Queen Anne's lace is blooming, and you know what that means

 

For the past few weeks, I've been giving a sharp look to every white flower with a flat top and tiny flowers that I see on my walks.

"Don't worry--that one's yarrow," I said to myself a few weeks ago with some relief. 

But when the flower has a tiny purple flower in the middle of the white ones, I can't deny it any more: it's Queen Anne's lace. 

Why do I dread seeing this innocent flower? Because it signals that the summer is well and truly almost over and that the fall semester is just around the corner. 

When Queen Anne's lace appears, you can count on getting email requests that, when you respond to them, lead to the inevitable autoreply: I am on vacation-away from my desk (etc.) and will respond in a few weeks when I return. Their request is urgent, but reading my response is not, I guess. Did I make a rule in Outlook for everyone from whom I got an autoreply, and am I declining to respond for a few weeks until I'm good and ready to look in the folder (after they return)? Yup. 

You know that you have to start thinking about your classes, but during this few weeks--the season of Queen Anne's lace--they are Schroedinger's Canvas course space, so to speak: They exist in the state of being both ready to go (alive) and in need to lots of work (dead), but if you open them, you'll have killed them and will spend the last few precious weeks bringing them back to life. 

Since you only have about two or three weeks left, you have to decide where to gamble with your money, by which I mean brainpower, time, and attention: the mind-numbingly dull task that you have to finish, or the creative one that you want to throw caution to the winds and work on. You realize that you can't do both, so which do you choose? 

Both the literal weather and the academic climate are--let's call it extremely challenging--right now, so I will close by noting something positive: I've been swimming a lot this summer, something I enjoy. I am by no means a "real swimmer," with goggles & metrics about distance, but "a person who swims," which is to say getting into the cold water and swimming for enjoyment. 

But those flowers are reminding me that this part of the summer is rapidly drawing to a close. 

I like the summer air (a summer activities post)

 Over at nicoleandmaggie's, there's a post about what seasonal activities people enjoy. 

Here's ten things that I like:

1. The smell and feeling of the summer air, very early in the morning when it's still chilly and there's a bite to it so it's cold on your skin when you walk or run.

2. The smell of the summer night air in May, when there are lilacs.

3. The kind of conference where you're hearing about actual discoveries in your field rather than just interpretations of familiar lines of study. 

4. The kind of conference where you meet new people but can also sit on a porch in the dusk after sessions are over for the day, watching fireflies and talking with old friends and colleagues.

5.  Coming back from a conference and realizing, with deep relief, that you don't have to go to another one for a while. 

6.  Fending off, with a smile, recent retirees who are as eager as Crossfit enthusiasts or vegans to convert you to their way of life. 

7. Walking on hills, because it feels so good when you're going downhill. Walking by water, for the negative ions or whatever makes you feel better. Walking in the woods with the smell of dry pine needles underfoot. 

8. Staying off social media as much as possible and buying almost nothing online (see: Costco cult).  Fun fact: the airports now show influencers on TVs at the gate rather than news so that you can learn tips that you have already known for decades, like how to make festive ice cubes, and you can watch YouTube stars as in-flight entertainment.

9. Reading actual books.  My most recent read is Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road, which I read carefully twice. I know--another mid-century male--but he catches something about that time differently or in more depth than Updike or Cheever, and his evocative prose is not composed of chunky rocks.   

10. Picking sun-warmed strawberries in the garden and eating them right then.

Academic Year in Review and next steps

 Apologies for the long silence (March, really?). 

The semester and the academic year is over, so herewith is a reminder/self-reminder about this year, including what to repeat & what not to repeat, as I look forward. 

1. I poured my heart into my teaching this year. I came up with new assignments and added new readings. I tried to reach out to every student every week and definitely did so in the online classes. I figured out how to temper my rage at AI, which does not seem to bother anyone else at Northern Clime, and came up with a solution (hint: better rubrics) that addresses the issue without sending me on a pointless quest to report it to admin. 

I met with students. I was on campus and in my office all day multiple days each week. I went to student presentations and supported them. In other words, I showed up. 

I loved it. I loved the reading and the teaching and the students. No regrets about that part. 

Would I do it again? Not on your tintype. 

Did my students appreciate it, and did I gain new majors for us? Absolutely yes. Did I give them the best experience that I could devise? Yes. 

Did the administration value it? What do you think? As you may have heard about a billion times, teaching at an R1 is not highly valued unless I am "reflecting on my teaching" in a public performance countable for annual review metrics. I am not the boasting type, so what I heard back was "yeah, okay, teaching--well, moving on, what did you publish?"

Don't love something that doesn't love you back. 

2. I didn't publish much because see #1 above. Will I change my priorities next year? You bet. 

3. For the first time since I gave up administration, I had an extremely heavy service load this year, which counts for the width of a gnat's eyebrow in terms of value. 

So now, having Learned My Lesson, I'm looking forward to the summer and the next year with energy and hope. 

1. The big archival project I've been working on for years: moving forward more swiftly to completion.

2. The book project: I hope the same.

Here's wishing everyone a happy and productive summer! 

In which I am Ahab, and AI is guess who

 You would think that someone who has taught Moby-Dick would understand the dangers of becoming Ahab and giving in to monomania and hunting the white whale because "I'd strike the sun if it insulted me." 

I am really trying to learn this lesson. 

AI is not completely pervasive, as best I can judge, but the 3 or 4 students in each class who keep using it madden me: "He tasks me, he heaps me." It's like getting a bad student evaluation out of 25 good ones: you can't let it go. 

And I am alone in this quest: for in-class courses, in-class writing is the answer, but for asynchronous ones we're on our own.  

Neither the university's academic honesty policy nor its guidance are of any help. If students are using AI it is definitely our fault for failing to be understanding, or nice, or write AI-proof composition-style assignments asking for personal narratives about their childhoods or a local issue (guess what? determined AI-ers fabricate those, too). 

The official policy is to teach them how to use AI "responsibly" by rewriting it, and I'm stuck back in the 20th century trying to get them to read and think and analyze using their brains, so I'm the one out of step. 

Yes, AI detectors are unreliable (though some are better than others), but when you get a piece of writing about a complex novel 2 hours after it was assigned, and said writing does not sound like human writing (it's perfect and soulless), it's a little confirming so that I don't feel that I'm nuts for seeing it. 

Yet it gets to me. I know that academic dishonesty has now been handed over to instructors as a "you problem," but that doesn't mean it's easy to drop it. 

The rubrics take care of some of it, but not all. I hate having to call them in to talk to them about possible AI use, because I want them to be ethical and do the work because they want to and because I have killed countless hours trying to make it interesting and accessible. I want to think well of them. Before those meetings, I'm torn up about it and can't think of other work. 

So I try not to stew about it, and then I can't stop thinking about it, and then I spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about ways to get that white whale, and that way lies madness. 

Today when I sat down to grade, my eyes just plain shut (I am very tired). 

I don't know the answer, but I need to become Ishmael to find some balance. 

Two views of AI-assisted teaching (spoiler: I think I'm right and they're wrong)

When I teach online, I use tools that allow students to comment, some of which allow a longer response in a discussion board, and some of which allow line-by-line annotation of the kind you would get in hypothes.is. and assign an auto-grade. Let's call it hypothes.is for short. 

But based on the teaching philosophy I outlined in an earlier post--"I’m paying attention, and I hope that they are as well"--I have told them that I am reading everything they write in my class, and I am doing it, too. I turn off all the intrusive "AI can generate the instructor's responses for you" defaults lest they infect what's left of my brain. 

It is my (possibly touching and naive belief) that if you connect individually with students by responding to them, even if they are online, they will have a better experience and might be less likely to plop everything into ChatGPT or its numerous hellspawn siblings and give me AI instead of their thoughts. 

There are a few concessions to knowing that they might try AI. I've disabled copying and pasting, to "encourage" them to write their own stuff for two reasons. 

• First, if they use AI, they still have to type it out, and given how low-stakes this is, some of them might choose to do the work as the path of least resistance. I had a student inquire about not being able to copy and paste, and I said, "nope, not in this class."
• Some students in previous semesters have copied and pasted from another student's work, a bold move given that I comment and say things on the board like "that's what X said above" and privately "see me." If they don't think I'm reading responses, they might think I won't notice. I notice. 

The other day, I was talking to a colleague ("they" for anonymity) and mentioned that I had just spent a couple of hours responding to students in hypothes.is and writing individual comments. 

Colleague looked at me as if I had grown two heads. "Here's a tip. Don't you know that hypothes.is grades them? You don't have to read all those."

Me: "Yes, but I want to respond to the students."

Colleague: "I never read them! They talk to each other! I look at their questions and once in a while dip into the comments for fun. The grades post themselves."

Me: "I think it's important." 

Colleague just stares at me as if their opinion of my intelligence has just dropped by double digits. Clearly anyone who had any smarts at all, in their view, would stop paying attention to stuff like student comments.

My first thought was "IDGAF what you think."

My second thought was "Your poor students. No wonder they pile on the AI garbage and think no one is reading, because in some cases no one is."

Yes, all this time is time and brainpower I could spend writing. 

But doesn't someone have to pay attention?  

 

 

(Off-topic) Postwar hauntings: Dana Andrews and Don Draper

 Reposted from 2013 because this is Dana Andrews's birthday. The original post has a comment by Carl Rollyson, who wrote a great biography of Andrews. 

This is probably truly not of general interest to anyone except old movie buffs and Mad Men fans, so if you're neither, feel free to skip it.

If you think about a postwar character, a handsome, modern, alienated sort of man, one whose dark moodiness occasionally gives way to a smile that masks an inner sadness, you may think of Don Draper. As I was rewatching The Best Years of Our Lives a few weeks ago, it struck me that the actor Dana Andrews is the prototype for this character.  Like Don Draper, he's a creature of the time he's been born into yet always distanced from it. 

Andrews is probably best known as the detective in Otto Preminger's famous noir Laura, where he's a detective in the Raymond Chandler Lite mode--that is to say, cynical, hardboiled, with a few light wisecracks masking a serious attempt to get at the truth. This film defines the Andrews persona of the haunted man: here, what haunts him is a portrait, but elsewhere, there are other memories that haunt him. 

The part that Andrews pays in The Best Years of Our Lives is that of a returning war veteran whose high status as an officer disappears once he returns. The only job he can get is his old job, as a soda jerk, in a drugstore that's undergone a corporate takeover. He seemed to have everything--good looks, status, a bombshell of a wife (Virginia Mayo)--but now there's no place for him in this world. His skills as a bombardier are obsolete. Earlier, we've seen his PTSD, nightmares of a fire on a plane, a dream that he apologizes for. One of the movie's themes is that no one wants to remember the war, now that it's over, but that those who lived it can never forget. 

Near the end of the movie, Andrews  sits in the midst of an airplane graveyard, surrounded by the junked metal that a postwar world doesn't need.  He sits in the nose turret of one of the junked bombers, hearing the sounds of the bombing missions he made and realizing that he's also one of the nation's discards.

His reverie is broken by a voice from the future: the foreman of a construction crew that's turning wrecks into prefab housing. If he wants to live, he has to forsake the past, abandon his old identity, and start a new life. There's a happy ending of sorts for the film, but that haunted look is there to stay, along with the inner torment that inspired it. 

Last days of 2025

• Grades were turned in a few weeks ago, and I didn't get much AI slop, as far as I know. How do I know? Their writing was consistent with what they'd been doing in earlier (in-class) papers and daily in-class writings. 
• What did surprise me were a few students who had clearly dictated something vaguely related to the class into their phones or into Word, didn't read it, and slapped it into Canvas as-is.  I'm not sure whether this meant that they ran out of time and turning in something was better than turning in nothing, or whether they wanted to express a not-so-subtle resentment about the class. 
• How do I know? It looked like the raw results I get when dictating into Word. Word used to do a fair job of transcribing from dictation, but now it is AI-ified and makes a lot more mistakes, such as the lack of tense endings even when I'm clearly articulating. They should just have put "dictated but not read" at the bottom of the paper like the bigwigs of yore used to do with their correspondence. 
• I had vastly underestimated how tired I was from incessant travel and commuting, or rather how tired my brain was, over this endless semester, but I finally rallied to get a piece of writing out the door.
• The Christmas work (baking, shopping, cards, etc. etc.) is all done and was worth it for the result: a happy Christmas with family. And now I have a stack of lovely books to read and a recovering brain to read them with before school starts up again.
• No MLA for me this year. I didn't submit anything this year but hope it goes well for all who celebrate. 
• The first MLA I ever attended was in Toronto (as it is this year), but I'm not in a rush to travel across borders right now. 
• Also, going to each conference costs about $2200, even if I eat granola bars for some meals, and we are funded for $2000 a year. Are we expected to go to more than one conference? Yes. Are we reimbursed for more than one conference? Not on your tintype. 
• At this time of year, do you all review your productivity over the previous year? I spent Wednesday doing that and discovered that I have a lot more notes toward my next book project than I thought. That's hope for the future!

Wishing you peace and joy and happiness in 2026!

Mark Twain, AI, and the "Big Thoughts" Lie

It is Mark Twain's birthday--happy birthday, Mark!--and I am reading, or rather listening to, Ron Powers's biography of Twain as I drive and walk each week. I'm now in 1907, when Twain is basically past his authorship phase and well into his very creditable phase of anti-imperialist writings. And since it is 1907, an epic brouhaha is about to ensue with Isabel Lyon, his secretary/companion whose motives & actions have caused considerable debate for Twainiacs over the past many decades. 

But one of the key takeaways from any Twain bio is just how convinced he was of his own smarts as a businessman and just how much money he lost from that belief, from investing hundreds of thousands first in the Paige Compositor (which bankrupted him), to the miracle food Plasmon, to a new Jacquard loom printer for which there was no market. He would say he'd been a fool before, but this new thing would really work and make his fortune--once it was perfected, of course. 

I'm reminded of this because one of the big tech bro billionaires asserted recently that AI would revolutionize learning because we could teach children to focus on all the big picture stuff--big thoughts--and leave all the random junk like facts to AI. Since AI spreads literal fabrications like Johnny Appleseed on a mission, I thought he was kidding, but no. 

I've heard this "teach kids to reason abstractly and the rest will follow" stuff for 30 years, and you know what? Without actual facts or contexts, they can't draw any "big picture" abstractions that are worth anything. No one can. The reasoning that happens without a grounding in facts and contexts is nonsense.

And since nature abhors a vacuum, metaphorically speaking, we have become all too aware of what happens when we stop dealing with facts, and the news media stop reporting them to become either a mouthpiece of Jeff Bezos or worse. If we don't have facts and teach people how to think critically about the inferences we can draw from them, here's what happens: they make up their own, with "big thoughts" that emerge from their worst fears and impulses. (Insert your own example here.)

But the tech bros and ed tech bros aren't buying that AI can't do it all. As Michael Clune says in The Atlantic, trying to warn us about its limits: 

We don’t have good evidence that the introduction of AI early in college helps students acquire the critical- and creative-thinking skills they need to flourish in an ever more automated workplace, and we do have evidence that the use of these tools can erode those skills. 

There's that pesky word again--"evidence." 

And Charlie Warzel puts it even more bluntly: 

We are waiting because a defining feature of generative AI, according to its true believers, is that it is never in its final form. Like ChatGPT before its release, every model in some way is also a “low-key research preview”—a proof of concept for what’s really possible. You think the models are good now? Ha! Just wait. Depending on your views, this is trademark showmanship, a truism of innovation, a hostage situation, or a long con. Where you fall on this rapture-to-bullshit continuum likely tracks with how optimistic you are for the future.  

 So do we believe our own lying eyes about the effects of teaching "big picture" versus facts, or do we believe the tech bros? Or do we just plunge ahead while we wait for the AI rapture?

Twain believed that the Paige Compositor would outclass the Mergenthaler linotype machine once it was perfected--that is, to quote Warzel, "You think the models are good now? Ha! Just wait." 

TL;dr. At this point, AI in the classroom is the Paige Compositor, and we all now know how that turned out for our birthday boy. 

 

Why I am teaching like it’s 1990: no phones, no bikes, no motorcars—not a single luxury

Whether you recognize my subtitle from Gilligan’s Island or from Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise,” you’re still getting the gist of it: teaching old school style. What does it mean this semester? 

First of all, a disclaimer: my students this semester are smart and eager to learn, so these things might not work everywhere if, as happens to us all, you have a lethargic or uninterested class. But here are a few changes that evoke the 1990s Days of Yore:

• They write something short every day, on paper, and I collect it. I comment on and return their writing the next day, with handwritten comments, though it’s sometimes only a word or two. These are low-stakes assignments, but they (1) help with attendance, (2) provide guidance (through questions) on the kinds of things that are significant in the reading, and (3) act as a springboard for discussion.
• They also present their findings in class a lot, either alone or in groups after discussion. I listen and take notes and comment.
• If it’s not written in class, it didn’t happen. I’ve had a few try to AI & upload their way to an assignment after it’s been written in class, but nope—in class or it doesn’t count. There are dropped grades to account for absences, etc. Also, those in-class assignments aren’t posted until after the class. 
• They’re writing their papers in class, as I mentioned in August and September, and there are usually only a few weeks between some kind of activity or campus-based field trip. 
• Said papers (the final drafts) are printed out and returned with handwritten comments. 
• If they’re doing group or individual work before coming back to discuss something with the class, they can use their laptops/phones to look things up. Okay, that’s not a 1990 thing to do—but I am walking around & talking with them, making suggestions, and talking with them about what’s on their screens. If they don’t want me to see it, they shouldn’t be looking at it in a class space while working on class work.
• Remember transparencies? (Remember what?). No, I haven’t gone back to those, but I do print out passages for class-based close readings using the doc camera and mark it up as we talk.
• And, of course, there’s the whiteboard notes for discussion. Armed with markers and energy, I still make notes on it (recording their comments)  rather than standing at a lectern and doing the same thing on a piece of paper. Why? I’m not sure. It’s something about the space of the whiteboard and moving around in the classroom and darting to the back of it and making eye contact with them rather than with a sheet of paper. I get ideas from them as I’m synthesizing their ideas & asking questions. 

The general idea of all this is that I am engaging with them in real time and real life. I’m paying attention, and I hope that they are as well. If it can be done in person, that’s what we’re doing. 

I’ve explained to them that I’m trying to provide a space where we can talk, and where they can write, without being called to everything else in their lives. It’s busy out there, and there’s a lot demanding their attention. 

So there you have it—my pre-web (though not pre-Internet) 1990 class strategies in 2025. So far, it’s been working. 

Random bullets of September

•  First, the stuff you know: the news has been terrible and keeps getting worse. I thought we were a nation of laws and, you know, checks and balances, but All This is terrifying because laws are for the chumps like us that believe in them. We volunteer, and give money, and I canceled Disney (small victory there, as nicoleandmaggie have pointed out), but nothing's enough right now.
• But the old-school-style classes I set up for this year are going well, so that's good news. Lots of short-form writing assignments and lively class discussions make me want to go to class. 
• Side note: Sure, I can read their handwriting. Back in the olden days they wrote a lot (and longer papers, and more papers) in class regularly, and we all survived--even thrived. It goes against the sacred doctrine of multiple revisions for a paper, but have you ever noticed that sometimes their writing on the essay part of an exam is clearer and more direct and insightful than their out-of class work? I've seen this many times & thus don't worry too much about the sacred doctrine any more. 
• The students seem eager to connect, somehow. They chat with me after class, or when we go on our little library trips, or whatever. It's a human connection that (to me) is welcome after the Covid years. 
• The prep work is astonishingly a LOT. Rereading, prepping, grading, writing assignments--why, after all this time, am I surprised at how much time everything takes?
• I am on the road or away from home at least four days out of seven, and it is wearing me down. All those miles are making me tired. 
•  This means that on days I am not in the car (Sunday, maybe, or Monday if there's not a Costco hunting & gathering trip planned), I don't get much research done.  
• This also means that I'm getting a little testy with comments like "hey, I know what would be good! Let's all meet on [day when Undine isn't on campus] for some community building." Yeah, no thanks. 
• I did one of these extra trips early in the semester because I'd been asked to give a small local presentation, but "oops! we ran out of time! sorry" meant that it was a wasted trip. I'm now more careful with my time. 
• Long emails debating things are a complete waste of time. Have a meeting or shut up.  
• The weather is finally cooling off, so I guess that's the good news for now.  

 So, as Ishmael says--"time, strength, cash, and patience." I wish them all for you in October. 

Ready for another year?

 So, amid all this stuff (cutbacks and much, much worse), are you ready for another year? 

I think I am, despite what I'm hearing and seeing.

1. The AI train has truly left the station. From what I see around the news and at r/professors, there's kind of an arms race going on with professors trying to prevent AI use (white text, anyone?) and students keeping one step ahead of them. If you have an in-person class, the blue book solution is staring you in the face, but aside from that, we just have to figure it out, I guess.

2. Speaking of an in-person class, I'm excited to teach a course in the literature of a previous century that I haven't taught for a while. In addition to having them write drafts and exams in class,  I am devising hands-on activities so that they can really experience reading & writing back then. Think about these: 

(1) library scavenger hunts in regular and closed stacks for copies of the magazines and books that they're reading; 

(2) bringing in copies of the original manuscripts so that they can see and decipher what it looked like when it went to the printer; 

(3) bringing in some stick (dip) pens, paper, and ink so that they can try their hand at writing sans electronic technology.  Maybe they could try their hand at crossed writing? At writing in the style and with the method (pen & ink) of an author? We'll see how it goes. 

3.  Worried about whether the course will have enough students to run? I'm concerned about this, but admin doesn't seem to be, so as my mother used to say (she said it was from George Washington, though I doubt it): "Worry is the interest you get when you borrow trouble." If they give me a little notice, I'm game to teach (though with varying degrees of aptitude) anything except Chaucer or linguistics, so I won't worry about it. 

4.  What's concerning you this year besides the obvious?  

Edited to add: Anne and Gwinne, your comments are there now; sorry for the delay! 

AI is to Writing as Cheez-Whiz is to Cheese (File under “cranky rantsmanship”)

 

Hear me out. I promise you that this is written by a real person, and possibly a Cassandra.

Exhibit A: A long time ago, I had Feelings about the incessant cheerleading for Twitter that first the media, and then colleagues, were going on and on and on about. (That was in the Before Times, before Twitter became Evil X.) My academic compatriots all but posted signs saying "Twitter will save the world, or academic discourse anyway." Now we are all on Bluesky, which alarms right-wing pundit Megan McArdle, she of the "If you're old and poor, sucks to be you" school of economic growth, because there is no profit in it for her, but for a time it did seem that Twitter could be great, and Bluesky, pace McArdle, might get there yet. 

But the point was, the cheerleading was too much, as it had been for other tech that was supposed to transform teaching. 

Exhibit B: Enter the MOOC. Remember them and the quaint old days they represented? They too were going to transform education in all the best ways--turning us into glorified tutors for the MOOC 'n' Bake classrooms we would all be grading for--not teaching, just grading, because that is why everyone wants to teach. UCLA is already going there: an AI + MOOC combination that will transform the world. 

Now to Exhibit C: AI and writing. I've already complained about the mind-numbing effects of reading AI-generated prose and the lengthy knuckling under that the MLA has done in bowing to our new environment-destroying overlords. 

But now I'm seeing professional writers (no names, of course) embrace it as an idea factory. All they have to do is clean it up a bit to mimic their voice and bingo, there's a Substack or blog post. 

I read a few, and the whole "idea factory" thing? Not so much. If that's what ChatGPT 4.0 or Claude or Grok or any of the other idea factories generate what you  consider ideas, then okay. Whatever helps to monetize the site. You do you. If your idea of writing is tweaking some very anodyne non-content, then go for it.  

But all AI-generated prose, in a perfect world, would have a disclaimer: "AI wrote this, so decide whether you want to spend 3 or 5 or 10 minutes of your only precious brain life in reading it." 

Oh, and is it good for your brain to use AI to write for you? Maybe not.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/urban-survival/202506/how-chatgpt-may-be-impacting-your-brain 

If you want to eat Cheez-Whiz, it definitely has its uses. But don't pretend that it's a true aged cheddar like you'd eat with fresh apples. 

Same goes for AI writing.

 

Random bullets of summer research and writing

 

It's (mostly) summer, and I hope your writing is going well. 

(I hope that that does not sound too much like the ubiquitous email "I hope this finds you well", which I became aware of as a curiosity in 2010 and 2016 and now, according to the interwebs, is the hallmark of the AI-generated student grade-grubbing email.) 

For the past few weeks, I've set aside the big project and have been writing on a subject because I feel like it. 

It was a heady feeling. "Guess I'll write on this minor literary figure along with this major one," my brain said one day, and, since I'm now committed to writing something every day and have a goodly streak of days strung together, I went along with it. 

Some thoughts: 

1. It is sometimes just plain easier to grab a dozen books on the subject off the shelf and leaf through them or check the index to see if there's anything about, say, dragon scales or some other specific item. Easier than what? Going to the university library site, and then logging in, and then authenticating, and then searching, and then authenticating again, only to find that you'll have to order it anyway.

2. And if the book is there: trying to read it from the palm-sized square of text you can actually see after all the crufty frames and so on block the rest.  Or searching at HathiTrust, Internet Archive, or other often reliable repositories, only to discover that the minor literary figure's biographer has pulled it from the archive, apparently in fear that someone will read it sometime. 

3. The only drawback with the real (not virtual) books is that I really do need a book wheel, since building a book fortress on either side of me is suboptimal for finding things. 

In life news:

1. Not news exactly, but I have planted lots of kinds of thyme for a scent garden, and it is sturdy enough to walk on and smell the waves of lemon thyme, spicy orange thyme, etc. Between that, brushing my hand over the lavender to release its scent, and smelling the intense fragrance from my neighbor's lilacs, which is much stronger in the evening, all of this is a pleasant way to "touch grass," as they say, and calm down from the world news. 

2. It is somebody's job to keep track of whether my classes will fill in the fall (one already has), but blessedly, it is not mine.

Edited to add: So many apologies to people who commented! I thought this site was posting comments when it wasn't--sorry. 

Random bullets of another semester ends, and spring is here

 

How's everyone doing? The Economist cover says it all, really.

• Teaching.This semester is all done & in the books, except for grading. Based on all of your comments a long time ago (2011! We were all so young!) I'm providing a summary comment along with the rubric and telling them to contact me if they would like more inline detailed comments. 
• I kept a chart this semester of who actually looked at the extensive feedback I gave, since Canvas allows you to see whether the student clicks back in to see the comments. You'll be completely shocked to learn that the rate of looking at the feedback was about 30%, about the same number that ever looked at the Panopto videos, etc. 
• It didn't change whether I gave comments or not, but it did make me a little more understanding about why they still can't tell whether to put quotations or italics in a title, etc., and that I could save my breath--well, my iPad handwritten comments--because they weren't paying attention to it anyway. 
• I have been lurking over at the r/professors subreddit, which is teaching me (once I ignore the bitterness) all about tools: tools to gamify, like Kahoot (not doing that), tools to grade (not doing that, either), tools to catch AI (many of which seem sneaky to me). But there seems to be (again, ignoring bitterness) a sense that students are struggling with basic thinking & reasoning concepts, with reading even short materials, and with speaking up for fear of failure. With an online class, it's hard to detect those things.
• Speaking of which: I have 100% in-person classes in the fall and am the only tenured person in the department to be teaching 100% in person. I didn't ask for this, since I do like to teach online as well, but I'm kind of excited about it, since the experience a couple of years ago with the old-school methods (writing papers in class, working on revising them in class, exams in class, class discussion, etc.) was great. 

• Writing and Research. I've been writing faithfully every day, though it's all notes circling the new project rather than actual paragraphs I could put into the new book project. That time is coming, though.
  
• Conferences. Going to conferences is surreal. Budgets are being slashed, academe is under attack (you're saying "tell me about it!") but in the conversations I overheard, everyone keeps talking as though nothing is happening--"And after this fellowship, I've applied for X," "Are you going to Germany for Y conference?" etc. Loads of themes about environmental justice and the anthropocene and pious hand-wringing over climate change, all while we are burning up the atmosphere flying to these things when we could be doing them over Zoom. I confess to laughing out loud when a colleague brought up flying to a European conference about something something climate change and said "Are you kidding? No academic who goes to an in-person conference gets to preach about climate change without a raised eyebrow from the rest of us" or something to that effect. 
• Service. Still showing up in person for stuff, and often the only civilian (i.e., non admin) there. 
• The rest of it. Trying to walk in the woods, and read real books, and spend time by the water as much as I can.

Edited to add: I'm trying to comment on your blogs, but Wordpress, etc. is hurling so many obstacles that I'm not sure the comments are showing--sorry. 

Still hanging in there

 It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that there are distractions in the country & in academe right now (waves hands in the direction of everything) as we swing between rage & despair & fight on as best we can. 

Anyway, here’s some non-news content: 

Regular life

• After a —let’s just say “weather-filled”—winter, it looks as though spring is going to be here at some point, so hooray! There’s something in the sky right now, some unfamiliar light—could it be the sun? 
• We can’t hibernate for February any more, but it is only 28 days, and this is the last of it. I couldn’t hibernate, anyway: the birds and the squirrels rely on my filling the feeders.
• One of my cats has discovered that he can climb onto the hammock, which is one of those that swings wildly, and he is extremely proud of himself, as indeed he should be.
• I’m listening to Dan Jones’s The Plantagenets and keep thinking “well, it could be worse, like the winter of 1314 worse, so keep moving.” Oddly, this gives me some hope: if they got through it, you can, too. 
• Since vaccines have been available, I’ve had them all—but I am also older than dirt and experienced a lot of diseases before there were any vaccines for diseases except for smallpox, TB,  and (later) Polio. Both kinds of measles, including one with a high fever during which I hallucinated voices; scarlet fever; mumps; chicken pox; shingles (yes, as a child)—you name it, I had it. My point is that seeing these come back is only one of the worst things that this kakistocracy has visited upon us—is plague next?—but it’s also one of the most pointless.

Teaching life

• We’re now, what, 4-5 years post-Covid, but I don’t think the students have recovered. I’ve tried to scale up the assignments a bit but received pushback that it was too much. Bear in mind that what I’m assigning for grad and undergrad students is about 2/3 of what I used to assign 10 years ago, but they seem to be really suffering under the workload, so I accommodate as far as possible. 
• I order books, but it seems that they will not buy the books. Would I rather have them have a chance at reading the materials, or would I rather have them buy the books & lose out if they don’t? I scan & OCR them & post them & hope that this makes reading possible for them.
• Lest I get a swelled head about making a difference with my awesome video lectures and extensive feedback on papers, I’ve checked to see the viewership of both. About 1/3 of the students watch the lectures, and about the same number actually look at the feedback I give. I guess making a difference for those who care is enough, right? 
• On the other hand, some students have reached out to say that they appreciate either the feedback or the lectures, so that’s a win.

Research life

• I’ve been writing most days, although it’s almost all reading & writing, making notes and working through ideas rather than creating finished prose. It’s kind of exciting, since the writing itself seems to generate the ideas—not a new concept, of course, but it seems to be working.
• I’ve also made progress on the collaborative project and can see the light at the end of one of the tunnels, anyway. 
• Conferences are coming up. They’re kind of the “return to work” version of academic life, but apparently virtual conferences can’t slake academics’ relentless thirst for travel and spending money in search of community. The COVID-era virtual experience wasn’t enough, apparently. 

I hope you’re all hanging in there!

Welcome to 2025!

Undine: "Welcome to 2025! New year, new me! This is going to be the year when I get so much writing ---"

Covid enters the chat, with a positive test line so reddish-purple that it looks like a murder scene.

Oh, well, eventually I will feel better. 

In the meantime:

• The fires and the political scene are terrible, but you already knew that.
• Reading actual books instead of doomscrolling through the now-canceled WaPo & NYTimes is better for mental health.
• Columnists like Jennifer Rubin have quit and have now gone to our old friend Substack. While I admire that in principle, it's the whole cable & streaming services thing all over again: you pay for cable, and then you pay extra for Hulu, Apple+, Netflix, etc.
  
• Teaching is going well, and if Covid 1.0 taught us anything, it's that we can hop on Zoom for a class or two if we are not too sick to teach but too sick to risk infecting others.
• Everyone on my social media counts the number of books that they read in a year and then posts it at the end of the year. I've never done this & don't remember seeing this before. Questions: Does everyone keep track like this? Should I start doing this? 

Hope your new year is going well!

 

Waning days of 2024

 

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and (nearly) Happy New Year! I mostly wanted to post in order to give you this peaceful picture to ring in the new year.

Academics think of the new year as beginning in the fall (because of classes), but I'm hoping this will be a new start. Herewith some wishes for myself and anyone else who would like them: 

1. For having a better work-life balance.

2. For finding new interests (crafts such as paper-making? more focus on local history?) and new sources of joy.

3. For finding more time for what matters. I've canceled both the New York Times and the Washington Post (sorry, Carolyn Hax) for their relentless cheerleading of guess-who. Anyway, I find more of WaPo's actual news reprinted in my local paper, since their digital format is all silliness and Trump. 

4. For spending less time on teaching, however fascinating I find it.

5. For getting unstuck and unstalled on one writing project and finishing a major part of another project.

6. For being outside more and using my standing desk adapter thingy (not a real standing desk) to stop the fidgets when writing. 

I wish you all joy, happiness, and peace in the new year!

Brave new AI world: UCLA comp lit course to be fully AI (except the grading, of course)

 https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/comparative-literature-zrinka-stahuljak-artificial-intelligence?fbclid=IwY2xjawHCkWJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHevSkyx0i5RjId-pd4g4_W-cs4zgTUOz19XwrxVpLU7LD2jt9E4FEkX7Jw_aem_LRrvJbHS0TFgq9uokRfYFw

So here we are: some kind of highly monetized tech company called Kudu is going to take Professor Zrinka Stahuljak’s comp lit course materials and turn them into a fully AI-driven course—except for the grading, of course, which will be left to Teaching Assistants. 

Benefits to students? Consistency across multiple sections. 

Benefits to Teaching Assistants? They get to work on the students’ writing (autocorrect wants to make this “writhing,” and I kind of get it).

Benefits to the Professor? No additional work except for submitting grades. She doubtless has tenure and is not worried about her job. 

Any downsides? 

1. Well, the TAs are going to be stuck reading writing that is likely to be about 95% AI generated (ChatGPT, Claude, Google Notes or whatever) and maybe 5% from Chegg or Course Hero. And they will get to track it all down to report to Academic Standards.

2.  If you were a student, would you put forth your best effort, knowing that everything was canned and your professor was never going to look at any of it? If your professor was like the Karl Marx God in the clouds in a Monty Python skit, who, once having generated content, just says “Get on with it!”? Look, I teach online often, and one of the hardest but most rewarding parts is talking to students as real person to real person. What if you remove even that layer of connection?

3. Who’s going to answer their questions? AI. 

4. Oh, and the textbook that will generate all the AI? Is it OER? Oh, you sweet summer child; of course it’s not. It’s going to cost the students an additional $25 per semester. 

5. If this is the wave of the future—the MOOC of the future, if you will—what about intellectual property? 

Questions:

1. Is this going to cost the university more than simply having a course in D2L, Canvas, or Blackboard? 

2. Since Kudu is compensating the professors, how does this affect their employment with the university? 

3. Cui bono? Kudu and the University’s bottom line, probably. But what about the students? What about the connections that teaching a humanistic subject is supposed to foster? 

4. Out of state tuition at UCLA is 43K a year. Would you send your kid to be taught by a bot? Call me when Bezos and the other billionaires and millionaires send their students to be taught by nonhuman objects instead of people. 

Dear Ms. Undine answers your top 3 nonacademic advice column questions

 

And now for something completely different: I'm shifting gears by resurrecting Dear Ms. Undine for a post.

As an avid if shamefaced consumer of advice columns, I've seen more than a few questions and answers recur over the years: these are the absolute perennials. The questions and answers below are replies to  just the relatively lighthearted ones, not the ones where people are trapped in bad situations, etc. 

Ms. Undine is going to dispose of these in a sentence or so, although advice columnists are much more nuanced.

Dear Ms. Undine,

I sent my young grandchildren gifts, but they don't send me handwritten thank you notes. Sometimes they call or text, but it's not the same. I am miffed and stewing over this incessantly. Should I stop sending them gifts? What should I do? -- Fretful

A. Dear Fretful,

Did I miss something? They're your grandchildren, as in children. Sure, you can stop sending them gifts, but tell me: how is this going to improve your relationship with them? Also: get a hobby. 

Q. Dear Ms. Undine,

I've been living with my boyfriend for seven years, and we get along well. I would like to get married and have a family, but he says "maybe later" or "I don't want to get married." How can I get him to propose? -- Limbo

A. Dear Limbo,

There's nothing wrong with living together forever without being married, but if you want to get married, he is not the person for you. If he wanted to marry you, he would. Sorry. 

Q. Dear Ms. Undine,

I am planning a destination wedding to Antarctica, and the wedding aesthetic for My Special Day is that everyone wear yellow with purple feathers in their hair or they can't come.  I've already told everyone that they can't get married/have children/get engaged in the next year because it is My Special Year. It's going to be amazing, but people are refusing to attend. How can I get them to stop being so selfish and realize that My Special Day will be the event of their lives? - Bride of a Lifetime

A. Dear Bride,

Have you considered that they have lives, limited money, limited vacation time, and perhaps a limited tolerance for entitled shenanigans? Sorry--stupid question. 

Town without Pity

 If you can't stand any more election stuff, skip this one.

 

This song (music by one of my favorite Old Hollywood bombastic composers, Dimitri Tiomkin) has been running in my mind for the last, oh, 6 days since November 5. In case you don't want to listen to a pop song/movie title music from 1961: "No, it really isn't pretty / What a town without pity can do." The lyrics are talking about young lovers, but I'm listening to the part that's something about "this crazy planet falls apart." 

 

She ran a great campaign, and we supported her with as many dollars as we could muster. Those who held back from voting, or voted again for the worst president in American history, have put us here, and here we are. 

So we're about to see an administration without pity, only with more juice from billionaires, a corrupt right-wing Supreme Court, and, as Mad Magazine used to say, "the usual gang of idiots." 

I'm sure you've all seen this great  meme, from https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1870771-leopards-eating-peoples-faces-party: 

The Leopards Eating People's Faces Party is in power now, and, to complete the pity theme, I am having a very tough time dredging up any pity whatsoever for people who voted for that man and are now in for a world of hurt--like the rest of us, of course, but at least we tried.

Hope you are all doing well.