Wednesday, 06 April 2011

"But what I DOOOO want to know is, what will I DOOOO in this writing class?"

SEK is substituting for his co-author/course director, so he when he walks into class, he doesn't know which students are supposed to be there and which aren't ... and there's one that certainly isn't.  SEK doesn't know that yet.  It is imperative for the reader to read said student's voice like this:

 

SEK walks to the Smart Podium and begins to open the images and videos he will be projecting on the wall during class.  MR. HELLO! approaches him.

MR. HELLO! HELLOOOO!  Will YOOOOU be doing the teaching of THIS writing class today?

SEK: I'm the sub.  I was told you were expecting me.

OTHER STUDENTS: We are.

MR. HELLO! I am not INNNN this writing class, I am considering adding a writing class to my portfolio this quarter.  May I add THIS writing class? 

SEK: I'm just the sub.  You'd need to ask the teacher.  

SEK explains course policy about adding this deep into the quarter.  

MR. HELLO! But I am thinking of adding THIS writing course THIS quarter.

SEK: Even if I wanted to, I couldn't add you to this class this quarter, because I'm not the teacher.  I'm just the sub.

MR. HELLO! But what I DOOOO want to know is, what will I DOOOO in this writing class?

SEK politely informs MR. HELLO! of what generally goes on in the composition department.  The other students—the ones actually enrolled in the class—begin to fidget.

MR HELLO! So what YOOOOU are telling me is that when I add THIS writing class, I will be DOOOOING writing.  How much writing will I be DOOOOING in THIS  writing class, counting by WORDS.

OTHER STUDENTS: At least two thousands words a week.

MR HELLO! So what YOOOOU are telling me is that when I add THIS writing class, I will be DOOOOING more writing than it is normal to DOOOO.

SEK: I can't add you to this writing class, because I'm just the sub, and it's already a little too late in the quarter to add.

MR HELLO! So what YOOOOU are telling is that when I add THIS writing class, I will be—

SEK: I can't add you to this class—

MR HELLO! But when you DOOOO—

SEK checks the clock and sees that it's about a minute after class should've started.

SEK: I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you leave.

MR HELLO! So what YOOOOU are telling is me is that when I DOOOO return on Monday to add this class, YOOOOU will be adding me to it.

SEK: I'm just the sub, and I'm subbing for the course director, but I can assure you, she's not going to let you add this late in the quarter.

MR HELLO! But when I DOOOO see you on Monday, YOOOOU will—

OTHER STUDENTS: Enough already!  Just leave!

MR HELLO! (addressing SEK) I will be seeing YOOOOU on Monday.

SEK: Alright then, you do that.

MR HELLO! leaves.  SEK stands in front of the class that isn't his with his mouth agape and his eyes agog.

SEK: I didn't get the best night of sleep last night, so I'm just wondering did I just nod off or did that actually just happen?

Apr 6, 2011 8:34:52 PM | Academia, Teaching

4 Comments

SEK

Note: In the interest of concision, I left out the part where he asked whether he could republish his course blog on the "WIDER internet" with ads so he could "at least make some money off THIS course." I tried to explain that monetizing blogs is easy, but actually making money off them isn't, but -- go figure -- he was having none of it, and informed me that he would be republishing his blog for "THIS course" on the "WIDER internet."

Even though I was about half of that exchange, I honestly have no idea what actually happened.

Posted by: SEK | Wednesday, 06 April 2011 at 08:49 PM

P.T. Smith

Are you on the wider internet or the narrow one?

Posted by: P.T. Smith | Wednesday, 06 April 2011 at 10:01 PM

SEK

It depends on what that means ... and I have no idea what that means.

Posted by: SEK | Thursday, 07 April 2011 at 01:05 PM

alkau

...And once again you prove you do not have a "normal" life. You really should write a book!

Posted by: alkau | Thursday, 14 April 2011 at 02:44 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Batman is always Beginning again (I never thought I'd dip back into this well, but then life happens and there you go.) Heath Ledger notwithstanding, I think it's fairly obvious that Batman Begins is the better of recent reboots. Nolan structures the first film not around an admittedly ingeniuous performance, but around a modified classical dynamic, by which I mean, he abides by his Aristotle. It opens with the most incentive of incentive moments—a boy watching his parents murdered before his eyes—then proceeds to a classic peripeteia*—that moment of reversal when the boy who witnessed his parents' murder decides to forsake revenge and fight all crime instead the responsible criminals. It need not bear mentioning, I don't think, that the deus ex machina, which Aristotle would otherwise despise, in this case fits within "the unity of action," because it has "an air of design" that's well-nigh indisputable. The real crux is the film's anagnorisis—or "revelation" in the I-murdered-my-father-made-kids-with-my-mother-sense—which occurs at a time Aristotle would've approved of, but not in the way he'd prefer. You'll remember that, early in Batman Begins, the recently returned Bruce Wayne takes his horny butler's advice and invites some models to go swimming in a restaurant with him: Nolan's use of a medium-long shot there is deceptive, as these aren't really women so much as beards: I'm not saying they're all legs and hair, the cropped medium shot notwithstanding—but for the purpose of the plot, Nolan certain reduces them to as much. (We're just going to skip over the scene of them skinny dipping, you know, for the kids.) The point is that these women are props, mere things Alfred suggests Bruce Wayne should acquire should he not want to be discovered as the Batman. So, then, anagnorisis avoided ... except: The love of Wayne's life can't even look at him—and not just because I caught bad capture. She's just watched him escort two soaking models from a hotel she's about to learn he bought, so she shouldn't want to look at him. But when she does, he makes a plea: Which you can tell, because he's wearing his best "plea" face, insisting that he "is more," whatever that means ("I'm the Batman") but also because previously Nolan kept him, however blurrily, in frame with Rachel Dawes when she spoke: But when he needs to say something? The camera centers on him and her dark hair turns into an inhuman column: In this shot-reverse-shot sequence, he's clearly the focus. Granted, he may be out of focus on the reverse shots, but he's still recognizably him, whereas when the camera flips, she becomes another dark image plastered on a theater wall. The irony of this portrayal is significant, though, as she's about to utter the most important words in the film: "It's not who you are underneath," she tells him, "but what you do, that defines you." Note that from the beginning of this exchange to the utterance of this line, Nolan's moved from a medium, to a medium close-up, to a...
PREVIOUS POST
How do you take your average orphan and turn him into a lunatic in a fetish-bat costume? The Joker, of course, has a theory: But his version, from Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, is only technically correct. Bruce Wayne did have "one bad day," yes, but it was different from the "one bad day" the Joker had: The difference could be that wives and children can be replaced—for tax purposes, if not in our hearts—whereas birth-parents cannot, but while that's true, that's not the most significant difference. The most significant difference—the one that, despite not knowing the secret identity of the Batman, the Joker deeply understands—is that "one bad day" is far worse when, instead of being told of a death secondhand, you witness it yourself. Hence, his plan: The Joker could have chosen to abduct Barbara Gordon off the street and dump her in the river, but instead he waited until Commissioner Gordon visited her apartment, because he knows that losing someone you love is one thing, but witnessing that person's death causes psychological trauma of a far greater intensity.* In short, without knowing that Bruce Wayne is the Batman or how he came to be the Batman, the Joker knows exactly how to make a Batman: make the victim watch. Lest you think that either the Joker or myself are pushing this argument too far, consider the visual history of the Batman's formative moment. It was first represented in Detective Comics #33: There's almost a duo-specific word-picture relation coursing from the first panel to the next. The text of the first declares that "[t]he boy's eyes are wide with terror and shock," and the second depicts the boy's eyes, wide with terror and shock. The focus, textually and visually, is on Wayne's eyes. On what he sees. The second, and first fully fleshed out, representation occurs in Batman #47: How significant are the young Wayne's eyes in this panel? They've been isolated from his head and framed with anger. It's not the "one bad day" that changes Wayne into the Batman, because there was "something about young Bruce's eyes [that] made the killer retreat," and that "something" consisted of a combination of awful accusation and eidetic memory, though even that is not enough to transform the owner of those disembodied eyes into the Batman. (Many a poor soul has witness many a beloved one murdered, after all.) But there is "something" to those eyes, as here they are again in Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One: They have, I grant, been shoved back in his head, but they're still isolated in an extreme close-up. Miller and Mazzucchelli follow Batman #47 in having young Bruce's eyes directly address the readers' so that they might see what Joe Chill sees above. Only not. Chill's already fleeing in Year One, so the attention of those eyes is even more focused on something outside or beyond the frame, almost as if Wayne seeks communion through eye-contact with an unseen audience. "You understand why I had to become this," those eyes seem to plead. But no matter how...

Scott Eric Kaufman

The Typepad Team

Search

Become a Fan

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments