Another edition of Unsent Letters

To students of my seriously ill colleague: Trust me, your professor is in no condition to respond to emails demanding instant information about your grade, and acting as if he got sick on purpose just to inconvenience you isn't going to help him recover.

To a student confused about what "revision" means: I started reading the revised draft you sent me but it immediately became apparent that you hadn't revised any of the problem areas I marked on the earlier draft, including such simple issues as incorrect spelling of place names. Surely you're not asking me to mark all those errors a second time, right? So why don't you go ahead and revise in response to my previous feedback before asking for more?

To the most non-responsive class I've ever encountered: Honestly, I could stand in front of the room and offer a hundred-dollar bill to the first person who speaks, and I wouldn't be a penny poorer by the end of the class. If you're so terrified of wrong answers that you can't risk saying a single word all semester long, and if you perceive every friendly attempt to elicit responses as intimidation, then I hope you someday own a restaurant that gets reamed out by Gordon Ramsay so you can see what real intimidation looks like.

To the student who educated me: I confess that I initially perceived you as a big dumb lunk, but you've shown such an eagerness to learn, a willingness to take risks, and a persistence in the face of difficulties that I'll be reluctant in the future to dismiss anyone on the basis of a poor first impression. 

To my students preparing final papers and exams: Go ahead and panic if you have to, but do it quickly--set aside five minutes for a full-on panic attack so that you can get it over with and move on. Hit something soft that won't hit back, or run around campus waving your arms and yelling all the names you'd like to call your professors--whatever you have to do to get the negative energy out of your system. Then sit down and do all the things that stand between you and a successful completion of the semester, because winter break is on the way and we all want you to get there in one piece.

Post-Thanksgiving thanks

Yesterday some of us were coloring at the dining table while my oldest grandchild drew up a chart to record data about an interesting rock she'd found down at the creek, and she said, "I can't wait to take this home and put it on my spreadsheet!" Yes, we now live in a world in which eight-year-old girls create spreadsheets to record data about rocks. There's something to be thankful for!

When she got bored, I threw open the cedar chest and the basket full of scarves and she got busy putting together some very creative combinations from all the old fancy-schmantsy clothes I've inexplicably saved over the years. My old prom dress has never looked better, and we all enjoyed the fashion show.

We've all colored and played Legos and gone for walks together, but I'm most thankful for a family that knows how to work together to prepare a feast. I don't know where my daughter learned to make such fabulous pies--certainly not from me--but every hand played a part in putting a turkey and all the trimmings on the table (and cleaning them all up afterward).

Last night while all the men took my grandson to Columbus for his first hockey game, my daughter and I introduced the little girls to Singing in the Rain, which made them laugh their little heads off and express a desire to see it five million more times. Now their chirpy little voices are going around singing Moses supposes his toeses are roses, a pleasant sound to hear in a house that is normally way too quiet.

Now it's time to clean up the Legos, wipe up the syrup smears, pack up the muddy boots, and send everyone home. But we're not packing up the thankfulness. I need to make room for that in my house every day of the year. 

 

The right time for running out of steam

"You can spend the final 20 minutes of class working on the reading assignment for next Monday," I told my composition students, "But I don't care whether you do it here or elsewhere." So they all left the classroom, possibly to find a comfortable place to do the reading and possibly not. Who knows? They'd turned in their major research papers this morning so we spent some time in class doing some preliminary work to prepare for the final essay exam, but I won't see them again for a whole week and who's going to remember anything I tell them today?

I've reached the point in every class when I've just about run out of steam. Sure, I'll lead discussions of reading material and provide feedback on drafts, but two of my classes are spending the final week of class watching films and I don't feel the least bit guilty about that. They all have major projects due in the next two weeks, so they're working hard enough--and so am I. It just doesn't always look like work.

Frankly, I'm too tired to stand in front of class right now. I've been awake since 4 a.m. because my subconscious mind decided it was really important to find out whether we had any yeast in the kitchen, which we did not, so I had to add that to my shopping list for Thanksgiving food, although why I had to do that at 4 a.m. is beyond me. How am I supposed to stand in front of four classes and be coherent when my subconscious mind is waking me in the wee hours obsessing over yeast?

So for now I'll do my work sitting down. Today I'm providing feedback on a pile of drafts from the African American Lit class plus a pile of Works Cited drafts for the Honors students' research projects. And then I have all those composition essays to grade and a bunch of interpretive maps from the Postcolonial Lit class, where students did some really impressive work on the meanings of Maori tattoos and folk tales and where one student illustrated Peter Cowan's short story "The Tractor" by creating an image of a garden growing plants shaped like dollar signs. Amazing work, and I enjoyed watching them explain their findings to classmates while I sat and watched from the sidelines.

If I've done my work well, my students should be able to take the lead at this point in the semester while I observe and encourage. It may look like I'm loafing, but it's evidence that learning has happened and work has been done, and after all that effort we all need a bit of a break. And so we'll take it, with thanksgiving.   

A well-earned reward for a powerful poet

I had dinner with poet Martin Espada a few years ago before he gave a reading on our campus. A power outage knocked out our favorite local restaurants so we took him across the river to West Virginia, which caused some trepidation--he'd never been to West Virginia before, and he knew Appalachia only from the popular stereotypes. 

It was an odd dinner. He was a lovely man but low-energy, almost morose; I worried about how he would reach the audience at the reading. 

But then he stood up and started reading. What a remarkable transformation: he performed his verse, chanting and swaying and sometimes shouting. Poetry that was pretty impressive on the page swept through the room like a cleansing fire. And I thought: powerful poetry--from a powerful poet.

And so I was delighted to hear that Espada's latest collection, Floaters, has won this year's National Book Award for poetry. The title poem (read it here) responds to a photograph of a man and his small child who drowned while trying to cross the Rio Grande. The poem reminds us that

... the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that
dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles,
names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints...

Espada is an expert at making us look at the world around us and see beyond the surface. A few years ago he wrote an essay responding to Shelley's claim that poets are "the unacknowledged legislators of the world," Espada writes,

Poets should have no trouble identifying with being 'unacknowledged.' They grouse about being ignored, about paltry attendance at readings and royalty statements that would cause most novelists to jump off a bridge. Yet poets also contribute to their marginalization by producing hermetic verse and living insular lives, confined to the academy or to circles of other poets, by mocking themselves as childish and unworldly, by refusing to embrace their role as unacknowledged legislators. The only antidote to irrelevancy is relevancy. The British poet Adrian Mitchell famously said: 'Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.'

Espada's poetry does not allow us to ignore people, even the nameless, faceless people whose tragedies are so easily overlooked. His poetry is an antidote to poetic irrelevancy, and for that he deserves all the applause he is now receiving.

A surprisingly easy week, despite everything

On Monday I excused myself from a class so I could go to the ladies' room and cough vigorously without alarming anyone, and today I had to figure out how to handle a nosebleed in front of a class while wearing a mask. I know what caused the nosebleed--the nasal spray that I generally use only during the height of spring allergy season but that I've reached for far too many times in the past week. No more! Today I feel nearly normal so I'm putting away all the over-the-counter remedies and sticking to hot tea to get me through the day.

And what a lovely day it is: warm and sunny, with a chance of gorgeousness this afternoon. It was a sudden shift to unseasonably warm weather that precipitated my allergy attack a week ago, so here's hoping that this week is different.

On the too-many-meetings front, things are going well. I've been reminded of how much fun search committees can be when they allow me to spend time with really interesting people who are passionate about their work, and the real advantage of Zoom interviews has become clear: I'm not stuck trying to eat a meal in a nice restaurant with a pedant who won't shut up about Foucault.

Most of my classes are having writing workdays this week, so I'm spending a lot of time wandering around classrooms checking on progress and answering questions. With little to prep, I'm working ahead on next semester's syllabi, which ought to be really easy since I'm teaching three repeat courses that require only minor adjustments. The fourth course is a new prep, but I had to produce a full syllabus to submit with the course proposal in August, so it just needs a little tweaking. 

On Friday I'll be inundated with drafts requiring swift feedback, and then over the next two weeks I'll be collecting piles of papers, exams, and other assignments to grade. Right now, though, I'm taking it easy, trying to be helpful, and celebrating every class period that passes without the need to cough.  

 

When students pursue the nuclear option

"We need to get together and share war stories so I won't feel like I'm the only one," said a junior colleague this morning. He's in the middle of a kerfuffle caused by a student who, upset with a particular classroom policy, sent a long angry e-mail to the President, Provost, the Associate Provost, and just about everyone in a position of authority at the College except the professor himself. Because why start small when you can jump right to the nuclear option?

I told my troubled colleague about the freshman comp students who told a former Provost that I should be required to teach in long sleeves because the big hairy mole on my arm was interfering with the students' ability to learn, and I also shared the then-Provost's helpful suggestion on how I should remedy the situation: "Why don't you just have surgery?" 

And I told him about the time I told a plagiarizing student that I didn't hear his own distinctive voice in his paper and he went and told everyone on the planet that I said his writing wasn't "Black enough."

These incidents and others like them happened when I was still wet behind the ears, not yet tenured and uncertain whether my career could survive. Incidents like these require time and resources from many people and tie everyone up in knots emotionally, with long-term impact. I mean, I still think twice before putting on short sleeves on a teaching day, and I've certainly become more careful about how I confront students about plagiarism. But here's the thing: I could have learned those lessons less traumatically if the students had approached me first instead of employing the nuclear option.

But outrage seems to be the order of the day, so complaints and concerns that ought to be worked out on the classroom level are instead making their way straight to the President and Provost, who, frankly, have one or two other things on their plate. Their response to the students is simple: "Have you talked to the professor?" But by that time the outrage genii is out of the bottle and it's often hard to shove him back in.

My colleague is doing okay. He'll come out of this just fine, and then someday he'll have a war story to share with a junior colleague who needs to hear that we're not alone, that we've all been through our battles, and that, if we pull together, we will survive.  

Can't hit the steps without a soundtrack

I'm in a panic after looking at next week's schedule. In addition to teaching four classes on MWF, I am also either encouraged or expected to attend meetings at the following times: Monday at noon, Monday at 4 (two different meetings!), Monday at 5, Tuesday at 12:15, Tuesday at 4, Wednesday at 4, Thursday at 4 (two different meetings!). Friday is my only meeting-free day, but by then I'll be too exhausted to celebrate. This week I backed out of two meetings because I was sick, but that excuse will only stretch so far--and besides, some of these meetings are kind of important. Not important enough to inspire me to be in two places at once, but important all the same. Good thing I'm not trying to, like, have a life or anything.

Someone needs to put this disastrous song-and-dance to music. Call it the Priorities Polka, the Too-Many-Meetings Blues, the Academic Hokey-Pokey, or whatever will put enable me to waltz from one conference room or Zoom call to another without tripping over my own fat feet. And a-one, and a-two--hit it, boys!

(You first.)

 

Is there anything we can't blame on the weather?

Is there anything we can't blame on the weather? There's lots of misery going around this week and we're badly in need of a scapegoat, so let's give it a try:

I'm behind on my grading because I got sick and stayed home feeling miserable for two and a half days, drugged up and surrounded by billows of used tissues because an unseasonably warm spell put some sort of allergen in the air that made my nose run like an open firehose, and yes, I blame the weather.

And I nearly had a face full of spider web this morning because the spiders that recently retreated to winter quarters have re-emerged in response to warmer weather but I don't expect spiderwebs across my front door in November so BOOM there it was, yuck, and yes, I blame the weather.

A committee meeting this morning was held in a room so hot and stuffy that people felt stifled and tempers simmered until they boiled over, and the room was hot because our HVAC system finally got switched over to heat last week in response to below-freezing temperatures and it's not feasible to switch it quickly back to air conditioning so yes, I blame the weather. 

Can I find the way to blame the weather for the fire that badly damaged a campus sorority house, displacing 15 students and destroying their possessions? No one knows what caused the fire yet and I guess I'm glad that the weather was warm so they didn't freeze to death when they fled the house, and nobody was hurt and the house can be renovated and the students have been re-housed (ugly word for a comforting concept) so no, I can't blame the weather for the fire, but I can't find anyone else to blame either so all that misery is just floating around loose, mingling with the heat and the allergens and all that leaf mold being blown into the air by the battalion of leaf-blowers all over campus, and the leaf-blowers wouldn't be blowing if the leaves hadn't fallen, so yes, I blame the weather.

The good news, though, is that my nose has stopped running and cooler temperatures are on the way this weekend so the spiders should beat a retreat from my front door and the committee meeting rooms will be just normally stuffy instead of unbearable. And for that, we can thank the weather.  

Buoyed up by future fun

It's amazing how little it takes sometimes to improve my mood. I was feeling stagnant, tired of teaching the same texts over and over, wondering whether it's time to pack up the office and call it a career, when suddenly, out of the blue, I was offered a chance to teach a special topics literature course, and now I'm all excited about choosing a theme and picking out texts and designing meaningful assignments--for a class I'll be teaching in Spring 2023. 

You know what this means, right? It means I can't retire for at least two more years and I also have an excellent response for all the people who keep asking me when I'm planning to retire: I'm too busy designing a new course to think about retirement.

It's a small thing, really, but thinking about this course has reminded me that I haven't used up all my good ideas and that I still have something to offer students. Sure, I teach a lot of the same texts over and over, but I'm not teaching the same students, and each new group brings something a little different to the table. And in 2023, I'll bring something new to the table too--and if I'm not quite certain right now what that something will be, at least it's giving me a reason to believe in a bright future.

 

 

Friday poetry challenge: Haiku, out on a limb

Creekside sentinels,
sycamores raise mottled limbs--
camo in the sky.

Everybody's good at something (I hope)

My student rushes into class flustered, says she's nervous about doing her presentation and It's not as good as the ones you do and I want to give her a big hug and say Oh sweetheart--I've been doing this since before you were born, but instead I help her get her file set up and I sit down and listen as she does her best not to collapse in sheer terror in front of the class.

And it's true--I've been doing presentations since overhead projectors were considered cutting-edge technology; I've juggled slippery transparencies and notes while trying not to knock the lens out of focus and I rejoiced when digital technology made the overhead projector obsolete. I've never claimed to be a master of PowerPoint but I've been honing my skills for a long time and I'm generally pleased with the results. I've seen talented students create slides that looked far more polished than anything I could hope to produce, but even the less flashy presentations are generally competent enough. I try to hold high expectations for student work, but I hope I'm not making students feel as if they'll never measure up.

Last week I watched a student presentation that made me marvel: the background looked clean and original, and the information was clustered to make the relationships between ideas especially clear. Two words were spelled wrong, but these students had designed something far beyond my skill-set. I expect to see more of this kind of excellence as my tech skills stagnate while students keep exploring new methods and programs. 

I give a loud hurrah to students whose presentation skills surpass mine, but that doesn't mean I expect every student to excel in that way. They're students! They're still learning! If they do their best to fulfill the requirements of the assignment, conveying helpful information clearly, then they'll be fine. And if oral presentations really aren't their strong suit, then they'll just have to grit their teeth and survive to move on to more comfortable territory.

Everybody is good at something, but if the something they're good at isn't on display in my classroom, then I may never know what skills my students possess that I could never hope to equal. So when my student said I know it's not as good as what you do, I was reminded that I get to get up in front of people and do what I'm good at every single day--and I can only hope that my students will reach a point when they will get to do the same.