Friday, May 02, 2025

Stop me before I get "brilliant" tattooed on my forehead

I had to do a little shameless self-promotion in my American Lit Survey on Wednesday just to show what sorts of rewards may follow when research and teaching go hand-in-hand. I taught Natasha Trethewey's poem "Native Guard" a few years ago and then I read more of her work and did research and wrote an academic essay about why and how I teach the poem--an essay that was published in Pedagogy journal last year at this time--and so this week when I taught the poem again I showed my students the journal and told them how prior students' experiences had informed my writing and current students may inform my future writing, putting a neat little bow on the last week of the semester.

What I couldn't show them (because it wasn't available yet) was the most recent edition of Pedagogy, in which Elizabeth Brockman, who recently retired as editor of the "From the Classroom" section of the journal, devoted her farewell column to praise for the last essay she had ever edited for the journal, one she holds up as an example of what the journal can and should do. "I chose this essay because the author is brilliant, the essay is skillfully written, and the topic is profoundly important," she wrote.

Reader: I am that author. The essay she's praising is mine. 

Academic writing can be such a thankless task: you read, research, write, revise, submit, get rejected, revise some more, submit again, and if all goes well the article gets accepted—and then you go through the long process of responding to suggestions for revision and reading proofs and waiting for the thing to finally get published, by which time you've been fiddling  with the essay for so long that you're utterly sick of the topic, and then you wait in hope that some kind scholar will read the essay and maybe, someday, cite it in a footnote buried at the bottom of an article in an obscure journal no one will ever read--or you go mad waiting for the round of  applause that never arrives.

Which is why Elizabeth Brockman's column in Pedagogy praising my essay makes me feel as if I've won a gold medal in the Academic Olympics. (Stop me before I get brilliant tattooed on my forehead.)



Thursday, May 01, 2025

Another brick in the (educational) wall

You encounter a course called The Naked Person--What section of the course catalog are you reading and what topic does the course cover? 

I've always felt The Naked Person would be a great title for the biology department's cadaver lab, but no: the title was proposed for an introductory course in the Gender Studies program. Someone in a position of power objected: What would outsiders think of they saw The Naked Person listed on the course schedule? (For outsiders read parents or potential donors or prudes.) So the title was changed to something more generic, like Introduction to Gender Studies.

This was years ago. These days all you have to do to offend an outsider is to call a class Introduction to Gender Studies.

Which is why I'm a little nervous about the title I've proposed for my first-year seminar class this fall. You're perusing the course schedule and notice a class called We Don't Need No Education. Appalled?

I hadn't expected to teach the first-year seminar this fall—or, really, ever again—but my Later American Novel class got cancelled (again) due to low enrollment (again), possibly because it didn't have a sexy title. So I needed a class to fill out my schedule and the brand-new director of the first-year seminar was looking  for another section so here I am scrambling about looking  for a topic, description, textbook, and title.

Over the years I've taught nearly every version of the first-year seminar, from the highly regimented lockstep to the teach-whatever-you-like version. I've taught the seminar on critical thinking, comedy theory, and nature writing, but I wasn't feeling inspired about any of those despite the fact that I'm required to submit a title and description in the next two weeks.

This fall's version of the first-year seminar focuses on transitions to college, critical thinking, and information literacy, and I'm required to assign at least 300 pages of reading--but nothing too challenging because, you know, kids these days. I briefly thought about assigning Hope Jahren's Lab Girl, which should be required reading for women going into STEM fields, but I can't choose my clientele so I went looking for something relevant to a wider variety of students.

Then it hit me: Tara Westover's memoir, Educated.
 
It has everything: train-wreck parents, familial abuse and indoctrination, grievous bodily harm, and the inspirational story of a student who arrives in college without ever having heard of the Holocaust but nevertheless manages to earn a PhD from Cambridge. (Read more about the book here.) I couldn't put the book down and I hope my students will find it equally compelling, or at least readable. 
 
The point of the first-year seminar is to help students—many of them the first in their families to attend college—make the leap to college-level learning, so they ought to be inspired by the story of a student whose childhood leaves her woefully ill-equipped to succeed in college but who nevertheless prevails.

Westover's memoir asks us to think about what it means to be educated, both formally and informally. What is education for, anyway? What walls do students have to climb to achieve their educational goals, both inside and outside the classroom? And how do we master the hidden curriculum needed for success in college if we're the first in our family to attend?

These, I think, are valid questions to tackle in a first-year seminar, and Westover's memoir will help us tackle them. But what do I call the class?

This is when I heard the thump thump of the bass line from "Another Brick in the Wall." Am I allowed to call my class We Don't Need No Education? Will any incoming 18-year-olds recognize the allusion? How appalling will it be to see such, um, colloquial language attached to a class taught by the most senior member of the English department?

At this point I don't care. I'm going to submit the title and description to the new director of the first-year seminar and let him decide whether it's too risque. I mean, it's not The Naked Person, but the title may be too revealing to make outsiders comfortable. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm okay with that.

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Budget cuts hit home

A colleague is distraught because her spouse may be one of several hundred local employees expected to lose their jobs at the Federal Bureau of Fiscal Service, which manages our country's public debt. A college administrator is befuddled because we can't determine whether a grant we'd applied for still exists. And now a former colleague has lost her job with AmeriCorps--a job that empowered her to work hands-on with low-income students and families to help them manage diabetes.

You can read the whole story on Substack here, but the salient point is simple: "What the cuts to AmeriCorps communicate is this: people and communities are not worth investing in. They are 'waste.'"

I am allergic to writing about politics and I have no doubt that intelligent people can disagree about what kind of spending qualifies as "wasteful," but these cuts hit home in painful ways. Agencies that serve the neediest in our communities are being wiped out as people who do good and essential work get shoved out the door. You want to know what's a waste? Taking someone whose gifts, talents, and passions help low-income people live healthier lives and saying, "No thanks." 

My heart breaks for those who are suffering right now and even more for the many more who will suffer in the future, but mostly I'm embarrassed. If we can't provide essential care for the neediest among us, who have we become?  

Monday, April 28, 2025

In the way-back on the way back

One of the grandkids asked me this weekend how old I am and another immediately objected that it's rude to ask old people how old they are, which didn't help, but finally I told the questioner the year I was born so he could do the math, something I have to do every time I'm asked about my age or my kids' ages or how many years I've been married because who keeps those numbers constantly at top of mind? I could see the wheels spinning in the grandkid's head but even a math whiz gets something wrong once in a while, which is why we all laughed at the first guess--43--which is just a few years older than my oldest kid and that kind of math doesn't work unless you're a Tribble, born pregnant. Then the grandkid got confused and said, "Wait, did you say 1861?"

Well I feel about 164 this morning after driving two hours to get to campus in time for my morning class. As much as I love a road trip, driving that far takes a little something out of me, which is why when I got to campus I decided to park in a two-hour spot and risk the $20 ticket, because who wants to drive around in circles looking for a parking space after being on the road all morning? Parking enforcement is notoriously inconsistent locally, so maybe I'll go outside at the end of a very long meeting-filled day and find a windshield covered in pollen but no sign of a ticket at all.

I'm tempted to go outside right now just to get warm before my next class. For reasons no one can explain, my little corner of the building feels like a meat locker today, while my classroom on the other end of the building remains in tropical rain-forest mode. If I step out into the bright sunshine in my dark sweater, I'll be toasty in an instant, plus I'd get a chance to check on the progress of the peonies just down the mall. 

As I walk toward the peonies I'll think of a line from my daughter's choir concert last night, where they sang a setting of some Wendell Berry poems, including this, from "Sabbaths":

There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place.

"The way is not a way but a place."

I'll have to keep thinking about that one for a while. The music was so beautiful, the setting so serene, the poetry so profound, that I felt transported beyond the present, moving far along a path that brought me back to myself refreshed, something Artificial Intelligence will never accomplish. I hope.

My journey home was much less poetic but my trusty red car safely delivered me into the place where I pursue my way--toward what, I don't know. Happy to be here nevertheless.

Saturday, April 26, 2025

Birds, bugs, and beauty

I don't know which is better: hearing my youngest grandkid tell me she's "allergic to bad grammar," watching the middle grandkid holding giant creepy-looking insects in his bare hands, seeing the oldest grandkid win a prize for an Earth Day coloring contest, or hearing all of them correctly identify wildflowers--and ask about the ones they don't recognize yet.

Spring ephemerals are already fading at our house, but two hours north I saw a whole new collection of wildflowers, including squirrel corn, jack-in-the-pulpit, and four species of trillium. After a many-meeting-marathon kind of week, it feels really good to go outside and touch grass--or bugs or birds or trilliums, as the case may be.


























Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes

Monday evening at the faculty meeting I looked around the room and wondered who will step up to fulfill the Law of Conservation of Curmudgeonliness on Campus, which states that the minute one career curmudgeon retires, another rises up to fill the spot. Who will be our next Chief Curmudgeon? Not me! I've been too irrationally euphoric this spring to let my curmudgeon flag fly.

I was pleased to see that the Silverback Gorilla Rule no longer holds. When I started here, I was informed that the faculty always elect as Chair the oldest male tenured Faculty Council member, but then I was the second woman elected Chair and over the years the Chair was occupied by a few other women--not male, certainly, but all tenured and old enough to be considered senior faculty. But on Monday we elected next year's chair, who may be male and tenured but he's hardly a Silverback. I think he's the youngest Faculty Chair we've elected in my 25 years here. 

I won't be getting my 25-year appreciation bonus this spring, though, because I worked part-time  my first year here so that year doesn't "count" toward my years of service. I'll have to wait a whole year to get my 25-year bonus alongside the remaining members of the North Bend 17. Yes: 24 years ago, the College brought in its largest class of new faculty hires in many years and held  New Faculty Orientation at North Bend State Park, so we became known as the North Bend 17.

How many of those 17 are still here? Five. We are a pretty impressive group, having filled just about every major committee chair on campus as well as leading departments and serving on task forces and organizing major campus events. If we all retired at once it would be a pretty big blow to the College, but I'm the only one of the remaining five old enough to be close to retirement. The rest will have to wait their turn.

How many faculty members will be ahead of me in the academic procession at Commencement next month? It depends on who shows up, but I ought to be among the first five faculty in line. Once you're in single digits there's nowhere to go but out the door or on the shelf. The rules have been in flux, but I sincerely hope Emeritus status still exists next year when I retire. Otherwise, I might be forced to unleash my inner curmudgeon.

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Villanelle, Taco Bell, gee this week is going well

You know it's a good day when you ask a class if anyone knows what a villanelle is and a student promptly raises her hand and explains the complex poetic form in detail, and then you ask whether anyone in the class has ever written a villanelle and three people say yes. I told them that they are required to show me their villanelles because it's something I've never been able to manage and I admire anyone who can make it work. One student admitted to having written a villanelle about Taco Bell, which makes my heart sing even though I'm not convinced that what Taco Bell serves is actually food.

In other news, we are down to 15 baby chicks--the smallest, most delicate ones failed to thrive, as they say. One big bossy yellow chick demonstrates such distinctive personality that I'm tempted to name her after one of my colleagues. The rest are still just cute little fluffballs. 

The chicks remain in the garden shed with a heat lamp, safe from the big bad pine tree that fell just behind the shed during a freak storm on Saturday night. It was a very quick storm--from clear sky to wind rain lightning hail and back to clear skies in about 20 minutes--and in the middle of all that, the top half of a pine tree got twisted off, knocked down a no-longer-in-use phone line, and wedged itself neatly between two rows of pine trees just uphill from the house. 

Do you think Frontier Communications is interested in dealing with their long stretch of phone line that's sitting on the ground in my back yard? No they are not. In fact, since we are no longer Frontier customers, they made it nearly impossible for me to file a complaint, and then when I did, they wanted to transfer me to some sales representative eager to sell me on all the services they claim to be able to provide. I pointed out that they'd provided our landline service, such as it was, for 20 years without demonstrating any evidence of their ability to serve our needs, so no thanks.

But I started the week at a lovely sunrise service overlooking the Ohio River and then zipped upstream a few miles to a backwater where I saw a green heron (which I always want to refer to as "The elusive green heron" in the voice of David Attenborough) as well as a couple of yellow warblers (which thrilled me because I recognized the song before I tracked down the birds, something I could not have done not so long ago), and the sightings made me so euphoric that nothing could possibly get me down--not dead chicks, not falling trees, and not mini-administrators who pat themselves on the back for coming up with a brilliant idea that I've been pushing for at least a decade. The only thing that can make this week better is if those three students actually show me their villanelles.