Nilofer came over…

Nilofer came over yesterday and spent the day. We both mostly worked, but it was nice having company for lunch (leftover Thai curry from me and frozen shumai from Trader Joe's -- mediocre and not to be repeated), for errand-running, for dinner (baked polenta with cheese and tomato/red bell pepper sauce and basil, one of Karina's favorite dishes that I used to make for her and which made me miss her), and for an episode of Charmed.

I started revisions on chapter 8, but I have a ways left to go, and since my schedule tells me that I'm supposed to be done with chapter 9 by tomorrow, I suspect I'm about two days behind on writing right now. It's not a tragedy, as the next three days are pretty full with other work, but after that, it should quiet down for a bit and I can put in some long writing days and hopefully catch up.

I also spent some time doing Roosevelt stuff, putting together my preferences for next year's teaching. I'm hoping to teach an undergraduate S. Asian literature class; that would be fun. And I'll likely end up teaching at least one section of a intro. to literary analysis class, which frankly scares me a bit, but I think with some help from other people's syllabi, I can probably handle it. I'll definitely be teaching an intro to creative class for undergrads in the fall, which is probably similar to what I taught at Utah, and a graduate fiction class in the spring. So it should be good.

Almost almost done with Vermont students. Just need to finish writing responses to two of them this morning. I think it might be more efficient to write a response when I read their packets for the first time, which is usually right after they send them in (a week ago), but I think I can think about them better if I read them, give them time to percolate, and then read them again before writing the response. I'm doing my best to not allow my crazy busy-ness to affect my response to my students at all; it's not fair for them to get less than my best, teaching-wise, just because I overbooked myself. So far, so good. (This doesn't mean there aren't better teachers out there, of course, or that they might not find my responses unhelpful or even stupid. But they get the best I can give them, at any rate.)

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *