27/50

I had a good day at the university today. The students seemed to be in a good mood. They exchanged stories in the workshop and talked genially with each other. Then we spoke truthfully to each other about revising.

The Native American Literature students had a test and got response papers back. Even these tense happenings did not squelch their apparent good mood. Indeed, many of them wrote essays that had inspired me, and they mowed through the test quickly and efficiently. They are a good class.

In my last two classes (response to literature), I had some serious things to go over. We discussed Ovid's Icarus and Auden's "Musee Des Beaux Arts," and then we watched the first half of The Bridge, a documentary I've discussed here before. I thought it might be a downer for students, but the class seemed to open a lot of them up and I had an outpouring of writings waiting for me in my university Internet inbox by the time I got home. I can see that they are really making connections between all the literature we have read this semester and also connections between the literature and themselves. That always makes for a great day.