A Case of the Yips

At the beginning of the semester, it's very, very, very easy to get into one's own head about one's teaching ability.  Especially if one's class in the previous semester ran freakishly smoothly.  A solid class can go steadily downhill as the sufferer of the yips gets into his or her own head and dismantles the pedagogical foundation on which his or her class is built.  Right now, I am suffering from the yips.

For those of you who don't know, the yips are defined as "an apparently baseless sudden loss of ability in one of a number of different sports."  I got that definition off of Wikipedia.  And while I would seriously discourage the use of the Wikipedia in any other forum, in this case it's fine.  Due to the deep breathing and running I've been doing to overcome the yips, I've been a bit distracted from formulating interesting things to say about popular culture.

To apologize for being distracted, I will now present you with a series of videos of songs I taped off the radio in middle school.*

First, a word from my serious 7th grade self:




And now, a song I made sure to listen to on my Walkman because even though I didn't quite know exactly what was being discussed, I had a feeling it was slightly raunchy:


1993 was CRAZY.

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*For fun, I checked to see what year these songs came out and was surprised to learn that I picked three songs from 1993 pretty much randomly.  I think this might have a lot to do with my family getting cable that year.

Hello, strangers

While I technically number in their ranks, I have little sympathy for the moaning and groaning the academic types do at the end of their ginormous breaks.  Seriously, where do we get off, pretending like we're summering Europeans?  That said, I don't really feel like starting the semester.  And while I've never been much for wearing pajamas in the daytime, I feel like 2010 might be the year I experiment with nightwear in the day. 

Just kidding.  I have an odd - and hard to explain - set of rules about when elastic waistbands are acceptable.  But I am having the usual pre-game jitters about teaching my first class of the semester tomorrow morning.  This happens most semesters, and I hear that it happens because I care.  But I think it's because meeting a room full of semi-awake, moderately surly teenagers for the first time brings out the worst parts of my desperate need to be liked by strangers.  I will be completely over this by next week, but until tomorrow's events prove otherwise, I will continue to worry that they will riot.  Or stage a coup, and a hostile one. 

I know they will do neither of these things.  I know that for good or ill, they understand that I'm the person in charge.  But that could be because I'm pretty convincing when I'm pretending that I know what I'm doing.  And I'm pretty organized, so my syllabus is pretty much set for the whole semester.  Now all these strangers have to do is fall in line and fly right.

While I was finishing my syllabus this afternoon, however, I was listening to Slate's Audio Book Club discuss David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, a book I someday hope to have the courage and strength of will to read.  Anyway, during that discussion, one of the panelists mentioned coming across one of Wallace's old syllabi and noted how he deconstructed every part of the class on the syllabus while he was trying to explain what the class is about.  So, because I was totally curious, I Googled it.  And I found this PDF, which is really worth the read.  When I was reading through it I had the rare experience of laughing out loud at a syllabus for reasons other than stifling rising panic.  It was really, really funny.  I especially enjoyed Wallace's "Basic Course Spiel" in which he attempts to elaborate on the class's task to analyze and interpret texts.  And, as someone who reads A LOT of college writing, I really, really enjoyed his discussions of what type of work was acceptable to submit for a grade.  Wallace's description of the the proper "Presentation" of work, which "has to do with evidence of care, of adult competence in written English, and of compassion for your reader" was a great way to describe how a paper looks when 1.) the writer is invested in his or her work , 2.) the writer realizes that his or her work says something about him or her, and 3.) the writer finally understands that there is, in fact, an audience that has a particular set of needs.  To get my comp-teaching heart fully a-flutter, Wallace later mentions that he "draw[s] no distinction between the quality of one's ideas and the quality of those ideas' verbal expression" and that he will not accept or reward "semi-literate college writing."   I wish I could its so well on my syllabus.   But at least I can keep his standards in mind.

A Wednesday of Grading

I usually just let Pandora do its thing while I'm grading.  My office is pretty quiet and I like to generate some good working noise.  Plus, the music drowns out my occasional groans when the English language is being beaten severely or when American history is being fully revised to fit a writer's particular needs. (Ask me about American presidents.  You won't be disappointed.)  Here's a link to the music video of the song that perked me up a bit, "Missed the Boat" by Modest Mouse.

When You Were Young...

This week I've been sitting through the English department orientation for new Teaching Fellows, thinking and talking about the class of 2013. I have to admit that I'm starting to feel like I've been blessed with a strange double-sightedness. While most people who know me are unsurprised that I'm strangely fond of Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA" and enjoy Top 40 radio (yes, radio) for the reason that it's just so darn catchy, I'm noticing that there are a bunch of songs that I would also sing along to appearing with an alarming frequency on LiteFM stations everywhere. (Case in point: I spent last night discussing the songs that I tend to belt out at traffic lights when the windows are down. This tends to be embarassing. One of those songs is "How Do You Talk to an Angel?" I not only identifyed this song on a restaurant radio, but traced its origins back to the one (or so) episode run of The Heights, the Melrose Place spinoff that only someone far too young to watch and understand Melrose Place would be interested in remembering.)

I entered college 10 years ago, in 1999, and while I feel connected in some ways to the First-Year students (or Newbies) that I'll be meeting and teaching on Monday, in other ways we couldn't be more removed from each other. As I was watching families lug comforters, plastic stacking units, microwaves, tvs, clothes, and the various contraband items that our new students have stowed with their possessions to their dorm rooms, I could remember a similarly disgustingly hot day in August when I was dropped off in a strange place, to live in a strange room, with a stranger, and told that the other nearby strangers would help shape my adult life. But, unlike the Newbies, I have the advantage of knowing how that all worked out and how right or wrong these statements were. In some cases, they were mostly right, but it's actually pretty complicated to try to fully agree with any of those first week statements after you've lived through the whole fun/messy/odd college experience.

Another thing that startles me at the beginning of every school year is the fact that while I've lived through a good number of technological, social, cultural, and political changes, for my Newbies, things have always been certain ways. Every year Beloit College posts the "Mindset List" for each incoming college class that gives a general summary of what life has "always been like" for the students entering college. And while I can definitely see the damage #20 has done to them (high-stakes educational testing) in the classroom, I really didn't realize what this group looked like culturally until I read the list. A good deal of my shock might come from the fact that I was 10 years old (or 9, if you count in the late birthdays) when this class was born and I was just starting to become aware of the world around me. I remember when Magic Johnson announced he had HIV. I was in a school full of fifth-graders and people told each other Magic Johnson jokes at lunch and thought they were up on current events. I remember the advent of blue Jello, though I still wish they would re-focus all their efforts into only making red Jello. I remember "discovering" salsa and the early days of its presence in my parents' house. And while I was briefly caught up in the early Berry Berry Kix hype, I still think it's too sugary and pretty disgusting. Especially when it's stale. And I would probably bet good money that my brother would still eat it should a box come his way.

So, what's my point? Well, I'm not sure exactly. I don't feel old remembering the world both before and after these changes. But I feel oddly in between my students and something else in the world. We are definitely of different mindsets and awarenesses; like my parents and other people who aquired portable technology later in life I have a stringent set of rules and expectations regarding its use. But in other ways we're very similar. I'm glad I don't have to use a card catalog anymore. But I'm also glad that I had to go on that fieldtrip to learn how.