Summer Lassitude and Semester Round Up
Well, despite the sense of motivation I feel, I must say that my initial reaction on hitting my first real break has been to do nothing more complicated than relax and play. I’ve taken a solid week off from anything very productive, and am considering continuing this way through Memorial Day, to make sure my perspective is fresh on return.
But the itch is there. I may compromise and allow myself ten or fifteen minutes of freewriting a day, just to give myself the creative output without adding any requirements. Soon, though, I will return to actual writing projects.
Not that I’ve been entirely inactive – I’ve submitted a short story to the LA Review and another to Soundings, and am heavily considering giving two more pieces a light once-over: one for a writing contest that only runs through the end of this month and the other for a major fantasy magazine (wish me luck!).
On the MFA front, now that my assignments are finished I have one more duty to my classes: evaluations. I’ve never evaluated a class or professor before, so I m relying on my old standard approach: be honest and hope for the best. In some ways, this will be very easy because I have had a fantastic time in these classes and I’ve learned a great deal, so I have many good things to say. The downside is that I’m having trouble finding much to point out in the way of weaknesses and recommendations.
I’ve heard a couple of people wonder about the anonymity of these evaluations, but to me it seems like a silly question. I’ve just spent six months with these people in classes of three and five students, talking casually and frequently in our online discussions – how could they possibly not know who will have which opinions? To my, the question of anonymity misses the point. The point is to provide us an opportunity to let them know three things: how much we got out of the class, what worked well for us, and what did not. There rest is a matter of details.
Speaking of evaluations, I’ll be getting my own grades in the next week or two. I think I did well in these classes, so I should come through all right.
This is getting a bit longer than I expected, so I’ll save talking about planning for the fall semester for my next post. Sorry this one was late. I blame it on post-semester indolence.
