Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Back in the Saddle

Summer I takes up today, to my mixed feelings.

I'm glad to have work, and you know I love my job. OTOH, I just got the plot snags in Book IV shaken out, and have been writing nine and eleven hours a day now that the kid has been shipped off to her grandparents (o bliss) and there goes that...

Oh, well.

I'm teaching History of the English Language -- HEL, as we call it, a joke we never tire of -- and the first half of Freshman Comp. Twelve students in the latter, seventeen in the former. All in five weeks. Eck. HEL in five weeks. I have never done this before. I am not yet convinced it can be done. Usually I teach HEL in 16 weeks, and even then I end up leaving something out at the end of the semester -- there I am in the last week saying, "Oh, well, the Purist movement, you don't need to know that...sexist language...uh...I suppose we can skip that, this is Arkansas, after all...the English Only Movement...you don't want to...let's go straight to semiotics, shall we?"

Can't wait to see what doing it all in five weeks will be like.

2 comments:

CB said...

oh sadness that you have to skip stuff. I always hate skippin stuff cause I feel jipped :/ That could be because I am a nerd and like to learn. Ah well, I'm okay with my nerdiness.

zelda1 said...

I loved HEL, it was one my favorite classes. In fact, it was my favorite, well, wait, I loved Chaucer and I liked Vic Lit too. I also loved Af Am Lit. So, I guess, there isn't many lits that I don't like. I hope you get it done, all of it. It would be a shame to miss some of the really good stuff.