Distraction of Late: Dog

I actually posted about this since my last post on this blog. Read it here:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&Mytoken=82CEC98A-D2A7-4B5A-928C0367CF7153B3116499563

I'm still adjusting to dog ownership/companionship. Sometimes situations that involve a lot of noise and chaos do something to my brain and I just completely go catatonic (or so it seems), so when our dog goes crazy because of other little dogs barking frantically on our doorstep while other little dogs bark frantically on the other side of the house, I just freeze.

I'll do a full dog situation update for all my blogs soon, most likely.

Other current distractions include preparing for a conference this Friday morning, my Advanced Writing Certificate portfolio presentation next Monday, substitute-teaching a class last night, and anxiety over next fall's situation. Six out of the seven programs I applied to flatly rejected my applications, while the seventh told me I'm "high on the waiting list." The initial first round picks had until today to respond, then the program will "reassess" the next round of applications, including mine. Hopefully I'll hear back from them in the next week or so. If it's a "yes," then we're headed to that university. If it's a "no," then we're headed back to the general area we both grew up in. If it's a "hey, you're high on the next waiting list!" that arrives in the mail, then I'll most likely spend yet another month all edgy and irritable and depressed. As horrible a person as I am in the first place, I think I've probably been nearing "genocidal cruel dictator" level terrible since mid-March, at least during the times when I haven't just tried to hide out.

My horribility especially showed itself yesterday while going over "experimental" pieces other students wrote for a graduate seminar I'm in. Now, first understand that my part-time job involves working at a Writing Center at community college locations in parts of the city where a lot of people just won't visit for fear of their safety. My clients come from various backgrounds and education levels, but many of them struggle just to follow basic directions and still can't really write complete coherent sentences in "standard edited English" on their own. I see confessions of true crime and graphic depictions of sexual abuse alongside all matter of other material, often borderline incoherent. One student, for example, was supposed to write about Slaughterhouse Five. She came in with a paper that literally reads like "this Vongut just don't make no sense he think we bileve wit him alien's and time all mess up i dont no he tak but i ges sum people lik it but i dont no were he come from." In there, most of the time I'm a bleeding heart liberal who works to Make A Difference One Sentence At A Time. I only become a stiff tough love conservative when it's necessary or a student insists that I do work the work for him/her. I'm really sincere about trying to help people finally learn things about writing that they should have learned in elementary school or junior high, because often their success in life depends on their learning to write something, anything, that makes sense.
However, if I'm reading an essay by someone who snagged a spot in a graduate level seminar ( the creative nonfiction grad seminars get filled up quickly and squeeze out very worthy students who just don't hit the "register" button in time), I feel justified in expecting that the essay will be of a certain level. Now, the whole point of an "experimental" course is to try new things, and sometimes when writers crawl out on limbs, those limbs snap and the piece just doesn't work well. Thing is, I'm now having to read pieces where the writing quality is low, the pieces are boring, and there's very little "experiment" (read: RISK) factor to it. I really did just about tear one up, partially because this person sent out two pieces for the class to read. I won't go on and on about what really made a couple of the pieces just completely unreadable, but my point is that I really kind of scared myself in the comments I wanted to slap down without mercy and make the pages look all bruised up by pencil. For example, "Maybe you should attempt something literary rather than an email to the grandkids." Honestly, it's frustrating to see people writing pieces that don't have the fundamental pieces in place that would allow us to talk about the things we're trying to accomplish in an "experiments" course. Sadly, the comment I actually did write that I felt bad about was the one where I congratulated the person on her clever use of irony in depicting herself as _____" when, in fact, the piece had no irony whatsoever. I find myself using that approach far too often in this class. Just for the record, I'm really ashamed to even admit that I'm thinking all these mean thoughts, but I'm also honestly bothered by some of the things people plunk out for this course. At the same time, plenty of other folks in the class write fantastic essays that I like a lot better than my own, so somehow their pieces make up for the other ones.
I apologize.

Yesterday's Distraction: Substituting for a Professor

I'm writing about this distraction after writing about today's because this one's a lot more positive and, frankly, interesting.

One of my favorite professors asked me to pinch-hit in his class because he needed to go get interviewed on NPR about his new book. Because I'm hoping for a free autographed copy and because I dig NPR, I agreed to do it.

Per his instructions, I led his class in a discussion on Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing." We talked about meat-packing and processing plants more than I would normally talk about in a literature course. Tillie Olsen actually grew up here in Omaha and dropped out of high school in 1929 to work various low-paying jobs, among them a meat-packing job where she tried to help form a union and, in turn, was arrested. She published a bit here and there about her experiences there, but after that spent more than two decades too busy as a working mother to get much writing done. When she did start writing again, she produced some fantastic short stories, then eventually litcrit that focused on feminism, minorities, and the working class. The particular short story "I Stand Here Ironing" focuses on the struggles of motherhood in the working class, something few (if any) of the students could apparently even relate to, but we still wound up with a pretty interesting discussion.

To learn more about Tillie Olsen and her writing, visit http://www.tillieolsen.net .

Distraction of the Day: a confrontation.

At the Writing Center where I work, a student had signed up herself as having appointments for four time slots at two different times. Since each time slot is approximately half an hour, this would have given her two hours of consultation time, but we distinctly say right on the appointment book that students can only sign up for two time slots.
She had written herself in as having an appointment from 10-11 and 12-1. She didn't even show up until 11. I had to do my job, so I told her she could only sign up for two time slots. Since she's also got a history of not showing up for appointments or coming way late, I decided to throw that in while having to be the bad guy.

Joel: "Also, when you sign up for 4 time slots, it blocks students who might want to make appointments. Especially when you don't show up for the first appointment, that can --"
Student (interrupts): "I didn't skip it. I'm just here late."
Joel: "Well, an hour late." (walks away, because having to explain that an hour late when her appointment was for an hour's length is the same as not showing up would probably take a good half hour and push me closer to a stroke)