A new season

No tutoring this last week, but plenty of busyness: (1) attending meetings and turning in paperwork; (2) reading textbooks (and a few secondary sources); (3) writing essay prompts and syllabi.

(2) and (3) have been pretty exciting. I chose each textbook because of its fonts. And I’m writing my IUSB course documents in Plantin and my Bethel documents in Photina.

Next week — Monday! — I’ll begin teaching. And during the nights I’ll be packing up my books to move out of my apartment. This has been a convenient but pricey place in which to live.

Where will I end up? I don’t know. Mary & Martin have offered to host me until I find somewhere better.

They just bought a house near Bethel. Their yard has a hot tub in it, with a large fence for privacy. Between the fence and the sidewalk, flowers grow out of a narrow strip of dirt. I told Mary & Martin to clear out the flowers and to plant tomatoes for public use: “Mishawaka Unity Garden.”

Along the eastern boundary of the yard is a noisy road. The western boundary nearly touches a power station.

Others might recoil, but I find the scenery quite charming. Industrialism, traffic: I am able to glean comfort from such things. I will miss the river, though. And it will be sad not to be able to walk so easily to my church.

August fragments

And suddenly I’m a lot busier because I’ve been hired to teach one more course, Introduction to Philosophy. This will be at Bethel College, my alma mater.

Soon I’ll have taught in the Ivy League, at a state college, and at a Christian liberal arts college. How’s that for job experience?

Once again, I’m starting to appear halfway respectable. I can see it in people’s faces. I regarded my tutoring job pretty seriously, but I guess for most people it wasn’t so impressive.

(I expect to keep on tutoring for a few hours each week.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

And now I wish to complain of my injuries. Last weekend, playing soccer, I suffered a full-body collision with someone who probably has health insurance. (I don’t.) For a couple of days I was sore all over and couldn’t bend one of my knees. This has improved.

Then yesterday I was in the church nursery, and the children were merciless. They assaulted me with medicine balls.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Today Ecuador lost to Spain, but my laptop wasn’t working, so I didn’t get to watch it. The game was held in Guayaquil: the Spaniards were too afraid to play in Quito. That’s our moral victory, I suppose.

Some advice concerning children

Xanga still hasn’t expelled me. Come on, Xanga! I’m weary of the suspense.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Some good news: the English Department at IU South Bend is hiring me to teach first-year composition. Unexpectedly, I’m even being offered two class sections. So after a year outside of the classroom I’ll be teaching more students than ever, and in a new discipline.

This job should make me a lot better at teaching writing. At Cornell I taught writing-intensive philosophy courses, but this course at IU is pretty much only about writing.

I’m excited.

Credit goes to my buddy Andrew for encouraging me to apply and for agreeing to be my faculty mentor.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

One more thing: it’s been fourteen days since I was last in the church nursery, watching the little kids during their mothers’ weekly prayer meeting. I miss those kids. It took about a month for them to decide that they could have fun with me, but as soon as they did, it was a hoot. The breakthrough came when I pretended to throw up. Everybody, if you want children to like you, just pretend to throw up.

I expect to use this tactic in my courses at IU.