Coffee Flavored Kisses

It was a decent week.  There’s a review

Actually, it was a decent week.  Students were all good; everything went well at work. Friday, we had a short in-service (we never have short in-services.) All good.

We’re doing a campus wide common reader..called Them by Nathan McCall, and he was our speaker Friday.  Now, the problem I have is I don’t think Them is a very good novel.  I find the characters stereotypical, and I find the novel itself a bit misogynistic.  I also think it’s a bit heavy-handed, but it’s a first novel so that is too be somewhat expected.  This means, however, I went into in-service less than thrilled.  Mr. McCall surpised–he is a very good speaker.  He kept us interested and stayed on topic.  He made me want to read his memoir Makes Me Want to Holler; alas, he did not make me want to read Them.  It will languish on my bookshelf unread.

Then again, it was a bit hard to hear Mr. McCall since my freaking left ear is stuffed up.  Since I had chronic ear infections a few years back, I am worried about what’s going on with it.  So worried in fact that I have a doctor’s appointment to see what’s going on.  Hopefully, it’s just a massive wax clog, but I am doing nothing until I know what it is.  I’ll work from there.  I’ll probably leave tomorrow with a new cholesterol medicine prescription too. Oh joy.

I have a story rattling around in my clogged head, but it’s not ready to come out yet.  I hope it’s ready soon!

then I’d sure be buying some!

I am a busy camper this semester.  The new schedule we have with a four day instructional week is going well, but I will admit teaching two hour and twenty minute classes back to back is a bit wearing. On Fridays, all I seem to do is socialize with my colleagues whom I only ever see in passing. This Friday, however, I forgot to attend a class because I got caught up in reviewing a text book.

Reviewing that textbook made me think–always a scary thing I know–but it did.  It made me wonder why textbooks are so dreadfully, dull.  Now granted teaching college composition in general is only as exciting as the instructor and students make it, but all textbooks seem so dreary to me that it’s a wonder anything is learned.

I’m a big believer in the idea that education and learning need to be stimulating, fun, and well, entertaining.  I always learned better when I liked going to class, and always forgot everything when going to class was chore (that is if I went to class. I remember a COBOL programming class that I dropped that I went to a total of ONCE in five weeks.)  As a teacher, then, I try to find something to make what goes on in class fun, and I am sure I am not the only teacher that does this–in fact, I know I am not.

However, it would help if our textbooks also included some sense of fun.Yes, they have cartoons and funny pictures–every once in awhile, but really who wants to wade through all of the text for one funny picture?  I find myself choosing what textbooks I can these days by which ones make me feel something or make me laugh.  At least, some texts do that. The Philosophy text I chose and the Tech Writing text I picked both make you feel the author is a living, breathing person. (I was very saddened to  learn that the author of the Philosophy Text died recently.)  I only wish a composition textbook had so much voice to it–which is funny since voice is one of the things the books try to teach.

I wish I had the talent to write a textbook (though I did just have a flashback to a charcter in an AOL chatroom whose main advice to writers was write a textbook!).  I just don’t know that I could. I am woefully behind in comp theory, which is why I frequently toy with going back for a Rhet/Comp or Writing Master’s.  Oh well…in the meantime, I’ll just stay out here in the trenches working to make writing class as fun and entertaining as I can–while keeping in the back of my head a comment a student made a couple of years ago, “Mrs. Jones, I used to hate writing, but you made me like it.”  Well, at least I got something right.

Summer’s hot, hazy, lazy ways are about to end.  Partly that’s due to some weird weather patterns (I am not complaining about less heat either!).  Mostly, I am talking about the beginning of classes.  They start Monday.

With the start of classes so soon, I have been busy.  Wednesday was faculty reporting day; we all drive over to the Helena campus to eat breakfast, listen to speakers, and have meetings.  Nothing really new this year, except, our administration announced that my usual campus will get a new building–a community/civic center with an auditorium, meeting rooms, classrooms, and office space.  Our chancellor also made mention of having the inservice of 2010 out here.  I do not think many in Helena were amused

Thursday was the big registration day.  I helped build schedules.  Think of it as brainstorming.  While it was not packed, we were steadily busy with 2-5 students and hour.  We’d done a huge amount of pre-registration all summer, so I was a little surprised by how busy we were.  We did the same on Friday, and it was MUCH slower.

The personal upshot of all this is that I had 5 classes make, one cancelled, and one that’s still up in the air.  I will not cry if I end up with simply 5 classes–I haven’t taught that few in a semester ever here!   While the amount of classes may be a little less, I cannot say the number of students is less.  I’ve got in just the 5 classes that have assuredly made 110 students.  It’s 116 if I add in the iffy class.   That’s only 89 students less than what’s enrolled at our smallest campus.  To break it down further I have 60 students in 2 sections of Comp 1, 20 (maybe 6 more) in Comp 2 (maybe 2 sections), 14 in World Lit, 16 in Philosophy.  I may be screaming help me save my sanity as the semester goes along.

Jilly in a comment asked about my poor, neglected dissertation.  It remains poor and very neglected.  I’ve had little time to write on it, and in the six years away from grad school, I’ve lost interest in the topic and fallen rather deeply into a love of teaching rather than researching.

However, I haven’t fallen out of love with writing.  Last year, I participated in the Little Rock Writing Project which had me writing everyday, and I loved it.  Unfortunately, I have had virtually no time to write anything new in the last year.  I’ve been swamped with teaching and work.  I stopped to figure out why I’ve felt so tired this year, and I realized in this school year that I taught some 14 classes between fall and spring and 1 so far this summer.  For those of you in higher education, you know that’s a lot of classes.  Most community colleges keep their instructors at a 5/5 load (5 courses a semester).  Most four years schools are 4/4 or 3/4 (4/3).  This allows instructors not to burn out and to write.  Somedays, I wish for that lighter load.  (Some school offer 3/3 and 2/2 loads!)

I have something I must write though–a book review.  I need to get to work on it.  I had started it, then lost that start, and now must start again.  Two scholarly books on Frances “Fanny” Burney.  These two books have sort of interested me in my dissertation again. But who has the time to even work on it?

I can hardly believe June is half gone.  It feels as if it just started!

I’ve been hitting the treadmill with a great deal of regularity.  I am up to 45 minutes a day.  I hope I can keep this up when school starts.  I must say that the ability to watch our multitude of DVDs while treadmilling keeps me from being bored.  I finished the first Feasting on Asphalt, and will finish the second one tomorrow.  Alton Brown enters the pantheon of famous people I would stand in a long line to meet.  It’s a short list–Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, A.S. Byatt…heh, he’s the only American–how odd.

In class, we have hit the Roman and Medieval plays part of the class.  Part of me is contemplating showing A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum rather than reading the Plautus play of Pseudolus. Since Forum is based on Plautus’s play, it’s a way to see how these plays still live. And really–it is Zero Mostel!

I’m reading a melange of various things as little is holding my interest. I am working on my review books mostly.  I do need to get that done.

Well, my pulse has returned to normal, and it’s time for me to move on with the day.

I have as you can see started a new blog; however, life hasn’t really changed, and things go on as they usually do.

Summer school is one week in. I am not hating it, but I am not loving it. Things are moving along nicely; we start reading Lysistrata this evening. After slogging through Agamemnon, Oedipus, and Medea, we need some good laughter. This is my favorite play to teach; it’s always great to watch the students realize that sex comedies are as old as civilization.

I’ve just finished reading Robert Graysmith’s book Zodiac about the Zodiac killer. I do not recommend this book. I’m not really a true crime fan anyway, but this particular book is so full of speculation and circumstantial evidence and very little else. Granted I knew it would mostly be speculative going in since the Zodiac killer has never been caught, but I found myself frustrated about halfway through, when the author’s own investigation takes over the book. My frustration came about because he simply focuses on his “favorite” suspect and stops looking at other theories. In effect, he begins to make what little evidence there is fit his theory. He also starts grouping a number of unsolved murders together as Zodiac killings on fairly slim evidence. Reading the book, I was annoyed by theories he didn’t even touch on–such as the idea of the Zodiac letters connection to the crimes. It’s simply not a book I can recommend.

Now, I have to pick something from my to read pile, or steal something from my husband