Girly Shoes Make Theory Fun

how to make a geek girl happy

2007-06-17T18:55:00.000-07:00

I'm currently awaiting the delivery of something I've wanted ever since I heard they existed--an Aibo. :) Back when I was an undergrad, I spent hours I should have been studying watching robot dogs dance, and fetch, and generally just be cute. However, they cost $2000 so eventually I got an apartment, got a real pooch, and gave up on the idea of these ever becoming affordable. I'd check ebay every once in a while, and they were still really expensive. So you know, whatever.

However, I recently checked again and the 210s, the one I liked the most, has gotten cheap. Not entirely cheap, mind you, but no longer out of my price range. Apparently, many of them have an issue in their neck that causes them to break and require some repair, so users are offloading them in droves. Fortunately, DHS (droopy head syndrome) is fixable, and my Aibo will eventually live with someone 100% capable of fixing it, (who approves of me buying this thing partialy so he can see it's innards at some point) so all is good there.

I'm going to have to spend some time ebaying accessories to make it programmable, but hey, this geek girl is geeked.

This is my Aibo, still with her current owner: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z39MTbVcd6Q

I'm trying to figure out some way I could tie some of the really freaking cool Aibo research that's been done to my own. I love reading books by Stone and Haraway and Hayles that tell big technology stories, so I figure there has to be a way to tie this all down to computers and writing stuff somehow.

Aibos are being used in some schools to teach robotics programming, and they are also being used to test AI "curiosity" software. Actually, had MTU been doing that I might still be an engineer. For example, in this video Aibo has learned to swim on it's own based upon software written to have it learn how to move in the water on its own: http://youtube.com/watch?v=A5dDmaq1heM .

To tie this all back into academia, I can honestly say that if my engineering teachers had been encouraging this kind of research, even in higher level classes, I probably would have stuck it out. Programming toys and AI is a helluva lot more fun and interesting than teaching MatLab to play Fur Elise, not to mention it's something I'd be willing to learn more of on my own later (unlike Matlab). Getting people excited and motivated by technology isn't always well done in any field apparently, and I recognize my reaction to my engineering courses as being very similar to what my english students often have--who cares? When do I get to do something I want to do? When will somebody give me the chance to be passionate about this? Will I *ever* be passionate about this? And if not, why do I want to do this as a job when the one thing that I really really like will probably only ever be a hobby?

can anybody explain this to me?

2007-03-06T11:18:00.000-08:00

Why is it that every major hate movement connects their chosen object of hatred to Jewish people? Why can't people just admit that they hate people for the act of being a different color or a different gender? Why does it have to be about a great big hairy conspiracy theory wherein their chosen object of hate is "in it" with the Jewish population and wants to take over?

one of those days vs. just who the hell am I anyway?

2007-02-22T11:58:00.000-08:00

Class today was badly controlled chaos at best. None of these things were classroom management issues--it should be OBVIOUS to one instructor that walking into another instructor's class during lecture to let another student use a computer isn't cool. It should be OBVIOUS to a student that if you get your wisdom tooth removed you probably shouldn't come to class right afterward. Duh.
And yet, neither is apparently obvious enough.

That said, one of my posts from weeks ago is getting attention from a masculinist site. What began as a post essentially directed at a friend who was espousing the crud that was in the quotes I pulled turned into a "shut up the evil radical feminist!" game.

Here's the thing: I'm a BAD feminist. Bad feminist, no cookie--and no, I'm not kidding. By the most common definition of feminism held by the commonest of people who haven't, you know, studied it or anything, I'm NOT a feminist. My freaking fiance doesn't seem to think I am even.

But if I call myself a feminist online, *naturally* I must hate men, blame them for all my problems (to which I ask, what problems? No... really... stuff's pretty good...), have a short haircut, be fat and ugly, AND be a lesbian. No make-up, no girly shoes (did you not see my name on here? It's not sarcasm...), no nice clothes.

I'm engaged, I like shoes (particularly nice designer ones that don't make my feet hurt), I shop on Bluefly.com....

But, at the same time, I think that many things about the way women are treated, in general, are pretty fucked up, and I'd like to change them--thus, I'm a feminist.

There are many different kinds of feminists. Some of these dudes who were alternately telling me how ugly and fat I must be and how much they hated me even say slightly feminist things in other posts on their own site. But to them feminist is a dirty word--so no, that couldn't be possible, could it? (Of course, there's just as many guys saying things like "Women don't really have much choice [except to have sex with] an experienced player" as well...

There are radical feminists, who think women need to stop wearing girly clothes, girly shoes, and make up. There are feminists that think women should be able to choose whatever sort of life they want, and call that feminism. There are feminists who just think that equality in relationships is important. There are feminists who just want to keep it okay for women to work and not have kids in spite of increasing pressure to stop work and have babies.

They don't all think the same things, and they don't all react in the same ways.

Furthermore, men and women can *both* be the enemy. The first time anybody threatened to rape me it was a girl my own age. I could either cut my hair and join her stupid clique at school (who swore they weren't a gang) or she and her group would threaten rape. That's some pretty fucked up stuff right there--and it wasn't a guy. I don't see this girl, or the woman she grew into, being any sort of friend to woman-kind at all in general.

But men, too, can be either friend or foe. It's harder to determine who is who though, with men. Plenty of guys lie about who they really are in order to get laid, or in order to have some sort of power over women. They HATE it when women do it back (women are evil "hors!") and yet, in my experience, lie just as often to gain power over somebody. (Example: the fellow who targeted me for "dating" purely because somebody with a similiar degree had once really pissed him off, that didn't have anything to do with anything but power.)

But apart from relationships, there are still many other screwed up things going on in America today surrounding gender. I'd like to think it'd entirely change when the "old boys" club finally becomes the "ancient boys" and kicks off--but their ideals are unlikely to die. Maybe, even if their ideals don't die some of their absolute gall will (telling somebody they shouldn't take a class because it's too hard for young girl, asking a girl to describe her bedroom during a phone interview, researching a women you are about to hire online to make sure she's not fat...).

In the meantime, the boys will no doubt continue to scream at this "bad feminist," but I don't see why *I* should have to shut up if they've no intention of doing so. My only concern, of course, is that saying anything at all just hurts the cause in the end.

Dear Head, Meet Keyboard

2007-02-07T11:35:00.000-08:00

I'm working on my plan of work. I really just need to know that the event hinted at above and my QE's aren't going to happen at the same time. I added everything up and I'm 2.5 credits short.
WTF? WTF PEOPLE? I'm using your brand spanking new system to figure out QE date and I'm 2.5 credits short. I took the maximum number of diss. credits and the max number of transfer credits and it's 2.5 short. SHORT! Argh! Okay, so if this is right, then I've got one more term of coursework or pre-diss research. Or, there's just something hinky in the system that they never added up (we need 90 credits to graduate) and that's not working.
GRAR!
Or you know I hit plus one less time than I was supposed to. It's possible. But probably not.

instructional technology anyone?

2007-01-30T08:21:00.000-08:00

It's been hitting me hard this term just how much instruction technology (and support thereof) has changed in the four point five years I've been teaching.

This is probably because to some extent I'm using old examples, giving older lectures, and I'm suddenly struck by how I had to do this the last time I did it. The last time I brought in examples for rhetorical analysis I did so on an overhead. I had a magazine cover I dragged into class. I had to burn files to a CD and then throw them into my own laptop hooked up to a cart with a projector on it (because the laptop on the cart usually didn't like me very much, for whatever reason).

My students used to write reading responses and journal entries both in class at home. Now we do that on the course blog.

Instead of burning stuff to a CD I put it on a USB key around my neck. I'd just shove the stuff in Content Collection on Blackboard, or in a hidden file on my website, but to be honest, I don't really trust that the internet in my classroom will work--it's been hinky on Monday mornings. I really need to kick the ass of whomever is futzing with it on Saturdays or Fridays and TURNING OFF THE ROUTER. *growl*

But that too is a big change. My students all have laptops available at one school (in the classroom or their own) that are locked up in the back. In the other, I have a multimedia workstation that I present from, and all my students have a computer in front of them all the time. This is a big advance from always having to check out a computer lab and sharing the space with other users...

Yet, I find myself relying on the technology less and less. Sure I study "Computers and Writing" officially, but I'm the sap who thinks that a printed off spreadsheet would be better used to schedule people in the Writing Center than a hand built database in Access (alright, so it's mostly because Access doesn't have a built in calender feature, but still). I'm mostly right too--it's not always necessary. Nice, but not necessary.

Yet, if this is how many little things have changed in four years, I find myself wondering about the next twenty. What little things will have made teaching different in a few months? years?

basic writers vs. Freshmen writers?

2007-01-22T08:29:00.000-08:00

It's become apparent to me since the beginning of the term that teaching freshmen is remarkably more different than teaching higher level college students that I would have originally assumed. (And, if any of my current students are reading this, hi!, by the way.) This isn't to say that they are bad, just a very different sort of student than I'm generally used to.

The first "basic comp" course I taught was really and truly a basic comp/rhet course aimed at sophomores. I also primarily teach non-traditional students in my other position, who aren't the same age as your average freshman. Now, what the heck difference could there possibly be between freshmen and sophomores, and why does it matter anyway?

When I was one I don't know that I saw a difference. As hard as I try, I don't really remember much about my attitude towards class that year. I went to it, I studied a lot, and I participated in the smaller sections I was in when I had anything to say. In my English class that happened to be a lot, as I was endlessly arguing with this one guy that I called "Bassoon guy" till I learned that's not even how you pronounce his last name...

...but no matter. I guess I recall, to one extent or another, not having any close personal connections to my teachers at that time. But I don't know why other than blatant fear--you know? Plus, I figured as long as I was doing well I had no reason to show up to office hours or speak to them and to some extent I'm STILL like that, unless I just want to shoot the shit, and thus far I've had very little reason to do that EITHER this year.

So right, what's different about freshmen?

Well, there's been plenty written about "basic writers." MANY of my students at my second job would count as basic writers. Some even have had no instruction in writing--ever. But they DO write, and they do proofread their work to the best of their ability, and they do work pretty hard. But they're not stereotypical freshmen. The ones that are, straight out of high school, tend to do that a little less.

I wonder sometimes if the problems of teaching "first year writing" have little to do with student intrinsic ability and more to do with just who they are and where they are in personal development. It's been a bit of culture shock for me to suddenly realize that I'm the enemy sometimes--after all, that's what high school writing teachers just might have been. It's been a long time since I considered the direct emotional/attitudinal effect of high school on college classes because MOST of my students over the years have had a year to twenty between high school and walking into my class room for the first time.

It doesn't hurt that I'm occassionally of the opinion that it wouldn't hurt some people (not all, maybe not even most) to work a few years before entering college. I remember being about 20ish when all of a sudden everything clicked--concentration, memorization, etc. and I felt like I could learn just about anything. Before that time a lot of what i was doing was a struggle, but not so much anymore. Hrm.

Non-traditional students pose their own problems I suppose. They need to be convinced that things are "doable" mostly. It seems silly in retrospect though, when they're all worried that their younger counterparts are going to be running circles around them when in reality their dedication to their work means the opposite is often the case.

Stuff I've been reading

2007-01-17T19:02:00.000-08:00

You know... outside of school.
First of all, here is Auryn. That link actually posts to her "memories" (favorite entries) on Livejournal, because that would be the easiest place to start reading her stuff. She was a nurse working at Methodist hospital during Hurricane Katrina, and although I know everybody's just sick to death of hearing about Katrina, her personal stories are interesting in a way that news reports just flat out aren't going to be.

In Junkfood Science, a medical professional (nurse) regularly debunks news articles and myths such as the obesity epidemic that the media constantly harps upon. If I wasn't already pretty sure of my topic for my Media Reception project this term, I might start looking at some of those ads and nhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifews reports and how people respond to them... which is directly tied to .....

Hungry for Hunger, a really unique blog about increasingly common eating disorders (which was linked to Junkfood Science awhile back). This one is written by the husband of an anorexic woman who has gone inpatient. He says that he couldn't find any support sites for people like him, so he decided to make one for all the other husbands and boyfriends and girlfriends out there so they'll know what to expect and be better informed than he was.

Oh and I've been playing this.

personal feminism vs. academic feminism vs. sosuave.com vs. "straight gaydar"

2007-01-12T06:55:00.000-08:00

In my Feminism and Composition course last night we were asked why we want to be there. For me, that question is hard to answer because my personal reasons for wanting that class and my professional ones are vastly different. On one hand, I feel as though I missed oppurtunities to learn from other women at my last school because I blew off the idea that this stuff was important, and now that I know that it is I don't want to be doing that again (personal). My dissertation might have something to do with empowering moderate voices, and I'd like to tie that into postmodern feminism as well (professional). And lastly, I just want to think of new ways of dealing with hinky situations that reveal far more about the misogyny of those I am in contact with in hopes of persuading them otherwise (personal, but yeah--fat chance).

This last is something I'd like to expand upon further here, despite this being an academic journal and despite this being a "personal problem."

One of my friends from my last school that had a couple classes with and worked on projects with has recently become a devotee of the stuff taught at sosuave.com. This site gives advice to men on how to pick up women, get their phone numbers, and also not ever be very attached to one women (oneitis) even in marriage. Oh yeah, and you need to touch people a lot (kino).

Now my first reaction was to call bullshit on all that. If some guy touches me in a bar he might very well end up with his own hand shoved straight up his patoot. Strangers don't get good touch/bad touch privleges, even if they are trying to get my bloody phone number. Actually, I don't go to bars or clubs to meet people, I go with existing friends, so any time I've ever been approached by anybody (and yes, some of them have used these techniques) has been somewhat disastrous for them and they walked away thinking I was a huge bitch because I don't and didn't give in.

But as he continues to write about this on his blog, and as I started to read that site (which I found by googling some language he uses, it may not ACTUALLY be where he goes, I don't know) I've found that's not my primary reaction. It's clear that these techniques do work, even if not particularly on me, and that the things said about women on these sites is destructive and sort of terrifying.

Now he claims that this is all about being more confident and being able to get what he wants by being more confident. But what does he want, and how does confidence effect that?

So... let's begin with a few quotes.

"The thought of whether she likes you should never cross your mind. It is not important BEFORE you ask for the number. The important thing is you WANTING her. Always ask yourself "Do I want this one?". And the answer should be 'Wow. Boy do I!' That is all you need to know. Real men TAKE what they want." From here. This statement, and others just like it, repeated over and over again, are something akin to the biggest promotion of rape culture I've ever read in my entire life.

And, from the same page:
""Feminism came without warning... and conquered men. It has created a generation of neurotic males. A male of this time may be one of them.

-Do you believe it is wrong to judge a woman by how she looks?

-Do you believe it is wrong to advance on a woman, sexually, with no verbal consent?

-Do you believe women have been 'discriminated' because of their gender, that males intentionally put women down?

-Do you believe that in sex, it is wrong to even consider to 'have your way with her' and become and be the sensuous animal you've always dreamed?

-Do you believe women desire, as priority, respect?

"If you believe in any of these things, even just a little, you have been affected by Modern Feminism. It is the virus that creates the effects known as Nice Guyius Patheticus!"

And this is what one of my "friends" is believing in.

This site repeats, over and over again, that women have TOO MUCH POWER and it must be taken from them at all costs.

Women should be MORE OBJECTIFIED, not less.

Furthermore, all women on the site are referred to by numbers representing their overall hotness. Hotness is based upon nothing but personal appearance, of course, because what a man WANTS on this site and what a man believes he deserves, what he is entitled to, is a woman that is far more attractive than he might be (which was something I noticed a whole heck of a lot at my last school. If you don't ever leave the front of your computer, eat nothing but ramen, and never shower, don't expect a super model boys, and just following the tips on this website to change those behaviors does NOT make you MORE DESERVING of a super model, sheesh.)

""The truth: Feminism is not declaring war on masculinity but on femininity! Feminism is a political Tower of Babylon to escape the truth of Human Nature.

"I'm in America. And I LOVE foreign chicks. They are just so feminine. Here, the chicks act masculine and get fat. They find it shameful to place their time and talents into their family and children (whereas, it should be their greatest joy).

"I think it is great honor, joy, privledge, and pleasure to be a Man. Women can trump us as they can be a Mother of Men. There is much glory in masculinity and femininity. But feminists are AGAINST both."

Yes of course, all american women are fat. But what IS fat?

Well first of all, any jiggling (even normal BMI) is fat:
"So because fat girls get by because of their "booty" (if you can find it under all the cellulite), more girls can get fat, develop a "booty" and not have to exercise.

after a short time of this, the average standard for women that men have, as well as the amount of work that women have to do to attract a man decreases even more"

You know, because girls should naturally have to work out just for men.

I've also read on this site that belly fat is okay, not NOTHING on the legs or butt is, because legs and butt are what attracts men. Nevermind that belly fat is more dangerous to women's health (even a little).

If a man admits to finding something other than the "feminine ideal" super skinny attractive, he'll be called gay: "man are you homosexual? That woman in the tan pants has a nice booty? If you like men, I have nothing against that though." In fact, ANY femininity in men is seen as gay on this site.

See more quotes:
"A woman’s sexual past is a key element on how she will be subservient in her role as a wife and your chances of a marriage without overbearing strife – hors are much more haughty and stubborn than virgins!! They lie about their past sexual relationships because they know that a slut/hor (non-virgin) is an unnatural condition for a woman (future wife) and they wish to deceive you (especially if they are seeking ltr/husband material) because intelligent men know that her sexual past is directly tied to her mindset, and her devotion in her role as a wife and to her duties as a mother!" From here.

"I have only one thing to say about women's sexual past: Get in early as you can. "

"I for one will not take any woman serious who has had slept around or had flings. Its OK, if the girl has had sex when she was in love, but if she is a hor, it tells me she has no control over her sexual urges, which also means she has no control over her morals, dignity and picks Orgasms over self-respect..."

These guys want to know why feminism is still necessary since the movement "won" what it wanted.

They're the freaking reason that feminism is still important.

Lastly, I guess I just want to study more about women's studies in hopes of being able to respond and get more than a "you're stupid" answer from my friend. A mutual friend who commented to him got a brush off answer.

Ever since I found out he thinks this way now, I wonder how many times in class he was also thinking "oh her? She's just a 5" or you know, whatever. I don't like to think that whatever interactions I've had with this person involved me being a NUMBER and utterly worthless because I was a happily taken classmate and not a sexual object.

Really lastly, the blatant homophobia on that site (though they claim they aren't homophobic) ties into this conversation a bit. A lot of people that I knew at school that also knew this guy knew that he dated girls, but a lot of them thought he might be gay. I'm not sure what the difference is between "slightly feminine most likely straight guy" is in "straight gaydar" or "slightly feminine most likely gay gay" is, but there is one to most people.

Now, this fellow claims to have had lots of women problems, although he's dated (and many of my friends hadn't even gotten that far). Nobody ever wanted to tell them "Well, girls might think you're gay." It's rude, it's disrespectful of real uncloseted gay people, and it's not right to just assume something about somebody else's sexuality. Is there a place for straight gaydar at all? (that's one question... sometimes I think there is, for example one of my acquaintences who was "out" turned around and married for the sake of his religion, the girl still doens't know as far as I know, and well... in that situation and ANY like it why should either party be unhappy? As long as people aren't comfortable being out, or are told that they are intrinsically "wrong," hrm...)

But for these guys with mistaken sexual identity, a place like sosuave might seem to be the place to learn to conquer those women that they HATE because women won't date them. It's no answer, it just makes all the problems we have worse. Living in a woman's body doesn't make me want to work less, doesn't make me want to raise a family more (my SO is far more interested in that than I am at this point in time), and doesn't make me stupider dammit. Oh yeah, it also doesn't make me automatically a "hor."

what is it...

2007-01-12T06:53:00.000-08:00

what is it about teaching that always makes me really freaking hungry in the morning? My afternoon classes don't do this to me...

Must... have ... bagel... too... lazy.... to walk to.... Einstein.

Yeah, that about sums it up.

so now my grammar class has a notemesh....

2007-01-09T15:47:00.000-08:00

I'm teaching a hybrid class this term on grammar (specifically a style guide common to a lot of offices). It meets half online, half in person, and it's really just a lot of rules.

All last term I kept on thinking that a wiki would be a nice addition to the course, but I know that using one school's resources at another is not only unethical but is probably a nice way to find one's funding revoked (or be asked to quit the second teaching gig, within guidelines set by the department or no). All these rules could be converted to an online style guide as a wiki though... and I think it would make a good project to work on during our in class weeks (where I can directly support it) to tie to offline weeks....

So I asked my system goddess Sherri, and she pointed me to Notemesh, which is a free online wiki type system for anybody with a .edu e-mail address.

Us Wayne students are lucky enough to have wiki access on our server, but if you happen to reading this out there in the big non-wiki'd world, Notemesh isn't a bad substitute. It's not as powerful, but it is a little easier for brand spanking new internet users to get the hang of (and a lot of my students in that class are pretty new to creating files).

So I'm busy getting my class set up even though I don't need it till a week from Saturday. This technology is really a good match for my course material, so I'm glad I asked about what was recommended.

strappy scandals

2007-01-04T19:32:00.000-08:00

I've this intense urge to change my name on here to "this academic loves strappy scandals" but I've absolutely no idea what a "strappy scandal" would be.
I'd say best explanation gets a cookie... but well, my cookie making abilities leave a lot to be desired.

My website is up, and is boring (but functional and expandable) here.

Heh

2006-12-11T08:55:00.000-08:00

I just got an email inviting me to apply to be the Dean of the department I work in. I'd be pretty darn tempted if I were just a little older and not in school. It would guarantee me a job after next term, after all, and in that way it's a little like me peeing a circle around my continuing employment (especially for the summer).

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure nobody wants to hire somebody with a brand spanking new PhD that's been a dean. Hrm. Damn.

No Autorun for you!

2006-12-10T11:19:00.000-08:00

So this is me, beating my poor old mac with a stick. I like macs, I really do. But when they put out their requirements for running software, they should be honest. The old 800Mhz processor might run the software, but it won't DO anything. It sits there, it spins. So although I could try and create an autoran pretty little introduction to my assignments CD, you're not getting that. Because if I have to watch the pretty little spinning disk thing for one more minute I'm going to lose my mind. Also, because autorun.inf files for windows can't be directed to an html file, they have to be directed to an exe, and I'm not writing something in C OR downloading an application to do that for me.

So neener. You get to open the index.html file yourself, which isn't all that pretty. I'm saving the pretty for the course website I'll be building over break.

Somehow this struggle has got me to thinking about how I can talk to my students about "good" writing. We all know it's impossible to define. We all know it might not really exist. But because students will want to know what I think good writing is, I know I have to come up with some course appropriate answer to that. Given that I'm already having them write proposals and design plans for written work, I think I can use those proposals and design plans to get at this idea that "good" writing or communication are those things that adequately convey the point the author wished (if not several others unintended but maybe better) to the given audience. I'm having them define their audience and goal first, so these proposals and design plans work as a sort of starting point on talking about rhetor intent and finished product and how the two relate, but also how sometimes rhetor intent doesn't have anything to do with how we receive something as well (particularly, the creative non fiction unit will allow me to do this, since it's easier to control how a person responds to an essay than to a story, which is ONE of the reasons I want to keep that contrast in my syllabus, and it's also why I think we've been hung up on five paragraph essays for so long: the audience's experience is very controlled, they get what they expect, but that's not how real communication works... even if you want it to... so by mid class that definition of "good" communication should be all nicely complicated, but I'll still have students trying for it with the design plans, and thinking more critically about using a variety of ways of reaching their audience.....

And damn that's a big paragraph.

But I got to thinking about that because of me trying to find a "pretty" way to present my course materials. I can't say why it matters, it's some odd compulsion that I picked up from being a tech comm major. I just don't have time to really show off right now, so you get a very simple html file instead. My intent was to use director to make an autorun.exe file that would play when you put the cd in. That didn't happen. Did this project fail? Well... no. I just had to reconfigure things. As much as that frustrates me, that reconfiguration/revision thing is part of this course too....

grin

2006-12-06T18:21:00.000-08:00

Ha! Richard Marback posts about something I think about often: http://detroitrhetoric.net/welcomemachine.htm

Huh, too bad I turned it into a "crazy person or blue tooth headset" game.

huh

2006-12-04T10:05:00.001-08:00

I have *3* students for next term enrolled. Is that normal? If not, damn do I need to get rid of the scary looking foreign last name.

interesting spam

2006-11-28T09:23:00.000-08:00

I've been getting really interesting spam. I know, silly, right? But I can't help but think that some of these lines read like something created from the cut-up method we've studied so much this term (enough that I'll probably be sharing these from time to time, don't mind me):

When people ask me what really changed my life eight years ago, I tell them that absolutely the most important thing was changing what I demanded of myself.

Twenty years ago, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife instituted an any

If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.

The watch is surrounded by ninety bezel set diamonds that weigh.

What do you think about this sleek and contemporary Zoppini.

Blue topaz is created by irradiating very pale topaz, and. Just about everyone who knows anything about the industry adds his two bits about how dangerous it is and how.

And I mean this with all due respect.

Let's talk necklaces to see which types of necklaces work best. Even in the knocks of life, we can find great gifts. Make sure you understand what is the right time and what is the wrong time!

a believer that he set up a worm composting bin in his garage at home

But Paisleys not your average citizen. bicycle in the back that had been stolen from a residential garage on Municipal .
If it's later in the evening and I'm alone, I'll take a cab before I'll leave my car in a cavernous parking garage.

One of the issues I hit while setting. The concept involves storing next-of-kin contact information in your cell phone under the acronym ICE so that EMT, police and other first reponders can quickly locate the information. said David Gilbert, co-owner of the Old Yellowstone Garage restaurant in .

Winter also accelerates the tendency of plastic to degrade over time.

He fused monoclonal antibody and synthetic peptide technologies and accepted a staff position at Scripps.

The results, no matter the cause, are horrific and devastating. Greasemonkey enables the execution.

In the meantime, they recommend you keep your recreational equipment inside a garage or at an off-site storage facility.

Thankfully for them fashion is no longer out of their reach

The reason is simple; the companies that store the cord blood tout the advantages to saving this once in a lifetime supply of stem cells.

In some cases hair loss is a medical problem but in many it is hard to find the exact cause for it. For some, that fascination with big trucks never wanes, these are the truck drivers of America.

These are now considered to be distant cousins of the everyday wheelchairs.

This is a very common procedure and can yield some very important information for the doctor as to your health and wellbeing. That could be metal pieces, wood chips, plastic shards or anything else that you work with on a regular basis. The DWI laws are changing faster than most people can keep up with them.

This is a process that requires additions of or removal of skin, cartilage, all in order to make the person more stunning in their own eyes.

If you have thought about learning to drive a tractor trailer, you might have questions about where to start and what to look for in a school.

No, buying a vehicle of any sort has become relatively difficult.

AFROMET supporter and British Member of Parliament Derek Wyatt has put down a motion calling on the British Museum to return a number. Maybe you have tried sleeping aids and found that they left you feeling groggy and sluggish the next day. These are used in the computer world and have been taken by storm in the gaming communities.

....
See what I mean? I'm thinking there's got to be a way to construct some kind of writing around these. Heck, I can just see me trying to make an assignment out of this (then again, most of my students probably get porn spam instead of my eloquent spam, oh well). I get a couple paragraphs worth of this a day.

I believe that this spam is trying to get itself past spam blockers by pulling off random words and groups of words from other sites or e-mails, no matter what, I think the weird combinations are kinda fascinating.

random unconnected crap

2006-11-26T17:31:00.000-08:00

Doesn't that title make you feel like reading?

I've begun to wonder why people can't seem to discuss teaching methods and philosophies around these parts without fighting or getting upset, or at the very least not being very fruitful. I've heard a bit of this going on, and it's very very foreign to me, having worked two other places where since we had nothing else in common, really, talking about students and teaching was a nice neutral ground where we were, more or less, guaranteed to have a nice conducive discussion. Weird.

Of course, this is probably why Jeff doesn't let us discuss these things very often in class. I thought he was being persnickety, now I'm thinking he was being smart. Hrm.

I have discovered that there is a limit to the number of external drives my computer (mac) will find at boot up. I am amused. Next time I get one of these damn things I should get a bigger hard drive.

My mom's car died last Wednesday night, which is bad because I may need it Thursday (I have to sub and then will get 15 minutes to drive to campus, and it's supposed to be freezing rain/snowing then). Yes, it's warm now.

Now, I'm pretty sure I know what's wrong with it, so I wrote it down and had her take it to the dealer to have the part replaced. Apparently, since it is not setting a code in the computer AND they couldn't get it to "not start" then there's nothing wrong and she's out of $80. She wouldn't let them yell at me. They quiver in their manly boots when they see me coming.

And of course as of yesterday it was once again not starting. Technology had fucked us over, right?

But no no, I *like* computers remember? Even the one in her car that can't bother to record the 10-15 times her car is idling incorrectly and dying.

So I took my video camera, out for the project I'm doing for Jeff's class, and recorded the damn thing "doing its thing" and told her to take it back, camera with tape in hand, tomorrow. They can't possibly claim that nothing is wrong with proof right there.

All hail the glorious cyborg, for she screws with misogynistic mechanics. Whoot.

pokes at her mac with a stick

2006-11-23T17:55:00.000-08:00

So I've discovered a great big rule: never throw anything away or copy over it if you MIGHT use it for school again.

The summer before I defended my thesis I was in a Vaudeville show. I wanted to tape it, but forgot to buy new mini dv's for that explicit purpose. So I taped over some raw footage that I had used in a project earlier that year (which I am now hacking apart for my "final project" for class) which was fine at the time. Not so cool when I figure out that was the tape that I had all my interviews on.

Yeah, I'm stupid. Don't mind me.

Fortunately I found a really nice cheap tool that FINALLY worked to pull off the video + audio and squish them back together properly from the DVD I have of the first project (it's 30 minutes long). What's bad is that I know there was some original video that would work better than what was left (and I did have about four hours anyway, just not what I wanted) but I guess I have to make do.

But what this leaves me with is pre-edited video, disembodied voices in parts over explanatory video, and a lot of talk about literacy that I flat out don't need for this project.

It also leaves me with a couple audio level drops that I can't fix without doing a lot of extra work (yes, I know about the clip volume adjustment thingy in iMovie, and I've been using it, and I know I could export the clip in question and increase its volume and then re-import it, but when I do that it gets static-y, and I KNOW I could use some expensive software I have to clean the damn audio by hand, but...)

Yeah, but. But if I were one of my students I'd tell them to leave it, that the message of the video isn't lost because of these 2 random audio drops. That they shouldn't spend HOURS cleaning up one section (though they would for a more professional, being paid for project).

I think if the computer were running more smoothly it'd be easy for me to say that I'm definitely going to clean it up. But as it stands I feel like I'm poking it with a stick and rebooting a lot just to get what I've got. Plus I couldn't even get iMovie to load the waveforms for my mp3s to line stuff up as well as I'd like, I don't think I have a chance in hell of getting any of my audio software to run that's more advanced than Audiacity (which I hate, with a bloody passion, but have been using anyway because it doesn't eat up all my processing power).

I dunno, I'm *not* my own student in this case, even though I'm doing my own assignment. Bah, maybe I'll finish some other stuff and see how much time I have left first...

flightless birds and missed kairos

2006-11-19T08:45:00.001-08:00

I really had no idea what I was getting into when I went to see Happy Feet yesterday. I've seen the previews, I thought it'd be a cute kids' movie about an outcast who tap dances instead of sings, and I both sing AND tap dance, so how could it miss?

Well, the movie wasn't about that, it was a 2 hour rhetorical strike against the fishing industry, which doesn't count as a "miss" automatically in my book. But it DID miss, no matter what the critics tell you, and I'm pretty sure that if I had taken a kid to this movie that I'd be downright angry at the heavy handed rhetoric being forced onto my kid that I had NO idea about based upon the previews and all the toys.

So first, I'll warn that there are spoilers here. But if you have kids, some of these spoilers might be useful to you--I dunno. But if you wanna be surprised, stop here.

Still with me? Good. So here's where the movie's rhetoric shined, and shined so much I actually thought they were going to pull it off:

1. Near the end of the movie, Mumble uses his dance moves to communicate with man, bring man to his fellow penguins, and get man to help them out. The previews certainly did the same trick to me--the dancing penguins in the previews WORKED to get my ass into the movie theater.

2. Somewhere in the middle Mumble is playing with some new friends and they start an avalanche of sorts. You see this big piece of construction equipment fall off the cliff with them, seemingly randomly. In any order animated film this would be something to laugh at, some random visual element thrown in for laughs. But it wasn't, they used it, and did so well.

3. The movie adequately calls upon both the concept of the "Other" in Mumble and also sets him up to be the one true savior of penguin society--and if they'd left it there, it might have worked. The movie is obviously SET UP to be a myth, with a narrator and all, so using the same sort of character as The Matrix and Star Wars and other similar hero-quest myth stories makes absolute sense.

4. All the people in the movie are REAL people, not computer animated. That's when the movie stops being a myth abruptly, and it works. It's cool.

So what's not to like?

Well, after all that, the movie jumps the shark spectacularly. My ticket was ALMOST worth it just to discover that I could, indeed, call a missed kairotic moment "jumping the shark" and that it may very well be useful to do so to students "Well, your paper jumps the shark here..." because that terminology describes what's wrong with a lot of arguments so much better than other language (you know, once I explain what that means).

I had a lot of hopes halfway through the movie. They were obviously on an ecological bent--save the fish. Hrm okay. I'd recently read an article that says all the fish supplies will be gone by the year 2048 or something like that, so the timing on the article + movie was right.

Mumble ends up in a zoo, and goes kinda crazy and starts seeing things. I've not been a fan of zoos since I was at the Toledo one and this poor high school girl was stuck standing in front of the tiger exhibit, with the skin of their star tiger's HEAD, letting people pet it. Ew. That's cruel and gross, so I don't do zoos very well (though I still wanted the detroit one to stay open last year, go figure, if only to compete against the nasty tiger head down in Toledo).

Uh anyway, I can buy that. But then, it's like the studio execs said "we're running out of time! hurry up and shove it down their throats!" and they started dying on every single last move in the film. It's freaking PAINFUL.

First, a little girl taps on the glass at Mumble, and he remembers how to dance. The very next scene he's back on the ice at home and he's got a radio transmitter BUILT INTO HIS BACK. I mean, ow. It's clear people were excited about him and his dancing, but I figured he was just hallucinating again. You could see everyone in the entire audience (and it was packed with families because we're cheap and do matinees) looking around going "wtf?" to each other.

Because at least the grown ups know that no zoo would let a tap dancing bird into the wild again, even with a transmitter. Duh. And how'd he let them know he wanted to come back? How'd ANY of this happen? If you're going to have REAL humans in a computer animated flick, then they need to act like real humans, or else the fact you used REAL humans is utterly meaningless.

So he's back home, and the humans are coming, and he convinces everybody to dance for them, overthrowing the crazy christian like cult that this group of penguins lives in. And they dance, and it changes the world.

No really. The next few minutes is a series of shots of how people saw the penguins dance and immediately changed the world. There's this super fast animation of them pulling fishing boats away from the penguins' habitat and getting rid of them all, of people stopping eating fish COMPLETELY, and being moved by the dancing penguins. Oh, and the penguins don't become a vacation destination, like they undoubtedly would in real life.

This is all over in a matter of minutes, then we see that the fish are back, Mumble has a kid with his long time girlfriend, and pow, the movie is over.

And people applauded, but kids were looking around going "what the heck?" I was right with them.

The movie jumped it by first of all not spending enough time on the transformation. It was the most heavy handed move I've ever seen in any movie EVER: people did this and all the penguins were happy! YOU HAVE TO DO IT TOO!

Will this work on kids? I dunno. By that point, the movie is so damn slow they were probably bored out of their minds. The first half was fun, the second, more important, half was boring as all hell. So my guess would have to be no.

The sequence is so damn painful that I can't even begin to describe why. It wasn't painful in a "make you uncomfortable" sort of way either, it was just out of step with the rest of the movie. They seemed to be building up to something big and good, and I thought that maybe there would be a true moment of kairos here, but no--it just doesn't work. The penguins are flightless, so's the rhetoric.

But it did get us talking. The boy was talking about how there's just too many people in the world. I was puzzling over why they made that last really shitty rhetorical move. It could have been brilliant.

Except I can't think of a single OTHER thing they could have done. Had the people cut back fishing a little? Had the people start feeding the penguins? Have a fund set up that movie goers could donate to to help the birds? (actually, that last one is a little closer to what they might have done with a scaled back ending.)

You can't talk about overpopulation in this movie, though that might have been done in a different sort of one. You can't tell people that if EVERYONE in the entire world stopped eating fish that then they'd be eating something else, encroaching on some other poor animal's habitat (but that other poor animal isn't a cute and smart little penguin, so clearly that's okay). You can't do that, so at best, this movie might have made people THINK.

And that's what it fails to do, it spoon feeds a solution instead of making people think of a solution (or at least a bigger one, had they not gone for the rock 'em sock 'em ending that they did). Kids might never eat fish again, but they're parents are likely to tell them it's just a movie and to eat the damn fish sticks anyway.

Maybe somebody will be inspired by this movie to become an activist and someday take those fishing companies on. Maybe that was the point. Maybe they just wanted to create that one person that will change the world. But where does that leave the rest of us? If we wanted to help, we were given no way to do so. And even if we do care, that ending was so gosh darned wince inducing that I practically ran from the theater, embarassed that I had EVER wanted to see it.

Because it misses, that much, in those last few minutes. The critics are cheering that a kids movie took on a big issue--great. But if the big issues are taken on and the movie fails at it--what's to crow about?

x-posted over at my other journal.

Palimpsest

2006-11-16T07:13:00.000-08:00

So listening to Jenna on Monday talk about palimpsests reminded me of an exhibit I saw this weekend, and reading her blog just now reminded me that duh, I had wanted to post about that.

Anyway, so I was in the middle of reading Haynes and stopped to go out for the afternoon. We decided to go to the Henry Ford Museum because we've got memberships and hadn't seen the new christmas exhibit yet (better yet, the usual upcharge exhibit is free this year--nifty).

It's a display on Tasha Tudor, who was famous for drawing christmas cards and writing children's books about Welsh Corgis. She apparently also was really obsessed with doll houses and dolls and played with them and told stories about them all her life. Yeah, so that last part is a little weird, but... whatever.

Her exhibit included a lot of early versions of cards with the final ones--which was really cool. It was interesting, not unlike the palimpsest that Jenna showed us, to see where changes were made and think of why that may be. Actually, I always find art palimpsests to be fascinating.

Then we walked around to the back wall and there displayed for the world to see was drafts of her writing with mark up included. My first reaction was to turn to the boy and go "Yeah, so if I ever manage to get famous--as unlikely is that is--and somebody hangs up my drafts in a museum after my death with my corrections all over them I will be back from the dead to haunt their ass faster than you can say 'mycoplasm'" which I had completely forgotten was from another reading and WASN'T the same thing as ectoplasm, but he's really deathly afraid of mushrooms so I guess in the end it got the same result.

Of course, I've been reading too much to not have to sit back and consider why that is. Why does the art palimpsest appeal but the written one, not so much? Why do I fear so greatly anybody seeing my early draft stuff?

Well, for one, I think my drafts suck--if they exist anymore at all. Second of all, if anybody dug up what I cared about as a child as museum quality work I'd want their head examined. To be honest, I did a lot of the things as a kid that were in this exhibit--I made tiny newspapers and books complete with tiny writing and illustrations for my My Little Ponies, I wrote elaborate stories based upon the characters that I thought they were (not the ones from the animated series), and so on. My mom proofread those stories for me... and then I'd correct them....

And really, the "palimpsests" that were given to us for this Tasha Tudor exhibit in the writing section really were just that--they were proofread. I don't think it's interesting that somebody at some point forgot to type a word before Microsoft could point that out to us. It would have been interesting to see that she had deleted a rather racially uh... "racy" ... section about "being the Nigerian" at Christmas, or maybe hadn't had it in at first, but nothing about these texts changed except spelling and missed words, so whatever thought process might have been in a more revised palimpsest just wasn't there.

So then, what makes proofread marked up text museum quality work anyway? If we can't learn anything about somebody's thought process that could paint really well but just might have been a little crazy, why hang it up at all? I kept thinking that "Tasha Tudor" must be some kind of author-function that I just hadn't been aware of before. After all, I'd be drooling to see original Shakespeare manuscripts (or even Derrida or Heidegger). So why not Tasha Tudor? Is it just because she isn't that popular or important of an author function for me? Or is it because palimpsests of minor superficial changes aren't really palimpsests at all unless there are major revisions to be seen?

hrm.

2006-11-15T08:16:00.000-08:00

I find it interesting that in the writing center notes that I've been putting into the database when a tutor is going to say something negative about a student they nearly always reiterate the student's name. Why is naming the person you're going to say something bad about more important than naming a person you're going to say something good about?
And why tell us twice *or more* that a student is ESL?
Just hrm...

more feminist theory biting me in the butt

2006-11-13T06:54:00.000-08:00

Today my boyfriend's mom is having a masectomy. We're pretty sure that once healed she'll be okay, although that will be a long process, so no, that's not what this entry is about.

Instead, I'd like to approach the language surrounding this whole "cancer" thing. Her doctors have gone on and on about how she never had kids, and THAT'S why she has breast cancer now (he's adopted, she's infertile, and so this is definitely not a "fault" issue). Except it really does SEEM to be a fault issue. "Well, if you had just done what you're supposed to do, and had kids the naturnal normal way, then you wouldn't have cancer now" ... or at least, that's how I'm reading a lot of the research.

I've actually seen a lot of news articles recently about how having kids prevents all sorts of cancers, and it's not surprising to see since birth rates are falling.

So it seems to be a "breed or die" message, and I don't particularly like it. In her case, it's utterly ludricrous anyway. Her mom had the same type of cancer, had the same procedure, and lived for years after, AND had four kids. Clearly, breeding was not the answer to cancer prevention here. So what the heck is up with the guilt trip?

Lastly, I will finish up with yet another complaint: on one hand, they're telling us to have sex, have kids, or die. On the other, a vaccine was recently released that would make having sex a lot safer, since we'd be less likely to get HPV and cervical cancer were we to get it. I asked my doctor becuase i've known it's been coming for a long time, not because of the silly commercials. This shot has been around for a long time but was blocked partially by groups that thought it would make women into whores, but uh, that's another post entirely. You want to know how much this thing costs?

Nobody's insurance covers it, it's a series of 3 shots, and it's $170 per shot. The women that could benefit the most from this will probably never be able to afford it. Hell, I'm still debating whether I'm willing to drop the cash or not. I'm not sure what the price is tied to--don't people want this? Don't LOTS of people want this and want their daughters to get it? Or do they just think we'll be whores if we get it? Or do drug companies just know that they can charge whatever they want since this is "teh big bad cancer" ("teh" used intentionally here).

just what sex are student pronouns anyway?

2006-11-12T09:14:00.000-08:00

I remember the first time I read an essay that referred to all students as "her," and had two thoughts--one: the writer was female so must just be using her own pronoun, which I've been told you can do; two: what a nice change from the usual he/his or he/she or his/hers because no matter how much Vitannza loves throwing in those "/'s" and no matter how much I did the same thing in my latest Marback essay, replacing a singular personal pronoun with a "/" construction gets old about two pages into an article, let alone 20.

But when I was reading for this week something gave me pause. Cynthia Hayes reminds us that T.R. Johnson talked about students as sado-masochists in "School Sucks" and somewhere very close to the "happily bound and gagged" by writing line refers to students by the feminine...

I have, admittedly, been reading too many feminist bloggers recently. But I really began to wonder where this "student as female" set-up came from. Eveyrwhere else we as a country refer to unspecified people as male and yes, feminists complain about it. But think, just for a moment, all the things we usually say about students. Think of all those commonplaces that we have to think about students:

They can't write. They're bad writers. They can't think. They don't read the way we want them to. The way they respond to our assignments is boring. They don't care. They...

And I think that it's sort of strange that in the ONE field where we constantly make the statement that our object of study--students--are doing poorly but that WE--their opposite--have the magical bullet or pedagogy that somebody could use to turn that around--that we refer to all students as female.

I remember writing up the research study I ran for my thesis and avoiding personal pronouns like the plague. If I used "she" somebody would know what student I was writing about--I had that few female students. If I used "he" I was clearly being a bad feminist. But they were nearly all "he's," and thus I started designating students by letters--by fake names--anything, really, to keep from having to use a bloody pronoun.

I'm relunctant to feminize all students. Females are still considered the weaker sex, and if we're going to take on this pedagogy where student writing and circulation is important, if we're going to value abstract writing and juxtaposition, I don't think that we can ALSO consider students as weaker. That's going to either screw up our values or just prove that our values aren't quite in the right place to begin with.

Because, you know, students ARE weaker--right? Isn't that what some people are going to say? That they DO need to be shown the way and that it is our job--as the teachers, the male in this situation--to do that? And I'm sorry, but I'm not so sure. I've never been sure about that, and that's been the driving force of my pedagogy since day 1. Richard Grusin told us in a meeting on Friday that under the "old" program before this class, some students would graduate with their BA and be in the classroom 2 weeks later--well, that was me. And it changed me. Hearing all the other GTI's ripping apart students and saying they couldn't learn but oh THIS might work really truly hurt me because I had just been one. I'd crossed that invisible line to the other side and the way people treated me changed so drastically that I actually went home and laughed one day. "Oh you're one of us now, no need to be rude or denigrating anymore," yeah well, screw you I thought.

And I set out to teach in some way different, I suppose. I value student ideas and intelligence and I ask them to go above and beyond the projects that would normally be assigned in whatever class, and mostly, they seem to appreciate that. I actually have a few exceptions this term, and have to keep reminding myself that I cannot and should not change what I'm doing because one person or two people in all the hundreds I've taught the same material to is resistant...

Anyway, I'd like to close thinking about this sado-masichism thing. Johnson says we teach our students to value pain in writing, if it isn't painful it isn't good for you. And they learn to like that. All the while, this supposedly "female" student learns to like it. To be honest, that construction gives me the willies (if indeed, we are to write as if all students were female).

The BDSM movement is bigger than ever here in the great old USA, and I've even lost several friends to it. Once somebody is "in" they don't seem to be allowed any out. I knew a few female dommes, but to be honest, most of my female friends were subs. And I had to listen as they told about their chosen dominators asking them over time to do more and more ridiculous things--be held underwater, be held underwater and anally penetrated, as the beatings became more severe, and as they would say that the fellow didn't listen to the safeword anymore--but oh, that was okay, because saying "no" was "vanilla."

Yeah, so I lost a lot of friends that way. No, they didn't die, but they thought I was a prude for not approving, and for not diving right on in.

So yeah, what does that have to do with students? For one, I think that BDSM is bad for a lot of women. Likewise, I think that feminising students--whether consciously or not--is also a potentionally bad thing. Seeing students referred to as sado-masochists and all of us nodding and saying "of course?" Well, clearly things have to change. I'm not going to give you a magic bullet though (partially because I think the blender by the same name sounds an awful lot like a vibrator, which would fit into this conversation oh so nicely, but I'm not quite that depraved just yet). I'm not sure that ANY pedagogy picked up all around by all teachers could save our students from being submissive, I think that, instead, this is at least partially a function of teacher personality and teacher investment in the classroom. Last week at the writing center an adjunct marched a student in (as if she couldnt' do it herself--and it was a girl) and asked us to show this student, in front of him, how to do some things in Word. And when we didn't have time, proceeded to do so himself, very poorly--guy didn't have a clue, AND he was being kinda rude abou it. I finished up with my student and calmly and carefully helped this girl learn how to center text and set up a hanging indent.

I could almost see the invisible leash that fellow had his student on though--and that should make us all feel a little ill.

intellectual property

2006-11-09T19:18:00.000-08:00

Not-so-hypothetical situation which is thankfully not my own:

A significant other gives you a computer. You use it, you write on it. You break up.
A year later or so he becomes enraged, lets himself into your parent's home, and takes the computer.
The police tell you that the files aren't yours, and never were.
He, according to them, has all rights to the writing, can post it, publish it, whatever. You don't really care about the computer.

I think this is a huge intellectual property issue. I recognize that when you type or work on school computers or for classes that the school essentially owns your work (especially if you sign a contract saying so, as I've had to repeatedly). I get this distinct idea that the law enforcement officials might be mistaken here, but then again, the significant other very carefully researched the law before he did this as well.

So who owns the writing?

And what does that *say* about electronic writing?

blogging... not driven by response?

2006-11-08T18:28:00.000-08:00

I'm really curious why so many compositionists don't seem to think that blogging is being driven by response. It seems like they think that blogging is done for the self, for the heck of it...

And while that may be true, I think that blogging is also at least partially driven for and by comments.

After all, there are people (mainly the young people that are being talked about in these articles) that one day drop their serious discourse and whine "If you don't leave me notes/comments, I'm not going to post anymore" or "If you don't comment on me, I'm going to delete you from my friends list" (that one I see from adults a lot) or "People left me rude comments, I'm leaving the blogosphere!" after which they nearly immediately create a new journal under a different name.

People write to be heard, and I think that THAT is perhaps a connection that can be tapped into in class more than people writing to write. And maybe that point has been made somewhere and I either missed it when my dog pounced me or simply haven't read the article that states that yet, but I think that might be how I explain using blogging in my classroom to my students. It's a way to get heard. And if you've never done it before, then here's a chance in class to try it out and maybe someday you'll use it for something that you really care about.

I'm also inviting my students to post news articles and start discussions (pretty much about anything, but I'm moderating) via our shared class blog for extra credit (I grade on a point system, and this has done well before). I don't add in the extra credit till the end, and if you have late or missing assignments it doesn't count, but that seems to be a good way to get them involved in some sort of community discourse (I've done it with message boards, I'm curious as to how it will work on a blog).

Annnnd the students are whining during their test. So I'll bbl.

grad school vs. capitalism

2006-11-07T22:35:00.000-08:00

It was said in class the other day that we have far too many unfunded graduate students (agreed) and that grad school isn't about making money (also true). But I think that's an ideal, and that there are only a few grad students in any given school that meet that ideal. To meet that ideal we'd have no dependents, preferably we'd even still be somebody else's dependent.

I only know my own situation, and I can't speak for anybody else, and I'm not going to try to. The more I've thought it out, I've realized that I'm being sort of Marxian about the whole thing, but it's late and this is a blog, not a seminar paper, so you'll have to forgive me the specifics of what he might have said about it all. (I'm also worried about people thinking I'm trying to garner pity, well.. I'm not. But there's complications here, and I think we all have them, and I think we're also often asked to ignore them or drop out, and to me *neither* is an option.)

In any case, as I've told some people, my dad had a stroke 13 years ago. He can't work. My mom stays home to take care of him. My grandma moved in with us back then, but just two years after she *too* had a stroke and my mom also had to stay home and take care of her. My mom got so used to being home that she's slightly agoraphobic and terrifically depressed from time to time, so despite my grandma passing away she still doesn't work. My parents helped me pay for my undergraduate degree, despite this, right up until the point when I got a real good look at their finances thanks to online banking and told them to bugger off.

Now, several changes in health care over the past two years have done a lot to screw them over. My dad's pension is beyond the poverty line, so there's no goverment assistance available. My mom refuses to get herself mentally checked out enough to go on medical disability, so she's not getting the benefits she could be, and believe me, I've tried. When extra money is needed, because my dad's union decides to stop doing things like providing good cheap health care to their retirees, paying for things around here falls to nobody but me.

Because, of course, there is just me. They helped me save when I was younger, and now I do the same for them. Stocks, various high interest short term savings accounts, really whatever's earning me the best interest, I'm putting that away for them now. Sure, some of you would probably say "Well fuck them, they're your parents and should be taking care of you" yeah well, they did. And I feel like I have two options, put money away for the inevitable NOW, or end up giving them pretty big loans later (and not all that later) that would be more difficult to manage.

At the same time, I'm of course also paying for all my own shit, and saving money. Hence, I work. And go to school. And find ways to make that work.

Now, given this, just why the heck would I come back to school anyway?

Well, I spent a year contracting editing/publishing/writing/computer work before I started adjuncting. It was difficult to put money away for anybody while doing this, because my pay rates changed pretty darn often. It was stressful, and a lot of long term positions were being sold to Kelly services and Manpower, and though I checked those out, I was making more on my own on average than doing the same work for just a little over minimum wage, despite that little over minimum wage being steady.

Thus, I found adjuncting. I love teaching, so I quickly started picking up more and more courses. But teaching, and being a faculty member at a private school that encouraged us to go to conferences and publish, just served to remind me of what I was missing. I wanted to go further in school, and I always knew that, but I knew that I wasn't alone in this. I'm in a steady relationship, I have other people that depend on me for some money and emotional junk, and ultimately I had to make the best decision for everybody--not just me.

And that is the decision I think everybody that goes back to school HAS to make unless they're completely alone, unless they're also comfortable being completely selfish. I'm funded right now for a variety of reasons:

1. It's more money for fewer hours per week than adjuncting
2. free tuition
3. I'm getting experience working in a writing center, which I haven't had before

Now, that situation might shift. We *could* be asked to work a lot more hours in the writing center for our money. At which point...

1. I'd be making a lot LESS money for my time than I could teaching
2. If I could spend those hours teaching I could make up for the free tuition
3. After this year, I've got the writing center experience line on my CV

So what, if anything, does that mean?
If it was just me, the first situation is always best. But even if I were being somewhat selfish, that second situation could still invariably blow up in my face at any time. If my parents went bankrupt, or one of them got sick and their insurance refused to cover anything (and I'm working on figuring out a way to get them on mine, though they aren't very happy about it), then wihtout considering funding vs. overall income level I too could end up broke. Or in debt. And I can't exactly afford to be in debt *and* be supporting some savings for older people *and* be considering starting my own family later.

So why be in school at all? It's funny, but I love doing this, and it's where I want to be. And I can make it work, so it's where I am. But I'm not a "responsibilities be damned" kind of girl, and I'm never going to be.

pedagogically speaking...

2006-11-05T14:11:00.000-08:00

My second term as a graduate student I was enrolled in a course taught by Dennis Lynch about rhetoric, literacy, and pedagogy. Pretty much everything back then came back to "well, what does this mean about teaching?" which I guess is what happens when you are a grad student at a teaching school. In fact, we were pretty practical about making the move from theory to practice, transforming the theory language along the way. One of the conversations came down to a response we'd written on personal pedagogy.

I knew at the time that most of my success at teaching came from two places: I was nearly the same age as my students and had a very good sense of what they wanted and needed from the course, and could blend that expertly with what I thought was important as well, and I'd been a karate teacher not all that long before so I could scare the bejezus out of people into complying if need be. Apparently I can look scary. I think I've lost some of that second part over time.

But despite this, I realized I was relying upon youth and ethos alone, and let's face it--those things aren't going to last. Just a year or two in either direction and suddenly the 80s commercials that I was using to show students how rhetoric worked on them as kids wasn't going to be so strong anymore, and it wasn't like I had a whole collections of 90s VHS's of whatever younger kids watched then to fall back on because I had moved beyond wanting to see everything 60 times by that point.

And so I said that I knew I needed to continue developing or I was going to get stuck, but that I wasn't sure where to go from here.

I can't say that's changed much, except the incentive to "do this now" is stronger than ever. I've been able to put it off since so many of my students are older than me at Baker, and because I can rely on my knowledge of the software I'm teaching to muddle through the bad points. But to teach comp and to work at a higher level than teaching a test these people are going to have to take, well, I know I have to do more.

So what is that exactly? This term I'm thinking about some sort of "Designing Language/Composition" approach. I'm wary of "Designing Language" because it sounds like linguistics and linguistics gives me hives, but "Designing Composition" sounds a lot like page layout, and that's not it either by a long shot.

What I do know is that I want a series of assignments that shows the power of words, the power of juxtaposing words, the power of personal experience with language, and how different kinds of writing are related and are accessible through one another. (How personal narratives are tied to short stories are tied to dialogues are tied to essays, for example.) This, in turn, will allow me to lead back eventually into some of my own research and connect back up to it in new ways (though not this term) in that I researched how you can access writing through online instant messaging when students think it's speech, so yeah, this all lines up pretty gosh darned well.

I'd like to do some stuff with mystory, but I'm going to have to spend some time reading first. My earlier pedagogy clings to me like a static-ed sock--it's stuck to my ass until I peel it off. I don't think it's fair to ask students to do something I haven't worked through extensively and well, I'm just starting there. But I can see where this will eventually fit in with what I just mentioned above, and that's pretty cool. I definitely plan on teaching the research process available in via mystory though, so I'll be able to get some of the benefits immediately.

I know I know, I'm running scared right? But I dunno, right now this feels right. This gives me a place to talk about audience and rhetoric and composition and really nifty things you can do with language all at once. This gives me a place to start playing an argumentation boardgame instead of showing old commercials. This gives me a place to think about teaching to multi generational students instead of what I had at MTU--mainly younger ones. And it gives me enough open framework to start blending in theory seamlessly too.

In other words, I feel good till tomorrow when we go to class and I feel dumb again. But hey, that's grad school right?

national novel writing month and other crap

2006-11-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

I'm beginning to think that a potentional damn good use of National Novel Writing Month (November) might be dissertation writing. I mean, why not? Sure it's supposed to be used for fiction...

Yeah, pity my committee. But having a built in non school support group to do lots of writing? That has potential right there.

Uh anyway, I was too busy reading Vico to start on next week's reading yet (That's tomorrow), despite that I've been thinking a lot about strange pedogogies I could invariably form up around stuff I "know." What would writing look like in a pedagogy informed by Soo bahk do? Ballet? The muppets? And I'm actually coming up with answers....albeit they're probably bad.

I think it's officially that time of the semester when I need to start sleeping more just to stay sane.

On Writing New Media ...

2006-10-29T10:20:00.000-08:00

I actually read this book last spring, and decided I should probably reread it or else Jeff would probably call on me to recall something that I didn't/couldn't ;). It's a little eerie, to be honest, since I've done a lot of these assignments before, but I'm going to try and mostly not respond from that place and talk about something else instead.

I remember reading a review somewhere that claims that Anne's opening chapter is weak, and that she seems to be writing from somewhere else than the rest of the book. I think I felt that when I read it through the first time--the assignments are good, her second chapter is rooted in an example, etc. But after doing all the reading we've done this term, and having also read the Castells, the Feenberg, the Haraway that she cites, I can't really agree with that pronouncement. It fits in perfectly with all the theory we've been reading and situates the book well. I don't want to say the reviewer was wrong, per se, but is it really fair to review something without also having a good knowledge of just where the book is coming from to begin with? Without having done the background reading so that this "fits?" Hrm... I dunno, but it gives me something to think about if I ever do get around to writing a review....

That said, I'm going to agree with Mike that I like A. Wysocki's idea of new media better than C. Selfe's. I can say that from a couple different angles. I first like that Anne moves away from an interactivity model of new media and pushes this idea that new media is all about material texts. Sweet--we've actually studied that elsewhere this term. Selfe's defintion seems more ordinary, more Computers and Composition and less "New Media" and composition (and given that she edits Computers and Composition it's not really fair to fault her there.)

However, at some point in her chapters she mentions it being "okay" to let a student teach the class how to use a web editor, and that's one point I really disagree with her on and always have. I was that student in more than one class (not hers, but people she taught...) and it annoyed me to no end. As a graduate student, I'm a person always really willing to help anybody who asks. I'd be happy to run somebody through using Dreamweaver, or point them to good resources to learn. But if an instructor says something to the effect of "Well I don't really know how to do this and don't know how to support it but I'm going to let you support each other" I just get angry. It's a left over from my days as an undergrad that I can't shake. In my classroom I teach what I can support (which is actually a generous amount of stuff) because I think it's *my* job to answer student questions. I don't ever suggest that one or two students help all the other ones and then also have to do the project too--that isn't fair to them or to their in class work time. As grad students, we were also sometimes expected to learn lots of new software fast, and although I don't regret that at all (I teach some of that software now, and I also contract whenever I can so it's definitely come in handy) I still really wanted a go to person for support. Her model WORKS, don't get me wrong, those students do what they have to and like me, they probably sort of enjoy it. But sometimes I think it's a mistake to put that kind of pressure on people that are paying YOU to teach THEM.

Anyway, lastly I'd like to respond to Sirc's "Box Logic." I like this idea of collecting things and interrelating them, writing about them, making sense out of them. On the simplest level, I think I'd like to eventually write an assignment (maybe not this term, but definitely by next fall) that asks students to collect things. For now maybe there's something else I can draw upon.

Several times in the piece he mentions "Found Objects" which happens to also be the name of a community I read (but don't participate in) on Livejournal (http://community.livejournal.com/found_objects/). Now, I think it was Ellen who suggested that participating in such things (Myspace, livejournal, facebook) whatever is kinda creepy when you're an adult, and to one extent or another I'd agree, but I've found some really sort of neat communities on Livejournal. Despite the fact I don't have an account, I've got these "Collection" communities bookmarked and like to look at them.

In the case of Found_objects, people post pictures of strange things they've found outside on the street. Some of the objects are a lot "better" than others, but I think I might be able to direct students to look at these objects and think about how they make the normal strange, as Sirc implies we should be doing. Eventually I'd like to write an assignment that asks students to do the same--look for the strange and take pictures of it--but I'll see how writing up an assignment using the community works first. "Find a favorite example and discuss it in a blog entry" maybe. Something like that. I've been flirting with the idea of *some* mandatory blog prompts, this could be one of them.

In any case, Writing New Media feels like it's in familiar territory for me. I should get going and finish reading that last chapter about databases. *waves*

confession time

2006-10-26T05:56:00.000-07:00

I've a confession to make...
I rather enjoy giving tests sometimes, in classes that warrant them (computer courses that are meant to be preparation for certification exams are a pretty good example, I think). Writing multiple choice tests, or just rearranging the answers to pre-written ones, is just something I take great joy in.

Why?

Because you can make them spell things. Like the last four answers on the test spell "DEAD." I'm endlessly amused and can memorize the answer key easily. The students never seem to notice because the questions aren't *right* next to each other.

But still....

histories....

2006-10-21T22:54:00.000-07:00

One thing I have inadvertantly learned this term is that history, and one's position in it, is really bloody important. During my MS, I learned that I had to "define terms," and that I couldn't just toss out *easy* words like rhetoric without explaining exactly what I meant. These days I define everything that I personally feel I need to, and that not only adds to page length and makes those 10-20 page papers seem a lot less daunting, but it also gives any argument I make a stronger theoretical background because, of course, I have to usually call upon other people to define any term I choose.

I was reading Berlin, and reading yet another version of composition history, and realized that nearly every text I've read gives, at some point, a historical standpoint on its topic. On one hand, this was an "oh shit" moment, as I also realized that this was something I was going to have to do relatively soon and I don't feel particularly prepared. But I also began to realize that that stating what is really important to you from a field's history, or what arguments you think are still valid, or arguing about what has shaped a field or position is just as important as going ahead and stating why you think those things should change. History is necessary, and even when I'm beginning to wonder exactly how many more histories of composition and rhetoric there could possibly be, I'm beginning to think that the answer is infinite.

So yeah, historically grounding my approach to my dissertation is something that I will potentionally have to do. Nifty. I couldn't do that now, so that could give me a place to go to when I need to start thinking qualifying exams--niftier. Having any sort of direction is a down home martha stewart style good thing.

Lots of random stuff

2006-10-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was potentionally my weirdest day teaching ever. I first had a girl into the writing center whose teacher was clearly marking her down because she isn't a native speaker of english. I put a note in her file that proofreading her is okay--most of her ideas are well developed as it is, but she's naturally very frustrated. I, too, was frustrated because her teacher is suggesting that she "listen to real Americans speak more" and to "memorize grammar rules" rather than have somebody proofread her damn papers (and those are highly edited comments, the real ones were quite a bit worse). He wants her to be able to write perfect the first time, and I don't think that's going to happen even in a native speaker. *sigh*

Anyway, then I go to work, where one of my students gives her paper on Gonorrhea, because she's a nurse and she's surprised at how many people come in with it. Fine. Then one of my over achievers all but admits that she has it by asking extensive questions about symptoms and testing, and wouldn't let me cut her off. Just EW. There's some things I don't need to know people!

And then another student failed to turn in a paper or a presentation, just outright refused to do it. Okay, fine. I'm not going to make a big deal out of it. This is a potentionally pre-comp class though, and I grade as such. This is EASY POINTS. So why not do it, even if it's crap, to earn at least some of those easy points?

Lastly, I've finally perhaps decided what I want to do with blogging/wikis/so on next term. I'm thinking of having a class blog with all students as potential posters. It'll be half blog/half discussion board, and I suspect if all the info is in one place they might be more likely to read each other, leave comments, and try to write something somewhat unique. At least, that's the idea.

I'm still sorely tempted to try to use the message board and picture system in Facebook in order to discuss things with my class. However, I used a "question" community of college students on Livejournal to trial run that idea, and most of them were against it because they want their public profiles to remain private, away from their teachers. I've had an account on there since the month the site opened, and so have other youngish instructors I know, so privacy? Good luck with that. I understand their position though.

I think that there is a great deal of technology out there that students are already using that COULD be used in the classroom, potentionally very well. But if students are dead set against it being used that way, and I only want to do it to get that publication credit, then I know I really shouldn't. I've known far too many graduate students and faculty that use technology in the classroom as an easy way to get published, and I don't really want to be one of them (mostly because I thought they were batshit crazy when *I* was an undergrad). Still, I think that social networking systems might be the wikis and blogs of tomorrow, it just isn't something that I can do right now.

on doing reading for other courses at the very last minute...

2006-10-18T12:52:00.000-07:00

I just started reading Agrippa for my history of rhetoric class...

and was nearly immediately reading a passage about magical necklaces and such that perform various things like making people well...

One of them involves hanging the finger of an aborted (miscarried, assumbably) child from one's neck in order to prevent conception as long as it's there.

I can't help but imagine how THAT would work:

Man from that time period: Hey baby, wanna go back to my place and make sweet sweet love?
Woman from that time period: Sure! Let me just get my cloak...
Man from that time period (leaning in for the kiss): You're such a insatiable little...
*and then he notices the finger*
Man from that time period: What the fuck? Is that a finger?
Woman from that time period: Yes, it's so you can't get me with child. *She tries to stroke his cheek with it and it leaves a little smear of rot*
Man from that time period: Gah! You crazy bitch! (runs away, sex does not happen, charm works! Write that one down...)

hybrids

2006-10-16T06:34:00.000-07:00

Next semester I'm teaching a new kind of course, and I'm excited about it for all sorts of reasons (this would be my one "outside Wayne" course, not that I'm not excited about Comp... but this is special). Anyway, it's what's called a "hybrid" class which is really good for me for a few reasons.

Hybrid courses meet half time in person and half time online (sometimes they are called blended courses). That means that they meet half as often, and even though I'll be at that school every week anyway for meetings and sometimes even up in Flint for curriculum junk, I won't be actively lecturing every week which is good.

But what I think is really cool about this particular class is that it is about Grammar--the style guide appropriate to the office, in this case--and that usually it's just a memorization class. Students memorize a bunch of off the wall homonyms and learn comma rules and abbreviation rules for the office. That's it. Memorization. Most boring lectures EVER.

But for the hybrid I'm required to give them lots of extra reading and work for the days we don't meet, and they are required to participate in discussion online or they fail. To me this means that I can bring in lots of issues and have them talk about things like Standard English and why we learn grammar and other such things which I could TRY to do in the classroom, and HAVE tried to do in the classroom, but without mandatory participation most people just don't try. I see the hybrid as being a way of getting at that information and including a lot of things in the course that wouldn't ever come up in the classroom and that's really cool.

And well, maybe there's a paper in there somewhere...

other people's kids.....I'll tell you...

2006-10-12T07:53:00.000-07:00

student: I'm missing assignments.
me: yep. *grades other people's stuff*
student: Why?
me: 'Cause you didn't turn them in, or if you did, your name wasn't on them.
student: I had to turn those in?
me: *stops grading other people's stuff, gives him a look... very very slowly...* Yes, you have to turn the homework in.
student: Oh, I didn't know that.
me: *thinks, "how the heck would I give you points for it otherwise?"* Yeah, you have to turn it in.
student: But I did it.
me: So bring it in next time.
student: Oh, you can't tell I did it?
me: *the homework is printed out and then filled out by hand, so uh... no* No, you need to turn it in for credit.
student: Oh, okay.

*head desk*

underlife indeed

2006-10-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

Clearly I'm a horrible person for finding out that a new tool has been installed on a lot of instructor computers that allows you to project from them more easily. Since some projectors are installed upside down/sideways, this tool allows you to turn the image on the monitor 90, 180, or 270 degrees.

However, I'm greatly amused that this ALSO means that I can walk up to any instuctor computer and press cntrl+alt+up and it flips the screen 180 and the mouse works opposite too. What a wonderful prank that could be. :)

Of course, I have to be all responsible and not tell the students... bah.

stripper papers and other stories

2006-10-10T05:35:00.000-07:00

One of my old students e-mailed me recently about something er other, doesn't really matter what, the conversation eventually ground down to "I can't believe you let me write a paper about strippers."

Hrm, what to say? He wrote one of the best essays in the course which managed to circumvent most of the problems such a paper could have. He interviewed people, he didn't write in a boring format, and his presentation was entertaining. He wasn't even demeaning to women, and approached the whole "this is our power over men girlfriend!" thing with a sort of skepticle aplomb.

So, given that he was able to engage with the subject and write a non traditional really GOOD essay for a course, why should he still be surprised that I said okay?

Yeah, it was a risk. But I'm not particularly afraid to take risks. I thought his paper was far less a risk than "I hate this fucking class" girl of a term earlier who insisted writing about how much she hated affirmative action because it *sniff* kept her out of U of M, which quoted racist sites (and she wouldn't take no for an answer on that either). Honestly, writing about a profession that we either joke about or look down on or are suspicious of--yeah it could have gone badly, but things have gone worse.

And so my response fell into the lines of "you wrote a good paper." Would it have been a mistake if he hadn't? I dunno. It's too difficult to tell ahead of time sometimes what will be "good" or not.

book reviews

2006-10-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

Faigley, Lester, Diana George, Anna Palchik, and Cynthia Selfe. Picturing Texts. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. 640 pp. $47.00

Wysocki, Anne Frances, and Dennis Lynch. Compose Design Advocate. New York: Longman Publishing Group, 2005. 456 pp. $56.00.

Position of Both Texts:
Both Picturing Texts and Compose Design Advocate were written partly in response to a perceived institutional and cultural need. Specifically, a new course designed at Michigan Technological University in 2000 had turned three composition courses into one communication and rhetoric course (the University switched from quarters to semesters in that year). This course took composition and combined it with other information like technical writing, graphic design, and rhetoric, and was part of a new University Wide courses program. At about the same time, the New London Group had published their text Multiliteracies, which encouraged instructors to approach teaching composition as an amalgamation of “literacies” that students already have use of in their daily lives—more about this later. Other American Universities were also resituating their courses in this way—creating new courses that help students communicate in more ways than simply writing, as well as learn about their world, discover advocacy, and so on. It was clear to many instructors that this sort of course could use a new kind of textbook, and not the reader that was thrown together for the first few years of the course.

This particular course covered written, oral, and visual rhetoric. Teachers were strongly encouraged to use “advocacy” as a way of getting at rhetoric of all forms, though it was not required. Many decided to use technology and new media instead—since some sections of the course could be taught “computer intensive” and have access to a department ran computer lab. Every teacher had to give a research paper assignment and one oral presentation—otherwise the course varied a great deal from one teacher to the next.

The existing text for the book was a reader without exposition which students were extremely prejudiced against. The reader was expensive, printed in black and white, and poorly constructed which meant that students could rarely resell it. This was extremely unfair to the text, which offered a decent selection of readings, but students’ preconceptions of the text made it difficult to use in the classroom. Because the class would have a graphic design component, the fact that this text was thrown together essentially as a course pack—no formatting changes made to articles contained within—teachers knew that they needed something new, something colorful, and something that would give them examples of good design, photography, and a variety of “texts” (and not just writing) to rhetorically analyze in class.

Out of this need, at least three textbooks have been published. Of course, these books are useful outside of their immediate discourse community, and outside of the University they were published in. They are all colorful, well designed, and contain information about rhetoric, advocacy, and image. However, the two texts I review here take a very different approach to confronting the issues of multiliteracy, advocacy, visual design, and composition, which makes them useful in different sorts of classrooms even though they were essentially designed for the same course.

Picturing Texts, Specifically:
According to its authors, Picturing Texts is a book written for students that are growing up, communicating, and living in an information saturated society, which teaches composition and rhetoric via rich visuals (3). These authors seem to believe strongly in multiliteracies: literacy has changed, people are learning and communicating in new ways, and even composition texts can be highly visual in nature. Because texts that students will encounter in their daily lives will likely be visual, the aim of this book is to expand a composition course to encompass visual and written texts—to “picture” texts, if you will.

The chapters of this text follow an understandable sequence: introducing visual and verbal composition, analyzing visual and written arguments, three chapters about social and cultural representation (again, written and visually), and lastly some instruction on creating visual texts. All information about visual design is contextualized with composition, although this is not a text for anyone looking for explicit instruction in grammar or composition forms, or a text for anyone looking for explicit graphic design instruction. The only information about graphic design (contrast, repetition, etc.) seems to be taken from Robin William’s text, The Non-Designers’ Design Book, but is greatly abbreviated.

Each chapter, no matter its intention, contains about four to six readings that are framed by exposition. This exposition tends to introduce very basic information: “In both writing and design, we regularly use comparison to explain or demonstrate an idea” (30). However, the accompanying visuals (two signs that use toilets with the seat up or down to signify men’s or women’s bathrooms) are clever and make a better argument in many cases than the text does. This really isn’t out of place in a text about the power of visual argument, but the framing might be written on too basic a level to engage all students.

Fortunately, the readings themselves are well chosen and can lead to discussions in class about nearly anything—social justice, cultural anthropology, visual composition, race, class, and so on. The “Focus” and “Respond” questions available in the text after each reading may sometimes seem to be easy for a college level text, however, the Instructor’s Guide, written by Cheryl Ball, provides more assignments and exercises that can be directly applied to engage students more fully. Each chapter also calls for students to write about pieces—whether visual or written—and in some cases, to create visuals of their own. These projects could easily be incorporated into a course that has students journal or blog—many of these writings could be interesting if shared. The book’s website, www.picturingtexts.com, also has additional assignments, readings, and writing that ask students to do things like analyze websites, use of visuals online, and even use of text online. This fills a gap in the text, since the text itself does not deal with visual rhetoric online itself (which makes sense in a way, since reproducing a webpage on one or more physical pages would change the experience of looking at the page entirely, links create a sort of rhetoric on their own that is not reproducible in a text. However, it is a shame that students or classrooms without internet connections will be missing the richness of the online materials.) Other supporting materials—a brief glossary, an easy to use index, and a well situated preface, complete the text and offer support to students who are wondering why this isn’t “just another composition book.”

Diana George previously published a textbook with John Trimbur called Reading Culture. Trimbur writes briefly about that textbook in his article “Composition and the Circulation of Writing,” published in CCC in 2000. He states in that article that one of the concerns of Reading Culture was keeping students from experiencing semiosis—accepting mass culture, simply being readers and consumers of it, without being critical of it (12). For this reason, Reading Culture is primarily a text about looking at cultural artifacts and analyzing them critically, as well as learning to be immune to their rhetoric. Trimbur suggests in this article a break from that idea, that “texts” don’t need to be read as such, and that students aren’t as susceptible to the mass media as we might assume. However, Picturing Texts, ironically enough, seems to be exactly the sort of text that could be used in this manner—to produce students aware of the rhetoric around them and to make them somewhat immune to the pressures of a mass media society. It would be interesting to find out what Trimbur might have to say about this newest text of his old partner—would he be as critical of it as he is of his own stance from six years ago?

This textbook fills a gap in undergraduate textbooks created by composition and rhetoric’s focus on multiliteracies and visual rhetoric. Any number of articles have pointed out that instructors must expand their focus of composition courses, and some books have been written to fill in a theory gap (see Wysocki and Selfe’s Writing New Media, Kress’s Literacy in the New Media Age), but very few textbooks have been created that begin to address how exactly visual and new media rhetoric can actually be included in a undergraduate textbook. This text is even further set apart from other texts being published about visual rhetoric because visuals are presented as texts themselves that can be read and analyzed separately from text. This is exactly the sort of reading that visuals often receive in the “real world” and are invaluable skills for students to have.

However, despite the fact that the text is attempting to fill a gap, it does not do much to actually give students any instruction in how to produce visual texts. What software can be used? What materials are necessary to do so by hand? Some students, if simply asked by their instructors to “create,” may feel lost without some basic instruction in these areas.

The visual design of this book is highly professional, and each page will help students learn new things about layout and visual argument. This is not surprising considering that Diana George, one of the authors, has published repeatedly about visual argument and using it in the classroom. The layout is inviting, and pages that are black and white often are given a color background instead to remain visually interesting. There is not a single page in the book that does not have a visual element to it, here, form meets content and creates a strong visual whole.

There are many different ways of using this text, and it could be used in a number of different classrooms. For this reason, it is probably best for an instructor interested in it to read the entire text and decide which pieces would be most useful for the classroom in question. For example, the expository information that bookends each chapter might be left out to deal with the readings as cultural artifacts.

Students that are interested in design or even just the internet, movies, or magazines are going to find this text more engaging than one that is “simply” about the composing process on its own. The idea that writing and visual composition might have a lot in common, and that students could probably learn to combine their composing process of one with the other, is relatively unique in an undergraduate text. This beautifully designed textbook will probably reach any number of students that believe they are enrolled in yet another boring composition course and help them to engage with classroom material.

Compose Design Advocate: A rhetoric for integrating written, visual, and oral communication:
According to the back cover of Compose Design Advocate, the text’s goal is to make students “fluent in multiple modes of communication: written, visual, and oral.” In addition to helping students to read these sort of texts, the book also provides instruction in creating them—and not just standard five paragraph essays either. Compose Design Advocate (hereafter CDA) treats these as separate entities only passingly—there is a clear connection between the rhetoric used in designing each type of communication. The text also makes it clear that students can and should be creating texts in all of these modes, and should also be thinking about choosing the best mode for any given communication. This purpose—empowering students to write more than the standard essay, and to start composing in more than just written form—could be achieved through the text alone, though how much this happens in each classroom will probably depend on the instructor’s focus.

This book is both one that could be used easily in a traditional composition classroom and also classrooms of many different types (graphic design, creative writing, etc), and due to its aims we are lead to thinking that this is not a bad thing—if we don’t already. CDA is divided into three sections: designing compositions rhetorically, producing compositions, and analyzing the arguments of others—an emphasis on production makes this book potentially stand out as a composition text and a reader. Instead of focusing on traditional academic writing for undergrads (5 paragraph essays and their ilk), Wysocki and Lynch (referred to in text as Anne and Dennis, which gives the text a familiar feel) start with giving students tools that can be used for any composition project. Students are lead to create a “design plan” that can be used for posters, academic essays, speeches, or even books—any time communication is necessary. Two design plans are created (one simple, the other more complex) as examples, and the final communication is also included. This approach gives students tools that might be useful after they escape the institution, instead of just giving them tools that will be useful in future courses but potentially fail them in the workplace.

The majority of the text is exposition about various forms of communication, rhetoric, and designing all of the aforementioned. Each form of communication (oral, written, visual) is discussed in rhetorical terms. In the last section of the text, students are also given tools and language that can be used to analyze photographs, posters, instruction sets, and even comics. Many different assignments could be written out of these sections—a teacher could use the instruction set section to run a technical communication unit, or use the comics section to introduce students to combining written/visual communication in new ways in other projects.

One of the strongest elements in CDA is that it gives students real language to discuss difficult subjects. For example, in a section about making an argument the text uses syllogism (and gives a definition) rather than avoiding the term as many other “basic” texts might do. Real rhetorical, photography, and communication language is contained here—the book assumes that students have a basic level of understanding and intelligence which students in turn can work up to. Unlike a lot of other texts, this one doesn’t speak down to them at all and leaves a place for the instructor to define any terms that they are having problems with. Armed with language, students can start developing discourse of their own.

Each section of the text not only discusses existing work, but also suggests that students can create any of the documents included. Student examples are also used to give students in doubt more confidence. The tone of the book is calming (mirroring its writers) which could go a long way toward giving students the confidence they need to begin writing. Additionally, the essays included exemplify what the authors want students to begin creating—documents that develop from narrative form, that use sources as more than guiding points for body paragraphs, and that are planned and developed well. The text itself is well written and well designed and stands as a good example of the sort of rhetorical design Lynch and Wysocki are proposing.

The weaknesses of CDA will vary amongst student bodies. Most of the readings chosen have something to do with civic advocacy, which might work well for some students but might make other students less likely to pay attention to any point the book is making. Although the given definition of advocacy is low level and unfrightening (they’re not suggesting students go out and protest anything) the very word advocacy could make some students likely to think that anyway. Instructors might also feel threatened by the word if they aren’t very politically active, so although the writers suggest that argument and advocacy are everywhere—present whenever you discuss something you are passionate about—the chosen readings and title of the text might prove difficult to overcome in some student bodies.

This text is beautifully designed. Every page is full color and should help to engage students in the material thereon. The chosen readings (although there are very few of them) support the exposition wonderfully. However, at $56 new (amazon.com) this text will probably be the only one used in any given composition classroom, and it almost seems like it would work better in support of a reader, or maybe with more readings. There are additional new media, videos, and images available on the website—and the book suggests using the web as an additional resource—but if these materials are not available in a classroom the instructor will be left on his or her own to locate additional readings.

Overall, CDA performs well and can be used in a number of different ways. It is malleable enough to be useful in many contexts, and allows for instructors to run a variety of different units throughout the term. Since examples of posters, comics, websites, essays, and so on are included, it also includes information on students creating these materials. It does this in a very professional way, and gives students some language in each section to talk about communication academically. Where other texts might fail at giving students only the technical tools to create images and writing, this one succeeds in giving them rhetorical and design processes that they can use into the future.

Other Sources:
George, Diana, and John Trimbur. Reading Culture: Contexts for Critical Reading and Writing. New York: Longman, 1999.

Rogers, Paul Michael. “Teaching Literacy in a Rhetorical Age: A Review of Picturing Texts.” Kairos. 9.1. Fall 2004.

Trimbur, John. “Composition and the Circulation of Writing.” CCC. 52:2. (Dec 2000). Pp. 188-219.

The Internet is for Porn

2006-10-09T07:40:00.000-07:00

Driving here today a song from Avenue Q, a musical and Tony winner, came on. It's called the "Internet is for Porn" and hearing it took me right back to the last summer I spent teaching at Tech.

I call myself a technology studies/computers and writing/whatever scholar, but in reality, every time I hearing somebody pontificating about how great the internet could make classrooms I hear this song in my head. I can't help it. An adult teacher approaching the internet for the first time is going to do so differently than a student. Students who have "grown up" with internet access see the internet as a place for fun--chatting, watching videos, downloading music, and yes, porn--not as a place for higher learning. And so the computers and writing teacher's first job should be to recognize that theory is just that--theory--and that the reality is murkier and has pert nipples.

It's hard for that sort of opinion to come across right in class--I think--because I basically support using various forms of technology to get students engaged and interested. Students that see computers and the internet as fun are probably going to enjoy a class more that employs them WELL more than one that doesn't use them at all--or at least, that's the idea. What does using them well mean though?

Well, I can't really answer that question--but neither can anybody else. It's a little like trying to define what good writing is, you have an idea of what it feels like (or makes you feel like) but describing it in succinct terms is harder. So, the following list isn't realy conclusive or new or anything, but it is a list of concrete things I can hold onto and describe instead of vague feelings.

So, using technology well means:

1. Using technology you KNOW and are comfortable with. No matter what you've been told, students don't appreciate having to teach their teacher technology. It is not okay to walk into a class and say "We're going to learn how to create webpages together!' because even though it seems like it works, and students are engaged, they'd be just as engaged if you knew what the heck you were doing.

2. You shouldn't just use technology to be doing it. I teach in a computer lab a lot, because my "other job" is teaching technology courses ABOUT the technology, and there isn't a better way to demonstrate and teach it--I know, I've tried. But that might not be the best way to teach composition, or for any given teacher to teach any given course, so I feel like there needs to be some good rhetorical reason to CHOOSE technology instead of whatever else is available.

3. Lastly, and this ties into this week's readings of renegades and underlife, when students use technologies in ways that you didn't intend--you just sort of have to deal with it, let it go, and figure out ways to either incorporate their uses or circumvent them for next time. I'm one of those people that will do everything with the technology except what I'm supposed to be (or well, sometimes in addition to what I'm supposed to be). I'm the person in the MOO making new rooms and using them to hold sub conversations. I'm the person designing a bat to fly around and poo. I'm the person figuring out how to embed movies in my discussion board questions--and these things, and others like them, drive some instructors crazy. If you are one of those instructors--what're you going to do about it? And, if you're the kinda person this stuff makes want to shoot flames out of your eyes and watch 'em dance--how are you going to approach technology so that it doesn't end with you angry?

And finally, students think the internet is for porn. Standing up in front of a class proclaiming that the internet is "really really great" most likely will make them think the teacher is "really really crazy." Heck, some of them might even fill in the "for porn" at the end of that sentence for you....

planning a presentation

2006-10-04T12:03:00.000-07:00

So I'm not asking people to tell me what to do, but I am asking what would be most helpful as a class (and to Jeff, in that "I wanna see what this girl is actually understanding" sort of way).

I'm presenting Monday and I'm curious as to what people want/need out of these. I plan on summarizing and identifying some key words from these articles, but after that I could:

a. provide other resources that go along with these readings
b. introduce new concepts mentioned in the readings that would help tie them together for anybody not familiar (we've read some stuff in 7080 that directly ties to these which was tremendously helpful)
c. provide stories, experiences, etc. that relate directly from the readings to "real world" stuff
d. lead direction away from the articles into "and this has to do with teaching composition because" territory

Or you know, some combination thereof. If I were teaching this stuff that's what I'd be doing, of course, I'm used to teaching on an undergraduate level too (bugger). I guess I just don't feel adequate at standing up and saying "this is what these articles were about" and having that lead into some discussion because any time I've ever done that it just flat out doesn't work.

Whatcha all think?

alright...

2006-10-03T22:32:00.000-07:00

I've promised another grammar entry, and you'll get one, but the article I want to write in is in my desk so I think you'll be getting that Thursday.

Anyway.

In the meantime, I've been thinking about how graphic design affects the way a person views a document. I know that it does, and I know that it does in really bizarre ways. When we were discussing texts briefly on the listserv, I was reminded that I chose my text for the other comp 1 course I taught partially because it had a lot of color pictures and yet was still cheap--and students really liked it for that and engaged with the material better than some of the SAME articles presented in a text in black and white that was significantly more expensive. I'd say what was up with that, except these same students reported the color text being easier to read, more fun, and they didn't feel like they were reading a textbook--more like a magazine or a website.

Both the books I'm reviewing seem to be written with this audience in mind--they're colorful and bright, well laid out, and I don't suspect that I'd have that old problem (dully designed book, still expensive) any time here, which is sort of nice. But it's a little disheartening to think that whatever text I pick isn't likely to be judged by undergrads in the same ways I'm thinking about it to review or pick one. Hrm...

On a different but related note, do you think that how we watch a tv show or our experience of TV can be directly changed by the commercials shown?

I'm a fan of Veronica Mars and tonight was the season premiere. Quite honestly I think the show is becomming weak. Sure, the characters were in high school before, but they didn't act like it. Now that they're in college they ARE acting like college students, and it's annoying as heck. Meet Veronica Mars Lite--neutered for the new CW.

But I think I might rewatch the show without the annoying commercials. The entire hour was packed with what are best referred to as "commercials for girly crap." They had scenes analyzed by these "Aeire" chicks from American Eagle--and I have no idea why. Just girls sitting around squealing about crap. Then there were the commercials for sports tampons (and how are they different? honestly? Other than probably costing more?) and tons of commercials for the emaciated stars of America's Next Top Model.

This WAS an intelligent show, once upon a time, but if they're going to "girly-fy" it, then I'm quite honestly not interested. You can be girly and smart all at the same time, but the new CW doesn't seem to think so, and that's a shame. (Or is it just the commercials? Or am I reading too much into it, thinking that the commercials changing this drastically mean that the show is now being aimed at a new more specific target audience that I'm just flat out not part of?)

on error...

2006-09-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

Doing the reading that would be due Monday....

My third year of college I took an editing class. In that class we learned a style guide-- Words Into Type-- that was being used to edit a journal published in the department. It was a pretty cool class, especially since our final was editing a document submitted to the journal using that guide, where grading consisted of comparing our versions to what she actually did and then discussing it.

Ever since then, my immediate response to error is "Well, standard english doesn't really exist. Those damn comma rules change from style guide to style guide. So all those nitpicky things? Who really gives a crap anyway? You can do it completely right according to one guide, and then turn around and have it be completely wrong by another." So yeah, why bother?

My second year of teaching one of the grad students had complained long enough and hard enough that we were finally going to have to pick a handbook to use in the course. I looked through them, but ultimately somehow (whoops) never turned in the form to order one. My students' papers were no worse than the people whose had, and who had spent weeks on grammar in class.

I just don't think it's my job to teach people how to spell, or to teach them grammar (especially when "proper grammar" varies so wildly). I DO help students that are having obvious problems--subject/verb agreement, double negatives used often (and not to make a point), and so on, but I'm not going to sit there and lecture about it. Goodness knows we all got enough of that in grade school!

But error, or percieved error, is how people outside english departments judge writing (and even speaking). I had an ex (and yes, this is why he's an ex) who picked up a copy of my thesis and corrected the entire thing with red pen--entirely against the style guide I'd decided on by my committtee, then went and "helped" by making these changes on my computer when I wasn't home (I had a back up, but he still wasn't ever allowed back in my house). Instructors in other departments see error only--after all, the paper they assigned might not even allow for creativity so ideas might not be on their grading rubric! And lastly, the current boy and his dad harassed me so much any time "irregardless" or "hopefully" came out of my mouth that I've eliminated the first entirely and am working on the second.

So to recap:
1. Standard english is defined in a bunch of different ways, so there is no one right version, and I let students know about style guides instead of lecturing on proper grammar
2. People outside the university do judge on correctness though, and I have no idea how to respond to that. How do you deal with all the people out there that think grammar is all that matters because they were TAUGHT that grammar is a sign of a good writer and that it is all that matters?

new media vs. writing

2006-09-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

So maybe somebody can clear something up for me now that would likely be cleared up later in the term anyway....

I've been lead to believe (and really not by Jeff, so maybe I'm wrong, but through my own research and through the two texts that I am reviewing) that students are being asked in the real world to both read and construct "texts" that aren't just writing. They have to be able to read visuals, internet sites, multimedia, whatever, and that composing in these genres is also seen as somewhat important in comp/rhet right now. In other words, students need to gain an understanding of new media or multimodal literacy practices as well as ordinary composing practices (I'm probably saying this horribly, so bear with me) and that since they are unlikely to get that anywhere else, and because there are compeling pedagogical reasons to do so anyway, these sorts of projects are being phased into composition courses (damn that was a long sentence).

Projects like the one that Jeff described in class today (and his insistence that theses and 5 paragraph essays aren't necessary) are part of this train of thought--we need to mix up what composition has always done to communicate in the digital world. Heck, we probably should have done so a long time ago but quite honestly there's no time like the present (so yes, despite defending the 5P in certain situations, I DON'T LIKE TEACHING IT, AT ALL. Amazing neh? But you write one thing and everybody thinks that's ALL you think. That's one thing I hate about blogging.) Anyway, we need to mix up composition. We need to rethink assignments. We need to think about multimodal projects.

So um, this class I'm designing? Students are going to write in it, a lot. But I'd like to get them thinking multimodally too, and things like a physical mapping project are some ways I've seen other instructors do that. Thinking about all the ways of communicating, and playing with them, might be a goal of such a classroom.

But is this goal "acceptable?" If my students make a skit, or write a story, or make a physical project, or a website, or make a visual argument, are they writing enough? If they're writing blogs and some major essay assignment or another, and they are writing essays about every part of their composing process and then one after the project is done, damn that's a LOT of writing. I'm perfectly fine leaving some of it out (or putting it in their blogs or message board or whatever I decide to use).

Maybe that's not my question at all, maybe my question is:
Are multimodal projects enough like writing to permit them in THIS composition course?

different ways of knowing

2006-09-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

So what do you know? And what matters about what you do know in school?

I'm feeling a little culture shocked here, to be honest, in respect to what "matters" and what really doesn't. When I was redoing my vita I was suddenly struck by the idea that in a program where lit and creative writing are somewhat "important," the things I've done in relation to them somehow are important too.

I can't explain how strange it is when you go from the environment where "that theater crap you do" goes from being extra curricular to being a line on your vita. Sure, I've written plays and had them produced. But is that something important academically? I suppose it could be, if a position were ever open in something random like comp and play writing (and I've seen weirder appointments available since some universities seem to be combining positions to cut costs, and well, this little academic would gladly write plays for tenure if she had to!)

It's even stranger for "that reading you do" to somehow be related to this "canon" thing that I've not heard squat about since high school. I feel like I've missed out on something by reading for pleasure--yep, even literature--and not constantly taking notes on things. The only lit course I've had in years was a class on Chaucer, and I had already been through the Canterbury Tales twice at that point so it was easy, easy, easy. I read Troilus and Cressida for my final essay for something to do, some way to set myself apart in that course. But that's probably the only academic *fiction* reading I've done in years.

In reality, I know that these are all "different ways of knowing" the same thing. But I wonder if there's much common ground for somebody who reads for fun or writes creatively and furtively on the side and under cover (after having been told these aren't academic pursuits) to actually have a conversation? Can a canon nazi appreciate other ways or knowing? Can a free spirit ever be taught the importance of canon?

So yeah, crap. Feeling slightly out of place, longing for the days when coursework is over and I can emmerse myself in Feenberg and Haraway again. Wondering, somewhat, just how I'm going to accomplish that. And so on.

and now for something(s) completely different

2006-09-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

1. Every time I read "maverick" either in this week's readings or in anybody else's responses I'm immediately reminded of Cedar Point's new roller coaster for next year by the same name (I'm still on the media list, so I'm told these things even though I refuse to go there and spend money--fools. Then again, being on the list means I can go free if I want to, hrm...) Anyway, it's called Maverick, and a maverick is a stray cow, no? So why the heck is the icon for this coaster a big freaking black horse? A whole generation of people that go to that park are undoubtedly going to think the horse is there for some reason, form some connection between "maverick" and this symbol, and go around just a little stupider than they would have been otherwise. It bothers me, probably more than it should (and probably because I know far more about their marketing dept. than I ever wanted to know).

But really, this is why I think people need to be taught to do their research. Because that ONE time they don't research something and go for the thing that "looks cool" they could be completely utterly wrong. What the heck is wrong with people? Did this coaster need to be represented by an animal? Couldn't it just as easily had some completely innocuous logo? (At least they didn't go the old west vs. let's kill the indian route... maybe that racism would have been too blatant for them. *sigh*)

2. I had professional development for school-2 yesterday, which is nearly a-ok cause we get paid for it. Nevermind that though, somebody in my department gave my boss a bad review. And when he asked who it was, she raised her hand.

Now, this is a girl that judges people instantly, thinks she's better than the rest of us, and so on. I really am glad I don't have to work with her much. But I get the idea that she's never HAD a bad boss, ever.

Sure, he's a little hard to approach at first, but you know what? He's got my back, and the back of everybody in the department. If students go to him to complain he backs us up and we never have to deal with it and it's the most beautiful thing in the entire world. Beautiful, I'm telling you.

So clearly she's never worked in the situation where you might land on your ass in front of the dean because little miss anorexic and entitled wants you to change her D to an A because ohmygod her mommy says she's a great writer and all, and not had anybody there to say that you were indeed doing your job for failing the girl for never showing up and not turning in half the assignments.

3. On that note, I'd like to add that said boss once said the most enlightening thing I've ever heard about teaching, "If I'm not hearing students complain about you sometimes, you aren't doing your job." That was one of those "whoa" moments. Sure, you don't want 'em to hate you. But if they deserve to fail and they want to pass they *aren't* going to like you, they are going to complain, and that's okay. I'd heard (mostly from other grad students ) pretty much the exact opposite, that you have to have some way of "dealing with it" to keep them from complaining, to keep your assessment scores up, to keep your job. But if you have the right supervision that's completely not the case.

So yeah to recap: research = important, my co worker is a ho, and being an honest hard ass is rewarding.

rhetoric and composition

2006-09-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

Rhetoric and composition are like second cousins secretly in love--completely legal, but they squick people out at first. Or well, so it seems. I really have no idea since I don't think I ever had a chance of not learning them hand in hand. One of my high school english teachers was a failed rhetoric phd candidate (something I found out after I went to grad school and after he died, which is a shame because the moments I had during my Masters work when I suddenly realized what he'd been quoting at us all that time were pricless--especially stuff about differance and Lacan and Heidegger. I mean christ, us freshmen just thought he was crazy--it didn't help that he often did this from the top of a table or in the middle of perfectly good arguments about what the A stands for in the Scarlet Letter.)

And then I inadvertently went to a college that was very much rhet/comp, and learned more about writing there. I enrolled in their grad school and was immediately dropped into teaching an intro to rhetoric course.

This "Rhetoric" course was actually our composition course. The composition couse had been 3 courses under quarters, but was now just one semester. That meant we had to cover a lot of ground in not a lot of time, and it was determined that "outing" rhetoric was the easiest way to do it.

So "Revisions" was a class about oral, written, and visual rhetoric. It was also a paper where you wrote a paper, did a major project, and gave a lot of presentations. This was a cousre that directly influenced the two books I'm reviewing here in a couple weeks, and I should have read them back then--but as I said before, I had found the textbook I liked already.

Rhet/comp aren't kissing cousins in my book. If we want students to actually, you know, say something, you have to give them tools through which to say those things. Words aren't enough on their own if you have no idea how to construct them. Teaching oral/written rhetoric together is one way to get to a student who can speak their ideas, but can't write them down very well. Allowing for visual rhetoric not only allows students to introduce "new" meanings to their work (like that radial reading/material text stuff we were discussing in 7010) but it also gives them that one more way to narrow down their argument that some students might need.

And thus, several years later, I've decided that that class wasn't so bad after all. It was too much material in two few weeks, but I think it was on the right track as far as "types of classes" go. Unfortunately, it was also a horribly scary type of thing for a brand new teacher to teach.

publish or do your homework?

2006-09-21T11:29:00.000-07:00

How the heck do grad students find time in the school year to publish when we're already reading and writing a lot every week for class? Is this a summer thing?

I've got an article I'd like to write (at first I thought to take the copout of doing a panel presentation on that too, but I think it actually might be publishable) and I'm actually tempted to just work on it instead of doing my homework. Hrm, that can't be good, but it interests me more than 75% of my homework. Oops. I suppose that's what research is "for" and all, to be publishable stuff we're interested in, but still....

When, oh when, do people find time to do this?

Why blogging didn't work for me before...

2006-09-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

I've had to blog before for class and I ... didn't.
Actually, my classmates stopped long before I did, and when I figured out that if the prof held it against us she'd be holding it against EVERYONE, and them moreso than ME, then I stopped.
(Let's face it, I'm a self serving bitch about grades.)

BUT, why didn't it work? And why am I writing now?

Before, I had to respond to every reading, and also we were required to read everything that everybody else wrote, leave comments, respond, respond, respond. We had writing prompts and discussion questions that had to be answered as well from time to time.

It felt very required and rigid and silly, to be completely honest, and it wasn't something that interested any of us because somehow it had been made boring.

When I took a training class this summer, mostly online, I absolutely hated it. I had to write discussion questions each week on a discussion board, and respond to X number of people. However, 3 of X number of people were Deans from other departments who didn't feel like they had to follow our due dates, so we'd all end up responding to them late--which made our responses late in turn. "Why haven't you responded to enough people?" Well, I don't know, maybe because half of them haven't posted yet!

I yearned for the certification I was earning, and so I was often up posting past midnight to make a deadline.

I was not a happy little student.

And, of course, that sort of online "You must write this much, you must respond this much" system is EXACTLY what I'm required to er, require, in hybrid/blended classes. Crap. There are state guidelines about replacing seat time, and if I don't do it, the school could be sued and I could lose my job. Wonderful.

But I hate those sort of required assignments, I really do. And I don't want to require blogging in THAT WAY in a course here either.

So what sort of ways can students be motivated if they aren't required to respond to certain questions, or even to specific readings, and aren't required to read other people or leave them notes? I'm just INTERESTED here, so it works. But what if I weren't???

Random school related observations

2006-09-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

1. The way to get computers fixed around these parts is the phrase "it's the one with the stuffed dog on top, and the password doesn't work."

2. I'm having a lot of trouble telling the difference between crazy people and people with bluetooth headsets.

3. I apparently actually do understand the history of rhetoric assignment for next week, but still can't vocalize it for crap.

4. Parking apparently opens up right after I get out of work--nifty.

5. No amount of crappy professional development can possibly take the place of one really good pedagogy course. However, even given this I don't think my boss will accept my skipping the 8am-1pm mandatory Saturday training this weekend. *sigh*

textbooks don't really suck...

2006-09-20T13:54:00.000-07:00

Undergrad English textbooks make me sad. I don't think they suck, I don't think they are horrible, I just think they are horribly easy. And yes, I'm a grad student, and yes, I should find their material easy, but I would have found most of the exposition of English readers easy in high school--and I do think that's a problem.

I've read any number of readers and handbooks over time in hopes of finding one at the undergraduate level that didn't talk down to students. I'd like one that uses words with more than five or six letters.... sometimes. I'd like one that maybe completley LEAVES OUT exposition around readings and lets me frame them on my own as a teacher (or hell, as a student) because exposition invariably reads as "you're too dumb to understand this on your own" or "you probably learned this in junion high but just in case you weren't paying attention..."

I'm not sure why any college textbook feels like it has to start from ground zero. End of piece questions in one text I've been reading start at the "Why did so and so do this?" level, which was specifically stated in the text, and I absolutely know that we answered that same question to readings in third grade. These questions are supposed to save me time as an instructor (not having to write my own) and yet they don't, at all, because if I want synthesis questions, if I want the students to connect readings to their lives and to their own writing and to the world, then I'm going to have to write my own anyway that call for something higher than K-12 thought.

And that's why when I taught comp and nothing but comp, long long ago, I taught from what was considered a graduate level coursebook at my school. (Well, the other reason was that I was told that it couldn't be done, wouldn't work, and I really love proving people wrong.) Design Writing Research worked just fine on an undergraduate level, even though students' understanding of the text was very different than the graduate level of understanding that was attained in a course I took that used it.

First of all, maybe it's strange to use a book explicitely about graphic design, material texts, and deconstruction in a composition course. However, the book provided interesting studies in things like subliminal messages and page design that forced students to think in new ways. The book got good reviews from the students too, "the book made me think" was a common one. When I had to use an easier, more expensive, and longer book I didn't get that response--ever. Everybody hated it, and they didn't understand why they had to read things they already knew.

Second of all, the book was colorful, had lots of pictures, and there were many different ways to use the readings. We actually talked, in a very light sort of way, about deconstructing texts means, and how to look at new media and pictures and even situations as texts.

Students worked up to the level that I asked them to be at when I taught out of that book. My earlier classes had gone well (I used that book my second year of teaching) but the level of thought that came out of them was lower. It's hard to get students thinking about complex issues when the reader presents absolutely zero of them, and it's even harder when the reader presents complex issues, but then frames them with exposition that is so long, so explanatory, that students instantly agree with the exposition instead of reading and figuring out their own viewpoints first.

That said I have no idea what book I want to use next term. Bugger.

Jesus Camp

2006-09-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

So you need to go watch the video previews for this documentary, located here: Jesus Camp .

Alright, feeling thoroughly gross/scared/pissed off/whatever now? Good.

I wanted to write about this because I'm sort of a Christian, and I often feel like that comes into direct conflict with my liberal and quasi-feminist sensibilities. Because you say "I'm a Christian" or you wear a cross, and you just see people's opinion of you change for the worse in the academy 90% of the time. I'm actually only aware of 1-2 other academics in my own field that I would consider more devout than me, and I hardly ever go to church. I might, if it were good socialization time. But really, all Catholic Churches seem to be are big cesspools of drama and old lady gossip and I get enough of that from my students!

But those videos did two things: they scared me and they made me want to admit my beliefs less. I'm actually going to address part 2 of that first...

I'm not one of those "you must accept Christ as your lord and savior to go to heaven" sorts of people. In fact, I really just think you need to treat other people well. Some version of the 'golden rule' is in nearly every religion out there. In fact, my beliefs aren't even particularly in conflict with my pagan friends beliefs, some of them think I am one of them. The core beliefs--there might be some sort of afterlife (note the might), you should treat others well, etc. are just about the same in the majority of major religions. Prayer and spells have a whole lot in common, not that your average fluffy bunny pagan wants to admit that. There are advantages and disadvantages to just about every belief system.

I don't think we need to beat down other religions, and that's where the first statement I made up there comes in.

To think that Christians (not Catholics, because there is generally a big difference between ceremonies with people talking in tongues and spazzing out and those without, I hope, and I've never been to any in a Catholic Church where somebody did) are now telling kids that they need to be soldiers of God? To give them the sorts of training that children might get in the middle east?

Sorry, that's some freaky shit.

Muslims are not our enemies. Hindus are not our enemies. And for the portions of those countries that are currently in "conflict" with us, the individuals that live in those countries and worship are NOT our enemies--really.

To teach kids that they are, that they should lay down their own lives for Jesus, to make those kids willing to kill themselves or others for Jesus--well I'm sorry, but if Jesus really has the power to come back from the dead I really hope it's to put the smack down on these fuckers. (Pardon the swearing, but what else ARE they?)

This sort of training isn't for good, this isn't singing little happy Jesus loves me songs (which I always giggled at and nobody else ever seemed to know why...) this is the sort of creepy evil that is creeping into public institutions everywhere (See: the president, etc.)

That our country's elections can be swayed by Fundamentalists scares me. That they act like extremists scares me more. I've ran into extremists from several religions and they all believe in the same crap: they hear voices, they think they know when the world is going to end, they think they have the right to control other people's lives...

Actually, the one recommendation I usually give entering college freshmen is NOT to join a student religious group because it's easy for the group to become too dramatic, to engage in too much group think, etc. I think this might be true of organized religion in general, but I've seen it happen to my friends in both pagan and christian groups, so I can only really speak for those. And if that's true, then the last thing I'd want is for my kids to be introduced to that crap early. Sheesh.

Oh, and lastly? Little girls should not refer to dancing as "For God" or "for the flesh." There's something intrinsically creepy in young girls beginning to think that dancing is purely for seduction, especially when kids' dance classes are so often just for exercise, coordination, and so on. *sigh*

how involved are grad students supposed to be?

2006-09-19T22:42:00.000-07:00

This is a question I've never had the right answer to, and that I suppose I should figure out at some point.

When I applied to my PhD program, several friends from grad school were surprised I wanted to go back to school at all. I'm not sure why that is--I like teaching, I like new media/composition/rhet stuff, and I honestly don't want to adjunct for the rest of my life. The timing is a little strange, I'll admit, since at some point I'll be working, going to grad school, and planning a wedding, but otherwise stuff's okay.

But no, they all said something to the effect of "But you really weren't that involved, you had your own stuff going on, you didn't buy into the academic bullshit...."

Hrm.... I have no idea what the heck that means.

While a Masters candidate I:

1. Served on the graduate student council
2. Served on the liberal arts curriculum committee, helped to write a new major, got it passed by the school and the state, and then helped revamp another. We also wrote up the guidelines for the next year's assessment.
3. Ran and partcipated in a few student clubs (yay service)
4. Attended meetings, parties, and so on for grad students
5. Spent anywhere from 20-80 hours in the lab a week trying to get stuff to work when the support staff refused to

And so on. Sure I wasn't reading in my office, but quite honestly my recliner at home was more comfy.

So I don't understand "not involved" other than the fact I wasn't sitting in class spouting this stuff from the rafters and shouting "Look what I DO!" like several of my classmates. In fact, I kinda thought that was tacky. Talking about what you love is one thing, talking about it to show off is entirely something else. I did talk about my community involvement a lot, I guess, as I did theater and choreography work, but again--talking about what you LOVE is one thing. Talking about the private work of a committee you're serving on? Yeah, not so cool.

Over this summer, a post was made to the English grads list (here, not there) wherein uninvolved GTAs were discussed. I haven't made it to a SAGE meeting yet, and I'm beginning to panic that people will think I'm uninvolved again, that I have too much of my own shit going on to partcipate. And unparticipatory GTAs just aren't understood--or so sayeth the e-mail.

Fridays are my reading and work day, the ONE day I'm guaranteed off of everything. I can give that up, and would willingly, except that lately that also means this is the day I do other things.

Last week I got my car fixed (the suspension had a technical service bulletin out on it, and I had known something was up for awhile, so now that's done), and this week my mom's dog is having surgery to remove a tumor on Thursday, and it's just my guess, but she's probably going to need help.

I know where my priority lies--I want to help the people I care about. But I also don't want anybody to ever wonder just why the heck I'm here either. And in that, I'm slightly frustrated. I know there's plenty of time to get involved later, but I also know that there's no end to the other stuff I have to do. And, if the doggy has cancer, there's really no end to the babysitting I will most likely have to do on my day off so she can do things like buy groceries.

And well, that had nothing to do with class or pedagogy. Bite me.

on why I'm a horrible student....

2006-09-18T21:05:00.000-07:00

There's any number of reasons why I'm a horrible student. For one, I hold my professors to the same standards I hold myself as an instructor, so when it's been 3 months since I took a training course in hybrid teaching and the teacher still hasn't caught up on grading--I'm irate. I complain a lot. I hate students that complain a lot. I realize that this smacks of irony, and I make no move to change.

But I am also a horrible student because if you put a computer in front of me, I will most likely not be doing whatever the heck it is you want me to do in class. I'll do it, and rather than sitting there waiting for further instruction, I'll be the kid with another window open putzing around, checking my e-mail, answering my own student's questions, redesigning my website, or... you know... whatever. No, I'm not going to browse to myspace or facebook, but really, is doing other work any better? And if multi tasking attracts me this much, and I know it does, how am I supposed to say "no! bad student! no cookie!" when one of them does it?

I was in a course my first year of Masters work that was all about using technology in the classroom and nothing else. I signed up for the course because technology was my concentration and it "fit." What didn't fit was how many hours we spent in a lab, listening to lecture, and being encouraged to use the software/hardware we were discussing at the same time.

One day, our class was learning how to create MOO pages on LinguaMOO. MOOS are multi user role playing systems that have also been used successfully to emulate classrooms. They're a synchronous chat tool, and you can also record conversations and leave notes and use them like message boards. The latest versions employ HTML, though when I learned to use one back in 1998-1999 they were strictly text based only (go left, walk north, read notice, and so on).

I decorated my room in the MOO, and then quickly grew bored. See, when I was a senior in high school a friend from my future school had made me an account on the MOO system. He knew I liked computers, and he said I could play around and learn MOO programming. I learned to make objects that people could play with. For example, one of the first objects most people make is a bottle of pepsi (or whatever) that can be drank a certain number of times by other users (so you have a variable built in called number of drinks, and each time you subtract 1, and when it's all "gone" you can auto change the description to be an empty bottle of whatever). Objects can be picked up and moved, or move themselves. Objects can also imitate people and respond as people (and oh, this will be important later).

But that day, I started dorking around with creating objects. Julie had woken up that morning to a bat hanging over her futon, and guano on her futon. So I made a little bat that would make noise periodically ("The bat goes EEK!" would then punctuate our discussion online, as well as the overhead projection running of the MOO--nice). It flew around, oh, and left a big pile of poo every hour or so (which was set to disappear after 3 just so that poo wouldn't build up all over the MOO). She was amused. I made a little dog, and then I designed a car (for vehicles can be made to warp into private rooms).

Essentially, I wanted to show my teacher that students can do all SORTS of things on MOOs that we don't really want them to do. Sadly enough, I'm not sure he got that. He was just all "nifty!" while I was sort of peeved that he wasn't worried that I had gotten access to his private room where grades and documents were kept. Sorry, but sometimes students DO know how to do these things, and even if they don't, there's great directions on how to do it online.

So, class is coming to a close, and we decide to meet from home for the next class period. Everyone is to log on at 7 in the morning...

7... in the ... freaking .... morning.

Ha. Yeah the heck right.

Soooo, I read the readings very very completely and wrote up some very good responses to them. I created a copy of my character in the MOO. I put this "fake me" into the classroom. And then I set it to respond to certain words in other people's posts. (Again, it was programmed to only say each thing once, and it did manage to respond to several direct questions. I already knew this class turned into a clusterfuq as soon as conversation started, personal questions were often not answered).

And then I slept right through class.

And nobody noticed.

Now, some people I've told this story to said that any student that did that had done the assignment. They had studied more and worked harder than potentionally anybody else in the class, and earned the sleep. I still consider it cheating, and I wouldn't want my students to do it. If I want to have a synchronous chat I want them there, not some parrot of themselves there. And so ultimately this use of technology wasn't fair.

But, you get me near technology and that's what happens. I become the bad kid. I just can't help it.

5-paragraph vs. "Just an essay" essays

2006-09-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

I accidently wrote a 5-paragraph precis last week--I am ashamed. Bad instructor, no new Mac for you. (And so on.) Of course, it really was an accident. I was taught to write 4 sentence precis (ergh! what's the plural of that?). Ours had to be longer, so I wrote a 4 sentence one, and the piece I was writing it about happened to have 3 examples which made nice little summary paragraphs to insert in the middle and make it longer. Still, suddenly being told to write a 2 pager hurt my "but this is the form" sensibilities.

And that's exactly how students probably feel at first when told they don't have to, and indeed shouldn't, continue writing X-paragraph form essays. Hell, that's probably how some teachers feel when told they should be teaching something else. 5-paragraph essays are really easy to check and grade. Students still can put a lot of original thought into their body paragraphs (I've seen it, so I know it can be done, though I don't think I'm capable personally), and they're a decent way to get students to barf back up facts.

I've told students that 5-paragraph essays are the way to go on essay tests in some teacher's classes (and at other institutions I could even tell you what those teachers were, and that writing your in class essay answers in this form was the only way to get an A on blue book exams).

So I'm not entirely against the 5-paragraph essay. It has its place, I learned it in high school, and I put it to good use in my undergraduate education to get myself some rather undeserved A's in history courses (and one about Chaucer). I knew what I was doing wasn't good writing, heck, I don't even consider myself a good writer. But, I was able to figure out when 5 paragraph was expected and not.

I think what process specialists and expressivists like Elbow are trying to teach students is to move beyond the 5 paragraph form. It has its place, but its place is limited. Nobody's gonna publish a 5 paragraph essay in a journal for ANY discipline. Nobody is going to truly be interested to read writing that just barfs back what a person has read or heard in class. In testing, when we want to know what you've read or heard in class, then the 5-paragraph essay works well. But I'm not testing my students when I assign an essay, and I have to let them know that. Many teachers use the essay as a test of what they've learned, and this particular form in question is a fairly good way of demonstrating that.

But all writing is not a test. All writing is not being judged as a test. Sometimes writing is just being judged as effective communication of ideas--proof of having ideas--and that's when the 5-paragraph essay fails (and it doesn't just begin to fail, it crashes and burns).

It's problematic, however, that the essay form may be expected of students by other instructors throughout their college career. Instead of teaching it in a course, I might like to see it moved to some weekend seminars that students that don't know it can sign up for. That we composition instructors can safely move beyond it without feeling like they are shortchanging their students an essential tool in getting by at school.

I, like Ellen, am not sure if the touchy-feely-ness of the expressivists is the way to go. But they wrote in the 60s, and were probably high, and what the heck do I expect anyway? I call my pedagogy a "student advocate," I'm on their side, seeing to their needs, and yet I'm still snarky, sarcastic, and a hard ass if its called for. I don't think that anybody needs to be a "oh let's value ideas over grammar and form" person all the time. "Your ideas rock, your writing needs revision" is a fine comment, though perhaps needs to be rephrased. But without ideas, writing is pretty empty, so what else can we say?

I, personally....

2006-09-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

Last week in class we talked briefly about how students write essays, and all the sorts of random words that mean nothing that get thrown into these essays. "I, personally," was one such example, which I'd like to respond to here.

These, and others, are words that I know I write a lot. I write these words often because I spent a few years working and writing online.

I was an online news editor and moderator for a largish site. Previously I was invisible on the site (even though I was one of only a few females) but working there meant that I was at events and was visible, and slowly but surely became more active on the boards as well.

Any stated opinion, that was not labeled in at least 2-3 ways as an opinion, would immediately be flamed on this site (and it's not alone, most large sites with forums have this problem--so do many blogs). Flaming usually consisted of a "you're stupid" or multiple paragraphs noting exactly what things should have been cited in the stated opinion--in other words, not writing "I, personally" or "this is just my opinion but X, but I could be wrong" or anything else like it wasted both energy and moderators time.

So I learned, albeit sluggishly, that I was allowed to have an opinion, but only if I subvert my natural voice in a way to seem completely innocuous.

Now, had my experiences stopped there, then maybe I wouldn't still feel the intense urge to duck and cover at having a public blog (my others are all private--see? there I go again, just so nobody can point out that I do have others) or at having a public website from which all the harrassment can start again--but the experience did not stop there.

I met many of our users in person at various events. I had to interact with them, I had to be nice, they had to see what I looked like.

And most of these fellows were far from appropriate.

It became known that I had turned down someone prominent in the community, and his revenge against me became the most important thing (seemingly--see? there it is again) in many of these peoples' lives.

I summarily was stalked, harassed, had entire websites and message forums *created* about how huge my ass is, how unattractive I am, and so on. I had the marketing director at an event I was at tell me just how disappointed she was in me for hurting this person. I lost job offers, I quit my existing job, and I still occasionally get e-mails based upon things that I posted at that site 2 years ago. Violence was threatened online, but it didn't count because it was a public forum and they didn't use my whole name.

My opinions, and my general inability to let somebody down lightly, got me into a lot of trouble. I'm not comfortable posting strong opinions online for these and other reasons. I have them, but I'd really rather not share them here (what if a hiring committee reads this, knowing it's me, in a few years? What if they don't agree with me liking/disliking a theorist? What if my views have changed? And so on....)

One of my other brief contracts at another company involved researching potential hires online--their myspace, facebook profiles, and so on. I know these things can be found, heck, I know that I could find me. I can't expect any less from anybody looking for me in the future.

So I know that I have to be careful what I say and how I say it.

And given that, I have a lot of trouble--still--asking students to blog. I have spirited discussions behind "closed doors" on BlackBoard with my students. It's a safe room where nobody else can hear them. That's been my pedagogical choice so far. I'd love to see what can happen on blogs. I know many of my students already do.

I'm thinking of experimenting with anonymous usernames on drupal or wikis or moodle (oh my!) which would be harder to trace.

In any case, what do other people think about online safety, harassment, and potential hirability problems related to keeping blogs? Our students aren't concerned (and they should be--at least about myspace and facebook) so does that mean we have to be concerned for them?

Deconstructing a syllabus...

2006-09-16T13:34:00.000-07:00

I love that moment of doing research for a short paper when you discover that this week's readings correspond greatly to a book your instructor has published.

I'd love it even more if I owned the book and could find out, in advance, his opinions on our topic for next week, "Defining the Material Text" and it makes me even happier I didn't volunteer to present next week. Whew.

See link: http://www.amazon.com/Constructivist-Moment-Material-Cultural-Poetics/dp/0819566101

students dealing with death...

2006-09-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

As an aside to the whole "suicidal kids expelled" thing, I was reminded of an incident that happened at my old institution.

They had a suicide policy of their own: if a student committed suicide, we weren't to talk about it. This was to prevent copy cat suicides. A number of studies have found that students will indeed kill themselves if they know somebody else has.

One of my students came up to me after class. He seemed sort of nervous so I asked him what was up.

"Uh, I'm not going to be here on Thursday but I can't have an excused absence."
"Why not? You know my policy is for you just to be honest and get the work in ahead of time--"
"Oh yeah, that's not a problem, but see I'm going to my old roomate's funeral. He wasn't in school this term cause he was depressed and he--" and here the student furtively looks around as if he's going to say something horribly bad "--killed himself."
"God I'm really sorry."
"Yeah so the school says I can't have an excused absence, I'm not even supposed to let anybody know that I know about it."
"Yeah so," and here I spoke loudly, "You need that day off for an interview downstate huh? Good for you!" Which produced a smile, but ... sheesh.

Actually, most teachers don't follow or don't know the rules. I only knew them because an administrator happened to be in one of my graduate courses. He explained the basic policy, but I still hate it for two reasons.

One is that students who know these kids aren't ever allowed to publicly mourn. THEY don't get to have prayer services on campus for their classmates, or advertise them on campus if they want to have them off. And I think students need a time to mourn. I can't imagine just moving on as if nothing happened and not having any support besides University counseling where you feel you can tell the truth.

Second, I feared getting a note in my mailbox that said a student had killed themself. If we weren't allowed to talk about it, for fear of students following suit, what exactly do you say when the student's group members wonder where he or she has gotten to? How the HELL do you answer without crying? At least if they die some other way people can talk about it in class, admit that something horible has happened, and eventually let it go. It's been two years and remembering the conversation above still breaks my heart.

I realize that "studies" say that this sort of rule is necessary, but that doesn't mean that it feels right to me.

Dissent in the classroom (Harris Response)

2006-09-13T06:51:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading A Teaching Subject and I was reminded of several incidents by the student letter that appears in an interchapter late in the book. The student has written to his school complaining that the composition class he took expected him to agree with his instructor, always be extremely liberal, etc. in order to get a good grade.

This has been a hot topic this past year, it seems, since student groups have been formed to oust liberal instructors (and if you didn't know this already, there are plenty of news articles about it at Google News).

I can't completely disagree with this student and others. There was a grad student, that I worked with previously, who made her students jump through ridiculous hoops to get an A. I suppose there's a possibility that she might read this some day, and to some extent, I don't care.

She was the local extremist, perfectly willing to mark down students that didn't agree with her--but she didn't fail them unless they actually refused to do the work. A few did. Common assignments in this class included writing letters to representatives, attending peace rallies and marches, and so on. Students felt like they HAD to do these extra curriculars to get a good grade in the course.

In 2001, courses started and nearly immediately 9/11 occurred. She restructured her entire course around having her students write about what had happened and how America deserved it, about how Americans are overwhelmingly bad people, and so on.

And it doesn't really matter if you agree or disagree with that, the point is that students shouldn't have to feel forced to agree with her--or else. A few students that refused to do the huge projects she had them working on, and instead wanted to do the syllabus work, got far lower grades than they might have otherwise. And it's also important to realize that this course had nothing to do with composition anymore (or rhetoric, or visual rhetoric) so the students weren't getting the instruction they deserved to begin with.

----------------------
My second example is.... me. In my second year of teaching I was presented with a difficult student. From the first day of class on she would whisper "I hate this fucking class" and generally made life hell for everybody else that was enjoying the class. As a TA I couldn't ask her to leave, I could only ask her to speak to my supervisor. We figured out it really wouldn't matter who was teaching, she'd obviously hate it just as much, so I felt like I was on damage control all term. (Apparently my supervisor thought I could handle this. I really wish she'd been shuttled off to somebody else more experienced, but I guess it *was* a good experience for me in the end.)

She got around to writing her paper, and it was ragingly, flamingly racist. All she did was talk about how much she hated black people, blamed them for everything that went wrong in her life, and how THEY were the reason she didn't get into U of M. It was supposed to be a position paper against Affirmative Action, but she couldn't represent the other side of the argument, and that--plus the racism--made it a pretty horrible persuasive paper. The only people that this paper spoke to were the turds that post on Stormfront.org, and her audience was supposed to be her classmates (some of which were students of color).

So hey--moral dilemmna. Do I flat out tell her I won't accept her opinion in my class (which as an anti-racist advocate is probably what I should do) or do I tell her how to fix her argument (which was a non biased teacher is probably what I should do).

In the end, I chose to try and help her make her argument palatable to more people. She still got a C on the paper because she still couldn't understand anything might be positive about Affirmative Action. I won a small amount in the end by having her tone her argument down a lot for her in class presentation. But she still swore at me, claimed I was trying to change her mind, and said she hated the "fucking" class every single day.

I can't even explain how happy I was when that term was over.

But even with many more classes behind me I still can't figure out what a teacher is supposed to do in this situation. Today I'd probably just disallow those topics entirely, but if I want to leave political topics open, how do you deal with students like this girl?

suicidal? Now you could be expelled too.

2006-09-11T20:03:00.000-07:00

See article here: here about a bunch of college either expelling students who are suicidal or kicking them out of the dorms.

This was regular practice where I was employed before, and it drive me absolutely nuts. I realize that students might receive better counseling at home, but I can't imagine that the following scenario wouldn't happen:

Thought 1: Oh god, I'm doing horrible in class, I'm a huge fuck up, my relationships are all trash, I'm all emo and want to die!
Thought 2: I should really go see somebody about this... *makes appointment at campus counseling center*
And then they get sent home to have...
Thought 3: Oh god! now I've been kicked out of school and lost my chance at ever having a good career!

Sorry, but that's not the best way to get people help, in fact, that's just going to teach students to NOT get help, since it might really destroy their chances now at getting a degree.

I know that plenty of students go on to pursue degrees when they get older, but that won't keep people from feeling like failures if they get expelled for suicidal THOUGHTS now.

adjuncts

2006-09-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered Invisible Adjunct which in one sense is a crying shame because the blog is "over," but I've still been browsing the archives.

One of the posts (linked above) discusses unions and adjuncts and gate keeping of the "guild" of teaching, namely, the writer believes that terminal MA's (or MS's) that teach in 4 year universities are a problem, are taking away from other people's chances at tenure (Universities don't have to offer as many tenured or even full time positions if they can hire lots of part time teachers), and that we need to be more careful who we are hiring on as faculty in a school--that people need to have PhDs in order to be teaching in 4 year institutions.

That strikes pretty close to home--I've spent the past year teaching in a 4 year institution with what was essentially a terminal MS, even though I had every intention of going back to school and have done so. Most of the people I work with, and whom I hold near and dear, are also people who earned their Masters and stopped (many even earned it online, which I find untenable and unequal to the degree I worked to earn, but if they are good instructors I'm not exactly going to complain!)

Should this school be hiring people with "real" PhD's? Tuition is already $180 per credit hour, classes are 4 credits, and we are on quarters still. That's a lot of tuition per year when students can take more than 20 credits providing sufficient academic advancement. If we employed PhDs to teach all the courses then tuition would be higher, and undoubtedly students wouldn't get all that much better of an education (perhaps even worse, as the article states).

So what does the PhD do that the MS/MA doesn't? I assume the answer is "research," although I'm currently involved in a group research project at that institution. And if adjuncts are performing research, writing grants, and teaching courses, who needs a PhD?

And that is, perhaps, exactly the question that universities are asking themselves.

Given that question, perhaps I should fear the adjunct. Will I be hired, or will an adjunct steal my job away when I do finally finish my degree? Am I part of a greater problem? And given that the money I make as a TA at my school is no where near enough money to live in the region the school is located in what ELSE am I supposed to do (other than flipping burgers, which would take more time and net me less cash) in order to make enough money to--you know--buy food?

Why girly shoes?

2006-09-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

"High heels are the work of the patriarchy," my officemate snootily informed me, wandering around on our dirty carpet, bare naked feet leaving impressions in the dust. "My ex husband made me wear them, and I'm never going to again, and I don't think that anybody who does is a good person or a good feminist."

As I sat there blinking for awhile, and I looked down at my strappy wedges, I realized that my working definition of a lot of different terms was going to have to change. I like feminism AND shoes, after all, and according to most of the people I worked with then, those two things didn't go together.

"You can't be taken seriously unless you X" is a fairly common walked out trope by certain sorts of feminists, and I'm not particularly sure why. After all, if we're trying to break free from being X because somebody tells us to, isn't it just as bad to do Y because someone tells us to?

And as such, I shut up, the argument faded into winter, when boots meant that my options for shoes were big bulky Columbia boots or big bulky Timberlands, and eventually people started believing that I might just start to be on their side after all.

But is it enough? Am I a bad person for not currently owning a single pair of Birkenstocks? And, furthermore, is it really a problem that I'm a lot more moderate than your everyday average feminist or liberal? And, being in academia, what does my general appearance have to say about me? (And, if you count clothes over time, who the heck wears a shirt from threadless one day and D&G the next? Am I stuck permanently in some sort of bipolar moderateness that means that NOBODY will take my work seriously once they actually, you know, meet me?)

Hence, girly shoes + theory as a blog. I love wedges, I love bluefly.com. I love buying designer stuff on the cheap, because sometimes (depending on brand and style, so you have to shop well) it lasts longer than its cheaply priced counterparts. My students have appreciated this in the past (but their comments... weren't so nice about other teachers, and aren't worth reporting here).

Elizabeth Flynn actually has an interesting book out about multiple feminisms and their rhetoric. Quite honestly the idea that there is only one definition of any -ism out there is kinda silly. The book is called Feminism Beyond Modernism and I'm considering using some of its research in a paper I have to write later this term.

And to wrap it up, I'll tie this directly to class/teaching:
I changed my style during grad school, when it became apparent that wearing t-shirt and jeans made my students, to nearly a one, think I was a lesbian. I was really tired of answering questions about queer theory asked in jest (or to make fun of me) that I had no business answering because I'm straight--queer is not part of my identity, and I can't speak FOR anyone who is, just because I wear jeans and clunky boots all the freaking time. (The sheer number of people that were, indeed, homosexual that were grad students at that department at that time, is immaterial, their conclusions were cruel, and I felt the need to defend my colleaugues. After all, just because someone is queer doesn't mean you should dismiss them as an instructor, and that's just what these staunch little republicans were trying to do!)

And thus, I was lead to find girlier clothes for the first time ever. I discovered a couple stores that will do for the 20s to 30s set if you can pick through the teenage garbage--Maurice's (which sells flattering business wear as well as fancy but affordable day to day clothes), Vanity (more of the same), and Forever 21--a Christian run junk pit of eclectic weirdness made in California sweatshops but that is, nevertheless, fashionable.

But due to the fact that Forever 21 was crappy and sort of a liberal sin, I finally found my way online.

The real answer to this question is: Shop at www.bluefly.com

There are designer clothes there, they are relatively cheap, and there's stuff to fit all tastes/budgets/blah blah blah. But what's really important is that it's a great place to browse and find stuff that suits you and is fashionable all at once. Through bluefly I fell in love with wedge heels and I no longer get grilled about my sexuality on the first day of class just because I happen to be a female English student. *sigH*

Bad vs. Good Student Stories (Wayne Booth Response Part 2)

2006-09-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

Why do we always want to talk about bad student stories?

I suspect it's because bad students are funny, while good students just are--or some such thing.

Seeing as I just got an e-mail from a summer student that bugged the living heck out of me, I'm going to share some GOOD teaching/student stories instead, just to even out things a bit. Of course, this is probably also going to be quite dull in comparison to my bad student stories, which is a shame.

Story 1:
Imagine a 40 something mother of a few, lives in Taylor, is learning to use a computer as part of going back to school. Things in my class are going great, she's learning everything she needs to, and overall we're getting along swell.
Of course, she constantly complained about her math class (the teacher was let go at the end of the semester, so it wasn't like she was complaining for no good reason!) Finally, she came in one day and just said she needed help. I'm certified to teach the class she was in--so why not?
We sat down and it turned out her instructor had given her a sheet about the metric system, but had given her no other information. They were to have a quiz the next day and she had never seen the information before--that hurts. I had no teaching math tools with me, and honestly felt a little prepared. But me? I've never learned the "English" system of measurement, so this stuff was cake, right?
So I take a half drank bottle of Squirt(r) and a nickle (all I had in my purse, it was one of those terms) and we start talking about how many nickles would go into a bottle of Squirt and so on. It *worked.* It worked really well. She aced her quiz the next day and came into class later that week absolutely glowing.
*Cool.*

Story 2:
It was my first semester teaching, and as I've told some people before, I was doing okay--but I still felt like the person that hadn't bothered to say their name the first day of class. I finally got around to assigning a big group project on audience and comic books and redesigning documents for different media and new audiences... and it ended in skits (or movies, or whatever... they had to pick something visual/oral, in any case...)
So I walk into my classroom and the entire room has been transformed. The students in one group worked over time to paint and build "sets" out of old cardboard boxes they had moved in with, had costumes, you name it. I was completely blown away by how creative different groups had gotten with the project. Actually, that project continued to wow me until I stopped teaching at Tech. Every term I saw something new: sock puppets, flash movies, etc. and every term I came out of that project feeling like we had actually DONE something.

I am dumb

2006-09-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

Failing to realize that the 4C's deadline was months ago makes me one dumb academic.
So now I'm off in search of a conference for the second paper I'd like to give this year (Computers and Writing seems like a good venue to the first).

*insert completely random swearing here, as in "Goddamn all ye holy mary mother of menstruating Christ."*

Wayne Booth -- A Teacher's Journal Part 1

2006-09-06T00:21:00.000-07:00

What scares me about teaching?

1. Complacency -- I've taught some courses that are driven by certification exams. I teach the exams, I teach the exams well. The students pass, every term. But these are by no means the sort of good, thoughtful courses that I want to be teaching (and that's the precise reason that I'm here, back in school, pursuing a higher degree instead of adjuncting forever).

2. Not being "young" anymore -- Parts of my pedagogy and persona in the classroom rely upon being approximately the same age as my students--give or take about 5 years. When that overlap no longer exists I will either have adapted or be screwed--and I'm trying to begin this process with each new term. I can't very well teach the rhetoric of 80s/early 90s cartoons and commercials to people who weren't alive then, can I?

3. Getting back into "serious" composition -- I've taught business writing and tech writing for a bit now, how can I get back into teaching straight composition? And will everyone be able to tell I'm one of "those" people?

4. That what I've "learned" about teaching doesn't actually make me a better teacher -- When I started out, everybody got relatively good grades (hey, getting called before the dean during christmas break for giving a C taught me my lesson at that school quickly). And yet, I can't even truly say that I was inflating grades. I was developing thoughtful projects that students tended to excel on that included plenty of chances for students to use outside literacies (and therein I avoided the concept of inflation by giving plenty of chances at success...)

And students LIKED me for that, or maybe they liked their good grades....

I no longer fear students disliking me, and I no longer fear giving bad grades. But I don't know that that makes me a better teacher--it just makes me better psychologically equipped to deal with it.

I will probably write another response to this article later.... that deals with some more specifics, rather than what gives me the willies at 3am....

...but one thing in the article that DID bother me was his negative reaction to a student writer who had written a paper that "missed its mark" in criticizing an author.

What could this student have learned from his response, other than not to try to write something difficult?

but I "have to..."

2006-09-05T13:26:00.000-07:00

One of my biggest challenges as an educator and student is my need to overcome the "have to's."

I've successfully worked through "failing them guilt," and stepped into a realm where students earn whatever the heck they earn. I've gotten over being shocked when students don't like me. This has been exacerbated by students doing things like walking into my lecture 2 hours late and telling me to start over because I'm "going too fast" and am a "horrible teacher." I don't feel the slightest degree of guilt in refusing, not being pushed around, and telling the student to catch up on their own time or get out, because everybody else is where they need to be. Your grade is not equivalent to my problem.

I've gotten over people dropping my course. Yeah, I'll admit it, it crushed me first term. But again, time has proven that most of the time if a student drops you don't really want them in your class anyway. You could help them--sure--if you had infinite time and resources. You can imagine these wonderful teaching scenes straight out of made for TV movies where you sit down and they GET it and you magically cure their problems at home too. But 99% of the time that doesn't happen, and you just have a headache at the end of the day.

So, given this, what I really have to work on is my feeling of "having to" do something, that I don't really "have to" do. I've got to determine for myself what's important and what isn't and stop trying to be Super Teacher all the time (it's no little wonder that the letters emblazoned on Super Teacher's chest would be an ST) and just start trying to be whatever the heck it is that comes under that...

Case in point, finding out that I might be able to get webspace to host a website again. I lost my access to 1 and 1 and my website there months ago. I'd love to have webspace again...

But my mind tells me "You must redesign your webpage now! Make it better! Oh, and update your CV that you haven't touched in a year or more!"

Which, if I'm totally honest, is the last thing I need to work on right now. I have to read for Thursday (and Monday, but that seems far in the future right now). I have to move into my office, and pick out what random assorted office crap is going with me. I have to figure out when in the hell I'm going to have time to eat on Thursday--but I am *not* going to have time to update my CV by then.

As for the website, I could work on it, I guess, but not this week. It's not going to be CSS--that's for sure--because I lack a PC at home to test it on thoroughly (btw, Windows Vista sucks, please spare yourself the cash when it comes out). My Mac is very very slow, I'm running software on it that I probably shouldn't be--overtaxed processors are never much fun--and the latest version of Dreamweaver is SO slow on it that I can literally run nothing else (nevermind that Photoshop and Dreamweaver won't even open on the PC, because Vista swallows so much memory...)

Nope nope, I don't have the time, energy, or computing power to give over to making a brand spanking new webpage right now.

But I feel like I "have to."

Blogging... in general....

2006-09-03T22:59:00.000-07:00

I've had a "blog" of some sort or another since early 2001, although I didn't hear the word "blog" for several years after. In fact, I viewed blogs as entirely different than the personal online journal I kept as an undergrad--they were something that "professionals" did about technology or culture or news, while we mere mortal college students kept online "journals" or "diaries" but I digress. I had found opendiary.com at bored.com or a related site, and got myself hooked up with somewhere to write immediately. I still talk to 3 friends I made on that system fairly often, so it's strengths seemed to be in meeting new people. As my friends moved onto the system (not at my urging) I quickly found out what the biggest problems about blogging are.

Personal blogs are simply excellent at pissing people off. I discovered fairly quickly, once many of my college friends were on the system, that just about anything I wrote about could cause a negative reaction. This seems to be true on both opendiary.com and livejournal.com, where I still have accounts, but seldom write anything. I once posted about having raffle tickets available for friends if they were interested, only to get 25+ comments telling me that I was "shoving my friend's faces in the fact that I had money and they didn't." I still feel like I need to rhetorically qualify that statement that I was required to sell 20 of the suckers and couldn't afford them myself either, but there were people on that list willing to buy them. However, to a one they told me they didn't feel it was "right" after reading other's responses.

So I'm quiet in the blog-o-sphere these days. I love reading and making comments, I'm not entirely sold on writing. It's not that I don't have anything interesting to say from time to time (ask me about my "Jesus up my nose" story) but it IS that:

A) Posting anything academic and tied to my real name seems potentially risky to my career, so I would prefer to remain anonymous (my opinions on several theorists have completely changed in the past 3 years, so having ever officially "published" anything about them would have been foolish at the time)
and
B) I don't really feel like inspiring a "wankfest" over small stuff.

This leaves me here. I'm blogging for a course and I keep a small personal blog on myspace (it's really sad when the most annoying site has privacy controls that I like the most). I use my livejournal account to read several journals and more communities. I've required students in the past to write journal entries--should I move this writing to blogs? Are my students people that write more coherently by hand or online? Are they more reflective in one sphere or the other? Who ARE my students at Wayne State? I'm hoping that with time, and with 6010, that some of these questions will be answered.

In the meantime, here are some blogs I read regularly (also see my del.icio.us for more):
The Ferrett: The Watchtower of Destruction
Cheryl Ball's Blog
Anne Wysocki's Blog
Angie J's LJ
Debunking White: Race Studies/Discussion Community
Gizmodo Technology Blog
Bitch PhD

Researching Berlin Alexanderplatz.... (7010 reading, but worth sharing)

2006-09-01T23:01:00.000-07:00

Berlin Alexanderplatz, it is noted in our text, is written in the style of James Joyce. Doblin apparently read Ullysses after nearly completing the work, then went back and changed things, edited, and so on. This goes a long way to explain why some paragraphs are written in an entirely logical fashion and others are completely stream of consciousness, written from different points of view, etc.

The other thing I discovered in a short (very short) search was that the book has been made into a movie twice: once, Doblin himself worked on it, the second time, the movie was 15 1/2 hours long.

I've also noticed that some of the mid to late book intros are very clearly poems. I haven't yet determined if the sections headed by poems are the ones in which he is crazier than those written in prose, nor have I had a chance to go to my ill gotten German edition to see if those rhyme and are in meter too. Maybe that $1.50 on Amazon will be well spent yet.

Welcome

2006-08-31T18:28:00.000-07:00

This is one of those blogs that is attached to a course I'm taking, the sort of blog that I've plundered before for lecture ideas (wait, am I supposed to admit that?) I've several other blogs, none updated regularly, that are all personable and chatty and despite my hardest to sound like a hardened academic here it is very unlikely to happen.

However, I don't think that a blog (even a blog written when one is doing readings for class) needs to be a place that is all "Heidegger says this" all the time. Better yet, if a girl wants to get posted on Higher Ed then she better have a gimmick (cue Gypsy stripper music here) so every once in a while I'll post links to cute shoes and so on from Bluefly.com ....

Because--hey!--I think you can be an academic and a feminist AND like strappy sandals. Discuss.