The spring semester begins next week, and I will return to my year-long project about my experience as visiting assistant professor. But I want to use this week to make an argument: if we want literary studies to remain a prominent feature of higher education, then we need to train our students to discuss their
I don’t teach on Thursdays, and early in the semester made the decision that I would spend that day working on things that don’t relate to teaching: research, when possible, but thus far mostly job market stuff (and not incidentally, most blog posts have been on Thursdays). I’ve stuck to that, generally, though I’m sure
Some of the concerns I had, coming to a new college, were about grades. Would student expectations be different? Would I find grading for three classes overwhelming? Would I grade too hard, or too easy? Would students complain about grades? I lucked out, a little bit, in that two of my classes are very small: