The annual Christmas Eve entry is harder to do, it turns out, when I spend most of the day in Binghamton and then drive up to Syracuse. So here it is now, late again this year(!).
For the first time ever, I actually did stay home (in Binghamton, that is) on Christmas Eve long enough to see my church's annual Christmas pageant, which was, may I say, adorable. We have lots of little kids in the congregation, and there are quite a few scenes and songs in the play, so besides the goodness of the story itself, I got to see a passel of mostly-familiar children dressed as sheep, shepherds (one little one in particular solemnly held his crook, which stretched far above his head, with two hands, and his head-covering almost came down to his eyes - I was both tickled and deeply charmed), palace guards (for when Herod tells the wise men to go and search for the child), and angels. To say nothing, of course, of the children with named roles. I don't know/remember whether it was the story, the kids, the week, or all three, but a couple of times, I almost teared up.
It's been an odd Christmas season: people seem either to have more Christmas spirit than usual or much less, with little in between. I was a "more"; Carrie and I broke out lots of decorations on the first Sunday in December, and clipped evergreen branches and holly from outside, and arranged everything about the downstairs of the house (though, not gonna lie, Carrie, who's very particular about aesthetics, did a lot more of the arranging than I did). And since my semester ended, aside from a couple of sick days early on, I've (in no order) frittered, reread Laura Ingalls Wilder books for the first time in years, played trivia and joyfully made dinners and desserts, seen Tangled with Leah and watched a DVD of Hamlet with Carrie and her friends, and more than once gone to Ife and Zack's with people and played Rock Band long into the night.
But lots of people have had less merry a time of it, either because they're just skeptics about the whole seasonal-joy thing (see Anne and The Didactic Pirate) or because they had personal heaviness to deal with (a lot of people have had bad things happen this semester - students, acquaintances, friends). So it's with a certain amount of gravity, too, that I rejoiced this Christmas - watched the small miracle of Aunt Lisa and Uncle Paul, Amanda and her boyfriend, my parents and brother and me, all together, eating turkey and sides and pies - and then cleaning it up. Just like that. Just life.
This year, too, prose says it as well as poetry, so I offer you this.
And I offer my greetings, too - to all of you, who so generously listen when I talk.
A merry Christmas, as always, to my new friends this year - especially the ones who're actually old friends, refound more deeply this year. I'm really surprised, looking through my archives, that I've never greeted Zack, Kate, Nathanael, Rafi, or Brendan. Besides them, merry Christmas to Mari (after John and Libby's wedding, I think it's worth calling her a friend; I don't think I realized in Alfred how nice she was), Elisabeth, John, Jamie, SHW, other-Sarah, and Amber and Nicole; to Bill and to all the youth group kids; and to my students. (If I'm forgetting anyone else, I'll have to amend this later.)
Merry Christmas to Samweli and Manfred, and to our soldiers everywhere. Peace, as always.
12.25.2010
12.10.2010
Seven Quick Takes Friday: Semester's-End Edition
One: As I organized the strewn papers into piles sorted by class and then by student, my floor approached neatness for probably about ten minutes this evening (excepting the dust and lint and whatever, given how long it's been since I've vacuumed the carpet). Then I started separating out the revision pieces (which I still have to grade) from the grammar/style tests (some of which I still have to grade) from the homeworks (which I pretty much just have to check done or not-done). Now the various piles (plus the to-be-recycled pile, but that shouldn't stay there much longer) block my way even more than they did before. Oh, well - it won't be forever.
Two: Speaking of the grammar/style test, I gave my students a study sheet a couple of weeks ago - based on the mini-lessons we've been doing all semester - and reminded them over and over about the test's approach. And still I had only about three A's in the first class, out of about fifteen. By contrast, Carrie, Zack, and Leah all took the test yesterday out of curiosity - and all of them, despite not having studied, got 100%. (Carrie may technically have done the best, however: Zack and Leah got their hundreds despite each missing one question - not the same one - because each redeemed him- or herself with the bonus question, whereas Carrie missed the bonus question but got all the normal questions right.)
Three: In case anyone's interested in hearing about pudding (...anyone?), Wegmans has been selling Hunt's Snack Packs for $1-per-package (four servings come in a package), even for the newer flavors, so the other day I figured I'd experiment, and I bought the cinnamon roll and blueberry muffin flavors. I was a little worried about the blueberry, going in, but it wasn't bad, though not exactly a revelation or anything. The cinnamon roll is definitely tasty, and I recommend it.
Four: My brother's car (which is how I still think of it, even though it's mine now) accelerates really smoothly. He's a leadfoot to begin with, but I will say, it does seem kind of easy to go faster in this car than one intends, just because it takes less work to get the needle to rise. The partial-compensation factor, at this point, is that the speedometer also runs high by two miles per hour (that is, if my speedometer says 55, my GPS, or whatever showing-you-your-speed device I pass, will read 53)...which, because I am a legalistic driver who wants to go exactly the speed limit, is bugging the crud out of me because now I have to guess whether I'm right or below or over the target speed.
Five: Based on a presentation yesterday that Leah and I went to, which Zack gave about his work (he's a PhD candidate in geology), and on a couple of other times Zack's tried to tell my other friends and/or me stuff about what he does, here are the things I know, assuming I'm not remembering them wrongly, about graduate-level geology: 1) The math never really corresponds to real life; 2) Kenya has five or six lakes worth studying because of something-or-other that sort of has to do with evolution, or something; 3) lithium is apparently the future, at least if you work for a company that makes batteries; 4) five-to-six-thousand years ago, the Sahara wasn't yet a desert; and 5) at some point in the distant past, the earth should have been a ball of ice, based on the lower levels of radiation the sun was putting out (or whatever the right idea is if "radiation" isn't), but instead it wasn't a ball of ice, and geologists are trying to figure out why not.
Does #3 even count as geology, or is that just a sciency thing I also happen to have learned from him?
You can see that I have a bright potential future in geology, should composition not work out.
Six: I have sent only one Christmas card so far this season, and have bought two presents. Which may count as only one present, assuming I give them both to the same person, as I have considered doing.
Seven: Tomorrow is the church bake sale, and I signed up, figuring, why not? So I decided, for lack of other inspiration (and because I wanted to), to make a couple of loaves of bara brith. The problem is that I remembered the part of the recipe where you're supposed to let the fruit soak in the sugar/tea/cinnamon for a while, and mostly remembered the part about letting the batter sit in the refrigerator for a while after that...but not the part about having to bake it at 250 for three-and-a-half hours. I was supposed to come to church with my finished goods at ten. Am I seriously going to have to get up at six to pop two loaves of bread in the oven (particularly as that'll make them take longer than three hours)?
Well, if I am, it's probably time I went to bed.
Two: Speaking of the grammar/style test, I gave my students a study sheet a couple of weeks ago - based on the mini-lessons we've been doing all semester - and reminded them over and over about the test's approach. And still I had only about three A's in the first class, out of about fifteen. By contrast, Carrie, Zack, and Leah all took the test yesterday out of curiosity - and all of them, despite not having studied, got 100%. (Carrie may technically have done the best, however: Zack and Leah got their hundreds despite each missing one question - not the same one - because each redeemed him- or herself with the bonus question, whereas Carrie missed the bonus question but got all the normal questions right.)
Three: In case anyone's interested in hearing about pudding (...anyone?), Wegmans has been selling Hunt's Snack Packs for $1-per-package (four servings come in a package), even for the newer flavors, so the other day I figured I'd experiment, and I bought the cinnamon roll and blueberry muffin flavors. I was a little worried about the blueberry, going in, but it wasn't bad, though not exactly a revelation or anything. The cinnamon roll is definitely tasty, and I recommend it.
Four: My brother's car (which is how I still think of it, even though it's mine now) accelerates really smoothly. He's a leadfoot to begin with, but I will say, it does seem kind of easy to go faster in this car than one intends, just because it takes less work to get the needle to rise. The partial-compensation factor, at this point, is that the speedometer also runs high by two miles per hour (that is, if my speedometer says 55, my GPS, or whatever showing-you-your-speed device I pass, will read 53)...which, because I am a legalistic driver who wants to go exactly the speed limit, is bugging the crud out of me because now I have to guess whether I'm right or below or over the target speed.
Five: Based on a presentation yesterday that Leah and I went to, which Zack gave about his work (he's a PhD candidate in geology), and on a couple of other times Zack's tried to tell my other friends and/or me stuff about what he does, here are the things I know, assuming I'm not remembering them wrongly, about graduate-level geology: 1) The math never really corresponds to real life; 2) Kenya has five or six lakes worth studying because of something-or-other that sort of has to do with evolution, or something; 3) lithium is apparently the future, at least if you work for a company that makes batteries; 4) five-to-six-thousand years ago, the Sahara wasn't yet a desert; and 5) at some point in the distant past, the earth should have been a ball of ice, based on the lower levels of radiation the sun was putting out (or whatever the right idea is if "radiation" isn't), but instead it wasn't a ball of ice, and geologists are trying to figure out why not.
Does #3 even count as geology, or is that just a sciency thing I also happen to have learned from him?
You can see that I have a bright potential future in geology, should composition not work out.
Six: I have sent only one Christmas card so far this season, and have bought two presents. Which may count as only one present, assuming I give them both to the same person, as I have considered doing.
Seven: Tomorrow is the church bake sale, and I signed up, figuring, why not? So I decided, for lack of other inspiration (and because I wanted to), to make a couple of loaves of bara brith. The problem is that I remembered the part of the recipe where you're supposed to let the fruit soak in the sugar/tea/cinnamon for a while, and mostly remembered the part about letting the batter sit in the refrigerator for a while after that...but not the part about having to bake it at 250 for three-and-a-half hours. I was supposed to come to church with my finished goods at ten. Am I seriously going to have to get up at six to pop two loaves of bread in the oven (particularly as that'll make them take longer than three hours)?
Well, if I am, it's probably time I went to bed.
12.09.2010
Two-Not-Necessarily-Quick-Takes Thursday
1. So I was informed after being observed by one of my bosses last Friday, that most of the ENG 110 faculty members, myself included, have been teaching some research-paper skills that really ought to belong to ENG 111. He (said boss) was cool and nonjudgmental about it, but apparently what I should have done was just introduce my students to using sources (for example, give them a list of film directors, have them watch a film by that director, then have them look up three articles about that film and summarize them). Instead, taking the course description as my model (some apparently-in-the-process-of-becoming-outdated standards are listed there), I taught a full-blown research paper. So he praised my review lesson on everything they needed to re-learn about direct quotation, but essentially tactfully told me I shouldn't have bothered.
Also, in my case, I'm probably even more confused than everyone else because I was never given a departmental orientation in the first place (believe it or not, this is not for my lack of trying - I offered to go to this semester's if there was going to be one, but no one got back to me about it). Either way, I gave any student who passed (the ones missing major assignment requirements, such as in-text citation, needed to rewrite before I'd grade them, as the previous post may have indicated) ten extra points as compensation, and suddenly the grades looked much more normal.
2. I will probably do 7 Quick Takes Friday tomorrow, because I am so happy to almost be done with the semester, but in the meantime, I do want to give one small plug: check out at least the banner, and possibly some of the posts as well, on a blog I've been following for a month or two now, The Didactic Pirate (general rating...maybe PG-13, with occasional forays into R for profanity? Or does no one really care anymore anyway?), by a college English professor who's been at it longer than I have, is much wittier a writer than I am, and who has hilarious (and, once in a while, poignant) posts about teaching, as well as many other fine topics. Don't worry, he's much less emo about it than I am.
Also, in my case, I'm probably even more confused than everyone else because I was never given a departmental orientation in the first place (believe it or not, this is not for my lack of trying - I offered to go to this semester's if there was going to be one, but no one got back to me about it). Either way, I gave any student who passed (the ones missing major assignment requirements, such as in-text citation, needed to rewrite before I'd grade them, as the previous post may have indicated) ten extra points as compensation, and suddenly the grades looked much more normal.
2. I will probably do 7 Quick Takes Friday tomorrow, because I am so happy to almost be done with the semester, but in the meantime, I do want to give one small plug: check out at least the banner, and possibly some of the posts as well, on a blog I've been following for a month or two now, The Didactic Pirate (general rating...maybe PG-13, with occasional forays into R for profanity? Or does no one really care anymore anyway?), by a college English professor who's been at it longer than I have, is much wittier a writer than I am, and who has hilarious (and, once in a while, poignant) posts about teaching, as well as many other fine topics. Don't worry, he's much less emo about it than I am.
12.02.2010
Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah
It's that self-furious time of the unit again. I should get another job, I should get better at this job, I should do this and that, blah blah blah. More writing whiny blog posts with my spare time. More deleting them later.
But, just to show that I never really learn anything: if you see me doing anything between January second and seventeenth, between about the hours of ten and four every day, besides revamping my lesson plans, you should probably remind me of how this unit went. I think a fair amount of it's not my fault: when you have seventeen students not hand you a research paper at all, and a bunch of other kids change the spacing and/or fail to number their pages in what looks to be the wild hope that you won't notice that they never got to the four-page minimum, there's just a certain amount of negligence involved. But a startling number of my B students have failed this paper outright despite turning it in, and that worries me.
The worst part of being a teacher isn't just having to sink so many hours into comments that are never articulate enough, often won't be followed, and sometimes won't even be read. That's bad, but it's worse to have to look at someone's mess of a paper and come up with a numerical value for how much of it is their fault and how much is yours. Composition is not for the guilty of conscience. But I, when it comes to teaching, may be little else.
But, just to show that I never really learn anything: if you see me doing anything between January second and seventeenth, between about the hours of ten and four every day, besides revamping my lesson plans, you should probably remind me of how this unit went. I think a fair amount of it's not my fault: when you have seventeen students not hand you a research paper at all, and a bunch of other kids change the spacing and/or fail to number their pages in what looks to be the wild hope that you won't notice that they never got to the four-page minimum, there's just a certain amount of negligence involved. But a startling number of my B students have failed this paper outright despite turning it in, and that worries me.
The worst part of being a teacher isn't just having to sink so many hours into comments that are never articulate enough, often won't be followed, and sometimes won't even be read. That's bad, but it's worse to have to look at someone's mess of a paper and come up with a numerical value for how much of it is their fault and how much is yours. Composition is not for the guilty of conscience. But I, when it comes to teaching, may be little else.