Like the fact that I have to prepare teach in the first summer session which is only 10 days away! I've decided to do something different with the "theme" of the class this time around. I'm going to have my students read about space and place and the readings will be more challenging than what I've used in the past but I'm hoping that will be a good thing. Plus, I have chosen only four main readings for the summer session and am planning to have them do more assignments with each particular reading rather than having them work with a particular source only once before moving on to the next source. I hope the students will like it. I'm focusing on home, mobility (where the world is home), the city, and the wilderness. We'll see what happens.
SIDEBAR: My tea is still too hot to drink!
Speaking of space and place, I have to start working on my seminar paper tomorrow. It's due next Wednesday and I would absolutely love to have a complete draft by the time I go to bed on Monday night which means I have to be serious about writing over the weekend. The good thing is that I have done all the reading and research I need to do (or rather, that I'm planning to do) so I'm really at the point where I'm ready to write. I just need to sit down and write.
I turned in my seminar paper for my Victorian class this morning. Whew. So glad that that's done and out of the way. I wrote about the role of violence in The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling. I can't really articulate just how happy I am to be done with that paper because it represents the very last paper that I have to write on a particular topic to fit into the theme of a class. My space/place paper is much more interesting to me because it's on literature that I might be able to use in my dissertation and it's using space/place theory which I will also use in my diss so it's a win-win all around. I think that's why I'm just so ready to start working on it and seeing how it turns out. I also think that if it turns out well, this will be the paper that I continue to work on and revise over the summer and then try to submit it for publication near the end of the year.
I continue to edit the drafts of my exam lists. I think I've made good head way on my historical time period list. I've whittled the primary texts down to 53 (I don't even know how many were on there before but I know it was more than that) and I've begun to select specific poems and replace the "selected poems" place holder. The goal is to be able to have a revised draft of that list and my postcolonial theory list by the end of next week. But now that May 1st has arrived I'll be starting to read and let me just say what a daunting task that is shaping up to be. I just blew another $100 at Amazon on books, and I'm still not even close to being done buying what I want to have on my shelf by the time I start writing my exams. I don't want to have to worry about the library not having a book that I need or it being checked out by someone else or recalled. The first book on my list to read is Howards End by E.M. Forster and then I think I'll follow that with A Room with a View, also by Forster, so look for book reviews coming soon!
And lastly, I see June on the horizon, and that makes me recall last June when I wrote a +50,000 word "book" in 30 days. November just isn't a good time for me to participate in NaNoWriMo so I chose June instead last year and I'm thinking I'm going to try to write another "book" this year. There. I've put the idea out there so now anyone who reads this has carte blanche to bug me about whether or not I achieved my goal. Also, anyone reading this is invited to join me in my crazy month of writing. It's fun and rewarding and I highly recommend it. You never know. You could be the next Stephenie Meyer. he-he-he-he....
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