Second Semester

Today is the first day of the second semester at our university.  I've been away from the classroom -- and the students -- just long enough to be happy to see them this week.

This semester, I'm teaching three courses: English 102, Critical Thinking 102, and English 340.

This is now my fourth time teaching English 102 (fifth, if you count the summer session).  While in some ways, I'm afraid that the course is getting a bit stale, I do remember that the material is new to the students.  Since I run a classroom that's primarily discussion- and activity- based, it's always the type of challenge that I enjoy in teaching.  Students notice new things in the readings -- or notice same old things, but have different responses.  It's also the course where I probably become most animated with explanations (I described it to colleagues as the course where there's "lots of arm waving and sarcasm").  I don't quite get down on the floor at the end of "The Yellow Wallpaper," but I definitely creep around the room and look over my shoulder; and teaching "Coy Mistress" to students who have never encountered it is always fun.  Plus, it's really the first time students see that I am a terrible artist, yet am insistent on drawing on the board constantly.

I mean really terrible.  So terrible, that I have no problem when the students in the upper division courses openly make fun of me for it.

Critical Thinking 102 is going to be fun, I think.  Or at least I felt that way while putting the finishing touches on the syllabus on Sunday (which my spouse took as a sign of my impending mental breakdown ... but anyway ...).  The course is one where we introduce students to the basic parts of the critical thinking framework we're using in our program.   Each course has a theme selected by the faculty member teaching it -- and we use that material as the way to help the students learn to apply the framework.  This semester, people are teaching things as varying as horror, the Vietnam War, the science of Frankenstein, and mental illness in world leaders.  Bradley and I are team teaching the course using Edith Hamilton's Mythology.  And that's why I'm excited about it -- and students registered for the course very, very quickly.

And the third course -- English 340 -- is one I've taught before (Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature).  But this time I'm teaching it with a "CT" designation.  I always enjoy the 300-level courses, particularly in the spring.  We begin the course by selecting readings and learning how to ask significant discussion questions (a fairly major assignment of the course).  And then we dive in.  Usually the spring semester means mostly English majors in my courses -- though I have a few more non-majors this time around, with that CT designation.  I think that even more than Renaissance Literature (about which the students have a vague awareness that they should appreciate its importance), Restoration and Eighteenth Century literature surprises the students.  We're reading Moll Flanders and Oroonoko.  The students have the opportunity to pick "The Rape of the Lock"(we're reading "Essay on Man" excerpts) or Fantomina.  Once students begin reading the works, they generally realize that these people in big powdered wigs had interesting things to say -- and engaging ways to say it.

Second semester also always brings much craziness.  I'm presenting at two academic conferences this semester: College English Association and Shakespeare Association of America.  (And if you're familiar with SAA, you know that I have to have my paper done and circulated to my seminar group well in advance of the conference. And that I have to respond to two members of my seminar group. And I have to read lots and lots of other things in preparation. It's an awesome conference -- but it requires a lot of work).  In addition to that, I'm giving a lecture this month on Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed; in March I'm giving a lecture on women's history; and in April, I promised to give a paper at our faculty symposium.  So I did that all to myself.  But honestly, this is the sort of thing that I love to do -- and I love that this job allows and even encourages this type of over-commitment (okay loving that the job lets me overcommit might be an overstatement of my part, but still).

Anyway ... there's lots and lots more things going on this semester.  And right now, I'm excited by all of it.  My goal is to stay positive about things.  I've started running again partly to do that (also ... the healthiness thing).

So ... here's to the new semester.