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The following is a document which I have attached to my syllabi for nearly three years now. It started off as a short list of six points. It has now, as you can see below, grown to nine points.
Enjoy.
American History
Updated: Tuesday, 01-18-2011
Why did I fail the Test?
In order to expedite the learning process and facilitate troubleshooting the potential reasons why students perform poorly on their exams, I have provided this list of primary factors which result in poor performance. This is not all inclusive, but it does cover the majority of poor test score issues.
1. Talking in class: Talking in class is perhaps the Number One pet peeve of the Instructor. Talking during the lecture not only takes your attention off of the material, it distracts everyone around the offending student. It is also THE PRIMARY COMPLAINT of your fellow students. Frequent offenders will be removed from the classroom without debate or discussion.
2. Someone next to you was talking: If you are distracted by a fellow student during the lecture then there is a pretty good chance that you missed something important. It is incumbent upon you to take action to correct this. It is within your right as a student to ask that your peer remain silent during the lecture. If they are unwilling to remain silent, report the behavior to the Instructor for further corrective action.
3. Sleeping in class: If the student is sleeping, the student is neither listening nor taking notes. A frequent excuse is that the course is boring. Part of education is learning to adapt and overcome which includes staying awake, whether you want to or not.
4. Texting in class: If the student is texting the latest non course related social gossip, they are not taking notes. Moreover, they probably aren’t paying attention either. Texting students are obvious to everyone around them to include the Instructor (who sees you hiding the phone under the desk, in your pocket, on your lap, etc). Aside from the fact that the syllabus states texting is forbidden in the first place, it is usually a self eliminating problem. Texting students perform poorly.
5. Poor attendance: If the student is not in class, they are not there to listen, take notes and learn. Reading the textbook alone and cribbing off of the notes of your peers will not suffice.
6. Late to Class: It goes without saying that if you are late to class, you probably missed something important. Tardy students invariably disrupt the class by asking their fellow student what they missed, impeding the learning process even further. Show up on time. It is that simple.
7. Failure to take notes: Learning does not occur by osmosis. The student must be an active participant and in a lecture based class that means taking good notes. Simply listening to the lecture will not work for the majority of the students in this class.
8. Failure to read the textbook: The textbook and the reading assignments are provided as a means of giving the student additional context and the opportunity to THINK about what they have learned. Learning is not just the mere memorization of facts. Learning is about understanding, in the case of history, why things may have happened the way they did and how they pertain to present day events.
9. Listening to your iPod during the lecture: The iPod or similar device is forbidden in any case. If you are listening to it, you aren’t listening to the lecture and you will fail your test.
There are other reasons but if you find that you have one or more of the following symptoms during the course of the semester, this might explain poor test performance. It is up to the student to be proactive and correct the problem.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Ponderings on Writing
I may have related this story here at the Pondering Tree or perhaps it was as the first version over at Journalspace. If I did it at Journalspace it is most likely lost forever, in which case I should probably tell the story again.
You probably should not openly state that the quality of a certain publication would be greatly improved if its’ editor stepped out in front of a speeding bus. Especially if this editor rejected your story.
Rejections are strange things. On the surface they are easy enough to understand. “We don’t want your story.” But they can be so much more, to the point where reading them and comparing stories is akin to reading the tea leaves. In Terri Lowry’s Creative Writing course we actually spend time talking about rejection letters and their stages of evolution. I should probably talk about that first.
When you send your first stories off you will most likely receive either no response back or a form letter. The form letter will be pretty clear. Depending on the publisher, the form letter may contain guidelines, frequent errors and the like. This is what I received in 2001 when I sent my first stories off to John Joseph Adams, the Editorial Assistant at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Over time, and with some luck, you will evolve as a writer. Editors will begin to leave little comments or notes on your rejections. Gardner Dozois at Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine was known for doing this. What gave me hope is that I received these handwritten slips in very short order, by 2003.
This is a sign that the editor is paying attention and sees some potential. It is also meant to encourage you. It does not mean resubmit that story. I’ll get to resubmissions here in a bit.
If you are persistent, you will eventually receive a full letter in response to your submission. This letter will most likely be typed or these days e-mailed to you. It will contain a critique of your story, what the editor liked, what worked, what the editor did not like and why the editor isn’t going to buy this story. Again, this is a sign of progress. You are getting closer. The editor is taking valuable time to advise you and mentor you. Gardner Dozois sent me such a letter in response to my story Tranquility Lost, which can be found and read for free at Bewildering Stories.
At this point of the game, two things can happen. The Editor in question considers you to be pro-material. You are on the brink of breaking through, right on the edge. It can go either way with your next submission.
The best case scenario is a straight acceptance. I received my first one in 2007 from Andy Cox and his Fiction Committee at Interzone Magazine. This acceptance will talk about why they like the story and what they are prepared to do in order to acquire the story for their publication.
The next best case scenario can be (but isn’t always, I’ll get to that) the rewrite request.
The rewrite request looks like the personal rejection letter. It contains positives and negatives. It also contains advice and suggestions on how to fix the story. Finally, last but not least, this letter will contain an invitation to resubmit your story after you have made the revisions.
Depending on the editor and the quality of advice, you have two choices at this point.
1. Follow the advice and hope for the best.
2. Disregard and send the story to the next market on the list.
I say it depends on the editor because editors, just like writers, have reputations. Some editors have reputations for being supportive, straight up, honest and fair. Other editors have a reputation for being fickle, unclear, or in some cases they have other agendas driving their mission which have nothing whatsoever to do with your career or your story.
In most cases, I would advise this. If you agree AND TRUST the editor in question, as I trusted (and still trust) Gardner Dozois, then rewrite the story and resubmit it.
On the other hand, if you disagree and DO NOT TRUST the editor in question, then you really need to ask yourself if this trip is necessary. Again, there are no guarantees.
Case in point. Most regular readers know this but Gardner Dozois retired (sometimes I’m inclined to think he was forced out by a controversy that brewed up over a particular story but I have absolutely no proof of this) as Editor of Asimov’s. This affected me personally because I rewrote a story for his consideration and it missed his retirement date by one week or so. In fact, fellow writer Lou Antonelli was the last writer purchased by Gardner, he made it by that one week margin.
The new editor, who I won’t name here for a lot of reasons, took over. They took their sweet time getting back to me while I waited on pins and needles for a response, any response, on my story.
The new editor sent another rewrite request. Unlike Gardner’s, it was muddled, unclear and in my mind, contrary to what I was trying to achieve with the story. In fact, at the time, it read very much like a veiled rejection letter. However, I was prodded, both by people in the community and people here in my personal life, to rewrite my story and resubmit it.
I tried to get clarification on the required changes. I received nothing. I had nothing to go on with this new editor, no track record or anything else. All I had was word of mouth from various people who had met her personally. I wasn’t reassured by what I heard but when a goal seems to be SO CLOSE, you decide to push forward.
I rewrote (actually, I butchered) my story.
And I sent it off.
And then it was rejected. If it says anything at all about this new editor, the rejection was partially written by her predecessor and it was a half hearted one at that.
As I said, rejections are funny things. I’ve received maybe fifty to sixty rejections over my career to date. Given that many writers receive hundreds of rejections before they achieve their first professional sales, I have done pretty well. None of those other rejections make me angry. They are part of the business, part of the deal. You just roll with them. You weren’t the flavor of the month.
And most of the rejections since my first sales have been personal ones which indicate, “So close, Murphy but not quite.”
Now here is what you should not do as a writer.
For nearly two years I kept my anger bottled up, something I am not very good at. My friends and family will tell you that the longer I try to suppress my anger, the stronger, the more virulent, the more powerful it will become. However, I kept it pretty well in check for awhile.
Until my first sale in 2007. The reviews came in and contrary to what I expected, they were all positive.
The common belief, one that I held until those reviews started coming in, is that my success at Interzone with Tearing Down Tuesday should have negated the anger, the growing ball of something that transcends anger to a point where the emotion I experience doesn’t even have a proper name.
Instead, success served to reinforce and fuel that anger. My feeling today is that Maternal Soldier is every bit as good as Tearing Down Tuesday and The Limb Knitter. Yet I can’t sell it to save my life.
With the second sale in 2008, more positive reviews plus lots of reader comments at Apex and again, my anger grew.
At the same time that Interzone purchased Tuesday, Asimov’s rejected a story set in the same universe, featuring similar themes. For the record, they aren’t the same story but they do feature a post singularity world.
The current editor at Asimov’s rejected it. Readers aren’t familiar enough with the singularity to know what I was talking about.
Which was really the final straw, I thought. The same magazine that published Charles Stross and his singularity stories wasn’t going to publish this? Especially when Interzone was willing go do down that road?
I remember reading that reject in my dock office at 1000 Walnut on a very cold, snowy day with a mug of tea in hand thinking, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
The message of that reject was pretty clear to me. Gardner’s replacement wasn’t going to buy anything I wrote, no matter what it was.
Eventually, sooner or later, my anger will vent. If you are an aspiring writer or even a small writers, you’ve got to learn how to manage this. Anger scares the living daylights out of folks who do not live in the Blue Collar World.
My anger vented in a series of postings at the magazine’s forum. I basically stated, in many different forms, that I thought the magazine would be greatly improved if the current editor was hit by a speeding bus.
I didn’t threaten this person directly. That is against the law. However, it is not against the law to openly wish for bad things to happen to people. It is just bad manners and perhaps more importantly, bad for your writing career.
Why?
Well, the editorial community is pretty small and they do talk to each other. More to the point they read the forum comments left by readers and writers. What happened is probably common knowledge.
Now, to date, I have no evidence at hand that indicates that my behavior has resulted in the rejection of my stories. No evidence at all. It is possible that it is a factor, in fact it is probable in some cases that it is a factor. Editors don’t want to be associated with nutters and the like.
However, I’m realistic enough to believe that the rejections I have received pertain more to the same things which caused many of my stories to get rejected. The story doesn’t match the editor’s tastes, or the anthology, they have some quirk or flaw that isn’t worth fixing, that sort of thing. It is, again, part of the game.
I should probably make one additional point.
Folks would probably forget what I did eventually, especially if I didn’t remind anyone about it like I am doing right now. But the thing they won’t forget is this.
I am unrepentant. I do still hope for the eventual replacement of the current editor at Asimov’s. By speeding bus, by retirement, by medical emergency or through getting forced out, it matters not to me. I harbor no good will toward this person who I feel is cowardly, dishonest, unclear and incredibly fickle.
My lack of repentance probably doesn’t help my case.
There are things I could be doing with my career. I’ve been advised more than once to give up on short stories and move off into novels. I’ve got some options I am looking at and I will probably see about that. I’ve been advised to give up on science fiction and try my hand at mainstream literature. I’ve been advised to give up on writing fiction and concentrate on my career as a college history instructor. Given that within a year I will have finally realized a full return on my investment as a historian, I can see that point.
For now, however, I will endeavor to keep writing fiction. I’ll write what I want to write.
And we’ll see how it goes.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Aboard the Battlestar Steven Francis Murphy BSG-71
Location: CIC
Mission: Damage Control and Assessment
I’m running on three hours of sleep after learning that my father is back in the hospital last night. He is having heart trouble, trouble breathing, etc, etc. So that was part of my evening last night on the eleven month anniversary of Trinity and I. Mom’s down with illness as well and I’m having a bitch of a time finding the time and energy to get enough lecture material scraped together for Western Civ.
The problem isn’t knowledge or material. That I have plenty of. No, I just need the time to write the lectures into something useable so I don’t stand there in class and babble on like an idiot. I call those lectures Falling Down the Stairs Lectures. I used to give a lot of them during my first two years of teaching and it is a horrible experience that ranks right up there with a dream where one is naked in public yet no one notices.
In other words, I hate not being fully prepared.
Worse, I hate not getting at least four hours of sleep. It is a wonder I didn’t stand there in class and drool all over myself. As it is, my military bearing and two years of experience allowed me to slug my way through both lectures this morning. I wouldn’t say it was a cheerful experience but my 0800 students seem to know that crossing me is unwise.
Apparently tales that I threw someone out at 0830 for tardiness have gotten ’round the campus (though they are somewhat inaccurate, the general gist is true). My 0930 class is a bit more spirited but that isn’t a bad thing. Some of them will get a wake up call here in a couple of weeks.
Of course the other problem is that running on three hours of sleep makes doing physical fitness training problematic. It is a great way to injury yourself and for those that aren’t following John Birmingham’s blog, be advised that he snapped his ulna in martial arts last week (probably not due to fatigue). I’ve already got some problem spots, notably along the upper right arm near the tricep, some elbow and some shoulder trouble. I don’t need to blow something out when I have a 145 pound stack of weights over my chest because I wasn’t focused.
On the other hand, I was able to get the iPods operational using a campus computer to download iTunes. The iPods are both synced and prepped. I didn’t load any music onto Trinity’s iPod as I only had one of my CDs with me. I’ll try to reload iTunes on my laptop and see if that will work. If that doesn’t work, I’ll load a few songs onto Trinity’s iPod on campus while she is at an extra credit lecture.
As for Dad, well, he’s terminal, kids. We’re all terminal but he is closer to it than most of us are. Estimates range from tomorrow to a year from now. That said, Aunt Margaret said over at my facebook that we Murphys tend to be a stubborn lot (all those bad genetics I guess). He may well outlast all of us, beat the lung cancer and come in under the five percent statistic on remission/cures.
Makes you wonder how long he’d live if he hadn’t gotten Agent Orange related crap.
YouTubeage Action: James Bond OSTs to listen to while writing
When I write some action scenes, I tend to draw upon movie sound tracks, notably those by John Barry but he is not the only one. Here are a couple of my favorites.
This is called “Space March” and it is from the You Only Live Twice soundtrack. It matches the opening scene where an American space capsule is captured by a mystery spacecraft. The scene, if you haven’t seen it, is akin to watching a snake unlock its’ jaw to consume its’ prey, slow but inevitable. The Americans, of course, blame the Russians for the incident, which gets the movie going.
In a similar vein is “007 and Counting” which is matched to the video you see now. A rocket is hijacked by our bad guys in Diamonds Are Forever. It happens to be carrying a diamond augmented laser satellite and you can see where this is going.
So it goes, kids. Repair operations continue. I’ve got to pick Trinity up later from her therapy where she is trying to get her ship back to 100% or at least as close to it as she can.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Writing Front: Tracking the Stories
Apparently over the summer I had three stories out.
I think.
I sent Maternal Soldier out in June apparently. For some reason I got this cross wired with Healing Hands of the Killer. Since I thought HHK was still at the June target market, I sent Maternal Soldier back out (engaging in unintentional simo submission which is bad juju in the field).
Maternal Soldier came back from the second market, Andromeda Spaceways, last week. That is the reject I blogged about. But at the June market I did learn, though I have not received the official reject, that Maternal Soldier was a great story, but didn’t fit the market guidelines.
So, two rejects for Maternal Soldier this week. Great story, everyone tells me. I just can’t sell it.
In the meantime I figured out that Healing Hands of the Killer never went anywhere, near as I can tell. I think.
Conversely, the other story which went to the same market as Maternal Soldier was Entangled. I didn’t even think I sent that story out but apparently, according to the editor who brought me up to speed on MS, I did.
Confused? You sure the fuck aren’t the only one. I’m confused and more than a little pissed the fuck off.
Why? Well, once upon a time, back in the Dark Ages of the Uniguard Era, all stories were methodically tracked, logged, annotated, followed, followed up upon, and the like. I knew where they were, I knew which one I sent out, I knew everything except whether or not they’d sell. Now, in the wonderful Golden Age of Adjunctland, I can’t seem to keep track of any of my stories.
Fuck! I can’t even get a new story written, let alone keep track of the old ones. About the only project which was relatively regimented was Research Project Number – 04, and even by previous standards of RPN-02 and 03, the regimentation was sloppy by comparison.
What happened? Teaching happened for one thing but that isn’t the only source of trouble. I’ve got multiple fronts of chaos and aggravation ongoing (which I make it a point not to EVER BLOG ABOUT). I’ve got demands on my time which far outstrip my ability to meet them and there are consequences for not at least attempting to meet those demands.
And it has gotten so bad that I don’t know where my stories are at. I had to have an Editor clarify my own submissions for me! An Editor I have a great deal of respect for, I might add.
This, my friends, is going to change. Oh yes. This will not continue as is.
The good news? Well, I have two bits.
First, Entangled is still under consideration. I wouldn’t hold your breath, kids. Then again I said that about The Limb Knitter and it sold so maybe I should follow Gardner Dozois advice about writers being the worst judge of their own work.
Second, I did receive a message from another editor who is interested in taking a gander at Maternal Soldier. No promises of course.
So, it isn’t all bad.
Lecture prep continues otherwise. Since those entries bore the piss out of everyone, I won’t hammer out what I did today.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Those that done said stuff