Somehow, I am listed in Pitt’s course catalog as teaching not one, but two sections of Intro to Fiction next semester. One of them is a Tuesday night class, the other is a Tuesday-Thursday afternoon class.
I’m pretty sure this is not for real, because I’m pretty sure that Pitt does not want to pay me more than they already do.
The night class is the “real” one, I believe, because it is listed on the piece of paper posted outside of the grad secretary’s office. But both classes are chock full of students, and the afternoon one has three names I recognize: two former students, and one student who was in my summer class but dropped out due to health issues. I’m pretty sure that these three students are signed up in this particular class because I’m teaching it. (At the very least they’re not avoiding it because I’m teaching it, and that’s something, right?)
So while I don’t particularly want to teach two classes … I’ll be sad if I don’t teach that one. There’s something affirming in those three names.
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In the meantime: the first week of the summer course went well. Last time we talked about detail and imagery; tomorrow we talk about dialogue. The first short story was originally due tomorrow, but I shifted it to Thursday. Partly for their schedules; and partly, I’ll admit, for my own, as I’ll be gone this weekend at a wedding and won’t have much time for grading. Hard to believe that after tomorrow’s class we’ll be a fourth of the way through.* Summer courses make time pass so quickly.
*I think of everything in fractions and percentages: time, amount of work completed or to be done, etc. When I was in undergrad I would calculate what fraction of the way I was through college after finals <em>and</em> midterms. Does this make me OCD?
