The Pissed Off Professor

I used to try to hold regular class meetings on the days formal writing assignments were due, but I’ve learned how foolish it is to expect the average (i.e. procrastinating) student to finish up a paper and read something for a class discussion.

I’ve come up with a few ways to solve this issue:

• The quick meeting: I collect papers, go over any pressing details, and dismiss the class.
• The in-class workshop: I assign an in-class reading and a discussion follows.
• The trip to the library: I escort my students to the mysterious brick building that takes up one end of the campus and show them what’s inside.

The first solution serves a dual role: I don’t have to put on a show for an entire period, and late students miss turning in their work—this leads to stiff penalties. The second solution is a bit dicey: the brain drain of paper-completion usually means even in-class work goes poorly. The third solution works reasonably well, but most students notice if I take them to the library more than once per semester, and this is confusing for them.

Monday, was a paper due date, and I went for option #3, so it was a hi-ho hi-ho it’s, off to the library we go day.

Monday’s task was to introduce the class to the wonders of online databases. The utter joy of being able to access full-text articles from a computer—even while seated in one’s home—is lost on most of my students because they have lived their entire lives in a world in which the internet was always at their fingertips. Most have never looked up a book using a card catalog. (Actually, most have never checked out a library book. Ever.)

I get downright giddy over online databases, but I’m a bit of a geek.

They didn’t get very giddy, and I just don’t get it: they have research papers to write, and being able to complete some of their research online is such a big gift, they ought to be celebrating.

Perhaps they were so overwhelmed by seeing thousands of books in one location they simply couldn’t take in the databases.

Summer Session Enrollment Watch:

ENGWR 100 (College Writing): 31/28 (Change = +1)
ENGWR 301 (College Composition and Literature): 31/25 (Change = -1)

It seems there’s a bit of a controversy burning in Kansas City: Tom Wayne, the man who’s been running Prospero’s Books for the past ten years is sick and tired of the apathy being shown by the reading public.

When he began to realize none of the approximately 20,000 tomes in his inventory were selling, he tried to give them to local libraries and thrift stores, all of whom reported not to have room for these books.

The article points to the fact that while some of the titles in Wayne’s collection are obscure, many of the 20,000 texts are best sellers.

Now that he’s straightened out his burning permit, Mr. Wayne (Tom not Bruce) will be burning books in protest on a monthly basis.

A book club I belong to is trying to save the remaining texts and distribute them to those who are interested. They’ve started a petition to convince Tom Wayne to release the books to them.

I hate the thought of all of those charred pages, but you’ve got to love this guy’s activism.

Summer Session Enrollment Watch:

ENGWR 100 (College Writing): 30/28 (Change = None)
ENGWR 301 (College Composition and Literature): 32/25 (Change = None)

I decided to give myself a break in class planning, so I put the 301 class aside for a few days and focused on the 100 class.

I’ve taught 100 many times including several summer sessions, so the planning isn’t nearly as great a challenge.

Well, it wasn’t supposed to be, anyway.

The wrong book has been ordered for my class—I think. There’s no real way for me to know until next week (the bookstore is closed until then), but if the online bookstore information is correct, I’m planning my class with one text, and my students will be buying a different text altogether.

Of course, the details online could be a simple error, in which case, I’m planning things as they should (and will) be.

Not knowing presents several problems:

• If the wrong book has been ordered, the book I generally use won’t even be available, and in a summer session class, I can’t afford to lose a day’s teaching because of a textbook error.
• If I plan a class using the book I ordered but that book isn’t available, all of my planning will have been wasted, and I’ll be scrambling to plan on-the-fly with a book I don’t even use.
• If the books have just been switched, I might be able to use the book I want to use; however, I’ll be dealing with students who are then faced with returning the wrong book in exchange for the right book, and that just doesn’t bode well for a clean start to the summer. (It also opens the door to excuses about getting homework done.)

I have some options, none of which are very pleasant:

• Wait until the week before classes to find out which textbook has been ordered for my class and then plan things.
• Plan for both books and go with whichever one is being sold.
• Plan for the right book, and hope not to get burned.

Obviously, plan #1 or #2 are my only real options, so I guess I’ll compromise: I’ll plan things with the book I am expecting, and in about seven days, I can find out which book I am really going to be using.

If the right book is there, great; if not, I’ll have a few days to plan the course all over again.

This is good news considering I get no compensation what-so-ever for planning a course.

Don’t you just have the warm-fuzzies? I know I do.

Summer Session Enrollment Watch:

ENGWR 100 (College Writing): 30/28 (Change = +1)
ENGWR 301 (College Composition and Literature): 32/25 (Change = -1)

It appears my worries regarding whether or not my summer classes were going to fill are over. With more than two weeks remaining before the session begins, both of the courses I’m teaching are full, and each has a waiting list.

This means I have to get down to the business of really planning things, and it’s a job I both love and hate.

I love it because there is such a feeling of newness, and there is always an opportunity to do something different, but I hate it because I generally get that so-much-to-do-and-so-little-time-in-which-to-do-it feeling which has got to be the educational equivalent of a panic attack.

This feeling is magnified, say, tenfold when summer session is at issue—and that’s exactly the issue here.

The first few meetings are important: they set a tone for the entire semester, and finding the proper ground between maniacal bitch and oh well is always a challenge. (Given my natural lean toward maniacal bitch, I really have to work at this.)

The 100 course is roughly one-third grammar / punctuation and two-thirds writing. The challenge is easing students into the grammar and punctuation because going at it too hard too early freaks people out. The problem with this in a six-week session is there is very little time to ease into anything. Additionally, because the course requires building blocks and their application, putting off the grammar and punctuation is a delicate matter.

M.C. Escher’s image of a hand drawing a hand is exactly what I mean.

The 301 course is reading heavy, so picking the correct initial reads is crucial to getting the course off to a bang. I have read and reread the texts for the 301 class, and I’m nearing a point where I think I know which selections I want to assign first, but it’s still a roll of the dice. I know two things: I can’t start with Black Maria because it’s poetry, and like grammar and punctuation, poetry freaks most people out. I also don’t want to start with the graphic novel (i.e. comic book) because I think it might send the wrong message.

It’s got to be story that’s shorter than long, not too gory, but absolutely engrossing.

This, my friends, is the nitty gritty of teaching.

Summer Session Enrollment Watch:

ENGWR 100 (College Writing): 24/28 (Change = +8)
ENGWR 301 (College Composition and Literature): 31/25 (Change = +12)

Summer session begins three weeks from today, and already I have a waiting list in my literature class. I don’t want to jinx things, but this is very good news.

In other good news, a box of books I ordered arrived today, and inside were several much-anticipated tomes. Among them was Kevin Young’s Black Maria which I read about in the latest issue of Mystery Scene.

This is a book unlike any I have ever experienced: it is a hardboiled / noir tale told through a series of poems. (Perhaps it is more accurately described as a book of poetry that tells a hardboiled / noir tale.)

It just so happens that the theme of my summer literature class is Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem, and Young’s book is going to round out my book list nicely.

I think we can have some real fun with this book: reading aloud in class, guessing what comes next, and applying what is in Young’s work to the graphic novel and the more traditional short stories I have planned for the course.

Ah, the smell of a new semester with just a hint of fresh book: what could be better?

One of the major breakthroughs I experienced as a student was a direct result of Henry James.

During my time as a graduate student, I signed up for a Henry James literature course because I thought highly of the professor who was teaching it. I don’t think I’d really read much Henry James—“Daisy Miller” perhaps or “The Beast in the Jungle”: both are staples of undergraduate, survey literature courses, and neither is really indicative of what I believe makes James great—but I digress.

One of the first reading assignments we were given was The Portrait of a Lady—in chunks of 10-15 chapters per week.

I was anxious to get into the text, and I remember with absolute clarity sitting down to begin this novel. After an hour, I had finally untangled the meaning in the first paragraph of the text.

Here’s that first paragraph:

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not–some people of course never do–the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one’s enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. The persons concerned in it were taking their pleasure quietly, and they were not of the sex which is supposed to furnish the regular votaries of the ceremony I have mentioned. The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of him. The old man had his cup in his hand; it was an unusually large cup, of a different pattern from the rest of the set and painted in brilliant colors. He disposed of its contents with much circumspection, holding it for a long time close to his chin, with his face turned to the house. His companions had either finished their tea or were indifferent to their privilege; they smoked cigarettes as they continued to stroll. One of them, from time to time, as he passed, looked with a certain attention at the elder man, who, unconscious of observation, rested his eyes upon the rich red front of his dwelling. The house that rose beyond the lawn was a structure to repay such consideration and was the most characteristic object in the peculiarly English picture I have attempted to sketch.

With the same clarity with which I recall paining myself over this paragraph, I recall the outrage I felt when I finally grasped what I had battled over for so long:

Men—men are having tea. Men are sitting on a porch in the approaching sunset enjoying tea—a scene generally populated by women.

What kind of a jackass takes almost 500 convoluted words to tell his readers men are at tea?

(Remember, I’d spent an hour getting through what amounted to 3/4 of one page, and to keep on a reading schedule, I’d need to get through another 50 pages before putting the book down.)

Had I not been assigned the text, I’d have tossed the novel aside and never thought of it again—ever. But I had to get through it: it was an assignment, so I went on.

By the time I’d plowed my way through another ten pages, I was exhausted, and I gave up. I had begun to feel as if the class was going to be beyond my reach, and I was pretty depressed.

When next I took up the book—about 48 hours had passed—I held it in my hands feeling as if it was the thing that had finally beaten me—I’d met a book I couldn’t handle, and as a graduate student in English, it felt like the greatest form of failure.

For reasons I may never understand, I went back to that first paragraph and began reading it to reaffirm how pointless it had been.

That’s when it happened: suddenly, the words that had been so meaningless to me—the words that felt like such a waste—seemed to paint a picture so strikingly vivid that I felt the setting sun beginning to blind me; I heard the clinking of cups on saucers; I smelled the acid aroma of the tea.

I was there. Oh, I was there.

I wondered to myself how a person could manage to describe three men having tea with such clarity and detail in only 500 words, and I wondered further what drove a writer to paint the picture when it was simply an introductory image: it serves no great point in the storyline but to vaguely introduce some of the characters.

The feeling of really having connected with the text after having struggled with it was unlike anything I had ever experienced, and that high is what I seek when I read and when I teach.

It’s the reason I chose to teach Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw in my upcoming literature course: it is written in the same rolling, verbose, image-filled manner that makes Henry James the master he is. It is also one of the greatest ghost stories I’ve ever read.

I have no idea if I can convince a room of summer-session students to take a solid bite out of James’ words, to chew his text vigorously, and to keep masticating until they can taste every juicy bite he has to offer, but I am sure going to try.

It was well after dark when I got home this evening, but through the small gaps in the pines trees that surround my home, I was able to catch a glimpse of my front porch. I saw the small package on the doorstep: it had arrived early.

With the giddy excitement of a child on Christmas morning, I hurried to the box, grabbed it, headed inside, and tore it open. Inside were three items: The Turn of the Screw (a novella by Henry James); A Modern Treasury of Great Detective and Murder Mysteries (an anthology of contemporary mystery and suspense fiction); and A Treasury of Victorian Murder (a graphic novel that recounts several of the famous, unsolved crimes of the Victorian Age).

These are the books I’m using for the literature course I am teaching over the summer: the theme is murder, and I cannot wait to get my hands dirty.

[Extended evil laugh here.]

The latest buzz concerning the mounting difficulties of being a college student revolves around the cost of textbooks. One article about this states that,

According to a survey conducted by the California Student Public Interest Research Group, college students in California and Oregon spent an average of $898 on new and used textbooks during the 2003-2004 school year, the equivalent of 20 percent of the typical cost of in-state tuition. In 1996, the average cost was $642.

‘Unlike the $6 novel you can buy in a bookstore at the mall, academic textbooks run in the high double digits and even triple digits,’ says Kelly Tanabe, author of 1001 Ways to Pay for College.

Okay, let’s begin with the comparison of a novel and a textbook:

A novel contains a few hundred pages designed to entertain; however, a college textbook contains a few hundred pages designed to inform, explain, exemplify, and educate.

The qualifications needed to write a novel are, uh, well, there aren’t any; whereas, the qualifications needed to write a textbook include a certain degree of expertise in one’s field.

A well-written novel is immortal; however, a well-written textbook contains cutting-edge information—it is short-lived.

Novels rarely contain diagrams, pictures, or integrated outside source material; whereas, these are necessities for most textbooks.

(Hey Kelly, you might want to go back to school and sign up for one of my critical thinking classes.) Need I go on?

Regarding the comment “college students in California and Oregon spent an average of $898 on new and used textbooks during the 2003-2004 school year,” quit whining. Let’s round that number up to $900 and do a little math. During a school year, there are usually two semesters, and during a semester, a full-time student takes between 4 and 5 classes. Using the low number, that $900 is spread between 8 classes: that’s $112.50 per class.

How in the world is spending $112 dollars on a course textbook unreasonable?

Let’s think this through a bit:

The cell phones being carried by most students are more expensive than their highest priced textbooks, and when one adds the cell-phone-service-plan that certainly includes the bells-and-whistles of text and picture messaging, ring tones, ring-back tones, and games, the cost of that student’s cell phone per-month is probably more than the textbook he or she will use for one class for the whole semester.

The iPods being carried by most students are no different: they cost more than many textbooks.

I watch each day as my students walk around campus with their purchased fast-food items. In fact, many of the students who are on campus all day purchase two or three meals in the cafeteria or via one of the nearby food establishments: very few of them pack their own meals. At $5 or more a pop per meal, a student who goes to school full-time is spending between $25 and $50 per week on pre-made, convenience food.

And by the way, part of the money spent on those textbooks is returned in the form of book buy-backs, but no one’s taking about that in the statistical data regarding expenses.

Let’s not kid ourselves, the price of textbooks isn’t the problem; the problem is society’s penchant for blaming others for the problems we create for ourselves.

Students are in school to EARN MORE MONEY, not to become better educated! If they cannot learn to prioritize and budget funds for textbooks to reach this goal, they are certainly not going to make it in the Real World where gas prices, food prices, and all other prices fluctuate on a whim. The Real World is going to demand they pay for what they need, and if students enter college unable to prioritize and budget, making that responsibility go away is doing nothing to make them better able to handle the Real World.

That same article goes on to say,

Textbooks have gotten so expensive that 43 percent of students surveyed by eBay in July said that they have not purchased required textbooks in an effort to save money. Nearly 50 percent of these students purchase their textbook[s] without assistance from their parents or student loans, and they identify biology textbooks as the most expensive type of textbook.

I wonder how many of those suffering students chose not to purchase a cell phone, or an iPod, or fast food “in an effort to save money”?

I guarantee you those same students would gladly fork out the money if spending it could buy them a grade. And that’s part of the problem: students don’t see the purchase and use of a textbook as part of the educational process. They want to sign up for classes, show up, sit in a room, and get an “A.” They are simply not up for the work that college takes, and that includes budgeting for the purchase of textbooks.

Those who are on the bandwagon with the students need to be careful what they wish for: if they continue doing things like lowering entrance requirements, tuition fees, and the cost of textbooks, they are going to reap the rewards. A society filled with even more poorly prepared people who are certain that anything that is hard isn’t worth doing.

I overheard a story on the news this morning, and though I’ve tried to find details on KCRA’s Web site to include a link, I can’t. I have to talk about this anyway: a teacher has been stealing textbooks from her school, marking over the school’s name, and selling them on eBay. Now she’s been caught. Currently, she’s on paid administrative leave.

It’s nice to know the school district is following the innocent until proven guilty theory. After all, the 600+ books found in her home might be there for a legitimate reason, right? (I keep thinking after-hours tutoring, and that just gets me nowhere good very quickly.)

Let’s not let her mistake be for naught: let’s admit teacher’s salaries suck, or this woman would not have bothered supplementing her income in this manner.

Now, let me tell you about an oddly similar thing that goes on at the collegiate level which is perceived as perfectly lawful.

The textbook business is huge, and book representatives do everything they can to convince teachers to adopt their company’s texts for our courses. One of the ways this is done is via sample copies of textbooks. During a year, I receive approximately 15 textbooks—without asking. When I need to ask, I do, and if the book I need is from a new publisher, the request for a single text will generate my receiving a number of additional texts as well.

Keep in mind, I am a part-time employee: multiply the 15 books I receive by, say 4, and that’s likely the number of books a full-time faculty member receives annually.

Admittedly, many of the texts I receive are not going to be adopted for my courses, but most of them find a place on my bookshelf on the off-chance I might pull something of value from them at some point.

Two semesters ago, I realized how much space the extra textbooks were stealing from me, so I began to ask fellow instructors what they did with their unused desk copies. The unanimous answer was they sold them. That’s right, I was told to sell the books I’d received for free.

Am I missing something here?

As the semester draws to a close, used book sellers begin to scour the halls of college campuses looking for instructors who are in their offices. They offer to buy unneeded textbooks for on-the-spot cash.

I have overheard instructors getting as much as $325.00 after allowing the used book sellers to go through their shelves picking and choosing books.

I have three bags of unneeded textbooks in my study, and while the book publishers are now beginning to offer a service by which instructor’s can send the unneeded books back (free of charge), I simply don’t have the time or the inclination or the resources to wrap and send these books back.

When my W2 finally arrived, and I saw I’d (again) made less than $20,000 last year, I had a moment during which I considered selling those books to supplement my income.

I know myself well enough to realize I’ll neither sell those books, nor send them back to their respective publishers. I can’t give them to needy students: they’re instructor’s copies, and in many cases, they have the answers. I’ve toyed with simply tossing them into my recycling can, but they’re books, so throwing them away is contrary to everything in me.

My solace is knowing those bags of books will soon be relics of a bygone era. Given the current abuse being done to what is a really great system in which instructors actually get something vital for free, publishers will soon figure out a way to put a halt to the distribution of free exam copies. Instructors will have to start buying our own copies of the textbooks we use and consider the cost as yet another price paid for choosing to teach.

Several weeks ago, I began to wonder where my W2 was: it had not arrived, and I was beginning to get worried.

If you do a bit of simple math, you’ll realize “several weeks ago” would be sometime in early February. You might also wonder why it took me until early February to miss a document that was supposed to show up in January.

I could blame this on being an English teacher: late things are so common they are, well, common.

Instead, I’ll place the blame where it belongs: The Los Rios Community College District.

Last year, a wonderful glitch in the PeopleSoft software the district uses caused all of Sacramento City College’s W2s to print with faulty figures. The bad W2s were distributed, and shortly thereafter, letters were mailed explaining the problem and notifying us that new W2s would arrive shortly. A few weeks later (in early February), I received my correct W2.

My mental where’s-my-W2? clock now operates on LRCC Distribution Time, so I didn’t begin to wonder about this year’s W2 until early February.

I placed a call to Human Resources and was told that a glitch in the PeopleSoft software had sent “a number” of W2s to old addresses. Now, my NEW address is going to be three this summer. This means it is completely independent of my old address. It gets nothing from it. Not a card on its birthday. Not a present at Christmas. In other words, NO FORWARDED MAIL.

Some stranger now has a copy of my W2. As special as I am, my W2 is much like yours: it has my full name, my social security number, my salary, details regarding my place of employment—you know, the very information identity thieves need to victimize people.

No one has apologized to me about this, and to the best of my knowledge, a general notification about this year’s “glitch” hasn’t been distributed. It is like a dirty little secret that the Los Rios Community College District has swept under the carpet.

And to think, I can’t be trusted with a library book.