Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Pinhead to Juggernaut

I'm too busy reading and responding to project drafts from students in HU211 to spend much time here. This is a busy week in my online course; I'm trying to pace through six project drafts each day so I can get them back by Friday. Oh, and I just started today, so I should feel refreshed and energetic. But I don't. I think it was the five hours of meetings I sat in today. Three meetings. First one was two hours long. It was also the most interesting: a consultant from Scion (?) Corporation pitching student housing designs to the directors from all of the student services areas. It turned into an interesting talk about students' conceptions of space--privacy, social connections, liberties and institutional definitions of how space must be used. I was sitting in place of our AD. I tried to argue that students are less concerned with the wall board, carpet and floor plans than they are with the institutional controls encroaching on the living space through rhetoric and technology: forced meal plans, surveillance upgrades (yes, we have cameras looking in on all of the dorm hall to and fro), and explicit measures to direct campus living. I don't have any experience with student housing beyond two years of dorm living as an undergrad. But it was an engaging interchange; it got me thinking about space dynamics, student perceptions and institutional language about spatial use. That's why it was a good meeting for me.

I'm also squeezed for blogging time because I was at work last night, the kids have practice tonight, and there's another event tomorrow night. I've been trying to read more, too--most of the way through Scholes' Rise and Fall of English. Since I read the bulk of it between Cleveland and KC on Monday night, I've been mulling over several ideas about intertextuality and sustained inquiry in our weblog for EN106. Even talked about those ideas just a bit in class on Tuesday morning. Working up to clearer understandings of these matters as they relate to research writing and question-guided investigations.

Posted by Derek Mueller at February 18, 2004 6:22 PM to Dry Ogre Chalking