I love teaching writing
Besides generally goofing-off for a few days, I have managed to get a couple of things done. I uploaded more major updates to my research site, including a page dedicated to Archibald MacLeish providing some bibliographic information, more excerpts, and fleshing out his positions on the timeline.
Grading a bunch of papers (and wondering why one class always does better than the other) I found a bit in a reflective essay that makes it all worthwhile:
At times, the course became confusing as to whether it was teaching “Writing for Work,” “Poetry,” “Literature,” “Rhetoric” or “English.” However, I found the common denominator soon enough to make a general relationship between them.
Sometimes, as my Blake instructor was fond of saying, “confusion is the best response.”
My approach often seems chaotic to people, but if I dig into things deep enough I can usually ferret out enough of a connection to make things work. I do like to make things up as I go along; it’s just the way I am. But I don’t think that even my twisted brain can connect the other things I wanted to remark about in this hurried entry (grades are due soon).
Trashlog is expanding! One of my favorite sites on the web is now soliciting international submissions for The Global Trash Collection Project, providing even more trash for the Internet. An admirable pursuit, in my estimation.
I was also quite taken by Pascale’s pointer to an item of interest in the Washington Post. Interesting is one of my favorite words. I must type interesting about a hundred times any time I try to write something. Then, I’m faced with the task of editing it back out.
Of course it’s interesting, you doofus! Otherwise, why would you be writing about it?
haha… It makes me feel better to read that a writing teacher has the same problem. I hate that I use the same words over and over again. I hate a lot of things about my writing, mostly that it takes me so long to edit it just enough to make it barely acceptable.