The General Sunday Ponderings: Long Time No Post

I often wonder about the future of my blog. Perhaps there will be a resurgence with the ongoing disgruntlement with the frequent changes that seem to afflict facebook on a regular basis. Who knows?

The Writing Front

I started a new project last night which doesn’t have a title yet. The good news is that the scenes are pretty clear in my head for parts of the story. Rather than writing in linear sequential order, I tend to write in modular blocks which can be reworked, modified and in some cases consolidated as needs require. This allows me the freedom to generate some word count and evade some of the problems which often lead to writer’s block.

In the meantime, A Restoration of Faith is more or less finished at the first draft level. I’m going to give it a read over today in an effort to see what needs to be done to it. When I get it to second draft status, I’ll contact the new members of the reconstituted Murphy’s E-Lite Reader Corps and send copies out for review. I’ve already had some significant help from Stuart Shaw down Australia way with regard to sword fighting tactics. Granted, I had three to four years of fencing but I wanted some variety.

The current writing effort is aimed at having enough material to send off to The Black Library, which is the publishing arm of Games Workshop. They have an open submission period which runs from May to July. My plan is to send a project off a week until they are expended. Perhaps the only downside is that I will hear back from them only if they are interested.

In reflecting on the current effort, in the event of a worst case scenario and they do not contact me, some of these projects could well be refitted for use as submissions at the professional markets outside of the media field.

There are a couple of additional irons in the fire as well but nothing I am free to discuss at present.

As for the novel writing effort . . . I’ve got two projects I can work on. I can work on my first novel attempt, Convergence Point and convert it to a novella around the 50K mark. There is a new opportunity for that one and I suspect when Terri Lowry and I meet to discuss this semester’s independent study, that is what I’ll work on.

I think the Tearing Down Tuesday project will have to wait a bit. I’m not sure why but everytime I work on a novel project which isn’t nominally a military project it ends up with a combat scene in it. The scenes just come very naturally to me.

The Teaching Front

I’ve got one of each flavor of American History this semester. In 120 we are working through the French-Indian War. Once we complete that, they’ll get their first test. In 121 we are working through Industrialization. I will get through the Spanish American War and American Imperialism before they get their first test which means they’ll be a week later at best.

Both classes took quizzes last Friday. One class got a multiple choice, the other got a three part essay question. Why the variety?

Well, for one thing, the 0800 hour class is taking notes, which is what they are supposed to be doing. The 0900, for the most part, simply stares at me or in the case of a couple of people, have side conversations which are unrelated to the course. I had planned on issuing an essay quiz in any case, the sooner the better.

My hope, when I grade these essays later today, is that they already know the material and are flatout bored. My gut tells me they aren’t taking the class very seriously and as a result, I’m probably going to have some pretty poor scores. Perhaps a bit of grade based shock therapy will prompt them to do a bit of soul searching and change their ways before the first test clobbers sizeable chunks of the class.

If I were teaching elsewhere I’d probably hear some nonsense about how, “Every F on the student’s part is an F on the teacher’s part.”

For the record, every F I earned over the course of my educational experience was my fault. Even if I didn’t like the instructor, found their material boring, or whatever, it was still my fault. It is my job as the student to master the material, one way or the other, regardless of the instructor. This was frequently the case when I took courses at Park University under a Professor I had virtually no respect for at all. I still had to get through his classes. Sadly, he was a rather lazy instructor who was an easy grader. As a result, he left me a bit unprepared for grad school.

To place the blame solely upon the teacher is a bit much. We’ve got students who work twenty to sixty hours a week. We’ve got students who are dealing with chaotic home situations, economic distress, vehicle failures, health problems, and the list goes on. Toss in years of educational malpractice which is the result of grade inflation generated by the, “Every F is the fault of the teacher,” plus an inability to read, write or even engage in critical thinking and you have a perfect list of ingredients for a first rate academic disaster.

I can only do so much in sixteen weeks. In reality, I do not even have that long. I have about six weeks to try to save as many as I can from themselves. I have to get them to take me seriously, shock them into doing what I tell them to do and get them motivated enough to believe that they can do it. I also have to get them to buy into the notion that hard work is a good thing and that an easy A will not serve them later in life.

By week eight, the Rubicon is well behind us and the only thing left is to figure out how long it will be before some of them drop completely. They’ll beg for extra credit, which will be denied. They’ll complain about the lack of homework, which will fall on deaf ears because this is not High School History. They’ll complain about the lack of PowerPoints, blackboard augmentation and the fact that I won’t post my notes on the internet. They’ll complain that I didn’t spoon feed them the answers and finally, once that is all said and done, some of them will complain that I simply didn’t like them.

Like or dislike has nothing to do with it.

It is what it is.

iPad upgrades

Trinity, who is presently working her way through her dual majors in Criminal Justice and Psychology, is lamenting the fact that it costs a ruinous amount of money to print the assigned readings for her classes. She’s already blown through her print allocation down at UMKC and I’d say we are already well on track for a print cost of $250.00 this semester. At the present rate, we’ll easily exceed that by the end of the semester.

I think an iPad is the solution. At the rate print costs are increasing, the iPad would pay for itself after the first semester. I have to admit that I’ve been thinking about getting one for myself as a lecture note carrier, putting an end to the need to print the notes off down at Longview.

So I think we’re going to invest in a pair of iPad 3′s when they come out this Spring.

Other Fronts

Not much else to report. I’ve pretty well established myself in my Dad’s old garage, turning it into a tolerable working space. It is good to have a place to retreat to and it has served to improve my productivity over the last few weeks.

Now I just need to see about working on that Spanish.

Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
Kansas City, Missouri