Summer school has started! Now I am not quite sure if this is something that I am excited about, or something I have to get through. I am somewhat excited because I have been bored for the last three weeks with little to do, well I should be writing but instead I watched bad TV. I am excited/worried about a six week writing class, I have never done writing in six weeks, usually summer is 8 weeks, but I am not too worried about time. I am however worried about my students. As normal at this school my class is a mix of traditional and non-traditional students as befits a largely commuter campus. The first day went as well as could be expected, it was the second day that left me with a knot in my stomach. Let me give some background, this is a 101 class, I use a textbook that deals with the patterns of exposition (not my favorite but I’m an adjunct, I actually get to change next year). So my class is set up as such where we read about the pattern and also read some of the example essays about the pattern in the textbook. It’s a bit boring, but fine; we go over the pattern, the class breaks up into groups to look at essays and answer some questions. After the presentation part I ask students how they liked the essay, usually we discuss that for awhile. All is going well last week when we get to this part. A few of my non-traditional students are dealing with the Jean Sheperd essay “Lost at C” an innocuous enough essay dealing with 14 year olds and algebra, at this point I am going through the motions when one of the students says “I could have done without the cursing.” I am stopped dead in my tracts because I honestly don’t even remember any cursing, this essay is in the textbook for the love of god! My dumbfounded expression is assessed by the students who say “there were like two GD’s at the end.” This of course takes me a few minutes to understand, GD? Oh, god damn! I am still at pretty much a loss as to what to say because I can’t fucking believe that a few students are getting pissy at two fucking goddamns uttered by 14 year old boys in an essay in their text book and I am trying with all my might not to say “Are you fucking kidding me? You are offended by goddamn? How the hell do you function in society? Would you put down Catcher in the Rye because of the swearing?” This would be followed closely by my rant on bible-banging self-righteous pricks. But since goddamn didn’t go over too well, I am sure that rant would have elicited calls to the chair. I leave the class wondering what new essays I could assign that have lots of racy material and language because these women have pissed me off, and I wish I could say that I calmed down and rethought this idea, but I have not, I can not be the bigger person, we’ll see how it goes.

So thank god vacation is almost over and summer school is about to start! I know that sounds weird but I honestly need something to do, the whole staying home watching bad daytime TV is just not going to work or me. I would be a terrible housewife, I wonder how people do this, of course if they have small children they don’t have time to be bored. What the hell if they have children small or otherwise they don’t have time to be bored (well maybe if they are like ready to graduate HS or something). Of course my vacation has been also interrupted by illness and students wondering why they in one way or another did not pass. I had one very polite but still astonishingly forward email from a student asking why they failed because
“i feel like I did better than what i recieved on my final grade a D”

Of course I emailed back that he got a zero on the final because he and another student had the exact same, word for word, incorrect essay portion I never heard from him again. I guess it should not still amaze me that students think that they won’t get caught, and I am irritated that they thought they could pull this one over of me. There were only 25 students in the damn class, like I am going to miss two students who wrote the same damn thing, especially since they were so grossly incorrect. I’m trying to let it go, it’s really not my problem anymore.

The good news is that I have a full time gig next year, yeah me! This means of course that I need to finish the damn diss, and I am doing everything in my power to not write. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s fear of finally finishing and being a “real” grown-up, I don’t know if I am ready for that. But that too will evaporate. I can already feel myself embracing the dark side of being faculty. I swore I would not become the type of faculty I disliked as a graduate student, but I don’t know if I can hold off too long, the force is strong in me, I feel it.