Kids These Days

I know, I know - I need to stop being surprised by these things, but... One of my students who is an Aerospace Engineering major says he has never heard of The Right Stuff. He's never even heard those words in combination. Sigh.

Overheard in the Hall

Sitting in my office, I overheard this comment from an undergrad walking down the hallway:

"There are many more syllables than you think in every Asian word."

Dear readers who speak "Asian", any thoughts on this?

Education Today

I'm working on another job application, this one for the role of "The Film person in the English Department". I took a gander at the university's website to see what's going on, and what kinds of courses they offer in English. The most intriguing title was for a graduate seminar called "Weird Books by Women Novelists." I feel inspired to propose a series of "Weird Films..." courses.

From General to Specific

Today my students started working on their final projects, where they will design media literacy lessons for actual high school students. Their first task was to come up with a topic, so I put them into groups based on their interests and gave them a few minutes to brainstorm. Before long, one group signalled to me that they had a topic, so I said "Great! What is it?" Their response:

"Different media have different effects on different people."

I tried hard to disguise my sinking feeling. Had they not been paying attention when I gave them that lecture on pointless vague statements and how they are pointless and vague?

I entered salvage mode, asking "Can you be more specific?"

His classmate piped up with "What he means is that we're going to compare written, audio and video versions of the same story and have the students discuss how differences in media lead you to different interpretations."

Phew.

Fear of Little People

I'm doing some grading-for-pay like I did last summer. So far the papers have not been as hilarious as usual, but one stands out from the others. The prompt was something like "Discuss something that frightened you as a child, but you find humorous as an adult". This person's response: Little People. The author refers to them as Small People, but you get the idea.


"My biggest fear when I was younger was small people, the really short adults like on The Wizard of Oz. The reason I was afraid of small people were that they could get in my hamper, they could fit in my trunk, and my mom was scared of them.
Small people can fit practically anywhere. Every time I went to the bathroom in my house, there would always be a hamper. The hamper was a perfect spot for a small person to fit into, and I was always scared he or she would jump out of the hamper while I was using the bathroom. It would be so easy for small people to jump out of hampers and kill people.
It would be simple for a small person to hide in the trunk of my car while my family are heading down the road, and I am dead by that person choking me or shooting me."

Jeffrey Express

As a grad student, I didn’t have a car, so I learned to navigate Chicago on public transportation. I spent many hours on the #6 bus, the Jeffrey Express, which connected three very different zones of the city: the working-class black neighbourhood of the South Side, Hyde Park and the University of Chicago, and the downtown, with its shiny skyscrapers. Chicago is still a segregated city, and riding the Jeffrey Express tended to place these divisions in stark relief. The correlation between urban geography and race, class, and education was unmistakable, and it was always clear to me that this bus was one of the few public spaces where these separated spheres would mix. One day in 2003 I was taking the Jeffrey downtown, no doubt to watch movies at the Art Institute, when some middle-aged ladies climbed aboard and started talking to people about a candidate for the Senate. They handed out modest brochures, and they sat and chatted with cleaning ladies and grad students alike about a man they believed in, and who promised to bring real change. I remarked that it was a clever move to campaign on the Jeffrey, a bus line that sliced through demographic divisions. Still, I had my doubts that their candidate would have much of a chance, what with the strange and politically unlikely name of “Barack Obama.”

Political Pumpkin

Enjoy the glow from my Barack Obama pumpkin.  I got the stencil here.