The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

You know what sucks?

Getting up early sucks.

It really does! Getting up at 6:15 this week to get to school, after my whole summer, has been a huge, huge pain. Really, really frustrating. Especially on top of everything else depressing that’s going on.

But you know what? I get up so early because it helps me get things done, and I have gotten shit done. Lesson plans, grading, homework, shit gets done when I get my ass out of bed. I keep it up because of that, doing it again and again. It was really hard to get out of bed this morning, but in this time I’ve filled out paperwork, answered e-mail questions from my students, took an online quiz, and wrote this blog. It’s still two hours before I really have to be up to do anything, and I have plenty more I’m going to get done in that time.

I don’t know why mornings work so well for me, but they do. They feel like time I wouldn’t have otherwise, so it doesn’t feel like I’m burning any free time. It’s partially that, and partially the fact that, since I did this to myself, I might as well get some reward from it. I’m already out of bed. I might as well do something.

But yeah, mornings. Hi. Been awhile. Let’s work together this semester, shall we?

My class this semester talks to me.

This, honestly, really caught me off-guard. Last semester, it required some teeth-pulling to get my students to actually discuss anything I put before them, and as such I had planned around the fact that I would have to pre-prepare them with things to say in order to get them to talk. There would always be group work and pre-discussion before discussion.

This semester is different. I have a much, much larger group of people who offer up thoughts and comments without hesitation. I’ve ran out of time twice already because I didn’t want to stop the awesome talking that was going on in class. It’s so awesome.

There are plenty of theories I could throw out as to why this is happening. For one, it’s the second semester, so maybe these students have broken out of the “high school” mode a lot of them were in their first semester. Also, my class is an hour later, which probably is helping my students to be much more awake when they come into class. Or maybe it’s just a much better group of people, I don’t know.

All I know is I feel like I am accomplishing a lot more already, and I feel like, for the most part, they’re getting it. I’m unsure what this means for my students. Hopefully they’re getting more out of it too. But for me, as teacher, this is the very best thing.
We are going to have so many discussions. Yes we are.

Hey, my first semester of teaching is over as of 2 PM today.

Yay for me?

Seriously, though, I think this semester went almost shockingly well. My class did not necessarily do great. I gave out, what, at least five F’s? But those were mostly to people who decided it was not in their best interest to show up and turn in papers, so I have little remorse for them. I managed to avoid completely falling apart or getting behind. I even forced myself to become a morning person, and worked every morning on all my shit.

What’s better, my final was pretty good for my ego. I swear it wasn’t actually my intent when I assigned it. I had to give some sort of final, and it just seemed easiest to assign a little no-stress essay. “How have I changed as a writer this semester?” was the topic. And yet, a vast majority of the essays ended up being about what the class did well and what it did badly. I had a few people who were kind of down on it. One in particular said the whole class was confusing and that they’re just going to go back to “writing like they did in high school.” But the vast majority cited various activities that I thought had fallen completely and utterly flat as being extremely useful. Apparently my whole class is just too shy to talk in class, but at least they’re getting a little out of it. Or at least they know how to flatter me really well, not that it affected their grades any.

Anyway, yeah, I am just really happy with how the semester went. Happy with all this teaching stuff. I feel legit and important, and I feel like I have my life together. Well, sort of, anyway. That’s a good feeling. Possibly even worth all the running myself ragged I was doing, hm?

Let me tell you, though, I am very much looking forward to the ability to sleep in and not have to do any of that stuff for awhile. I’m sure Christmas break won’t feel like near enough. I’ll try though, dammit. I’ll try.

By the time you read this (Well, okay, as long as you’re reading this after, say, 11 AM) I will be on my way to beautiful (I assume) Arkadelphia, Arkansas to present my silly paper at the 2009 Arkansas Conference on Literature, Rhetoric, and Composition. This is like… a professional event and shit. It is the exciting times.

Honestly, I’m kind of excited about it. Mostly because I haven’t like… taken a trip in forever in general. Granted, I’m not going to the most amazing place, but it already feels like a breath of fresh air when I’m writing this and I haven’t even left yet. It is all kind of silly, though, as it might even border on boring. I’m going to be sitting about listening to people read papers! Maybe they’ll be interesting. I hope so. But it’s mostly going to be a few nights by myself having nothing to do and days listening to papers. I’ll have to find things to do! I already plan on seeing Fantastic Mr. Fox while I’m down there, (and I would expect me to write a review of it on here while I’m bored) but otherwise, I dunno. Are there interesting things to do around Little Rock? I’ve no idea.

But yeah, that’s what I’m doing this weekend! Woo! Expect updates about it! Or maybe I’ll be having such an INTENSE time I won’t write anything about it until afterwards! YOU NEVER KNOW!

Yeah, I probably will write about it, though. You know. Probably.

So, I have this kid in my class. He is like… the sort of person you would put next to the term “Emo kid” in the dictionary in look. Wears all the clothes, has bangs that cover his eyes, stays in the corner, never says anything, you know. Stereotype, through and through.At the same time, he’s a nice kid. Turns things in on time. Never an issue. It’s not like I hate him. It’s not like I have anything against him wanting to play that emo role, either. If it makes him happy, more power to him. It’s fine with me.

At the same time, I do things like, say, play Forumwarz, which is awesome. But I play an Emo Kid, and so I’ve sort of gotten myself used to laughing my ass off at these ridiculous emo things. I mean, they are funny! That’s why I laugh. It’s motivated by some of the same reasons I would, say, laugh at more ridiculous aspects of the furry subculture, or the gamer subculture. Any group is likely to have aspects of it that are ridiculous, you know?

Still, I get his papers from class, and I read them, and I’m met with a problem. This is exactly the sort of text that is displayed in Forumwarz when I make an emo attack. Exactly. Like, I could cut and paste parts of it and put it into the game, and nobody would know it wasn’t parody.

This puts me in a spot. I just don’t know how to react to this genuine, heartfelt text that is, at the same time, hilariously an emo stereotype. I know this guy takes his writing seriously, and is wanting to write something good. Though his style is so painfully, painfully emo, he is trying to cultivate a style, and I should encourage that. It feels very wrong to laugh at him. I don’t want to do that, just like I don’t want people to laugh at me for my oddities, or at the very least laugh with me, you know? But damn, separated from him, in my office, grading these papers, it is really hard to remember there’s a person behind it that I shouldn’t make fun of. Incredibly hard.
So I almost always have to take these long breaks before I write comments on his paper so I don’t write anything weird. But it’s hard.

It just goes to show you how dangerous stereotypes can be, I guess. I mean, I feel like I’m pretty good about such things? But then here’s this clear situation where I’m fighting with it? I don’t know. I guess it’s, to some extent, inescapable.
Somewhat.

It’s fall break!

Sort of!

Last week was so shitty, oh yes it was. I was so busy. I was so looking forward to this break. I’d get to sit back, relax, and play Brutal Legend. What more could you ask for? I even started it off on a good foot this past day, with a monster Beatles: Rock Band session where we actually took time out for Vocal practice to hit the harmonies. It was so sweet and so fun.

Now, I’m thinking about what I have to do this weekend, and I pretty well have work to do every day. I have a midterm I have to take, papers to grade, a teaching journal I should probably catch up on… suddenly, my break has disappeared.

Man, is this what it’s like to grow up? Fuck that shit. I dunno. Bleh blarg.

I mean, it’s not really as bad as it looks. The vague plan is to finish it all today, but I kind of doubt that will happen? So probably the midterm today and the grading Friday or something. It really won’t be that bad, and I’ll have plenty of time to take ample breaks. I just…
Man, I’ve really got myself into a fuck-ton of work, you know? I really have.
I’m making it. I’m surviving. But I really have.
Man.

Remember that paper I submitted?

Well, uh, it got accepted.

So now I’m going to be going to beautiful Arkadelphia, Arkansas in November to read this paper, which doesn’t QUITE exist yet but I’m working on it, in front of other people who are doing the same thing and who may or may not be more qualified than I am.

Needless to say, I’m thrilled. Thrilled-ish.

Granted, I still have a ton of paperwork to fill out. Paperwork is fun! But that should, you know, pay for the whole thing, which will be cool.
I’ve never been in an hotel room by myself, though. That’ll certainly be an interesting experience. But I made sure my room had Internet and I’ll bring the lappy, so I will be entertained! That, and I’ll have papers to grade. So, you know. Fun times.

I guess I’m kind of legit, huh?
No?
Oh well.

I submitted an abstract to a conference the other day.

I mean, I don’t know if I’ll get in, but goodness… that was not on a list of things I expected myself to be doing… going to scholarly conferences… reading papers I wrote in front of strangers and trying to sound important. That is just… not something I was going to do!

I’ve always thought of myself as a smart enough person, but never so much as an “intellectual” or someone who does this kind of shit. Someone who would, potentially, be making their way in life as an academic. That was never even vaguely in the game plan. I never really felt comfortable writing papers. It never felt like I was doing good work, even though I always got good grades on them. To think that creating these papers could be a marketable skill for me seemed… pretty crazy.
The main reason I’m drawn to that kind of life at all is a want to teach, and the main reason I’m repelled from it is getting into the supposed “Publish or Perish” mindset of actual academic life, you know? I don’t need this vague deadline over my head that I’m needing to get another article out there. Ugh.

And yet here I am. I submitted a paper.
I dunno. It’s odd.

My students have completed their first paper, and are well on their way to the second. I’ve also graded my first paper, and been observed in class. How did I do?

Good!
Apparently!

On the grading scale, it doesn’t look like I used many C’s or D’s. I had a couple awful papers that ended up as F’s, and a handful of really good papers that got A’s. and then most of the class ended up in the high to low B range. I’m pretty okay with that. It does indicate that perhaps I had a lot of “freebie if you did the work” points in there, since those who got the really low grades were the ones who did not get those. I’m trying to be fairly nice with having those points about, seeing as this is an entry-level course. Seems like the right thing to do.

As far as being observed, that too went very well! My class didn’t, uh, do the assignment at all that day, so I’d probably put the class in the middle of the road as far as how successful the class was. We did get some discussion going, and that was good. I also got points for being very prepared and having a great sort of “classroom persona” and being able to ad-lib useful stuff from student feedback, which is awesome to hear.
(The best thing, though, was that there was no mention of my dress whatsoever. Take that, Mom! I win! Completely vindicated!)

So yeah, I guess I’m doing as well as I think I’m doing? Probably? It’s all going pretty well in my class. Of course, there are already things that I’m probably going to change or fix next semester. But it’s good to know I already have the hang of this stuff. Very good to know.

I remember, way back at the beginning of the semester, when I was told that “You should really look ahead to see where major assignments are, and not schedule papers due around that time!”

Man, that’s some advice, huh? That I didn’t follow?

Yeah, I’ve got the first big paper for my class now, and it needs to be graded. On top of that, I also have my first big paper for my Linguistics course, and I need to finish up a short story, among other basic homework.

This is going to be a real busy weekend! Aren’t we just excited?
Of course we are. Of course.
I mean, technically, I hope I’m done with most of it at this point, when this actually gets posted. That would be totally cool and super sweet. But, you know, I’m realistic. If nothing else, I’m sure I still have that Linguistics project to work on. Yay yay.

Anyway, I’ll stop complaining and get back to work now, I suppose.