Good work if you can get it

I'd like to issue an invitation to everyone who has ever congratulated me on getting the whole summer off from work: Please come and watch what I'm doing today and then tell me I'm not working.

Granted, I'm not required to work outdoors in wretched heat or do any heavy lifting or crawl around on the floor of a horrible old bathroom or even punch a time clock, though if I were I'd be tempted to follow the example of Mooch in the 1979 film Breaking Away when he punches the timeclock--literally. I may have my moments of metaphorically throwing punches at certain people responsible for the mindless pettifogging procedures I am required to follow, but my job has never compelled me to throw an actual punch. 

But I have punched a lot of keys and crunched a lot of numbers and I have the eye fatigue to prove it. This fall I'm teaching two almost-brand-new classes, classes I've taught before in other incarnations; however, the contents and expectations for both courses have changed so much that I may as well be starting from scratch.

I last taught an upper-level class on Nature Writing more than a decade ago--as a summer online course. I like to use recent examples in upper-level writing classes, so most of the readings I assigned previously are no longer relevant (except Annie Dillard's 1982 essay "Total Eclipse," which everyone interested in writing about nature ought to read). The eight-week assignment structure for the online course doesn't translate well to a 14-week face-to-face semester, and I no longer have access to the previous course management system so I can't just copy and paste assignments and content into the new shell. So I have spent a lot of time tracking down appropriate readings, scanning them into the system, and organizing them into a reasonable class structure.

And then the first-year seminar I'm teaching is very different from the version I last taught several years ago, so this summer I've had to shift topics, choose a new text, and create an assignment structure that includes certain types of required assignments plus a whole range of activities requiring students to show mastery of the skills they need to succeed in college. These skills will be taught by the Peer Mentor, an upper-level student assigned to my class, but I'll be the one collecting and grading the required college skills assignments. 

First, though, I need to develop an assignment structure that makes some sort of sense, motivating students to do all the things even though many of the things simply aren't comparable. I mean, sure, I have no problem creating a meaningful prompt and rubric for the required annotated bibliography and research paper, but how do I balance those demands against, for instance, an assignment requiring students to print out an email on a campus printer or come up with a list of potential classes to take in the spring? Those can be low-stakes assignments, but if the stakes are too low, the students won't do them.

So I've spent a lot of time writing prompts and shuffling due dates and moving readings and activities around on my draft syllabi, and now I'm uploading assignments and files and rubrics to the course management system. Three solid hours this morning just trying to get one class's assignments mostly loaded to Canvas, and I haven't even started uploading files or developing detailed lesson plans.

Now my eyes are blurry from staring at the screen and my wrist hurts from all the pointing and clicking. (Ah, the humanity!) But on the other hand, I get to do my work sitting down in a comfy chair, with a cold drink at my elbow and no snarky supervisor looking over my shoulder. Granted, Bathroom Dude is just a few feet away putting the finishing touches on our guest bathroom while listening to a very loud podcast dealing with supernatural phenomena and conspiracy theories (somehow combining interest in the Shroud of Turin, sea monsters, and Florida bog people), but anyone willing to spend the morning on his hands and knees installing new flooring and fixtures in my horrible old bathroom is allowed to listen to whatever he wants to.

Bathroom Dude is a bit of an inspiration: if he hasn't punched the face right off the time clock after all those hours in that cramped room, then I think I can keep on pointing and clicking for as long as it takes to get the work done, all summer long.