Notes to panicky students.

TO: Panicky Student

FROM: HTMS

DATE: the day after the deadline

SUBJECT: Your work

Yes, it's true: the deadline has passed. The deadline for everything, including the peer reviews for the position paper, which you did not do. Perhaps you remember that those peer reviews were due in October. As I understand it, you're asking me if you can do those peer reviews now, now that everything is due--past due, even. Peer reviews, which are intended to aid your peers. In revising their work. Which has all been turned in.

There is an absurdity inherent in your request. It's an absurdity that has now infected my own thinking about everything. Why peer reviews? Why points? Why not? What the hell?

I do not appreciate thinking these thoughts right now. I just want you to know that I am in a non-appreciative state as I approach grading. Grading your work, as it turns out. I hope you can see the paradox. It's an elegant one.

__________

TO: Panicky Student, another one

FROM: HTMS

DATE: the day after the deadline

SUBJECT: Your opinion of how my class was organized

I totally appreciate that you took the time to tell me that my class was disorganized. I have been contemplating this view of yours ever since I read it, a couple of days ago, when you were also asking for my help in finishing the culminating project of the course. Believe me, I think about the possibility all the time--your comment was not the first time I have wondered this about my course. I weigh your note seriously in the balance with the fact that most of the students in the class have already finished the assignment you are finding so puzzling, that you see as an indicator of my failures.

Perhaps you might like a short refresher in the ancient art of asking for help, which generally relies upon good will all around. I know, I'm your professor. It's my job to help you, and I want to help you, I really do. I admit though, that I felt infinitessimally grouchier when you asked, after having pronounced your judgment. Infinitessimally, yet measurably. Yep, when I think of you, I will always remember, s/he was the one who told me my class was disorganized. The one who reminded me of my failures. In fact, I'll probably never forget you, dear student. Ever.

___________

TO: Panicky Student, yet another one

FROM: HTMS

DATE: the day after the deadline

SUBJECT: what should be your priorities at this point.

That's easy: your priority should be the assignment with the most points.

Let me rephrase: that assignment which, without its associated points, will be the death of you and your hopes for a passing grade--that's the one, that's your priority.

To be clear: do not, as you attempt to glean last late points from failures to post replies to at least two peers in small-potatoes discussions, fail to remember the big-ass assignment weighing down the point distribution. The assignment sitting there, heavy and weighty and significant, worth 30% of your grade: don't neglect that one!

Memo to the new television season.

TO:         The new television season
FROM:   htms
DATE:    Oct. 20, 2012
RE:         Mid-October Evaluation

I see a lot of hit-and-miss-iness. For instance, my commitment to The New Girl and The Mindy Project, while stalwart, is running purely on my affection for the characters/stars, and possibly my misbegotten confusion of the stars with their characters.

I love--I'm using the word love--Tina Fey, and I have loved 30 Rock from the beginning, despite the fact that it has been weird, pretty weird, for quite some time now. I decided long ago I was in it for the long haul. I'm just built that way. But I would appreciate it it, the new television season, if you would convey this message to the 30 Rock writers: would it kill you to, I dunno, make us care about the characters? a little? (Also, you can tell them that I totally fell for that Facebook thing, citing the faux magazine story where they said Jenna was 56 years old. Psych! on me. She's 42. Well-played.) But still: I want to care about the characters! Caring about the characters is why I'm still watching The Big Bang Theory and why I'll watch any episode of Frasier, anytime. (Yes, I know this is sad, but this memo is me giving notes to you. Let's leave my emotional life out of it.)

Parks and Recreation--hit and miss, but more hits than misses. Carry on.

Glee has made the transition of taking the younguns past high school graduation rather gracefully, and I am loving it. The last episode nigh unto killed me, because everyone broke up with everyone. Kate Hudson plays a mean/secretly not quite as mean dance instructor at NYADA that has it in for Rachel. It is awesome.

Now that the "season" of Major Crimes is over and they're promising new episodes next ...wait for it...summer, I am officially bummed. Because I really, really liked it. It made me almost not miss The Closer, and that's saying a lot.

The Good Wife is as good as it gets. Perhaps it will gratify you to know that it's one of the historian's all-time favorite shows. That's right. All-time. Me, too, by the way.

I also went ahead and took up Nashville which is a giant slice of cheese served on a cheese plate with a side of cheese and a foamy soapy topping. Wow! But it is compulsively watchable and laugh-at-able and full of excellent music. Also, the city of Nashville figures prominently. This show is so good/bad that the Go Fug Yourself girls do a screen-capped episode guide for it that is a riot. AND it features songs as good as this:




In conclusion, please don't cancel this awesome/awful show, and let there be more achy-breaky music like this, preferably in every single episode. And characters I care about! 30 Rock, I am looking at you.

A couple of dyspeptic memos, with feelings in them.

TO: Student, whom I like quite a bit and who is still in the game at this late point in the semester, so...there's that.

FROM: Professor, easily appalled because of this same late point in the semester.

DATE: Today

RE: What you said about Chekhov

When you said you loved Russian writers but you also thought that writers from this period tended to make small details "unnecessarily long-winded" and that Chekhov was "no exception," I felt a little murderous.

Chekhov was, well, first of all, Chekhov is Chekhov, for heaven's sake. Secondly, sir, he was a Russian writer. The winters in Russia are long. What was there for Chekhov to do but write long, elegant, wintry sentences?

_______

TO: Student, whom I like but who always disagrees with me in every damned online discussion, literally EVERY single one.

FROM: Professor, who's a little tired of this nonsense, at this late point in the semester.

DATE: Today

RE: Your critique of me

Today, when I read your critique of the question I asked in the online discussion, particularly where you told me I should write more clearly and my questions shouldn't have so many parts, I felt annoyed.

My dear, you may be right. But I shall continue to ask my many-parted questions until forever or when I find a simpler way to ask them. You go on thinking every question can be asked in a single, straightforward, uncomplicated clause. You'll probably make piles of money and I will still be a community college professor. But I will have my dignity. And my fat, gnarled questions. And this tiny bit of rancor that I shall cherish, a minuscule needle that I will keep in my satchel of teaching memorabilia.

Memo from Idaho.

Up the road, they're excavating a site where, formerly, there was a cabin. This was a place on the river--we used to use their pier to walk out to the water, and to clamber up after a river float. Now, there's a truck rumbling up and down, carrying away dirt and rock from that site. Eventually, maybe, there'll be a new cabin there.

In the spirit of home improvement, we have purchased two new mattresses. The old ones were pretty darn old--fifty years old, my dad says. Below, the miracle of a box spring, naked and still shiny. It was very springy, which made it not such an excellent mattress for sleeping. For making a lot of bouncy noise, it was awesome.

Hardly anyone is up here in the village. So we walked up the road past the cabins, at the moment unoccupied, to the river.

There are birds everywhere. We found a couple of nests in the eaves.


We also have burrowed in, with our food, our paints, our woolly socks (it's a bit chilly here), our cameras, our books.

On our evening walk, the birds let us get pretty close:

More efficient living through correspondence.

July 2008

Dear Clutter in my Study:

Today, I bought you several items that I would like to see put to good use for our semi-annual "Organize the Study" project. To wit:

• a low table;
• several closely woven baskets

As you know, today I began the project by

• recycling half a year's worth of New Yorkers without looking at the table of contents for each issue (at least, not every issue), and
  
• shoving a bunch of stuff I don't know what to do with into the nether half of the room.

This made me sweaty and also despondent. Why is there so much stuff in my study? Why is there a "nether half of the room"? I pulled myself together and got a shower. Much better.

However, having begun the project, I expect that you can now continue sorting yourself on your own and without my direct supervision, using the above-mentioned receptacles in any way that you see fit, so long as you establish order and manage chaos. Feel free to think outside the box!

Please consider Monday the deadline for this organization project.

Sincerely, etc., etc.