My dream semester

I confess that my mind wandered during our department meeting yesterday as we were trying to assemble a schedule of English course offerings for the next two years, a task just as scintillating you might imagine. While the discussion hovered over issues outside my bailiwick, I asked myself a question: What courses would I teach if I could put together my dream schedule?

Course scheduling is like a jigsaw puzzle in which everyone holds tightly to certain beloved pieces while others lie neglected in a heap, and the complete picture won't come together without compromise and cooperation. We need enough composition classes, enough intro-level literature classes, enough upper-level classes, enough writing courses, enough service courses to make everyone at least partially happy. No one gets to be entirely happy all the time, but we're all willing to trade in a little happiness for the good of the order: I'll move my class to a different time so it doesn't compete for English majors with yours, and you'll move that upper-level class to spring semester so it doesn't compete with mine, and we're both moderately content.

But what would I teach if I didn't have to think about anyone else's needs, if I only had to please myself? What would my dream schedule look like?

It would start small: Only three classes instead of four. The four/four load becomes more exhausting every year, leaving little energy for writing, research, service commitments, or out-of-class activities like field trips. My dream semester will include only three classes, which means I'll have to sacrifice first-year composition. I don't mind teaching composition every semester and I think I'm pretty good at it after all these years, but if offered the opportunity to drop one course without repercussions, I would drop composition without a moment's regret.

Instead I would teach the upper-level writing course I haven't been able to offer for years: Nature Writing. Imagine spending a semester reading and writing about nature with advanced writing students! If I could bump a colleague's writing course to make room for Nature Writing without risking any hard feelings, I'd do it--but again, we're just dreaming here. 

So dream on: How about a Representative American Writers course focusing on Natasha Trethewey and Amit Majmudar? My upper-level courses generally focus on fiction, but spending a semester with these two very interesting contemporary poets would be a nice change. Both poets plunge deeply into the American experience for people of color, and both engage in formal experimentation to produce poems ranging from playful to somber. I would gladly spend a semester in such good company, if enough students would sign up for an upper-level poetry course.

And for my third course, I would love to reproduce my favorite teaching experience ever: the California Lit class that included a spring break trip to California. I wouldn't have to go to California; I could teach Florida Lit or Chicago Lit or literature focusing on some other area where I'd love to take students. Since we're dreaming, let's locate this dream semester at a time when Covid no longer makes travel so unpleasant, and let's imagine that I can find sufficient grant funding to make the trip affordable. It's hard to believe, but in 2011 my California Lit students each had to pay only $850 to cover their share of the cost of six days in San Francisco and Monterey, which covered airfare, lodging, admission to attractions, and some meals. The rest of the cost was covered by grants, and it's a good thing my dream semester includes only three classes, because a trip like that takes a lot of time to plan and finance.

So there's my dream schedule: Nature Writing, Trethewey/Majmudar, and a Concepts of Place class including a trip to somewhere interesting. What would have to change to make such a schedule possible? 

Well, I would. I would have to stop caring about what my colleagues want and what my department needs, and I would have to think only about what makes me happy. So maybe I'll save up this schedule until I'm ready to retire and then go out with a bang. By then the four/four load may have reduced me to nothing more than a composition-teaching robot, but a girl can dream, can't she?