Windchimes

fizzle phhhhhhhhht

I turned in the last essay of the semester, my last assignment, earlier this morning. One more semester, all wrapped up. I should be spinning and twirling for joy, or decompressing with the aid of some sort of mind-numbing chemical, whether inhaled or imbibed, like so many other college students. Might still do that later this evening. All the grades aren't in yet, but my part of the work is done. I'd like to speculate on how well or badly I did it, but I'm afraid of jinxing things, somehow. Anyway, it's not up to me to decide how well or badly I did the work. I write it, they grade it, that's the deal.

Whatever notes get posted on my transcript for this semester, it's been productive. I just feel like I fizzled flat here at the end. The final projects...well, I said I wasn't going to speculate about those. Instead, I'll try to assess the semester in its totality.

First, the poetry class. However I did on the final portfolio, the sustained work required of us during the course of the semester built some skill-building habits for me. I wrote a reading response to a poem in my poetry journal a few minutes ago, although no one will ever read it. Doesn't matter. I learned, from having to write those responses, that sometimes I don't discover something cool about a poem until I start examining it closely enough to write something about it. I've also written in other sections of the journal since the last time we had to turn it in for the professor's perusal.

In an evaluation other than the official university bubble form evaluations, our professor asked us how the work involved in this course compared to other 4000 level English classes we've taken. I told him it involved substantially more work than any of my other 4000 level English classes. He sounded kind of surprised and said "that's just what I do." Well, that's intimidating, but if that's what he does, judging from the poetry of his I've read, I'd do well to emulate it. I just keep wondering what kind of vitamins he takes. Still, I don't really understand why he found the comment surprising, since some of his colleagues said to him, during the semester, that they were totally intimidated by the amount of work we were required to do.

Not that I got all of it done. My journal only contained the correct number of entries the last time we had to turn it in. My number of entries were substantially lower than the required number at least on two occasions. Still, I guess with all that volume of work, missing some of it doesn't affect your grade as much as missing some of a small number of required work would. It's more like taking a few cups of water from a lake versus taking a few cups from a puddle.

I've taken courses with one other poet-professor, and have to say the work involved in those compares in volume, although those classes didn't involve as many writing assignments. He made up for it with reading assignments. A friend of mine has taken a course with another professor who writes poetry, and it sounds like his courses are pretty intense as well.

My daughter asks why I keep signing up for them. I'm taking another course with my poetry professor in the Fall. He makes me write, that's why. Lots and regularly. Some of what I write turns out good, some not so good, but the odds on the good increase with the practice.

On to my contemporary fiction class. We read Raymond Carver short stories, novels by Cormac McCarthy, Octavia Butler, Penelope Lively, Scott Bradfield, and Percival Everett. My favorites were Bradfield, Butler and Everett, to go in alphabetical order. If there's one more thing I wish I'd gotten out of that course, though, it would be more of a grasp on how these novels fit into postmodern critics' conception of postmodernism. Now that it's all over, I wish I'd read some Fredric Jameson before it all got started. But a friend of mine has one of his books, so maybe I can borrow it in the interim. If all my ambition doesn't dissolve and fly out my ears between semesters.

The contemporary German Film class...not the first film class I've ever taken, but I still learned a ton of film critiquing jargon, as well as about film criticism techniques. Mostly in German, but those kind of concepts and terms usually translate pretty easily. Matter of fact, a lot of the terms are so close to English, they might as well be.

The German Immersion weekend was available as a one-credit course this semester. The decision to sign up for that was a no-brainer. Since most of the folks I'd attended those things with before have graduated and moved on by now, it wasn't quite as much fun as the first two, but it was just as valuable in terms of the practice keeping my brain in the German mode for the duration.

Then there was the Yoga class. One credit, doesn't count toward graduation. Saved my sanity more than once. Will have to find somewhere to sign up for Yoga classes.

Okay, I think I've satisfied the monster for the moment. Time to get some lunch.



J.H. Larrew
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