It's not over until...

Summer. Everyone says that summer is over when school starts, and it starts tomorrow. Does summer end tomorrow? No, in fact we're about to get the best stretch of weather we've had in the last couple of months, over the next week. The weather doesn't suddenly change because school starts. The days are shorter than they were in June, certainly. The evenings are cool, but they've been cool since school let out in June.

Summer ends at the fall equinox.

We had the party and it went well. Lots of people came, we had our marriage blessed, there was food, drink, and a gorgeous day. I have one picture, it's not great, but until I get more I won't post anything. I wore a 55 year-old dress. Hub wore a new jacket and shirt ... he wore pants too, but they weren't new. We didn't make speeches, although that was probably expected. There were a lot of children. Both yards got used, although Zio's yard next door was probably more used because he had the bar tent. I couldn't believe that the weather was so perfect; there's been a lot of rain this summer.

It was good to have a party that wasn't a wake. I know I've said that a lot over the past month, but it needed to be said. We're all holding our breath, waiting for the next shoe to drop so to speak, and thus far it hasn't. Hub talked to his cousin last night, and his wife is still with us and out of ICU, but the prognosis hasn't changed.

One thing I hate about September is that people say to Hub and I, "Oh, you must be going back to work too..." as if we had the summer off, like regular teachers. We don't. I don't get any holidays because I'm a casual employee at QuitelargeU, and Hub is staff, so he gets three weeks of holidays. Faculty get four weeks. It's not very much time, and it certainly isn't four months. There are four months where the place isn't overrun by undergrads, but that doesn't change our jobs at all. Even when I was faculty, all that "summer" meant was that I didn't have to teach, and I could do my own work.

Tomorrow I go back to school too. I tried to be sort of keen and I read one of the books for the course, a to-the-point treatise on literary theory by Bonnycastle, who's an English prof (nearing the end of his career I suspect, although we don't have mandatory retirement any more so he can hang out as long as he likes, I would think) at RMC. It's straightforward, easy to read, and I felt as though very little of it was completely beyond my grasp, although there were some finer points that seemed very similar to other points. The thing about literary theory? is it remains theory. You can't prove that your attempt to understand literature is better than my attempt. Rather than "theory" then, the word "criticism" is used, even though "critiquing" isn't always the goal so much as coming to an understanding of the work at hand.

I've got a few chapters left, but they're short so I could finish that book tonight if I tried. There's another book I'll have to start reading soon, and right now I can't remember the title of it but it's about the fact that many of our social theories (that word...) and constructs were established in the Middle Ages. That text is apparently also a pretty easy read, so I don't foresee problems except for the possible boredom factor.

Sadly, the third text was written by one of the directors of the course, and I know that I will have issues with it. It's a text about adult education, and while I have been involved in adult ed for a large portion of my career, I have stayed away from theoretical discourse regarding its administration. I think you teach people. You go into a classroom with a notion of what you have to teach, you get to know the people in the course as quickly as possible, understand their backgrounds and expectations, and then you teach. Them. Next time you teach the same course, you teach it differently because there is a new group of students. I tend to lecture because that's what science students want, it's what they respond to, and it's the way they feel most comfortable. Very few of them are true extroverts, and very few of them want to talk in class or give an opinion until they know everyone around them and they know the prof. The small amoutn of this particular textbook that I've read has been wordy: it wanders around a point instead of getting to it, the author uses too many words to express very simple concepts. Why use one word when ten will do so much better? Because after word three, I don't care any more.

I hope I'm being pessimistic and that the last book turns out to be fantastic. I hope I'm terribly, terribly wrong about my foreboding and that I love every aspect of this course. Guess I'll find out tomorrow.