It's the beginning of the semester again, the time of the year when I feel most like Sisyphus at the bottom of the hill. Oh, crap, I'm thinking. There's that rock again.
I love teaching. I love English. I love what I do. As I told my freshmen students on Wednesday morning, words are my business, and I love the whole business of words. It's just this first week, standing on the threshhold of the semester, when I'm thinking, good crap, don't these little fuckers know Chaucer yet? I mean, I've been teaching freshman comp, what, fifteen *years* now? Surely they know how to write by NOW?
Or, you know, Dickens. Must I explain Dickens AGAIN? Or World Lit II. Monkey. Reading Monkey. Surely you little trolls get the whole business about Buddha and all-suffering-arises-from-desire so stop with the fucking desiring already by NOW?
If you don't, hell, go find some of my old students. Ask them. I'm going for coffee.
Rock? What rock?
1 hour ago
2 comments:
I hate the first too. The rock, for me, is winding through the hallway between all those lost freshmen, and dodging the breeding sophmores, and not getting in the way of the over scheduled juniors and by all means, not getting in the way of the freaked out seniors. That's what we graduate students, here on the hill, deal with. Geeze, why not make a building just for us, wouldn't that be nice?
I remember not knowing buddha, or chaucer.
It's a scary thing to know you don't know.
Just remember that.
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