I got behind on my blogging last week because I got both busy and sick. I have been fighting a sinus infection for the last few days, which makes extra screen time particularly awful. My head is not pounding as hard now that the antibiotics are kicking in, though, so I am back!
My classes are going well. We are nearly done with the Romantic period in my literature class, which is unbelievable. Survey classes go so fast! We are working on Essay 2 in my composition classes, which is also unbelievable! In fact, we are peer-reviewing in my hybrid classes this week. I set their due date a few days earlier than my in-person classes so that I could break up my grading a little bit. We don’t peer review in my in-person classes until next week. We are working on a physicality essay in my 102 classes, and I always enjoy that one. I was skeptical the first time I assigned it, but I have found that it is actually quite a fun essay.
We picked out some textbooks last week for English 101, which was also very fun. I like looking at the different options for the courses. I have been very happy with the one I have been using, so I am glad that we get to keep it. We also added a book that looks good, though. I don’t know that I will make a change because I have been so happy with the book I have been using, but it is nice to know that there is another option if I want it. We didn’t make any changes for English 102 at all, so that conversation was very short. We also added a no-textbook option for both courses so that instructors can pull together their own set of readings if they want. I’m glad we are going to be working with Disability Services for guidelines, though, because I get really tired of badly scanned articles in my own graduate classes. They just don’t meet ADA requirements, and professors are lucky they haven’t been nailed for it. Last semester’s professor was particularly awful about it. His scanned material was hard to read. This semester’s has been better because she has so far been posting articles that the librarians scanned. They are more familiar with ADA requirements.
My presentation on Audre Lorde is tomorrow. I absolutely love Audre Lorde, and I love the essay I am presenting on. I absolutely hate applying it to Orlando. Lorde openly criticizes Virginia Woolf in the essay I am presenting on, and it feels wrong picking out small pieces to apply to the novel. I very much appreciate Lorde’s comments on how having a “room of one’s own” is an idea that comes from a place of privilege. If you don’t have the paper, ink, or time to write, a room is the least of your problems, and focusing on the room itself is very much ignoring class issues involved in writing and art. I really wish I could present only on the essay and leave Woolf out of it entirely. Unfortunately, that is not the assignment.
Small Changes 