Day 2. Log. 8Am ish. I've been up since 2:30 ish (after going to bed around Midnight). Up with my daughter. For the second night in a row, she's on strike. The nightnight time management wanted to renegotiate her sleep agreement, and apparently she gave them a big mouthful of sass to the effect of, "No no no no NOO!" Either way, it means that for two days now she's blasted awake in the middle of the night with no apparent ailments needing attention, and also no interest in sleeping, unless said sleeping occurs on my shoulder while I stand and rock her.
Wednesday night, I stood and rocked her from around 4:45-6:15 before she finally relented and let me lay her back down.
Last night was far more complex. At first even the holding and rocking wasn't working. Sue and I ran the parent gamut--diaper check, food check, drink check, orajel check, no fever check, etc. She needed nothing. No gas, no nothing but a big pile of crab. To make it all worse, Sue is such a good mom, that she can't sleep if Molly's crying. Sue had to work in the morning.
So since it's day two of this and we decide to opt for the cry it out route. Tough love. Well although it's something that often works to help develop the ever lovely pattern of sleeping, last night it backfired; Molly jumped out of her crib for the first time. Not good. Thankfully aside from a scare, no damage taken. But there were still tears and lots of crabbing.
So I opted to take her downstairs in hopes that she'd fall asleep while we watched something. Fortunately The Heist was on HBO, and we caught it fairly early. We both enjoyed it. Which meant no sleeping for her. After that, there wasn't much good on, so I attempted to encourage sleep. Got her to lay on the couch with me...no real sucess there.
So it's 4:30 and I'm getting pretty crabby so we went upstairs and resumed the I'll-hold-you-and-you-sleep bit. It's a killer on the lower back, but she was sleeping at least. Anytime though I though she was enough asleep to lay her down, she snapped back up super fast.
Around 6 I was falling asleep standing. So I tried laying down on the floor with her on my chest. That bought us both an hour of sleep. Then she rolled and saw that the sun was up. So sleep time was over.
So far I'm feeling not too bad for 2 hours worth of sleep. We'll see how that pans out.
all I know is that Threequels suck. So tonight Molly, you better sleep like like a baby. But not like the baby you've been the last two nights.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Pedigogy and the 2009 CEA/PCEA Conference
A couple weeks ago I attended the annual PCEA conference, which this year was paired up with parent society, the CEA, for a conference at the lovely Omni William Penn in Pittsburgh. Since it was in the 'burgh, I got to cut cost and stay with friends, (and enjoy a nice metro ride into town). Overall, the conference was a pretty decent success as far as I'm concerned. Here are the highlights:
My own presentation:
Unfortunately, I was scheduled for the 1st panel on the first day; so I expected an audience of 0 much like last year's conference, but fortunately, we had two audience members in addition to presenters and moderator, so that was a 200% improvement. Things got off to a pretty good start. I read from "Deconstructing Happily Ever After," and it went ok-ish; nowhere near as fun as the smashing success the story had at Spalding, but still a pretty decent reading.
Flow
Also during that panelone of my co-presenters spoke about Flow and theories set by herself and Csikszentmihalyi regarding the process of writing and how it affects our minds. The presenter, Julie Kearney of Penn State Harrisburg expanded on Csikszentmihalyi's theories by studing the level of serotonin in the brain in relationship to the state of Flow a writer is in. Basically, achieving flow is that state that we as writers, (and by extension, I would imagine any artistic endeavor as well) come to when we lose sense of the world around us and are totally absorbed in our work; that feeling you get fleetingly when "the keyboard is writing for your, or if you're old school like Dave Harrity, when the pen is writing the poem." She found that Seretonin levels go up, which makes me think then that (and this is my own thought, not Julie's) that writing is somewhat addictive; we're always searching for that absorbative high, when we're fully geared in creative mode; and we hate coming down from it. I wonder if so many writers over history were also addicts (Faulkner and alcohol, Ken Kesey and LSD, etc) for this reason -- sort of short circuiting the true payoff. Julie also reported that she planned on running writing experiments with folks that can achieve flow where she inhibits seratonin to see what happens. Interesting stuff.
The New Historicism way of Responding to Student Papers
I went to a panel geared towards comp teachers that stressed a new method of using critical theory as a method to respond to student papers. Essentially, the presenter, argued that "Rubber Stamp comments" were doing nothing for our students and that New Historicism theory will allow instructors to better approach the students' work without making the students just appropriate what we tell them for a better grade. I like the idea behind this; teach the student how to write what they want, and communicate their designs well, but I'm unsure of its effectiveness in the sea of 100 essays every 2 weeks. I currently average between 10 and 20 minutes per paper, which places me at around 30+ hours worth of grading per essay. Adding a new historicism twist by showing students how their essays fit into the historical context of their writing realm, while not rubber stamping comments, sounds, to me, to be very time intensive. Our departmental meetings have constantly stressed that when commenting on student papers, less is more, and that students rarely, if ever, pay much attention to the blood on the page, so I've got to say that I'm not entirely sold on this model of response. It doesn't seem to have openings for structural, grammatical, and clarity issues, which are all too common. Perhaps I'm missing the point of this methodology. I can see definitley how it'd work well in more advanced classes for seminar papers, and even creative works, but it seems a bit too much for a freshman comp class.
Other Stuff
One of the better aspects of the conference was that I got to meet up with several former IUP professors and hear about the very excellent sounding revision they've done to the English curriculum at my alma-mater. When I transfered into IUP in 2000, I was aghast at how archaic and backwards IUP's English program was in comparison to Behrend's. Not only did it severly limit a student's ability to gain depth in Literarture studies, it allowed little avenue to specialize and/or excel in particular interests. I ended up spending a rather large portion of my final two years taking survey classes that struggled to cover massive amounts of literary time, and offered little depth, and because I had pretty specific interests (postmodern theory and creative writing), I ended up taking several more classes than I needed to graduate, just so I could satisfy some of my curiosities.
Fortunately now, IUP is offering a much more modernized track system with several different areas of specialty, and an expanded and updated list of courses. They'll be launching this program in the upcoming Fall 2009 semester, and by the looks of it, it'll be a smashing success.
My own presentation:
Unfortunately, I was scheduled for the 1st panel on the first day; so I expected an audience of 0 much like last year's conference, but fortunately, we had two audience members in addition to presenters and moderator, so that was a 200% improvement. Things got off to a pretty good start. I read from "Deconstructing Happily Ever After," and it went ok-ish; nowhere near as fun as the smashing success the story had at Spalding, but still a pretty decent reading.
Flow
Also during that panelone of my co-presenters spoke about Flow and theories set by herself and Csikszentmihalyi regarding the process of writing and how it affects our minds. The presenter, Julie Kearney of Penn State Harrisburg expanded on Csikszentmihalyi's theories by studing the level of serotonin in the brain in relationship to the state of Flow a writer is in. Basically, achieving flow is that state that we as writers, (and by extension, I would imagine any artistic endeavor as well) come to when we lose sense of the world around us and are totally absorbed in our work; that feeling you get fleetingly when "the keyboard is writing for your, or if you're old school like Dave Harrity, when the pen is writing the poem." She found that Seretonin levels go up, which makes me think then that (and this is my own thought, not Julie's) that writing is somewhat addictive; we're always searching for that absorbative high, when we're fully geared in creative mode; and we hate coming down from it. I wonder if so many writers over history were also addicts (Faulkner and alcohol, Ken Kesey and LSD, etc) for this reason -- sort of short circuiting the true payoff. Julie also reported that she planned on running writing experiments with folks that can achieve flow where she inhibits seratonin to see what happens. Interesting stuff.
The New Historicism way of Responding to Student Papers
I went to a panel geared towards comp teachers that stressed a new method of using critical theory as a method to respond to student papers. Essentially, the presenter, argued that "Rubber Stamp comments" were doing nothing for our students and that New Historicism theory will allow instructors to better approach the students' work without making the students just appropriate what we tell them for a better grade. I like the idea behind this; teach the student how to write what they want, and communicate their designs well, but I'm unsure of its effectiveness in the sea of 100 essays every 2 weeks. I currently average between 10 and 20 minutes per paper, which places me at around 30+ hours worth of grading per essay. Adding a new historicism twist by showing students how their essays fit into the historical context of their writing realm, while not rubber stamping comments, sounds, to me, to be very time intensive. Our departmental meetings have constantly stressed that when commenting on student papers, less is more, and that students rarely, if ever, pay much attention to the blood on the page, so I've got to say that I'm not entirely sold on this model of response. It doesn't seem to have openings for structural, grammatical, and clarity issues, which are all too common. Perhaps I'm missing the point of this methodology. I can see definitley how it'd work well in more advanced classes for seminar papers, and even creative works, but it seems a bit too much for a freshman comp class.
Other Stuff
One of the better aspects of the conference was that I got to meet up with several former IUP professors and hear about the very excellent sounding revision they've done to the English curriculum at my alma-mater. When I transfered into IUP in 2000, I was aghast at how archaic and backwards IUP's English program was in comparison to Behrend's. Not only did it severly limit a student's ability to gain depth in Literarture studies, it allowed little avenue to specialize and/or excel in particular interests. I ended up spending a rather large portion of my final two years taking survey classes that struggled to cover massive amounts of literary time, and offered little depth, and because I had pretty specific interests (postmodern theory and creative writing), I ended up taking several more classes than I needed to graduate, just so I could satisfy some of my curiosities.
Fortunately now, IUP is offering a much more modernized track system with several different areas of specialty, and an expanded and updated list of courses. They'll be launching this program in the upcoming Fall 2009 semester, and by the looks of it, it'll be a smashing success.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
McDonalds is Craptacular
Went to McDonalds today for a Shamrock shake--you know a green drink for St. Patty's day.
"Sorry we don't have those anymore," says the disconnected voice coming through the drive thru window as I STARE AT THE FUCKING PICTURE OF A SHAMROCK SHAKE ON THE PLACARD.
Assholes.
So I got a Frosty and Fries from Wendy's instead.
My daughter stole my fries....all of them.
"Sorry we don't have those anymore," says the disconnected voice coming through the drive thru window as I STARE AT THE FUCKING PICTURE OF A SHAMROCK SHAKE ON THE PLACARD.
Assholes.
So I got a Frosty and Fries from Wendy's instead.
My daughter stole my fries....all of them.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Alone at the Top now live
"Alone at the Top," the first story I wrote for my first Spalding Workshop is now live over at The Wrong Tree Review.
If you have a moment, go take a look.
If you have a moment, go take a look.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
State of the Estate
Life is busy, and by that extension, I'm guessing I can't complain. So here's a slice of the latest, freshest, bit o' life I can dish out. Straight from me to you. No lengthy emails, just straight bloggery at its logorrheic finest.
The Fam
We're all doing pretty ok. We're all busy as hell, but overall things are going as well as they can. Molly just turned 16 months, and she's not one, but three handfuls of cute. She can rattle off probably close to 10 different animal sounds, and has gotten very good at asking "what's that." She listens really well too (most of the time). She's very much in love with Nemo and Tinkerbell, though to her it's Memo and dinkdink (or something like that). Oh and don't think about eating ice cream unless you plan on giving her half.
Now that Molly's a little older and whatnot, Sue's been getting back into her art more. She's looking to expand and restock her holdings at a local art gallery, and/or start expanding onto etsy.com. Right now she's been buying up plain ole plates and painting them up with some really slick designs. She's also planning on doing some fabric art class with aunt Jeanie here soon.
Schoolin'
I'm teaching another full load this semester--100 kids this time, divided up 75/25 between composition and business writing. Now that it's nearly the end of the fourth week of school, I estimate that I've read and commented upon over 980 pages of student work so far, and that's taking only the minimum side of page requirements into account. That's a freakin' lot of damn grading. Fortunately, my kids this semester seem to be a good amount more attentive and serious than last semester, and that makes grading easier.
I also have several international students this semester, which is both humbling and really interesting. It amazes me that these kids not only can write well, but participate in class discussion just as fluently, if not more fluently than the rest of the students. While I'd love to think that someday I could subsist with my German or Japanese knowledge, I know I'll never approach the sort of fluency these kids have unless I'm living in one of those countries. Another cool thing about the international students is that they bring in a really diverse and worldly view on the types of issues we discuss; and these world views have done wonders for fostering our class conversation. While a lot of profs complain about having international students, I'm really enjoying mine, and looking forward to having more in the future.
Grant Musings
Since this is an ultra-random, catchall type post, NEA Grant applications are open now for Fiction/non-fiction. The deadline is 3/5/09. Here's the link: http://www.arts.endow.gov/grants/apply/Lit/index.html. I'm really hoping I can land something like this; it'd give me the time to write and finish Not an Autobiography without having to think about bills, and maybe a little on location travel research too.
Current Music
It's been a while since I've talked up my latest musical influences, so here's a list of things that have been consistently populating my Amarok Playlists:
Ha! Not happening. Maybe Spring break. Maybe Summer. With 100 kids and a Molly, there just isn't time for much else.
Reading
I'm slowly chugging my way through Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism and Alan Moore's The Watchmen. For school I'm rereading D. Michael Abrashoff's It's Your Ship and Matt Mason's The Pirate's Dilemma.
Watching
Right now we're cutting through several TV series on Netflix: Jekyll (very good), Witchblade, The Lost Room (very good), and Miracles (ok--Sue liked it a lot). Movie wise, we just saw Underworld 3 (very good), Wanted (very good), Rocknrolla (I liked it; Sue didn't), and Death Race (suprisingly good). Molly's been all about Tinkerbell, Finding Nemo, Monster's Inc, Baby Einstein, and to a lesser degree, It's a Big Big World. We're about to relive our college anime-nerdness by rewatching all of Rurouni Kenshin.
Speaking of anime, how I wish Netflix were around back when I was in college. I watched so much anime at such a terrible quality, because that's what we had--I saw all of Kenshin for example via TERRIBLE Real Player Rips. And I put up with it. Anime nerds today have it way too easy.
Well that's enough rambling. I have to finish grading persuasive memo revisions.
The Fam
We're all doing pretty ok. We're all busy as hell, but overall things are going as well as they can. Molly just turned 16 months, and she's not one, but three handfuls of cute. She can rattle off probably close to 10 different animal sounds, and has gotten very good at asking "what's that." She listens really well too (most of the time). She's very much in love with Nemo and Tinkerbell, though to her it's Memo and dinkdink (or something like that). Oh and don't think about eating ice cream unless you plan on giving her half.
Now that Molly's a little older and whatnot, Sue's been getting back into her art more. She's looking to expand and restock her holdings at a local art gallery, and/or start expanding onto etsy.com. Right now she's been buying up plain ole plates and painting them up with some really slick designs. She's also planning on doing some fabric art class with aunt Jeanie here soon.
Schoolin'
I'm teaching another full load this semester--100 kids this time, divided up 75/25 between composition and business writing. Now that it's nearly the end of the fourth week of school, I estimate that I've read and commented upon over 980 pages of student work so far, and that's taking only the minimum side of page requirements into account. That's a freakin' lot of damn grading. Fortunately, my kids this semester seem to be a good amount more attentive and serious than last semester, and that makes grading easier.
I also have several international students this semester, which is both humbling and really interesting. It amazes me that these kids not only can write well, but participate in class discussion just as fluently, if not more fluently than the rest of the students. While I'd love to think that someday I could subsist with my German or Japanese knowledge, I know I'll never approach the sort of fluency these kids have unless I'm living in one of those countries. Another cool thing about the international students is that they bring in a really diverse and worldly view on the types of issues we discuss; and these world views have done wonders for fostering our class conversation. While a lot of profs complain about having international students, I'm really enjoying mine, and looking forward to having more in the future.
Grant Musings
Since this is an ultra-random, catchall type post, NEA Grant applications are open now for Fiction/non-fiction. The deadline is 3/5/09. Here's the link: http://www.arts.endow.gov/grants/apply/Lit/index.html. I'm really hoping I can land something like this; it'd give me the time to write and finish Not an Autobiography without having to think about bills, and maybe a little on location travel research too.
Current Music
It's been a while since I've talked up my latest musical influences, so here's a list of things that have been consistently populating my Amarok Playlists:
- Blue Foundation--My wife's been spinning up the Twilight sountrack a lot lately, and I really dig the Blue Foundation Song on there....Now before I continue, y'all need to know that Sue's not one of the 800 million Twilight fangirls out there. Sue read Twilight long before it became harry potter rediculous popular; she even Emailed Stephanie Meyer back in the day some (and got responses). Anyway, Blue Foundation. Great band. Really nice ephemeral, trancy kind of stuff.
- The Ting Tings. I can't get "Shut up and Let Me go" or "Fruit machine" out of my head. Cha ching. Cha Ching.
- The Birthday Massacre--this band rocks. One of the best goth rock bands I've ever listened to. Excellent melodic female vocals backed by a great synthy dirty grind.
- Conjure One--another good ephemeral trancy kinda music. This kinda stuff is great to grade to.
- Fauxliage--see Conjure One's entry.
- Juli--She's German. I fell in love with their song on Rockband. Very good alternative rock sound.
- Oasis--loved em in the 90s. Still love em today
- "Love Spreads" by the Stone Roses--I forgot about this band and song, but Rockband again rescuscitated that memory for me. Back in high school art class, I borrowed this cd off of Mr. Humes. Great English band, and "Love Spreads" in particular rocks. Plus it's one of the few songs I can sing on Rockband without causing the paint to curl.
Ha! Not happening. Maybe Spring break. Maybe Summer. With 100 kids and a Molly, there just isn't time for much else.
Reading
I'm slowly chugging my way through Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism and Alan Moore's The Watchmen. For school I'm rereading D. Michael Abrashoff's It's Your Ship and Matt Mason's The Pirate's Dilemma.
Watching
Right now we're cutting through several TV series on Netflix: Jekyll (very good), Witchblade, The Lost Room (very good), and Miracles (ok--Sue liked it a lot). Movie wise, we just saw Underworld 3 (very good), Wanted (very good), Rocknrolla (I liked it; Sue didn't), and Death Race (suprisingly good). Molly's been all about Tinkerbell, Finding Nemo, Monster's Inc, Baby Einstein, and to a lesser degree, It's a Big Big World. We're about to relive our college anime-nerdness by rewatching all of Rurouni Kenshin.
Speaking of anime, how I wish Netflix were around back when I was in college. I watched so much anime at such a terrible quality, because that's what we had--I saw all of Kenshin for example via TERRIBLE Real Player Rips. And I put up with it. Anime nerds today have it way too easy.
Well that's enough rambling. I have to finish grading persuasive memo revisions.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Fiction Reading
I will be reading from my fiction at the annual Behrend Reads! event Thursday February 5th at 6pm in the Smith Chapel on Penn State Behrend's Campus. Behrend Reads! is a forum that allows English faculty outside of the Creative Writing department to read some of their creative works.
It should be a good time had by all.
It should be a good time had by all.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Upcoming Publication
I just received word that my story, "Alone at the Top," will be the featured story in the March issue of The Wrong Tree Review. Wrong Tree belongs to a couple of friends, and great writers from Spalding. Kilean and Rod kicked off the first two issues; great stuff too.
"Alone at the Top" was one of the two stories I submitted to my first workshop at Spalding. At the time it was so dense that no one really knew what to say about it, but thanks to a lot of help from Sue and Krista, it's finally found a home.
"Alone at the Top" was one of the two stories I submitted to my first workshop at Spalding. At the time it was so dense that no one really knew what to say about it, but thanks to a lot of help from Sue and Krista, it's finally found a home.
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