Sunday Night
It was good to really slow down over this long weekend, see family, friends, sleep a lot, exercise (every day but Thursday!), clean (a little bit). Now it is 8:30 Sunday night and I am starting to feel that end-of-the-weekend anxiety creep in. But I am in pretty good shape for tomorrow--not that many more papers to grade. And I just came back from a yoga class, so I am hoping the calmness in my muscles will carry me through the evening.
The papers I am grading are responses to two different personal essays/memoirs (students had a choice of which one to respond to)--one by Naomi Wolf recounting an abusive relationship with a boyfriend that she experienced at age 14 and one by Meghan Daum recalling the crushing disappointment she experienced when she met the man she had been carrying on an Internet relationship with for months and months (her story took place when she was in her 20s). I have been impressed and touched by many of my students' responses. Even the usually less articulate writers have been able to convey both a sense of compassion for the narrators of the stories and a more distanced and analytical understanding of how these narrators got themselves into the situations they describe and the meanings of the situations.
It's interesting because in class the students have not responded in a particularly active or engaged way when we talk about gender roles or relationships. But in their writing, they seem to have strong feelings to express about these subjects.
More another time.
The papers I am grading are responses to two different personal essays/memoirs (students had a choice of which one to respond to)--one by Naomi Wolf recounting an abusive relationship with a boyfriend that she experienced at age 14 and one by Meghan Daum recalling the crushing disappointment she experienced when she met the man she had been carrying on an Internet relationship with for months and months (her story took place when she was in her 20s). I have been impressed and touched by many of my students' responses. Even the usually less articulate writers have been able to convey both a sense of compassion for the narrators of the stories and a more distanced and analytical understanding of how these narrators got themselves into the situations they describe and the meanings of the situations.
It's interesting because in class the students have not responded in a particularly active or engaged way when we talk about gender roles or relationships. But in their writing, they seem to have strong feelings to express about these subjects.
More another time.
posted by Sarah Sometimes at 8:21 PM
2 Comments:
What kind of course are you teaching?
Freshman composition. Students read essays and short fiction from a collection on popular/contemporary culture and write their own essays in response. They also have to write a research paper on a topic of their choosing.
Post a Comment
<< Home