Sometimes I think writing quickly would be better, writing without much crafting, the idea being that this would be more 'honest' writing. Or the idea being that I could at least write then, instead of carrying words and sentences that spring up in my head, waiting for the right time that never seems to come. How can there be no time to write? I teach only three times a week for 65 minutes a class. What can possibly take up so much of each day?
The day before yesterday, a student cheated. He copied an excerpt of a New York Times book review onto a minor informal writing assignment - their weekly responses to the readings on the class website - as if it were his own work. So there was that. My first plagiarism case. I emailed back and forth with a professor I know, like, and respect, there where I teach. He told me which steps I needed to follow; informing the student by email was important for documentation, in case a bigger problem arose. I finally emailed the student; he apologized and agreed to meet me the next morning before class. Yesterday I left early to meet with him, and then I taught.
A bit later, I ran into a professor who asked me how teaching is going. "Great! I love it!" I said. I said that I'm trying to learn more as quickly as I can about writing process and how to teach writing. He suggested I apply to be part of a week long seminar there in January, during semester break, which even pays a stipend. This morning I worked on that and emailed the application in.
My students' drafts for their second essay came in yesterday, so I will be spending days writing extensive feedback and meeting with those who want individual help on the next steps in their essays. I take far too long with each draft, often an hour or more, reading, thinking, rereading, writing feedback. The next seven days will be so full.
I need to submit my book list for the class I will be teaching next semester by November 15. I've only read parts of two books I'm considering, so I'm trying to read them now. I'm also trying to force my mind to be making the final decision about the course books in the 'background' of my surface thinking. I don't know if this strategy amounts to anything.
I read to Sean and Ryan most days, though not all. I never feel that I read to them or work with them enough.
This year is my last chance to apply to PhD programs. It's probably already past my last chance, really. But I think of this as the final chance to apply. I've looked up so many programs, taken notes about people I might work with, noted deadlines and what each program wants. That in itself took enormous amounts of time last year, when I thought I would apply to many more places than just the local research 1 university where I went for my undergraduate degree not long ago. But I only applied to that one. I made it onto their waitlist, but no further. This year, I figured, I would have more time to apply to more places. But it never works out that way.
I'm trying to learn to do things quickly - thus, this more hastily written blog post.
Even so, I have decided - or I think I have decided - that I won't apply. I don't know if this decision is wise or weak. I don't know how to know what I need to in order to make the decision in any meaningful way. I always seem to be rushing from one thing to another, always thinking that soon I will arrive at the time when I will be unhurried and wise (the pairing which Thoreau believed in). I wanted someone to calmly talk it through with, someone who really understood me as well as the realities connected to the choices, but in our busy society, we instead are supposed to pay 'counselors' to talk us through these often irreversible upheavals in our own and our loves ones' lives. I know that the paid counselor approach would not work well for me, would only use up more of my time (and money), so I am 'deciding' as the days go by.
I dream more and more about moving out of the country, maybe to teach ESL in Chile or Ecuador or Nicaragua. I dream about building a strawbale home or a small cob home, something muddy to put my hands into. I dream about studying 'non-traditional' adult education, and going to Cuba to do yet more research on the 1961 Cuban literacy campaign, and more followup on what became of the participants. I dream about all of those things I wanted to do but have not done, just like so many other people do when they start thinking in terms of last chances. I try to recognize the difference between ghosts of dreams that no longer mean enough to me and the sparks of excitement which should be acted upon.
I wonder at times why I write at all for this blog. This isn't scholarly writing. It's entirely too subjective, too personal, too much like a private journal. But I wrote long and hard for each semester in graduate school, and those papers sit mostly unread, too. When you work at something with everything you have, and then the object you produce somehow becomes unimportant for its own sake to a large extent - becomes a means to get to go on to another level - after a while, you can feel yourself crumbling within. It functions too much then as currency rather than as a real object with use-value. The blog, at least, is an attempt, however feeble, at communicating with other people.
During my conversation with the student who plagiarized, he told me at one point that his English teacher last year (his senior year in high school) hadn't had them write any papers all year, and had given them all A's. He said that at the time, he'd thought this was great, but has since realized how unprepared for college this left him. I told him that this feeling of gladness to not have to write papers arises from a society in which education is always a means to some other end without much intrinsic value. I said that we would never pay a piano teacher to give us lessons and then be happy that this person never made us play piano. But our system routinely produces these absurdities.
And so... Do I try to change it from within? If so, how? With whom? From within where I am now, or from within a PhD program? Or do I abandon it, try to make a living some other way, and teach and learn autonomously? How does a person know what to do? Or is most choice an illusion as we rush through our days? Yet still... there is SOMETHING resembling choice here. I will try to 'decide' what to do with some of my present and future life while I read and write feedback on students' essays, and plan some more for class tomorrow.
Yesterday, I told that student that I've given him so many chances and worked with him to get him caught up. I'd even volunteered to meet with him to make up his last missed class (the day after Halloween) because he'd been trying hard to do better, and then blew it again by not getting up early enough. I said that I only do this because I believe what we do has meaning. I said I'm not required to do this, and that most of my colleagues would not be willing. I said I'm a part-time professor, and if he ever looks into it, he'll find that part-time college professors mostly make very little for that work. I asked him why I should bother meeting with him on my own time if he doesn't value what we're doing and only sees it as a way to get points. I've talked with my class so many times already about the problems inherent in education as a way to get points, grades, credits, degrees, jobs, and finally, money. These are our lives, right now, I tell them. If they don't matter now, how will they ever matter? He seemed deeply sorry, and seemed to understand at least some of my larger points.
In the aftermath, I'm glad I talked with him, but I wonder if I'm putting too much blame on someone who is himself being shaped by the logic of this system. Was I too self-righteous and moralistic? In the end, I decided to still meet with him next week to let him make up one of the six classes he's missed. This hardly feels like a decision for me. I have to err on the side of doing too much for someone rather than doing too little - 'deciding' as we're all swept and rushed along.
***
I wrote of dreams, but I am living this dream - this one - the one I carried with me for so long. It isn't that it's not that good after all - far from it. I love teaching. But I wonder at times what we are to do for students when we make the cruel absurdity of our society's dominant logic and practices more starkly visible. What then? Is the message supposed to be that we've now shown them that the structure itself is inherently at odds with our collective well-being - and so it is up to them to go forth and change it?
A student wrote in his rough draft this time about being forced by his father to get all A's in the toughest classes in high school, because he's living in a time when he must compete against so many others for the dwindling supply of livable wage jobs. He wrote of his sister who graduated from this university with honors, and is now unemployed. He wrote of his cousins who did poorly in college, but now make quite high salaries. He wrote angrily and painfully.
The problem I think is that even so-called 'right livelihood' in a profoundly destructive, unjust society cannot quite BE 'right livelihood.' Even if we love our work and beam with enthusiasm, what do most of our students get? And how long can we count on our work? What can we all 'decide' to do with and for each other in this rushing but paradoxically stagnant 'society' or 'system'? How do we somehow create the ability to decide?
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