Like sands through the hourglass...
I'm in the midst of spring break and have no papers to grade, so of course I'm thinking about...school. Well. Hogwarts, at any rate.
I know that teaching at the secondary level involves more actual in-class work than those of us who teach in universities have to deal with; that's just the way things go. However, even secondary school teachers are supposed to get some time to breathe, aren't they?
Snape is the *only* Potions instructor at Hogwarts, right? So, okay...let's take all the students, years one through seven. Two Houses-worth of students per class. Many references to double potions classes, so let's assume that each group gets at least two hours of Potions instruction per week, which brings us up to a minimum of 28 [7 x {4/2) x 2] teaching hours every week (during which time at least some students are bound to blow something up or poison themselves or poison their classmates, which has got to add something to the total workload...even if it's just extra yelling and looming time).
Add to that class preparation (and note that lab-type classes take far longer to prepare for than do lecture/discussion classes, since both require background preparation and organization, but the former also requires a physical set up before almost every class...although I suppose the aid of House Elves could be enlisted for that task). Plus - potions preparation unrelated to classes (including Wolfsbane and other equally complicated things), monitoring the corridors at night, and Head of House responsibilities...not to mention "Spying for the Light," of course.
Take into account Snape's basically misanthropic, high strung personality, and...you know, it's a wonder the man hasn't gone completely mad already.
(Mind you, I was just thinking yesterday as I was re-reading some scene from GoF: if *I* were Harry Potter, I'd have cursed Snape out long ago and probably would have hexed him with his own damned wand, with the result that Dumbledore would have been forced to expel me, savior of the wizarding world or not. Harry's relatively minor moments of backtalk actually demonstrate great self control, from my own [more typically hysterical and shrieking] perspective. So, as you can see...it's not *all* about the Snape Apologia, here in this journal.)
***
And now for something completely different:
I know I don't read in more fandoms than anyone else; just a quick glance at shrift's and Nestra's recs page would disabuse me of that notion if I were foolish enough to believe it. However, I'm beginning to think I just may have the inside edge in the "Most Pages of Fanfiction Read Per Day On A Regular Basis" (tm) sweepstakes.
I'm...a bit obsessive. There's really no other way to describe the way I read fanfiction - except possibly compulsive. Or obsessive-compulsive. Yeah, that sounds about right.
Oh, I read other things as well. The New York Times every day. Seven or eight magazines on a regular (weekly/monthly) basis. The Village Voice. The plays, poems, novels, etc. that I assign to my classes (plus relevant criticism). Student essays. Many online journals, blogs, websites. At least a dozen novels, biographies, histories, and the like are in-progress at any given time.
But fanfiction? God. A dozen stories a day? Two dozen? More? The truth is that I have no way of keeping track; it's all started to blend into one continuous fanfic-reading blur.
And I'm not talking about 5K snippets, here. I'm talking about 50K, 100K, 500K extravaganzas. A 500K story shows up on one of the archives I haunt at two in the morning, and I'm not going to go to sleep until I've read it. Ever.
Before you ask, no...I don't sleep (although that has nothing whatsoever to do with reading fanfiction and everything to do with genetic inheritance or habit or...something. Ever since I was 13 I've been able to get away with something like three to four hours of sleep a night, on average.). And yes, I do read incredibly quickly. But even so, I'm not quite sure how I get through the amount of fanfiction I read, considering I actually do go out, work, travel, take walks, play with the dog, see friends/family, and do all the other things that normal, non-obsessive people might do in their day to day lives.
But, you ask, doesn't this mean I end up reading a lot of dross? Oh babies, you don't know the half of it. I must have read at least part of every piece of Badfic that's (dis)graced the archives and websites of my favorite fandoms. I can attest to that Sturgeon-attributed saying ("90% of everything is crap") because I've read that 90%.
And it's not like I read these stories and then get to forget about them. Oh, no...that would be far too easy. All of them - the good, the bad, and the hideously ugly - remain permanently lodged in my brain, taking up space that could be better served by, oh...possibly some thoughts about how I really should consider doing my taxes before April 15th next year. But I know I won't.
Because on 14 April 2004, some really, really long story is going to be posted... and I'll have to read it.
In other news, my beta'ing is done! (I didn't dare post anything new here until I finished beta'ing those two stories. *g*)
I know that teaching at the secondary level involves more actual in-class work than those of us who teach in universities have to deal with; that's just the way things go. However, even secondary school teachers are supposed to get some time to breathe, aren't they?
Snape is the *only* Potions instructor at Hogwarts, right? So, okay...let's take all the students, years one through seven. Two Houses-worth of students per class. Many references to double potions classes, so let's assume that each group gets at least two hours of Potions instruction per week, which brings us up to a minimum of 28 [7 x {4/2) x 2] teaching hours every week (during which time at least some students are bound to blow something up or poison themselves or poison their classmates, which has got to add something to the total workload...even if it's just extra yelling and looming time).
Add to that class preparation (and note that lab-type classes take far longer to prepare for than do lecture/discussion classes, since both require background preparation and organization, but the former also requires a physical set up before almost every class...although I suppose the aid of House Elves could be enlisted for that task). Plus - potions preparation unrelated to classes (including Wolfsbane and other equally complicated things), monitoring the corridors at night, and Head of House responsibilities...not to mention "Spying for the Light," of course.
Take into account Snape's basically misanthropic, high strung personality, and...you know, it's a wonder the man hasn't gone completely mad already.
(Mind you, I was just thinking yesterday as I was re-reading some scene from GoF: if *I* were Harry Potter, I'd have cursed Snape out long ago and probably would have hexed him with his own damned wand, with the result that Dumbledore would have been forced to expel me, savior of the wizarding world or not. Harry's relatively minor moments of backtalk actually demonstrate great self control, from my own [more typically hysterical and shrieking] perspective. So, as you can see...it's not *all* about the Snape Apologia, here in this journal.)
***
And now for something completely different:
I know I don't read in more fandoms than anyone else; just a quick glance at shrift's and Nestra's recs page would disabuse me of that notion if I were foolish enough to believe it. However, I'm beginning to think I just may have the inside edge in the "Most Pages of Fanfiction Read Per Day On A Regular Basis" (tm) sweepstakes.
I'm...a bit obsessive. There's really no other way to describe the way I read fanfiction - except possibly compulsive. Or obsessive-compulsive. Yeah, that sounds about right.
Oh, I read other things as well. The New York Times every day. Seven or eight magazines on a regular (weekly/monthly) basis. The Village Voice. The plays, poems, novels, etc. that I assign to my classes (plus relevant criticism). Student essays. Many online journals, blogs, websites. At least a dozen novels, biographies, histories, and the like are in-progress at any given time.
But fanfiction? God. A dozen stories a day? Two dozen? More? The truth is that I have no way of keeping track; it's all started to blend into one continuous fanfic-reading blur.
And I'm not talking about 5K snippets, here. I'm talking about 50K, 100K, 500K extravaganzas. A 500K story shows up on one of the archives I haunt at two in the morning, and I'm not going to go to sleep until I've read it. Ever.
Before you ask, no...I don't sleep (although that has nothing whatsoever to do with reading fanfiction and everything to do with genetic inheritance or habit or...something. Ever since I was 13 I've been able to get away with something like three to four hours of sleep a night, on average.). And yes, I do read incredibly quickly. But even so, I'm not quite sure how I get through the amount of fanfiction I read, considering I actually do go out, work, travel, take walks, play with the dog, see friends/family, and do all the other things that normal, non-obsessive people might do in their day to day lives.
But, you ask, doesn't this mean I end up reading a lot of dross? Oh babies, you don't know the half of it. I must have read at least part of every piece of Badfic that's (dis)graced the archives and websites of my favorite fandoms. I can attest to that Sturgeon-attributed saying ("90% of everything is crap") because I've read that 90%.
And it's not like I read these stories and then get to forget about them. Oh, no...that would be far too easy. All of them - the good, the bad, and the hideously ugly - remain permanently lodged in my brain, taking up space that could be better served by, oh...possibly some thoughts about how I really should consider doing my taxes before April 15th next year. But I know I won't.
Because on 14 April 2004, some really, really long story is going to be posted... and I'll have to read it.
In other news, my beta'ing is done! (I didn't dare post anything new here until I finished beta'ing those two stories. *g*)