Alive But Losing It
I know, I know. It's been a while. Who would have thought teaching six classes would consume my life? Well, everybody but me it seems.
Teaching is going well, albeit time consuming. Between the lesson preps, test writing and grading, and those evil term papers, I haven't had much of a chance to sleep nonetheless relax. The college seems to like me since I got a decent evaluation. I received "meets expectations" on all but "enthusiasm for subject" on which I got "exceeds expectations." That comes as no surprise. :) I also received my schedule for next semester which is a good sign that I'll be renewed for at least one more semester.
Right now, term papers are the bane of my existence. It really is amazing at how well my students can fuck up such a simple assignment. They got to pick the topic as long as it was in the range of the course material. Then, they had to write your standard--and slightly boring--history research paper that was 3-5 pages long. How hard is that? *sigh* You would be amazed at the stuff I've gotten. So far, I've read one paper that was a summary of the class notes I provide for my students (that kid got a "D"). In another, a kid seemed to confuse the causes of the French Revolution with the "Reign of Terror." Big difference between people rising up because they are starving and people getting their heads cut off en masse because their ideas differed with the current regime. That one got a "C."
There was one paper, though that seriously scared me. First time it has occurred in my career. His paper was on Martin Luther, the founder of Lutheranism and the main figure associated with the Protestant Reformation. Luther is one of my favorite figures in history and I was looking forward to reading this. Well, I had a serious "WTF?" moment once I got about halfway through it. It was basically a psychohistory of Luther and he blamed Luther and his antisemitic ways for being the cause of the Holocaust. Yes, Luther was anti-Semitic. We have proof of that in his writing. Unfortunately, most people in 16th century Europe were anti-Semitic. Yes, Hitler did use those writings to support his arguments against the Jews. I've seen students write on this before so it was nothing new to me. It was the way the student did it that scared me. At first, I thought this was going to turn into an argument for the white supremacy movement (yes, there was that much anger and hatred in the paper). As I read on, it was revealed that the student was Jewish. So instead I got this flaming anti-Luther paper.
This kid is getting an "F" on this paper. It has nothing to do with what he was writing about but rather the fact that he used no scholarly references whatsoever to back up any of his statements. The question is, with this much anger in the student, what do I do if the student pulls the religion card on me? What if he says "you must be anti-Semitic if you gave me an F" type of deal? I literally had a long discussion not only with the head of my department but with other collegues as well. This is going to be a lose-lose situation and I'm not looking forward to dealing with it when I hand back the paper.
Is the semester over yet?
Teaching is going well, albeit time consuming. Between the lesson preps, test writing and grading, and those evil term papers, I haven't had much of a chance to sleep nonetheless relax. The college seems to like me since I got a decent evaluation. I received "meets expectations" on all but "enthusiasm for subject" on which I got "exceeds expectations." That comes as no surprise. :) I also received my schedule for next semester which is a good sign that I'll be renewed for at least one more semester.
Right now, term papers are the bane of my existence. It really is amazing at how well my students can fuck up such a simple assignment. They got to pick the topic as long as it was in the range of the course material. Then, they had to write your standard--and slightly boring--history research paper that was 3-5 pages long. How hard is that? *sigh* You would be amazed at the stuff I've gotten. So far, I've read one paper that was a summary of the class notes I provide for my students (that kid got a "D"). In another, a kid seemed to confuse the causes of the French Revolution with the "Reign of Terror." Big difference between people rising up because they are starving and people getting their heads cut off en masse because their ideas differed with the current regime. That one got a "C."
There was one paper, though that seriously scared me. First time it has occurred in my career. His paper was on Martin Luther, the founder of Lutheranism and the main figure associated with the Protestant Reformation. Luther is one of my favorite figures in history and I was looking forward to reading this. Well, I had a serious "WTF?" moment once I got about halfway through it. It was basically a psychohistory of Luther and he blamed Luther and his antisemitic ways for being the cause of the Holocaust. Yes, Luther was anti-Semitic. We have proof of that in his writing. Unfortunately, most people in 16th century Europe were anti-Semitic. Yes, Hitler did use those writings to support his arguments against the Jews. I've seen students write on this before so it was nothing new to me. It was the way the student did it that scared me. At first, I thought this was going to turn into an argument for the white supremacy movement (yes, there was that much anger and hatred in the paper). As I read on, it was revealed that the student was Jewish. So instead I got this flaming anti-Luther paper.
This kid is getting an "F" on this paper. It has nothing to do with what he was writing about but rather the fact that he used no scholarly references whatsoever to back up any of his statements. The question is, with this much anger in the student, what do I do if the student pulls the religion card on me? What if he says "you must be anti-Semitic if you gave me an F" type of deal? I literally had a long discussion not only with the head of my department but with other collegues as well. This is going to be a lose-lose situation and I'm not looking forward to dealing with it when I hand back the paper.
Is the semester over yet?
Comments
Yep, Luther was "anti-Semitic," Washington owned slaves and Franklin wasn't a morally upstanding individual. People who want to have a big historical hissy about that need to go into sociology instead, where the correct answer to everything is, "the mysoginistic and imperialist attitude of Western culture is quashing the beautiful social mores of the local people blah blah blah."
Really. That's all you have to know, except maybe in the upper courses you might throw in "neo-colonialism of the multinational corporation" for brownie points on occasion. That always works, too.
Mrs. C (your friend from high school... we im'd a bit ago and this is my pseudonym on the bloggies)
PS. Hopefully this blows over like nothing.