Mountains Made Low

I also taught my first-ever creative writing class last night. I’m teaching Creative Nonfiction this semester, and because it meets once a week on Monday night, and the Mondays of the first two weeks aren’t actually ever on the calendar around here, I met them, for the first time, last night. It was syllabus day.

Ah, syllabus day, which the students generally think means a short class (and it was a little short last night, but with no reading to discuss and no writing to workshop, it wasn’t all that short). In a more traditionally scheduled course, students tend to think that syllabus day will be a 15-and-out kind of thing. It never is for me, which disappoints them. In fact, in a fifty-minute class, I tend to use the whole time even on syllabus day—not that I issue the 40-page syllabus (anymore; okay, it was never 40, but I used to get to 10 pretty regularly); my longest syllabus this semester was 6 pages, and that included three pages of calendar; the other three are 5 (2 pages of calendar).

But last night was a really fun class. First time in a while I’ve taught a class where the students are there because they want to be. Not because they have to be—for gen ed, for their major—or because someone told them that it would be a good idea. But actually because they’re interested. It was nice. They asked questions; they participated willingly; I actually watched the lightbulbs come on over their heads as they made the connection between the in-class writing activity and the assignment I asked them to start on. It was nice.

Really. Freakin’. Nice.

And they seem excited about the way the class will work. An hour discussing readings. An hour of workshop. And a half-hour of in-class writing activity every week. Because the class is so small, everyone gets their work workshopped every week. They seem happy about all of this (except for having to turn in a workshop draft this week “already”—and being a little freaked out by the reading load, but as I pointed out, if you split each week’s reading into three chunks, like a MWF class would, it’s really not all that unreasonable, and it is a 400-level class).

The funny part is, though, that after last night’s class (the end of week three in terms of this course), after syllabus day, the class is 20% over. Week three has ended, in a 15-week term. I have 11 more meetings with these students, because in addition to the no Mondays in the first two weeks, we lose an additional Monday to Easter. So four more weeks, then spring break. Two weeks after that, then Easter. Then five more weeks.

And beyond the scheduling of this course (which I did, and I’m still okay with), how is the semester already 1/6 gone, with 1/5 of it gone by the end of the week? and more than 1/4 gone by the end of next week?

I guess time flies when you’re having fun.

I’m teaching two sections of Rhetoric II this semester (the second half of our two-course writing’n’speech first-year sequence). I teach them at 10:30 and 12 Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (there’s a built-in lunch break at 11:30). And the classes are both full. Beyond full, actually. For the first speech assignment of the term, I asked the students to prepare a 1-2 minute talk on their proposed topic for the semester-long research assignment. In a 50-minute class, this means that we could have had everyone deliver their talk in one class session (up to 23 students talking for up to two minutes each = up to 46 minutes). But I scheduled them for two days, and told everyone to be prepared on the first day, with a few exceptions.

The two classes seemed to have very different ideas about what that means. In the 10:30 class, the prevailing thought seemed to be, “I’m ready today. We have time today. I’ll go today.” With the exception of one student who was having voice issues, those who weren’t there on Monday, and those whom I’d asked not to go because their topics needed a bit more refining before they actually could go, everyone went. We had 15 or 16 talks in the first class. If I put on my cynical teacher hat for a moment, I would guess that the thinking was really more along the lines of: “If everyone goes today, we’ll get out early on Wednesday.” And maybe there’s some truth in that.

Maybe.

In the 12:00 class, though, the prevailing thought seemed to be, “I don’t really want to go today,” even though the student in that section who was having voice issues in that section, did in fact take her turn, as did the student who felt she was underprepared (ah, peer pressure), and the student who was still in her pjs at noon. But, seriously, only about half of them went. And when people quit volunteering, I shut it down. They’re definitely not getting out early on Wednesday. The others may not either, but we’ve still got 25-30 minutes worth of speeches in the 12:00 now. And I’ve got 30 minutes worth of material to cover. Guess what that means in a 50-minute class session.

Can you say 7 pounds of crap, 5-pound container?

Gotta love it when they think they’re winning, but all they’re really doing is prolonging the inevitable, making the whole class run long, and—in the process—pissing off the teacher a little bit. Not a good combination. And they didn’t get out early yesterday, either (well, maybe three minutes).

Until pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training 2008 (at least the ones I care about). Go Tribe!

I was told, about a year ago, as I was going through a divorce and in the process of finding and being offered and accepting a new job, that with any major life trauma (death of a loved one, divorce, etc.), it’s not a good idea to make another major life change simultaneously. When a parent dies, you don’t sell the house right away—that sort of thing. I’m coming to realize, more and more, that this was good advice. Good advice I didn’t take. I needed change. And within a month of the divorce being final, I made changes, lots of them: I moved 400 miles away in anticipation of starting the new job; I tried a geographical. Now, I’ll grant you, I was, by then, pretty much over the emotional nastiness of the divorce: the only thing I really felt when it was final was relief at being done with the process. I had done my grieving already: sadness bordering on depression, anger, the whole bit.

I was 100% ready for my new start.

I had accepted a new job before I reached this point, but at this point, I was ready for it. I bought a house. I moved. I started the new job in August.

I’m not saying any of this was a particularly bad idea. I’m not to that point, particularly because I love where I live, I really like my house, and because I love what I do, it doesn’t matter to me, overmuch, where I do it.

And that last was a lesson I learned. It doesn’t matter overmuch where I do my work. But if I had chosen to continue doing it at Capital, I would be on the verge of tenure and promotion at this very moment. I would be closer to my parents, who from time to time, seem to have a hard time coping with the fact that I live in North Carolina and my sister lives in Tennessee. I would be working at a school with problems, but not one where the faculty and the administration seem to have such fundamental problems trusting each other. And, because it would be my fourth year in that position, if I wanted to change jobs at any point in the near future, I wouldn’t feel stuck.

Here, I do feel stuck. I feel like I can’t move again, even though I’m getting worn out by the environment here: by the tension, by the nearly open hostility, and by the constant demands. I feel like I’m stuck because it’s my first year: I don’t want to be seen as a job hopper, which is absolutely not a good reputation to get. I feel like I’m stuck because I bought a house: a house that I was able to buy at a good price because it had been on the market for more than a year; which was good for me as a buyer, but scares the bejeezus out of me if I were ever to try to sell it.

But the other thing is, the longer I am in higher education, the more disenchanted I get with it. I love teaching, I love my students; don’t get me wrong about that. But I’m wondering if higher ed is the place for me to do what I love doing. I’ve been kicking around the idea, for two years now, of getting out of higher ed. Getting into consulting, but not consulting, 100%, per se. Doing freelance design, consulting, and guerrilla education: working with small and medium business and non-profit groups conducting communications seminars for their employees. Teaching writing, communications, and PR on a private basis. Of course, I don’t have the time or the money to start doing this right now, but it’s what I’ve been thinking of for a couple of years. Maybe it’ll happen.

Anyway, I’ve got to get back to doing my job now. The papers don’t grade themselves.

I wrote a while back that I was reading Stephen King’s Misery (1987). Even though it is my mission to read everything that King has bound between the covers of books (though I’ll admit to being too lazy to track down the uncollected short works—I figure it’s only a matter of time until they show up as a collection), it may have been apparent that I was wasn’t thrilled, at that time with this latest stage of that mission, especially when I found out that Duma Key had shipped (it arrived on Wednesday).

But I finished Misery this morning. I still have to say that it’s not King’s best; in fact, it’s not anywhere near the top.

But it wasn’t bad. And I’m so relieved that I can say that. To my knowledge, King has not written a bad book. Ever.

He’s written books with problems, and Misery is one of them. It has one big problem: it starts incredibly slowly.

In.

Cred.

Uh.

Blee.

Someone who didn’t have the motivation of reading everything that this author has ever written would likely have dumped it in the first 100 pages—where I was with it when last I wrote. But then, almost miraculously, King found the through line, and told what’s probably one of his most frightening tales—frightening because of its plausibility. Unlike some of his books, there’s precious little disbelief to suspend in Misery. There’s nothing supernatural, nothing fantastic or science-fiction-y. There’s just a truly frightening hybrid of obsession and insanity, a crazed fan, holding her favorite writer hostage.

And that’s why it’s scary. It stands beside Cujo and Rage in a rather unique, “holy shit, this could really happen” category. It’s been said that King’s particular talent lies in making us all able to believe that Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine is full of vampires, that a car crash victim can really see the future, that Lisa Landon can really step out of our world and into another introduced to her by her late husband while evading the psychotic killer. But when he gets his hands into insanity…. Then, my friends, he’s truly scary.

The setting for Misery is near Sidewinder, Colorado. And the Overlook Hotel, its destruction, and the peculiar psychological condition its last winter caretaker made a brief appearance in Misery’s narrative. Nice.

Misery, then, was among King’s scariest (most of his novels don’t scare me at all; which I’m sure says something about me). But it is a book with a problem. But if you can get past the slow start, and the one three-page chapter that’s printed as though written longhand (necessary to the story, but still a pain in the ass), it’s a good read. And unlike so many of King’s works, this one has a happy ending.

Which is almost certainly commentary of some sort.

Another tale from the 12:00 rhetoric class.

I have a strange situation. A student is in both my 12:00 and 1:00 classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this term. On a small campus, that may not seem all that unusual, and probably it’s not. But the strange part is the 12:00 is Rhetoric II (the second half of our first-year sequence), and the 1:00 is Communication for Business and the Professions. Put another way: 12:00=RHE 102, 1:00=COM 401; a first-year composition/speech course and course full of jr and sr communications majors. Yeah.

I held writing conferences with the 401 students yesterday. This particular student’s conference was the last one scheduled. And we talked both about the project he was working on for 401, which the conference was about, and what’s happening in 102, because he enrolled late and is working to catch up in 102. He said that he doesn’t remember first-year classes being like this when he was a first-year student, and gave specific examples of what he thought was different. He pointed out serious contrasts between this course and his other, mostly 400-level, coursework (he’s a senior, graduating in December), differences in workload, differences in student behavior, that sort of thing. Since I teach one of those 400-level courses, he pointed out the differences in my style between the two courses, too. And I told him that it’s sometimes hard to shift that gear in the ten minutes between the two classes (or, often more realistically, five or three, because I often don’t get out of the 12:00 class until 12:55 or 12:57, even though I have a 1:00 and class ends, promptly, at 12:50).

That’s been a challenge this semester, already. Moving from a 100 to a 400 in three, five, or ten minutes. But I must be doing okay with it because this student has noticed the difference.

Let me make it clear, they’re not evil. They’re not even sneaky. But in the more arcane meaning of the word sinister, the students in my 12:00 rhetoric class fit the bill. As Ned Flanders once pointed out on The Simpsons, “sinister” means, at its root, “left-handed.”

But before I talk about my students, let me back up a bit to provide some background on me, and on left-handedness.

There is a strong genetic link to our “handedness”: the estimates for left-handedness in the general population range from 7% to 10%, but if one identical twin is left-handed, the chances that the other twin will also be left-handed are 76%—call it 10 times the random chance. But the fact that it’s not 100% points out that there must be an environmental component, here, too. Some studies suggest that handedness can be determined in utero, or at least in infancy, by observing which hand the child tends to lick or position near the mouth more often. That is, kids who suck their left thumbs tend to be left-handed.

I was a left thumb sucker. I’m naturally left-handed, though I’m functionally right-handed (we’ll come back to this). Most of the signs or signals pointing to left-handedness work for me. When I’m caught off-guard by something coming toward me (toss something at me when I’m not paying attention), I will raise my left hand to ward it off (as we all tend to raise our dominant hands to do so). And when I was a kid, my left hand was always out in front of me (at least when it wasn’t in my mouth). Before my sixth birthday, I had suffered two pretty severe burns to my left hand, probably because it was the hand I led with (particularly when touching hot things, apparently).

When I was two, for some reason that I cannot as an adult fathom, the muffler on my dad’s big Gravely lawnmower (the kind that is self-propelled, but you walk behind or get towed on a little wheeled cart) seemed fascinating to me. I wanted to touch it. After the mower had been run. Actually, I was apparently inspired to grab the damn thing. With my left hand. And then, when I was five, there was the woodstove at my aunt and uncle’s house. I managed to scorch the back of my hand pretty good. So good, in fact, that I still, 27 years later, have a visible scar on the back of my hand. Seriously: you could still see it if you looked. And what’s more, I can still feel it. The back of my left hand feels different, in my perception of of my body’s interface with the world, than the back of my right hand does. It was how I learned to, and how I to this day, tell left from right. My left hand bore the brunt of all of my encounters with hot, metallic objects.

Bearing the brunt of that second brush with intense heat, though, is why I’m functionally right-handed in the world today, because that excessive bit of trauma occurred, to the best of my knowledge, in January 1981—when I was in Kindergarten. You know, about the time that you get serious about coloring and drawing and making those weird little squiggles on the page that we call letters. And about the time I was getting serious about these things, and getting serious about training one of my hands to do them, I burned the hell out of the smart one (though, I must wonder how smart it was, if it was the one always touching the hot things). At about this time, the smart hand was out of commission. So I learned to do all of these things with the dumb one. And then when it came time get serious about throwing and hitting a baseball, the question was always, “Which hand do you write with?” So I bat and throw right, too. Can I throw left? Yes, but it’s sort of awkward. Can I bat left? Yeah, and it’s really no different than batting right—I can’t see well enough to hit the bloody thing, anyway (but that particularly disability is another story for another time). Can I write left? Sure, but I haven’t practiced nearly as much with my left hand as with my right, and as I explained to my student who asked today (she was in my class last semester, too): You’ve seen my writing with my right hand, and it’s bad enough.

But, yeah, I’m naturally left-handed.

Which brings me back to my students. I saw one young woman performing the standard wrestling match that goes on when a left-handed person uses a spiral-bound notebook: the wires are right where your wrist wants to be. I told her she needed a left-handed notebook, and she was surprised that such a thing existed. That’s when someone else mentioned Ned Flanders’s Leftorium. Then two other young women piped up with their left-handed complaints about notebooks and all the right-handed desks in the classroom (all of the desks in this particular classroom are right handed). Then I noticed a fourth left-handed student. Then, a fifth.

By the law of averages, there should have been 2 left-handed people in the room. After all, counting me, there were 23 people in the room. But counting me, in my natural state, there were 6 lefties present—three times as many as there should have been. Which is truly bizarre when you stop to think about it. More than 25% of the population of this class, with its right-handed-only classroom equipment, were left handed.

Not that this means anything.