the point was the journey, and the journey was pointless. Also, a rec.

[fictional]

So, I just had to make a quick [read 3 hours] dash to the New College Which Must Not Be Named. (I may need a new fandom-specific name for this one: thoughts? Prydonian Academy will not do, as I fear it will not be all happy, happy, joy, joy.) It was frantic because I'd not read the email closely, and I was just checking it to make sure I was getting certain notations right in my syllabus, and then I realized that we were *ahem* requested & required to make an appearance at a New Faculty Tea. At 3pm. It was 2:10pm when I was reading the email. SO I dashed out the door, armed with laptop (so I could work on the subway, always fun, and I ended up just writing more story instead, bad kali! no biscuit!) and ran like the hounds of hell were chasing me down to the college.

Only to discover that it was totally useless. It was in fact, just tea. (Literally tea. And lemon cake. and ice cream - none of which I ate.) Dunno what they made such a big deal about it for; it was completely insipid, and also not net-worky. Just to produce the illusion that we are all collegial colleagues, with spirit Feh. And if I have to hear once more: "Oh, you teach children's literature! You're so lucky!" I might throw something. I'm not lucky, okay? I've got balls and attack ovaries, and therefore enough guts to actually study things I like, rather than things which look respectable. Luck has got nothing to do with it! ANYWAY. I did get some writing done, which was okay, and on my way home, I stopped at the bookstore to see if my texts for the class had arrived, and didn't even have to go downstairs because I saw a bunch of college boys coming out with them all in their hands. One of them was cute too! He looked exactly like Lex Luthor from Smallville. Dunno what I'm gonna do with that.

In conclusion, a rec. This is a Doctor Who vid; it's called Handlebars, and I think it is incredible. The song choice is impeccable and fits the Doctor in all his breathtaking arrogance and fundamental glee so perfectly, but with all that, there's an underlying irony; the glee is undercut throughout by notes of anguish that just made me want to cry, even as my mouth hung open in awe. It's the kind of vid that is so very clean, you almost can't see all the work the vidders did to make it work. Spoilers through 4x13: Journey's End. Go check it out!

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

No lemon cake?

What, lest you eat their food and become trapped in the world of academia forever like they're bloody faeries?

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

I wasn't hungry. ;-) Also. Sweets. I'm trying to be good. If they were fairies though, I definitely would've eaten something.

[framefolly.livejournal.com]

Yepper. Spirit Feh. I've just sat in a 3 hour "department open house!" where no students came. I ate two bags of popcorn, though. Cause we're a film dept!

Cute students...mmmm....

Fanfic alias? How about Hearst?

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

I want to be in a film department!!! *cries*

Cute students = very!bad. Must not lech on students. Must not...

Hehehe. Hearst! I didn't know you were a vmars fan =)

[sanginmychains.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't be the first teacher to lech on the students. If they're over 18, I say you shouldn't even feel guilty. A vivid fantasy life is a good thing.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Hahaha. Very true. On the other hand, this impulse does not generally survive the first day of class, after they...uh...open their mouths.

[sanginmychains.livejournal.com]

I took a children's lit class in the last year of my undergrad. It was a space filler for my schedule. Not that I wasn't looking forward to the study, I totally was, and the instructor was one of my favourites, but I was a 4th year student taking one of the 100-level courses, which are the survey courses with no pre requisites, and therefore full of students from other disciplines looking to fill their Arts credit.

If I had a nickel for every scrunched up nose and bewildered brow of every student who was perplexed by the idea that they were meant to actually analyse children's books for their cultural assumptions, their gender role inflections, and for their class-normative influences... I started to hate the phrase "but they're just kids books!"

*facepalm*

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, seriously. I have the same issue teaching pop. culture which is another one of my interests. I keep having to say that you can study anything, and what makes it valuable is the quality of the analysis. And also, studying the forces that shape culture and society is, you know, important.

Then I get the "you're ruining my childhood" thing. FEH.

On the other hand, at least I won't (hopefully) have to hear anymore comments about "old English" since I'm not teaching Shakespeare.

[sanginmychains.livejournal.com]

I taught Pop Culture for one, glorious semester. I loved it, loved it so hard. But yeah, same thing -- it was tricky convincing the students that yes, they could do their essay on Family Guy, but if they didn't do some actual analysis (and any use of the phrase "so cool" does not count as analysis), they'd fail.

I do miss teaching. I don't miss the hours and the prep, but I miss the teaching; it was such a mental buffet of creativity and analysis.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, the "so cool". *facepalm* For me, also one of the problems was not being into the SAME pop. culture as my students, and they, being excessively ill-prepared for college, weren't always willing to bring examples from their interests to the table. Which made it sort of like trying to communicate across a giant abyss. But it's fun anyway.

I don't like teaching, really. I mean, there are the awesome days, when things go right, and you can see someone *get* it, and there's the moments, when a student comes forward and is like, wow, I never thought about ____, like this before, and thank you. And I could talk to a captive audience forever ;-) But I lack patience, and I teach in a university system that is so tragically messed up, and the students are coming out of NYC public schools, and literally cannot read sometimes - even if they can usually phonetically sound things out, they don't know what any of it MEANS, and it's just heart-breaking.

And their general knowledge:
I was once teaching american "minority" lit, and we were reading James Baldwin's Another Country, and talking about the 1950s in America, and the release of the Kinsey report, etc etc, and one guy says, completely without irony, "Well, yeah. Way back then everyone was gay and shit. Things be different now." When I asked him what he meant, he said, " I mean, think about George Washington. And all those fruits wearing powder wigs." At first I thought he was joking; but he wasn't. And it was pretty widespread: connecting the decade of the 1950s with a time period when their grandparents, if not their parents were alive, was just not something they'd ever done... And many of them are also homophobic, sexist, and evangelical Christians, which I find very hard to cope with.

[sanginmychains.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that would make me crazy. I had a better experience (in the whole 2 years I was teaching). I was at a college, which in Ontario is I think equivalent to a community college -- kids who did okay in high school, but whose career aspirations are more in the line of dental hygienist, administrator, construction technician, fashion designer, etc. I taught basic writing courses (essay and business writing, not creative) and the aforementioned marvelous pop culture class. Still, the students were coming out of the Canadian school system so they had decent basic skills to start with. I wouldn't know what to do with students who had been graduated without literacy skills.

I find it funny that they'd connect the 50s with greater social freedom -- the general reputation of that decade is such the opposite! The seeds of the social upheaval were there, to be sure, but ...? And was he connecting George Washington to the 50s, or was he assuming that everything before his parents' time was "back then" and therefore all the same? The mind boggles.

This does illustrate why I never, ever had the urge to teach high school. Even 19 year olds were a little young and unformed for my liking. I couldn't imagine teaching 14 year olds.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wish that was what community college meant here. I mean, they're going for the same type of jobs, but the preparation is completely lacking. To be fair, I don't think this is the case in all of America; New York City's public education system is in serious need of overhaul, because it's so overwhelmed by sheer mass, and of course, it's also a vast, unspoken, racist conspiracy to keep a racial & immigrant underclass going.

I think they divide all of history into "Olden Days," "Nowadays" and "The FUTURE." Actually, I'm not sure they ever think about the future. But I could be wrong on that one.

Then there was the bio major, who informed me that evolution couldn't be right because "Chairs exist, and chairs are made of wood, which comes from plants" and "evolutionists have no explanation for plants, whereas creationists do - i.e. God created them," and when I tried to explain that evolution does in fact provide an explanation for plants, since plants are you know, organisms that evolve, appeared to not know that plants were alive.

AND I HAVE TO START TEACHING AGAIN TOMORROW. *cries*

I really hope I get a job in Canada or the UK when I am done with grad school. I want to flee, oh yes, I do.

[electro-club.livejournal.com]

Ok, so i'm intruding AGAIN. Sorry. =(~ I just babbled at your comment book about your weird neighbors, and I'm here to bug yet another time. Sorry. =/

I was reading this discussion over here, and I'm a bit surprised, really. Especially with the lack of interest of students with pop culture. I'm in college. And i know college here is completely different from college there, but is is college nevertheless. And the pop culture related subjects and projects are usually the most successful ones. I had this professor who taught Communication Theories III, and he basically showed us, you know, how those theories are applied at pop productions. And how this whole industry is organized. I can't really get to details in english, 'cause I'm not really that good, but things went on that way. We red books, we watched documentaries about it, and had wonderful classes. By the end of the semester, we all had to present a seminar on a subject of our choice, related to pop culture. Analyze it, discuss it, and not fall to the oh so boring conspiracy theory. Like ten different groups, analyzing the most different things! From TV shows, to movies, to the representation of minority social groups in Hollywood or television. People fell in love with it, and took his elective subject the next semester. So, so, crowded. And so, so great! Last semester, we even had classes about fanfiction on it. I was like, SRSLY DUDE?! And it was so, so, so great! There was a monograph about it, even. It's not the only subject revolving this matter that we have, but it's one of the most famous ones. Everybody LOVES it. This professor wrote about three or four books concerning the subject, and we all bought at least two of them. It's culture, you know? Modern culture. It might seem stupid, but it is what shapes the society, like you said. It moves the world, really. So, why not study it?

I don't know if it's because my ramification in college is more connected directly to this area, or something like that, but it makes me really surprised that people who have this industry sparkling right before their eyes don't grow interest on it. I love what I do, and this is a part of it. I don't want to be a writer, or even work in this business, but getting to know a piece of everything makes a good professional, right? You can't just lock yourself in whatever it is that you want, that's not how the world goes.




I'm have gotten the whole point of the discussion thing wrong, though. Just crossed my mind.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

No, you haven't got it wrong at all!

And yeah, I thought that was the way it was going to be too; I remember LOVING any introduction of pop. culture in my college classes. Like, we had a Greek Mythology professor who used to show up on the first day in sunglasses and a motorcycle jacket and inform us that if we ever called his home number between the hours of 8pm and 9pm on Tuesdays - when Buffy the Vampire Slayer was on - we'd get an automatic F. People adored him.

When profs. used to talk about fanfic and tv and music and stuff, we'd all go nuts for it.

But my students seem completely uninterested; it's all just "geeky" and boring, and has no relationship to their life, or something. I try to do it, because I loved it so much, but they don't seem to, or I'm just not finding the right things to reach them with.