RBOC: Spring 2012 semester edition

• It's been an emotional rollercoaster for me this week, just like the rest of January.  I'm increasingly convinced that Ghosttown, for a variety of reasons, is actually bad for my mental health.  It is therefore uncomfortable to speculate on the possibility that my only hope of employment for next year may be begging to have my current contract renewed for another year.  Sick irony, anyone?
• My therapist seems to have zeroed in on my emotional distress as rooted in guilt, shame, and self-loathing.  I find myself agreeing with this and, at the same time, wondering, Are there survivors of graduate school who don't fit this profile?
•  The semester kicking off doesn't do much good for my emotional stability, since there's the inescapable fear that I will somehow screw everything up and scar my students.  I'm calming down from that one, as the classes start to knock themselves into shape.  The add/drop period makes everything so chaotic that I have totally abandoned teaching actual material for the first week, since so many people register late.  I feel good about this choice, now that I've tried playing it both ways.  This is definitely the more efficient way to go.  The students may be bored the first few days, just going over the syllabus, policies, study skills, etc.  But hell, it's not like students won't be bored anyway.
• Even faster than last semester, students are dropping my courses (or the idea of them) after getting a look at the requisite work.  Effort appears to frighten them intensely.  I feel I chose wisely this time around by forcing the students to go through the entire syllabus with me so I can explain to them what college professors mean when we say things like "read" or "take notes."  No one seems to arrive at Ghosttown U. with any study skills worth a goddamn, and I figured that out too late to really address it properly last semester.  Now that I'm walking them through the processes en masse, and am forcing them to confront the reality that they will have to read for nearly every single class session, a few more of them seem to be jumping ship during the first week.  
• My favorite example of this so far: a senior came by my office today after class, apologetically explained that zi had just registered a few minutes before, and wanted to know what zi might have missed the first few days.  Zi seemed on the ball, well aware of how college operates, and I was fine letting hir know where we'd be picking up.  I printed out a syllabus and the little sheet I concocted this morning about reading and note-taking skills and gave them to the student, who seemed almost insulted by the thought that zi would have to read such elementary instructions.  I practically apologized as I gently urged Stu to read them through to understand my policies, even though I was sure zi knew all of this stuff already, and explained that these things were intended primarily for my first-year students.  Before the work day ended, Stu had already dropped the course.  I believe zi was on my roster for approximately two hours.
• Not that this is brag-worthy, but I have managed to write bits of my book manuscript more days than not, so far this week.  This evening, I was puzzling over which chapters to focus on preparing for my potential book editor's review, and I suddenly realized, while fiddling the wording of a footnote, that Microsoft Word doesn't include footnotes in the word count.  (Is this a Mac thing?)  I can't for the life of me find whatever widget in Word would change this scenario.  But anyway, I created a separate document and copied all of my footnotes from all my chapters into the body text, so I could see the count.  It expanded my manuscript word count by nearly 3,000 words!  Celebrate!

First week of classes

I have now survived my first week of teaching as a titled professor.  It's not so bad, for the most part.  There are a few little irritations, but they're nothing I can't handle.  The worst is seasonal in nature: it's goddamn hot and humid here in Ghosttown.  Walking from building to building, as I must each class day, is unpleasant.  But, as Haphazard Musings pointed out to me, this will soon seem delightful, once the summertime intensity cools off and we settle into whatever passes for autumn here.

The most unexpected aspect of my classes for me is how much the character of the class seems to be determined by the time slot.  My early morning class?  A little foggy while the caffeine does its job, but they're game to try their best.  My noontime class?  A bunch of zombies, most of them.  My afternoon classes fall somewhere in between those extremes, and I haven't worked out the finer details yet.  People can still add and drop through next week, albeit with less ease, so things may be fluid for a while.

I am amazed at how little common sense college students have.  My syllabus has a huge wealth of information on it about how the class is structured, things they need to do, etc.  And they bring the dumbest fucking questions to me, all of which reveal that they haven't clapped eyes on the syllabus at all.  No, the course reader has not sold out — you went to the wrong place to buy it.  No, I will not tell you what the readings for next class session are, because you ought to know already.  It's not some goddamn state secret.  The statistics tracking in Blackboard clues me in that a little over half of the zombie class hadn't even downloaded their syllabus by Friday.  How on earth do they expect to do anything?  No wonder my pals from grad school are always ranting "read your fucking syllabus!" on FB. 

My first impressions of my students is that they, as a rule, not terribly well educated.  Based on accumulated data about public education in this state, that's hardly a surprise.  Apparently, it's in the running for Dumbest State in the Union*.  That's a harsh idea to process, one which would rankle me to no end if I were from here.  On the other hand, most of them give me the impression that they are willing to learn, if I can show them how to go about it.  I don't know how many are willing to put in the effort for close reading, but I guess I'll find out.  I tried to emphasize that skimming will get them nowhere, and they might have to – gasp! – read things twice in order to understand them thoroughly.  I'm sure a lot of them will blow this off and, consequently, do poorly in class, but I'm starting to accept the idea that all I can do is provide good advice for how to succeed in this class, and then let them make their own mistakes. 

It's eternally frustrating to witness – and participate in? – the phenomenon that Dr. Crazy and many others have discussed, the structural discouragement of working-class kids in college.  I can see it right away: the kids who look uncomfortable among their middle- and upper-class peers, the ones who seem not to understand anything about high-level study skills, the ones whose body language communicates to me that they want to do their best, but they just don't know how in this environment.  Most of them – hell, most of my students in general, more likely than not – could easily have gotten to Ghosttown U. by coasting through K-12.  When the public educational standards are really low, a smart kid can figure out pretty fast how to sail through with minimal effort, and look super-smart and accomplished to boot. 

But pseudology isn't a subject they would have encountered in school before, and lord knows that I am not the kind of teacher that they have probably gotten used to dealing with.  I know that a bunch of my students, and not just the ones from the lower socioeconomic strata, are going to hit the rocks as soon as the first evaluative assignment comes, but relatively few of them will heed my call to come to my office hours and ask for help.  They are used to hiding from teachers when they don't have to see them.  A few of them will shut down when they see a low grade, perceiving it as confirmation of their fears that they don't belong there.  They'll stop coming to class, and then they'll drift away from college altogether. 

It angers me that they come in with the idea in mind that their peers kinda-sorta don't even want them there, and that this is their starting point.  I want to tell them that the best way to show up their snooty, preppy classmates – who are no brighter than they, but have been trained and conditioned to succeed in both classroom and in elite social situations – is to kick ass at their studies and come out of college prepared to do something better than drift back to their little hometowns and do whatever Mom and Dad did for a living.  But, for a host of reasons, this is not practical to tell them.  Sigh.  I really hope at least a few start coming to my office hours after the first assignment, when they see the difference between what I expect and what they were prepared to produce.

On another note, I made the choice to forbid all electronic devices in my classes.  These students are going to have enough trouble concentrating without dicking around on Facebook and shopping online.  While I'm not going to let myself get sucked into policing over teaching, I have found that this ban has forced me to pay more attention to people who seem to be playing with smartphones in class.  One of them definitely was, because zi didn't listen to me or read the syllabus.  The rest, though, weren't — they were just doing other stupid shit that caused them to lower their eyes and hands toward crotch level.  This has brought into focus for me just how much college-aged dudes pay attention to their crotches, in one form or another.  Five minutes adjusting your belt buckle?  Obsessively trying to scratch out a stain at the bottom of your t-shirt?  Guys, it can wait.  Was I this crotch-focused when I was eighteen?  I'd like to think not.  I mean, if nothing else, I had enough sense not to give the impression that I was literally jacking off in class.  (We had no smartphones back in the dark ages, so there was only one reasonable assumption to draw about such behavior then.)  Clearly, I need to go Zen about delivering my lecture to the students who are looking at me, and tuning out the fuck-ups who have drifted back to their junk.

*That's not the formal designation for the statistic, but you get the idea.