If it's not one plague, it's another

A plague on all our houses! At home we're battling the usual fall influx of mice and spiders, while on campus I fight an epidemic of frantic questions, complaints, and requests for extensions, plus piles of drafts featuring festering masses of inanity and pestiferous punctuation.

The comma problems alone! My students prefer to use no commas at all, while in another context I received a long angry screen insinuating that inserting a particular comma will destroy the writer's life. Can we please find some middle ground between apathy and hysteria?

Yesterday I encountered a colleague in the hallway and noticed that we were both carrying boxes of tissues to our classes, which are full of students sniffling, coughing, and struggling to keep their eyes open as they try to complete all their final projects in the last two weeks of classes. Two years ago, we compressed the Covid-inflected fall 2020 semester and took no time off so that we could end before Thanksgiving, which was awful, but I'm not sure that semester-long slog was much worse than the stress that stalks these hallways in the two weeks after Thanksgiving.

And to top it all off, I have a cold. It's not the end of the world and others are suffering much more severe illnesses, but the constant drainage makes sleeping difficult so I'm not at the top of my game, inside or outside the classroom. "Phlegm can't think," I told my students yesterday. "It may resemble brain matter a bit, but phlegm can't compose any coherent thought and neither can I." 

But here we are slogging through the various pests that plague us, armed only with a box of tissues. (I would call out "Exclesior!" but every time I raise my voice I start to cough.)

 

Gobble, gobble, gobble

Coloring books all over the table, Legos all over the floor, and a fine youthful voice belting out "God Bless America" from the bathroom--some things happen only when the grandkids are visiting. Right now the kids are giggling while singing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" along with The Chipmunks while their mom colors and the men wrestle with a plumbing problem in the laundry room. Two plumbing problems in one week--we are doubly blessed! But at least we have some extra hands around to lift the burden.

Yesterday many hands made light work of our Thanksgiving feast. The resident grillmaster smoked the turkey overnight and the rest of us labored over the rest of the meal, which was fabulous despite a few flaws. (A little gravy burnt onto the cooktop never killed anyone.) My daughter's pies were flawless (apple pie with a lovely lattice top and sweet potato tart), and my pumpkin roll was good enough to remind me why I make it only once a year--because if we had it every day, we would all be shaped like pumpkins.

The grandkids enjoyed constructing tiny mutant turkeys, which were nearly cancelled due to supply chain problems. Vanilla wafers were unavailable locally so I substituted Nutter Butters; the three local stores I tried were sold out of candy corn, and I couldn't find any burnt peanuts either (but my husband did--at the farm store). My daughter saved the day by bringing candy corn and we were ready to assemble our candy turkeys.

After all that work, all we had left to do was to gobble, gobble, gobble. And for this we are thankful.

Pie makes everything better

My students were talking about pie yesterday, all the pies they expect to see at Thanksgiving dinner and which kind they like best, when I suddenly realized that I'd missed our annual Friday Pie Day on campus. For years, on the last Friday before Thanksgiving the College served pie during the noon hour to any employee who cared to come and get it. 

How wonderful it was to gather with faculty, staff, and administrators in the middle of the day to chomp down on pumpkin, apple, blueberry, banana cream, or many other types of pie, with or without whipped cream on top--and when the pandemic prevented us from eating pie face-to-face in an enclosed space, we could pick up individually packaged wedges of pie outside a classroom building and eat them in our offices or stand and eat outdoors while socially distancing.

But this year, no Friday Pie Day. I never even heard any mention of it in Faculty Council, but I assume that the ongoing budget crunch put the kibosh on pie, just when we're all in need of a morale boost. What a pity! There are few situations in life that can't be improved by a timely slice of pie.

I won't be baking pies this week because my daughter will do the honors.  I'm afraid the pie-crust gene skipped a generation: my mother made good pie crust and my daughter's pie crusts are fabulous while mine are...not. A few weeks ago I visited a dying friend in Jackson and stopped at the Amish store along the way to buy giant apples so fresh they went snap when I cut into them, from which I made two apple pies. The resident pie-eaters agree that those were the best-tasting apple pies I've ever made, but the crusts were thin, hard, and not at all flaky. 

But an imperfect pie is immeasurably better than no pie at all, which is what we received on Friday Pie Day. I know we have many more important problems to worry about on campus, but I won't believe the College has recovered from its budget crisis until I see a room full of campus employees happily eating pie.  

Everything underfoot everywhere

From where I sit in my cozy living room, the view ain't pretty.  I see a chunk of rolled-up carpet piled on a stack of uncut baseboards next to a pair of fat mallets, an empty bucket, and a vacuum cleaner, very full. Across the way in the dining room I see the table shoved against the far wall and miscellaneous items piled on every chair, the detritus of a cleared-out closet. That quilt doesn't belong on the dining table but it will sit there until I carry it away on one of my many trips to our bedroom. Under the table lurk an old dusty briefcase, some torn jeans that need mending, a bag full of things to take to the Goodwill, an exercise ball, and a couple of suitcases. And looming tall beside the table is a big white shelving unit holding cleaning products, paper towels, boxes of lightbulbs, a basket of cleaning rags, and all the kinds of household items I prefer to keep hidden away in the laundry room.

We're at the stage in our home improvement project where the professionals have done their work and now we just need to put everything back together. This morning I was delighted to sink my feet into plush new carpet in our bedroom; later I'll make multiple trips across that carpet to put all kinds of stuff back where it belongs.

New carpet in the master bedroom and guest bedroom and our big walk-in closet, new waterproof vinyl tile flooring in our bathroom and laundry room, new baseboards in the bathroom and laundry room (which never had baseboards before). Everything looks and feels fabulous and all the big furniture is back where it belongs, so we're down to the niggling details.

Like nails. The flooring dudes ran out of nails halfway through installing the baseboards in the laundry room, so their supervisor will come out Monday to install the rest. We can't move the washer and dryer back in place and hook them up until those baseboards are in place, so it's a good thing we did a pile of laundry Thursday. The laundry room is a small and oddly-shaped space where things fit together like a 3-D jugsaw puzzle, so we can't get the big white shelving unit back in there until the washer and dryer get moved, which means it'll be hanging out in our dining room for the next couple of days.

The workers did a good job cleaning their mess but we'll be sweeping up carpet fluff for weeks. Everywhere I look I see a long day's work, but I'm more pleased by what I don't see: No more nasty stained carpet in the bathroom. No more ugly linoleum in the laundry room. No more carpet stains of unknown origin staring me in the face every time I go to the guest room. 

The chaos is calling me: I need to get to work. But just for a moment I need to close my eyes and block out the mess and recall that wonderful moment when I stepped out of bed this morning and felt the new carpet underfoot. Feel the softness, caress the plush, relish the sense of accomplishment, and then open my eyes and get back to work.  

Mess.

 

More mess.

New bathroom floor!

New bedroom carpet!

 
 

Finally, a solvable problem

Last night after a long, late, and probably futile meeting, I stopped in the parking lot to help a colleague jump-start his car. The night was dark and cold and we were constantly pelted with sharp ice pellets, but I did not regret helping for one single moment--because for the first time all day, I was able to offer a simple solution to another person's problem.

Too many of the problems that come my way these days stymie all attempts to assist. Sometimes it's because the person asking for help really doesn't want a solution, but more often it's because the problems are too tangled and I lack the right kind of sword to cut through the Gordian knot. I am happy to help a student narrow search terms to find resources for a project, but if what he really needs is a time machine so he can go back and reverse a whole semester's worth of bad decisions--well, good luck with that.

And faculty governance is the worst. Some person or group brings us an issue and we promise to look into it, but the more we look, the more complicated it gets and the less likely that we'll find a solution that pleases anyone. Maybe we'll pass the concern up the ladder, or maybe we'll draft a stern memo or write a motion to bring before the faculty, or maybe we'll form a hearings board to listen to a formal grievance, but all too often the actions available to us accomplish little more than a pat on the back and a gentle "there, there." 

A dead car battery, on the other hand, is a solvable problem. I have jumper cables and my colleague knows how to use them, so within minutes his car turned over with a very satisfying VROOM. I was wet and cold and eager to get home, but I had to take a moment to savor the feeling of finally calling a problem solved.

Chilling, literally

Today on campus I'm torn between saving the College money by keeping my space heater turned off and, on the other hand, turning the space heater on so my fingers can stop shivering enough to hold a pen. What both hands really need right now is to wrap themselves around a big mug of hot coffee.

The weather has turned and 'tis the season to agonize over how uncomfortable I am willing to become before turning on the space heater in my office. Space heaters are, of course, outlawed, but we all have them because sometimes the Bob Cratchit fingerless gloves aren't enough. I can't turn on my space heater, however, without going through a complicated calculus balancing my need to be warm against. my need to avoid feeling guilty. 

If I'm wearing two sweaters plus a scarf and huddling under a blanket but I'm still too cold to think clearly, then I ought to be able to turn on my space heater, but I worry that that little bit of extra electricity will cause the College to tip from budget crisis mode to full-blown Budget-Pocalypse. I don't want to be responsible for The End of the World as we Know It.

A whole new level of guilt arises if I turn on my space heater without first checking whether my colleague across the hall has turned on his, which may blow the circuits for this whole side of the building, and since no one in the building is authorized to reset the circuit breakers, we all have to wait, powerless, until an authorized employee comes over from the Physical Plant to reset the circuit. I don't even want to think about how much all this is costing.

On the other hand, I don't want to think about how cold my hands are every stinking minute of the day, and I don't want to have to keep my arms hovering a few inches above my desk because the desk top feels like a block of ice, and I don't want my feet to get so cold that it takes the whole drive home with the heat on full blast to take the chill off.

So if I say I'm just chillin' on campus, it doesn't mean I'm relaxed. It means the part of me that craves to be warm is waging a fierce internal battle against the tiny internal Puritans who insist that frugality is the highest virtue and suffering builds character. One of these days I'm going to wield my space heater as a weapon to beat all their tiny little Puritan heads to a pulp. Maybe then I can relax.

 

Just showing up, for the win

The other day a colleague told me I need to lower my standards for success, insisting that sometimes just showing up should count as a win. I thought of that this morning when the cashier at a convenience store started complaining about an absent employee: "He's been on the job two days but it's more work than he expected so he called in and admitted that he's just too lazy to do the job." Compared to that dude, I'm definitely winning today.

Just showing up feels heroic after I've spent the last couple of months in frequent long stressful meetings related to faculty governance issues, after I struggled for three weeks to get 37 contributors to the comedy volume to respond to the copy-editors' queries, and after I've devoted way too many hours to dealing with the kind of student who thinks "Desk, News" is the correct way to cite the name of an author of an anonymous news article. But today just showing up was even more difficult because last night I helped the new honors director drive students 45 minutes away to see a performance of Julius Caesar at Ohio University and arrived back home around midnight. On a Tuesday. When I teach at 9 a.m. on Wednesday.

I'm not sure what possessed me to agree to this, but it was an experience both enlightening and exhausting. The production was clever, utilizing only six actors, some of whom played multiple roles very convincingly. Above the stark stage was a screen where projected images and video reinforced the play's action, so that the first act's explorations of power and persuasion played below blurred black-and-white images of mass crowd scenes devolving into violence. I had to close my eyes during Mark Antony's funeral oration because the video projected above him was making me dizzy, but the rousing demonstration of the use of political rhetoric to manipulate the masses made me wonder about the midterm election results. (I checked my phone during intermission. Mostly inconclusive.)

And then after the play the twelve of us walked down the main drinking street in Athens to find a cookie shop where we bought a dozen cookies and ate them while standing on the busy sidewalk and singing "Happy Birthday" to one of our students, despite the fact that we were surrounded by OU students who looked way too young to be as drunk as they appeared to be at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday. I wonder how many of them will show up to class today. 

Well I did, and I'm glad for it. My students were alert and ready to work this morning, even the ones who went to the play with us last night. The discussions may not have been scintillating (I mean, how scintillating can you be while demonstrating the finer points of citation format?) but we got the job done. Most importantly, we showed up, and today that counts as winning.

But don't even ask me about tomorrow.

Marvelous Monday

Today I emulated my students by emailing the department chair to request that we hold our department meeting outside. Three good reasons: (1) our building is beastly hot; (2) the weather outside is warm, sunny, and welcoming; and (3) lately I've spent so much time stuck in front of a computer or a classroom in this building that just stepping outside would feel celebratory--and I've got plenty to celebrate.

First, I got to spend a little time today with a sick colleague whose cheer has been sadly missing from the building. Some people encourage me just by stepping into a room, so I'm glad she was able to do so.

Second, my Concepts of Nature class engaged in a really fun discussion today, led by two classmates who presented excellent discussion questions. I'll never get tired of looking closely at Aldo Leopold's "Thinking Like a Mountain" or Joyce Carol Oates's short story "The Buck," and the students seemed to enjoy it too.

Third, I finally submitted the updated version of the Comedy collection to the copyeditor yesterday after spending the last couple of weeks tracking down distracted contributors, responding to questions, negotiating the finer points of comma placement, and seeking out missing references for the sake of contributors who were, for various reasons, unable to assist. The minute I bundled all those essays into a Zip file and pressed send, I felt a massive burden being lifted from my shoulders. That kind of effort deserves a small celebration, even if the ticker-tape parade has to wait for a later date. 

So I hope my department chair agrees to let us go outside. It would do us all a world of good, and if the cursed leaf-blowers show up to disturb our piece, we can throw things at 'em until they go away. Winning!

Hampered by spinbots

I read this article in Inside Higher Ed about "spinbots," tech tools that allow students to evade plagiarism detectors. The principle is simple: paste text, click "spin," receive "paraphrased" version of text that substitutes synonyms for many words. Suddenly a light bulb clicked on and I understood a phenomenon I've been seeing in student papers recently: passages that look like they're copied from online summaries except they contain a slew of words that don't quite make sense, and I can't locate a source. 

How do we fight this? The Inside Higher Ed article suggests all the usual methods: change texts and assignments frequently; make assignments very specific to the course; teach students (more!) about plagiarism and proper citation. I'm already doing these things, and yet certain students keep finding ways to take unacceptable shortcuts that produce papers that aren't quite coherent. 

I decided to try out one of these online spinbots to see how it works. Since I've just finished grading a whole bunch of mostly great papers on Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, I found an online summary and copied the following text:

Cold Mountain opens with its protagonist, Inman, lying in a Virginia hospital recovering from war wounds. He is shattered by the violence he has witnessed while fighting in the Confederate army and wants to go home to reunite with Ada, the woman he loves. Inman talks to a blind man and realizes that losing something you already have is worse than not getting what you want. One day in town, Inman writes to inform Ada that he is returning home. That night, he leaves the hospital through a window and sets out on his journey back to North Carolina. 

And here is the "paraphrase" Spinbot provided:

Cold Mountain opens with its hero, Inman, lying in a Virginia emergency clinic recuperating from war wounds. He is broken by the viciousness he has seen while battling in the Confederate armed force and needs to return home to rejoin with Ada, the lady he cherishes. Inman converses with a visually impaired man and understands that horrible something you as of now have is more terrible than not getting what you need. One day around, Inman writes to illuminate Ada that he is getting back. That evening, he forgets about the clinic through a window and hampers on his excursion to North Carolina.

In some ways it's no worse than the kind of patch-writing I saw before the advent of spinbots, but in other ways it's just nuts. I mean, the last two sentences are nonsensical. "Hampers on his excursion"? Reading such text is no picnic, but I wonder what happens if I paste this result into the box and spin again?

Cold Mountain opens with its legend, Inman, lying in a Virginia crisis center recovering from war wounds. He is broken by the violence he has seen while doing combating in the Confederate furnished power and needs to get back to rejoin with Ada, the woman he treasures. Inman speaks with an outwardly hindered man and comprehends that horrendous something you at this point have is more horrible than not getting what you want. One day around, Inman writes to enlighten Ada that he is getting back. That night, he disregards the facility through a window and hampers on his trip to North Carolina.

Writing is an iterative process, so let's iterate again:

Cold Mountain opens with its legend, Inman, lying in a Virginia emergency focus recuperating from war wounds. He is broken by the savagery he has seen while doing battling in the Confederate outfitted power and needs to return to rejoin with Ada, the lady he cherishes. Inman talks with an apparently obstructed man and grasps that shocking something you right now have is more awful than not getting what you need. One day around, Inman writes to edify Ada that he is getting back. That evening, he dismisses the office through a window and hampers on his excursion to North Carolina.

Worse and worse, but not far removed from some of the prose I've been seeing in student papers. Insert some line breaks and some of it could almost pass as poetry:

an apparently obstructed man
grasps that shocking something
you right now have
is more awful than
not getting
what you need.

It's not going to win any prizes or earn any high grades but these lines hover on the edge of almost saying something sort of worth saying. Or, as Spinbot puts it, it won't win any differentiations or gain any high grades yet these lines float on the edge of almost offering something sort of worth saying.

If Spinbot does nothing else, it once again reminds us of the vast gulf separating the right word from the nearly-right one.