Student Evaluations

Although I've been teaching for more than a year, yesterday (yes, that's right, Christmas Day) marked the first student evaluations I've ever had the dubious opportunity to read. My students managed to impugn everything from my textbook to my hair and clothes. It was a truly disturbing experience, and not particularly efficacious in my opinion.

I did learn some interesting things about students' impressions of me, but learned much more about my former students, and not all of which was flattering to them. I wonder if I should be mortified by my own comments to teachers past, but I recall very few negative things I might have had to say of them. It has been my experience that students who do well complain less, and as per human nature, students who do badly lay more blame than is warranted on instructors.

One comment I cannot dismiss, though. I feel the urgent need to address an accusation students have been making for several semesters, even knowing they'll never read this. My students are somehow under the impression that I play favorites - that I am very strict with most students, but that I allow those few students who have the same opinions, or who know my family, to come late or hand in shoddy work without reprisal. It's totally untrue, and a look at my gradebook can prove it. My students have no way of knowing that everyone is marked late, whether I personally like them or not. They don't know that I cover their names when I grade their papers. They simply assume that because I am convivial in class the grades I hand back reflect that congeniality.

No teacher is purely mathematical in their policies. Every person has bias, prejudices, and uses stereotypes. I admit that I have mine, but they are not what my students believe. I am prejudiced towards effort. I tend to give much more credit to someone who is obviously trying than to someone who feels that they can effortlessly succeed, and whose attendance etc. reflects that attitude.

I must adjust my teaching strategies somehow to help students understand that I don't just hand out grades like candy. You'd think the algebraic formula I use should be of some assistance.

GRE: Literature in English

I recently re-took the Graduate Records Examination: Literature in English Subject Test. Now everyone keeps asking me how I think I did. I suppose if I looked at the questions and thought "I don't know this at all!" I could be pretty sure I'd bomb, or if I breezed through it like it was tissue-paper I could be fairly certain I'd get a high score. Unfortunately, I enjoyed it. I know there were questions I simply didn't know. There were several questions where I had narrowed the answers to two options, but couldn't decide between them. My best chances in that case would be about fifty percent.

This is the great tragedy of an English degree; I have been trained to be confident - to say things with certainty even if I'm only fifty percent sure I'm right. That makes standardized tests lots of fun, but it means I don't have the faintest clue how I did. I could have been completely mistaken, and yet totally confident. I won't find out until Christmas, when all my dreams of a PhD are dashed by a single percentile score.

Perhaps $130 is too much for three hours of pointless bubble-filling, however much fun it is.

A New Word

Today while reading Carlyle's "The French Revolution: A History" (NOT a typical ouvre), I came across a brilliant word with which I was not yet familiar. I blame my stubborn apolitical tendencies.

The word is "Poltroonery." Basically, it means cowardice, but it sounds so much more like "chicken" - *grins from ear to ear.*

Poltroonery, so newly re-named for me, has long been one of the weaknesses I despise most in humanity, and in myself. By fear we allow ignorance (a form of slavery), oppression, misfortune, misconception, and we allow our own souls to fester inside of us. Only by a profound courage - to accept truth, to shoulder responsibility, and to face the world unashamed - do we, as a species, move forward.

A Real Vote

Each semester someone in the English Department hosts a penny-poll, and this semester it's Donne vs. Shakespeare - the E.M.E. smack-down.

I sincerely believe that Donne will win for one simple reason. So many people don't like Shakspar because they know just enough about him to have been intimidated.

Donne was profound and funny. He thought in words and ideas so entwined together that they resembled the threads in some nautical rope, and from each twist sprouted some new metaphor which may or may not totally redefine the subject. His poetry embodied linguistic and theological complexity, and his ideas warrant nearly as much concentration as Ulysses.

Shekespear was crass and commercial. He wrote fast-talking but believable characters, and mocked his own cast, his critics, colleagues, and occasionally himself. He killed mercilessly and resurrected without a blink. He hosted fairies, demons, witches, bastards, cuckolds, royalty, and soldiers, and even the funny ones weren't safe. For an E.M.E., he was awfully modern.

How would you vote?

Thornton

My heart is still pounding away from the last two scenes of the BBC North & South. Pounding away, I tell you!

I recall a scene from earlier in the movie where Mr. Thornton has fallen asleep at his desk and his mother covers his shoulders with her shawl, and I remember thinking that he works too hard, and he wouldn't have time to keep a wife and childer happy. He might say that he works for their benefit, as his employees do, but if his employees don't work, they starve. If he doesn't work, his wife and sister wear their own cotton instead of imported silk.

And then I realized that Mr. Thornton personifies a conceptual medium between Mr. Darcy of the Romantic era and Ebenezer Scrooge of the Victorians. It turns my head in fascinating circles to imagine Scrooge as a romantic lead. I think I might indulge in that turn.

Round Two

It is time to begin applying for PhD programs again. Folks, I'm petrified. I know for certain that my GRE subject score wasn't high enough for UC Irvine. I know my writing has at least one noticeable flaw. I know I was rejected last year.

I am also as certain that my professors are correct in their assessment of my potential. Simon, of Simon Says, said that I certainly have the research and writing abilities for a successful PhD. Professor Rosemary attests that I have a definite academic aptitude. Three of my other professors agree that I have potential adequate to the task. Plus my boss is pretty sure I'm valuable, and Elizabeth thinks I'm a genius because I can fix her electronics, cook, and build furniture (I spend lots of time around her. It does my confidence good).

And now I need to choose an area of specialty. I really want to study Critical Theory, but that'll happen either way. I could study Arthurian lit, Metaphysicals, Romantics, Victorians, Edwardians, Modernists, or the Aesthetics. Since most of those fit into 19th Century British, I think that's the outer ring of the target, which eliminates the first two, and second to last options.

It must be decided. I shall ponder.

More Syllabi

I've been working on my revised syllabus for Fall semester. I will be teaching three sections of the English 1010 course, "Intro to College Writing" or "how to avoid intellectual dribble on your academic shirt." Most of my students will already be able to identify 20 of the 26 letters in our alphabet, and the Freshmen might already have the skills necessary to recognize a piece of paper three out of five times. One or two of them might even have once touched a very large book, although I'm not sure there are any readily available in my small hometown.

Perhaps some of them will read this. Perhaps they'll be offended. To this I say, "What will you do to disprove it?"

Two of the sections will meet three times a week. My lesson planning will need some significant adjustment from the once per week meetings of Spring semester. Contrariwise, the third section meets twice per week only, which means I'll need to set up an almost completely different chedule for that class. That need suggests unwarranted excitement. It's still the same crappy writing 101.

I have dreams. Someday I'll teach a literature course. Someday, instead of spending classroom hours discussing boring textbook chapters my students haven't read, I'll spend them discussing exotic literature they haven't read (even in graduate school students act like students).

As of last month (I haven't been online in quite a while) I have seventy-five students. Each student must write at least twenty pages per semester. Logically, I will be marking at least 1500 pages in the next three months. One at a time, my fans, one at a time. I finally mailed the last few papers from Fall 2008. Talk about "in a timely manner." I submit an alternate definition of "timely" not available to the general student body.

Wish me luck. Wish me time. Wish me Texas in January.