Miscellany

I don't know about you, but tonight I’m just going to be handing out candy to trick-or-treaters and sitting around the house watching scary movies. I thought, then, that it might be fun to talk about what movies are the best, worst, etc.

Best (in no particular order):
1. Ju-On (this is the original Japanese version of “The Grudge”)
2. Nightmare on Elm St. parts 1 and 3
3. The Ring
4. Halloween part IV
5. Friday the 13th

Completely Unimpressed By:
1. The Blair Witch Project
2. the Scream trilogy
3. Fear Dot Com

So Bad They’re GREAT:
1. Child’s Play (all of them)
2. Children of the Corn
3. Ice Cream Man
4. Hollow Man

What do you think?

What I did over fall break:

• Attended a tailgate party for UNA's homecoming game and saw people I hadn't seen in about ten years
• Graded a set of papers
• Submitted a proposal for an edited collection
• Read Naked by David Sedaris (finally!)
• ...and more work to do before tomorrow, when my "break" is officially over
• ...and I still feel behind on just about everything.

This has all happened so quickly. We've gone from graduate students to assistant professors.

I'm really pleased that BasicWriting.org exists. It's nice to have a good, centralized resource for Basic Writing. My only suggestion would be to add the Basic Writing e-Journal. While short-lived (but liable to come back soon, for all I know!), it still merits inclusion.

I've been enjoying seeing the results of the 2006 Black Weblog Awards contest. It was especially nice to see Tiffany and The Humanity Critic recognized.

My CCCC panel was accepted, hooray!

As seen at Geeky Mom, New Kid, and Workbook.

Teaching:

• Make things easier on myself by speeding up my grading turnaround time (which isn't bad, but it could be better). Plus, I think I heard somewhere that student evaluations are higher the quicker the turnaround time. Anyone else heard that, or found it to be true in your own experience?
• Get lots of people lined up to observe my classes
• Keep a teaching journal so that when I write up my reflections as part of my personnel action dossier (PAD), I'll have a lot to work with
• Enjoy it! I can already tell that my students are creative and enthusiastic. I've hailed Celebrity vs. Thing before as a really clever and interesting writing exercise, and I've been wanting to use it in my writing classes for over a year now. I'm pleased to say that students have taken it and run with it, to wit: Tom Cruise vs. MySpace, Michael Jordan vs. Playstation, and Simon Cowell vs. The Alarm Clock. Ha!
• Whip up some compelling flyers for the courses I'm teaching next semester, which include (unless something changes) an undergraduate introduction to rhetorical studies course and a graduate seminar in research ethics. I've always thought creating flyers to advertise courses was a little sad, but at the same time, I understand that the title of a course in the catalog might not describe it accurately and that a flyer is a good way to get the word out about a class.

Research:

• Send that rejected grant proposal, the one I coauthored with esteemed colleagues, the one I haven't mentioned here so you have no idea what I'm talking about, right back out after getting some good feedback and revising it
• Be aggressive about asking people to read manuscripts, proposals, etc. before I send them out (the worst they can do is say no)
• Send out two articles based on my dissertation*

Self:

• I'll go with everyone else and say "exercise," but I need to figure out a gym situation first
• Worry less about money
• Use all my stockpiles of stuff before I buy more (this means shower gels, facial cleansers, lip gloss, lotions, and hair care products), no matter how cute/good-smelling/innovative the newer stuff is
• Go out to eat less often; I don't do it much anyway, but I'd like to do it less

* Yes, they will go to PRINT journals. Also, what's a good goal here? I tried to be realistic and say that the goal is to send out two article manuscripts, and that's for the year, not the semester. Is that enough?

When I saw an ad for Adjunctopia in my Gmail, I thought about a recent post at Dean Dad's, in which he wrote:

there’s a hefty chunk of change to be made for some enterprising type who sets up shop in an area with lots of colleges and establishes a temp agency for adjuncts. “I need a cultural anthropologist, stat!” Anybody who has ever chaired a department with significant numbers of adjuncts knows that there’s always that one last section to staff two days before the semester begins, it’s full of students, and absolutely nobody can take it. A temp agency for adjuncts – call it Kelly Profs – could be the number a harried chair could call. “Hello, Kelly Profs? I need three daytime sections of freshman comp covered, starting Tuesday. No problem? Wow! Thanks, Kelly Profs!” Dollars to donuts, someone does this in the next five years. Hell, if I had the entrepreneurial zeal and absolutely no soul, I’d do it myself.)

Looks like they've been online since at least 2002.

• In my composition courses this semester (two FYC and one Advanced Composition), the first assignment is a list-style composition after the style of Being Poor, preferably engaging the local setting -- life in Greenville or North Carolina. The first-year students are doing this as a collaborative assignment. As I've said before, I think there's really something to the list as form that makes it especially participatory. Notice how many people built on the White Privilege Checklist (links) and the 350+ comments at the "Being Poor" post, many of which contribute to the list. There was also a separate response to "Being Poor" which I'm assigning along with several other list compositions. The idea is that in the first-year classes, students have to get to know each other enough to find some common ground, so that each one can contribute points to the list. Hopefully it'll go well.
• In reading some back columns of Dear Margo, I was a little disappointed with her advice to a coworker of a new mother. How about, "Ask the company to provide her a separate space so she doesn't have to pump in the bathroom in the first place"? (The woman was pumping in the bathroom and making business calls at the same time, and the Dear Margo advisee was uncomfortable flushing when someone was on the phone.)
• My fear of flying has been renewed.
• I had an awful dream last night. My left arm had been torn off at the shoulder somehow, and I was holding it with my other arm. It was heavy, and I couldn't lift it high enough and hold it steady enough to set the bone. I thought, "I'm going to have to find a doctor to do this, and it's going to hurt."
• I'm close to finishing the knitting project I've been working on for SUCH a LONG time and getting sidetracked from: a felted handbag. I'll post pictures if it looks okay.

I suppose the world needed this: