That'll Learn Ya

Today I taught literature on the university level for the first time. Although I'm technically a writing professor, I believe—as most of us do—that reading and writing are, by nature, intertwined. Besides, I miss teaching literature and crave it almost as much as I crave chocolate chip cookies. (Although I cannot tell you the date that I last taught literature, I can tell you the last time I ate a real cookie was on December 17, 2007.)

Anyway, I built a literary analysis unit into my Writing 102 class. It consists of five stories covered in two class periods, culminating in the students composing a paper discussing a literary element of their choosing. I was very interested to see how these students would fare in such a unit.

My first 102 class begins at 8:30. These students are more chipper than you'd expect—several of them are commuters, which means two things: they're generally more motivated, and they've generally had more time to awaken on the ride over.

In fact, these were the only students who were awake enough to discuss Hemingway's brilliant story, "Hills Like White Elephants." A pocket of the room was very excited about the symbols in the piece and discussed it with fervor. The others, however, did little more than sleep with their eyes open. My prompting and tooth pulling did little to draw them into the conversation. As the class ended, I thought, well, at least the next class is usually livelier.

My 9:35 class was worse! Whereas the few enthusiastic students in the 8:30 section wanted to satisfy their curiosity about this elusive piece and thus asked questions and worked out ideas aloud, this class was content with it being a story about a guy and a girl drinking cervesas in a train station. (Abortion? Where'd you get that from?!)

Just as I had believed my literary discussions to be a total flop, I entered my 2:20 class. (Don't let the time fool you; these students often drag themselves to class post-siesta and are just as groggy as the warm bodies I teach in the morning.) I had admonished them on Monday for their poor attendance and punctuality; when I walked in the door at 2:19, they were all there. That's right: I said something, and students TOOK HEED. It was a strange sensation.

Not only were they there, but they seem to have (as instructed) pumped themselves full of caffeine because they were ready to roll. From the get-go students began asking questions, drawing conclusions, and engaging in discourse that usually is only featured in my sweetest of dreams.

What happened next was more than I would even hope to dream. Two of my students are taking a Sex Lit course (Sexuality in Literature?), and one of them pointed out the them of Ave (Maria)/Eva (Eve) in the story. The student asserted that Jig's role had changed from the sin-loving Eva to a maternal Ave with the conception of her unwanted child, thus changing the man's view of her.

Wow.

I learned something new today. (Oh, boy.)