Abnormal but enjoyable

Classes started yesterday so I suppose I ought to write about my fall teaching schedule, but I'm a little embarrassed to admit it and I don't really know the right way to say this without sounding smug so I should probably just shut up about it right now before I set off a massive envy-bomb, but here goes anyway: I have a really easy schedule this fall.

Maybe it just seems easy in comparison to previous outrageous schedules: I'm not teaching an overload or a learning community, and I have no freshman classes. I'm not serving as department chair or faculty chair or participating in any search committees, which means I'm on only two committees instead of four. I am directing the center for teaching excellence, but my sabbatical starts in January so I'm unlikely to be appointed to any other major tasks.

And my teaching load is fun: only three classes, two of them quite small.

The larger class is Concepts of Nature, a sophomore-level course that attracts both English majors and students seeking General Education literature and writing credits. We'll read a variety of short stories, essays, and poems in the first half of the semester, and then we move on to A River Runs through It by Norman Maclean, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. We start in paradise and end with Atwood's dystopian vision, stopping along the way to explore many literary portrayals of nature. Neat.

The nature theme will carry over to the senior seminar, which will focus on ecocriticism. For the past few years we've had relatively large classes of senior English majors, with a low of 8 and a high of 17. We have some large classes coming up in the next few years too, but this year is a fluke--with only five senior English majors, we'll have a nice cozy seminar with plenty of individual attention.

My third class is creative nonfiction, which I love so much I would be happy to teach it every semester. This time I'll draw on some of the techniques I tried in my summer online nature writing class to bring some new insight to a familiar course. Only seven students! That gives me a total of 37 students in writing-intensive courses instead of the more usual 60 or more.

How did I end up with such an abnormal schedule? We take turns teaching the senior seminar and my number came up; I would normally teach creative nonfiction in the spring, but I can't do that because I'll be on sabbatical. The result is a semester loaded with courses I love. I know I'm unlikely to get a schedule this good ever again, so I intend to enjoy it while I can.