Among The Savages- First Day

I am continuously enticed to start up a new blog. Occasionally, I do. Occasionally, I don't. The truth is that, right now, I am so locked down for time, that any other activity besides those that can be performed while watching children is moot, and even there, that's what I do in my free time when I'm not teaching or writing professionally, or...writing a dissertation. However, had I the time, I would want to chronicle this in blog form: today I begin a class teaching Freshman composition and all but one student is an engineering major. That's a lot of engineering majors.

One of the interesting things about college composition is that you often meet people in various stages of developing their writing skills. Some are quite able to do what you ask, others not. Students in the field of engineering are more often the latter rather than the former. It isn't that they aren't good students, this just isn't there gig. In general, they slip into the background, and your go-to students remain in the humanities and you hope that some of it is sinking into the silent kids in the back, but in this class, that will be all the kids.

The good news is that I imagine I will not find myself filling as many classroom roles. I will probably not have to convince the class's prima donna that their blog and its ten readers are not evidence that they don't need a class in writing while simultaneously trying to teach someone else how to use a comma, while trying to argue with someone else that all immigrants are worthless and horrible. Chances are, with a class of all engineers, the problems I face, simultaneously, as the teacher will resemble each other.

We'll see, I suppose.