Hot for Teaching

Ugh. Sorry for being away for so long, but there's a good reason: I'm finally writing my diss, really putting words on paper, and I'm excited about the direction it's taking. Which means every other kind of writing seems kind of superfluous right now.

But I don't want to lose the, like, three people who read this blog.

Teaching has been exhilarating lately. Despite having taught various courses and hundreds upon hundreds of students, I've never had a class of around 30, for which I get to teach literature--not freshman composition, not lit and film, just literature--twice a week for majors. What a significant difference it is to have students who want to be in class, and who actually take notes regarding things that I say.

I'm happy for the opportunity to teach every term, mostly because it helps pay for school. I've been in graduate school since 2004 and I do not owe a dime for it--and that's because I've been able to teach. The problem is they usually stick me in Freshman Composition. It's assumed that because we study literature, that we automatically know how to teach writing. Now I probably know better than many grad students in other fields, but I do not consider myself an expert in teaching writing--it is truly a field unto itself. Literary criticism is an entirely different animal than teaching basic composition to students who can hardly write a sentence.

And so in my composition courses I rarely assign literature because what I hate even more is teaching people who don't give a crap about it. Which is why this term has been so great. I literally run out of time every single class, because I have so much to say and so little time to say it. I have to curb the urge to simply lecture the entire time, because it's such an intoxicating feeling. It's in front of a class like this that I realize how much I've learned--how many different ways I can take a lecture depending upon what associations I happen to be making that day with the material we cover. I'm usually quite fluid with my words, but I'm working on overcoming what I think is a monotonous tone when I lecture--and my low voice doesn't help. I like to pace, because it helps me think, but sometimes it prevents me from making eye-contact with students, which I'm also working on.

So far, the students have liked Dickinson the best, and for very good reason. What an amazing poet she is.

Wanna take my class?

My course description for English 380 next term:

Section 002 – Schwartz
This course will introduce you to the methods, techniques, and theories associated with analyzing and writing about literature. We’ll deal mainly with three genres: the short story, the poem, and the novel. You’ll become familiar with literary terminology, a selection of basic critical methods—including “close reading”—and we’ll occasionally touch upon the relationship between literature and its contexts, mainly the political and social milieus from which texts originate.

Requirements for the course include a midterm and final, as well as 2-4 medium-length papers and one longer paper (+/- 10 pgs). We’ll read short stories by Faulkner, Joyce, O’Connor, Wright, and Melville; poems by Whitman, Dickinson, Stevens, Toomer, Auden, Yeats, and Keats; and Thomas Pynchon’s first novel, V. (1963)

Even Sandy's and Danny's summer ended

My summer is officially over. Tuesday I start back to teaching class, and more importantly, begin my newly disciplined and streamlined schedule in which I finish the first chapter of my diss this term.

I'm very habitual and live by my routines. Alas, malaise, much like I imagine a very addictive drug, is the easiest habit to acquire, and has overgrown my day-to-day this summer like a bad weed. Granted, much of that was spent with my new daughter, so I really don't regret my do-nothingness. Nevertheless, I must thwart summer's complacency with different and better habits.

That means less TV (and football season is starting, too!). Less time online. Less sleeping generally. More time writing. Hopefully not less time with Ada and Michele. Overall, less fun.

For, malaise, contrary to its connations of rottedness and decadence, can also be a tempting wellspring of, maybe not joy, but certainly a deceiving contentment. Even further reason to rekindle my ambition, lest I become permanently mired in a bog I only thought had been a fountainhead.

Here's to summer, and back to life.