School Observations & Reactions - Fall 2007 (Week 15)
I feel so out of it today, and part of that has to do with the suddenness of Friday's arrival. Days are flying by now, and I quickly trade one set of anxieties for another as deadlines pass, and I feel that nearly post-coital relief of handing in something I slaved over. Taking a deep breath, craving a cigarette, I gear up for the next one. This time of year obligations and plans pile up and can overshadow the joy of the moment.
Yesterday, I gave my presentation on Trinh Minh-ha for my Feminist Literary Critical Theory class and it went really well. I skipped work to finish preparing it, which has become the standard procedure for days when I have some due of a higher stakes than the general response papers. We've gotten to the post-colonial feminist studies section of the class, and so discussed an essay by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in which she discusses Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea and Frankenstein, examining them for potential critiques of imperialism (or failure to do so). I gave my presentation, but since the essay by Trinh Minh-ha we were assigned was "optional," I was correct in my guess that most people in the class would not have read it. Thus, instead of focusing on the essay I tried to give an overview of Trinh's main ideas and works. She is really fucking brilliant and I love the way she works in different mediums, disciplines and realms, and does not seem to privilege one over the other. I am really interested in seeing her films.
Next week our final papers are due, and I think I am going to use some of this research on post-colonial studies to my advantage and write something about that. . . and since she is giving us free reign to write whatever we want, I think I am going to write use a combination of narrative (regarding some of my family history - which is basically the history of the women in my family, as they are the bonding force) with some broader theoretical explorations. When we hand that in we'll get our take-home final, which is due the week after.
But before that, this coming Tuesday I have to give a presentation on an essay for Teaching College Composition, which is not as big a deal as the syllabus for an English I or English II class I have to hand in that same day. As you might know, the actually nuts and bolts of teaching make me nervous, and despite enjoying the theoretical pedagogical aspect of the class, I feel like we could have benefited from a lot more example and exercises and specific discussion on creating syllabi - we had none, except for a quick glance an example a student had handed in the year before. It just doesn't seem right that all of a sudden we had to be thinking of what kind of reading we want to build the class around, when it was never discussed in class, and most of the semester Professor Brooks has been emphasizing, "English I is a composition course, it is not a course about reading. The reading is a springboard."
At least I got an 'A' on that stupid 'Letter to the Editor' assignment.
Speaking of grades, before Literature of Brooklyn on Wednesday, I went to consult with my professor for that class about my final paper (I'll be writing about Lethem's Fortress of Solitude) and to talk about my master's thesis, which I have officially decided to change in a big way. I mean, my new idea has absolutely nothing to do with my original idea (which I even did research for already and wrote a prospectus for) which was "Animal Figures & The Proto-Acculturative Zone." Now, I am going to be writing something about the Post-Coloniality and Brooklyn Literature & Gentrification, and since Professor Nadell is the resident expert on all things Brooklyn Lit, it made perfect sense for her to be my thesis advisor - which she volunteered to do before I even got a chance to ask, and then immediately started quizzing me about my plans for a doctorate and giving me advise for that as well.
Part of that advice had an immediate impact. She convinced me that instead of taking Language, Culture & Society (which is something I am really interested in) that I should take Literature of the Middle Ages (something that I am sure is going to bore me to tears1 (sorry, ladybird97!), because I know the professor and he gave me an A+ in the class I had with him, so I should target him for one of the three recommendations I will need. Oh, and to get back to my segue regarding grades, when Professor Nadell looked up my records on her office computer to better advise me, she let out a "Wow" when she saw them. "These are all A's, and you have A+'s. That's really good!"
The other class I had to sign up for was the only grad level comparative lit class being offered next semester (to meet a requirement), which is Literary Genres, its focus being "A Brief History of the Lyric." I am not too excited about that either, but I am willing to be pleasantly surprised. I heard from one of my respected classmates that the prof teaching that class is actually very good, so there is some hope.
Afterwards in class, we continued to brainstorm on paper ideas to help out those who were still trying to work out what they were going to write about, and then moved on to a second day of Fortress of Solitude, which is the only book we have spent nearly two full classes on - and deservedly so, I think. In my research for my paper, I found an interesting article that takes the reviewers of the book to task for ignoring the centrality of the issue of race and identity in it in order to focus soley on the "coming of age" aspect of the novel. The author of the article posits the same reason as I imagine, which was that the way it handles race makes self-identified white liberal folks uncomfortable. If the class discussion was anything to go by, it is tangled knot, and we struggled with and chewed it over quite a bit.
The final paper for this class is due the 19th. So that's, syllabus/presentation on the 11th, 7 to 10 page paper due on the 13th, 10 to 15 page paper due on the 19th, and take-home final due on the 20th. In addition, during that time I am having houseguests come on the 14th for a couple of days, and may have my brother staying with me one night on Sunday the 16th, and mi abuela is back in the hospital, and I have not had a chance to see her, as I have been crazy busy and getting back home without enough time to make visiting hours. I plan to go tomorrow afternoon. And then there is the pressure of X-mas shopping and being asked by my family what it is I want, when I'd rather call the whole thing off - get nothing, give nothing. And speaking of calling things off, I really wanted to start looking for a new apartment, but that keeps getting backburnered. . . I guess I will have a brief time in January to take care of it, if I decide to go through with a move. Also, I have come to recently note the increasing shabbiness of my clothes. I have probably not gone clothes shopping in three years! My wardrobe always suffers when I'm single. So I need to make time for that.
1 For me all the middle ages are good for is grist for fantasy stuff, otherwise while I have a passing historical interest, I do not have much of a literary one.
Yesterday, I gave my presentation on Trinh Minh-ha for my Feminist Literary Critical Theory class and it went really well. I skipped work to finish preparing it, which has become the standard procedure for days when I have some due of a higher stakes than the general response papers. We've gotten to the post-colonial feminist studies section of the class, and so discussed an essay by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in which she discusses Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea and Frankenstein, examining them for potential critiques of imperialism (or failure to do so). I gave my presentation, but since the essay by Trinh Minh-ha we were assigned was "optional," I was correct in my guess that most people in the class would not have read it. Thus, instead of focusing on the essay I tried to give an overview of Trinh's main ideas and works. She is really fucking brilliant and I love the way she works in different mediums, disciplines and realms, and does not seem to privilege one over the other. I am really interested in seeing her films.
Next week our final papers are due, and I think I am going to use some of this research on post-colonial studies to my advantage and write something about that. . . and since she is giving us free reign to write whatever we want, I think I am going to write use a combination of narrative (regarding some of my family history - which is basically the history of the women in my family, as they are the bonding force) with some broader theoretical explorations. When we hand that in we'll get our take-home final, which is due the week after.
But before that, this coming Tuesday I have to give a presentation on an essay for Teaching College Composition, which is not as big a deal as the syllabus for an English I or English II class I have to hand in that same day. As you might know, the actually nuts and bolts of teaching make me nervous, and despite enjoying the theoretical pedagogical aspect of the class, I feel like we could have benefited from a lot more example and exercises and specific discussion on creating syllabi - we had none, except for a quick glance an example a student had handed in the year before. It just doesn't seem right that all of a sudden we had to be thinking of what kind of reading we want to build the class around, when it was never discussed in class, and most of the semester Professor Brooks has been emphasizing, "English I is a composition course, it is not a course about reading. The reading is a springboard."
At least I got an 'A' on that stupid 'Letter to the Editor' assignment.
Speaking of grades, before Literature of Brooklyn on Wednesday, I went to consult with my professor for that class about my final paper (I'll be writing about Lethem's Fortress of Solitude) and to talk about my master's thesis, which I have officially decided to change in a big way. I mean, my new idea has absolutely nothing to do with my original idea (which I even did research for already and wrote a prospectus for) which was "Animal Figures & The Proto-Acculturative Zone." Now, I am going to be writing something about the Post-Coloniality and Brooklyn Literature & Gentrification, and since Professor Nadell is the resident expert on all things Brooklyn Lit, it made perfect sense for her to be my thesis advisor - which she volunteered to do before I even got a chance to ask, and then immediately started quizzing me about my plans for a doctorate and giving me advise for that as well.
Part of that advice had an immediate impact. She convinced me that instead of taking Language, Culture & Society (which is something I am really interested in) that I should take Literature of the Middle Ages (something that I am sure is going to bore me to tears1 (sorry, ladybird97!), because I know the professor and he gave me an A+ in the class I had with him, so I should target him for one of the three recommendations I will need. Oh, and to get back to my segue regarding grades, when Professor Nadell looked up my records on her office computer to better advise me, she let out a "Wow" when she saw them. "These are all A's, and you have A+'s. That's really good!"
The other class I had to sign up for was the only grad level comparative lit class being offered next semester (to meet a requirement), which is Literary Genres, its focus being "A Brief History of the Lyric." I am not too excited about that either, but I am willing to be pleasantly surprised. I heard from one of my respected classmates that the prof teaching that class is actually very good, so there is some hope.
Afterwards in class, we continued to brainstorm on paper ideas to help out those who were still trying to work out what they were going to write about, and then moved on to a second day of Fortress of Solitude, which is the only book we have spent nearly two full classes on - and deservedly so, I think. In my research for my paper, I found an interesting article that takes the reviewers of the book to task for ignoring the centrality of the issue of race and identity in it in order to focus soley on the "coming of age" aspect of the novel. The author of the article posits the same reason as I imagine, which was that the way it handles race makes self-identified white liberal folks uncomfortable. If the class discussion was anything to go by, it is tangled knot, and we struggled with and chewed it over quite a bit.
The final paper for this class is due the 19th. So that's, syllabus/presentation on the 11th, 7 to 10 page paper due on the 13th, 10 to 15 page paper due on the 19th, and take-home final due on the 20th. In addition, during that time I am having houseguests come on the 14th for a couple of days, and may have my brother staying with me one night on Sunday the 16th, and mi abuela is back in the hospital, and I have not had a chance to see her, as I have been crazy busy and getting back home without enough time to make visiting hours. I plan to go tomorrow afternoon. And then there is the pressure of X-mas shopping and being asked by my family what it is I want, when I'd rather call the whole thing off - get nothing, give nothing. And speaking of calling things off, I really wanted to start looking for a new apartment, but that keeps getting backburnered. . . I guess I will have a brief time in January to take care of it, if I decide to go through with a move. Also, I have come to recently note the increasing shabbiness of my clothes. I have probably not gone clothes shopping in three years! My wardrobe always suffers when I'm single. So I need to make time for that.
1 For me all the middle ages are good for is grist for fantasy stuff, otherwise while I have a passing historical interest, I do not have much of a literary one.