The gift of nothing

This year on my birthday I received a big pile of nothing--and I love it.

Most years my birthday falls during finals week, so I end up taking home a big pile of student writing. Today, however, is Sunday, so I'm not even seeing students, much less collecting any of their papers. My briefcase runneth over with nothing. Likewise my inbox--piles and piles of neatly wrapped nothing, with a great big bow on top. I couldn't ask for a better gift!

Today I've been rocking my fuzzy red holiday socks, singing along to holiday songs, dipping pretzels in festive habanero pepper jelly dip, and opening gifts and cards entirely lacking in student writing. I haven't even thought about my students all day until right now. Final exams begin tomorrow so I'll soon fulfill my quota of student writing, some of it quite wonderful and well worth reading. But just for today I want to thank my students for the marvelous birthday gift--nothing at all. 

And it's just my size!

When students write the questions

I don't recall my Ph.D. comprehensive exams with much pleasure--two weekends of nonstop writing-for-my-life, the second one under the influence of antihistamines, followed by an oral grilling--except for one part: writing the questions.

I didn't write all the questions, but several weeks before the exam date my committee asked me to submit a few questions for each category. Overly simple questions would have elicited inadequate responses, so I put a great deal of thought into writing my share of the questions, which helped transport me into the mind of the examiners--an excellent place to be when tackling a difficult test.

That's why I like to enlist students in writing essay questions, especially in upper-level literature classes. Today my African-American Lit students had a pizza lunch to celebrate completing their papers--a working lunch where I handed out a study guide for the final essay exam. I gave them a list of literary works and four general themes for essay questions, and then I broke them into groups and asked each group to come up with a list of relevant works from several genres for each theme. Then we shared our results and discussed how we might use those works in an essay.

I've used this technique in many classes and often I'm surprised at the students' rationales for selecting certain works. Later, I construct the essay question based on their suggestions, sometimes with a little tweaking. Enlisting students in crafting questions may make exam-writing a little easier on me, but more importantly, it invites students inside the mind of the examiner--which, during finals week, is an excellent place to be.

Everything's a story

According to the pile of student papers on my desk, everything is a story. Poems, plays, short fiction, novels--stories all, except that one student refers to a novel as a poem while another thinks an anthology of poems is a novel. 

I'm trying to decide whether to despond over the fact that this class made it through an entire semester of literary analysis without ever figuring out the difference between a poem and a story or a play and a novel. If poems can tell stories, what distinguishes a poem from a story? Form, of course--but that's the very element of literature these students are least willing to examine. To judge from this stack of papers, the only thing that matters is the plot, and once the plot has been summarized, what more can be said?

It's a plot, I tell you--a nefarious plot to drain the last dregs of sanity from my exhausted mind until I'm wandering naked around a blasted moor, drooling and babbling about genre conventions. Feel free to join me!
  

Valubility added

First I thought the student was writing about volubility, but no: the sentence asserted that taking classes in a variety of disciplines increases one's value on the job market, but the word the student used to express this value-added component was valubility, which is either a portmanteau word combining value and ability or else evidence of a gap in the student's vocabulary. Vocabulability. Whatever.

Or maybe it's just me. Let's take a look at the OED: nope, no entry. Dictionary.com: nothing. Google: 49,400 hits, including one promising to translate valubility into Urdu but instead suggesting malleability as an alternative. Not helpful.

However, if college students start using valubility in essays, it's only a matter of time before the word takes its place in popular usage and eases into the dictionary. Look what happened to relatable! A vapid vocable eagerly adopted by students with nothing to say now gets nearly seven million hits on Google! 

The inevitability of valubility makes me want to take up a less futile line of work, but where shall I begin? Fortunately, a student essay offers the answer: the advantage of taking classes outside your discipline, asserts the essay, is that if you fail at your career, you'll always have something to fall back on. So if this whole stamping-out-ignorance gig doesn't work out, I can always fall back on the introductory computer programming class I took in 1981. Basics of Basic! Putting that kind of course on my vita is certain to improve my valubility.         

Time: you can only stretch it so far before it breaks

I'm standing in front of my African-American Lit class Monday and musing aloud over the fact that no one has requested an extension on the final paper.

"NO!" cried one student--"No extensions! I need to turn my paper in on Friday!"

Unusual response, but I know what she's saying: for the student compelled to keep perfecting a paper until the moment it's due, an extension may be a curse rather than a blessing. 

She's pretty rare, though. Others try to plead, demand, wheedle, or whine their way toward an extension, and occasionally the combination of a watertight excuse, a reasonable request, and a workable plan will persuade me to extend a little grace.

Here's the request that won't earn any grace: assignment given in October; drafts submitted and comments returned in mid-November; revised paper due this Thursday; student arrives late Tuesday to sign up for a conference to discuss his draft but finds no remaining time slots available--and he expects an extension. "How can I revise my paper without a conference" blah blah blah, except I point out that he doesn't actually have a paper to revise since he never turned in a draft.

Oh yeah, that. Minor detail.

I won't give him an extension, but I do suggest that he add another item to his wish list: a time machine. This late in the game, not much else will help.

Dwarves, ducks, dogs, and more

Sitting here reading drafts, writing reports, and getting so grumpy, dopey, and sleepy that it's only a matter of time before the rest of the Seven Dwarves show up, so it's time to share some holiday gift ideas:

Dave Barry's holiday gift guide--because where else can you find inflatable cat unicorn horns?

From the Quacker Gift Shop, "the most quacktacular place on earth," comes the Rubber Duck Nativity Set--only $29.95! (One of those ducks looks oddly like a duck/pig hybrid. Is that even legal?) 

From Fake Science, a great gift idea for dog-lovers. (As long as they're not dogs.)

Finally, the perfect gift for the book-lover on your list--provided that you can spend a measly $25 million! 

Shopping at work: so wrong but so right

The chief disadvantage of online shopping is that I miss that holiday magic--the sparkly lights, the shoppers elbowing one another toward the latest techno-gewgaw, the jangly renditions of "Frosty the Snowman" wafting through the air. 

But those are also online shopping's chief advantages.

I like Christmas shopping--in theory. In practice, I get annoyed. I'm not a fan of crowds, especially desperate ones, and I surpassed my quota of "Jingle Bell Rock" renditions decades ago. Part of me finds online shopping wretchedly impersonal, but I've spent the past two weekends trying to shop locally with little success. I'm not in the market for any more scented candles or overpriced faux-primitive craft items, thank you very much, and the local pasta place is all sold out of the gluten-free items I'd like to send to a certain family on my list.

So instead I'm sitting in my office using my college-issued computer on college time and ordering gifts online accompanied by Vince Guaraldi playing the Charlie Brown theme. I don't feel at all guilty about shopping at work because I have a list of students desperate to meet with me about their final papers due this week, but they keep missing their appointments. One student missed an appointment late Friday afternoon, which ought to be illegal. Online shopping distracts me from thinking of nefarious ways to torture students who skip Friday-afternoon appointments.

So I'm looking at fruit baskets online and wondering whether those pears taste as good as they look. Are they juicy enough to justify the delivery charge? If they save me from another wasted Saturday spent wandering aimlessly through uninspiring stores, they'll do just fine.  

Friday poetry challenge: grading scale

I haven't offered a Friday poetry challenge for a few weeks because it's hard for a mind steeped in drivel to write even doggerel, but then I read Matt Bell's brilliant grading scale composed entirely of quotes from Samuel Beckett (read it here). Now that's poetry! If only I could respond poetically to student papers:



Between the conception 
and the creation
Between the emotion
and the response
Falls the C-minus.


I think that I shall never "C"
a paper quite like this. (See me.)
You celebrate yourself and sing yourself,
And what you assume your readers shall assume.
(In your dreams. In my class, that's a D.)
 
I heard a fly buzz--when I tried--
To find your paper's form--
But lacking that--you'll find an F
Between the heaves of storm.

Now you try! Alter a poem to serve as a grading comment on a student's paper--or write your own!

Something to chew on

I heartily appreciate my wonderful mechanic and my wonderful dentist, but seeing them both in the same day seems a surfeit of wonderfulness--and besides, it's difficult for even the greatest dentist to make a two-hour dental visit enjoyable, especially when I spend most of that visit on my back with two or three (or maybe eight or ten, I don't know) people stretching my face all out of shape, poking me with needles, and shoving pointy grindy squirty sucky implements into my mouth (and yes, I know how disgusting that sounds, but trust me: it's less disgusting to read than to experience), and the only thing that makes it bearable is the realization that at least I don't have to read any student drafts right this minute, and then it occurs to me that what I need to make the draft-reading experience less disgusting is a hearty dose of novocaine, provided that it could be delivered directly to the brain without the use of needles.


 

What to do with a skimpy wordhoard?

Yesterday I read a paper that used "diverse" as a verb--and then I read another one! The context clearly called for "diversify" but the students apparently didn't know that word, creating instead a construction like "Go diverse yourself!"

And then in another class I was trying to get students to choose verbs other than forms of "to be," but they had trouble coming up with options. It finally hit me: they just don't know enough verbs--or they haven't seen diverse verbs in action often enough to see the possibilities. 

What we have here is a failure to communicate the multifarious wonders of words. Making students read ought to open up whole new worlds of words, but if they're not readers by the time they get to my class, it's a little late. How do I encourage them to build their wordhoards? 

In my literature classes I introduce certain terms and expect students to employ them in their literary analyses; maybe it's time to focus more intentionally on vocabulary development in freshman composition. How can I help my students diversify their vocabulary without delving back into the junior-high world of vocab worksheets?

Maybe I'll just tell them to go diverse themselves. Yeah, that'll work.    

 

Missing pieces in the 13th week

This is the point in the semester when I start to wonder whether I've really accomplished anything in some of my classes. Yes, we've read some interesting stuff and batted around some interesting ideas, but are my students better thinkers and writers than they were in August? Has my class made any real impact on their skills? Will they one day look back at my class fondly and recall the moment when they suddenly understood, say, the use of the semicolons or the advantages of considering opposing views when constructing an argument?

And if my class hasn't made an impact in the past 13 weeks, how can I possibly hope to accomplish anything in the two remaining weeks?

That kind of doubt makes my head hurt. The best cure? Start constructing next semester's syllabi.

A brand-new class (or a revision of an old class) is a blank slate, and assembling the assignments and activities into a meaningful arc leading to learning is as pleasurable as putting together a mass of puzzle pieces into a lovely vista full of potential and possibility. What will students read and how will they respond to their reading? What sorts of writing assignments will build their analytical skills? How many exams, how many papers, how many days to digest a difficult theoretical essay? At what point in the semester will we really need a break? 

I move around the elements until the shape of the course becomes clear and its rhythms pulse like a human heart. For a brief moment it looks like I've created the greatest course in the world, but I'd better enjoy it while I can because it doesn't last. Before you know it I'll be at week 13 wondering why my lovely vista is missing so many pieces and whether there's time to fill in the blanks before the semester ends.

 

My mouth runneth over!

They say good news comes in threes but it really depends on when you start counting and when you stop--and then when the news items are supposed to be kept secret, they just keep piling up. At this point my cup runneth over and I'm tired of biting my tongue about why, so if you're not in the mood for good news, go read something else:

1. I'm going to be a grandma! Next May! And how sweet of my adorable daughter and son-in-law to plan their pregnancy around my teaching schedule--although given my daughter's eagerness to enter the world five weeks early, I'm not betting money on the actual date.

2. I'm entirely unremarkable! In the medical sense! All my recent blood tests and CT scans resulted in a report dotted with the word "unremarkable," which makes me three years cancer-free!

3. I'm still smiling! And here I have to be a little careful because the process of earning promotion to full professor goes through multiple stages before the Trustees make the final determination, but my progress through the first stage has resulted in ear-to-ear grins all around!

That's today's big three, but why stop counting? Another wave of blessings could be on the way!    

Blah Friday

While others joined the hordes celebrating Black Friday, I hunkered down at home celebrating Blah Friday--a day free of obligations, responsibilities, and urgent tasks, a perfect day for making potato soup, drinking hot tea, and reading a good book.

Except I'm not entirely convinced that it is a good book. Ian McEwen's Sweet Tooth is both sweet and sour, featuring a lightweight but nevertheless lovable female protagonist trying to maneuver the labyrinth of early adulthood without being out-maneuvered by the surrounding panoply of manipulative men--including the author.

The metafictional twist at the end should be unsurprising to anyone familiar with Atonement, but Sweet Tooth explores a fluffier moral landscape than Atonement, which makes the twist both unexpected and completely right--unless it's completely wrong. I can't decide. After spending much of the novel wanting to grab Our Heroine by the shoulders and shake some sense into her, I had to turn that same treatment on myself. You try it. Not comfortable.

But it was a great way to spend a long, luscious, boring day. Today I'll venture forth to celebrate small-town shopping day in the most appropriate way, well rested and refreshed thanks to a totally blah Friday.

Maybe I need a rubber stamp!

Things I'm tired of writing on student papers:

Would you want to read a paper called "Analysis Essay"?

Generalizations require specific supporting evidence.

Cliches do not count as evidence.

Plot summary does not count as analysis.

Please review the quotation handout and make sure your punctuation follows those models.

What new understanding does your analysis provide?

 

 

 

My life as chutney

Need to do over Thanksgiving break:

1. Read and respond to Sports Lit analysis essay drafts.

2. Read and respond to African-American Lit research essay drafts.

3. Prep next Monday's classes.

4. Catch up on the ironing.

5. Clean bathrooms. Sweep floors. Dust.

6. Bite my tongue.



Want to do over Thanksgiving break:

1. Drive north. Drive south. In between, spend time with family.

2. Bake pumpkin yeast rolls. Cook green beans.

3. Eat really good food at Thanksgiving pot-luck with extended family.

4. Take long walks in woods with camera.

5. Attend basketball game.

6. Celebrate.



Somehow those two lists will mesh into one big mass of baking ironing walking cleaning talking traveling reading writing biting celebrating wonderfulness, but right now it's just a list of ingredients on the Recipe Card of Life, like the cranberry chutney I make every year: some sweet ingredients, some sour, some zesty, some bland, but the end result satisfies, and for that I am thankful.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Now hold!

Up at 4:30, showered and out the door at 5:20, where wet hair meets sub-freezing temperatures for a chilling wake-up call. Driving down the highway on autopilot impaired by a lack of breakfast to arrive at the hospital by 6 a.m.  for a CT scan.

Yes, it's time to celebrate an important anniversary: three years since my final chemotherapy treatment. Once again I face a barrage of tests to determine whether those nasty cancer cells are gone for good or merely regrouping to stage an all-star comeback tour. The assault started last Friday morning with blood tests that left behind an ugly bruise on my right forearm; this morning's work led to a matching bruise on the left forearm and a bonus bruise on the back of my right hand. Tag-team lab techs put out an All Points Bulletin for usable blood vessels, but my veins saw them coming and fled for the hills. Hence the two pokes (and two bruises) for one measly IV injection of contrast dye.

But that was later--hours and hours later. I arrived at the hospital just before 6 and spend two hours mostly sitting in a waiting room where two televisions are mounted on the wall at such an angle that it's impossible to escape the onslaught of morning drivel. Here's a tip for the hospital designers of America: if you're going to make me sit for two hours pouring barium "smoothies" into a stomach that hasn't seen solid food or caffeine since yesterday's lunch, could you please let me suffer in peace? Those glue-like delights go down much better when I'm not being bombarded by inescapable early-morning infomercials.

And here's another tip: your robo-voices need to improve their bedside manner.   I'm lying there with a needle in my arm, dye that feels like industrial acid coursing through my veins, both arms uncomfortably clasped overhead, and this big chunk of machine looming imperiously overhead, but the robo-voice doesn't make any attempt to ease my discomfort. "Breathe in, breathe out, and hold your breath," it demands, and then, after a great deal of clicking and whirring, it issues its final command: "Breathe!" 

Would it hurt so much to say "Please" once in a while? Or how about, "This'll just take a minute so why don't you hold your breath for me, honey, if it's not too much trouble?"

Now here I am in my office five hours after I first got up, with classes to teach and papers to grade and Thanksgiving to prepare, but all I want to do is eat and sleep, in that order. I'm trying to drive the taste of those barium smoothies out of my system and the memory of those inane infomercials out of my mind, but I'll have to wait a full week to get the results of all these tests. Meanwhile, I'll follow the robo-voice's commands: Breathe in, breathe out, and hold!

My writing process (don't try this at home!)

1. Write an essay about a new approach to teaching a writing class. Stick it in a folder to stew for a while.

2. Two years later, stumble upon the essay accidentally. Not bad. Worth sending out? 

3. Revise to appeal to readers of first-choice publication. Submit.

4. Three months later--rejected. Stick it back in the folder.

5. Nine months later, stumble upon the essay again. Not bad but it could use some work.

6. Revise drastically to appeal to readers of second-choice publication. Submit.

7. Six weeks later--accepted! Provisionally. Please add a few paragraphs of discussion at the end, blah blah blah, deadline in three months.

8. About once a week over the next three months: Open file. Read essay. Think about ending. Write a few sentences taking the topic in a more theoretical direction. Get stuck in a swirling quagmire of vagueness and cliche. Close file. Repeat.

9. The weekend before the revision is due: Open file. Read essay. Move a few sentences around revised ending. Add another paragraph. Feel the quagmire sucking you down into oblivion.

10. Go outside for a strenuous walk. Let the breeze clear the cobwebs and the rhythm of walking inspire clean, well-lighted sentences. 

11. Go back inside. Open the file. Delete most of the new section, brutally slashing all the theoretical blather. Write down the sentences pounded out on your walk.

12. Take one last read-through to tighten up a few sentences and, as an afterthought, add a clever phrase to the closing line. 

13. Attach to e-mail. Submit to editor.

14. Hope.

15. Exactly 17 minutes after submitting the revised essay, receive enthusiastic response from editor: Great job! Love it, especially the last line!

And that, students, is how it's done. (I hope you've been taking notes. We'll have a quiz on this next week.)     

Adventures in Twinkiedom

It looks like Hostess is heading for bankruptcy despite my secret efforts to revive the company. Yes, after years--no, decades--of hiding my central role in the fortunes of Hostess Brands, I'm ready to reveal the truth: I was a teenaged Twinkie.

Well, not teenaged, exactly. The photo on the left shows me--or a reasonable facsimile--at a grocery store in Cynthiana, Kentucky, circa 1983. That was me in the ten-gallon hat and the fuzzy felt costume that was like being rolled up in a rug with the Great Pyramid of Giza plopped down on my head.

I was supposed to be walking around the grocery store during its Grand Opening Celebration and spreading good cheer about Hostess Twinkies, but you try spreading good cheer with the Great Pyramid of Giza on your head. It hurt. And it was hot, too--hot enough to inspire me to spend a lot of time in the frozen foods section even though that's not where Twinkies generally congregate.

The aisles were wide in Frozen Foods but narrower elsewhere, which was a problem because that big Twinkie mask restricted my vision, a weakness exploited by the small boys who kept trying to trip me. They succeeded, finally, when I came around the corner into the meat aisle.

You think it's hard to spread good cheer while carrying the Great Pyramid of Giza on your head? Try spreading good cheer while watching your head roll down the aisle in the meat department.

But the pain, heat, and humiliation weren't the worst parts. 

What could possibly be worse? I'll tell you what: on the way to the grocery store, I was the sole witness of a traffic accident that totalled three cars and a tow-truck. I somehow escaped so much as a scrape in the chaos, but I saw the bleeding truck driver pulled from his cab just before it burst into flames and I saw another driver's bloody hand reaching out the window, flailing about for help, finally grasping the radio antenna and breaking it in two with a thunderous snap. And as I walked around that grocery store wrapped in that ridiculous rug and wearing that ridiculous mask on my head, I could still see that bloody arm waving, still hear that driver's frantic screams.

But I was being paid to spread good cheer--not paid much, of course. What was minimum wage in 1983? Just enough to cover a week's groceries for a couple of struggling college students provided that we didn't splurge on Twinkies. I needed the money or I wouldn't have been there, and so I did my best: walking around the store sweating and in pain and with a mind roiling with bleeding, screaming car-crash victims, but through the pain I struggled to keep a great big happy smile on my face.

Stupid, of course. You've already spotted the flaw in my reasoning, but I didn't spot it until about halfway through my shift when I came around the corner into Frozen Foods and suddenly encountered my reflection: stretched across the front of that mask was the biggest, sappiest, happiest plastic smile ever manufactured.

It was a liberating sight. Inside my mask I could grimace and scowl, twist and mutter and even cry, but all anyone would ever see would be that big plastic Twinkie smile. 

Did my stellar performance sell any Twinkies? I didn't keep tabs on the cash registers, but I know I made some small children cry and inspired a grizzled tobacco farmer to flash me a big toothless grin. Maybe if I'd tried a little harder to create warm feelings about Hostess Twinkies, the company would not now be facing dissolution. 

But I did my best, and in the decades since that summer afternoon in Cynthiana, Kentucky, I've always kept a toy Twinkie nearby as a reminder of my venture into Twinkiedom and the valuable lessons it taught me: sometimes it's best to slap a plastic smile over the pain--but the longer it stays on, the more it hurts when you finally tear it off.

Have I mentioned lately why I love my job?

Casual conversations in the department office about the best way to communicate with the zombie who wants to eat your brains.
 
An elegant colleague who, on Halloween, dresses as if for a hoedown and kicks off class with a rousing recording of John Denver singing "Thank God I'm A Country Boy."

A professor from outside my department who comes to my office carrying a copy of William Faulkner's Nobel Prize speech and wants to talk about what it means to have a soul.

A student who always smiles and talks intelligently in class and whose essay on John Henry Days is a one-way ticket to English Professor Nirvana.
 
A colleague willing to drive me across town to pick up my car from the mechanic and who can be counted on to return what she borrows.

A student who reads my comments on his essay and revises--and revises--and revises until he's finally discovered for himself the magic of vivid verbs.

A valid reason to read and talk about books I love, to play with words and syntax every day, and to sometimes light a fire in a student's mind that will glow and grow until it illuminates some dark corner of the universe.  

Lost (and found) in a good book

Wide awake at 5 a.m. ready to lecture on narrative conventions and rhetorical templates--yes, I am a literature nerd. African-American Lit class starts on Colson Whitehead's John Henry Days today so I get to talk about a topic rarely touched in an upper-level literature class: the importance of page numbers. This issue arises very early when I teach Whitehead's novel. "Turn to page 9," I will say, and the students will fumble with the text before finding page 11 and turning back two pages.

And it's not just page 9: John Henry Days has no numbers on even-numbered pages, on the title page for each new section (or its reverse side), or on the first page of a new chapter--and there are many chapters. Fewer than half of the pages in the book have numbers on them, and the right combination of conditions results in stretches of three or four pages without a number. 

Readers tend to take page numbers for granted: we don't really notice them most of the time, but when we need one and it's not there, we get annoyed. How do we know where we are without page numbers? Why would a publisher resist such a simple convention as the page number? What other conventions might this book violate--and why?

And suddenly we find that the lostness caused by the dearth of page numbers is at one with the ethos of the piece. Look at the pronouns--notice how many chapters start with an ambiguous pronoun, sending us on a search for antecedents and inspiring us to make connections across the unnumbered white spaces between chapters.  Look at all the types of narrative templates on display--the perp walk, the press release, the Who-What-Where-Why-When-How news story lede--and note how the facts resist convention and the template deforms the truth. Notice how Whitehead makes us notice the book as a faulty and incomplete vessel--starting with the absence of page numbers.

John Henry Days defies expectations, crumbles conventions, tampers with templates, and launches us on a narratological thrill ride only a literature nerd can love, and I know some of my students will resist the opportunity but today I intend to tell them: Fasten your seatbelts--it's going to be a wild ride.