Week 9: Is This Semester Over Yet?

I know there's always been the stereotype of the absent-minded professor, but for me, I've (generally) thought of my professors as competent, professional people who work hard to keep up with everything they're doing.

I feel less and less professorial and more and more like I'm still a grad student barely treading water.  What, the letters Ph.D. are after my name?  Yeah, I'm not so much feeling it right now.  I know that part of this has been because I've been sick over the last week.  On the other hand, though, part of it is because of my grading.  I keep asking myself--did I really do this bad a job of teaching?  Failing midterms, pervasive plagiarism problems (not intentional, just a clear lack of understanding about how to summarize), having to continually drop students from my class due to attendance, and other concerns have me wanting to pull my hair out.  More than that, they have me wanting to go to the faculty council and demand a fall break, just so I can catch up.  I'm beginning to absolutely define the phrase 'absent-minded professor' simply because I don't always know what day it is.

In the meantime, I've been snowed under with grading, and I don't anticipate that stopping between now and the end of the semester.  I have conferences coming up with my 1301 and 1302 students, which means I need to calculate midterm grades for them.  I'm giving serious consideration to revising some of my assignments so it's easier for me to grade.

And as we go along, I still have these moments of distinct hate for Texas.  My mother-in-law is wonderful and sent us several packages of country ham in the mail because country ham is not a thing down here.  (I asked in the grocery store if they had any and got "What's that?" in return.)  The highlight of my week last week was parking behind a car that had Fayette County license plates, because it meant that there was someone from Kentucky on campus with me!

I've also been sick this last week.  Stress--even though I don't really feel all that stressed--is eating my stomach alive, and ginger ale and lemon drops have been my constant companion.  (I've had several people ask me if I'm pregnant--apparently that combination of things is a dead giveaway?  I'm not, though.  I checked.)

We did have some good news this week--potentially good news.   The job Dear Husband got turned down for at Del Mar apparently didn't work out with the original person they hired, so they contacted DH this week to see if he was still interested.  His background check form was turned in on Friday, so hopefully we won't have too much longer to wait before hearing something official.  He was very glad, particularly since he found himself watching Rachael Ray this week while he was cleaning the downstairs.  Apparently, that is the point at which a man begins going stir-crazy.

But for now, I'm taking a break from grading before my head explodes, and Cat and I are going to hang out and do something fun.  Maybe read something fun or play a computer game.  I'm sure whatever we do, she'll be right there with me.  She always is.

Week 8: New Adventures...Old Problems

I had sushi for the first time this week when I went out with some new friends I've made here in Corpus, and since I knew that no one would ever believe me if I didn't have photographic evidence (Catie Storm), one of my friends very kindly took a picture of me eating a Philadelphia roll.  I also had some fresh edamame with sea salt (which was delicious) and a spring roll with spicy ahi tuna and fried avacado (which they'd substituted for crab, since I'm allergic to shellfish).  I also had a bite of a vegetarian roll, but I didn't like it as much. I really liked the spring roll with the peanut sauce, but I think that I should put more wasabi in the soy sauce for my sushi.  Yes, I said next time!  I would not be averse to going back.  (And I know that will shock people more than anything else.)

In the meantime, it's raining...again.  And that has created yet another problem: water in the garage again.  Yay.  We're pretty sure that there is a crack in the foundation that's causing this, and once again, are very grateful that we do not own this house.  Rent may be expensive, but trying to fix this would be a lot worse.

I bought a prop at Big Lots for my 1302 class.  Meet Yorick!  I knew him well, Horatio. 
I think he'll be a  nice touch, and it will help with ideas about staging and rhetoric, I think.  My students have been having problems with the language, so we've been acting the play out in class, but I think having props also helps.  I really want to get a couple of plastic swords so we can have a Hamlet/Laertes battle at the end, as I think it would be fun to take my students outside and have the whole battle out in the quad.  A big fancy goblet would be nice too, perhaps, since, "The drink, the drink! I am poisoned." 

One the other hand, I promised that they wouldn't have to make spectacles of themselves outside of the classroom, so I may just have to see how far we can move the desks out of the way.

I finished grading my 1302 classes' identity papers this week, and can't express how many times I found myself in tears.  It's a lot different from reading other papers about identity from previous students.  So many of my students have had incredibly difficult lives--having children when they were no more than children themselves, some moving out of their homes before they can legally work full-time in order to make things easier on their families, others who escaped out of gangs.  Some join the military to escape the poverty of Corpus Christi, and there are none who go to war and don't come back changed.  It's taken me longer to grade these papers, because I have to be sure that I'm grading them on the merits of the writing, not necessarily the content. 

What has unified many of them, though, is a distinct determination to make a better life for themselves and their children.  Still, though, my heart has just hurt for so many of these students.  My 1302 students, in particular, are working so very, very hard, and I could not be more proud of them.   

In many ways, it's been odd for me as well.  I've said prayers for students before, but I've never felt the need to so deeply and specifically pray for students before.  In some ways, it may seem paternalistic (maternalistic?).  I know that I have had other students that needed prayer before, but I've never felt it so collectively.  And for as much as I am still homesick, I keep being convinced that this is the place for us to be.

That's not to say that I haven't had some difficult decisions to make over the last week.  I have.  They aren't ones that I can talk about, but they've been very stressful, and at some point, you have to start channeling the Vulcan axiom that "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few--or the one."  And it sucks.  There are things that you simply have to do, but you feel terrible about them.  And you have to deal with the consequences of that decision, however unpleasant they may be.  But I have a department that is incredibly supportive, and I can't even begin to say how much I appreciate that.

So I'm hoping that this week will be better.  Midterms are here, and I've got to get things done, so it's back to the grind.  With any luck, the cold front coming through tomorrow won't make the garage flood....again.

Week Whatever.

Dear Husband took this picture from the beach today.  If there is one nice thing about living in Corpus Christi, it is the ability to decide on a beautiful Saturday afternoon to forget about everything else, throw your stuff in the car, and head out to the gulf.  We spent the afternoon reading (and in my case, getting a bit toasted), which has been a nice end to what has seemed like nigh endless weeks of rain.

Those nigh endless weeks of rain meant another adventure with water in the garage, and this week, a migraine that lasted from Monday afternoon all the way through Friday and which has only now abated.  My students are pretty good when it comes to keeping it down to a dull roar when I ask them to, though my head was so mixed up that I gave two different classes the wrong readings and had to correct for it later.

As such, I'm not entirely sure all what went on this week!  I've felt behind this week--more behind than I actually am.  Not that I still don't have plenty to do next week, but I'm not that behind.  Part of being behind was because I ended up spending two hours Tuesday writing a paper prompt for my American Lit class that I'd not only already written but handed out to my students--and had completely forgotten about.  But because it somehow didn't get checked off my to-do list, I ended up doing it again.

I've actually been trying to write this blog post most of the evening, and realized that most of the things that occurred to me this week to put in my blog didn't stay in my brain because of that week-long migraine.  So this will be a rather short entry, I think.  Maybe next week will be more interesting, but since interesting often means stressful, I'm going to hope not.

Week 6: Homesick

I've been in Corpus Christi for almost eight weeks at this point, but next week begins week 6 of the semester, and that's the funny thing about getting into the grind of the semester--in some ways, you start running on autopilot, which lets your brain finally start focusing on other things, particularly when you get home on Friday, like how you can't just jump in the car and make the quick journey home to see the fam.

Kentucky for Kentucky has a great print with a quote from Happy Chandler that says "I never met a Kentuckian who wasn't either thinking about going home or actually going home."  And while I do generally like Texas (apart from trying to drive in traffic down here), and I'm making new friends, I am desperately sick for home.

It really wasn't so bad when we were living in Tennessee, because again, a jump in the car on Friday, and in four or five hours (depending on who was driving), we were back in God's own country and with family.

This is the longest I've ever been away from home.  And it's going to be Christmas before we get back.  Dear Husband has a bit more experience with it, having spent six months surveying in New Mexico (without me, even), and I am so blessed to have him with me here.  But I still find myself wishing for hills and green grass and for Jeopardy to come on at 7:30 like it's supposed to!

I think part of the homesickness has also been a realization that some of my teaching is going to have to fundamentally change.  I'm dealing with a different level of preparation for college than I ever have before, and in some ways, I feel like I've been doing a lot of things wrong because I've been taking things for granted that I shouldn't have.  I've had to explain to all five of my classes--Composition I, II and American Lit--the difference between a summary and a response.

On top of that, I've been reminded, once again, there are some students you simply cannot help.  You can get as many resources available, but if they don't want help, you can't make them get it.  On the other hand, there are also victories when you have a student who you can help and you do.

I ordered my books for next semester, and I've got a new appreciation for trying to order books and keeping the costs down for students, and I've decided that handbooks need to go the way of the dinosaur.  There's nothing in a handbook anymore that students can't find online for free, mostly through the resources of very excellent university and college writing centers.  So for one class, I've ordered it as recommended, but I won't be assigning any readings out of it.  I'll simply be supplementing from online, and for my 1302 classes, I haven't ordered one at all.  It's not that my students don't have grammatical problems--they do--but I think there are far more effective ways to teach grammar than handbooks.  I think the Grammar Girl podcasts will be helpful too.

So the week has been up and down, but I'm hoping that things will look up.  In the meantime, I'm going to start counting down until Christmas and charging my brothers with installing Skype on my mom's computer.  Even though my laptop is currently broken, I have it on my phone, and I'd like to at least see some people's faces.

Week 5: Into the Grind

My office is starting to look like someone actually works there, versus being a vacant space where someone's been stashed for a semester.  Books are making their way a grocery bag at a time, and my gnomes are traveling to display allegiance to proper sports teams in a heathen land. (No, we are not talking about the Reds 2014 season.  We are not.)

In case you're wondering, this picture was taken during my Friday office hours.  Del Mar doesn't really hold classes on Friday, and most of campus shuts down at noon on Friday anyway, so assuming anyone comes in on Friday at all, it's pretty casual--hence the t-shirt.  It's a good time to come in and be assured that you're going to be able to work in an uninterrupted block.

But we're into the real heart of the semester now, and I'm seeing things settle into the grind.  Students are starting to come in tired, and I'm hearing moans about exams starting.  The marathon part of the semester has started, and everyone is plodding along.  In the meantime, I keep making notes about what's working and what's not, and most of it is once again related to my syllabus.  I read this article from Slate about syllabus bloat last week, and over the last week, it's become more and more evident that not only did very few of my students read it, but very few of them listened the first day of class when I went over it (if they were there the first day.  I had several transfer in afterward).

So I've been trying to figure out, what do I actually need?  Should I put all of the required policies online and simply hand out a sheet of paper with the most important things in class, so if they want to know more, they have to go online and read the full syllabus?  I hate the idea of having to give a syllabus quiz, if only because of the fact that I shouldn't have to give one.

I also made my first foray into institutional service this week with the first meeting of the department development committee.  It wasn't a big meeting, mostly choosing a chair, going over the charge of the committee, and figuring out what we're going to do first.  There are a lot of things to discuss, a lot of things to figure out, but it's going to be productive, I think.

Finally, to close this relatively short entry, I have to say, this is an incredibly supportive department.  I can't tell you how amazing everyone has been and how much everyone has had my back when I've had an issue, or how patient people have been when I've had a question or needed someone to explain something.  They've been so helpful, and I'm so incredibly grateful.

Week 4: It Never Rains...

I mean this literally, actually.  I ran out without thinking to rescue our recycling bin this morning from the flooding and managed to grab it before it completely floated it away, but when I tried to rescue our neighbor's as well, I found myself in water up to my ankles and decided that, nope, his could get stopped by a car further down the street.  Bill Meck from WLEX has told me my whole life to turn around, don't drown, and I have no intention of ignoring him now.

Most of this was from about an hour of rain this morning from a storm that rolled in over the laguna, and I was never quite so happy to have gotten our flood insurance handled yesterday morning!  We were watching the back door quite carefully to see if anything would seep in there, but it didn't.  It might actually be the coldest it's been since we came to Corpus Christi--70 degrees! 

This week has been full of ups and downs, some of which I won't talk about and some of which I can't talk about.  But the best part about teaching are those little triumphs that make you go back to your office and punch the air and go "YES!"

For example.  My 1302 classes are reading Ibsen's A Doll House right now, and after so many of them said they'd had an easier time with A Raisin in the Sun after finding video clips of it online, I thought we'd try acting parts of it out in class.  That way, students also get to inhabit the characters and get to think about the choices of the director and the actors as well, since that so often influences how an audience sees the play.  So for Act I, I had some of my students in each class act out the first confrontation between Nora and Krogstad, and it was wonderful.  I was so amazed at how well it went and how insightful these off the cuff performances were.  In the first class, Nora and Krogstad were both played by young men (this is what happens when the teacher has to randomly select people who are then volun-told that they'll be taking part in the activity).  But it was so neat to watch, because "Krogstad" was very forceful and intimidating, and afterwards, "Nora" pointed out that "Krogstad" kept backing him in the corner, even when he tried to get out of it!

But the second class had a completely different take on it.  "Krogstad" in the second class wasn't in-your-face and forceful.  Instead, he was supercilious and slimy...but still menacing, and "Nora" (played by a woman this time) was much more child-like.  The Noras were very similar, but the take on Krogstad was so different.  This Krogstad was almost like watching James Spader as Alan Shore in Boston Legal.  And the best part was that I got to see both interpretations!  I don't know that the second Krogstad would have felt free to do that on the heels of watching the first.  It was so neat to watch, though.

My 1301 classes have been talking about blogging and writing reviews.  I'm very excited about this, because many of them are talking about doing restaurant reviews, versus movie or book reviews (and they all seem excited, because I told them I was looking forward to having them recommend places for Dear Husband and I to eat as newcomers--and suddenly that really got everyone interested!).

But we've also taken a look at blogs and blog conventions, and I think my 1301 classes have decided that despite the fact that my blog has had a bit of a makeover in the last month or so...it needs some more work!  I've gotten suggestions that I need some new graphics, some better organization, more descriptive tagging, etc.  So my blog will be under continual construction for the foreseeable future (possibly with the help of my 1301 students).

I've found an incredibly helpful tool to keep me organized while I'm working, though.  Snarky Writer introduced me to HabitRPG a while back, and I can't even begin to tell you how much it helps.  Everyone makes to-do lists (and if you're me, then loses the to-do list), but this isn't just a to-do list.  It gives you rewards for doing your to-dos, daily or not daily.  And it's put together like a game, so rather than just a boring checklist, you actually have fun goals that you're working toward.  You accumulate gold as you check off tasks, and you can set rewards for yourself.  For example, when I get 1500 gold, I am going to reward myself with Jan Karon's new Mitford book, Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good. (I have 46 gold right now.  I've been getting equipment for my avatar to boost my stats so I can get some in-game rewards lately.)

When it comes to school, though, I've been using it to keep myself on track.  Under the dailies category, I keep things that I need to do every day, like take my medicine, etc., but also to enter attendance into Canvas.  I use my To-Do list to organize everything else I have to do--all the lesson planning, grading, etc., and because I can move things about, I can reorganize them and put the highest priority at the top.  I can also edit them and put due dates on certain tasks, particularly for things like bills that need to be paid, to make sure that they don't get lost in the shuffle of everyday life.  As a teacher, I could also really see how this could be helpful for students.  Just opening the app up after class and listing the homework for each class under tasks with the due date would help organize things, and it gives visual learners a clear picture of how things need to be organized in order to get them done. 

And the best part about HabitRPG?  It's totally free, both the online version and the app for your phone, so even if you're not going back to school, it's something to look into.

Pulling Together: Week 3

Dear Husband is here!  He, Youngest Brother, Buttermilk and Father-in-Law all got here on Saturday, to my great joy with all of our things, and our house is beginning to look like a home.  With DH here, it's beginning to feel like a home, too.  And I cannot even begin to express what a help our family was (and I cannot leave out Eldest Brother, either, who drove Youngest Brother and Buttermilk down to Tennessee and helped load the truck or Mother-in-Law, who helped DH finish packing the house).

So now, to quote Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man, my things are about me, DH is sitting back on the couch reading at the moment, taking a well deserved break, and I'm updating my blog.  And even Bergie is starting to emerge.  I think once furniture came in and DH arrived, he realized that we might be staying here a while and he wasn't going to have to go back in the car again.  That has not stopped midnight yowling (I think he's getting lost in the house again).

And today, we are getting things taken care of here at the house.  The dryer hookup is now working, smoke detectors have been installed, the window that needed replaced is being fixed right now, and we are going to go get a clothes rod for the closet later, as well as some new pegs for the bookshelves and clamps for the dryer vent.  In the meantime, we've been unloading books on to bookshelves that have pegs, and we may go out to the beach this afternoon now that the weather has cleared up.

But life is good!  Classes are going well.  I'm especially enjoying my American Literature class right now, and our day exploring Anne Bradstreet's poetry went very well this week.  My students really enjoyed Bradstreet's poem on Queen Elizabeth.  I've taught my poetry explication lesson three times in the last few weeks, though not with "Bohemian Rhapsody" the way I normally would in a typical literature survey, but it's seemed to have gone over well.  My 1301 students are finishing up their resume and cover letter assignments this week and rolling right into their review assignments; they'll even be reading some of the book reviews I've posted to this blog in the past.  I fully expect some of them to poke around the blog as a whole a bit, particularly since we're going to be talking about blogging as a genre of writing this week too.  (Hi, students!)

My 1302 classes are going to be writing about identity for their first paper, which I'm also introducing this week, and I'm excited to be working on poetry with them next week too.  We'll be reading Whitman, Gwendolen Brooks, T.S. Eliot, Adrienne Rich, and a poem that's one of my new favorites, Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman."  I'd actually never read the poem until a friend linked it after Angelou died a few months ago, but it's such a wonderful poem, and when I first conceived of this assignment, I knew I had to use it, so I'm supplementing the book with the poem. 

Our department has added two new committees this semester, so I've signed up for one to begin my institutional service to the college.  The Departmental Development Committee is designed to put together department colloquia, professional development, oversee travel funds, as well as put together social events, etc.  It's an opportunity I'm really interested in.  One thing I really learned to appreciate at MTSU was the wide variety of professional development seminars that the department offered.  It was always a good way to glean new ideas for classes and a way to help keep up with new research, particularly in teaching composition, which is really important if your area of expertise is more literature-based than composition and rhetoric-based.   It's not the only committee I'm a part of--people who teach 1301 and 1302 are automatically on the 1301/1302 committee, and the same goes for the sophomore lit committee (which is almost everyone in the department for both, I think), but the development committee is one that I've signed up to take a really active role in.  I've offered my services to take an active role in the 1301/1302 committee too, though, particularly as we approach the 1302 assessment, as I'm familiar with the 1020 assessment process that MTSU goes through every year. 

I'm already going to be signing up for classes next week!  I meet with our asst. dept. chair on Wednesday to sign up for spring 2015 classes.  I do know that next fall, I'll be teaching Mexican-American literature, as I've been put on rotation for that, which I'm very excited about.  I think it will be a really awesome learning experience.  SV is teaching it this spring, and I'm going to ask her if I might sit in on her class once in a while this spring, just to get an idea of how she teaches it.

I am making some friends among my colleagues.  KR invited me and DH to church with her family, and we will likely be taking her up on that offer, as she is also Episcopalian.  I've continued to find the atmosphere in my department very collegial, and I can't tell you how very patient everyone has been helping me adjust.  I can't tell you how many times a week I pop my head into the office next door to ask a question, and after our department meeting yesterday morning, KR had to explain some Texas state laws that mean I have to have my vita online for students to check out.  And I still need to ask the developmental education coordinator, to explain to me how dev ed works in Texas! 

So there's lots left that I need to learn, and that's making things challenging here and there, but I feel like things are starting to pull together.  Having Labor Day off put me a bit behind, but I've caught up, and having DH here makes everything better.  Full-time academia is an adjustment, for sure, but I feel like I'm getting into the swing of things.