Fall semester: day eighty
Finally, it's done.
Well, technically, anyway.
Yesterday I "taught" my last classes of the semester. I say "taught" because all I did was give them the practice exam to better prepare them for their final on Monday, and gave them their final farewells. The great experiment of the semester in teaching Science/Engineering English 102 for the first time was mostly a success, to be honest. I wasn't sure I could do it effectively when I first started the class, but as the semester progressed, I realized that not only could I do it, but the philosophical aims of the class -- any sort of technology-oriented class like this, actually -- weren't so different than my own aims in teaching. What I also realized was that said class is simply a modified version of the normal 102 with a different primary textbook and different paper topics...and very nerdy ones at that. I can get behind that. For example, the first unit could be summed up in one statement: how robots may eventually kill us all, and why.
No, I'm not kidding. I get to teach an English class that involves an in-depth discussion topic covered for several weeks -- as well as in my students' first paper -- about a possible impending robopocalypse. No wonder I liked teaching this class so much.
Overall, though, I think I learned as much about teaching over the course of this semester as my students learned from the coursework in the class. I can't say this all the time; this semester of teaching allowed me to broaden my own horizons when it came to what an English class could be and how it could function in the broader scope of students' education. This may be the only time I say this, but I believe I am fortunate in being able to teach such a class at Flat State University, as it's really a unique course that I've not really seen offered before. I'm proud to be one of the few people chosen to teach such a specialized course, and despite the outwardly flippant or outside-the-box subject matter, it does prepare these kids for what they'll be doing for the rest of their collegiate careers -- writing papers in a concise, scientific way, formatting them correctly, looking for the most authoritative, accurate sources on their subjects and citing them correctly in their research. The subject matter may have been fun, but the coursework was academic and dead-serious. That mix, I think, is what made the class incredibly successful.
And, I might add, it was incredibly successful; limiting it to science/engineering majors who had to get special approval from their respective advisors before being able to enroll sort of upped the ante for the quality of writers in the class -- as a result, my students all semester have been outstanding, with none of them doing poorly. I expect that the only failures will be from too many absences (the department, regrettably, still has an attendance policy). Restricted enrollment plus highly interesting subject matter means that the students who want to be there and are interested in the work will do well in said work. I couldn't have asked for a better semester of teaching, to be honest.
My students' final exam is on Monday afternoon. The vast majority of them have nothing to worry about as long as they show up and write something coherent. My hopes are that I can get the exams graded quickly and efficiently, and that I can completely calculate and upload my students' final scores on Monday afternoon and be done with my actual GTA-related work of the semester. Before I can do that, though, I have a full class's worth of papers to read and grade over the weekend. I've found, however, that these papers take much less time to grade than my former English 101 students -- these kids are good writers, they've paid attention in class, and they know what to do. For most of them at this point it's just "going through the motions."
I attended my last class of the semester last night as well; it was the final meeting of the Middle Eastern/Asian lit course, and was very short. I can't remember how long it was, but we got out of there more than an hour early, I believe. I came home, made something to eat, and fell asleep on the couch for the first time in several months. When I awoke, it was 2:10AM, I was sitting half-upright, and I was blanketed by all three cats -- Pete on my chest/shoulder, Sadie between my legs, and Maggie on my thigh. The fact that I slept through all of them climbing on me, especially Pete, I think is a testament to how tired I actually was. It was if my body realized that hey, the semester's over now, and it put me into a relative coma which lasted for a few hours. Not once on a weeknight during the semester have I ever fallen asleep on the couch. It's not even a comfortable couch; it's a loveseat from the '70s (or possibly early '80s) with a hide-a-bed under the cushions. I got up and went to bed downstairs, where my extra sleep on the couch beforehand only let me sleep until 9:30 this morning.
Today, there are no classes on campus; it is the university's official "study day." Because, of course, everyone can study for all of their exams over the course of one day. I don't even know when "Finals Week" officially begins or ends, to be honest with you. All I know is that I give my students their final on Monday, and that I take my one and only exam for the Middle Eastern/Asian lit class next Thursday night during normal class hours (7-9:30ish). I am certain that we'll be the only people in the department during that time, as pretty much everyone else will have vacated the premises and/or town for the holidays. The one drawback about taking classes with that professor is that we'll always have a midterm and a final. I'm willing to put up with that, however, for taking lit classes that I will actually enjoy.
Still don't know what I got on my Dalloway paper; even though I turned it in a week early, it still hadn't been graded (to the best of my knowledge, anyway) by the time we had our last Grad Studies in Fiction class on Wednesday afternoon. My professor told me he'd stick it in my office mailbox when it was graded, which I suppose has to be good enough for me. Said professor has also been really (read: uncharacteristically) nice to me over the course of the past two weeks or so, so maybe he's already read it. I haven't a clue, honestly. All I know is that whatever grade I get on said paper will more than likely be the grade I receive in the class. Whether I should be looking forward to seeing my grade, though, is questionable. I'll remain reserved until I see said paper's grade.
Meanwhile, I at least know that I have a 99% right now in the Middle Eastern/Asian Lit course, which means to get anything less than an A in there for my final grade, I'll really have to screw up the final exam (next to impossible, by the way, to do) and my professor would have to hate my paper, which I'm sure he will not.
Poetry? Eh. If anyone gets lower than an A in workshop -- any workshop, ever -- there's usually something really wrong, either with the professor or the student. As it's been a delightful semester in there for all involved, I have no worries.
So, I suppose that elusive free time, relatively speaking, has returned to my life. Yes, I have some grading and some studying to do over the course of the next week, but I can do those things at a quite leisurely pace if I so choose. If my luck holds out, I should be able to spend less than twelve hours on campus next week, only being there on Monday for my students' final and grading and on Thursday for my own. If the weather remains relatively nice as well, it would be even better. It can snow/ice/sleet/etc all it wants as long as it waits until after 10PM on the 15th. After that, I no longer will have to drive in it, and will no longer care -- as long as it doesn't inconvenience or endanger any friends and family traveling over the holidays, that is.
It has been an incredibly long semester, however; this is something that most of my readers not only know, but have experienced themselves (as about 85%, roughly, of my readers here are colleagues/former students, or are working in academia). But I know one thing for certain, and it's because I've proven it to myself this semester: I can survive on my own and do well. Or, relatively well, anyway. I mean this in myriad ways, really, as it's an all-encompassing statement. I proved to myself that I can live alone and pay the bills, even if I barely scrape by a lot of the time. I proved to myself that -- for the moment, anyway -- I can keep a fifteen-year-old car running well with little more than crossed fingers and safe driving. I proved to myself that, yes, I can balance teaching two sections of classes with three classes of my own to attend and do work for, two of the latter being reading/writing-intensive lit courses. I proved to myself that being single and (occasionally) really lonely is not the end of the world, and in that also proved to myself that while it may be nice to have someone else around, I don't need anyone but myself and my own determination to make it through grad school, especially in what has been my most hellish semester yet. I'm not trying to sound smug or self-righteous at all, really I'm not. All of these things have been huge personal issues for me that were, and still are in some cases, difficult for me to overcome. As you folks probably know, I've never lived totally on my own before, totally alone (except for the cats, who don't really factor into this sort of thing that much, as they're not human). Not only have I been able to successfully do so for quite some time now, despite a few setbacks and unexpected problems, I've been able to do it during one of the (arguably) most tumultuous years of my life, what with the breakup with the former girlfriend and the work-filled semester I've had to deal with.
Yes, I've lost many hours of sleep. Yes, I've more than likely permanently alienated some friends I was once close with. Yes, perhaps I've become a little more of a boring person than I expected myself to be at this age or at this point in my graduate school education. Yes, I've made many, many mistakes over the course of the past year or so, some of which still haunt me, and others that I've learned from in one way or another. 2011 has been a horrible, terrible year, but surviving it has taught me many, many things, especially about who I am and what I am capable of as an individual. It's been so long since I've been able to so fully focus on myself and the betterment of my own standing on life that I almost forgot how to do so. For so many years I was forced to focus on making everyone else around me happy -- first my parents, then later the former girlfriend and her parents -- now that I am able to focus on myself, I don't know where to begin, but I'm trying to piece it together a little more every day. As I've written here before, I don't know whether or not I'll ever truly be happy or even relatively content in my life, regardless of where I end up or what I end up doing. But surviving the events of this semester, and this year in general, is a good start. It puts me on a completely different track, gives me completely different ideas about things I could do with my life. I've realized that it's okay to be depressed, that it's okay to be uncertain. I've realized that there's no rhyme or reason to anything that happens, and -- permit me to be a bit nerdy and to quote the Terminator movies here -- there's no fate but what we make. This is why, every day, I try to better myself.
Anyway.
It should be no surprise to you that my mind tends to run in a thousand different directions at once, touching on the darker sides of depression, loneliness, and regret at times of the past and present, yes, but also trying to focus on the moment, on the future ahead of me, on the things and events that will happen or are possibilities. Despite a lot of things against me, I remain hopeful about the future, about the coming year. I'm a stronger person than I was a year ago (I prefer to think about it as becoming "battle-hardened"). I still get up every day. I still have hopes and dreams, I still have faith -- not necessarily in a higher power, but in myself. Even as a writer, I can't put into words how important that feeling, that drive within me is to my entire personality, as well as to how I view the world. The semester has ended. Soon, the year will end as well. It is, once more, a time for new beginnings. I'll turn 29 in eleven days, starting the last year of my twenties. I want that year to be a good one. I will do everything I can to make that year better than this one, to make up for my mistakes and sins of the past, to forge a new future for myself.
It is also no secret to most of you (if you can do math, of course) that this is the end of my third semester of graduate school, and I am now 1.5 years into my 3-year program. This means that I am now half-finished. To a certain extent I am filled with the accomplishment that, again, I'm half done, and it should all be coasting downhill from here (relatively speaking). To another extent, I think to myself something along the lines of "I'm only half done? Fuck." But, of course, that was to be expected. Everything is relative, and everything looks different depending on one's point of view. I'm a big proponent of the "cautiously optimistic" outlook -- acknowledging that yes, things might suck, but there's always the possibility that they won't suck too badly. That may be the closest parallel to the concept of being a realist that I will ever possess. That's also the outlook I have on the rest of my graduate school education, in case you were wondering. I do not, however, extend that outlook to the rest of my life. At least not yet.
So. The rest of this weekend, which is a day shorter for me due to my students' final exams, will be spent leisurely grading and reading, and trying to get back some of that relaxation time this semester so callously stole from me. Also, as the semester comes to a slow, torturous end when my students' finals are graded and my own final has been taken, my posts here will more than likely become more frequent as I'll actually have the time to update the blog more often. That's good, right?
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