfred Hillel sponsored the Great Latke-Hamantaschen Debate while we were there, right?

No. No, I didn't. How did I miss this? Under what rock was I living? My heart sinks with shame and disappointment.

Oh, the Fantasticness!

Our undergraduate class is something like 1/3 Jewish! Why do we not have one of these?

It would have been, like, the highlight of my grad school experience if we had.