Frost knows syllabi!

The spring semester begins tomorrow, and somehow I am not scrambling to finish that last syllabus. I seem to have sorted things there--which only means that now I'm scrambling to set up Blackboard sites for all my classes. A net loss, come to think of it...

Syllabus revision is a (bi)annual ritual for the professorial crowd--not really a clean slate, but a chance to start over, for sure. You want to cut your workload, but you want to cover more material, but you want to make it easier on yourself, but you want to get better outcomes from your students, but... You see how this goes. Prof friends of mine reading this: you know what I mean.

Last semester, I taught a first-year seminar for the first time: an honors course on Central European cinema. The culmination of the class was to present at the college's undergraduate symposium with frosh and sophomores from across the college--sort of an in-house NCUR, if you will.

And part of what makes NCUR great is that you get to hear a discussion on Don Quixote, a panel on quantum physics, and a poster-board session on service learning...all before lunch. And so I felt at home hearing my student paper on the interplay between Polish film and its socialist-era contexts presented amongst several presentations doing close textual analysis of US poetry.

The poem that hit me across the head was by Robert Frost (somewhere RHS junior-year English teacher Mr. Mackey is nodding wisely) called "The Armful." It struck me that what Frost describes here is what professors go through as they try to revamp their courses (yet again!) in the hopes that they can it just a little bit closer to where it "should" be. Here's the poem, in its entirety:

For every parcel I stoop down to seize
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns--
Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with hand and mind
And heart, if need be, I will do my best
To keep their building balanced at my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load.

Classes start tomorrow...only four months until syllabus revision starts all over again. Camus would say: Surely we must be happy.

Fantasy Football: (no) prep is for losers!

Here's a note I originally posted on the Inter-Galactic Football League (IGFL) site this weekend--the league has been around for better than a decade, and contains a number of Gusties (although they let in at least one guy from Augsburg, but it's OK--he never wins). The lull between fantasy playoffs and actual real-life playoffs gives us a window of lethargy to craft stuff like this...
~bpi

Despite winning the East, WMD folded like the proverbial deck of cards in the semifinals to eventual champion Environmental Warriors. Any success I had this year was a matter of the waiver wire rather than the draft, I kid you not...

ROUND ONE: MICHAEL TURNER (RB)--Mind you, this is the #2 overall pick...After AP, it was a toss-up for me between Turner and Jones-Drew. Let's just say that, to date, Jones-Drew is a solid 3rd in scoring for running backs, while Turner is 12th, and fading. To a point, we were all sleeping: the top scorer, Chris Johnson, was taken in the middle of Round Two....

ROUND TWO: GREG JENNINGS (WR)--Sort of a homer pick, sort of a hedge against taking a seemingly overpriced 2nd RB (see Chris Johnson discussion above), sort of a hedge against taking a QB "too too early." Jennings is 27th in scoring for WR/TEs. Remember how we all watched in amazement as the Robot picked tight end after tight end? Remember how we all watched in amazement as the Robot won game after game, all the way to the championship game? Remember how we all made a mental note to let the Robot draft for us in 2010?

ROUND THREE: TOM BRADY (QB)--Manning was still on the board, Brees had been passed up last time around, and Aaron Rogers (the eventual points leader) remained on the board. (Hey wait--f**king Ace scooped him up in the 3rd! So with the top overall RB and the top overall QB, Black Tail managed to get bounced in the division round? Uff da.) I noticed that my record this year pretty much paralleled that of the Patriots. And just like I felt really squeamish about my chances in the playoffs, despite winning the division...

ROUND FOUR: WES WELKER (WR)--Finally! Value for the money! Sort of. Welker finished 21st in scoring, although he always seemed like he was better. He'd have been a heck of a #3WR, but turns out to have been a bit of a stretch as a #2.

ROUND FIVE: ROY WILLIAMS (WR)--Yeesh. Disaster. Dropped and forgotten.

ROUND SIX: LEE EVANS (WR)--See "Roy Williams," above. It's a good thing I can justify this nonsense with the fact that I clearly did not do my homework.

ROUND SEVEN: FRED JACKSON (RB)--A desperation pick for a stopgap running back actually worked out for a few weeks. Lynch was suspended and Jackson actually did will for Buffalo for a while, then got cold and I dropped him. By the time he was rocking again, he was long gone off the waiver wire...But then I found Ricky...

ROUND EIGHT: JULIUS JONES (RB)--What can I say: the season was a constant fight to sort two believable running backs week-in week-out. Might have started a week or two for me. Yeesh.

ROUND NINE: FELIX JONES (RB)--Ha ha ha. Boy I was really sucking at this point of the night.

ROUND TEN: STEELERS (DEF)--Might have been a reach, but even this early, the Steel Curtain was probably more valuable than any of the three running backs picked in Rounds 7-9. A bye-week drop in favor of New Orleans, which worked out fine.

ROUND ELEVEN: MATT HASSELBECK (QB)--Adequate bye-week fill-in for Brady, but was just insurance.

ROUND TWELVE: Neil Rakers (K)--Did fine, but was shown the door w/ the bye week. Picked up New Orleans kicker(s), which worked fine.

ROUND THIRTEEN: JERIOUS NORWOOD (RB) (RB)--Insurance for Michael Turner, which, as it turned out, was warrented. Except that Norwood was hurt too by the time Turner went down.

WAIVER PICKUP THAT SAVED MY BUTT: RICKY WILLIAMS (RB)--Good Lord, who is that in 4th position for running back scoring?! Is this 2002 or 2009?! Sick!

MY NOD TO THE TIGHT END FAD OF 2009: VISANTHE SHIANCOE (TE)--He would never get a whole lot of yards, but Favre seemed to find him in the end zone with surprising regularity. More points than Jennings, that's for sure. And for the haters: he even scored more than Anquan Boldin!

So what have I learned from all this? First: don't dismiss tight ends out of hand. Second: don't wait forever to get that second RB. Third: crack the f**king magazine BEFORE the draft starts.

When's the baseball draft?

More balance in '10?

It seems I'm as vulnerable as anyone to making grandiose (and half-baked) New Year's resolutions--but I'm trading in mine for my wife Loreta's. It took me about two seconds to realize hers made waaaaay more sense.

Having worked through our discomfort w/ J-Lo, and counting down the minutes until 2010, Loreta asked me what my New Year's resolution was this year. I started to mumble something about more of everything ("everything" being book proposals and the like), but stopped short of anything definitive.

She, on the other hand, was perfectly clear: "I want more balance in my life." Absolutely right, of course. We've taken on new challenges in the past several years, and hope to take on more (and sooner rather than later)--but to take them on effectively, we both need more balance between work and play, career and home.

So if I sort out this book proposal, lead this study tour, etc., then cool. But not at the expense of other parts of my life which I can neglect, if I'm not careful.

Naïve? Maybe. (I didn't get the nickname "Skippy" from the Queen for no reason.) But it's a worthy goal--wish me luck. And I wish you a happy, healthy, and balanced new year to you and yours!