getting back in the habit

It's been hard to get back in the habit of blogging, what with moving and teaching and financial agony and all.

So today I taught my second class--really the first REAL day of teaching because I never get past the syllabus on the first day. I'm not even one of those nice teachers who gives a brief overview and lets them go early. I just spend a really long time talking about the syllabus and assignments and how I want things to go. This class is very different from anything I've taught because it is a senior-level single author course that I have designed. I do have mixed feelings about teaching this class as a grad student. I am ecstatic about the opportunity and I know that I am fully qualified to teach it, having done extensive research on O'Connor. But I wonder how I would have felt as an undergrad taking such a class from a grad student. I am taking it as a huge responsibility, but then I always consider teaching a huge responsibility.

On the first day of class I asked what experience students had with Flannery O'Connor, and very few had read anything. I naively assumed that they registered for the class because they were really interested in taking it, but no, just needed some upper level credit. One student said that she had not read O'Connor but knew she was a Christian writer and so was very excited about reading her work. Yikes! O'Connor is not offering a kind of Christianity that one finds in--well, that one finds much of anywhere. If she's open, though, I think that this student can have a profound experience reading O'Connor.

So today I was nervous before class because I was prepared to deliver the longest lecture I have ever given--I tend not to lecture--but also because I was coming to them after they've had their first taste of Flannery. (No fewer than seven dead bodies for today.) They were shocked but most of them are still on board, and the discussion went well. This is a good location to discuss O'Connor because many of the students do know the Bible and are familiar with religious symbolism, even if they don't consider themselves born again (and about half the class was surprised that the phrase "Bible Belt" was coined as a pejorative term). A major theme of the class is the fact that O'Connor has been the most influential critic of her own work and the question of a writer's critical authority. I'm excited to see where things are going to go.

We're moving Saturday and are not nearly packed up. There is a promise of cable internet coming by the end of the summer and I think that the decision has been made to wait on it. These things tend to take longer than anticipated, but I'm still going to school every day to teach, so I'll have access. Come September there might be trouble.

We're taking it easy tomorrow; O'Connor body count is low.