I have returned! Sacre bleu, mes amis du blog, eet az beeen a hwile, n'est-ce pas? Sorry about the conspicuous lack of posts, but I have been on an Elba of my own the past couple of months. My Elba isn't an island in the Mediterranean, however; no, my Elba is a great big, energy-sucking classroom full of freshmen dunces...er...writers.
We are nearing the mid-point of the semster now, and I still feel like I have done little to help them be all they could be, but I have resigned myself to the old adage about the "proof" being in the "pudding." There are some days, though, when the "proof" is actually in the bottle of Wild Turkey I'm compelled to swig after an evening of grading their inane papers. "In the vast majority of the large and differing society of the modern age..." one paper starts out. Z'wounds! How does one even begin?!
Anyway, at least next semester promises to be more about literature and less about grading, so I am consoling myself with thoughts of the future. As I stroll along the beaches of my own private Elba (figuratively, of course), I plot my triumphant return to the land of "Caring About What I'm Being Forced to Teach." Oh, won't that be a glorious day! Comment glorieux! Mais dommage, cet jour n'est pas tout pres. C'est la vie, mes amis du blog, c'est la vie.
On the bright side, that most decadent and macabre of holidays, Halloween, is just around the cobweb-draped, bone-strewn corner. Watching scores of blood-soaked films in which innocent people have their bodies maimed and mangled for no reason by some random monstrous beast or homicidal fiend always cheers me up. It really gets me into the spirit for Christmas.
