I'm exhausted

Yes, if you look at the post time, it's 11:45. a.m. It's not today that's exhausted me, but the last week... month... maybe even year...

Sandy's farewell/graduation/belated birthday party was this weekend, which went off with only a few hitches. A forecast of thundershowers meant we brought everyone back to our place - thank god a few people didn't end up coming! - and splitting people into two "shifts" (because she had 50 people on the guest list... if you've ever seen our place, you know it can't accommodate anywhere near that many people!)

Of course, not a drop of rain fell the whole time, let along thundershowers.

The shifts idea was a bit stressful because it meant it felt like two parties in a row. It also meant I did none of the huge pile of marking I had to do once it was all over, so I spent Sunday marking papers... and Monday actually... which put me in a right rotten mood when I walked into the final exam I gave yesterday.

Being bombarded by five students who all had different requests (and didn't come by my office but waited till I walked into the exam room) most of which were either a) minor, or b) left till much too late, didn't help the matter either.

Students take note: asking your teacher if you can convert the class to pass/fail moments before the final exam begins, is not under ANY circumstances cool.

Most of the marking was for that course I took over last week. I'd taught the same course last year, so I figured it wouldn't be hard, but I hadn't figured on the first instructor not only using strange assignments I'd never seen before, but also requiring that the students follow a draconian report style that requires them to force their material into a format that doesn't work well for every report. I learnt yesterday that my approach of 'do what works best for your project' was a shock (albeit a pleasant ones for those who discussed it with me) that they've had to adjust to. So despite my efforts to make the transition as seamless as possible, just my pedagogical style has meant the students have had to change course. I'm hoping based on the response from the few I've talked to that it will work out in the long run, but it's still been rough.

On top of all this, we want to get a family portait done (before my family disperses to all ends of the globe... well, okay, North America... for the summer) and we're moving, though we don't know where to yet. All we know is that my handsome partner in crime will be getting a new job now that he's graduated, and we're gonna try to 'move on up' at the same time. All I know is that I need to leave this place by mid August. Thank goodness! It's been nice and all while we've been here, but it really is a cramped space and we're hoping to gain a bit more square footage wherever we go so that it doesn't feel like we're just moving the stuff around in an endless circle trying to make room for various activities.

This whole year has been busy for us though. With two graduations in the house, the studying that goes into those, finishing my exams, trying to put together a prospectus and dissertation committee, preparing oldest daughter for transition to another country, teaching a lit course (fun! but LOTS of extra work), and everything else with everyone else, it's been a very full year.

When the kids were born, I thought the sleep deprivation was bad, but the exhaustion of keeping up with and track of teenagers rivals it... or maybe I'm just older... either way, it's been a ride this year!

We need to plan ourselves a vacation!

They say something about laughter and medicine?

** Annual English Teachers' awards for best student metaphors/analogies found in actual student papers:


Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law George. But unlike George, this plan just might work.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Take a break from the ordinary

Sounds like a travel ad: "Take a break from the ordinary" but there really is nothing like a break from the usual routine to shake you up and make you realize that your life has been rather ordinary for the last while. Ordinary isn't a bad thing, it's just really easy to slip into it without knowing.

Sometimes I treasure ordinariness (for example, after our hectic and stressful cross country move I was almost cried with joy at the end of a day when I realized it was the first time I hadn't felt homesick all day). But sometimes it just starts to make you dull. You do the same thing over and over again until you don't even notice that you're not growing and learning anymore.

Today I think I must have done some growing, or at least should have, because it wasn't an ordinary day.

I suppose it actually began on Thursday afternoon. As I was teaching the poetry class, I saw one of the writing program directors in the hall. I assumed he was there to talk to my colleague across the hall, but he waved me out of my classroom. I suppose I was more curious than anything, so I met with him. He asked me if I would take over a class right away. I said I had to consult with my family, but would call him the next day and I did to say I'd do it. They seemed pretty desperate to cover this class, and I'd taught the same one last summer, so I figured it'd be pretty easy.

He told me they were replacing the existing teacher because she'd failed to attend the last three classes. When I found out two days later who it was, I was surprised, because I knew this instructor (mostly by reputation) and she didn't seem like a flake. There might be other adjectives for her, but flake is never one I've heard applied in her situation.

So I walked into the classroom this morning and got the students to start telling me about the course. Strange way to begin a relationship with a group of students, and I felt slightly less authoritative than normal because I had to rely on them to tell me what they were doing.

The class is behind by a good bit, and the students are going to have to work steadily through the remainder to make up for it. I'm trying to figure out how to keep it from feeling like punishment for their teacher bailing on them.

Then I had a very relaxing and highly enjoyable dinner/writing discussion with friends. I realized that I've been relaxing far too little lately, because the enforced relaxation of just sitting around seemed strange at first. But I did get used to it, and boy did it feel good!

And then?

All I can say is neither Tampa Bay nor Raleigh have naturally occurring ice.

There's something wrong with the universe.

Pity this busy monster

I have these drafts of posts sitting here but feel like I've no time to do them justice... maybe I never will. Instead I give you some e e cummings:

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.

A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

cybernetic versification?

I'm reading a summary of T.S. Eliot's biography (and skimming quickly at that) for Tuesday's class, when I read that he was influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson, which gets me thinking about Benedict Anderson's argument that modern time is "empty homogenous time" ... and that gets me googling Bergsonian time, to compare it to, only to find out that Norbert Weiner used it as a model for time as it is experienced by cybernetic organisms, and that it has become a standard of sorts in all kinds [pdf] of cybernetic studies.

See? It all comes back to the robots!

I hate this part of the job

I'm reading the proposals my students posted to Blackboard - which range all over the place from concise, well thought out questions, to vague 'I gotta get some books from the library' kinds of rambles - when I come across one that sends my radar into overdrive.

You see, the proposal sounds... well, it sounds like something a graduate student would write... not something a student who almost failed the midterm would write. Now, I accept that a midterm test which requires the application of learned facts to a problem (scansion) and memorization (match this passage to who wrote it) is a very different thing than typing up something at your leisure. But this proposal was just too slick to sound right.

So I set up the paper as a Turnitin assignment. It's a nifty new (and as I understand, expensive) service that scans papers for "originality" and gives you an "originality" score for the paper. I've never used the feature before, but it strikes me as a much more efficient way to check for overlapping sources than the old google it yourself routine.

I really hate it that I even have to do this.

I also realize that there is some controversy about this product. My alma mater has decided not to adopt it, but their reasoning strikes me as only partly thought out.

Dr. Patterson [Associate VP Student Affairs]also pointed out Turnitin.com can't distinguish between intentional and accidental plagiarism.

"I think it's really hard to determine where it's actual plagiarism--where there's an actual attempt to deceive--and how much of it is lack of information on how to do it properly," she explained.

What their objections ignore is the teacher. Hello? You know, the teacher? The person who has trained for a decade or more to be in the position they're in? I agree that Turnitin could produce false positives. This is partly the objection of a McGill student who challenged that school's use of the service. He objected to Turnitin's mission to "help students take more responsibility for learning, and let teachers focus on teaching." (which is why I'm using it - my time is much too valuable to spend hours googling phrases from papers!):

"That statement is basically saying that students, if given the opportunity, will plagiarize, and they're forced to prove they didn't plagiarize before their paper is even looked at"

But that's where the teacher's intelligence and discretion comes in. Just as in any other case of a plagiarism charge, the teacher needs to present evidence that the plagiarism took place. And the teacher still has the option to confront the student about unintentional plagiarism (and Turnitin has an option that allows you to resubmit a student paper in such a case).

The thing that the opponents at U of C seem to be ignoring is that Turnitin is just one of many tools a teacher will use during their career. Their knowledge of the subject matter, their evaluation of the student's performance outside the case in question, and institutional policies will all come into play in a plagiarism case. They're acting as if a bad score on Turnitin will AUTOMATICALLY translate into a failing grade, no ifs, ands, buts, or maybes. No teacher discretion. If there's no institutional policy that says that's the case, and no institutional mechanism intercepting originality scores before the teacher gets ahold of the paper, then the teacher has the option of examining the paper more closely and ignoring the report, or challenging the student about it at which time the student has the opportunity to respond to the charge.

Yes, in an ideal world, there would be no need for Turnitin. In an ideal world, there would be no need for traffic cops to enforce laws because everyone would obey them. In an ideal world, I could open any email message I receive without fear of damaging my computer.

But this ain't an ideal world. It's the real one. And sometimes, the actions of a few people, spoil it for the rest of us. That's life.

Personal Notes

• Oldest daughter received first acceptance letter in the mail yesterday - there was much rejoicing! It isn't her first choice, but she's in and grandparents are less than an hour away for visits/support etc.
  
  We discovered a glitch in communication between countries when one of the other schools sent a rejection letter last week, saying she didn't have the basic requirements. Problem was just that the requirement went by a different name here, so we sent off explanatory letters to them and everyone else hoping that solves the problem.
  
  
• Hubby is writing Canadian licensing exam this weekend. I would've loved to go with him, but he flew out about four hours before youngest daughter came home from D.C. and one of us had to be here to pick her up and drive her home.
  
  
• Youngest daughter had a great time in D.C. - unlike here, the weather was hot and sunny the whole time. It was probably the first time she's been away without another family member around, so it was a good growing experience.
  
  
• Oldest daughter had made arrangements for room and board with a friend over the summer, so was beginning her job search based on these arrangements. Now, suddenly, the family may need to move and if they are in a smaller place, they will not have room for her and we'll have to make alternate arrangements. It's not so much that we have to change plans, but that we have to change them at the last minute.
  
  
• I am far too sentimental. I sorted some old receipts this weekend, and some of the receipts reminded me of places or people who I'd been with when I'd made the purchase. I found myself feeling a bit nostalgic about the times/places those receipts represented. Usually you'd expect photographs to trigger fond memories, not receipts - goes to show how anal I am about keeping them I guess [in all fairness though, I've been audited by Student Finance twice during my student years and by Revenue Canada three times in my life - twice during the time we've lived out of country and those receipts have saved me a world of grief when that happens]

Just a matter of degree?

A good journalistic sense will sometimes compel a writer to sensationalize a subject - create an eye catching headline, or start off with a sensational first sentence, or even a ridiculous cartoon. Just like this article, "Among the Transhumanists: Cyborgs, self-mutilators and the Future of our Race" from Slate does.

The second paragraph asks the question: Why do we shrug at botox, liposuction, and circumcision? but get grossed out by guys like Lizardman? What seems at first a rhetorical question actually becomes a way of mocking transhumanists for being just too "weird", essentially too idealistic or irrational "incoherent" and just plain "creepy"

The article ends on a derisive note, dismissing even the mildest claims to the betterment of the human race (and isn't this what countless doctors, philosophers, educators, philanthropists etc. have been doing for ages already?) by presenting them alongside the most outrageous.

But when you think of it,
the difference between lizardman's brow ridge implants and a buttock implant really aren't that different. Both are cosmetic modifications that change the shape of the body by inserting an implant below the skin/muscle.

I understand that on one level it's about societal notions of beauty, the acceptance of female body modification for those aims and a host of other social factors, but once you peel all that away, seems to me it's really just a matter of degree.

Up Down Up Down

On Tuesday, I began the following rant:

I just had one of the worst teaching days ever! Yes, I know I said that only about a month ago, but this one was worse!

What made it worse was not so much the actual class, even though the students were woefully unprepared for class itself, but the fact that this was the day my supervisor was sitting in on class. It felt like I was pulling teeth to get them to talk (and I know someone who pulls teeth and he makes it sound easier than this was) Then there were the several times when I felt awkward, out of control, and like I was talking a different language - one the students themselves didn't speak.... which I suppose is what I was doing, since I was talking poetry language, and they hadn't even read the poems I was talking about!

I couldn't figure it out at first. I thought maybe I was more nervous than usual because my supervisor was there (even though I only felt marginally nervous by the time class started) and that's why class seemed to be limping along, but then at one point I just stopped and asked how many hadn't read the poems. Half the class admitted to it, which means that probably 3/4 of them didn't actually read.

We didn't even have anything due today. What are they going to be like on the day the paper's due?

I despair.

And today?

Today was better. Not stellar. But soooo much better than Tuesday. Either the students who hadn't read the material masked it better, or they actually had read it.

Maybe it was me. I was so disgusted with the class on Tuesday that when I walked into the classroom, all I could think about is how much I really didn't want to be there and how unfair it was that the students could skip class whenever they didn't want to go, but the teacher can't. And then the first thing I get from them is that some of them couldn't figure out how to find the online source. Hello?! We've been downloading stuff for weeks! Does this mean you haven't downloaded anything? Or that you've forgotten everything you know about downloading?

It's a good thing no one sits in the front row because otherwise they would've heard me grind my teeth when I turned to the board to write a few notes.

But then things changed. The students started talking. One particularly brilliant one gave such a concise and descriptive summary of the first reading, that all I said was 'great! that sums it up' and moved on.

I wonder if it was the humor of the situation? After all, the second poem we talked about was called "Souvenir de Monsieur Poop"... trying saying that to a class with a straight face!

They did think that Stevie Smith's poem reminded them of Shel Silverstein's, and many of them were fans of his... my kids are fans of his too, which makes me feel so much older than those students now...


On the other hand, I did also only have three quarters of the students there, which might account for why it went as well as it did - the slackers stayed home so they weren't dead weight in the classroom.

Minding someone else's business

A few minutes ago, I was sitting studying, feeling a little tired of all the reading I'd been doing when I hear this very strange thud from outside. Normally, I don't respond to much going on outside unless I'm lying in wait for a delivery truck, or someone is actually banging on part of my house, but the thud I heard was an unusual one.

I couldn't think of anything that would make such a sound.

So I got up and looked out the window - anything for a study break, right?

Imagine my surprise when I see a body at the bottom of the stairs leading to our house!

We ran outside, ferrying towels, first aid kit and umbrellas. I called hubby since he's the one with the most medical training in the house while I called 911.

It was one of our neighbors. I've talked to her only a couple of times. She's retired, used to own a wine store (hence we had something to talk about) and lives about six houses down.

She should be okay. She was able to stand, so her back wasn't hurt. She was very disoriented though, which is why the paramedics hauled her off... that, and she needed stitches to the side of her head and her nose was probably broken.

My willingness to suspend studying for the smallest thing - in this case a thud - worked out for the best this time. She'd fallen down a flight of three stairs, but the stairs are there because the front yard slopes, and it would've been difficult to see her from the street, or anywhere other than our house or the neighbor's (which is empty right now). So if I hadn't gotten up and looked out the window, she could've laid there a long time without anyone noticing.

It kinda feels good to know we could help someone today.

I don't understand

Seeing as two people near to my heart are visiting Washington D.C. in the next month, I was having a conversation about the whitehouse and tours with one of them. She pointed out that there is a very strange list of prohibited items if you take a White House tour (which she unfortunately can't because she's a foreign national).

They include:

handbags, book bags, backpacks, purses, food and beverages of any kind, strollers, cameras, video recorders or any type of recording device, tobacco products, personal grooming items (make-up, hair brush or comb, lip or hand lotions, etc.), any pointed objects (pens, knitting needles, etc.), aerosol containers, guns, ammunition, fireworks, electric stun guns, mace, martial arts weapons/devices, or knives of any size

While the weapons certainly make sense, just as the pointed objects and aerosol containers, I'm not sure what kind of damage a hair brush could do. I've seen some bad hairdos, including that oh-so-brief flirtation with backcombing in the 80s, but really, if someone were to backcomb Mr. Pres's hair, they really couldn't make him look any more ridiculous than this.