Category: Random Thoughts

It was 10:40 when I reached over to turn out the light. I was worn out enough that even that motion was taxing. Not at all EZ.

I woke briefly at 1:07 and thought a few incoherent things about the Google Books Settlement and Fair Use as soon as I saw that number glowing at me from the night stand.

At 3:43 I wondered if there was a section of some title that I should know about, or some form. It was probably something that I’ve forgotten to fill out, and this is my only warning.

At 5:29 I realized that I probably needn’t worry about whatever 343 is because 529 has no bearing on my life. I’m already done with college and don’t have kids to save college funds for.

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I’ve spent the day at a workshop run by a grant-funded initiative called “State Your Case” and that’s examining how to help students develop and support a point of view, an academic argument. The professors in the room are now working on assignments from upcoming courses that they’ve brought here to revise, and since I don’t have a course to work on, I’m thinking about the stuff I learned this morning about what goes into a good argument and how this will impact the work that I do, and I’m also thinking about what, exactly, I’m doing here anyway. The first will have to wait until my brain kicks back in to higher gear later, but the “what I’m doing here” part is something I find really interesting.

I’m actually thrilled to be here even though all the workshop portions don’t really apply directly to me. I’m constantly trying to figure out how to reinforce the fundamental projects of the classes I support rather than flit more or less irrelevantly around the peripheries. (This isn’t just because I balk at the idea of being more or less irrelevant, just generally, but also because students will learn better from me if I seem less irrelevant.) Opportunities like this, where I get to sit in a room full of teaching faculty and learn together what these fundamental projects are and how they want to go about guiding students through them, are absolutely invaluable. We get to develop a shared vocabulary, align our pedagogical goals, and negotiate our priorities.

I’m also thrilled to have been invited to join this group. Four years ago I attended a similar workshop and constantly had to face overt or implied “why are you here” questions. That has been singularly absent this time. Maybe it’s that the faculty at Carleton have recently grown accustomed to having these interlopers from the library wandering among them at these things (and several have taken it upon themselves to directly invite us, which is wonderful), and that these other professors are taking their cue from the cohort from Carleton. Maybe it’s that I’ve become better able to say “I’m here because I work closely with students as they go through the process of matching evidence to argument, and because I want to reinforce the fundamental projects of your courses, so I need to know this stuff too.” Most likely it’s a combination of the two.

Whatever the reason, though, I’m here and learning a lot and enjoying it.

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I never really noticed the simile until relatively recently. I mean, I knew it existed. I knew good authors used them. I knew bad authors used them. I knew I loved to use them. And then I read The Road and ODed on them.

Apologies to people who loved that book, but finishing it was an exercise in stubbornness on my part. Every single paragraph had at least one tortured simile and soon I progressed from marveling at the unending stream of them to rolling my eyes as each new one appeared (rolling eyes doesn’t improve reading speed, just so you know) to grinding my teeth with every new “like” that appeared. The simile that nearly caused me to fling the book across the room was particularly gratuitous and tortured: “By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp” (28).

Seriously?

That’s the last sentence of one paragraph. The next paragraph starts, “People sitting on the sidewalk in the dawn half immolate and smoking in their clothes. Like failed sectarian suicides” (28).

Seriously??

Since then, I’ve developed a theory about similes. My theory is that I love them in extremely small doses and from extremely good writers who know when not to use them. My theory is that the books that I really like have very few of them. My theory is that they are too-easy crutches for writers who have authorial inferiority complexes. Or superiority complexes. Either way. My theory is that I used too many of them when I was first trying to write “well.”

I just finished The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, and I just started re-reading Empire Falls by Richard Russo, and both are blessedly light on similes. Thank goodness.

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It’s hard to believe that August is nearly half over. It’s harder to believe that the second half is likely to be the busier half. In part because I want to remember what I want to write about later, here’s a list of the biggies that we’ve worked on so far this month:

• We revised the rubric we’re using to evaluate the level of information literacy in sophomore writing portfolios. (Even just coming up with this rubric has been a fascinating project. I can’t wait to see what we learn from it later, but I actually can’t imagine the results being any more educational than the rubric-planning process has been.)
• Then came that Mini-Immersion day, which was also hugely instructive.
• In between all of this, I’ve been building LibGuides like there’s no tomorrow. (I tell you, building guides in these things are ridiculously engrossing and … dare I say it … FUN.) Here are my guides so far. I love it that I’m able to add guidance about keeping track of your research along the way, or studying abroad, or even just add search boxes for musicians or Russians. I still have one for English majors to do, and one on finding book reviews. Then it’ll be time to start creating course-specific guides for Fall term.
• Today we started actually reading sophomore writing portfolios using our new rubric. It’s slow going, but seems like it’ll be useful in so many ways. It also gives us a chance to spend time sitting out on the huge comfy red couch in the reference room. Last time I sat there I was getting ready for Immersion.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with a professor and several other academic support units about her support-intensive course, more portfolios to read, and hopefully a LibGuide to finish.

Busy is good. Especially when it’s the kind of busy that requires creativity, rewards initiative, results in growth, and reminds me just how engaged, thoughtful, and talented my colleagues are.

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