May 6: "Dictionary Wanderings," Strange or Dirty Words, "Final Exams"

Billy Collins checks his spelling . . . 

Dictionary Wanderings

by: Billy Collins

The two silent "els"

in talk and calf

find a place

of prominence in llama.

As a kid, I loved wandering through the dictionary, window shopping for strange or dirty words.  I learned a lot about life (and sex) by doing this.  And I probably doomed myself to be a poet.

I spent most of the day and night grading papers and exams.  Final grades are due by noon tomorrow, so I'm under the gun, so to speak.  Currently, I'm wading through my students' essay exams for Intro to Mythology.  Prior to that, it was reading journals for my Good Books class.

I love teaching, but I'm not a big fan of grading.  I may be in the minority of educators, but I truly believe that grades interfere with a student's ability to learn.  Instead of trying to grapple with course content, students spend their time worrying about what they need to do to earn an "A" from their instructors.  It's pointless.

I would much prefer a Pass/Fail system of evaluation.  If a student demonstrates mastery of the course material, the student passes.  If the student still doesn't know the difference between "to/too/two" at the end of the semester, the student fails.  Simple and easy, eliminating all the stupid competition that occurs in higher education.

Of course, Saint Marty has been grading for about 16 hours today, so that may be influencing his judgement a little bit right now.

Final Exams

by:  Martin Achatz

Grading them

at 1 a.m.

reminds me

of cramming for them,

minus the gin and panic.

July 15: "Just as the Calendar Began to Say Summer," Important Lessons, Calumet

Mary Oliver on things she didn't learn in school . . . 

Just as the Calendar Began to Say Summer

by:  Mary Oliver

I went out of the schoolhouse fast

and through the gardens and to the woods,

and spent all summer forgetting what I'd been taught--

two times two, and diligence, and so forth,

how to be modest and useful, and how to succeed and so forth,

machines and oil and plastic and money and so forth.

By fall I had healed somewhat, but was summoned back

to the chalky rooms and the desks, to sit and remember

the way the river kept rolling its pebbles,

the way the wild wrens sang though they hadn't a penny in the

     bank,

the way the flowers were dressed in nothing but light.

Mary Oliver didn't learn the most important lessons of her life from a textbook or in a classroom.  Instead, she listened to the rivers and wrens.  Observed blooming flowers.  Those were her greatest teachers.  Sure, you can learn about iambic pentameter and metaphor in a traditional educational setting.  However, studying prosody and figurative language is not the same as whispering a Shakespearean sonnet in your love's ear in the dark.

It's a matter of experience.  You can read every manual available about flying an airplane, but that won't make you a pilot.  Yes, education is wonderful and important.  I've been a college professor for close to 30 years now, so obviously I value classroom learning.  However, everybody doesn't learn in the same way.  I've had students who thrive in a traditional classroom setting and students who struggle and, oftentimes, fail.  Because their brains just aren't wired for learning like that.

I'm still in Calumet tonight.  I just finished performing in a radio variety show, and now I am back at the hotel, dead tired.  There's not a whole lot of wisdom in my head right now.  I sort of feel like I used to feel at the end of a school year or semester of college:  completely and totally devoid of brain power.  I've taken my final exams, and now the switch in my head has flipped to "off."

And that's okay.  I don't have to tap into my creative spirit until tomorrow evening, when I'm leading a poetry workshop.  Even then, I may write complete and total shit.  And that's okay, too.  Summer is in full swing.  The trip home from Calumet tomorrow morning will be green and beautiful.  Pretty soon, wild carrot will be blooming in the ditches and culverts along the highway, filling the air with lace.  July lessons.

School is always in session for me.  I don't remember the last time I had more than a couple days of complete and total break, unplugged from the university and the library and all my other obligations.  There are no rivers rolling their pebbles or wild wrens singing.  No flowers dressed only in light.  My life is not a Mary Oliver classroom.

Saint Marty is now going to collapse for a few hours before rejoining the living world.

May 3: Fall Apart Where I'm Standing, Finals Week, Broken Healthcare

Marvin the robot and Arthur and Ford are on their way to meet Zaphod and Trillian (if you've gotten this far into the blog and don't know who these characters are or what novel they're from, abandon hope all ye who enter here) . . .

Vague whistling and humming noises were coming from Ford.  "Well, well, well," he kept saying to himself, "Zaphod Beeblebrox . . ."

Suddenly Marvin stopped, and held up a hand.

"You know what's happened now, of course?"

"No, what?" said Arthur, who didn't want to know.

"We've arrived at another of those doors."

There was a sliding door let into the side of the corridor.  Marvin eyed it suspiciously.

"Well?" said Ford impatiently.  "Do we go through?"

"Do we go through?" mimicked Marvin.  "Yes.  This is the entrance to the bridge.  I was told to take you to the bridge.  Probably the highest demand that will be made on my intellectual capacities today, I shouldn't wonder."

Slowly, with great loathing, he stepped toward the door, like a hunter stalking his prey.  Suddenly it slid open.

"Thank you," it said, "for making a simple door very happy."

Deep in Marvin's thorax gears ground.

"Funny," he intoned funereally, "how just when you think life can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does."

He heaved himself through the door and left Ford and Arthur staring at each other and shrugging their shoulders.  From inside they heard Marvin's voice again.

"I suppose you'll want to see the aliens now," he said.  "Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm standing?"

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  I totally get Marvin.  Get his attitude.  Get his sense of humor.  Get his funereal tone.  If I were a robot, I'd be Marvin.

Finals week always drives me to this state.  So much work to do, not enough time to do it.  Then the e-mails from students start rolling in, each one wanting to know grades on papers and final exams.  I understand these student requests.  I, too, was one of those anxious, grade-obsessed students when I was younger.  I wanted to know my grade the day that class ended.

Now, if I were a full-time professor, I would have been holed up in my office at the college, cranking out grades and sucking down caffeine.  Unfortunately, I am a contingent professor.  Therefore, grading is done before I go to my full-time medical office job, on my lunch breaks, and after I'm done working, before I collapse into bed at midnight.  Then I get up at 5 a.m. and do it all over again.  That is the life that I've chosen.

Today, I had plans to grade during my breaks at work, at lunch.  Instead, I got a call mid-morning from one of my sisters.  It seems that Rose, my sister with Down syndrome, had a major seizure this morning in bed.  She was choking, foaming at the mouth.  An ambulance was called.  She was taken to the hospital. 

You can imagine that the rest of the day consisted of texts and more texts and replies to texts and group texts.  I got very little grading done today.  My sister Rose was evaluated at the ER.  Given an MRI.  Scheduled for an EEG.  Put on two anti-seizure medications.  Discharged.  Translation:  they really didn't figure out what has been causing the seizures, just put her on some drugs and sent her home with fingers crossed. 

If I sound a little frustrated, I am.  Here comes the Marvin-side of my personality.  I know healthcare.  I've been working in the field for going on 25 years now.  Never thought that I'd make a career out of it.  Anyway, I know when people in healthcare are passing the buck.  The buck was passed on my sister.  Instead of trying to get to the bottom of her issues, they wanted an empty ER room.  I saw doctors do the same thing with my other sister when she was suffering with lymphoma of the brain for almost a year-and-a-half before she was diagnosed.  By then, it was too late.

I get very frustrated with America's healthcare system.  It's not really about the patient.  Ever.  It's about insurance.  And money.

My sister is at home.  She's acting like her old self.  Perhaps the medication she was prescribed will stop the seizures she's been having.  That is my hope.  And I'm ashamed tonight of being a part of a broken healthcare system.

This message has been brought to you by Saint Marty.

August 7: Grading, Exhausted, Classic Saint Marty

Another day of grading.  By this time tomorrow night, I hope to be done with everything.  I have only my students' final exams to complete.  That's six essay questions for 22 students.  If you're doing the math, that means 132 short answer essays stand between me and peace of mind.  That may seem like a lot.  It's not, compared to what I was facing at the beginning of the weekend.

I am brain dead at the moment.  I need to go to bed.  Still have to work tomorrow morning.  Plus a dentist appointment.  And then a meeting at the university in the evening.

About a year ago, I had a completely different worry.

August 6, 2015:  Fragility of Life, Absolutely Go to Heaven, Sharon Olds, "My Father's Eyes"

I've been thinking a lot about the fragility of life.  Yesterday, as I was hiking up from the base of a waterfall, I nearly slipped off the edge of the hill into the valley below.  Lots of rocks.  It would have been a very hard landing.  In the space of a few seconds, my life could have changed forever.

Of course, that's always the case with anybody.  Things happen.  You walk into a party and meet your future spouse.  You have a romantic evening, and suddenly you're a parent.  You go to see your doctor, and she tells you that there's a mass in your abdomen. You wake up in the morning with a pain in your side, and in the evening, you're in an operating room, having your appendix removed.  Fragility.

I have plans.  Syllabi to put together.  Poems to write.  An attic to clean out.  These things are all on my to-do list.  I make lists.  All the time.  Those lists help me feel in control.  Notice I used the word "feel."  In reality, I know that I'm not in control.  But the illusion of control is important for my peace of mind.

My sister, the one at the University of Michigan Hospital, was always in charge, at work and at home.  People depended on her level-headed, no-nonsense approach.  This time, last year, she was going to movies and out to eat.  Visiting with her nieces and nephews.  She was happy.  In control.  At least, that's what she believed.  Yet, right now, she is beyond making decisions, telling people what to do.

At one point in Mr. Ives' Christmas, Ives' son, Robert, asks Ives:

"Do you think that if you die just after receiving communion you will absolutely go to heaven?"

Robert is young, impressionable, full of faith in God's goodness.  Ives answers him, "Yes.  Without a doubt."  Robert is looking for comfort and assurance, and Ives provides it.

I will be traveling to Ann Arbor tomorrow to see my sister.  I'm going with one of my best friends (and one of my sister's best friends).  My friend offered to drive me, and I accepted.  I know that I'm not in control of my life or my sister's life.  I have to give her over to God.  I am simply going to provide comfort and love and support, like Ives gives to Robert.  I won't be posting again until Saturday.  Maybe Sunday.

Life is fragile, but God's love isn't.  Hopefully, I'll be able to help my sisters who are down there, making the decisions, understand that.  It's time to hand over the reins to the Big Guy in the Sky.

Saint Marty hopes he's doing the right thing.

My Father's Eyes

by:  Sharon Olds

The day before my father died
he lay there all day with his eyes open,
staring with a weary dogged look.
His irises had turned hazel in places
as if his nature had changed, bits
of water or sky set into his mineral solids.
Every time he blinked, the powerful
wave of the blink moved through my body
as if God had blinked,
a world unmade in the jump of an eyelid.
They said he was probably not seeing anything,
the material sphere of his eye simply
open to the stuff of the world.
But toward evening he would seem to move
his eyes toward my voice or his wife's voice.
And once, when he got agitated,
reaching out, I leaned down
and he swerved his blurred iris toward me and with-
in it for a moment his pupil narrowed and
took me in, it was my father
looking at me.  This lasted just
a second, like the sudden flash
of sex that jumps between two people.
Then his vision sank back down
and left only the globe of the eye, and the
next day the soul went out
and left just my father there
and I thought of that last glint, glint without
warmth or hope, his glint of recognition.

August 4: Live Seasons, Liquid Nitrogen, "The Walking Dead"

These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.

Simple advice from Dillard.  It's all about living in the present, not grasping into the darkness for tomorrow or next week or next month.  Today--right now--that's all we have.

I have been working and grading all day long.  Just finished up a batch of papers, starting into another batch of papers tomorrow.  Then final exams.  That's my right now.  That's my tomorrow, as well.   And probably my Saturday and Sunday.  I can be fairly confident in that prediction.

I am beat right now.  And my nose and forehead are burning.  I went to a doctor's appointment today, and I had a couple of things on my face burned off with liquid nitrogen.  I'm supposed to blister and then slough.  So, basically, this weekend I am going to look like a reject from The Walking Dead.

I am ready for bed.  Not ready for work tomorrow.  I just want to got to sleep and stay asleep for a few days.  That is the extent of my wisdom tonight.

In the present, Saint Marty is a zombie.

December 1: I Owe Ya One

Well, I owe you guys a post.  I blogged once on Friday and then got too tired to do it again.  Thus, I am now going to do a stream-of-consciousness post to make-up for my negligence of two days ago.

I am heading into my last week of official teaching at the university for the year.  One week of teaching and then final exam week.  I'm in pretty good shape.  My final exam is done.  My essay questions are done.  I've e-mailed my students their final instructions for the coming week.  All that's left is a lecture on It's a Wonderful Life, review for the final, and then class evaluations.

Of course, I have to actually grade the final exams next weekend.  That will take quite a bit of time.  And then there's all the math, totaling up all the points and determining final grades.  It's my least favorite part of the semester.  It's tedious and involves a good deal of guilt, especially when a student doesn't do well.

Yes, professors feel guilty when students fail.  There's this little equation that kicks in:

Student failure = Teacher failure

Guilt is a whole part of the teaching process for me.  I want my students to succeed.  When they don't, I start questioning where I went wrong.  Over the years, I have become less apt to take full responsibility for student failure.  However, failure of a class is a two-way street.  The students have failed to learn the material, and I have failed to teach it effectively.

Even though I've been a college professor for nearly 20 years, I haven't been able to develop a thicker skin about this subject.  I think it's because I'm a contingent faculty member.  My success isn't measured on publication and research.  My success is measured on teaching.  I need to be an effective teacher in order to retain my position at the university.

That's why I dream of tenure.  Tenure means you can be an absolutely shitty teacher and still be employed.  Not that I would do that if I had tenure.  But there's a certain amount of peace a security that comes with tenure, and I, unfortunately, will probably never have that peace or security.  Such is life.

Saint Marty may be a part-time professor, but he's a full-time worry wart.

I haven't reached the panic stage.  Yet.

May 2: Old Spencer, Exam Paper, Final Grades

"You glanced through it, eh?" he said--very sarcastic.  "Your, ah, exam paper is over there on top of my chiffonier.  On top of the pile.  Bring it here, please."

Old Spencer is a little ruthless here, grilling Holden at the beginning of Catcher.  Spencer is trying to guide Holden, give him life advice.  All Spencer manages to do, however, is disgust him and piss him off.  After Holden fetches the exam, Spencer proceeds to read it aloud to him.  Holden sits and listens, mortified.

I spent all of last night grading my Intro to Film students' final exams.  I finished the job this morning.  In the space of a couple hours, I managed to read, comment on, and grade 23 of them.  And I enjoyed it.  I thought it was going to be torture, like eating mashed potatoes laced with ground-up glass.  Instead, I coasted through it.  Then, I dragged out my calculator and finished totaling final semester grades.  I had to fail no student.  There were a pack of A's, a gaggle of B's, and some C's.  It was a good class.

Now, I'm sitting in a lecture hall, watching The Wonder Boys with Michael Douglas, waiting for my students to not show up and collect their graded final exams.  Yes, I'm Old Spencer, expecting Holden Caulfield to walk through the door so I can hand him his essay questions.

After The Wonder Boys ends, I will pack up my belongings, bring them back to my office, and be done with teaching until the fall semester begins.  It's a long four months without university paychecks.  Even longer now that I had to shell out $400 for a brake job.  Yes, I'm a little melancholy right now.  I'm going to miss this part of my life.  Miss campus, students, and colleagues.  I like the academic hustle.

Until the end of August, unfortunately, Saint Marty's title is simply going to be "medical records clerk."

Farewell, academia

April 25: Pounding Motrin, Ready for Bed

I have learned that whatever bug I am battling at the moment needs Motrin more often than every six hours.  I am totally feeling like crap right now, and I took an 800 mg at 10 a.m.  I have decided that I'm just going to listen to my body.  When I feel the symptoms returning, I'm going to pound another Motrin.

I just finished administering a final exam in one of my sections of mythology.  Tomorrow, I will administer my other final.  Then the work of grading begins.  It shouldn't be too bad.  However, I have to have everything done, all the semester final grades calculated, by Monday for both classes.  That kind of sucks.

Tonight, I will do no grading.  Tonight, since I do not have to go to choir practice (it's my wife's turn), I plan on putting my son to bed at seven and following him shortly thereafter.  If the Motrin I just took takes the edge off my fever and tiredness, I may stay up to watch American Idol.  But if I feel like I currently feel, I will be crawling under the covers and studying the insides of my eyelids.

Saint Marty hates being sick.

In keeping with my Dickens obsession