Friday, October 22, 2010
Oct. 22nd, 2010 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bearshortyI actually like going to school very early, since from 7:30 to 9, I can catch up on work and no one is really on campus and it just feels peaceful. I completely forgot to buy a bagel yesterday for my breakfast, so I had to wait until 8am for Student Center to open to get everything bagel with cream cheese and tea at DunkinDonuts. I graded midterms, first in a random classroom, then at the coffee shop and then in my office.
When I left the house this morning, for the first time it was still dark outside and really chilly. I’m going to need a hat soon. It is full autumn.
I had a students come to my morning office hours. It is a student who needs it, so it is good that he wants extra help.
Today was peer review day, and in the first class I finished grading all the midterms while my students read each other’s papers (I do give them a worksheet). The midterms were much better than I thought they would be.
In the second class, I even had a chance to figure out the article I’m going to assign for the final exam in December. I think I’ll give them “East Indian” the essay by V.S. Naipaul. It is very amusing and it deals with questions of immigrant identity. It is about Indian community in Trinidad – or East Indian in West Indies - and what it means to be a ‘colonial’, as he puts it. My other two articles in that sequence will deal with a woman visiting a Chinese village with her parents, a village her parents left behind forty years before and a Mexican illegal immigrant living in the Bronx. I don’t know if my kids ever read a Nobel Prize winner before; they are not big readers. (I have a standard textbook full of articles that all Basic Composition classes in the department have to use. They vary on themes, but it is our choice which six article we get to teach each semester. They do have to come in two sequences or themes. My first half of the class is about ethical use of science and nature and intersections of science and religion. The second half will be on perception and immigrant experience.)
For lunch, I was craving a burger, so I had one with fries. I was so full from it that I didn’t even eat dinner. I was going to go to Shabbat dinner tonight with my neighbor but she wasn’t feeling well. Instead, I just relaxed a bit and caught up on internet links.
One link I really liked, from the Hathor Legacy Friday linksplatter: a really cool statement from a young woman running for Congress in Virginia.
When I left the house this morning, for the first time it was still dark outside and really chilly. I’m going to need a hat soon. It is full autumn.
I had a students come to my morning office hours. It is a student who needs it, so it is good that he wants extra help.
Today was peer review day, and in the first class I finished grading all the midterms while my students read each other’s papers (I do give them a worksheet). The midterms were much better than I thought they would be.
In the second class, I even had a chance to figure out the article I’m going to assign for the final exam in December. I think I’ll give them “East Indian” the essay by V.S. Naipaul. It is very amusing and it deals with questions of immigrant identity. It is about Indian community in Trinidad – or East Indian in West Indies - and what it means to be a ‘colonial’, as he puts it. My other two articles in that sequence will deal with a woman visiting a Chinese village with her parents, a village her parents left behind forty years before and a Mexican illegal immigrant living in the Bronx. I don’t know if my kids ever read a Nobel Prize winner before; they are not big readers. (I have a standard textbook full of articles that all Basic Composition classes in the department have to use. They vary on themes, but it is our choice which six article we get to teach each semester. They do have to come in two sequences or themes. My first half of the class is about ethical use of science and nature and intersections of science and religion. The second half will be on perception and immigrant experience.)
For lunch, I was craving a burger, so I had one with fries. I was so full from it that I didn’t even eat dinner. I was going to go to Shabbat dinner tonight with my neighbor but she wasn’t feeling well. Instead, I just relaxed a bit and caught up on internet links.
One link I really liked, from the Hathor Legacy Friday linksplatter: a really cool statement from a young woman running for Congress in Virginia.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-23 09:06 am (UTC)Those articles you're going to be introducing sound really interesting! I hope the students take to them.