Freshman student: "So, I really need help with grammar. Can we work on that during this session?"
Me: "Sure" (thinking to myself "I can teach grammar, parts of speech and sentence type; no problem") "what do you have questions about?"
Freshman: "I really just don't get the predicate stuff; direct and indirect objects, subject complements, and transitive verbs."
Me: "ok...let's see" (thinking to myself, "dang, how much have I forgotten since eighth grade? I don't even remember what those are.") "Let's see what your grammar text book has to say about those things! It can be tricky, but I bet if we work through the book it will all become clear." (thinking to myself "I hope")
Another day in the life of a writing center consultant. I'm currently on a mission to make the writing center a more welcoming environment. The people in the center are very nice, but the wall hangings currently are large barnes & noble-esque framed posters of Virginia Woolf and Nathaniel Hawthorne (not the two most cheery literary figures between a biography that ends in suicide and a novel about adultery and hypocrisy). So, every week I put a new inspiring quote about writing on our otherwise unused chalkboard and I've started bringing in cookies. I really want some lighthearted decorations to sprinkle around the room, but that might come later when (and if) I have money to spend on such things.
Classes are going very well, and I feel like I've finally hit my learning groove in most of the classes. The heavy theological reading is pretty much over for my class on Religion and Literature in Early Modern England (there is only so much Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Moore, William Tyndale, Philip Melancthon, Erasamus, Martin Luther, and John Calvin a girl can handle) and we're headed towards poetry. I'm also reading a book for that class of my choosing for which I have to write a book review by next Tuesday called The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama, and it discusses the ways in which theatre by using religious props on stage both confirmed and undermined the Protestant desire to move away from a material faith towards an inward immaterial faith. It combines my interest in Drama, props and religion and I'm enjoying it a lot.
My pedagogy class continues to be eye opening, mostly because half of my classmates are currently teaching English 101, and I feel like I'm learning a lot from their shared experiences, frustrations and successes. My intro to the profession of letters class is also interesting. Last week we went on a field trip to the University of Maryland to visit their archives where I got to look at and touch the marriage certificate of T.S. Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a Christmas card he wrote to a friend, an early type-written with revision notes of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and a prescription William Carlos Williams had written. Most of us were in book nerd heaven. I also have an assignment for that class that will take me down to the Library of Congress in the upcoming weeks to look at 19th century British periodicals. I got my reading card for the library and have had a tour of their reading room, and it brought back lovely memories of doing work in the Radcliffe Camera at Oxford.
In other news, my roommate's sister who lives in Baltimore just had a baby boy, and Hannah is very happy. A week before she went into labor, Abby had Hannah and I over to make applesauce which was very much fun. Other non-school related activities have included a Friday night spent with Marie, reducing my bank account at H&M--my small wardrobe has grown disturbingly since moving to DC...have I become a clothing accumulator? I hope not!
Additionally, the weather in DC has taken a turn for the pleasant with cool sunny days after a mad string of humid rainy ones.
I think I'll wrap it up for now. Photo post to come!
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