Summer School

This feels so odd.  I’m doing a weeks worth of teaching each day.  This feels too intense.

I feel sorry for many of my students.  About half the class, again, is Japanese, and for many of them this is the first college class they are taking.  Of the 7 or 8 in there, maybe 4 are close to ready for this level of class, but I’m not the one to make that judgement call.  They have to learn for themselves. 

So far I’ve had three students drop the class (including a tiny Japanese girl who had more nose-hair than my grandpa), and I expect more before the end of the week. 

And yet, there are some interesting stories this time.  One of my students is a high school Senior (or will be, in the fall).  She’s 16, plans to be a psychiatrist, and wants to go to premed and possibly med school at Duke university.  She’s trying to get her Gen-Eds out of the way so she can enter sooner.  She has this class now, and is planning on taking calculus in the fall . . . this chick is SMART!!! Smarter than me, at least

Anyway, it just feels weird to try to cover a weeks worth of info each day.  And it feels weirder to run out of time.  And tomorrow is going to be even harder.  More information, lots more writing . . . I need almost an extra half hour! Scary.

News Post

Well, the semester ended with a wimper.  I had one student ask me to up his grade.  I really hate that.  You got the grade you deserve, you whiny little brat.  Maybe if you hadn’t been fucking around on your cell-phone, you would have been able to find the mistakes you made.

Tomorrow my mom is bringing my nephews down for a 4 day visit.  My sister and bro-in-law are heading off skiing for their anniversary, and will be back on Saturday night or Sunday, I guess.  Not sure if I’ll go up there with them.  I know it’s Mother’s Day, but it is also my last chance to prep for the class on Monday.  So it depends on how things go between now and then.

Then, 2 weeks from now we’re going down to Kansas for Memorial day with my Mom’s side of the family.  Should be fun.  Or at least intersting.  Or maybe just a change of scenery and a loss of privacy and bathroom time :P  Then 2 weeks after that I finish the summer class . . . and then I don’t know what.

Oh well, I’ll figure it out later

 

I readed last night :D

So, yesterday was the yearly Short Fiction Slam at my favorite bar.  If you remember, last year I tied for 2nd in a 3 person race.  This year I slipped a little . . . I got 3rd in a 3 person race

I saw, yet again, that I am not a typical artistetype writer.  I tell stories.  All of the ones I read are ones I posted on here in various forms.  My competition was a guy in a kilt who reread the same tired stories he has read for the past two years because one of them won a very minor local award.  The other was some guy I’d never heard of who was full of stories where his character talks to a cancerous tumor in his colon or is a high-school English teacher talking to his class. 

I read a story about a couple on a train, of Joseph and Mary being interviewed by Jesus in a Jerry Springer type TV show, and an old man reliving his one true love.  Guess mine were just too mainstream for the judges.  Then one of the judges got up and read one of his pieces . . . same overly artistic crap that doesn’t mean anything and isn’t read by anyone outside of his Myspazz friends list.

I don’t get that sort of, for lack of a better word, literature.  Everybody wants to be Kafka, but their metaphors are overdone and the dialogue is so full of childish curse-words that have lost their shock value.  They are supposed to represent the language of the common man, but I have never met anyone who talks like that outside of a few pathetic suburban Guido types who think they’re rappers and have street cred.  (Just a hint, but if your collar is popped, you have no cred with anyone outside your circle-jerk of fellow idiots).

In other news . . .

The semester is winding down, but I’m busier than ever.  I’m picking up papers today, but I won’t get a chance to even look at them until next week.  This weekend, I’m helping with a garage sale, next weekend I need to finish prep for summer classes, plus my nephews may be down so I’ll have to go tickle them for awhile.  Then the weekend after that, I’m going with a friend to a car rally of some sort.  And the weekend after that is Memorial Day, which will be spent down in Kansas with relatives.  Then I’ll have two more weeks of summer classes, plus grading . . . and then I’ll have some down-time.  During which I will quite possibly go insane . . . or just run around my apartment in my underwear

I have a new love in the world of tea . . .Harney & Sons Paristea blend.  Pure heaven in a cup :)  I shall now go drink some, if anybody is looking for me

New Recipe Night

Don’t have much to post about lately.  Won another pool game, semester’s almost over, still no nookie, blah blah blah

So, here’s what I made for supper tonight. 

Egg . . . something

6 medium eggs

1/2 cup salsa

4 servings breakfast meat, cooked (optional)

1 cup cheese, shredded

1/3 loaf of bread

Cut the bread into inch squares.  Beat the eggs with a little milk and the salsa.  Dump the bread into the mixing bowl and stir it around until the bread soaks up the liquids.  Pour into a glass casserole dish.  Cover with the meat, and top with cheese.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 25-30 minutes.  Foil usage is optional.  Serves about 4, which makes it perfect for a small brunch

Quick, yummy, but make sure the eggs are fully cooked (burrrrrp)

I don’t feel like a student . . .

…but that is what I’m contemplating becoming again.  I’ve been thinking alot about the things I want in life.  The sort of place I want to live, the places I want to be able to go, the world I want to see.  Here’s the problem: I can’t make it with the job I have now.  And I can’t move ahead without at least one more degree.  So, I am left with several choices.

1. Get out of academia.  I could try to find something else to do, but other than owning a bookstore, and writing books there isn’t much else I want to do.  The writing is fun, but I’ve never been paid for it.  And the bookstore would require me to go to some basic business classes, so I’d be a student again there too.

2. MFA.  Master of Fine Arts.  This is a terminal degree, similar to a PhD, but you don’t get to be called “Doctor.”  With an MFA from the right school, I’d have an in at many many colleges as a full time professor

3. Ph.D.  There are Ph.D.s in creative writing, but most of those programs are slowly being replaced by MFAs.  And it is more of an academic degree instead of a practical degree . . . if that makes any sense.  Plus, where most MFA programs are 4-5 semesters long, a Ph.D. would probably take me another 5+ years.

I still feel like kicking myself for wasting 2 years getting a practically useless MA.  It would be cool if some of the credits from that would carry over to an MFA program, so I need to just start applying and seeing if I get any credit for the classes I took.  Maybe I could get out of some of the Lit. Crit. classes

Thinking, thinking, head is hurting.  Must stop the hamster on the wheel before he does me damage.