It's the hot and humid middle days of the spring (zenki) semester, about half way through the term. Partly I wish the semester would hurry up and end, partly I wish it would take its time. Speeding to the end happens every year anyway, and only hurries me up to retirement and death etc., and I do enjoy spending time with the young ones and look forward to my classes with them.
Anyway, I've been lazy about writing about things that have been happening at school, so will try to catch up a bit here. One funny thing happened in a class for architecture majors, when one group of four people asked me as I was going around the class listening to them supposedly communicate in English, "How old are you?" And when I said "57," she (bless her heart) said, "I thought you were 38!" So I had to show her and the others with her my white eyebrow hairs and so on. . . Ah, to be 38 again (or even 48)! My American culture class (Kakuron) continues to be somehow disappointing. Not only are there far fewer students in it than usual to begin with (only about 45 on the list), but a few of them have stopped coming and many of the rest are missing too many classes or coming too late. And way too few have been submitting comments and questions to our class blog. There are plenty of good students, really, in the class, as well as a few stellar ones, but... Last Friday I introduced a current event, yet another mass shooting in America (the Virginia Beach one), and then showed them lots of statistics about guns in America, and at the end of the class realized that I'd probably just turned any who might have been contemplating visiting the USA off from the idea! My Introduction to American Culture and Literature class continues to be mostly fun because the students are so responsive, but always I realize when talking with them individually before class that too many of them probably don't understand much of my English, so I at times feel a sense of futility, especially near the ends of classes, when I am drained of energy after 85 minutes of trying to entertain and educate and communicate with them. This is also probably part of aging. After last Wednesday's class, for instance, I felt so empty and exhausted that one of my TAs expressed her concern for my voice. And then I had to hustle to the top floor of Building A for Freshman English with architecture majors. And when I got to the room, just on time (the elevators of Building A are unusable because they're always overcrowded with people waiting for them, so I have to take the escalators to the fourth floor and then walk up the remaining four flights of stairs), there were no students in the classroom! I stepped outside to be sure I had the right room. Where was everyone? Had i inadvertently given them to believe I had canceled the class? Hmm... As I was leaving to get a drink of water at the fountain, a boy walked in and I recognized him with relief and he smiled as though understanding my confusion and told me that everyone was coming soon. And then in two or three waves the 28 or so kids came in, having, I assume, waited for the elevator. And we had a good class, I think, focused on requesting favors politely (with the magic word "please"). My graduate school classes are going fine, I think. The ones where I supervise MA students is tricky, because I have one second year student who's working on starting her thesis and two first year students who are working on finding their thesis topics, so I have to meet them separately. . . And I don't want to force topics on students, but so far my new students aren't exactly suggesting their own, so we're just reading almost random books of YA fiction. . . The grad school seminar is fun, really, though it's my last class of the week, on Friday afternoon, and the last of three back to back classes on that day, so I'm usually spent by the time we meet. . . Luckily, the eight people in the room with me are all diligent and interesting (five official students, two repeating unofficial students, and my super TA). We're getting into The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich now, about the seven-year-old Ojibwa girl Omakayas and her family living through a year of seasons. . . I've enjoyed so far playing the songs of white-throated sparrows (so high and pure) and showing pictures of cute chickadees and so on to gussy things up. And last week we had no meetings! (that's always a blessing, the rare Wednesday without any...) So things are going OK. I'll try to avoid getting impatient for the end of the semester and try to be better at enjoying and appreciating the moments with the kids.
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
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December 2023
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