Over the weekend, JPU held its winter commencement, which, compared to the jumbo public proportions of our spring ceremony, is always modestly attended. Clocking in under thirty minutes, our departmental festivities were downright intimate. More than half of the graduates showed up, supported by raucous cheering that was quite endearing, but the number of faculty [...]
Archive for the ‘ms. chips’ Category
23 Nov
Roster madness
In today’s work email I found not one, but two, requests for overrides into my upper-division class next spring. These were the eleventh and twelfth such requests I’ve received in the past two weeks. That class doesn’t begin for—what?—two months. But I teach at a public university, and even after what the local papers have [...]
13 Nov
Cheezed off
It must be the weather, or maybe the threat of swine flu, but, between screaming at slow-moving strangers and what happened yesterday, I fear I am losing my Pollyanna touch. Gentle reader, I am cheesed off.
Yesterday, partly to burnish my “student engagement” cred, I was coordinating a project with some former and future students, and [...]
3 Nov
What’s “independent” got to do with it?
This is not a political post. But if you live where an election is going on, then go get your vote on. Well? What are you waiting for?
That’s better.
Anyway, spring classes have opened for registration. After a year of dodging graduate classes, I have been assigned a grad seminar that meets during the graveyard shift. [...]
15 Oct
No reservations. . . not
Between job searches and graduate school admissions of all flavors, many faculty members’ offices are like little recommendation-letter factories these days. Letter-writing is part of my job, and I owe it to the universe not to upset this pyramid scheme that works as a pyramid scheme ought to work: since high school, over a dozen [...]
12 Sep
Sympathy for teh Basement Cat: I has it.
Like some middle-aged dude with fading tattoos on my sagging, dough-like nether regions, I’ve been trying to get the band back together. Well, not quite. What I’ve actually done is send out an email to a group of my former undergrads, now strewn about the nation’s grad programs, great and, uh, not so great (and [...]
3 Sep
Getting them at “hello”
It’s always better on holiday, so much better on holiday, even if you spent it working and listening to crappy songs like the one I quote at the beginning of this sentence. But here we go again. Another academic year, another meeting of the College, another Faculty Council, another departmental meeting, another convocation, another welcome [...]
14 Jul
Writing like an undergrad
On my way to the office this morning (cos I’m trying to avoid getting sucked into and enraged by the Sotomayor hearings, though I wound up listening to them at the office and getting enraged, anyhow: Jeff Sessions, your disingenuousness makes you sound so dumb that it vindicates the Senate Judiciary Committee that blocked your [...]
9 Jun
Envy
Once upon a time, I was just beginning my teaching adventures. The course, of course, was composition. For some reason, such as unoriginality, a great clump of us teaching neophytes had assigned an “advertisement analysis.” The students’ task was to find an advertisement, to figure out some question about the appeals made, and then to [...]
6 Apr
Open Letter to (Too Many among) My Seminar
Don’t b.s. your way through your annotated bibliography, and don’t annotate a source unless you have, like, actually seen it. I’ve emphasized since the beginning of the term that the course focuses on an emerging subfield; some of you may have chosen the course for that very reason. You may also have noticed that the [...]
