Back from the Dragon-Infested Precipice at the End of the Earth

I've been quiet here lately, and I should probably continue that silence today, considering that it's already 4:00 in the afternoon and I have yet to get a single important thing done. (Well, I taught a class this morning, but whatever.) But for the first time in a while, I feel like sharing. I won't share the really interesting stuff, like the imaginative ways some of my students have been messing with me, or the passive-agressive conflict I'm entrenched in with a family member, or the over-the-top crazy customer stories I've been able to collect at the bookstore lately. Sorry. I'm trying really hard to keep this blog from becoming a sounding board for my anxieties and bad moods.

But today I woke up to rain, and drove to work in rain, and drove home in rain, and read a good book and intermittently napped in a gray living room. And outside, there was rain. There's still rain. Some people might be depressed by that, but I love it. I've never listened closely enough to that Blind Melon song to really know what Shannon Hoon was talking about when he said, "And I start to complain that there's no rain," but I like to imagine that the guy was like me and felt comforted by rain. (I'm sure Eric will correct me later.) So I've been taking advantage of the weather, allowing myself to be lazy and sleepy and lost in a story. I'm even going to put a positive spin on a negative part of my day. Watch:

The downstairs neighbor is recording a pleasant, bluesy guitar riff this afternoon. I'm annoyed that it's as loud coming from his apartment as it would be if I were playing it on my own stereo, and I'm not in love with the constant stopping and starting over again, but I'm not complaining yet. That's partly because it's not as bad as the rap that usually emanates from downstairs, and partly because he's been pretty considerate lately and I feel indulgent, and partly because I'm exhausted from all the complaining I've done in the past couple of weeks, since I decided it didn't make sense for me to just accept his noise as part of my own life. The effort has paid off, especially in terms of the bass level and the inappropriate hours, but I instinctively avoid confrontation, and it's hard work for me to be a bitch, even in the very best sense of the word. Which is, by the way, Tina Fey's sense:



So today I'm taking a lot of deep breaths to suppress the sudden spikes in my blood pressure that correspond with the rise of the guitar notes, and it's working. I feel relaxed and refreshed and ready to turn up my own music so I can plan my last three days of class (hooray!) and later on, cook comfort food (homemade macaroni and cheese), then watch the presidential debate and make snarky comments about John McCain (it's called having fun with political bias, and I'm not proud of it, but I do enjoy it).

Compelling New Evidence that I'm a Total Geek

Next week I'm teaching a chapter on adjectives and adverbs, so today I'm writing a test that includes a number of sentences containing misplaced and dangling modifiers, and they are cracking me up. Some of my favorites:

After washing the car, my dog wanted to be walked.
Excited about my vacation, the plane took off soon after I boarded it.
Having not eaten for hours, the sandwich looked delicious.
At dinner I would indulge in a giant lobster tail watching the sunset.
Last year, my sister bought a car from a neighbor with no backseat.

Ha! Lobster tails watching the sunset! Now that's comedy!

I'm afraid this may be a very embarrassing week for me.

Getting Out My Telescope

The better to see the silver lining.

The class I taught today was for me largely an exercise in patience and crowd control; culpability, embarrassment, and humility; and understanding and authority.

The answer key for a quiz and I made a joint mistake, and then I went on to make some more all by myself. When I promised to regrade the quiz, a student argued that some of her classmates may have taken the opportunity to change their answers (true), and a tiny riot nearly broke out. It was not an exemplary day of teaching.

Except that I believe I handled it with grace, firmness, and respect toward everyone in the room. I've devised a solution to the problem that I'm confident will at least acknowledge each point of view that was (loudly) voiced, even though I don't expect anyone to be overjoyed by it.

Today I did what an instructor does when careful planning fails.

The Blogging Paradox

Sometimes this happens. I have things going on, things that beg to be blogged about. I think about blogging every day, but my brain is clogged by all these blogworthy things I'm doing, and I'm too busy to sit down and relax enough to let the clog flow free into this space. So even though I would like to feel able to write (vaguely and confidentially) about the class I started teaching this week, and even though you may be interested in hearing about that, I have a test to write and a couple of classes to plan, so we'll all have to be satisfied for the moment with a list, in no particular order and with mainstream choices unashamedly mingled with the heroically underplayed, of eleven women whose music you should probably be listening to, if you aren't already:

1. Keren Ann
2. Feist
3. Kate Nash
4. Regina Spektor
5. Madeleine Peyroux
6. Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton
7. The Pierces
8. Rachael Yamagata
9. Goldfrapp
10. KT Tunstall
11. Vyvienne Long

Better than an Apple on my Desk

Today I picked up the books for a reading class I'll be teaching this fall so we can stash more money to pay for the wedding, and there were some papers in my mailbox along with the books. Just now, while Eric ran to Blockbuster to pick up the next disc of Lost so we can stop scratching at our necks and having seizures and hallucinating dead babies on the ceiling, I casually looked through the stuff. The last thing I opened was a large envelope marked "Confidential," but with no other clues to its contents. The papers inside weren't clearly labeled either, so it took me a few seconds to realize that what I was looking at were the results of the student course evaluations they never mailed to me after the last class I taught at that school. After seven months, I wasn't expecting to ever see them. But I'm so glad I did.

Except for one or two outliers, they loved me, man. And reading their written comments made me remember that I liked them, too. I hadn't been sure how I felt about teaching again, but now I'm pretty sure I feel confident and even a little excited.

Aha

In the continuing spirit of instructor-class confidentiality I won't be specific, but there was a moment in class today when I was so proud I could've pooped.

And She Said

Let there be chicken and leek soup.

And there was chicken and leek soup.

And she saw that it was good.

And since this was on a day when she had also said, "Let there be a whole week's worth of class plans," and there were class plans, she was feeling pretty good about herself.

On Not Feeling Like It

My to-do list for today includes an exciting variety of tasks, none of which I want anything to do with. And while I'll admit that some of that laziness is internally generated, I really think the fact that it's 47 degrees outside right now and I have no say over whether there's heat in my apartment (which there isn't yet) is playing a supporting role. Today is a perfect day for putting on a pair of fleecy socks, sitting underneath a big fleecy blanket and the pair of cats who refuse to relinquish contact with the fleecy blanket, and reading a good book while drinking cup after cup of hot tea. In comparison, cleaning, vacuuming, planning classes, and grading all sound like very cold activities for a cold day.

Fair to Middling Day

There's just nothing quite like finding out that you won't be getting paid for another three weeks, and that your haircut just cost you half again more than you were expecting, on the very same day.

And it doesn't help when, while muttering to yourself in the car about the price of your haircut, you forget to stop at the library on your way home to pick up the Spenser novel you've been aching for because it's fall and time for some literary comfort food. And it makes it ever-increasingly worse when you aren't willing to get back in your car and drive the five minutes to the library because both sides of your whole street are posted with temporary no parking signs and you might lose your halfway-decent parking space on a cross street.

On the bright side, because I insist that there be a bright side to all of this, my haircut is pretty much fabulous, possibly the best I've ever had. And class was wonderful today, because before I tortured my class with their first test, I pulled out some of my best and most fun educational activities. Also, All Creatures Great and Small is pretty good cool-weather reading, even if it doesn't involve the character who inspired me, when I was 13, to learn to raise one eyebrow independently of the other.

First Day of Class

Ugh.

Privacy

My recent silence here, if you've wondered at all, can be partly attributed to my discovery that, thanks to my writing on a wonderful little website, I'm extremely easy to find in a Google search. And not just me, but this. Here. This blog. And as most of my teacher-friends will probably confirm, the idea of being findable on the internet can be an uncomfortable one. I hate limiting myself here, but I think any writing about my teaching experiences will now cease. That's a no-brainer, because smearing my reactions to teaching all over the internet is both unwise and unprofessional. But I'm also conflicted about the purely personal things I usually write about here. I'm friendly with my students, but I like to maintain at least a thin shroud of mystery around myself. I might tell them what I did over the weekend, but they don't need intimate knowledge of all my human weaknesses.

So I'll mull these things over, and maybe this blog will become more superficial for a while. I'll try not to stop writing entirely.

Competence

Last night, I walked into class better prepared, more confident, and less self-conscious. I was full of energy and authority and self-assurance, and that person from last week who apologized with her body language and her eyes and her tone of voice for being the teacher, boring and in charge, was gone. The students responded to me and I enjoyed being there. And now I remember how I "got through" all those other semesters of teaching. I did it by liking what I was doing, and by liking who I was while I did it.

Surfacing

I started teaching this week. And there are stories about that, stories those of you closest to me have already heard, involving American Sign Language interpretors and insubordination and serious language barriers. I understand why teaching this class has fallen to an adjunct instructor. I understand why none of the full-time faculty cared to take it on.

But today I'm less concerned about the innate challenges presented by the course than I am about the fact that I allowed myself to walk into that classroom on Monday, and again on Wednesday, shamefully unprepared. Practically until the moment the class started, I worked full-time at the bookstore, and that kept me from preparing properly, because I let it. Because I'm lazy these days. Because I've adjusted my worldview to permit laziness. I've decided that life without ample time to watch movies and read books and sit on the front porch with a beer is a life poorly lived.

And those things are important. I still believe that. I believe one of the problems with our culture is that so many of us refuse to rest. It's a culture of extremes and of competition, so we can never have enough money or enough friends, and if we know someone who spends more hours at work every week than we do, we aren't working hard enough. All of these contests we enter ourselves in leave us too little time for relationships with the people who mean the most to us, and far too little time to be alone.

But this year I've given myself down-time so excessively that I feel almost physically unbalanced. Almost physically unable to stay organized and keep up with daily tasks and errands, let alone be productive in meaningful ways. And when I'm productive, when I'm writing and teaching and I have a purpose beyond just getting through this next thing, is when I'm happiest, even if it is when I'm busiest. When I have so much on my plate that I can only choose to move through it systematically and laboriously, is when I feel the most organized and when the scattered little pieces of life find a place most easily.

Because I was intentionally keeping almost nothing on my plate when this teaching job fell onto it over a month ago, I couldn't find a place for it and kept just shoving it around, occasionally nibbling at it halfheartedly. When I could have been reading about theory and pedagogy and planning classes, I was thinking vaguely about what I would do the first couple of days of class, figuring that would be enough. With that, I would survive the first week.

Then I walked into class and it was exactly like the time when I was four years old and I walked into a dropoff in the lake. Instead of the surface of the water, I was suddenly looking at sand and seaweed and my own feet. And I couldn't breathe.

I discovered that I had been anticipating cardboard students who were less intelligent and intuitive than the three-dimensional people who sat down in the chairs on that first day. Almost immediately, I felt like a fraud, and I was pretty sure they knew all about it. I was relying on the textbook to direct my daily lessons, and I discovered that the textbook gives me next to nothing to work with. I can't spend six hours a week lecturing over four pages of text and doing interminable practice exercises. I discovered, suddenly, standing in front of ten strangers, that I had never actually been invested in this class. I was steeling myself to go through the motions, to somehow talk my way through eight weeks of class while doing a minimum of planning and self-education.

I should have been reading books about this for the past month. Now I have to throw my whole being into making up for the fact that I didn't. So today I'm going to take her thoughts about routine to heart, and go get a library card and some books. And maybe if I can do that, I can eventually get some writing done and clean the house and return Season One, Disc Two of Deadwood to Blockbuster.

Tension

This morning, despite an aching neck and an aching back and a groggy feeling pounding against the insides of my eyelids, I stayed in bed an hour and a half longer than I intended. Not sleeping so much as hiding. Today I have plenty of the normal stuff to get done, like buying conditioner and groceries and cleaning and taking out the recycling. But today is also the day that I've set aside for driving up to the college where I'll be teaching as of Monday, so I can use the floppy drive in the "adjunct workstation" to read through the entirety of the helpful information I've been given, and so I can make copies and transparencies for the first day of class, and so I can find out where to pick up keys and how to get a copy of my class list, since I can't print one myself until Human Resources finishes processing the paperwork I gave them three weeks ago.

Add to those Unfamiliar Important Things the fact that we found and applied for a really great apartment over a week ago and still haven't heard whether we're approved for it because if we are approved, they'll simply sign and mail us the lease we've already signed. And yes, she said to assume we were "in the clear" if we didn't hear from them, and we haven't heard from them, but we are both committed realists (pessimists), and I want so badly to just know where we stand on this that I dreamed last night we got the lease in the mail, and we moved in. And today, because it wasn't real and because so many other uncertainties are, I feel as if a crowd of tiny people is bracing its feet against my brain and pushing with its hands against the inside of my forehead.

Scared to Death

Today I gave myself an assignment: write a syllabus. I start teaching in just over two weeks, and I remember the Dean saying that he wanted to see the course syllabus before the class began. So today I've sat down a few times to begin working on it, and I've always ended up doing something else. Have a bowl of ice cream. Do a load of laundry. Read. Blog.

Because every time I sit down, I immediately run into something intimidating or scary or difficult to work with. Oh no, I don't remember where anything is in the school. Oh no, I haven't decided what kind of work I'll be assigning, or for how many points. Oh no, I've agreed to work full-time at the bookstore until the day before I start teaching, and I won't have enough time to prepare. Oh no, I don't know for sure how many chapter tests there will be, and since my computer doesn't seem aware that it has a floppy drive, I can't find out by checking the discs the instructor gave me. Oh no, grading involves math. Oh no.

I'm fully cognizant that the best thing for me to do right now is flex my nuts, write a syllabus with a few blanks in it where the so-far-unresolved stuff will go, and work on the hard parts after I've earned a sense of accomplishment. And I think I'm almost to a point where I can handle that, emotionally. But first I need to put on some music (because music is good, and because the landlord's kid has been jumping/stomping/bludgeoning baby bunnies upstairs for literally two hours and I'll have to poke out my own eyes if I don't drown out the thumping soon). And fold some laundry. And make a quesadilla. And then I will be brave enough to write a syllabus.

Ready...go.

Oriented

So one whole wall of my classroom is a window, two-thirds of my students will probably be future nurses, everyone still seems kind and supportive, and there's no writing to grade. In fact, the chapter tests are multiple choice, provided by the textbook publisher, and I can use a Scantron machine to grade them. So what used to be the most time-consuming part of teaching isn't part of this job. More and more excited every day.

Tuesday is Brain-Garbage Day

Today is my first day off work since last Monday. That's seven straight days of eight-hour shifts at a job that's more physical than you'd guess, and today I feel kind of like I was recently in a fistfight. At least, this is how I imagine that would feel. Because it's a pretty funny mental picture--and those of you who know me can go ahead and try it out: me in a fight. Most of my coworkers knew I was working a seven-day stretch because one simply cannot be silent about injustice at Barnes & Noble. The managers are nice enough that they don't actually want to screw us over, but sometimes they just don't pay attention. So you make them pay attention. And it worked, because yesterday the general manager told me I'd better sleep in today (which I did, past 9:30 even), and the assistant manager who made the schedule told me to lie around and do nothing all day. Which I won't, because doing nothing usually makes me feel like a big rolling ball of crap. And also because if I don't go to the grocery store today, we may not survive the week, and if I don't clean the litter box today, the more fastidious of my two cats might fill up with poo and explode. But I've made a decently lazy start to the day, since it's almost one in the afternoon and my hair is still wet from the shower and I'm on my first cup of tea. In fact, the only thing really productive I've done today is schedule a meeting for Thursday with an instructor at the technical college where I'll be teaching. Because I decided to take that teaching job, like I knew I would. And I'm nervous about that, but excited too. It'll be a good change in my life, and I think it will be a good place to start teaching. So far, everyone seems supportive. So yeah, excited.

But you know what I'm also excited about? Finishing this rambling post so I can do my errands and chores, and read Anna Karenina, which--in more random news--is totally engrossing and much more modern than I expected.

That sound? That's the last three years of my life going down the cosmic toilet.

On Monday I got a phone call from a local technical college that sounded promising for about two minutes: "I see you applied for a part-time or adjunct teaching position back in December. We have an opening for a full-time English instructor now, and I don't know if you're interested or even qualified, but you should take a look at the job posting on our website." Well, yeah, I'm interested. I'm not entirely sure I want to saddle myself with a full-time teaching position (which at a technical college might mean five or six classes a semester) when I'm hoping to devote more time to writing, but of course I want to apply.

Except. I'm not qualified.

And this is a new thing. Because once upon a time, having a Master's degree in something--being a master of a subject--and having some experience teaching it, was qualification enough to teach it again. But my state's college and university system has put in place a new kick in the ass for all of us foolish enough to get Master's degrees. (My favorite Simpsons quote: "Bart, don't make fun of grad students. They just made a terrible life choice.") It's called a "Teaching and Learning Competency Requirement." To be qualified to teach at the college level, I have to have either a degree in (K-12) education, or at least three years of full-time teaching experience, or pay to complete four courses in teaching.

This is insulting and ridiculous. A professor once told me that it's sometimes considered detrimental for post-secondary instructors to have teaching degrees, and that makes sense. Because teaching strategies will be different for high school and college students, even if there's only one degree of separation between them. And students will notice the difference and call you on it in a nanosecond if you don't adjust your tactics once they hit college. Besides that, having an education degree or even a few years of experience doesn't automatically make you a more competent teacher. Some people teach for thirty years and are still pretty incompetent. I've been in their classes.

I suspect the colleges participating in this are already feeling the effects. I mean, they called me to tell me about the job. Under normal circumstances, people would be attacking that job like piranhas. And the website says the posting is actually a "re-posting." The original resume review began a couple of weeks ago. That makes me think they're having trouble finding suitable candidates. And why wouldn't they? I know a couple of people with education degrees and Master's degrees in English, but only a couple. And they either are teaching at K-12 schools, or they intend to. These colleges have winnowed their applicant pools down so far, they're missing out on some seriously good teachers. Like me.

Because I'm not exactly in a position to say "screw 'em," and I think they may be just desperate enough to jump on someone who's almost-but-not-quite "qualified," I think I'm going to resubmit my resume anyway.

If this goes anywhere, I'll post a giant "na-na na-na boo-boo" here.