Next week! Here goes something or other! School starts again--my brief retirement now seems all too brief. I worked in the yard maybe four hours in 11 weeks--a record for activity. I battled a bougainvilla, planted some native plants, let the lawn die, and now it's back to classes. My last full-time year. The year after this, down to half-time if all goes well. Duck into school a couple times a week, the rest of the time practicing and writing.
A friend's partner told me last week that retirement is okay, but after a couple of years, you get bored with naps on the couch and gardening, though he's also writing novels, staying active in other ways. I don't see myself getting restless, except maybe to get more ideas realized, play instruments better.
Meanwhile, put off the music more or less for another nine months and shuffle as much in around classwork as possible.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The Skin of our Teeth
After days of anxious watching, I believe the one literature course I'm teaching this semester--Literature of the Bible--has finally gained enough students to run. I have fifteen, unless some wandering soul drops, and fifteen is the absolute minimum--seventeen is more solid, 20 is preferred. Other lit classes filled much earlier: one on horror, another on comedy, women in literature closed right away. You get to wondering what prevents people from taking a Bible as Lit course: is it me? Or do most people have such fixed ideas about the Bible, or they've read it in bits and pieces, so they think they've read it, and there's no reason to take a class in it. They can do that at church. I suspect it's one of those collections of texts that people have dipped into as their pastors or rabbis directed them. The analogy would be taking a couple of lines from King Lear--using them as the text for a sermon, taking a couple of lines from Comedy of Errors, using that as a sermon, or the basis for a prayer meeting, taking a couple of verses from one of Paul's letters, or a psalm, creating a wall hanging. Then saying, Well, of course I've read Shakespeare--no point taking a class in it.
There are several other lit courses in equally dire straits. Another explanation might be that, in the current times, there are fewer people interested in reading from an actual book, as opposed to reading from the computer screen, getting their information from Google and Wikipedia, watching television, etc. Obviously there are still people reading--bookstores are staying in business and Amazon seems healthy (though diversified into many other products besides books). But what are they reading? There is a lot of printed material that is roughly equivalent to watching television--romances, suspense stories, science fiction, horror. I can't say I have a lot of admiration for people who spend their time reading that: it's just another form of entertainment, with no intellectual/challenge value at all, except that it's reading, not watching something.
There are several other lit courses in equally dire straits. Another explanation might be that, in the current times, there are fewer people interested in reading from an actual book, as opposed to reading from the computer screen, getting their information from Google and Wikipedia, watching television, etc. Obviously there are still people reading--bookstores are staying in business and Amazon seems healthy (though diversified into many other products besides books). But what are they reading? There is a lot of printed material that is roughly equivalent to watching television--romances, suspense stories, science fiction, horror. I can't say I have a lot of admiration for people who spend their time reading that: it's just another form of entertainment, with no intellectual/challenge value at all, except that it's reading, not watching something.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Anna Chronism
I posted this under Bible-O-Phile, but I couldn't help putting here under adventures and misadventures in academe as one of my colorful experiences in the classroom.
Anna Chronism is perhaps my favorite student.
Yesterday, a girl called my office to ask about my Bible as Literature class in the fall. I explained that we take a historical perspective, discuss textual problems--that got a quick question, as in what do I mean by "textual problems." I explained that it had to do with authorship, origins, sources. She was afraid, she said, it might involve philosophy. In fact, her pastor had told her recently that Job and Moses lived at the same time. She seemed satisfied with my description of the course, but I'm not sure how she reacted when I illustrated the historical approach by separating Moses and Job by seven or eight centuries. Moses was a twelfth or thirteenth century BCE figure, the book of Job probably written in the fifth or sixth century. I added that, indeed, they might both be fictional characters. She said she would see me in the fall and hung up, rather quickly, I thought. I wonder what conversation she will be having with her pastor.
In another case, not biblically related, I had an ex-father-in-law who asked if Julius Caeser and Shakespeare didn't live about the same time. What do you say to your father in law? I believe I said, mildly, that Caesar was somewhat earlier.
Ah, Anna, you are one of the Princesses of Reason.
Anna Chronism is perhaps my favorite student.
Yesterday, a girl called my office to ask about my Bible as Literature class in the fall. I explained that we take a historical perspective, discuss textual problems--that got a quick question, as in what do I mean by "textual problems." I explained that it had to do with authorship, origins, sources. She was afraid, she said, it might involve philosophy. In fact, her pastor had told her recently that Job and Moses lived at the same time. She seemed satisfied with my description of the course, but I'm not sure how she reacted when I illustrated the historical approach by separating Moses and Job by seven or eight centuries. Moses was a twelfth or thirteenth century BCE figure, the book of Job probably written in the fifth or sixth century. I added that, indeed, they might both be fictional characters. She said she would see me in the fall and hung up, rather quickly, I thought. I wonder what conversation she will be having with her pastor.
In another case, not biblically related, I had an ex-father-in-law who asked if Julius Caeser and Shakespeare didn't live about the same time. What do you say to your father in law? I believe I said, mildly, that Caesar was somewhat earlier.
Ah, Anna, you are one of the Princesses of Reason.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The Wilderness of Summer
I only have 20 minutes of grades left to do, so, in effect, summer has come. For one of the few times in the last decade or so, I can look forward to an extended period of time with no one's academic clock to govern my activities.
A colleague of mine recently mulled over what she would do when she retired, trying, I think to convince herself that no longer teaching would be okay--she would be able to keep herself busy.
"There are so many books I want to read," she said. Yes, I thought, but at a book roughly every two weeks, you can go through 20-25 books a year, and within a couple of years have used up most of those books you really want to read.
What would I do? This summer is another beginning of retirement, like temporary retirement. I will be writing music, practicing the tuba, going to rehearsals, maybe the occasional gig. There seems to be no end of activities that renew themselves day by day, phone call by phone call, idea by idea. Instead of just reading novels, why not write some? Even if they don't get published (I wrote seven, and not one has seen print), it's the writing itself that matters.
The people next door spend their time keeping their yard neat and watching television. Their yard looks very nice. But there's got to be more to free time than trimming the jasmine plants with a scissors.
A colleague of mine recently mulled over what she would do when she retired, trying, I think to convince herself that no longer teaching would be okay--she would be able to keep herself busy.
"There are so many books I want to read," she said. Yes, I thought, but at a book roughly every two weeks, you can go through 20-25 books a year, and within a couple of years have used up most of those books you really want to read.
What would I do? This summer is another beginning of retirement, like temporary retirement. I will be writing music, practicing the tuba, going to rehearsals, maybe the occasional gig. There seems to be no end of activities that renew themselves day by day, phone call by phone call, idea by idea. Instead of just reading novels, why not write some? Even if they don't get published (I wrote seven, and not one has seen print), it's the writing itself that matters.
The people next door spend their time keeping their yard neat and watching television. Their yard looks very nice. But there's got to be more to free time than trimming the jasmine plants with a scissors.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Change in Perspective
I'm at the end of the school year, after teaching full-time since 1970. That's thirty-eight years, including most summers. College level.
At the beginning of each new semester, I used to think, ah-ha, a fresh start, new students--hope, light at the end of the tunnel, my intellectual and pedagogical missions are being advanced--a new group of students to introduce to the joys of reading, the value of improving their writing and thinking skills. A new group to send out well prepared into a world in need of them.
But I've had a change of attitude. Not long into the beginning of each semester now, I think to myself: I'm saying the same things I have been saying for 38 years. Some students might have improved because of me, but by and large, I keep having to say the same things, make the same corrections, offer the same advice, issue the same warnings.
Not only that: instead of thinking that each new semester brings a new crop of students, I've started to think, while grading papers: why are you still making this mistake? It's hard to see individual students. Instead, I see One Student, who has been bedeviling me and my colleagues for the past 38 years. In spite of all my efforts, all my preparation, all my attempts to interest him/her in his/her education, the excitement of the books, the stimulation of the ideas, of people who make their livings thinking and writing, the same mistakes persist, along with the same lackadaisical attitude--except that what was formerly lackadaisical has become aggressively, belligerently sometimes, indifferent. I have the feeling that the marks I put on papers go unregarded, or dismissed as the obsessive attention of a psychotic (things like correct spelling, competent punctuation, literate, expressive use of language.
I hasten to say, not all students are like this. But it's a minority who actually think about what they're writing and care enough to put forth high quality work.
Or, the others simply don't have the ability. Never mind a socio/economic/family background that prepares them poorly. Plenty of disadvantaged people catch on quickly enough to "smart-people things," as a colleague of mine puts it. Yet there are many more who don't look like they're going to catch on to anything at all. I showed a film in class the other day and suggested that students take notes on who the characters are and what issues the film raises. I took copious notes myself, but I looked around at one point and saw very people taking notes, some paying little or no attention at all. They're already targeted for failure, based on the rest of their work. Yet, they've attended class--they've put their bodies in their seats and stuck out what must have seemed like an excruciating fifteen weeks, in which their efforts have consistently received poor grades.
I used to think everyone should get to college. Now, the best I can say is that everyone deserves a chance, but not everyone is fitted for the kind of intellectual work college involves. I don't understand students who come up and admit that they've never liked reading: what do they think they're going to have to do in college, which is about getting new ideas, fresh perspectives, sifting arguments--much of which is going to come from the printed page. We have textbooks that are visually based as composition class "readers," but what difference do those pictures make? The students, after they've done the semiotic analyses, are still going to have to express ideas and put together a coherent argument in words.
These are signs that retirement is hastening toward me. One day, I imagine, I will have a revelation: the time has come. Perhaps the whole idea of an apocalypse, or end times, related to the sense of imminent change one feels at various points in life, the potential of that change to produce anxiety and disorientation, which feel like the coming of a new world and the devastation of the old. But I'm getting readier to embrace the new world, which for me means more time to practice music, more time to write it, and little or no time marking that single closing-in-on-forty student who never learns, no matter how many times I tell him.
At the beginning of each new semester, I used to think, ah-ha, a fresh start, new students--hope, light at the end of the tunnel, my intellectual and pedagogical missions are being advanced--a new group of students to introduce to the joys of reading, the value of improving their writing and thinking skills. A new group to send out well prepared into a world in need of them.
But I've had a change of attitude. Not long into the beginning of each semester now, I think to myself: I'm saying the same things I have been saying for 38 years. Some students might have improved because of me, but by and large, I keep having to say the same things, make the same corrections, offer the same advice, issue the same warnings.
Not only that: instead of thinking that each new semester brings a new crop of students, I've started to think, while grading papers: why are you still making this mistake? It's hard to see individual students. Instead, I see One Student, who has been bedeviling me and my colleagues for the past 38 years. In spite of all my efforts, all my preparation, all my attempts to interest him/her in his/her education, the excitement of the books, the stimulation of the ideas, of people who make their livings thinking and writing, the same mistakes persist, along with the same lackadaisical attitude--except that what was formerly lackadaisical has become aggressively, belligerently sometimes, indifferent. I have the feeling that the marks I put on papers go unregarded, or dismissed as the obsessive attention of a psychotic (things like correct spelling, competent punctuation, literate, expressive use of language.
I hasten to say, not all students are like this. But it's a minority who actually think about what they're writing and care enough to put forth high quality work.
Or, the others simply don't have the ability. Never mind a socio/economic/family background that prepares them poorly. Plenty of disadvantaged people catch on quickly enough to "smart-people things," as a colleague of mine puts it. Yet there are many more who don't look like they're going to catch on to anything at all. I showed a film in class the other day and suggested that students take notes on who the characters are and what issues the film raises. I took copious notes myself, but I looked around at one point and saw very people taking notes, some paying little or no attention at all. They're already targeted for failure, based on the rest of their work. Yet, they've attended class--they've put their bodies in their seats and stuck out what must have seemed like an excruciating fifteen weeks, in which their efforts have consistently received poor grades.
I used to think everyone should get to college. Now, the best I can say is that everyone deserves a chance, but not everyone is fitted for the kind of intellectual work college involves. I don't understand students who come up and admit that they've never liked reading: what do they think they're going to have to do in college, which is about getting new ideas, fresh perspectives, sifting arguments--much of which is going to come from the printed page. We have textbooks that are visually based as composition class "readers," but what difference do those pictures make? The students, after they've done the semiotic analyses, are still going to have to express ideas and put together a coherent argument in words.
These are signs that retirement is hastening toward me. One day, I imagine, I will have a revelation: the time has come. Perhaps the whole idea of an apocalypse, or end times, related to the sense of imminent change one feels at various points in life, the potential of that change to produce anxiety and disorientation, which feel like the coming of a new world and the devastation of the old. But I'm getting readier to embrace the new world, which for me means more time to practice music, more time to write it, and little or no time marking that single closing-in-on-forty student who never learns, no matter how many times I tell him.
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