We’re heading to Chicago for the weekend to celebrate our friends Jenny and Steven’s nuptials. We’re bringing el bebe. Wish us luck. We’re excited to be going to Chicago. I can’t remember how long it has been since I’ve been there. The AWP Conference back in February, maybe? As always, the hardest part is trying to decide where to spend each one of your meals to maximize the trip…

Unfortunately it looks like I’ll be working over the long weekend too. I have to read the essay I’ve assigned to my research class so I can come up with some decent questions for them to answer, and I’ve got to read the section of the poetry chapter we’re reading for my creative writing class for basically the same reason. This is why teaching two new classes is a little like taking two new classes. It’s too early to tell how these classes will be (students tend to be uptight for the first couple weeks) but no red flags yet. Some of the CW students seem really enthused, which is awesome, and it turns out that 6 of the 24 students in my research class had me for 101, so I already know a quarter of the class. Which means I can pick on them to get conversations started.

The classes I’m taking are still a little up in the air too. One is entitled Rhetoric, Writing, & Info Technology and the professor (who I had last semester) is still building the syllabus and assignments, largely around the interests of the group. While there’s a theory component to this course, a good deal of it is also “building stuff” to use the professor’s own language. I hope to learn more about CSS and PHP (there are still things with this site that I’m not thrilled about so I may do another overhaul in the future) but we’ll have to see what direction the course takes us.

For my independent study, it’s largely up to me. The course is about information design so I’m reading a book this week on design principles, and I plan to find some crummy ads and redesign them. I’ve got the whole semester’s reading planned out, but not what I’m going to produce for “assignments.”

So the motto for this semester overall: make it up as you go along.

Current Mood: Good |