This is exactly not what I wanted to hear:

From Gargoyle:

Sorry Drew--

Almost impossible to land anything more than 20pp anywhere right now in these grim times. And we're in the 5-15pp range with most of our stuff lately.

Pax,

Richard

Thanks Gargoyle, for at least breaking up with me quickly. I hate that long drawn out feeling.
The good news: that was a < 24 hr response. I have to say though, if Richard is correct, I'm in a world of hurt. Look only to my currently unpublished list:

• Self [Inflicted] Portrait - 38 pages
• Endings Lead to Beginnings - 37 pages
• 7,500 Miles to the Bottom - 24 pages
• The Poetics of Self - 18 pages
• Contents Within - 17 pages
• Substrate - 17 pages

I guess this really means only one thing, I need to finish Not an Autobiography and start marketing it as a finished collection. If only I weren't so interested in developing long winding sentences each with a series of footnotes....

Everything Ends goes Electronic and other stuff

A cappella Zoo, recently started posting electronic versions of their back issues on their website, and as a member of issue one, "Everything Ends" now has a new electronic home. Given that my story is full of XML, footnotes and other elements of structural screwity, the folks over there assuredly had to do a lot of finagling to get that story online, so take a moment and read it again. Maybe even buy a subscription because they are one of the best mags out there as far as I'm concerned (one of the only literary magazine that touts that it prints experiemental fiction and actually follows through with it).

In other news, Rod, Dave, and I are getting very close to publishing issue one of Ontologica. The website is ready to go, and we're sliding into editing time right now. I expect things to be live sometime in early July. With that said, we're already starting to lay grounds for the Winter release--I know Dave's done some work on setting up the theme for that issue, basing it partially on some of Colleen Harris' work (Her new book is out soon. Buy it).

Lastly, my summer job's led me down the path of web-development, and I've recenly learned massive amounts of CSS, XML, and XSL, all of which is coming mightily handy in building the Ontologica site and setting forth a roadmap to one day rebuild my own domain and the Warrior Poet Group Main Page.

Good bye Spring '09, Hello Summer

As I type this, I'm finishing up the last of my grading deluge. I posted my composition class' grades the other day, and momentarily, Business Writing will be set to the books. It's an awful nice feeling to be 'done;' very much akin to the done-ness achieved at the end of a semester when you're a student. Funny how when you're a student you never consider how much work is involved on the prof's side of the house--really it's about the same as what the student faces.

Between Last Thursday and Sunday, I slammed through 71 five page essays. I just finished slugging through 5 business proposals weighing in at nearly 20 pages a piece (some more, some less), and sorting out grades on a multi-tiered system for them.

Here are some more stats:

Overall, I read over 3,050 pages of student writing this semester, and that doesn't include revisions; so I wouldn't be surprised if there was another 150-300 pages sneaking around that average that I didn't account for.

I went through 7 pens.

I averaged 10-15 student emails per day.

For my business writing class, we read two books: Matt Mason's The Pirate's Dilemma, and D. Michael Abrashoff's It's Your Ship, as well as three 30 page articles from CQ Researcher, and a good chunk of The Business Writer's Handbook

In Composition, we read five essays: Gerald Graff's "Hidden Intellectualism," Christopher Lasch's "The Lost Art of Argument," Sven Birkerts' "The Owl Has Flown," Susan Bordo's "The Empire of Images in the World of our Bodies," and Arlie Russel Hochschild's "From the Frying Pan into the Fire." We also watched and discussed Steal this Film.

On the side, I managed to read Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism, Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts, and The Watchmen. Currently, I'm reading Robert Coover's The Public Burning, and Nation of Rebels by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter.

Oh and I haven't written a word of fiction since...um...maybe November? So sad.

As far as students, I noticed a dramatic improvement in attentiveness, class participation, and overall quality of writing in comparison to the fall semester. Part of this is due to students moving into the comp class after having taken an introductory class (which is optional based on entrance tests), and/or repeating the class after having failed in the fall. In any event though, we generated a lot of good discussion, and I didn't have any 'dead' sections like I experienced in the fall. I also had a dramatic improvement in seeing students going to get writing tutor help; largely this was a good thing.

I did however learn that there are several topics that I never want to read about again. They include:

• The Drinking Age
• Gun Control
• Abortion
• Steroids
• Gambling
• The Smoking Ban
• Stem Cell Research
• The Death Penalty
• Alternate Fuels
• Global Warming
• Illegal Drugs

While I encountered exceptional papers throughout the above list (particularly there was a fantastic Pro-Life paper, and last semester brought me a stunning Legalizing Marijuana Paper), overall, these topics end up being dry, predictable, and very very similar. Fortunately, next semester, Behrend will be kicking into full-on LRS mode, which will involve required course "Themes," so as long as I'm crafty enough to select a theme that doesn't involve any of the above topics, I'll be safe so to speak. As far as themes go, I'm currently kicking around the following:

• Capitalism
• Piracy
• The Information Age
• Counterculture
  

Now that I have a couple semesters under my belt, I hope to start revising and deviating my lesson plans a bit for the future. I want to incorporate more focus on MLA citation in my Composition classes--this semester's addition of the Annotated Bibliography assignment revealed that many students are still clueless about proper citation. Also, in one of our departmental meetings, Craig presented a sort of handout relating to asking "Good Research Questions." It's something I hadn't considered before, and when I presented it a couple weeks ago, the students really seemed to like it; so that'll go in much earlier in the semester. Also, I think I'd like to develop Problem Statement Format introductions more clearly from the start-- the weaker writers in my classes always benefit from this, as it helps them form a clear direction to their papers. Currently, PSF comes in around week four; I think I'm going to move that up to hit before the first essay is due.

I altered the way I handled open revision this semester (in the fall I didn't put a timeline on revision and received a deluge of last-minute revision), and it worked really well, so I'll definitely keep that as an option.

I'm also working on creating a sort of revision checklist of common errors that I'd say 80% of my students make. Things like putting your punctuation inside your quotes, proper citation format, not opening or ending paragraphs with evidence, etc. Hopefully such a document will help them organize their workshop sessions more, and help them get away from focusing only on grammatical feedback.

So now that School is over for the moment, I've been working at gainful summer employment. At the moment RGIS is my only current holding. I had my paid training session today. The work is ridiculously easy; the hours are awful. Strange times are dealable--Verizon hardened me against weirdo shifts, but the pay is awful, and they only have me down for 17 hours in the next 2 weeks; nowhere near enough to pay the Man.

Fortunately, I managed to land an inteview tomorrow for a Marketing/web development gig at a place that's less than two miles from my house. From the sounds of it, it might solve all the summer monetary problems. So I'm looking forward to that with gusto.

Plus, since my next big project is to build the site for Ontologica, it'll be nice related practice. Speaking of Ontologica, I am finally going to be able to start drafting the essay that's been floating in my head since before Rod posed the notion of putting this journal together. Although I'm not traditionally an essay writer, I'm pretty psyched up to write this, so hopefully it'll pan out well.

Finally a note on the homefront: Sue's gone back to work, and though on many levels I feel like I'm somehow failing at bringing home enough money to cover bills, her work environment has changed drastically for the better, and she's really enjoying herself there; which is really good (and it's really helping with finances).

Molly's just coming out of a real bad stint of no sleep week (see my previous blog post). I guess most of the molars have cut through, because after nearly a week of no naps, and really poor sleeping at night, she's more or less back on her regular schedule (though the daytime nap is more floaty now--she used to crash immediatly after lunch, now it's hitting anywhere between 10:30 and 14:00). She and I have been hitting up the Zoo pretty regularly, and Molly likes that a whole lot. We'd like to hit some other zoos this summer, so hopefully that'll happen--kind of all dependent on work schedules and whatnot.

So now that I've written a blog post that, by all website usability rules is far too long, I'm going to end with a hopeful note about summer.

I hope summer rocks as much as I think it's going to rock.

O my child, why don't you love the sleep?

Day 2. Log. 8Am ish. I've been up since 2:30 ish (after going to bed around Midnight). Up with my daughter. For the second night in a row, she's on strike. The nightnight time management wanted to renegotiate her sleep agreement, and apparently she gave them a big mouthful of sass to the effect of, "No no no no NOO!" Either way, it means that for two days now she's blasted awake in the middle of the night with no apparent ailments needing attention, and also no interest in sleeping, unless said sleeping occurs on my shoulder while I stand and rock her.

Wednesday night, I stood and rocked her from around 4:45-6:15 before she finally relented and let me lay her back down.

Last night was far more complex. At first even the holding and rocking wasn't working. Sue and I ran the parent gamut--diaper check, food check, drink check, orajel check, no fever check, etc. She needed nothing. No gas, no nothing but a big pile of crab. To make it all worse, Sue is such a good mom, that she can't sleep if Molly's crying. Sue had to work in the morning.

So since it's day two of this and we decide to opt for the cry it out route. Tough love. Well although it's something that often works to help develop the ever lovely pattern of sleeping, last night it backfired; Molly jumped out of her crib for the first time. Not good. Thankfully aside from a scare, no damage taken. But there were still tears and lots of crabbing.

So I opted to take her downstairs in hopes that she'd fall asleep while we watched something. Fortunately The Heist was on HBO, and we caught it fairly early. We both enjoyed it. Which meant no sleeping for her. After that, there wasn't much good on, so I attempted to encourage sleep. Got her to lay on the couch with me...no real sucess there.

So it's 4:30 and I'm getting pretty crabby so we went upstairs and resumed the I'll-hold-you-and-you-sleep bit. It's a killer on the lower back, but she was sleeping at least. Anytime though I though she was enough asleep to lay her down, she snapped back up super fast.

Around 6 I was falling asleep standing. So I tried laying down on the floor with her on my chest. That bought us both an hour of sleep. Then she rolled and saw that the sun was up. So sleep time was over.

So far I'm feeling not too bad for 2 hours worth of sleep. We'll see how that pans out.

all I know is that Threequels suck. So tonight Molly, you better sleep like like a baby. But not like the baby you've been the last two nights.

Pedigogy and the 2009 CEA/PCEA Conference

A couple weeks ago I attended the annual PCEA conference, which this year was paired up with parent society, the CEA, for a conference at the lovely Omni William Penn in Pittsburgh. Since it was in the 'burgh, I got to cut cost and stay with friends, (and enjoy a nice metro ride into town). Overall, the conference was a pretty decent success as far as I'm concerned. Here are the highlights:

My own presentation:
Unfortunately, I was scheduled for the 1st panel on the first day; so I expected an audience of 0 much like last year's conference, but fortunately, we had two audience members in addition to presenters and moderator, so that was a 200% improvement. Things got off to a pretty good start. I read from "Deconstructing Happily Ever After," and it went ok-ish; nowhere near as fun as the smashing success the story had at Spalding, but still a pretty decent reading.

Flow
Also during that panelone of my co-presenters spoke about Flow and theories set by herself and Csikszentmihalyi regarding the process of writing and how it affects our minds. The presenter, Julie Kearney of Penn State Harrisburg expanded on Csikszentmihalyi's theories by studing the level of serotonin in the brain in relationship to the state of Flow a writer is in. Basically, achieving flow is that state that we as writers, (and by extension, I would imagine any artistic endeavor as well) come to when we lose sense of the world around us and are totally absorbed in our work; that feeling you get fleetingly when "the keyboard is writing for your, or if you're old school like Dave Harrity, when the pen is writing the poem." She found that Seretonin levels go up, which makes me think then that (and this is my own thought, not Julie's) that writing is somewhat addictive; we're always searching for that absorbative high, when we're fully geared in creative mode; and we hate coming down from it. I wonder if so many writers over history were also addicts (Faulkner and alcohol, Ken Kesey and LSD, etc) for this reason -- sort of short circuiting the true payoff. Julie also reported that she planned on running writing experiments with folks that can achieve flow where she inhibits seratonin to see what happens. Interesting stuff.

The New Historicism way of Responding to Student Papers
I went to a panel geared towards comp teachers that stressed a new method of using critical theory as a method to respond to student papers. Essentially, the presenter, argued that "Rubber Stamp comments" were doing nothing for our students and that New Historicism theory will allow instructors to better approach the students' work without making the students just appropriate what we tell them for a better grade. I like the idea behind this; teach the student how to write what they want, and communicate their designs well, but I'm unsure of its effectiveness in the sea of 100 essays every 2 weeks. I currently average between 10 and 20 minutes per paper, which places me at around 30+ hours worth of grading per essay. Adding a new historicism twist by showing students how their essays fit into the historical context of their writing realm, while not rubber stamping comments, sounds, to me, to be very time intensive. Our departmental meetings have constantly stressed that when commenting on student papers, less is more, and that students rarely, if ever, pay much attention to the blood on the page, so I've got to say that I'm not entirely sold on this model of response. It doesn't seem to have openings for structural, grammatical, and clarity issues, which are all too common. Perhaps I'm missing the point of this methodology. I can see definitley how it'd work well in more advanced classes for seminar papers, and even creative works, but it seems a bit too much for a freshman comp class.

Other Stuff
One of the better aspects of the conference was that I got to meet up with several former IUP professors and hear about the very excellent sounding revision they've done to the English curriculum at my alma-mater. When I transfered into IUP in 2000, I was aghast at how archaic and backwards IUP's English program was in comparison to Behrend's. Not only did it severly limit a student's ability to gain depth in Literarture studies, it allowed little avenue to specialize and/or excel in particular interests. I ended up spending a rather large portion of my final two years taking survey classes that struggled to cover massive amounts of literary time, and offered little depth, and because I had pretty specific interests (postmodern theory and creative writing), I ended up taking several more classes than I needed to graduate, just so I could satisfy some of my curiosities.

Fortunately now, IUP is offering a much more modernized track system with several different areas of specialty, and an expanded and updated list of courses. They'll be launching this program in the upcoming Fall 2009 semester, and by the looks of it, it'll be a smashing success.

McDonalds is Craptacular

Went to McDonalds today for a Shamrock shake--you know a green drink for St. Patty's day.
"Sorry we don't have those anymore," says the disconnected voice coming through the drive thru window as I STARE AT THE FUCKING PICTURE OF A SHAMROCK SHAKE ON THE PLACARD.

Assholes.

So I got a Frosty and Fries from Wendy's instead.


My daughter stole my fries....all of them.

Alone at the Top now live

"Alone at the Top," the first story I wrote for my first Spalding Workshop is now live over at The Wrong Tree Review.

If you have a moment, go take a look.