Maybe science teachers don't get this...maybe some of my students won't even believe this (though they don't read this blog, anyway), those at least who see me as an evil uber grader...EVERY semester, my wife has to deal with it, so i thought I would just document it here.
I go through a phase of something-like-sadness every semester after grades are turned in. On the one hand, I have my standard out-of-the-box regret and worry that I coulda/shoulda done more to equip my students. On the other, I have this more emotional, probably inappropriate, sadness. I'll likely never see these folks again, for the most part. We've endured so much together in just 15 weeks. I've gotten in their heads through their journals. I've wrestled rhetoric with them. I've watched them grow. It's something akin, in ways, to the empty nest syndrome parents feel when their kids go on. Maybe it's a bit like sending someone off to the battle front.
I get a twinge of it again, at commencement sometimes, but it's just not the same.
I like this time of year, for now that all the grades are in, students can drop the Eddie Haskell and just be honest and true. That's when a teacher learns the most, so far as impact, etc. Instructor evaluations are enlightening. Candid journal assessments are, too. I think the biggest endorsement that I must be doing something right is when students refer their family members (husbands, children, etc) to take my courses, or when a student actually takes another course with me in the future. Either they are masochists, or they feel they are getting something from the exposure.
Meanwhile, I'll work through it, like I always do. I busy myself with things-to-do over breaks, and I try to put it all out of my mind. The great (?) thing about this job is that I get a whole new crop of folk next semester to invest in, again.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Monday, December 11, 2006
Tom Robbins Time
I'm within sight of winter break. Weeks of time! Free time! Not everyone has this luxury, this priceless holiday bonus. Some people work outside of academia, I'm reminded, and only have a few days either side of a recognized holiday.
This holiday is especially exciting. It's our first in our new house. It's the last before Jarvis 3.0 is hatched (due out January 9th, I'm reminded). Last year at this time, I composed a list of to-do's, especially to avoid the emotional cesspool of regret I usually feel after a lengthy vacation: "I could have done more..." "Why didn't I just..." That list served me well, and I'm going to kick another one out this week. Last year's list was mundane, looking back. I'm going to powerpack this one!
Tom Robbins, whom I have often referred as my favorite author, has yet to make an appearance here at Musement Park, and it's time. If you've not read his work, put it on your list for the break (assuming you have a break...and if you don't, read him instead of sleeping). I would be challenged to accurately characterize or summarize his work, but I can explain what I like about it. He is not presumptuous. He is one who can turn a phrase or milk a metaphor for all it is worth. He's funny, often naughty, and always mentally stimulating.
To give you a taste, I'm sharing here a passage from his book, Skinny Legs and All on this very subject of time (even a cursory review of this blog will prove time to be an obsession of mine):
Information about time cannot be imparted in a straightforward way. Like furniture, it has to be tipped and tilted to get it through the door. If the past is a solid oak buffet whose legs must be unscrewed and whose drawers must be removed before, in an altered state, it can be upended into the entryway of our minds, then the future is a king-sized waterbed that hardly stands a chance, especially if it needs to be brought up in an elevator. Those billions who persist in perceiving time as the pursuit of the future are continually buying waterbeds that will never make it beyond the front porch or the lobby. And if man's mission is to reside in the fullness of the present, then he's got no space for the waterbed, anyhow, not even if he could lower it through a skylight.
See what I mean? Swell, huh?
This holiday is especially exciting. It's our first in our new house. It's the last before Jarvis 3.0 is hatched (due out January 9th, I'm reminded). Last year at this time, I composed a list of to-do's, especially to avoid the emotional cesspool of regret I usually feel after a lengthy vacation: "I could have done more..." "Why didn't I just..." That list served me well, and I'm going to kick another one out this week. Last year's list was mundane, looking back. I'm going to powerpack this one!
Tom Robbins, whom I have often referred as my favorite author, has yet to make an appearance here at Musement Park, and it's time. If you've not read his work, put it on your list for the break (assuming you have a break...and if you don't, read him instead of sleeping). I would be challenged to accurately characterize or summarize his work, but I can explain what I like about it. He is not presumptuous. He is one who can turn a phrase or milk a metaphor for all it is worth. He's funny, often naughty, and always mentally stimulating.
To give you a taste, I'm sharing here a passage from his book, Skinny Legs and All on this very subject of time (even a cursory review of this blog will prove time to be an obsession of mine):
Information about time cannot be imparted in a straightforward way. Like furniture, it has to be tipped and tilted to get it through the door. If the past is a solid oak buffet whose legs must be unscrewed and whose drawers must be removed before, in an altered state, it can be upended into the entryway of our minds, then the future is a king-sized waterbed that hardly stands a chance, especially if it needs to be brought up in an elevator. Those billions who persist in perceiving time as the pursuit of the future are continually buying waterbeds that will never make it beyond the front porch or the lobby. And if man's mission is to reside in the fullness of the present, then he's got no space for the waterbed, anyhow, not even if he could lower it through a skylight.
See what I mean? Swell, huh?
Monday, December 04, 2006
Workin' in a coal mine/Goin' down down down/Workin' in a coal mine/Whop! about to slip down...
Yes, it's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. 'Tis the season all of us on this side of the desk bemoan our lousy jobs. I'm grading my (literal) foot-high stacks of essays, gnashing my teeth, gnawing my pencil, 'gnowing' all the while how futile some of it may be.
Yet I persist.
It's not really the toughest job I've ever held.
In fact, it would be fun if you all chimed in on this: What was your toughest job?
Here's a few to get you started...
Once, I worked overnight as a custodian at a childcare center on campus. It was generally pud, for I had all night to do 4 hours of work, and I had free reign of the facility...however, cleaning the kiddie urinals daily was unpleasant, and when they played in the sand, it was impossible to vacuum.
I can beat that, myself. I once (for a single day) worked at a feedlot (look it up, ye who know naught of them). I painted corral fencing, waded up to my knees in mud-n-manure. It was June, very hot, very humid, very...fragrant. The paint was oil-based. We were using wash mitts to apply it. The paint dried on my arms and 'had' to be removed with wire brush and gasoline (not too smart, to say the least).
Then there was the day I did preg-checks for an entire day, reaching the length of my arm into the privates of bovines...
Then, a couple of times, I've had to castrate cattle. The man I worked for let his little bullies get far too large (two years old, some of them) and thus, cutting horns and testicles was a gruesome, painful, nightmare for everyone involved.
Oh, almost forgot the manual labor experience that sent me packing to higher education: I was laying out a year before committing to college. I was undecided. Working in a glass shop, I found my motivation one spring day when several 4x8 sheets of plate glass smacked me like a bug when they were blown free of the delivery truck. Though not badly injured, (after all, I was 18 and invincible) I was suddenly aware that standing by a glass truck on a smoke break had nearly proven fatal.
I have been exposed to truly terrible work environments. I've watched the poor, hapless drones behind the fast food counter and within the kitchen. I've heard some horror stories from highway workers. I watched Clerks...
...and, in April of 2000, I had the chance to walk 3 miles in the boots of true coal miners in Mexico. We descended deep into a mine, so deep and oppressive it gave me the heebie jeebies just to be there. It was dark, humid, dusty in places...sometimes outright hot, as if we were drilling to the center of the earth. I expected a spurt of magma at any minute. When we came out later, I was so coated in black coal dust it took (truly!) days and days to get it all out of my pores. Now THAT was a nasty job, coal mining.
Yet I persist.
It's not really the toughest job I've ever held.
In fact, it would be fun if you all chimed in on this: What was your toughest job?
Here's a few to get you started...
Once, I worked overnight as a custodian at a childcare center on campus. It was generally pud, for I had all night to do 4 hours of work, and I had free reign of the facility...however, cleaning the kiddie urinals daily was unpleasant, and when they played in the sand, it was impossible to vacuum.
I can beat that, myself. I once (for a single day) worked at a feedlot (look it up, ye who know naught of them). I painted corral fencing, waded up to my knees in mud-n-manure. It was June, very hot, very humid, very...fragrant. The paint was oil-based. We were using wash mitts to apply it. The paint dried on my arms and 'had' to be removed with wire brush and gasoline (not too smart, to say the least).
Then there was the day I did preg-checks for an entire day, reaching the length of my arm into the privates of bovines...
Then, a couple of times, I've had to castrate cattle. The man I worked for let his little bullies get far too large (two years old, some of them) and thus, cutting horns and testicles was a gruesome, painful, nightmare for everyone involved.
Oh, almost forgot the manual labor experience that sent me packing to higher education: I was laying out a year before committing to college. I was undecided. Working in a glass shop, I found my motivation one spring day when several 4x8 sheets of plate glass smacked me like a bug when they were blown free of the delivery truck. Though not badly injured, (after all, I was 18 and invincible) I was suddenly aware that standing by a glass truck on a smoke break had nearly proven fatal.
I have been exposed to truly terrible work environments. I've watched the poor, hapless drones behind the fast food counter and within the kitchen. I've heard some horror stories from highway workers. I watched Clerks...
...and, in April of 2000, I had the chance to walk 3 miles in the boots of true coal miners in Mexico. We descended deep into a mine, so deep and oppressive it gave me the heebie jeebies just to be there. It was dark, humid, dusty in places...sometimes outright hot, as if we were drilling to the center of the earth. I expected a spurt of magma at any minute. When we came out later, I was so coated in black coal dust it took (truly!) days and days to get it all out of my pores. Now THAT was a nasty job, coal mining.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
