It’s stuck in a vortex of two papers due very soon.
One paper is for my Narratives of Teaching and Learning class, and it’s actually a two-parter. I’m spending about 15 pages writing about my composition class this term, focusing on one student’s work. I’m trying to capture the evolving perceptions we have, as teachers; in my paper, my perceptions are revealed to be correct but also incorrect. But then I redeem myself. And in part two, I get to describe how this narrative fits into other narratives of teaching and learning, with lots of academic language and works cited. That’s another 6 pages or so.
The other paper is for my Landscape and Literature class. 20 pages. Or is it 25? Lots of citations and academic language here, too. It’s on the way Los Angeles is portrayed in Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister and how the city informed the writer and his work, with a fair bit of urban theory and references on the role of cities/LA in detective fiction. The class didn’t have anything to do with urban environments or even America — it was the landscape and literature of English country homes, with a big chuck of the gothic. Most people are writing about Dracula or As You Like It or one of the other works we read in class. I could have done that; it certainly would have been easier. But I wanted to write about the landscape of LA and how it informs the literature of the city, I read The Long Embrace and couldn’t get Chandler out of my head.
Now my head is all muddled up with this stuff. Wish me luck.
Boy, can I relate — your brain will someday not be an exhausted critical thing, I promise. But it sure feels that way when you’re in the middle of it. I suggest cupcakes and caffeine. xxx G