Gah!

Even on unofficial tests I can't do it!

I have fallen just short of perfect scores on every standardized test ever, from the 99 on my Regents in English (where did I lose the one point?) to the 790 on the SAT-II in reading comprehension, and often including subjects other than English (98 on the Course-I Regents because I missed the last part of the last question)...

And now I have missed two questions on one Pioneer Woman vocabulary quiz (more like one-and-a-half questions, really, since I think one of my answers was right, just not really what she was looking for) and one on the other. Even though they were, except for THAT ONE QUESTION on each one, so easy.

Or at least I'm pretty sure I only missed one just now. True enough that the answers aren't up yet, but I looked up the only other one I wasn't sure about, and I'd been right.

Anyway, I just thought I'd take this opportunity to lament my inability to be as good as English non-majors at my own major, since plenty of people on that site got perfect scores (crud, plenty of people reading this blog could get perfect scores, and by "plenty," I mean "almost all five of you"). Thank you for your time.

Four Unofficial Quickish Takes

If you want the real 7 Quick Takes, go here.

1. The first two weeks at BCC are over. Some days it's great and I feel amazing. Some days, like today, I feel like I'm never going to be a good teacher until I'm working only one job at a time and/or I give up the entire internet in exchange for hours, hours, and hours of sleep.

2. I finally put some of that insulating plastic on my window. This was precipitated by today being eight degrees (negative-twenty with windchill, reported my mother, but I think that might just have been Syracuse) and my room getting to the point where I had on two shirts (though one was thin), a hoodie over that, and my bathrobe over that, and I think still being cold. Basically, the kit you buy at Home Depot (I grabbed mine from the markdown bin, since I've come a little late to the winterizing party) gives you a roll of thickish double-sided tape (not necessarily very nailbiter-friendly, but then, what is?), some shrink-wrappy plastic, and instructions for putting on the tape, putting the plastic on the tape, and sealing everything up with a hairdryer. ...Apparently they assume both that there'll be an electric outlet near every one of your windows and that your hairdryer cord is long enough to reach that high. Or that I have an extension cord. None of those things was true, but it did work. Mostly. I did use some of the rest of the tape to seal a couple of potential leaks. But I have to say, I feel a bit warmer already. Not totally - this house is too old for just a little bit of tape and plastic wrap to work too many wonders - but a bit. Hopefully it'll make a difference downstairs, too - the living room windows leak heat like nobody's business.

3. Here's why I'm loath to start the Dorothy Sayers mystery I just took out of the library: because I know how this will end. No, I don't mean that I already know who committed the crime. I mean that every time I start a book that doesn't have to do with the course I teach, I have to race through it in big chunks because I'll hardly get any work done until I do. This is what happened with the last two books I read for fun. Two days each, as I recall. Not just because they were written in such a way as to make that easy, but because I really don't have any self-discipline at all these days past two years at least.

4. Try though I might, I cannot find an online sample for you of the Can Man Redemption Center radio commercials. I wish I could: Can Man is a Binghamton thing, and the ads would be so two-bit if they weren't so fantastically random. Their tagline appears to involve, among other things, some kind of hockey goal horn.

Okay, I'm going to bed.

Ech

The first day of BCC was fine. Maybe I'll write about it if I ever have genuine free time again, which is unlikely, as I'm too busy having illegitimate free time to ever get enough work done for genuine free time.

I really have no idea what I'm going to teach tomorrow, or, for that matter, ever.

Comm-Coll One-Ten, Episode 1: Be Afraid, But Not Very Afraid

A Would-Be-Frequent-But-Probably-Will-Be-Occasional Series

Here's an interesting thing about some community college people: they seem to be simultaneously eager for you to like teaching there, yet honor-bound to imply that many days you won't. Broome Community's secretary, a very friendly lady (like I said), was like that. Dr. C., who interviewed me, both turned my questions into opportunities to sell me on the idea of teaching there (not realizing, perhaps, that I was already on board for more reasons besides my need for employment) and made it obvious that the week prior to my first day was going to be ridiculously busy and that it was going to be quite a semester overall. Even one of the informational sheets I got from the department contains the following sentence: "This 'Quick Guide' is provided to help you get set up and negotiate through the challenges of your first semester here."

Maybe I'm reading too much into that word "challenges," but it's a big switch from WRIT 111, where I got orientated (twice - I got asked to do it again last fall as an adjunct after having gone through it the year before as a student), placed into a weekly-meeting "peer development group," given an "instructor of record" to go to with questions, and been assigned projects to give and sample curriculum to fall back on. I could tweak and supplement, but all I had to do was execute.

Not. Anymore.

Here I am, less than forty-eight hours from my first day of English 110, and I'm still trying to figure out what to assign. It's not a rhetorical course, Dr. C. confirmed for me during the interview (I'd already suspected it). I'm to teach things like narrative. So I obediently guessed, when asked, at how I'd teach a narrative essay. I must have done at least sort of okay: I got hired.

But I hadn't been told what, besides the personal narrative and the research paper, to assign. I've only ever taught two other units, both for WRIT 111. Op-eds are probably too overtly rhetorical; I can't imagine doing one well without having to teach more skills than I'm really being asked to. And as for rhetorical analyses, I suppose that's a possibility and all, but I don't really, when you get right down to it, know what makes a good rhetorical-analysis essay.

There's also been the little matter of the "twenty pages of formal writing" requirement. I was told that assignments should be 2-5 pages long, and I know from my own Alfredian days how long three to four pages feels even to an English major. So do I then assign more than four projects? It suddenly occurs to me that somehow I acquired an idea that I was supposed to assign four projects (maybe the part of the info packet that suggests I do the research paper third, before students conk out and while there's still time to fix big problems), yet really don't know whether I'm right.

Also, I got some paper about an essay that's supposed to be assigned so that the state can evaluate what gets handed in to make sure the school's got its act together, but that was back in the fall - does it still apply in spring?

Had I read this material, which I received on Tuesday afternoon, prior to Saturday afternoon, I wouldn't be writing this kind of post right now. But I worked "all day" (read: 9-4 or so) on Wednesday and Thursday, and on Thursday night I went to my parents' house to claim my Social Security card (HR needs to see it tomorrow), and on Friday I made some baked beans and went to Joe's birthday party. So it was Saturday, of course, by the time I started. Part of me had really always known that it would be.

But that part of me, as usual, really did not fathom the depth of the misery I was bringing down upon myself. Had it done so, I would have started reading earlier, and I could have discovered that I had these questions, then asked them, on Friday or earlier. Instead, I discovered them on Saturday. You know: the beginning of a three-day weekend. BCC is closed.

So now my course starts on Wednesday (thank God it doesn't start tomorrow, at least - though if it had, theoretically I would have started reading this stuff sooner - but still, since maybe in real life I wouldn't have, thank God it doesn't start tomorrow). And here are the things I have to do tomorrow:

-Have my textbook chosen (I have my choice of about five of them)
-Have my syllabus written (or, well, maybe I don't have to have it written by that morning, but I sure enough have to have it done by night so I can hand them out on Wednesday morning)
-See if my parking pass has made it into my mailbox yet
-Claim part of a desk in the adjunct office
-Actually enter the room I'll be teaching in
-Get a faculty ID card and, hopefully, a key to the office
-Per the Quick Guide's suggestion, "Locate the Copy Center and make friends with them"
-Find the Writing Center
-Meet with Human Resources, bringing my completed paperwork (it's partly, though not wholly, completed already)


Perhaps predictably, my goals from last Tuesday concerning where I would be by Wednesday morning have drastically changed. Last Tuesday, I wanted to more or less outline the whole course for myself, knowing exactly when everything was going to happen. Today, I want to be able to get through the first day of class (the first two days would be even better, but I will settle for just the one) and pass out my completed syllabus on that first day.

To that end, I've been e-mailing BU colleagues who teach, have taught, or have been in some way connected to BCC, asking them what they've assigned. One of them has been mostly too vague despite what I hope was a tactful plea for more specifics, although he has given me a couple of potentially-helpful, if a bit startling, suggestions (most notably, don't assign homework if you can avoid it, because they won't do it; instead, have them read in class what you want them to). Two said, "Oh, actually, I didn't teach at BCC [or teach that particular course]."

Aaron, however - a guy I was in PDG with a year ago, no more than an acquaintance but friendly enough that I swallowed my sense of awkwardness and added him to the list of people I asked for help - may have saved my life. I just got an e-mail from him, with his syllabus attached and a bunch of advice.

I've also googled various terms, having the most success with something like "community college ENG 101 syllabus," and read some syllabi from community colleges in states I don't even live in, just trying to figure out level-appropriate assignments. I have a few leads - not many essay types I feel like I'm an expert on, but at least they sound simple to learn (to what degree I couldn't fake them already, like a comparison/contrast assignment), and hopefully therefore to teach.

I've also been contacting community-college-student friends of mine - of whom there are too few, though I guess that isn't a surprise, given that I was an honors-class kid who made most of my current friends at the two universities I've attended. Most of them (the community-college-attendees, I mean) don't remember most of what they wrote, but that's okay. Erik, though, had information to offer - he actually sounded uncannily like Dr. C. in the way he talked about community colleges: "You'll have a chance to finally teach and to feel like you're really helping someone," he said. "It's really different. In four-year schools [he went to Alfred State for a semester], it's like the kids are trying to be smarter than the teacher. In a community college, they take your word."

All of that, of course, is my reconstruction of what he said - it was to that effect - but it also sounds a lot like what Aaron wrote. Like Dr. C., like JoAnn, he mentioned that some things would be hard ("Kids will drop your class...by the end of term you may be down to eight kids or less but that's normal, so don't freak out"), but he also wants to be there, and also wants me to like it. Here's how he ended:

Teaching at BCC is soooo much better than BU...[the students] actually pay for their education so they have something at stake. I have a lot of fun with my kids, and it's not because I'm some great teacher. The kids at BCC are good people.

So, yeah, I'm a little scared. But it does look like this is a place worth being at.

On the Internet Occasionally Being Kind of Awesome

You might want to check this out - it goes 'til the end of the month and will cost you nothing but a few seconds.

Going on Record

And I don't care if you disagree.

Winter Olympics: so much better than the summer ones.

February 12th-28th! They're coming!

Two Things

1. So I got a college teaching job here after all, much to my surprise. One section. Everyone at the new place has been very nice to me so far - it seems that English-department secretaries are fabulous people no matter where you go. I now have eight days (seven, really, by this time) to do a lot of stuff. And considering the tired procrastinator I ever-and-always am (I guess "always-and-ever" would be more usual, but here it doesn't sound right), you know I'm not going to do it all according to the timetable I'd like to use.

2. One of the free apps I downloaded for my iTouch is the Whole Foods Market one because there wasn't a Wegmans one because you can put in ingredients you want to cook with and give it all sorts of qualifications (quick preparation, high fiber, and/or whatever), and it'll give you recipes back. (This, despite the fact that such technology has existed for years on the Food Network website, nigh-on horrified Ben. "It cooks! It cleans!" he cried, startled and perhaps annoyed by my sudden via-iPod cookbook. But really, if it did clean, my room would look a lot better, I'll tellya.) Anyway, per its recommendation, I tried this for dinner, except that I doubt I kept any of the proportions as written. Instead, I sort of tasted and adjusted, then put the whole thing through a sieve to get out the ginger gratings (I'd put in more than I wanted, so I was trying to turn down the heat factor), then, as directed, spread the stuff over the chops (except I only had two chops, and I don't know if they were center-cut or what they were) and broiled.

As I said, it was not a serious attempt on my part at a glaze, so it came out thin and so it didn't really flavor the meat very much - I ended up using some of the unused portion to dip the finished product in. But I bring this up because it turns out, therefore, that there IS, in fact, a way to cook Wegmans's obnoxiously-thick pork chops both quickly and evenly: under a broiler. Six to eight minutes per side. I grew up in a household that, for some reason I can't imagine (all parts of our oven worked fine), used the broiler about once a year, so such a method had truly not occurred to me before. But there you are. I still think that pieces of meat are really best when thin, and that everything is too bland otherwise, unless you want to brine or marinate everything to within an inch of its life (this is one of the major reasons, after all, that spiedies exist, right?), but if you're looking for a glaze/dipping sauce to put on your pork, and you don't object to ginger (as far as I remember, today was my first-ever actual purchase of real, knobby, gratable ginger, though not the first time I've had it), this one's worth your experimentation.


And now, finally, I'm going to fire up Car Talk and go do dishes. And we're going to pretend that I didn't just spend ninety-seven words on that little thing I like to call my new job, and four hundred eight on pork chops.

What I'm Writing Instead of Doing Dishes or Cleaning the Bathroom

1. Apparently, inside of my plainly-dressed and NOW WITH AN ACTUAL AGE LINE OR SOMETHING BY HER MOUTH?!? self lies a person who doesn't rate a total fail at using a hair straightener. Whether I'll ever figure out how the hairstylist made my hair look so good on Monday is another question, but at least I'm not consigned to ponytails for the next three-to-four months again.

2. Ben opened at CyberCafe tonight for a band that I think includes friends of his. He was really nervous (he always is), so some songs were better than others, but he got applause and enthusiasm all the same, particularly for his covers (who knew people still get excited about "I Try"?). He also played the song of his that's my favorite of the ones that he's written, which he doesn't know that it is, and I don't even know what it's about. I just like the tune, especially the rhythm and the repeated "bahh-bah, bah-bah bahh, bah, bah-bah bahhhh" lyric. (For those keeping rhythmic score at home - you know who you are, and I probably know who you are, too - I've always imitated much better than I count. You're gonna do better just to ask me in person.)

3. Speaking of rhythm and my inability to count, I don't think I'd ever heard any Dave Brubeck until this past year - several of his songs make my short list of Jazz Instrumentals I Actually Like. I keep meaning to use some iTunes credits on "Take Five" and maybe "Unsquare Dance," but then I never do.

4. I wish I had more blog readers, but I don't want to do any of the conventional things people do to attract more readership. Basically, I wish everyone I'd given the blog address to actually still read this blog.

But then, I'm a pretty boring blogger. So, y'know.

5. I really need to, like, get off the internet until further notice. But I probably won't.

New Decade, New Tech(Subtitle: Written from the Kitchen)

So I'm not sure how to feel about this, but I'm writing and posting this from my iPod. I got a Touch for Christmas.

It's cool and all, but I miss having a mouse. Even a stylus would help. But having portable internet is nice.

I'm gonna have some yogurt. So exciting. The end.