my spartan summer office.

The academic placement gods seem to have been with me this summer. After feeling miserable about writing for months now, I show up at Andover, meet my 14 students from 10 countries, and soon realize that they are universally eager, excited, and ready to participate. Today the fairly shy, taciturn Nick from Indonesia was whispering his ideas while Long Island Tawana and Athens Alexia were loudly duking it out about whether or not Gregor in Kafka's Metamorphosis understands more about his transformation than we, as readers, do. No one would have heard Nick, but Nigerian Anthony politely interrupted, turned to the class and commanded: "Yo guys, Nick here has somethin' to say. Let him talk." Nick, in at a nearly imperceptible volume proceeded to explain that Kafka makes Gregor's transformation vague (is he vermin? a bug? a beetle? a rat?) such that as readers we are in the same state of confusion as Gregor. As he's trying to figure himself out physically, we gain measured insights as he does. No dramatic irony. No privileged position. Equality between vermin and reader. I then asked one more question about pronouns and the class managed a 30-minute discussion with no prompting, no clues, no disclosures. As I've said to others recently, I think I'm beginning to accept the fact that creating such a class has very little to do with my actions and so much to do with enabling a critical mass of students to develop this sense that engaging fully is a really very cool thing to do. They, of course, have to feel like it was their idea to feel that way as well. You know something extraordinary is happening when they stay after class today just to tell you how much they enjoyed the poetry explication.

Can someone please remind me why I would ever take a 4-4 at the University of No Man's Land at No Mansville? A life of this would be just dandy, if you ask me...