Last “Confident Homecoming” class last night. We determined that the misery was all down to the instructor because the last few weeks haven’t been bad. We’re confident about coming home now. It’s just coming home with a baby that complicates things.
Also, on the car ride over Amy insisted on telling me the longest story ever about how she first waffled, and then ultimately decided to go for the five-year warranty on our newest big purchase, the Power Miser 900. It’s a hot water heater. She kept getting mad when I interrupted her to say that this conversation was what all non-married couples feared most.
Federations is now available for pre-order from Amazon. Buy it! I assume it must be some kind of accident or oversight, but my name appears nowhere amidst the promotional hyperbole.
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Man Ure vs. Villa on Sunday was a remarkable spectacle, wasn’t it? Heartbreaking for Villa but what an ending. Happily, I don’t have Man Ure enough for this to upset me too much, although I do think their fingers are touching trophy now. It’s that game in hand that spoils things.
Porto, Chelski, Barca, and Ars*nal in the semifinals of the Champs League? Who would’ve thunk it? ‘Pool are well and truly out as are Bayern, but I’m not writing off Man Ure. Remember ’89? They did things like this every round. And my heart would love see Villareal bounce back in London, but my head says Spanish teams just don’t do that.
Geek admission: I love writing long, properly formatted bibliographies. I compiled a 30-item list yesterday, the fruits of some good research. Now I just have to read the articles and write the 15-page paper.
“This was a wonderful paper,” I said dreamily the other night. Amy looked over and asked if it was a student’s. I said no, I was talking about mine. She rolled her eyes and I quickly added, “Oh, I’m not reading my own paper, I’m just reading the bibliography. It’s like a narrative in itself, you know.”
Finally, I am always trying to bring in texts from outside the class in an effort to convince my 101 students that the course is applicable to just about everything in their lives, if they pay attention. The goal is to alert them to the rhetoric that always surrounds us, to decipher the possible purpose behind the rhetoric, and to pay close attention to both the language and design of texts that help reinforce this purpose. To demonstrate this, on Monday we’ll be looking at this article from Madison Magazine on how menus are put together. A quote:
A menu seems so simple, but in truth it is part business plan, part efficiency expertise, part artistry, part culture vulture and part psychological tug-of-war….A restaurant menu announces its intentions in a variety of ways, balancing practicality and desire right down to the paper. A higher-end restaurant menu may be literally more substantial: heavier paper and broader dimensions seem to prepare the eye for double-digit prices. Capitol ChopHouse, for instance, presents its guests with a simple two-color printout at lunch but an oversize cardstock version at dinner.
When I find things like this I think, “What a great example!” This is quickly followed by the thought, “God, I must be insufferable to listen to.”
Current Mood: Pretty Good | 
3 Comments
I judge every non-fiction book I read by its sources (and failing that, its index). I won’t even read any of it before I’ve looked at the bibliography or end notes or whatever they put in the back.
I hoard marketing copy from anything investment related, just to see what is being said and how it’s being said. Most of it is crap. Too few people pay attention to your rhetoric-purpose-language-design rubric there. Never thought of it that way before, but it is elemental.
You have to be insufferable to teach — and wear the bastards down til they listen. (grin) Funny thing, they WILL remember more of these outside things than the stuff the course is supposed to be about. That’s because they are real-world examples which have context, something often missing in regular discussions.
Dr. Phil
John, I think that kind of thing comes naturally to writerly types who pay attention to language. Once you learn all the cool catch phrases then you’re on your way…
Phil, I generally forget that the reasons my students don’t make the same connections I’m making, or as fast as I’m making them, is because they’re about half my age and therefore have half the life experiences from which to draw on. One of the things that stuck with me from a class last semester was an article where the author (who also happened to be my instructor) made a comment along the lines of “you never know what from your teaching might resonate several years down the road for your students.” I sure know that was my college experience—I don’t think I truly understood what I’d been learning until I was out for a few years and then started hearing all these echoes from those classes. Kinda cool, actually.