Originality And Assignments

Jejak PandaJumpa Lagi Kita Diblog Kesayangan Anda
ceme 99 onlineI had an unusually long time between my last class of the semester and the tamat exam. My students had over a week to prepare. I do not give a traditional sit-down tamat exam, especially since I teach a writing intensive course. Students spend the entire semester working hard on a full, fifteen-page term paper, so I don’t see the need for them to also come in and take a timed test with short answers to uniform questions. I’m not convinced that would be an accurate or useful assessment of anything in particular, and certainly no more rigorous than what I have already required them to do.

The last two regular class meetings were dedicated to response groups, supplemented by lots of one-on-one conferences with me. But since we had this long week and a day between the last class and the exam, I had many students in my office over the last few days, too, finishing up their drafts and working on bedeviling details like useful quotes, proper citation, or how to effectively conclude this paper they have been plugging away at for the past fourteen weeks.

During one conference that took place earlier today, a student remarked that professors must get tired of reading students’ essays, especially if they are all on the same topic and even more especially if they are poorly written. I agreed, but I also observed that many professors have none but themselves to blame for this situation when they give a uniform assignment to all the students. Of course they are all going to write similar papers if the topic is the same for all, and of course many of those are going to be poorly written, because there is only a small likelihood that many of the students will find such a canned topic of any direct interest to themselves.

My students might have to struggle with being given more independence and autonomy than they are used to or comfortable with, but most of them end up with interesting topics that, ultimately, they enjoy researching and writing about. And as for me, I get to read an incredibly varied set of essays.

This semester, I had twenty students. We read Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Twain, Dickinson, Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau. Pretty straight-forward, canonical stuff. (It is a survey course, after all). But the students’ papers were anything but straight-forward or canonical. No discussion of the symbolism of Hester’s A. No discussion of the whiteness of the whale. No discussion of the personification of the House of Usher. No discussion of Thoreau, Whitman, or Dickinson’s embodiment of an Emersonian ideal.

Alana wrote about Joshua Komisarjevsky and the death penalty through the lens of Edgar Allan Poe. Andrew wrote about the entrapments of celebrity, focusing on Tiger Woods and Anthony Weiner, and in addition to Hester and Dimmesdale, discussed Don Draper from Mad Men. Liz wrote about female sexual repression in Poe and Hawthorne, but read additional texts by Henry James, Sigmund Freud, and William James. Brittany defended Harry Potter from attack by Harold Bloom using Emerson, Twain, and Joseph Campbell. Matt wrote about the importance of place in Whitman, Hawthorne, and various contemporary musical artists, such as Bruce Springsteen. Andrea wrote about educational leadership and read texts by Emerson, Twain, Paolo Freire, and other less well-known contemporary educational researchers. Alyssa wrote about abortion and gay rights, and cited texts as varied as the US Constitution, "Resistance to Civil Government," The Scarlet Letter, the New International Bible (used by Assemblies of God), and various abortion and gay rights rulings, including Roe v. Wade.

Bobby wrote about bullying. Spencer wrote about the sea. Kristina wrote about Casey Anthony. Mary wrote about theocracy and Rick Perry and Michelle Bachman. She’s a science major and had 21 sources, mostly news articles but also Puritan texts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Peter wrote about American History X. Alex is a psychology major who wrote about isolation using several relevant psychological studies on monkeys and humans. Mark designed a course on minority literature. Steve wrote about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Alyssa wrote about the Byronic Hero, and brought her discussion into the contemporary kurun using Dexter. Laura wrote about the American Federation of Teachers New York City chapter, and read educational theory going back to Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Horace Mann, and Elizabeth Peabody. Jessica wrote about Landscape Architecture, and Gina wrote about Charles Manson.

Now I can’t guarantee that all of these will be well written, but I certainly won’t be bored reading twenty dull, uninspired versions of essentially the same assignment.

The Annual Hurricane Issue

Jejak PandaKembali Lagi Bertemu Di Situs Kesayangan Anda
situs bandar ceme

It is eleven o’clock on Thursday night, and I still have no power.  We live only a mile and a half from campus, but we are on a dirt road in the woods, surrounded by nature preserve.  I can’t complain because it is an idyllic setting.  But it’s not so good during storms.  There are too many trees.  In fact, most days I can’t get good cell phone service.

This morning I hoped we might get power back because there was a Northeast Utilities car parked along our road, but when we returned from seeing Pilobolus at Jorgensen tonight, that same guy was still waiting for a repair crew to show up.  Maybe tomorrow we’ll get lucky.

Meanwhile, we have tried to make the best of it.  We had power Sunday till around 6:30 in the evening.  That night, after dark, we read Halloween stories to the kids by candlelight.  The following morning, no one had school, of course, and we were fortunate to have sustained little damage.  One large limb came down in our back yard.  A neighbor had a large tree take out a fence and almost hit the garage.  But when we ventured out into the road to walk up the hill, we encountered two very large, old trees down.  One completely took out a set of power lines, and both tree and lines lay across the road.  Another had fallen against lines and was pressing hard, just waiting to fall.  There was no way to drive up that hill and out.  In the other direction, our road crosses the Fenton River.  Only kasus is that the bridge has been under repair for ages.  You can walk or ride a bike across it, but there’s no way to drive a car across.  The workmen have heavy machinery blocking the way even if you wanted to try.  So we were effectively trapped in.

About ten in the morning, Cormac and I decided to head out to campus.  We didn’t want to cross the downed lines, so we hiked toward the river and picked up the Nipmuck Trail, which follows the Fenton.  We hiked about a mile to where it crosses Gurleyville Road, and then walked up Gurleyville to Bundy to Dog Lane and then to campus.  If you know the area at all, that part of Gurleyville is just one long hill.  Not too bad for me but quite a challenge for a nine year old boy.  It took us an hour to get to the community center.  I carried a shoulder bag with towels, toiletries, and a change of clothes.  Cormac and I were able to gather information, take showers, grab coffee, juice, an apple and a pastry, and head home.  Another hour.  For all the inconvenience, it was pretty nice father-son time.

Eventually, tree removal guys came and cleared the trees.  We know you’re not supposed to drive over downed lines, but there was clearly no power, and so we and all the neighbors proceeded to drive out over the lines to get to town.  Not that there was much to do.  Most stores weren’t open till Tuesday or Wednesday, and no one had school.  I slept a lot.  I have a perpetual sleep deficit that I will probably never make up till death finds me, but I made up a few hours over the past several days.  And in the daylight hours, we all did a lot of reading and a fair amount of walking around the area. 

I rarely get to do much pleasure reading these days, so it was delightful to read Smithsonian front to back, and then devour Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude, which I have been wanting to read for years.  It’s sad but beautiful.  The book is the compilation of two long essays written around 1979, during which time Auster’s father died suddenly and then his grandfather died in a prolonged way, his marriage failed, and his young son came close to dying from pneumonia.  The book is a meditation upon memory, family relations (especially fathers and sons), and identity.  I was even inspired to write a short essay, though I doubt I will share it with any but a few select people at this point.

So I am very ready for the power to come back, but I am thankful for the time to sleep, read, and spend time with my kids.  Tomorrow I leave for a conference and get to stay in a hotel for two days.