Friday, March 16, 2007

Madness. March and Otherwise.

YOU WANT A GRADE FOR THAT?
The end of winter term is here, student papers are piling up, and my patience for mixed constructions and clichés is running very, very low. I am officially invoking the “Student-Professor Non Aggression Pact”.
If you don’t complain about the fact that I didn’t really teach you anything this term, I won’t pay attention to the fact that you write at a fourth grade level and don’t understand basic logical premises. Deal?

And by the way, your writing sucks ass. And NOT in a good way.

MODERN MEDICAL MIRACLES
One: Rod Stewart has to be 100 years old by now, right? He looks remarkably good for his advanced age, but really? The Colleague and I were invited by Former Student to a little fundraiser for a program called KidTix. The deal? A luxury suite at Key Arena for the Rod Stewart concert. Ok…Things I don’t understand about this situation:
• Who are these women who still think Mr. Stewart is sexy?
• How far gone are the women who would rush up to the stage to touch him when he limped past them with his walker?
• Why does Key Arena give last call 1 hour before the show ends?
• Why can’t the Sonics make money in Key Arena? Seems like all they have to do is win more fucking basketball games and more people would show up.

Two: 2 weeks into my recovery from the broken foot, things are starting to look up. A nice 4 mile jog on the treadmill at the new club yesterday. Can actual running be far behind?

New club? That’s right. Back to the pool, the weights, and the juice bar for me. Thank god. Things are getting a little loose around the old body. The salt water pool gets a thumbs up for me, as does the outdoor spa. Of course, we had to commit a little fraud to get the “family” membership…sshhhh.

Three: I’ve had a chest cold of varying seriousness for 3 months now. Is this normal?

SPHERICAL ORANGE OBJECTS
I said this last year and I’ll repeat it here: The nickname of the Gonzaga basketball team is the Bulldogs. NOT the ‘Zags. Shut the hell up. Oh, and nice first round torching by Indiana. My bracket lives on…I need to revamp my rooting theories: I root for the Huskies and any team playing against WAZZU and now Gonzaga. If WAZZU plays Gonzaga? I just root for the Rapture.

The new best sportswriter in the country? Bill Simmons at ESPN.com. Bookmark his Page2 column/blog. Seriously.

And? I don’t give a rat’s ass about Syracuse or Kansas State in particular, but how pissed off must their fans be at being left out of the tournament when a team like Stanford comes in and gets crushed by Louisville?

Plus? If The Colleague beats my bracket this year by picking teams based on who she knows at which school, I might have to dump her. Not really. Don’t tell her I said that.

You know I’m hopeless when I am still a bit hurt by the Huskies being snubbed by the NIT. The NIT? Who cares?

SPRING BREAK!
One of the things that sucks about teaching where I do is that my students are, as a group, horribly lame. My spring break plan of hanging out with a suitcase full of books on the (hopefully) stormy Oregon coast is WAY more exciting than anything my students will do. I realize people have to work to pay for school and those obnoxious tailpipes that make their dad’s Civic sound “cool”, but get a little bit of a life, would you? Go somewhere and get loaded and take off your clothes. What happened to Spring Break? Of course, I shouldn’t expect much from a group of students who haven’t seen Borat.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, congrats on surviving another quarter. I've just finished as well and what a quarter it has been. Allitt's analysis is bang on (an excellent book too). This quarter I've been confronted by students who are proud of the fact that they have not read and have nothing to say (intellectualism in and out of the classroom is a threat methinks).

Best thing I saw in an exam this quarter? Bush v. Gore (2000) was decided by "7 + 5" Supreme Court Justices.

I think I need 2 weeks in a sensory deprivation tank.

-R

ps. I might be joining you in the pool. Tweaked my right ankle but good.

Anonymous said...

I'm late finding this post, but I'm glad I did. I'll have to get Allitt's book. I've noticed this non-reading trend, especially this term. My students here, who are all either transfers or AP-exemptions and so haven't had our otherwise required first year course, don't read the assigned material, don't read my comments on their work, don't read the material they are charged with using for writing their papers. My online students over there are a little better, or at least a few of them are, but largely I am disappointed at finding these people in college at all.

When I was first here, teaching the second year "research" course, I was mildly amused at students who were seniors who smugly told me they had never entered the library. So I made a library tour/visit/training day part of my class. Converted a few, lost a few - but none of my students "get" the stacks like I do.

Why do students go to college? I know the whole drill about getting the piece of paper that gets them the supposedly better job, but what kind of world am I entering if I'm the bad guy for expecting actual reading and writing skills to be in evidence as part and parcel of that certification? Why should my job be at risk because I demand of students the abilities the diploma claims they have? When I was charged with hiring them, I damn sure expected those skills. Is that next? Oh, no, wait - that's already being solved by outsourcing of white collar work.

I've tried many times to engage this discussion with "colleagues" here, but I get the equivalent of the fingers-in-ears-la-la-la response.

Drinks on me for whoever is willing to spend an evening discussing action plans for reversing this downward trend.

GVB said...

Reversing the trend? Right. Instead, I just keep teaching and assigning work as if they read and are intellectually interested(ing?). Some of them rise to it, some don't.

The real issue is this: not only do they not read, they don't partake of ANY culture at all. My students haven't seen any movies, concerts, or even interesting television shows. When I showed the "Ask A Black Dude" clips from Chappelle's Show to my comp students, only one student had seen the show before. If you're not reading, and you're not watching movies and TV, what are you doing? Oh yeah, eating at Red Robin and getting fat. It's lame. For sure.