Spread

Wake me up for May.

Not on my game today. Driving into my neighborhood, I slowed down before a left turn to wait for a guy on a four-wheeler coming from the opposite direction to pass. He held up his left hand, and I thought he was waving me on, so I turned in front of him. I saw him turn behind me and realized he was giving the bike signal for right turn. Lucky I didn't run him over. Then, I just put on some coffee – because all I want to do right now is take a nap but I can't – and my coffee pot read 9:20 and I thought, "That's not even a real time." Granted, it's the wrong time, but it's a time. Though I guess the whole day hasn't confused me – only the hours since class. I try not to blog about work, but I made a student cry again today, and another one pouted her way through workshop, and I'm trying to figure out if I can actually add a "no freaking out" clause to my syllabi from now on.

Anybody reading this, though, is probably saying, "What? But you're the queen of crying." Maybe I used to be, but only with close friends, or complete strangers, like librarians and people cleaning the bathrooms at Taco Bell. There's no crying in class, no crying in front of acquaintances.

And okay, since she's not going to read it, here was the argument. I'm like – the whole class is like – this story is very abstract. I took a poll of where everybody thought the story was set, and I got these responses: on a roof, on a beach, sitting in front of a computer, in a jungle, at a Starbucks, on an airplane. I said, stop saying my soul this, my spirit that, love love love, and tell us who's in the room. I said be concrete. The writer said, "What's more concrete than the soul?" I said, "Everything." She left.

I decided to take advantage of the bad day, to pile it all on together, and tell the pouting girl after class that she couldn't simply assume I'd direct her thesis, that she had to ask me, and that I was going to say no. She pouted.

Can't wait for Wednesday.

The trace.

Just went to log into my school webthingy place to look up a section number so I could turn in my book order. For some reason, I typed "m" as the first letter of my login, which it isn't, and Chrome suggested filling in the rest for me as, "My deer came back!" I *wish* that was my login name.

Never mind.

It is so dark out. Up-way-too early dark at 6:00 p.m. I'm thrown off my game. Though my game tonight is simply to read a manuscript, so really, the lamp next to the couch takes care of everything.

Where does *this* go in my promotion app?

I shot myself in the foot by agreeing to be interviewed by a student today and making her promise not to bring a tape recorder. Because – while I will continue to take a firm stance against being recorded speaking after once seeing myself transcribed and realizing how completely incoherent I am when I talk – in a way it might have been easier than waiting for this girl to write down my responses longhand in her notebook. I kept thinking, Is it rude for me to get some other work done while she's doing that? Plus, her questions seemed culled from a generic list: "Do you work alone or with a team?" Do I write stories with a team? Hm, nope. And I can't imagine anything more miserable.

Or: "Do you ever find yourself writing in a genre you didn't expect?" Like, have I suddenly typed myself out a poem or a screenplay? Guess I'll go with no on that one too. I didn't mean to be, but I think I was terribly unhelpful to this poor freshman just trying to finish an assignment for some other class.

Maybe that last one could have come from someplace sincere, but she didn't really talk to me so much as shoot questions, and then tell me what her answers to them would have been after I replied. And when I peeked at her notes, I saw she was actually writing down everything *she* said in response to my answers, rather than what I said. So I think she probably could have written all about me without us ever having met. I could have slept in some.

Paper of color then?

Went to the supply closet at school, and found myself second in line and asked the grad student in front of me, "There any colored paper in there?" Because I need some to divide the sections of my report. He said, "That's racist."

Let me tell you about me.

I got feedback on my application for promotion, and the whole report needs to be re-imagined. While this is a big job, it's really not anything traumatic – it's not like anybody thinks I'm not magitastic at my job, but it *is* like I need to do a better job of bragging about that on paper for the powers that be who don't know me. Which I hate. So today, I've been trying to better put into words what makes me so fucking important. This is hard.

But I am proud of one editorial choice I made today, which was to switch the whole document from Times New Roman to a sans serif font. What I'm saying about myself suddenly looks so much more official.

Not at all here and now.

Several of my fiction students this term are workshopping chapters from their fantasy novels. So often, when I read student-fantasy, I'm left wondering just when and where these stories take place. Sure, there's the urban fantasy, which takes place now-ish but where fairies live next door. But most of it has some sort of vaguely medieval feel, and yet not. (And yeah – sometimes they like to spend the first 200 pages establishing the intricacies of the when and the where, which tires me out.) So I got brave and asked one of the writers last night – out of curiosity more than anything – if it was even a fair question to ask *when* a fantasy story takes place. She said she thought of her story's setting as "during the time of the dinosaurs but on another planet." And suddenly I felt better about not having been able to suss that out all on my own.

Not quite, girlie.

Reading essays. Student is writing about the underground railroad, led by, she thinks, Uma Thurman. I'm going to be happy all morning because of that one.

Don’t judge me.

It's that time of year again, when I go through my student evaluations. Mostly, the responses are fine, though I got my first evals with straight E's (the lowest score). And you'd think I'd have some idea of who that student was, but I have no idea. Someone hated me a whole semester and I missed it. (I'm trying to be grateful for that obliviousness, since it could have been a tough term had I been more aware.)

A couple good ones, though completely unusable for quoting on my annual evaluation:

• So-and-so is the universally renowned Super-Queen of the Crazy Babies Intergalactic Assembly and you would do well to heed her words. She's flexible, supportive, and absorbative. She's up, down, all around, and underground.
• So-and-so has been my favorite professor: I'm a total pussy and never once did I feel intimidated in one of her workshops.

My favorite sentence, though, is this one, the last line of a positive if lukewarm review: "I thought she was weird about some things, though." I suppose that's true.

Dear writer.

Time to get some editing work done this weekend. But I waited too long after reading this particular manuscript to sit down and write the evaluation: I can't decipher my own notes. "Good mt mon"? And I have "ex" in the margin many many times. I know by "ex" I mean "example," as in I should pull something from that paragraph into the evaluation and address it. But it might have been helpful if I'd noted an example of what. My new-school-year's resolution is to be more on the ball. To do the annoying stuff first. Or at least soonish.

Probably should have taught them the word “keychain.”

What a good first week of school. I love that I get to spend my time at the office on Twitter, on WordPress, on Submishmash. The new PN website should go live this weekend. Waiting only on writing guidelines form the poets. Oh poets.

Though I might be taking this online excitement too far. I've been up searching for past contributors to follow on Twitter and just got this error message: "You have exceeded your hourly usage limit." I've been told by Twitter I've been on Twitter too much! Maybe it's time to do some other work instead. (Follow PN here.)

Saw my nieces on Monday (and got to teach them both the word "TARDIS"), and one of them gave me a cold. Isa was actually sick, but Georgia sneezed in my face a couple times, so I'm not sure which. But it was the shortest cold ever. I took a bunch of vitamin C on Tuesday, and by morning I was all good again. Must have been a baby cold. A tiny gentle thing.

Happy last weekend of summer, everybody. And wish Georgia a superfun first day of preschool! I can't wait to hear all about it.

Wish I could floo to Esky this morning.

Oh dear. I used the word "apparated" in an editorial evaluation I submitted yesterday. In my defense, the novel is magical fantasy, so I'm betting the author recognizes the term. But quality control emailed and asked me to use a real word instead. Thing is, even though I'm not part of the Harry Potter generation (like my students now are), I kind of actually felt like it *was* a real word.

Had two stories accepted the other day – will post links when they're up. Off to paint.

In other world news…

I just posted my final grades. And: for the first time ever here, turned in and signed a contract that had no end date. Mostly, I am very happy about this. I try to keep reminding myself it doesn't mean I *have* to work here until I die.

Plus, you're looking at [the words of] the new editor-in-chief of everybody's favorite Queen City-based literary journal: PN. (Lord. I suppose at some point now, I'm going to have to learn to use real names for people and magazines. I mean, I know I had the one fiasco with the editor who was google-alterted to my blog, but who exactly do I worry is searching the internet for Passages scandal?)

You should totally check it out.

We're workshopping an essay today, and one student says the ending reminds her of Stand By Me. It doesn't immediately click what the connection might be, so I ask, "How's that?"

She says, "Oh, it's good."

Chapter 9: How to open, sort, and organize mail.

I haven't written here for a while, but know that I've got drafts of a dozen blogs saved. Like one about how Little Sweet and I went to an AAUW book sale this weekend, where I picked up a 1983 Women's Secretarial Handbook, second edition. I was just so excited by the sheer obsolescence of almost everything inside it (taking dictation!), and its faded lavender, girl-friendly book jacket. It wasn't until I took the book out again later that I realized it's the [Merriam] Webster's Secretarial Handbook, which makes it so much less sexist and interesting. But then I just save the post without posting and get back to work, or TV, or FFtoday.com.

But today, I put all the fiction on a disk for the managing editor of my journal, for him to print and compare to my layouts, and accidentally included one of my blog drafts the file folder. He was like, "Somebody's journal got in here." And it was a really stupid one, the start of a blog entry story in which I had driven to the gym only to find it was closed for some party with Mardis Gras beads. Both boring and whiney. Not sure why I even saved that one, but I didn't know how to play the paragraph off as not mine. Yeah, some teenage complainer girl got into my laptop or something. I must have given her my password.

The Women's Secretarial Guide had a whole section on proper filing, which I probably shouldn't have dismissed so quickly. It probably said something about not putting your dirty laundry in with your boss's important work papers. I probably said to at least be aware of what you're revealing to all the wrong people.

Not to mention her mutant nipple.

My big job application thingie is due on Friday, so yesterday I was on my office floor with eleven binders with eleven dividers each (I think it took me two hours just to get all the little tabs in the right places), trying to get it all organized. One of my appendices contains evidence of my publications, in most cases simply a given journal's table of contents with a little arrow next to my name. But the TOC for my first XXX Quarterly story sent my morning completely off track. Here's the page [link redacted**] I printed out and needed to include. Pretty NSFW, right?

Now, I'm crazy about XXX. It's one my favorite journals, and I'm so happy to have been included in the issue. But I can't exactly put this picture in my application, even in black and white. I consider simply leaving it out, but I don't want any higher-ups thinking I made any publications up. I try to print the page without the graphic, but no luck. So I take the page to my chair, and he and the department secretary and I spend way too long with markers and white out and stickers trying to cover this poor woman's gaping midsection and bloody kneesocks. My chair liked his sharpie'd revision best, thinking it still looked like abstract art, but I went with a photocopied post-it note cover-up, even though it's pretty obvious I'm hiding something.

** I learned my lesson last time I google-alerted an editor in my blog. But I'll send you a link if you email me.

Not Freebird.

Lived through hosting my first visiting writer, which meant three days of being social and smiling and good food on the university. It exhausted me. Luckily, this writer in particular was easy to be around and seemed to enjoy himself, so it wasn't as hard as it could have been. My favorite part was probably after the reading, sending musical requests (with tips) down the mezzanine zip line at the Landmark. Dude on the keyboard played King of the Road straightaway after we dropped him the note. Thanks!

But just the stress of it all has knocked me out and today I'm home sick, even though it's a Sunday and I'd probably be home well if I felt better. I've got two weeks to gear up for the next writer, so don't expect me to be wasting any of my charm before then. It needs time to accumulate.

Bring on fall.

It's 87 degrees here, on a school day, and our offices aren't air conditioned. I'm seeing far too much English Department leg. We all look so much better bundled up for snow.

Like a band of gypsies.

Are there any jobs you can blog about? Geez, I always want to record here things about my students, my editorial clients, and high school essay test takers, but I don’t want to get fired. And now, I’ve got visiting writers, which is a whole new kettle of fish. And like everybody knows, some fish are awesome, and some think they’re the top of the food chain when they’re not. Guess when I finally realize my dream of working completely alone, I’ll be able to let you all in on everything then.

Luckily, Little Sweet’s company is good reason to blow off as much work of every kind as possible so we can read fan fiction and crochet and swim and watch Doctor Who. And to drive around the UP. Tomorrow, we head east to the bear ranch and the Toonerville Trolley with family. And on Friday, G’s third birthday bash. Why can’t summer last forever?

Smooch Lions fruity sunhats?

Yesterday was a good one. A pretty pretty day, and I wore my new shoes out and about for no reason. One of my students won the fiction prize (out of the five finalists, four of them were my kids), though I snuck into the ceremony just as it was being declared over because the girl at the podium had just fainted. And I received the most kick-ass gift basket in the mail from one of my editorial clients, full of fancy-pants edibles: olives and brownies and biscuits and almonds and on and on. This next week should be all right too, though giving final grades is always my least favorite part of the term. Still, at the least, I'll be well fed.

Debunked!

What a lovely last day of class. In my nonfiction class, so many people brought food, and we hung out for almost two hours, mostly playing Lingo on the board. Love them and their homemade carrot cupcakes.

And I found out that in the fall, since I'm taking over as director of the visiting writers program, I get to have a couple of my very own interns to help me out. I signed up a grad student (just the first one to come talk to me, but he appears to be enthused enough) and then an undergrad – the girl who writes the Mennonite Table blog. It's nice to have a team behind me. My main goal was to find people who could be sociable with the visiting writers, to make up for what I can guess will be my weakness. I'm sure I can be organized – get posters made, book hotel rooms, devise schedules – none of that part scares me. It's the long ride from the airport or the lunch with a near-stranger that makes me edgy even six months too early. So now I've got backups. Maybe the three of us will pregame each visit by making lists of funny anecdotes and ice breaker questions. Maybe we'll practice being charming.

Maybe I should be doing that anyway, just to be more ready for everyday life.

Maybe. But it'll have to wait. Class might be over, but now the grading begins. Bring on the revisions.

Watched.

My nonfiction class is being observed today by the Zen Buddhist priest. I adore this guy, but I become a total spaz in response to his quietness. Thankfully, that somewhat coincides with my teaching style, which is somehow much more energetic than I am in real life. But still, I'm nervous. So send good thoughts for me and my kids, that we're all involved and productive and smart – and for Buddha's sake, coherent – for the particular hundred minutes we need to be today.

No snack for me.

I lost a banana on my way into work this morning. Must have fallen out of the side pocket of my backpack on the walk to my office? Best case scenario, it's still in my car. What am I thinking? Best-case scenario, some mama monkey found it on the ground outside Gries and took it home to her hungry babies.

Only Tuesday already.

I can't focus yet. I've been in my office for two hours, and I can't spend more than two minutes on any one thing. I score a quiz, write a paragraph in the evaluation I'm working on, make a note for today's class, order a cardigan from Old Navy, read a student writing exercise, check my Twitter, start and delete an email. I'm in circles.

And today, my nonfiction students need to have some idea of their blog topics, and I'm not even sure about my own yet. I want to write about my closet, but so much of that is past tense, and this blog should be more of a documentary: let's see what happens. To do the closet blog, I'd need to actively try to find a person (to hang the doors/to love) and I don't know that I'm up to that.

Narrate this.

On day two of my fiction workshop, we write bad stories. The idea is to get out of our system all of those lazy and ugly writing habits and clichés that make for bad stories. After we talk about our writing don'ts, they write their own terrible stories, with stilted dialogue and crazy point-of-view shifts and lots of tears and melodrama and characters describing their pretty hair in the mirror. It's usually a pleasant day, and the worst that can happen is that they think it's so fun to write crap that we should do it all term.

In my last class today, everything seemed to be going fine until the final group read their story, which began: "When the phone rang, I was inside my professor." Oh fuck. The story turned somewhere else right away (like bad stories do), and I thought it was over, but it returned to the bed and got fairly graphic, and there was thrusting and whatnot. (Ha, I typed "trusting and whatnot," which is probably more my fantasy.) If they'd written a story with me as a character in any other situation, I'd just tell them to leave me out of it and invent their own characters, thanks. But this was so weird, and it wasn't necessarily *me* -- always "my professor" – so I didn't want to say anything that implied I thought it was me, but at the same time I couldn't help but feel a little messed with. The whole class was watching to see how I reacted, which – besides my confused face – was very little, something like, "So… for Tuesday you've got a reading and a writing assignment and we'll have a quiz. Have good weekends."

I don't know. Maybe I should have stopped them right away, but day two is my favorite day. I'm still trying to establish the tone on day two, and I need it to go well. I need to seem open so they're not afraid to write, and then, after they do, that's when I get tough on them.

So. That's that class. The others both seem pretty lovely, and PG-13 at best.

No cigar.

Alternate titles for the George Orwell classic I have seen written by high schoolers this week:

1. 1983
2. 1985

Just wherever is fine.

I headed to school earlier today in six-degree weather, but everybody on campus had done such a ridiculous job parking that I turned around and came back home. Seriously. I know there's still some snow on the ground, but people seemed to have absolutely no memory of how the lots are organized. And forget just lining yourself up with the guy next to you to approximate a straight line. I told myself if I found a spot on the edge of a lot, I'd stay, but if I parked in the middle somewhere I knew I'd be parked in by the time I left, so I guess I'm working at home again today.

What’s a pencil?

Yesterday was my last day of class proper. We had one last workshop to do, which I'd prepared for and printed out but forgotten to bring with me. And I didn't have my laptop with me either. So I pulled out my iTouch and logged onto WebCT and found I could open her story just fine on that. Couldn't believe it. This means I can read student stories at the gym or in bed? Well, not that I really want to do either of those things, but still: love love love this little thing. I've already looked around for attendance apps, so students won't make fun of my little paper gradebook anymore. Once I find a gradebook app that can handle all my little pluses and checks and scores and revised scores – I'm going totally electronic.

Little Early-Pearly came in by her curly-wurly.

One of my students brought a friend to class today. This is fine with me, and the friend even said he'd read the stories in preparation. Excellent. My student introduced him as what I saw in my head as "Douchet," i.e., /dooshay/. I was even thinking, isn't there a football player named that? Early Douchet? I'm such an idiot, but I don't know. People have weird names sometimes. Who am I to tell someone their name is stupid?

And the friend raised his hand to comment, and I called on him, though I un-Frenchified his name (probably because of Early) and pronounced it "Douchette." I thought it was an unfortunate name, but I knew somebody in college named Mike Unti, and this didn't top that.

They all loved this, of course. And my student was like, "I just called this douche Douchet because it sounded fancier." Turns out, the guy's name was "Timothy." Which, of course, I couldn't remember, and just pointed at him when he raised his hand from then on.

Call me Ishmael.

I know everybody in the world is named Jennifer, but come on, you wouldn't use your writing teacher's name in a story you were handing in to workshop, would you? So far, my students have used my name for a character who is sleeping with the narrator's girlfriend, a character who is being stalked by the narrator, and a character who died in childbirth. The always flash into realizing it during class. Oh! That's *your* name!

Yep. That's my name. But I'm just glad they're writing about worlds with names like Jennifer, I guess, rather than Xlyeron and Bloog, or Hermione. Or Spot.

How to write like a girl.

It's registration time. My nonfiction class for next term is already full, and mostly full of students I've had before. Got to love that, that I can walk into class already knowing what it is they should be writing about it. And 15 of the 18 are female. So I think I'll drop Friday Night Lights from the reading list and figure out how to take advantage of all that girl power. Two of the boys' names I recognize, and they're nice kids, but how great would it be to transfer them to another section and focus all writing toward getting published in Seal Press anthologies?

My fantasy team, for example.

Earlier in the term, I found a bunch of little bits of scrap paper in the recycling bin in one of my classrooms. Turns out, each one had a job title on it: waitress, architect, chef. I pulled them out of the box and passed them around for my students to use in whatever they were writing, but at the end of class, I put the whole pile of them in my backpack. Now, I keep finding them everywhere. In my wallet, in my gradebook, on the passenger seat of my car. Mayor. Engineer. Journalist. Every time I find one in my hands, I consider it. Nurse?

And while a million other things in my life may be crappy, I have yet to draw the slip of paper that I'd trade for English professor. Sincerely, in that department, I have the luck.

Oh, while I'm on the subject of drawing little slips of paper: it only just recently hit me that our Can of Words and Can of Wagers plans are completely busted unless we make them iPhone apps. Do we know anybody who can program? (Because, yeah – Game Inventor might be a fantastic swap.)

Dragon magazine.

A student came to my office yesterday, and after we talked about his own story, he gave me a whole list of fantasy books Noni might like for Christmas. I tried to write them down. He's saying things like "codex alera" and "the dragon della sangre," which I have no idea how to even start to spell. Those two, though, turns out I was close to getting right. But some book I thought was called "Horses Got Guard"? It didn't turn up any search results on amazon, and I wasn't sure she was that into horses anymore anyway. Luckily, I search "Ender's Game" and was reminded of the author -- Orson Scott Card – so that mystery was solved. But I wonder if I sound as nonsensical to him, and all my students. Up in front of class, spouting Esperanto – you know, something a little familiar, but still genuinely meaningless.

And then I went to my sister's house, a place where things make sense. Where a two-year-old will compliment you on your ability to draw circles or go potty – "Good job, Jenny" – and even when the baby baby pukes all over your spaghetti, it is a million times more funny and charming than anything that happens in the classroom.

The things they recorded.

I went to a Tim O'Brien reading the other day, and I was sitting by myself with my gradebook open on my lap because I'd promised extra credit to students who attended and wanted to mark them down. I was on the aisle, and two kids I didn't know climbed over me to sit in my row. One of them totally made fun of me. "I haven't seen one of those since grade school!" he said, opening his hands like a book. "Present?"

The other one raised his hand. "Here! Here!"

They weren't mean about it really, and I laughed with them, but sincerely? None of their teachers since elementary has kept track of attendance or grades on anything but paper since elementary school? And I'm still confused. It is that I should be keeping my records on my iTouch, or that I shouldn't be keeping track of things at all? I wanted to ask what their majors were.

Don’t piss off the talent.

Little Sweet writes fan fiction, and she sends it to me for editing. Here's the first sentence of the latest batch of chapters: "Hollyleaf padded through the snowbound forest, half-forgotten scents washing over her." She hardly needs any help from me. I clean up some dialogue formatting, delete an adverb here or there, ask a question any cat clan expert would already know the answer to. But best of all, she's the most pleasant writer to work with. I seem to be getting a lot of gruff from my authors these days, writers who seem mad I don't think their novels are as good as they think they are. I wish more of them would respond like she does: "Your suggestions were good. I'll probably take some of them."

Floating ribs.

I have a student who I think is doing some sort of corset training. This freaks me out. Most days, she wears the sloppy chic student uniform, but the other day, she had a corset-style belt over her tank top. It was cinched super tight, to the point where it looked painful, not pretty. I've probably gotten more motherly in general with students over the years as I've become less able to relate to them via pop culture, but I think I went especially mom on her. That shit's not good for your insides, and beyond a certain ratio, it looks freakish. The whole notion of an hourglass figure sounds lovely, but when you literally start to look like one, that's not good. I mean, an hourglass only lets a tiny bit of sand slip through the middle.

My students this term have all the usual issues: friends in car accidents and coming out to their parents and resistance to psychiatric drugs that I really think could help them. But this quiet girl is the one I'm most worried about.

Or somebody.

Speaking of bad game show answers, in the past few days I have seen the following three names complete the phrase, "Their Eyes Were Watching God, by _____________." (The correct answer is Zora Neale Hurston.)

1. Zora Nelson.
2. Hurston Wanston.
3. Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Employed.

I've got a contract for next year, so I can afford to keep the blog. Celebrate good times.

The news came the night before my previous contract ran out. I almost had to turn in my laptop. And worse, my boss put me through the ringer by calling me at 9:45 p.m. and telling me to come over. (That sounds weird, and it is, in that it's kind of late for an invite from your boss, but it's also not weird in the way you think. He was at my friend/his ladyfriend's house, and they are like my local mom and dad.) But I was positive it was bad news. I thought, if they want to be with me when they tell me what they're going to tell me, they must be worried about how I'll react, or they want to hug me and tell me things will be okay, or make sure I don't crack up. On the ride over, I tried to imagine a whole new life without work. Well, without a paycheck and health insurance.

But they had good news for me. I'm still on the team. I don't know my full schedule for the fall, but I do have two of my favorite classes, so it'll be good regardless. In fact, hm, I have a book order to put in.

So big picture, life's good. But when big cat jumped in the window last night with a celebratory baby rabbit, I had to tell him it was not necessary. Oh dear. The bunny was so little, but luckily, not terribly hurt by the trip inside. Big cat let her go, and he and the little cat tag-teamed her around the living room. I was on the phone with Peter, and he told me, "There's plenty of rabbits." (You'd think with a name like Peter you'd be more sympathetic to rabbits.) I suppose so, I said, but I really really didn't want this one eaten on my watch.

She made her way under the loveseat, and from there, I used my curling skills to broom her into the open and toward and out the door. She jumped off the porch, twenty times her own height, and my hope is she made it back home. She did.

Peter thinks one day the cats will capture neighbor kid through the window, and he'll read it here on Spread: "Oh no, everybody! The cats left me a little boy in my living room!" The prey is getting bigger and bigger, so I wouldn't be surprised.

Etiquette.

I didn't mean to, but I think I asked out one of my students last night. It was our last night, and a bunch of people were still milling around after, and I told her, "We should get a burger sometime." I meant it – she's a nontraditional student, which is code for grownup, and just a cool lady. I'd totally have a burger with her. But still, as soon as it came out of my mouth it felt weird. I know I'm not supposed to hit on my students, but I'm not sure how long I'm supposed to wait before I try to become friends with one of them. Until after I submit grades?

Cloodle.

It's the last week of classes here. One student (the one who is my sort-of relative) made a pink cake, and another brought in really undercooked brownies. He said they were in honor of 4/20, so I didn't eat them. We played Cranium in another class, because spelling backwards and drawing with your eyes closed are relevant. Tonight, I'm picking up pizzas. After this last class, I've just got a lot of stories and essays to read and grades to calculate, and a contract to pray for. My skills are not broad: I can't hum things so that people recognize them, and I don't draw well even with my eyes open. But I can do this one thing. So I really hope they ask me back. Plus, I need to know because I should really only put up the puzzle mural if I'm going to stick around this one-moose town for a long, long while.

In your pants.

I woke up at 5:30 this morning – for no reason – so I got my whole day's list of essays critiqued and checked off by 9:00, before I even headed to school. (It's a snow day for Marquette public, but NMU's open.) My boots lost their waterproof and the snow outside is falling into ponds of slush. So my wet stocks are now on my office radiator and I'm barefoot at work. And I got coffee at the sushi place on the way in, and my fortune cookie says, "If you wish to, you will have an opportunity." I think that's good, right? I wish to, already. I wish to.

Fantasy.

Little Sweet's here, and she's coming to class with me. So we were talking about what makes for a good story, and turns out she has a list:

1. Major character dies.
2. Battle.
3. Long travel by foot (or horse or boat).
4. No electricity.
5. A feast, with long descriptions of the food.

Don't tell my students.

Team captain.

If I had myself as a professor in college, I might have really been frustrated. I would certainly wanted more direction, and less loopy insistence on just messing around. I would have been mortified to workshop early drafts with so little guidance. Plus, all that talk about reality TV. "Please," I would have asked, "where are the Jesuits?"

Oh but today, I am feeling good about myself. My nonfiction students are starting to turn in revisions, and they are so lovely. One woman's essay made me cry, right here in my office, and the rest are just making me jump up and down. They're funny and open and humble and honest and tight. I want to take on the other section of this class, the one taught by the Zen Buddhist priest. I want to rumble, essay for essay. I think I've found my roller derby team, right here, under my Wednesday night nose.

Prou forta com per una dona.

It's been a long weekend. Productive. I've had a ton of student stories and essays to respond to, other essays to score, and there's a novel manuscript on my desk (heh, I mean my floor) that I haven't even gotten to yet. I'm tired of my couch. But here's how I've handled it. I find the day's Top Model marathon. (Could be on Oxygen, could be on Bravo – you never know!) Turn it on, and mute it. Then I work until it's time for panel. I turn on the sound and see their photos. I mute it again, because I already know who's going home, and I get back to work.

Growing up, there was a guy down the street who was going to school for nursing, and he'd study for 45 minutes and walk around the block for 15, over and over. His is a better system, but until my toes heal (they are feeling much better already), I'm happy with my way.

Okay then, guys.

This is the year I've officially given up the fight against "alright," which I very much consider to be a misspelling. But Word accepts it, and it's in the dictionary, and students can probably find a million examples of its use. I'm still a staunch defender, however, of that comma before or after a name in direct address. Even though it's always left out everywhere, even in the Slumdog Millionaire subtitles. That one, I'm ready to fight for.

Petulant.

Does everybody but me know that "froward" is an actual word? One of my students used it tonight. "Not willing to yield or compIy with what is required or is reasonable; disobedient." I can't think of another word that looks so much like a typo.

We need a team name.

Oh, it is quiet around these parts, isn't it? Somebody put on some music.

So I'm teaching, and we're talking about a story we're reading, and one of my students, he hates to interrupt, but he has to read us what the last moron who owned his book wrote in the margin. It's the word "prego." Who knows why. Easily distracted, the rest of them all decide they love this game and start flipping the pages for notes and reading them out loud. My favorite: a solemn "OMG" next to a highlighted passage about Hiroshima. It's cute, this little performance, but I'm just crossing my fingers the whole time for something halfway smart because the thing is, I'm the only person here who assigns this book. These comments are almost certainly all from my very own kids in semesters past.

But whatever glues this group together. If they want to rumble with my other section, that's fine by me.

The power.

I was working in my office yesterday when a student dropped in on a professor across the hall. They were having a totally reasonably volumed conversation. Honestly, it wasn't bothering me, and they weren't being loud, but I was reading and my left hand made some bizarre independent reach for something on the desk that it didn't find. I looked at my hand, and the shape it was prepared to wrap around, and realized it thought it was going for the remote. It was going to press mute. As if I were reading a Rock of Love recap and the Snuggie commercial came on. Same exact maneuver.

I'm embarrassed that I hear more TV voices than human ones most days, but still, I wouldn't mind having the power to quiet things at will sometimes.

Professional development.

Compiling my evaluation, trying to tell the story of a person who should stay on here. More student comments from last term (one of which I'll include in the report, the other I'll just hang on to in my head): "I had bowling this semester, but I enjoyed coming to this class more" and "Also, her hair is neat."

I get my highest scores in response to this prompt: "The instructor was interested in the subject." I think I like that about me.

So much depends.

Three poets just walked down the hall, arguing over where to put the stresses on the word "wheelbarrow."