{"id":427,"date":"2005-05-04T16:11:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-04T16:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=427"},"modified":"2005-05-04T16:11:00","modified_gmt":"2005-05-04T16:11:00","slug":"427","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=427","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Who am I, and what am I doing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s a good thing that the semester is finished, because my brain is finished too.<\/p>\n

My university sets a different class schedule for finals week than for the other weeks of the semester. Each class meets just once, for two and one half hours. The times are calculated to avoid scheduling conflicts.<\/p>\n

At 10:30 yesterday morning I walked from my office into the m\u00eal\u00e9e of students in the corridor. Some of my own students were standing along the walls outside a locked classroom: there were Tom, Gino, Megan, Cheryl . . . <\/p>\n

“Hi,” I said,”Do you need me to open that door for you? Do you have a final exam in there?”<\/p>\n

I was getting blank looks, looks that asked, “Is he messing with us?” One of the students reminded me, with polite exasperation, that our<\/em> class had a final, right then and there.<\/p>\n

Oops.<\/p>\n

That is a small class, and their “final exam” consisted of presenting Web-based writing projects, so all I had to do was step into another room and grab a portable LCD projector.<\/p>\n

Back in January, before I came down with the flu and evidently lost brain cells, I had written and distributed my syllabus and class calendar. Earlier this month, I realized that I had listed an incorrect date for the final exam, so I announced the correct date in class and sent all the students an e-mail too. But I forgot to correct my own appointment book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who am I, and what am I doing? It’s a good thing that the semester is finished, because my brain is finished too. My university sets a different class schedule for finals week than for the other weeks of the semester. Each class meets just once, for two and one half hours. The times are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-427","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":329,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=329","url_meta":{"origin":427,"position":0},"title":"Secret Thrills of Teaching Rhetoric\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Secret Thrills of Teaching Rhetoric I teach a class each semester on advanced composition and rhetoric, using this book as one of the texts. The students are mostly education majors who must take the course as their last exposure to a writing class before they are turned loose on the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":779,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=779","url_meta":{"origin":427,"position":1},"title":"A sign of the season","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"How do you know that Yule is coming? Is it the Christmas music in stores? Is it the Sun setting at 4 p.m., which means I have to stop my project of staining the exterior walls of the new cabin addition?Or is realizing that you are standing beside a photocopier\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Yule\"","block_context":{"text":"Yule","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=yule"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":936,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=936","url_meta":{"origin":427,"position":2},"title":"The Dream and the Job","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In the dream last night I was at some kind of Protestant Christian youth camp, headed by the stereotypical big, extroverted, 30-something youth minister.A teenaged girl was supposed to be baptized, but the minister had to leave suddenly, so he asked me to baptize her. His request presented two problems:1.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"teaching\"","block_context":{"text":"teaching","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=teaching"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3818,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3818","url_meta":{"origin":427,"position":3},"title":"When Is a Monk not a Monk?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"When he or she is a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Given that this is a religious-studies class (academic, not doctrinal) at a secular university,\u00a0 I thought that the professor had an interesting idea. The ... course on monastic life and asceticism gives students at the University of Pennsylvania\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":747,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=747","url_meta":{"origin":427,"position":4},"title":"Outed by ‘the chair’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"My department chair (that's how we say it in Academia to avoid the sexism of \"chairman,\" even though it makes him sound like an ornate piece of furniture) recently invited me to speak to one of his classes.To establish my credentials, he handed a copy of my book Her Hidden\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":594,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=594","url_meta":{"origin":427,"position":5},"title":"Porch-ismWhile I was fretting last\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 9, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Porch-ismWhile I was fretting last night about the forest fire 50 miles south of here (but in similar terrain), a little cold front came through and dropped an inch and a half of snow. (So what is that, an eighth inch of moisture?) And it did help the firefighters.Classes start\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}