I just got what is without question—and by an astronomical degree—the WORST set of teaching evaluations I’ve ever gotten.  These come from my graduate cultural studies seminar, which I will here admit I totally phoned in all semester.  The overload was simply too much, and I found myself repeatedly putting that class last, as I think any reasonable person in my situation would have.  (And no fair responding that any reasonable person wouldn’t have taken on the overload.  You’d certainly be right, but there’s no point harping on it.) My students picked that up, and really slaughtered me.

I’m alternating between two responses here, one which is a little bruised and one which is a bit more indignant.  The latter response comes from my sense, given the comments, that this seminar expected to be taught in a way that graduate seminars simply aren’t, and that some measure of my hands-off approach (admittedly too hands-off) was intentional, designed to force the students to develop their own responses to the material.

But whatever.  I forgot the third response, in which I can’t quite bring myself to care very much.  My relationship with the grad school is a pretty exploitative one (them of me, not me of them), and if they decided not to ask me to teach for them any more, it would come as a huge relief.  Perhaps there are moments when doing a bad job is called for.

Remaining:

– 5 graduate Cultural Studies projects

– 12 Media Studies term papers

I’m still holding out hope that today’s the day.

On a not-unrelated note:  I’ve been heard to complain, over the last few days, that my senior majors have come up with an astonishing array of ways to avoid graduation this semester, ranging from the extremely belated recognition of course requirements left incomplete to the failure to pass said course requirements.  This has required some substantive hoop-jumping on the collective parts of the students, their advisors, and the registrar in order to make everything right.  I love them all, and they’re worth some significant trouble, but I’ll admit it’s been something of a trial.

No more shall I complain, however, as none of them have taken that last statement literally, as has, apparently, a graduating senior at NYU (from the Chronicle; subscription required):

A New York University student who is scheduled to graduate this week was arrested on Friday and charged with bank fraud in what prosecutors described as a complex series of transactions that involved the shuttling of $43-million in bogus checks between banks in Switzerland and the United States.

No more complaining from my corner.  No sirree.

What must be done, before the summer can begin:

– read 6 senior theses (5 of which have been turned in)
– grade 26 Race, Gender, and Science Fiction term papers (25 of which have been turned in)
– grade 33 Media Studies term papers (due on Wednesday)
– grade 16 graduate Cultural Studies projects (due by Friday)

Thus far have done:

– 17 21 25 (!) Race, Gender, and Science Fiction term papers.

Am in a good position to clean these things up in relatively short order.  Which is good.  I want to go into our graduation festivities done with all of this.  There’s nothing more depressing than coming home from graduation and realizing that the summer can’t yet start.

In yesterday’s mail, the following, from Educause:

COMPUTER APPLICATION GRADES ESSAYS
A professor at the University of Missouri has developed a computer application that grades papers and offers advice on writing. Ed Brent, professor of sociology, created the application, called Qualrus, using a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Qualrus evaluates papers based on the structure of sentences and paragraphs and on the flow of ideas. Instructors can specify which factors of an assignment are most important, and Qualrus incorporates that information into the scores it provides. Brent claims the application improves students’ papers and estimated that it saves him more than 200 hours of grading per semester. The tool has been approved for use across the university, but so far Brent is the only instructor using it. Brent is also looking for ways to distribute the tool to other universities and to businesses.
CNET, 7 April 2005
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5659366.html

I don’t know how to respond to this at all.  Sure, I’ve got fantasies of some super hi-tech invention that will get me out of the hundreds of hours I spend grading each semester, too.  But the ironies in this particular version are only highlighted by the article immediately preceding this one in the Educause mailing:

POKING HOLES IN MICROSOFT’S GRAMMAR CHECKER
Sandeep Krishnamurthy, associate professor of marketing and e-commerce at the University of Washington, is so incensed with the grammar checker in Microsoft Word that he has taken to posting examples of what he sees as the checker’s failings on his Web site. He has also called on Microsoft to improve the checker. Citing egregious grammar mistakes that the tool does not question, Krishnamurthy said that although it

might be helpful for above-average writers, it actually impedes below-average writers’ efforts to improve their writing skill. Krishnamurthy said Microsoft should modify the tool to allow users to select the level of help they need, from basic to advanced. For its part, Microsoft said in a statement that the tool is not intended to find or identify all errors. Instead, it is designed “to catch the kinds of errors that ordinary users make in normal writing situations.”
Chronicle of Higher Education, 15 April 2005 (sub. req’d)
http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i32/32a02902.htm

So, in case you’re keeping score:  grammar checkers are useless, but this new software is capable of “evaluat[ing] papers based on the structure of sentences and paragraphs and on the flow of ideas.” Because those are more machine-recognizable than all that complex grammar stuff, I guess.

I remember these lovely moments from college, moments that continued into grad school, though without quite the wonder they’d earlier produced.  Moments at which it seemed that all my classes were suddenly speaking to one another, and I’d get a hazy glimpse of the ways that all forms of knowledge were in some mysterious fashion interconnected.  The grad school version of those moments of synchronicity was less thrilling, somehow, only because it was more expected; when you’re only taking classes in one department (and, by and large, classes focused on the literary production of one continent and in one century), such overlaps are inevitable.  In college, though, I felt a real shiver every time my history professor would mention the same writer or concept or event that my English and political science professors had independently mentioned just the day before.

I’ve never had one of those moments as a professor, for no other reason than that there are very few openings for the unexpected; the woman who writes the syllabus is hard to surprise.  Except when she’s not really paying attention.

Yesterday, my Intro to Media Studies class covered bell hooks’s “Eating the Other”; tonight, my Intro to Cultural Studies graduate seminar discussed the volume from which the essay came, Black Looks.  I didn’t plan it that way.  In fact, I didn’t even realize until this weekend that this was going to happen.

The conversations in the two classes were quite different, in no small part because the context each course had to this point created was pretty specific.  It was nonetheless fun to remember, however briefly, the excitement of those glimmers of interconnection among diverse fields, glimmers that gave me the sense that there was something transformative to be found in interdisciplinarity.

The feeling is fading already, though, I’m sorry to report, and I’m trying to figure out what to make of the sense of nostalgia—of loss—that is lingering in its wake.  I wonder if there’s something in the institutionalization of interdisciplinarity that robs it of its magic.  Once one teaches a course—worse, once one has repeatedly taught a course—entitled “Introduction to [Interdisciplinary Field],” have the pathways between subjects become so well-trodden that little room for exploration, and for the random connection, remains?

(11 x 100-page screenplays) + (8 x 20-page term papers) = two very long days before I leave town

[UPDATE to the Update, 12.11 am, 12.15.04:  3 term papers remain.  I’ve had much caffeine, and so may attempt to press on, but my grading skills are rapidly degenerating, from whatever sorry point at which they began.  I’m not a late-night worker anymore, and haven’t been for years...]

[UPDATE of the Update to the Update, 10.49 pm, 12.15.04:  Term papers are done, and grades for that class are calculated.  8 screenplays remain between me and the holidays.  Or between me and total collapse.  Take your choice.]

Over the last several days, I’ve been madly building this semester’s course websites, and remembering, once again, why I adore Liz Lawley.

I’ve branched out a bit, this year; I’ve got the standard courseware blogs up and running, but I’ve also integrated the building of a wiki into one class.

It’s been two solid days of installing and coding.  I must leave the computer, now.  But more soon, on fascinating topics, I hope.

But I am drowning.

Jake writes to ask where the heck I’ve been, which is a really, really good question.

Alas, I’ve been more or less right here, grading papers for class, reading senior thesis drafts, desperately trying to get the paper written that I’m delivering this week in France…

And thus I’ve had no thoughts worth sharing, unless you find yourself interested in the babblings of someone periodically exclaiming ”Where is for physical locations only!  Use in which to talk about parts of the text!” Or “That quote isn’t going to do all the work for you!  You must explicate, explicate, explicate!”

When I am grading, I think in exclamation points.  And no one here wants to read my exclamation points.

Ah, but tomorrow, I’m leaving for France.  (Have I packed?  No.  Do I have a plane ticket?  Yes.  That, I consider a major triumph.) I’m speaking at a conference of the Laboratoire Orléans-Tours de la Littérature Américaine (otherwise known as LOLitA), focusing on the work of Richard Powers.  (Along which lines, I get quoted here.) So things could be worse.

(Apparently stress also produces an abundance of parentheticals.  A sure sign not of too little to say but too much, and no time for proper organizing.)

In any event, I’m outta here until Sunday, but will hope to post from there, if this “world-wide” part of the web allows.

Announcing the launch of Palimpsest, a group-authored weblog devoted to open-source teaching resources.  Thanks to George for getting it off the ground.

A new semester.  One old class, and two new ones.  (One overload.) Three new manila folders.  One new courseware package.  And I’m good to go.

The courses, if you’re interested:

• Introduction to Media Studies
• Topics in Contemporary Fiction:  The Big Novel

The third class is a graduate cultural studies course.  I may add a website for it later.  I may not.

Got my pens.  Got my legal pads.  Got my syllabi.  Got my usual first-day jitters.

Happy New Semester, everyone.