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upsy downsy
Tuesday, 31 July 2007 07:38 pmIt's a mad week: at least three hours of curriculum advice per day. The Government Health Warning on the curriculum advice packet states: "May cause headaches, backache, exhaustion, handwriting degeneration and the grinding of teeth. In cases of extreme overdose a psychotic tendency to flip between wanting to help students, and wanting to beat them insensible with blunt objects, has been observed."
On the upside: two separate students today gratefully accepted curriculum advice and my increasingly loopy-yarn-snarl signature, and then told me how much they enjoyed and remembered my lectures from last term/three years ago. This makes me Happy, TM, and is largely the reason why I stick with this ridiculous teaching gig.
On the downside: one student, having failed all four of his first semester courses, was still adamant that Economics, the Nastiest Major with the Strictest Requirements in the faculty, would miraculously accept him into their second-semester course. When I carefully explained how this was simply not happening, he listened to my spiel, or at least to the spiel going on inside his own furrowed brow, nodding his head like a heroin junkie, and then said "So what you're saying is that there's a chance." Which, strangely, I wasn't. Far too many students wander into curriculum advice expecting me to be able to rearrange the laws of reality by sheer force of will.
Surreality levels have not been assisted by the fact that I've been madly reading Philip K Dick short stories, trying to decide which one to unleash on my unsuspecting third-years in the name of postmodernism. His intro to the Golden Man anthology is an endearingly meandering and vulnerable collection of comments, including the following:
On the upside: two separate students today gratefully accepted curriculum advice and my increasingly loopy-yarn-snarl signature, and then told me how much they enjoyed and remembered my lectures from last term/three years ago. This makes me Happy, TM, and is largely the reason why I stick with this ridiculous teaching gig.
On the downside: one student, having failed all four of his first semester courses, was still adamant that Economics, the Nastiest Major with the Strictest Requirements in the faculty, would miraculously accept him into their second-semester course. When I carefully explained how this was simply not happening, he listened to my spiel, or at least to the spiel going on inside his own furrowed brow, nodding his head like a heroin junkie, and then said "So what you're saying is that there's a chance." Which, strangely, I wasn't. Far too many students wander into curriculum advice expecting me to be able to rearrange the laws of reality by sheer force of will.
Surreality levels have not been assisted by the fact that I've been madly reading Philip K Dick short stories, trying to decide which one to unleash on my unsuspecting third-years in the name of postmodernism. His intro to the Golden Man anthology is an endearingly meandering and vulnerable collection of comments, including the following:
The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possiblities. It's not just "What if -" it's "My God; what if -" in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming. Mr. Spock is the only one calm. This is why Spock has become a cult god to us: he calms our normal hysteria. He balances the proclivity of SF people to imagine the impossible.I can kinda see his point. Although I'd probably accept pretty much any pronouncement from a man capable of forcibly breaking up a fight on his front lawn with his Hugo trophy.
