1) Oh my gosh, yes.
2) Oh my gosh, yes.
12.30.2009
12.25.2009
A Day Late, For Real
So, as longtime readers of this blog (and who else, really, reads this blog but you?) know, I do an annual Christmas Eve entry where I post something Christmasy and then give shoutouts to all the new friends I've made over the past year.
But yesterday I was so busy with my family that I never got a chance. In the afternoon my brother roped me into a two-hour game of Mario Party. In the evening I helped Dad and the bro do some very-last-minute Christmas shopping (we went to Target during literally the last two minutes it was open, then to Walgreens, which was open much longer). That night we built a fire and sat around it, eating and talking and making my dad finally tell some stories about being a kid, which weren't really funny like my mom's about her childhood are, but which were nice because he just doesn't usually talk much about that sort of thing.
We didn't even go to church - Mom and I were the only ones who wanted to, and by the time we could have had our act together to do it, we would have been late. A surprisingly-small number of churches around here do nighttime services - well, at least a small number of churches my parents would go to, since they're kind of picky. ("We're going to Aunt Lisa's tomorrow and singing Christmas carols," said my brother, attempting to convince us we weren't really missing anything. "It's the same thing as church, just without the boring guy up front.")
So it's been nice and all, but a little disjointed all around. In that spirit, I offer you (rather than a graceful Richard Wilbur poem or bittersweet Chris Rice song) this op-ed, which was in the newspaper this morning and which, while I don't agree with some of his interpretations (for instance, consider the Magnificat; does that sound like "a mother hides a miracle in shame" to you?), had me nodding overall. Comin' clean on this, it's been a big year for staring things in the face and having to work, hard sometimes, to believe that God is there and is who I've always been told He is. Not that all years don't include a little of that, and not that they don't always end the way I hope they will, but this year I really recognize Gerson's feelings - his uncertainty, his eventual decision in favor, but with a hint of suspense. He says a lot of things that I've thought before.
I also offer you, though, my grateful greetings. Thank you for giving me someone to whisper, murmur, shout, and sob to, particularly about my teaching-related neuroses. And my thanks and greetings to this year's new friends: Dawn, Chung Eun, Elizabeth S-Z., all my WRIT 111 colleagues (I probably should've mentioned Kristi before this year), Kate E., Libby M., Ben, Kelly, Kelsey, Brian, Jerry and Sarah, Laura R. (if I've never mentioned her before), Barb W. (last year's Barb was Barb M.!), both Jasons, and anyone else from church whom I didn't cover last year. Merry Christmas and happy Chanukah to my students, especially Brian and Leah.
A merry Christmas to Manfred, to the girl whose name I can't remember (Ananda would know), to Samweli (however he's doing now), and to servicemen everywhere (especially now that Erik, though home for the holidays, is among them).
To 2009...and to 2010.
But yesterday I was so busy with my family that I never got a chance. In the afternoon my brother roped me into a two-hour game of Mario Party. In the evening I helped Dad and the bro do some very-last-minute Christmas shopping (we went to Target during literally the last two minutes it was open, then to Walgreens, which was open much longer). That night we built a fire and sat around it, eating and talking and making my dad finally tell some stories about being a kid, which weren't really funny like my mom's about her childhood are, but which were nice because he just doesn't usually talk much about that sort of thing.
We didn't even go to church - Mom and I were the only ones who wanted to, and by the time we could have had our act together to do it, we would have been late. A surprisingly-small number of churches around here do nighttime services - well, at least a small number of churches my parents would go to, since they're kind of picky. ("We're going to Aunt Lisa's tomorrow and singing Christmas carols," said my brother, attempting to convince us we weren't really missing anything. "It's the same thing as church, just without the boring guy up front.")
So it's been nice and all, but a little disjointed all around. In that spirit, I offer you (rather than a graceful Richard Wilbur poem or bittersweet Chris Rice song) this op-ed, which was in the newspaper this morning and which, while I don't agree with some of his interpretations (for instance, consider the Magnificat; does that sound like "a mother hides a miracle in shame" to you?), had me nodding overall. Comin' clean on this, it's been a big year for staring things in the face and having to work, hard sometimes, to believe that God is there and is who I've always been told He is. Not that all years don't include a little of that, and not that they don't always end the way I hope they will, but this year I really recognize Gerson's feelings - his uncertainty, his eventual decision in favor, but with a hint of suspense. He says a lot of things that I've thought before.
I also offer you, though, my grateful greetings. Thank you for giving me someone to whisper, murmur, shout, and sob to, particularly about my teaching-related neuroses. And my thanks and greetings to this year's new friends: Dawn, Chung Eun, Elizabeth S-Z., all my WRIT 111 colleagues (I probably should've mentioned Kristi before this year), Kate E., Libby M., Ben, Kelly, Kelsey, Brian, Jerry and Sarah, Laura R. (if I've never mentioned her before), Barb W. (last year's Barb was Barb M.!), both Jasons, and anyone else from church whom I didn't cover last year. Merry Christmas and happy Chanukah to my students, especially Brian and Leah.
A merry Christmas to Manfred, to the girl whose name I can't remember (Ananda would know), to Samweli (however he's doing now), and to servicemen everywhere (especially now that Erik, though home for the holidays, is among them).
To 2009...and to 2010.
12.18.2009
Grading
It went mostly okay. I'm a big jerk who grades too hard and I have no idea what anyone really deserves, so really the final grade submission inspires mostly guilt.
Especially with one guy in particular, whom I basically - let's call it what it is - screwed over hardcore, without meaning to, because he made two mistakes, one of them big, that were partly, though not wholly, my fault. I tried to fix it, but I just don't know what he really deserves, and I couldn't just doctor him into the grade I wanted to give him; if it were all my own class I probably would have, but my grading group, even after hearing the story, clearly didn't think he deserved what I wanted to give him. But I wish I'd done it anyway. Yet I had the power to do that; I could've done it if I'd decided to. And at first I even did. But then I read his portfolio over one more time. And I thought about what I'd said, and what he'd said, and what I should have said, and what he'd written, and how I offered to meet with him one more time but he didn't take me up on it, and what I surely would have told him if he had and I'd gotten to read his newest draft, and about what I would have done if it were someone else's student, and what I would have done with a kid I didn't like as much or know as well. And then, exclaiming a word not quite obscene but very close - again and again and later again - I dropped his grade by half a letter, which dropped him down into the next grade range. And as much as I thought about scribbling it out again, that's the one that stayed when I mailed my grades to Kristi. Even knowing that those peers of his who got the grade I wanted to give him didn't deserve it as much as he did.
"The friendly fire of composition," Jim called it at our grading meeting.
Before "had done things differently" and after "I," I don't know what fits better, "could" or "should."
Especially with one guy in particular, whom I basically - let's call it what it is - screwed over hardcore, without meaning to, because he made two mistakes, one of them big, that were partly, though not wholly, my fault. I tried to fix it, but I just don't know what he really deserves, and I couldn't just doctor him into the grade I wanted to give him; if it were all my own class I probably would have, but my grading group, even after hearing the story, clearly didn't think he deserved what I wanted to give him. But I wish I'd done it anyway. Yet I had the power to do that; I could've done it if I'd decided to. And at first I even did. But then I read his portfolio over one more time. And I thought about what I'd said, and what he'd said, and what I should have said, and what he'd written, and how I offered to meet with him one more time but he didn't take me up on it, and what I surely would have told him if he had and I'd gotten to read his newest draft, and about what I would have done if it were someone else's student, and what I would have done with a kid I didn't like as much or know as well. And then, exclaiming a word not quite obscene but very close - again and again and later again - I dropped his grade by half a letter, which dropped him down into the next grade range. And as much as I thought about scribbling it out again, that's the one that stayed when I mailed my grades to Kristi. Even knowing that those peers of his who got the grade I wanted to give him didn't deserve it as much as he did.
"The friendly fire of composition," Jim called it at our grading meeting.
Before "had done things differently" and after "I," I don't know what fits better, "could" or "should."
12.11.2009
Semester's End
Now that I have a lighter workload (though certainly tomorrow will be full of grading, at least it will be faster, hopefully less stressful grading), I went to InterVarsity tonight for the first time in, I dunno, prolly a couple of months. It was nice, and funny, and made me wish I were an undergrad again, that I had friends around me...that I hadn't wasted so much time in APO, to be a little too candid, after my freshman year (since freshman year with them was fine and important).
I wish I had more stories to tell about my last couple of years, wish I had time now to just spend with friends, doing the kinds of things my freshmen and the IV kids get to do. Like, my IV freshman guy B. got to be in on a joke where his roommate's left shoes all got stolen and he has to do acts of kindness to ransom them. And tonight Katy and Matt, Steve and Gary all busted out into an acapella song at the end of large group, some popular thing I faintly recognized, but with the words changed, to serenade the newly-elected incoming e-board. Whereas I can't have a decent conversation with people half the time because I just don't even know what to say: what do you say to someone who isn't a writing instructor or part of my church? That takes up pretty much my whole life. That doesn't seem right.
So hopefully the new second job, whatever it is, will pan out in such a way that I get a little more free time, and hopefully I'll turn out in such a way that I don't squander it on flipping pointless things like Facebook. I even kind of hate Facebook, much of the time, but I like knowing what people are doing: I like the socialization I can't really, in real life, have.
Next semester, let me have real friends, and stories to tell.
I wish I had more stories to tell about my last couple of years, wish I had time now to just spend with friends, doing the kinds of things my freshmen and the IV kids get to do. Like, my IV freshman guy B. got to be in on a joke where his roommate's left shoes all got stolen and he has to do acts of kindness to ransom them. And tonight Katy and Matt, Steve and Gary all busted out into an acapella song at the end of large group, some popular thing I faintly recognized, but with the words changed, to serenade the newly-elected incoming e-board. Whereas I can't have a decent conversation with people half the time because I just don't even know what to say: what do you say to someone who isn't a writing instructor or part of my church? That takes up pretty much my whole life. That doesn't seem right.
So hopefully the new second job, whatever it is, will pan out in such a way that I get a little more free time, and hopefully I'll turn out in such a way that I don't squander it on flipping pointless things like Facebook. I even kind of hate Facebook, much of the time, but I like knowing what people are doing: I like the socialization I can't really, in real life, have.
Next semester, let me have real friends, and stories to tell.
12.08.2009
In (What was Supposed to Be) Brief
This deserves much deeper treatment than it's going to get, but it's the last week of the semester, so instead of anything beautiful, profound, or properly-detailed, here're my notes on WRIT 111 right now:
-My students' work is generally much better, at this point, than I expected it to be. It's really remarkable how clearer everything gets when I drill them in sample argument structures and - this one's been big - force them to give me explicit topic sentences. I know my colleagues hate our students sounding too formulaic, and I'd like to read more graceful-sounding papers myself, but you know what? I've never taught four projects in fourteen weeks (if you count revision weeks separately, though technically they're not) before. It's hard enough for them to grasp the genres. And anyway, some of my smartest kids are figuring out on their own how to make their papers sound less mechanical, whereas my average kids are still learning how to gather and organize their thoughts and don't even have time for a lot of style - if I even knew how to teach it, which, partly because I got my English skills from a childhood of constant reading and proto-fanfic-writing instead of from school, I really mostly don't. So this's where we can be right now. And I think I'm going to have to be okay with that.
-I hope L. and I get to be friends-for-real after I stop being her teacher, because we've done quite a bit of talking this semester, and a) it turns out that we live right near each other (she's a transfer, so she doesn't have to live on campus); b) she's very smart and interesting; and c) she's a little odd, which's fine as far as I'm concerned, but she doesn't ever really talk about friends (she talks about her family, but she's an only child), which makes me wonder how many she really has.
-But...I unexpectedly got laid off from school for spring. The writing department didn't get the student enrollment it needed to keep all the sections, so, because the grad students get first crack at what students there are, all three of us adjuncts were let go. The plan thus far is to adjunct elsewhere in the area if either school will have me and to sub at a high school if not. Thank God for New York State law's just having changed to let me back on my parents' health insurance.
Okay, time for bed: after filling up on sleep over Thanksgiving break, I'm running short on it again. But Friday's the last day of the semester - for both good and ill, it'll all be over soon. And...break!
-My students' work is generally much better, at this point, than I expected it to be. It's really remarkable how clearer everything gets when I drill them in sample argument structures and - this one's been big - force them to give me explicit topic sentences. I know my colleagues hate our students sounding too formulaic, and I'd like to read more graceful-sounding papers myself, but you know what? I've never taught four projects in fourteen weeks (if you count revision weeks separately, though technically they're not) before. It's hard enough for them to grasp the genres. And anyway, some of my smartest kids are figuring out on their own how to make their papers sound less mechanical, whereas my average kids are still learning how to gather and organize their thoughts and don't even have time for a lot of style - if I even knew how to teach it, which, partly because I got my English skills from a childhood of constant reading and proto-fanfic-writing instead of from school, I really mostly don't. So this's where we can be right now. And I think I'm going to have to be okay with that.
-I hope L. and I get to be friends-for-real after I stop being her teacher, because we've done quite a bit of talking this semester, and a) it turns out that we live right near each other (she's a transfer, so she doesn't have to live on campus); b) she's very smart and interesting; and c) she's a little odd, which's fine as far as I'm concerned, but she doesn't ever really talk about friends (she talks about her family, but she's an only child), which makes me wonder how many she really has.
-But...I unexpectedly got laid off from school for spring. The writing department didn't get the student enrollment it needed to keep all the sections, so, because the grad students get first crack at what students there are, all three of us adjuncts were let go. The plan thus far is to adjunct elsewhere in the area if either school will have me and to sub at a high school if not. Thank God for New York State law's just having changed to let me back on my parents' health insurance.
Okay, time for bed: after filling up on sleep over Thanksgiving break, I'm running short on it again. But Friday's the last day of the semester - for both good and ill, it'll all be over soon. And...break!