Grad School Report - Spring 2008 (Week 3)
It was one of those mornings because it was one of those nights. You know the kind, waking up every hour or so, seeing that its 3:30 am, 4:40 am, 5:20 am. . . It is hot and then it is cold, the pillows are flat, your throat is parched, you are too much aware of the weight of your body to ever find a comfortable position. . . And then when the alarm finally does go off at 6ish - Snooze, snooze, snooze. Wrapping the comforter tighter around you, knowing that with each slap of the snooze bar you are closer to being late, to dealing with crowded trains, missing out on the only part of the work day that is tolerable - the quiet of the early morning before anyone else arrives - But you don't care - those seven or eight minutes of sleep at a time seem so damn precious, you cling to them. . . Thanks god for those 35 minutes on the 'D' train - that's the best sleep I get.
On Monday the English 2 students had another in-class writing assignment. The professor had them go to the archive on poems.com choose any poem and discuss their choice in small groups and then write the introductory paragraph (with underlined thesis) as a headstart on a paper on the poem itself which would be due at the next class meeting. I seem to always have issue with the way the prof does things. First of all, there are at least a thousand different poems on that site of varying degrees of difficulty and quality, and he provided no guidelines or advice for choosing. I watched some students flip through poem after poem not knowing which (or how) to choose, while others just kind of picked the first poem that struck their fancy - usually based on the title. As I wandered around I tried my best to help them decide just by asking questions about what criteria they were using to choose (though most of them could not articulate their criteria). Secondly, that whole underlining the thesis thing sticks in my craw. Not because a thesis statement is not important to framing your argument, but because his emphasis on that before everything else is putting the cart before the horse in my opinion. How is a student supposed to come up with a thesis in their introductory paragraph when they have just read the poem for the first time moments ago and probably not sure what it is they are going to argue about it? I wandered around some more trying to ask facilitative questions that might lead them to look at their chosen poems a little differently, a little more deeply. Some of them are really into looking up the multiple definitions of words that are unfamiliar to them, or seem emphasized in the poem - which I think is a great start, but I also reminded them to consider the relationships of words/objects in the poems to each other - for example, one of the poems mentioned squares and cubes, and I told one group of students who were all working on that poem and very concerned with the definition of squares and cubes, to try to think about the relationship of squares to cubes and the language of geometry that pervaded the poem. I also told them not to forget what the title of the poem ("She Considers the Dimensions of Her Soul") might suggest about the poem in general and that relationship in specific.
After class, I had my first one-on-one meeting with a student during my "office hours," as his first paper (on "To His Coy Mistress") was handed back with no grade and a note that said "please see me." It seemed the prof felt that the student's writing was not up to par to passing the class, and he suggested additional meetings with a tutor, and to meet with me to go over it. It became clear while reading over his paper that the professor did not read past the first three or four sentences, and that while the student was having some basic ESL problems with writing, and an overall problem constructing his argument, his reading of individual lines were right on, and he knew what he was doing. He just need some "big picture" help. We also went over the poem he chose for the paper the class had started that day, and I gave him the same advice I gave the other student, that he should try writing some about the poem to see where it takes him and then craft a thesis.
I do want to say that I am loving dealing with the students and helping them. It just feels right, like it is what I should be doing - which is a feeling I have never had at any job ever. I also realized that before taxes I make just about as much in a week of TAing this class as I make as I make in an hour of my day job. . . Crazy.
Yesterday the class met in the library in order to watch the first hour of Arthur Miller's Death of Salesman, which I have not seen or read since high school, and which is one of the three plays the class will be choosing to write about for their final research paper. It was an old production, with George Segal as Biff and a young Gene Wilder as Bernard. I love things that are simultaneously funny and depressing. I like things with simultaneity. Afterwards, I collected the papers and left to get started on them - as I will be grading them (well, correcting them and then suggesting a grade the prof will then approve (or not)). But I did not get started on them - instead I got sucked into the discussion of Absalom! Absalom! on the blog for my The Language of Place and Location in American Literature of Brooklyn and the South class. I need a shorter version of that, perhaps LoPaLiALoBatS. . . Actually, that seems like the name of a character in book we might read for this class: Lopalia LoBats.
I need to get to those papers this weekend as they are due to the prof on Tuesday afternoon.
Wow. . . Absalom, Absalom! Once I finished I immediately began to read it again as I was mesmerized, enervated, drawn deep into it by the rhythms of its language and the plurality of voices and knocked around, abused. Easily, easily, one of the best books I have ever read. I wrote in my response paper (and posted to the blog):
Absalom, Absalom! seems to be an indictment of the American South using incest as the counterpoint to the social, legal and moral gymnastics required to justify both keeping Blacks enslaved before the Civil War and accountable for its treatment at the hands of the North after the war. That is to say, by having Henry Sutpen waver on the acceptability of incest, but to be driven to definite (if delayed) action by the idea of miscegenation, Faulkner is describing a shocking moral hierarchy that underscores the hypocrisy of Southern views of race and sex wherein lies a deep-seated and simultaneous desire to both merge with and resist 'the other.'
We had the actual class at 6:20, and the class size has ballooned from five students to an unwieldy six! There was lively discussion that I really enjoyed, and the time flew by. We easily could have continued talking about the book for another two hours. . . In fact, we decided to spend another class session on this dense and rewarding text before moving on to The Fortress of Solitude, which is a surprisingly. . . well, not "dense" exactly, but certainly rewarding in the sense that the more time you spend with the text the more there is to discover. Lethem may not be Faulkner, but he doesn't have to be to tackle that complex jumble of race and class in an effective way.
I am the only man in that class which is fine by me. Other men tend to bring out that competitive and aggressive spirit in me, while I am generally much more mellow around women, except of course, when I am foolishly trying to impress one - but thankfully, I am able to curb that behavior in a classroom setting.
Once again I have jumped around in time, skipping my Literature of the Middle Ages class in favor of classes I am enjoying. Well, I skipped talking about my Brief History of the Lyric class, too - but that is because we did not have it this week due to Lincoln's birthday ("Lincoln wasn't Cuban!"). I guess I don't have much to say about Lit of the Middle Ages. The class seems to drag and the discussion is not nearly as lively or fun, or even as constant - as the professor seems to be having a hard time getting the class to engage with the text. I just think his approach is a bit disjointed and I can sense his frustration in those weighty silent moments before anyone responds. We finished discussing Augustine's Confessions (though it felt to me that we left so much undiscussed), and we are now moving to reading A Monk's Confession: The Memoirs of Guibert of Nogent, which I am kind of liking - despite suffering (to a lesser degree) from that same repetitive and obsequious religious language that permeated Augustine - but why should I expect it to be any different? I mean, it is a monk's memoir. It is not the texts in this class I am objecting to at all - it is the discussion of them in class. On the blog front, everyone's comments are interesting for the most part - much more interesting than the class itself, actually. . . Perhaps we are all burning ourselves out online?
I have not yet had one full week of classes since the semester started, and next week will be no different as Lit of the Middle Ages does not meet on Monday. I've been so tired lately that I am a little scared of when that first full week happens and the worry of how I can possible get all my reading done.
Today is Valentine's Day (when did they drop the "Saint"?) and it is just a stupid empty holiday full of sappy and shallow sentiment that is only mitigated by chocolate. Mmmmmm, bitter dark chocolate! My new response to people in the office when they say "Happy Valentine's Day" is "Fuck you," with a smile . . It makes people laugh. I guess it's all in the delivery. But all you single folks out there, don't let V-day Hallmark bullshit get you down and remember to STAY INDEPENDENT! (only 142 shopping days until Independence Day!) - because going from single to attached is just a matter of trading one set of problems for another.
On Monday the English 2 students had another in-class writing assignment. The professor had them go to the archive on poems.com choose any poem and discuss their choice in small groups and then write the introductory paragraph (with underlined thesis) as a headstart on a paper on the poem itself which would be due at the next class meeting. I seem to always have issue with the way the prof does things. First of all, there are at least a thousand different poems on that site of varying degrees of difficulty and quality, and he provided no guidelines or advice for choosing. I watched some students flip through poem after poem not knowing which (or how) to choose, while others just kind of picked the first poem that struck their fancy - usually based on the title. As I wandered around I tried my best to help them decide just by asking questions about what criteria they were using to choose (though most of them could not articulate their criteria). Secondly, that whole underlining the thesis thing sticks in my craw. Not because a thesis statement is not important to framing your argument, but because his emphasis on that before everything else is putting the cart before the horse in my opinion. How is a student supposed to come up with a thesis in their introductory paragraph when they have just read the poem for the first time moments ago and probably not sure what it is they are going to argue about it? I wandered around some more trying to ask facilitative questions that might lead them to look at their chosen poems a little differently, a little more deeply. Some of them are really into looking up the multiple definitions of words that are unfamiliar to them, or seem emphasized in the poem - which I think is a great start, but I also reminded them to consider the relationships of words/objects in the poems to each other - for example, one of the poems mentioned squares and cubes, and I told one group of students who were all working on that poem and very concerned with the definition of squares and cubes, to try to think about the relationship of squares to cubes and the language of geometry that pervaded the poem. I also told them not to forget what the title of the poem ("She Considers the Dimensions of Her Soul") might suggest about the poem in general and that relationship in specific.
After class, I had my first one-on-one meeting with a student during my "office hours," as his first paper (on "To His Coy Mistress") was handed back with no grade and a note that said "please see me." It seemed the prof felt that the student's writing was not up to par to passing the class, and he suggested additional meetings with a tutor, and to meet with me to go over it. It became clear while reading over his paper that the professor did not read past the first three or four sentences, and that while the student was having some basic ESL problems with writing, and an overall problem constructing his argument, his reading of individual lines were right on, and he knew what he was doing. He just need some "big picture" help. We also went over the poem he chose for the paper the class had started that day, and I gave him the same advice I gave the other student, that he should try writing some about the poem to see where it takes him and then craft a thesis.
I do want to say that I am loving dealing with the students and helping them. It just feels right, like it is what I should be doing - which is a feeling I have never had at any job ever. I also realized that before taxes I make just about as much in a week of TAing this class as I make as I make in an hour of my day job. . . Crazy.
Yesterday the class met in the library in order to watch the first hour of Arthur Miller's Death of Salesman, which I have not seen or read since high school, and which is one of the three plays the class will be choosing to write about for their final research paper. It was an old production, with George Segal as Biff and a young Gene Wilder as Bernard. I love things that are simultaneously funny and depressing. I like things with simultaneity. Afterwards, I collected the papers and left to get started on them - as I will be grading them (well, correcting them and then suggesting a grade the prof will then approve (or not)). But I did not get started on them - instead I got sucked into the discussion of Absalom! Absalom! on the blog for my The Language of Place and Location in American Literature of Brooklyn and the South class. I need a shorter version of that, perhaps LoPaLiALoBatS. . . Actually, that seems like the name of a character in book we might read for this class: Lopalia LoBats.
I need to get to those papers this weekend as they are due to the prof on Tuesday afternoon.
Wow. . . Absalom, Absalom! Once I finished I immediately began to read it again as I was mesmerized, enervated, drawn deep into it by the rhythms of its language and the plurality of voices and knocked around, abused. Easily, easily, one of the best books I have ever read. I wrote in my response paper (and posted to the blog):
Absalom, Absalom! seems to be an indictment of the American South using incest as the counterpoint to the social, legal and moral gymnastics required to justify both keeping Blacks enslaved before the Civil War and accountable for its treatment at the hands of the North after the war. That is to say, by having Henry Sutpen waver on the acceptability of incest, but to be driven to definite (if delayed) action by the idea of miscegenation, Faulkner is describing a shocking moral hierarchy that underscores the hypocrisy of Southern views of race and sex wherein lies a deep-seated and simultaneous desire to both merge with and resist 'the other.'
We had the actual class at 6:20, and the class size has ballooned from five students to an unwieldy six! There was lively discussion that I really enjoyed, and the time flew by. We easily could have continued talking about the book for another two hours. . . In fact, we decided to spend another class session on this dense and rewarding text before moving on to The Fortress of Solitude, which is a surprisingly. . . well, not "dense" exactly, but certainly rewarding in the sense that the more time you spend with the text the more there is to discover. Lethem may not be Faulkner, but he doesn't have to be to tackle that complex jumble of race and class in an effective way.
I am the only man in that class which is fine by me. Other men tend to bring out that competitive and aggressive spirit in me, while I am generally much more mellow around women, except of course, when I am foolishly trying to impress one - but thankfully, I am able to curb that behavior in a classroom setting.
Once again I have jumped around in time, skipping my Literature of the Middle Ages class in favor of classes I am enjoying. Well, I skipped talking about my Brief History of the Lyric class, too - but that is because we did not have it this week due to Lincoln's birthday ("Lincoln wasn't Cuban!"). I guess I don't have much to say about Lit of the Middle Ages. The class seems to drag and the discussion is not nearly as lively or fun, or even as constant - as the professor seems to be having a hard time getting the class to engage with the text. I just think his approach is a bit disjointed and I can sense his frustration in those weighty silent moments before anyone responds. We finished discussing Augustine's Confessions (though it felt to me that we left so much undiscussed), and we are now moving to reading A Monk's Confession: The Memoirs of Guibert of Nogent, which I am kind of liking - despite suffering (to a lesser degree) from that same repetitive and obsequious religious language that permeated Augustine - but why should I expect it to be any different? I mean, it is a monk's memoir. It is not the texts in this class I am objecting to at all - it is the discussion of them in class. On the blog front, everyone's comments are interesting for the most part - much more interesting than the class itself, actually. . . Perhaps we are all burning ourselves out online?
I have not yet had one full week of classes since the semester started, and next week will be no different as Lit of the Middle Ages does not meet on Monday. I've been so tired lately that I am a little scared of when that first full week happens and the worry of how I can possible get all my reading done.
Today is Valentine's Day (when did they drop the "Saint"?) and it is just a stupid empty holiday full of sappy and shallow sentiment that is only mitigated by chocolate. Mmmmmm, bitter dark chocolate! My new response to people in the office when they say "Happy Valentine's Day" is "Fuck you," with a smile . . It makes people laugh. I guess it's all in the delivery. But all you single folks out there, don't let V-day Hallmark bullshit get you down and remember to STAY INDEPENDENT! (only 142 shopping days until Independence Day!) - because going from single to attached is just a matter of trading one set of problems for another.