I have 108 students this term.
I have spent at least one week with them all and I am impressed. Is it because I'm not teaching comp? Very liberating. I have time to read. I have time to write. I have time to prepare lectures. Teaching comp is a constant burden. It is rewarding only infrequently. Always 80 pages of essays that nobody really wanted to write waitng to be graded. I was sick of just this circumstance. I tried so many different methods for getting them to write engaging prose. But the classes are required, and that alone, above all else really, kills their engagement. The class as commodity is not valued for its use-value rather for its exchange-value.

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My writing students are reading, patient and trusting students they are, Magdalena Tulli's Dreams and Stones, and probably pulling their hairs out, one by one. Do I get pleasure out of frustrating them? Absolutely. (smile) Nothing like a good Being, shaken out of consumer daze, to brighten up a class discussion. Their first writing exercises...600 word Royal We, 300 word No Ideas, But in Things, 600 word story that ends with another author's sentence (9 endings to choose from.) The exercises this term are all based on constraints. good stuff.

I lost the password to their blog...ugh. I am so tired today: dj on Thursday nights, get to bed at 3am, teach at 8am. Anyway for those of you looking forward to peeking-in on my class through their blog, they are looking forward to "it": the blogging and the comments. Hopefully, they'll keep up the enthusiasm.

grad student org meeting at four;
grad reading (Julie Doxsee and Greg Howard) at seven;
bed by ten?
I hope.



I just remembered
I'm hungry.