Monday, January 29, 2007
Commence blog dump
Warning: you are entering a low-coherence zone. Hardhats optional.
The first album by Hyper Static Union is currently blowing me away. Sample lyric from "Now That It's Over":
I was clinging to the very thing that held me down
Then I fell in love with the beast that kicked me around
I was defending the criminal that killed me
I was biting the hand that healed me
They're kind of Queen and kind of P.O.D. and I haven't figured out what else yet. They surprise me. My wife's comment was "We approve of the harmonies."
Apparently, Century College has a blog. Who knew? It's kind of fun--different comments by students. I don't know who's doing it--hadn't heard about it until the always-reliable writing center coordinator tipped me off.
I have been trying to think of a really witty way to express my disappointment with Pan's Labyrinth. I can't. It's just pretty dreary and not very fantastic at all. It may be a fantasy movie for people who don't like fantasy, at least based on how many critics are all excited about it. Fair warning is this: if you've seen a TV commercial for it, you've seen pretty much every cool fantasy image in it. The rest is all dreary real world war stuff. If that's your thing, enjoy.
I'm hopeful that Cornerstone, the church my wife and I attend, is headed into a time of deepening and maturity. They need to get strong quick, because Barry asked me to preach on March 18, so who knows what damage I'll manage to do. I know that yesterday we had two great worship services. For me, it was great 'cause I've finally gotten where I really can worship when I'm playing. It's partially about having achieved enough technical skill that I can play without constantly thinking about it, but it's more a matter of the heart.
My semester is off to a great start. I'm still trying to figure out how to get authentic questions, especially questions generated by students, at the center of all my classes, but that's an ongoing issue that I don't ever expect to "solve."
I'm behind on my work for the new comics class that starts in fall. I still hope to have it mostly in shape before the semester ends so I don't end up spending all summer working on it. But I need some dedicated time to put together documents and make final decisions about what projects to do and build the D2L site and all of that. And I've got a lot of comics to read.
My life is very painful, and you should pity me. ;)
Plus Century has adopted Persepolis as the college's "common book" for 2007-2008. The era of comics at Century College begins Fall 2007!
So I'd better go get ready for it.
The first album by Hyper Static Union is currently blowing me away. Sample lyric from "Now That It's Over":
I was clinging to the very thing that held me down
Then I fell in love with the beast that kicked me around
I was defending the criminal that killed me
I was biting the hand that healed me
They're kind of Queen and kind of P.O.D. and I haven't figured out what else yet. They surprise me. My wife's comment was "We approve of the harmonies."
Apparently, Century College has a blog. Who knew? It's kind of fun--different comments by students. I don't know who's doing it--hadn't heard about it until the always-reliable writing center coordinator tipped me off.
I have been trying to think of a really witty way to express my disappointment with Pan's Labyrinth. I can't. It's just pretty dreary and not very fantastic at all. It may be a fantasy movie for people who don't like fantasy, at least based on how many critics are all excited about it. Fair warning is this: if you've seen a TV commercial for it, you've seen pretty much every cool fantasy image in it. The rest is all dreary real world war stuff. If that's your thing, enjoy.
I'm hopeful that Cornerstone, the church my wife and I attend, is headed into a time of deepening and maturity. They need to get strong quick, because Barry asked me to preach on March 18, so who knows what damage I'll manage to do. I know that yesterday we had two great worship services. For me, it was great 'cause I've finally gotten where I really can worship when I'm playing. It's partially about having achieved enough technical skill that I can play without constantly thinking about it, but it's more a matter of the heart.
My semester is off to a great start. I'm still trying to figure out how to get authentic questions, especially questions generated by students, at the center of all my classes, but that's an ongoing issue that I don't ever expect to "solve."
I'm behind on my work for the new comics class that starts in fall. I still hope to have it mostly in shape before the semester ends so I don't end up spending all summer working on it. But I need some dedicated time to put together documents and make final decisions about what projects to do and build the D2L site and all of that. And I've got a lot of comics to read.
My life is very painful, and you should pity me. ;)
Plus Century has adopted Persepolis as the college's "common book" for 2007-2008. The era of comics at Century College begins Fall 2007!
So I'd better go get ready for it.
Monday, January 15, 2007
T minus 2 days, and counting
Yesterday morning as I was setting up to play at church, I noted the date on my song list, and it suddenly hit me that school starts on Wednesday.
There is absolutely no sensible reason why this should have hit me suddenly. This has been a very long break--maybe even too long, though mostly it's been a blessing. And I've known it was coming. I worked a couple of weeks ago to get everything up and ready, did more here and there last week, and even went to campus for a couple of meetings at the end of last week. It's no surprise to me that we're almost there.
But somehow on Sunday it felt shocking. I don't know what that's about.
Part of it, perhaps, is that I'm excited but uncertain about this semester. I'm trying to push out of the easy comfort zone I'd fallen into and do the real thing, and that means it doesn't feel automatic anymore. Everything is thrown open to questioning again. Conclusions I'd drawn before about how grading should work, how to start a semester, how to use our time, are all back out in the open. That's good, it's necessary, but it makes me a little antsy. The old way may have had plenty wrong with it, but I'd done it before, and there'd never been a crushing disaster. With the new way, no such guarantee.
And that's the thing about being real, I guess: the guarantees go out the window. Jesus was the most authentic person ever, and he got lied about and beaten and killed for his trouble. And some of the people (a lot of them, really) he reached out to didn't take what he offered.
So I resolve (once again) to set aside safe and do the real thing. On the surface it may not look that much different, or parts of it may get me into trouble. As I think about ways to connect deeper with students, a colleague I respect greatly cautions me that such behaviors might be disruptive to the department, if it appears that some students are getting some kind of "special treatment." And that could be just the first of many things. But as I think through my years of teaching, the ones that matter the most to me are the ones where somehow I made real connection. And the common factor there seems to doing the best teaching I can while being authentic. We'll see what the new semester brings.
And JQ, frisbee sounds like fun--but I think it may have to warm up just a smidge before I join you.
There is absolutely no sensible reason why this should have hit me suddenly. This has been a very long break--maybe even too long, though mostly it's been a blessing. And I've known it was coming. I worked a couple of weeks ago to get everything up and ready, did more here and there last week, and even went to campus for a couple of meetings at the end of last week. It's no surprise to me that we're almost there.
But somehow on Sunday it felt shocking. I don't know what that's about.
Part of it, perhaps, is that I'm excited but uncertain about this semester. I'm trying to push out of the easy comfort zone I'd fallen into and do the real thing, and that means it doesn't feel automatic anymore. Everything is thrown open to questioning again. Conclusions I'd drawn before about how grading should work, how to start a semester, how to use our time, are all back out in the open. That's good, it's necessary, but it makes me a little antsy. The old way may have had plenty wrong with it, but I'd done it before, and there'd never been a crushing disaster. With the new way, no such guarantee.
And that's the thing about being real, I guess: the guarantees go out the window. Jesus was the most authentic person ever, and he got lied about and beaten and killed for his trouble. And some of the people (a lot of them, really) he reached out to didn't take what he offered.
So I resolve (once again) to set aside safe and do the real thing. On the surface it may not look that much different, or parts of it may get me into trouble. As I think about ways to connect deeper with students, a colleague I respect greatly cautions me that such behaviors might be disruptive to the department, if it appears that some students are getting some kind of "special treatment." And that could be just the first of many things. But as I think through my years of teaching, the ones that matter the most to me are the ones where somehow I made real connection. And the common factor there seems to doing the best teaching I can while being authentic. We'll see what the new semester brings.
And JQ, frisbee sounds like fun--but I think it may have to warm up just a smidge before I join you.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
To blog or not to blog
That is the question.
Look, I'm erratic. Scroll down to the post before this, brush the cobwebs off it, and you'll see I took three months off. And it's not like a lot of people are eagerly reading this.
But if I tried to get more consistent, maybe some people would. There are a few people I email who periodically ask me how it's going--and the blog could indicate that. I could use it to be more connected with my family. But the multiple audiences get tricky.
'Cause my family would probably just be hurt and mortified to read some of my opinions about some things. And my students too might be better off not hearing some of my blunt opinions out of the context of our class. They might draw some false (but understandable) conclusions about what I think about them. The things I want to say to the people I go to church with are not necessarily the same as the things I want to tell the people I work with.
Oh, I know, the culture of the Internet is largely that you can find any kind of offense you're looking for without much trouble, and that you have to pick what you read and take it with a grain of salt and remember that YMMV. But I don't want to take that as license to be cruel. I don't want to hurt my parents by rubbing in their faces how different some of my opinions are from theirs. I don't want a bunch of people at Cornerstone being alarmed about me.
Well, I want some of the people at Cornerstone to be alarmed, actually. But mostly either people I'm close to or people who are in positions to do important things. And I want them to be alarmed about thinking about what it really means to be disciples of Jesus, not to be alarmed that I read a comic book with dirty pictures in it.
I don't want students to read my blog and mistakenly think that I will grade them more harshly if they don't share my religious convictions or my politics or my preference for movies or music or sports teams.
So the question is, what now?
It's out of the question to try to keep multiple blogs for multiple audiences. I've experimented with that and never gotten any good results from it. I could keep this one blog and limit the audience for it, but I'm not sure where the limits need to be.
Maybe that's not true. I think I know where the limits need to be. If someone gives some indication that they want to know what I think, then here it is. In pieces, erratically.
So if you're reading, don't take anything here to be ALL of me. It's a bit of me, at this moment. I don't expect you to agree with me. I won't love you any less (or more) based on how you react to this.
But here are five things in my head right now:
Look, I'm erratic. Scroll down to the post before this, brush the cobwebs off it, and you'll see I took three months off. And it's not like a lot of people are eagerly reading this.
But if I tried to get more consistent, maybe some people would. There are a few people I email who periodically ask me how it's going--and the blog could indicate that. I could use it to be more connected with my family. But the multiple audiences get tricky.
'Cause my family would probably just be hurt and mortified to read some of my opinions about some things. And my students too might be better off not hearing some of my blunt opinions out of the context of our class. They might draw some false (but understandable) conclusions about what I think about them. The things I want to say to the people I go to church with are not necessarily the same as the things I want to tell the people I work with.
Oh, I know, the culture of the Internet is largely that you can find any kind of offense you're looking for without much trouble, and that you have to pick what you read and take it with a grain of salt and remember that YMMV. But I don't want to take that as license to be cruel. I don't want to hurt my parents by rubbing in their faces how different some of my opinions are from theirs. I don't want a bunch of people at Cornerstone being alarmed about me.
Well, I want some of the people at Cornerstone to be alarmed, actually. But mostly either people I'm close to or people who are in positions to do important things. And I want them to be alarmed about thinking about what it really means to be disciples of Jesus, not to be alarmed that I read a comic book with dirty pictures in it.
I don't want students to read my blog and mistakenly think that I will grade them more harshly if they don't share my religious convictions or my politics or my preference for movies or music or sports teams.
So the question is, what now?
It's out of the question to try to keep multiple blogs for multiple audiences. I've experimented with that and never gotten any good results from it. I could keep this one blog and limit the audience for it, but I'm not sure where the limits need to be.
Maybe that's not true. I think I know where the limits need to be. If someone gives some indication that they want to know what I think, then here it is. In pieces, erratically.
So if you're reading, don't take anything here to be ALL of me. It's a bit of me, at this moment. I don't expect you to agree with me. I won't love you any less (or more) based on how you react to this.
But here are five things in my head right now:
- The Kansas City Chiefs picked a really stupid week to experiment with running the Minnesota Vikings' offense.
- Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What --while I disagree completely with about 4 points in it-- gets to the heart of one of the most important ideas that modern Christians need to wrestle with: Christianity as about relationship, not abstractions.
- As the new semester starts, I'm going to be turning more of my attention to relational issues. I'm trying to use that as a guide for how I use the time available to me. In my classes, I'm trying for better balance of "getting it done" and "slowing down to dig deeper."
- It is time--way past time, actually--for Christians to absolutely respond to the GLBT community with love. We must immediately cease all efforts to politically or socially oppress them. We must even quit worrying about publishing our notion that sexual deviance is sin. (Not that all Christians 100% agree with that, which we need to admit.) None of us are worried about making sure everybody knows we think greed is sin, and everybody around us is greedy. We need to show these people we love them so that they know that God loves them. No more attacks. No more fear-mongering. No more hatred.
- I start my "comics as literature" class in fall, and whatever "spare" time I have this spring will be spent getting it put together. This is great news for me. It's been a long time coming, and I can't wait to start it.
So there's a tiny bit of me, today. Maybe more in a week or so, if anybody's watching.
