Taking a Breather

I made it through Dramatic Analysis, Aristotle and all. Our final was on Friday. Hopefully I did well enough on the final and the final project paper to get a B. I'm convinced I will never get an A from this prof since he thinks I can't write. I get really irritated when I get comments on my papers saying I am "off topic" or I am bringing in outside material. I was not off topic and the outside sources I used strengthened my thesis. Apparently not - HA! I thought students were supposed to be critical thinkers and to use what they know and/or can find to support their work. Guess I was wrong about that too which means I am teaching my English Comp students bad things, like how to think critically. Oh, the horror!

At any rate, my next class doesn't start until July 7, so I have a bit of a break, but not really. We have 4 books to read for this class, 2 of which are to be read by the first day. Guess what I'll be doing next week? I am taking at least one day to do nothing school related however, because after DA my brain is pretty fried. I need to work on something that will give me pleasure not pain - LOL. I'm going to go back to working on a play project I've had on the backburner for a while. I need to recharge my creative batteries big time!

The Summer of the Play

As a playwright, I should embrace this, right? Ordinarily I would, but reading 10 plays in about a month and writing papers on most of them, with "Everyman" reserved for the final exam, is a bit on the stressful side. A plot paper on "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a character paper on Moliere's "The Imaginary Invalid," and a diction paper on "The Adding Machine," is not my idea of a fun time with plays. On the up side, I am reading 6 of Sheila Callaghan's plays and writing my project paper on her work. That does make me happy. I think my eyes might fall out by the end of the summer though. Not only do I have all the reading (and writing) for the current class, but I also have 4 lengthy books to read for the second summer session class. I'll be brain dead by the time summer school is over. Good thing I get a break to recharge before I start all over again in the fall - LOL! Every day I ask myself if this will all be worth it in the end. Some days the answer is yes and some days no - depends on the day.

Do the Happy Dance!!

We finished Aristotle today. Time for the happy dance. The undergrads are taking a 60 question multiple choice exam tomorrow. The grads get to write a paper - a chapter by chapter one-two sentence distillation of what the chapter is about and then a response to the entire thing - that is due on Monday. Lucky for me I'll get to spend all day Saturday working at the box office. That gives me plenty of time to write the paper. We have a list of our chosen playwright's works due on Friday. We're meeting tomorrow while the undergrads are slaving away at the exam to further discuss the project. What fun! At least I got approved for the playwright I really wanted to do my project on, Sheila Callaghan. I'm looking forward to this project, for a change. Ah well, it will soon be all over. Class ends on June 25 and the final is June 26, then a break until the art class starts on July 7. I just hope all those books we have to read for art get here in plenty of time for me to get them read before the class starts - 4 books and the longest one is 500+ pages. My eyes might fall out and this is my summer to re-read "War & Peace"for the I don't know how manyth time!