A Quarter of the Semester Already GONE!

ha Haaa! One week into a four-week section, and a quarter of the course is already past!

The li’l stoonts have turned in five papers — really just little reports on assigned chapters, designed to force them to actually read the stuff. They’ve been to the library and listened to the librarian lecture on how to find resources for their papers. A few of them have come up with viable topics for their papers, the first of which is due in a week.

This. is. GREAT.

I fail to understand why most of these de rigueur hoop-jump courses are not taught in extremely short format like this. Obviously, an intense format would be too much for some students — though it must be noted that several of the current classmates are alumni of remedial reading and writing courses. So if we must have these courses, they should be offered in 16-week sections for those who aren’t so fluent at reading and writing. And 8-week sections would probably do for those who feel  less confident but still are reasonably competent — I mean, we’re only talking about three papers here! For those who are good writers and reasonably well organized students, four weeks should more than suffice. That’s one week per short paper and two weeks for the 2,500-word term papers.

Since as a practical matter most students put off writing any paper until the last minute, those periods are probably as much time as any student in a 16-week course would devote to the assignments.

At any rate, from my point of view, teaching a four-week course makes the pay almost reasonable: $2400 for a month of part-time work. The class meets two hours, four days a week. Although I have grading every night, except for the three District-required essays, it’s pro-forma: just glance at their papers, see if they’ve actually done the assignment; if so slap 15 points on it; if not, downgrade accordingly, with as little comment as possible. It leaves the rest of the summer for me to do my thing, and it also leaves about half of every day for the purpose.

And so, to work…to read these exercises in front of Netflix. 😉