Monday Miscellany: Back to school edition

Even though I've been teaching university for almost ten years, and teaching as a professor at this particular university for three years, I always get the back to school jitters: in anticipation of this afternoon's inaugural class, I indulged in three hours of mid-night insomniac pacing around my house, before falling to a shivery and anxious sleep in the guest room at 6 am.

Don't tell anyone the first day still makes me nervous, ok?

---------------

From the Chronicle of Higher Education [no link, sorry, subscription only], Tim Gunn opines that academics look like hell deliberately, because they don't care: the 'look' that results, he says, is supposed to indicate that the professor in question would much rather spend an extra 30 seconds reading a book, than dragging a comb through his or her hair. He generalized also that professors wear ill-fitting clothes, generally too big on top, and too small on bottom. Think giant polar fleece zipups, paired with peg leg flood pants.

I regret to say that some people watching from a bench outside the bookstore mostly confirms this assessment.

Me? I wore a seafoam green fitted mock-t with the princessing detail at sleeves and neck, paired with a black/white flecked tulip skirt, knee-high 'dressy' black boots, and a fitted black tuxedo blazer. I like to look like a grownup, at least on the first day.

----------------

English students tend to be fashion conscious, so it was nice to sit outside and be reassured that my campus has fashion dorks aplenty, in keeping with its exalted reputation for nerd-dom and intellectual excellence (cf Tim Gunn above). I saw plenty of bad hairdos, pleated shorts, socks-in-birks, and more than enough pairs of Crocs outside of a pool deck.

I shared my bench with two students, huddled over a piece of paper and scribbling furiously against the sun's glare. They were doing math questions, grabbing the pen back and forth in a rush of problem solving. "Don't you see? It has to be zero for it to be a perfect square!!!" I could've flashed my boobs at them and they would not have noticed.

It gladdens the heart, it does.

-----------------

Chalk. I teach in a room with a thirty foot wall of chalkboards. I filled it up: with extra readings for those who might be interested, with the agenda for next day, with the guiding questions for today. With interesting quotations. Here's one, by Roman Jakobson, a Russian Formalist literary critic:

"[Literariness] is organized violence committed on everyday speech."

I have chalk ground into my hands, which transferred to the bum of my skirt, and inevitably onto my inky black suit jacket. Teaching is messy business.

-----------------

Number of students who asked me for directions today: 2
Distance, in feet, of querent number two from his sought-after location: 3
Number of students who have already prepared medical documentation for absence: 1
Age, in years, of oldest reference work I cited today: 27
Average number of years by which this book is older than my students: 8
Number of years since I last took a foundation course at the BA level: 12
Total cost, in Canadian dollars, of the textbooks for my course: $83
Average reduction in speed of travel around the campus ring road this week: -15km/h
Number of banners across Small City's main street, welcoming students: 1
Number of police officers stationed under said banner, in front of liquor store: 2

-----------------

Why are chalkboards so vastly superior to white boards? Well, chalk is plentiful and never dries out or goes missing entirely. Chalk doesn't smell bad either. Also, white text on black board seems to be far more visible than squeaky, streaky blue across glaring white.

-----------------

Twice this weekend, I marched across the street to the student house directly opposite our house. Twice I asked them to be quiet: Friday night, partyers on the balcony were shouting down to friends in the street; Saturday afternoon, I interrupted the youngish alpha male resident--in a fit of post-party housecleaning--to ask him to turn his stereo down. We could hear it in our house, across the street, with the windows closed. He immediately apologized and turned it down.

Later that day, gazing out the window while making the bed, I noticed him walk gingerly out into traffic in his bare feet, pause at the centre line with his head cocked, and then trot back into his house.

He was checking the volume level.

------------------

Last year, I couldn't imagine things being this normal again. And now, it's that experience that seems so hazy and surreal. Huh.