Forgive Me For Complaining.

At this time a year ago, I was going nuts. Or more nuts. During the first three days of Thanksgiving Break a year ago, I wrote a twenty-six page paper. Then, frustrated by how freakin’ hard grad school was and by how much I still had to do during the semester (and over the course of my grad career), I had a bit of a nervous breakdown. I decided that I was going to quit. Then, I had a great three days, as I was doing no homework and felt that I had no more homework to ever do again. Then, on the Saturday of that break, I decided that since I only had two weeks to go and everything would be over for the semester, I should just finish out and see how it goes. I went back to school, did two presentations and wrote two twenty-five page papers and a thirty pager and did fine.

This semester, things are both the same and different. In the next two weeks, I, much like last year, have too much to do:

1. Teach five more times (and keep office hours)
2. Finish grading and report my students’ final grades
3. Read the novel Moscow Yankee
4. Write a 15-20 page paper on the metaphysical implications of Henri Bergson’s theory of laughter and prove that the resulting theory is viable by demonstrating it in the workings of Moliere’s Tartuffe
5. Write a 15-20 page paper on T.S. Eliot’s assumption in “The Waste Land” of the linguistic forms of Yahwehistic poetry
6. Write a 15-20 page collation essay on the four versions of Wilfred Owens’s poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est.”
7. Read several hundred pages of poetry
8. Slog through about thirty critical articles
9. Take two final exams
10. Apply to ACU for that class I want to take

The odd thing is, all this stuff isn’t bothering me too much this year. It’s not going to be fun. But I’ve done it before. And when I finish this time, it’s over, at least for a good while.

The nice thing about getting several degrees is that my family gives me another graduation gift at every new graduation. For high school, I got a car. For my BA, I got a computer. For my MA, my parent bought me a little digital camera. That’s not bad. And just think, I may get to graduate a two or three more times before I’m through!

The Ladies Do Love Me...

When I lived in Abilene, that whole city would be overrun intermitently by a different insect. I've seen plague-like infestations of termites (the flying kind), stink-bugs, and crickets. And crickets.

Now I'm in Menard, and I'm getting to see a new insect infestation that I hadn't really expected. Ladybugs. They are everywhere. I just counted twenty-five on my bedroom light. And there are plenty more all around the rest of the room. On the curtains, on the tv, around my lamp, climbing out of the air-conditioner, on my bed. Everywhere. It's odd. I remember that ladybugs used to be a rare sight that we would be excited about because they were pretty rare. No longer.

The odder thing is that they're only in my bedroom. Nowhere else in the house. They're drawn to me. It's a little strange, though I guess it could be worse.

Wackos

I notice that the number of hits on my blog went up pretty significantly over the last few days. I wonder why. Was it, perhaps, that the word "porn" appeared in the last post?

Education

Yeah, two things happened in my classes last week that are embarassing enough to share here.

First, I once again taught class with my fly unzipped (I've got to wear a different pair of pants when I teach--either that or wear longer shirts (that's the problem--I was wearing a sweatshirt)). Anyway, unlike last time, one of my students pointed this out to me during my lecture. Everyone giggle. I said thanks, turned around, faced the board, zipped up my pants, turned back around, and kept going, making the next section of the lecture much more boring than it had to be to stop the murmuring, and the moment passed pretty quickly.

After this near-porn moment, however, the next class I taught had a real porn moment. I was substituting for a friend, and I was supposed to show a few scenes from Office Space and then use the character's problems in those scenes as an example for explaining this week's essay (a problem-solving paper based on a workplace problem). It should all have worked smoothly, though of course, it didn't quite. I didn't realize it, but evidently, I was supposed to show two scenes, skip a scene, and then show a third scene. I didn't realize I was supposed to skip that scene.

Of course, that scene had its fair share of nudity. And it was also that scene with the pretty famous conversation--"What would you do if you had a million dollars?" Ans. "Two girls at the same time." It's not exactly what you show a freshman class in Lubbock, TX. Maybe an upper level class that has been warned, but not a freshman level class, even if most of them have seen the movie.

I wasn't actually watching the movie at the time and was instead doing some of my own homework, so I didn't realize what was going on until the class suddenly gasped and then started to laugh. Then, it was too late. I decided to pretend like I was supposed to show them that scene, and we watched the film until the real scene we were supposed to watch was over.

The conversation afterward was a little awkward.

Funny Freshmen

I have this student. She started emailing me about Thursday last week about trying to meet me in my office. My normal office hours conflict with her class and practice times (she's a cheerleader), and she wanted to "talk over her test." I thought that that was odd, since I don't give tests in my class, only essays. Still, I thought she had just accidentally put "test" instead of "paper," and I started responding, trying to work out a time when she could come in. During one of the earlier emails in the string of emails that followed, my student asked where my office was, and I told her that it was in the English Building, room 413. All of these emails were sent to my class email account also--pierce1301, as in ENGL 1301, the course I (Mr. Pierce) teach. After about six or so emails, we worked out a time.

It's pretty easy to see where this is going. She comes in to my office today, and the moment she steps in the door, she exclaims, "You're not my psychology professor!!!" The poor thing. She had forgotten her teacher's names (that shows how exciting a professor I've been) and had been exchanging emails with the wrong professor. And she had missed all the clear signs that I was her English professor rather than her psychology professor.

Ah Freshman, I love'm.

By the way, she's no dummy, just a bit of a ditz. She has an A in the course.

Funny

Here's the set-up. Click on the comments link to see the punchline.


How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light-bulb?

And Another One

The Leader

Head like a big
watermelon,
frequently thumped
and still not ripe.

A nice little poem I happened across by Wendell Berry.

A Passing Thought

I think therefore
I think I am.

Quite a Day

Today was quite a day. I can't tell you all the details here in this public forum, but I definitely did something I had never planned to do.

You see, we had this meeting here in the department concerning the departmental split that's going down. Of course, I'm quite passionate about it, since my literature and creative writing friends among the grad students and the faculty are getting screwed. Anyway, so we had this meeting where our weasely department chair was going to explain his decision. He talked, and we graduate students tore him apart. His ideas were illogical, and we showed it. His actions were unethical, and we showed it. Of course, none of it mattered. His decision's made, and he's blind as to what they mean. So it goes.

I played a small part in the discussion, and that's what surprised me. The chair had said a load of crap about his actions helping the literature, creative writing, and linguistics people clarify their goals as a department. Of course, it was crap. So, I spoke up finally in the meeting, in front of a lot of people. I said something about how his actions contradicted his BS by claiming that he was doing this largely for the good of the literature, creative writing, and linguistics people at the same time he was keeping all of his negotiations and maneuvers in secret from them. I said to him that this contradiction "seems to indicate in you a lack of sincerity--as always."

That's what surprised me. I not only spoke in a large departmental meeting in front of a lot of colleagues and several important people, I also told the chair of my department that he lacks integrity. We'll see if I get that job I need next semester from the department.

Yeah, my computer crashed also. It was quite a day.

I didn't like the movie Cold Mountain, but when I found this passage from the book in my inbox the other day, I liked it. It seemed awfully relevant for our times. I've been meaning to post it for a while.




Private Inman and his companion, an unnamed boy-soldier from Tennessee, are sitting out the night in a frozen Civil War battlefield “littered with bodies, and churned up by artillery.” It is long past midnight, and the eeriness of the carnage is still keeping them from sleep. Suddenly Inman spies Orion and, finding comfort in its familiar shape, is able to relax. The constellation stands there on the eastern horizon “like a sign in the sky…sure of himself as a man can be.” Pointing it out, Inman tells his comrade that the name of Orion’s brightest star is Rigel:

The boy peered up and said, How do you know its name?
- I read it in a book, Inman said.
- Then that’s just a name we give it, the boy said. It ain’t God’s name.

Inman had thought on the issue a minute and then said, How would you ever come to know God’s name for that star?
- You wouldn’t, He holds it close, the boy said. It’s a thing you’ll never know. It’s a lesson that sometimes we’re meant to settle for ignorance. Right there’s what mostly comes of knowledge, the boy said, tipping his chin out at the broken land…

At the time, Inman had thought the boy a fool and had remained content to know our name for Orion’s principal star and to let God keep His a dark secret. But he now wondered if the boy might have had a point about knowledge, or at least some varieties of it.

Funny Freshmen

This weekend, I was grading. I was grading a lot. It's a problem-solving paper they are writing, so the students were supposed to talk about a workplace problem, and they all have had the same problems. People who supervise pools are not nice to the lifeguards evidently, and every female at the school has been sexually harassed. These problems are just fine, but they get boring after a while. You would think that reading about other people's problems would be great, but it gets dull after a while (You've probably noticed this with regards to my blog). Anyway, then along would come these priceless ones.

Like the one where the workplace problem was that the manager had published all of the waiters and waitresses social security numbers on the back of the menu, and nobody noticed for several weeks. That's not an ordinary workplace problem.

Or the student whose manager had started rubbing her shoulders one day. She decided to squirm out of his way while making a nice comment so that she would get out of the situation and not lose her job. So she ducked and twisted and got out of the way while saying "That feels good." This was all bad and not at all funny. But then the manager guy made his supposedly suave and sexy comment: "That feels good because I'm an expert in the fine art of kama sutra." The girl laughed and moved on to another job.

I need to post again sometime, don't I?

It is done.

It's finished. The Portfolio of Doom is finally completed. One hundred sixty-nine pages. Four hundred twenty-nine kilobytes. It is done.

I can now go back to doing my other homework.