It's 8:00 AM, and I'm sitting at the desk, looking out to what looks will be a nice day. The temperature's about 45 F, but it'll probably warm up to the mid 50's by noon although there are scattered showers predicted.
I've been collecting my favorite episodes of Roswell and Smallville and have them on my laptop. I think I'll transfer them to cd and carry them with me when I travel anywhere. I can watch them if I'm bored and not doing anything else when I'm away. But I think I spend too much time on the internet looking for and downloading stuff; I haven't really written anything in over a month. I need to get back to that; it's driving me nutty not putting anything down, not developing anything...
I've been working with more and more students; at least that's picking up. What I've been noticing is that most students who come in for help don't have any idea of what to write about. When I ask them what they're supposed to do, what type of paper they're working on, they're unsure. One of them did have something specific to work on, but the paper was all wrong. While she was supposed to critique a book, she just wrote a book report; I pointed out what I thought were her strong points, gave her suggestions on developing her paper, and she was happy with that. But most of the students aren't ever that specific on their assignments.
That reminds me of some of my classes. The first assignment I used to give was an essay on the difference between listening and hearing. I actually got the idea from a Newsweek Classroom idea and adapted it for my own, but it seemed to work. Once the students developed their essay, giving specific examples of each term and how they differed, I could refer to it throughout the semester and point out that they heard something I'd said, they didn't listen to what I was saying. I used to get many different papers for that assignment; one I specifically remember was so well written and such a good paper I suggested it be submitted to a local magazine, and it was published. The writer was thrilled. I'm sure I kept a copy of it somewhere in my files.
Well, it's getting a little busy, so I guess I'd better finish here...