"Extra credit?"

I find it difficult to take "extra credit" seriously. In my high school, there was none, at least none that I knew of. When I failed my algebra midterm, there was no "extra credit" to boost my grade. There was though "extra help," offered 45 minutes or so before the school day began. I went in for that help morning after morning, learned some algebra, and ended up with a B or B- for the semester. (Thank you, Mrs. Waibel.) In college, my only extra-credit memory involves an intro poetry course in which we could memorize and write out poems or partial poems on several occasions throughout the semester. We were paid by the line.

While I have trouble saying "extra credit" with a straight face, I'm not completely opposed. I sometimes add a simple bonus question to a quiz (for some reason that happens only on Fridays, so some students never know about it), and I sometimes add a question that can be answered only by someone who's shown admirable diligence in reading. I once offered an enormous amount of quiz extra credit for anyone who had looked up verst, a word that comes up in passing in Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin. One student had the definition, and I was happy to make good on the offer.¹ I suppose that I see extra credit as something like a surprise party, to which I bring the goodies, of my own generosity, on a whim.

I'm opposed though to extra credit as it usually functions in college life. Sometimes extra credit amounts to a private arrangement between student and professor, typically a student who has already struck out and now seeks another chance at bat: "Do you give extra credit?" Such arrangements are ethically indefensible, violating the grading policies of a course syllabus and cheating every student who takes the grade he or she has earned with no attempt at negotiation.

And sometimes the offer of extra credit is made to all, usually for showing up. E-mails announcing fiction- and poetry-readings often include a sentence or two encouraging faculty to offer students extra "points" for going. Having gone to many readings with largely captive audiences, I wonder about the effect on readers' morale. I remember going to a reading by Alice Munro, many years ago, and watching as a professor took a count of her students while Munro waited to begin. You can always spot the extra-credit seekers at the end of a reading: they're the ones who are up and out before the questions-and-answers start.

The tipping point for me came when I was teaching an intro lit course focusing on themes of faith, survival, and progress. It was a good class, with a reading list that included the Book of Job, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, and Art Spiegelman's Maus. Eva Kor, a Mengele twin and Auschwitz survivor, was giving a talk on campus that semester, and I encouraged my students to go hear her. What could be more relevant? "Extra credit?" someone asked. The question made me crazy with exasperation. Here's a woman who survived the Nazis, I said, and you want me to turn her life into points to add to your grade? I couldn't do that. The best kind of extra credit, as I told those students and still tell my students, is the kind you give yourself: by working harder on an essay, by doing some extra reading, by taking in an exhibit or lecture for its own sake, because you might find it interesting, because you might learn something.

I was curious about the history of the term extra credit and did a little snooping before writing this post. The Oxford English Dictionary, I am happy to report, offers no extra credit.

¹ There was a point, by the way, to the verst question: the word is an early hint that the novel's narrator is a Russian émigré.

Michael Goldberg (1924-2007)

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega

Frank O'Hara, "The Day Lady Died"

Michael Goldberg, 83, Abstract Expressionist, Is Dead (New York Times)

Thank you, Iowa!

Proust is for hunters

I heard a branch snap behind me. I closed the book and slowly lowered it between my knees, which made it almost impossible for me to turn and investigate the sound. I was immediately struck by the absurdity of the situation: I was standing 20 feet up a tree in single-digit temperatures reading Proust.

Common sense deer hunting (Michigan Live)
All Proust posts (via Pinboard)

Happy birthday, Van Dyke Parks

Van Dyke Parks turns 65 today. Happy birthday, Van Dyke!

There's a 2002 Dutch television documentary on VDP at YouTube, with many choice remarks. E.g., on crowds: "I can make it in a queue system, but it is just generally safer to stay at home." (Thanks, Timothy, for reminding me about this documentary.)

Van Dyke Parks documentary: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (YouTube)

Other Van Dyke Parks posts (via Pinboard)
The Music of Van Dyke Parks (fan site)

Syllabub

Is today's Word of the Day meant to get on the nerves of those who haven't yet begun to prepare for a new semester? O, cruel!¹

syllabub \SILL-uh-bub\ noun
: milk or cream that is curdled with an acid beverage (as wine or cider) and often sweetened and served as a drink or topping or thickened with gelatin and served as a dessert

Example sentence: On special occasions, grandma would serve syllabub for dessert.

(I started working on my syllabub syllabi yesterday.)

¹ King Lear 3.7.70

Teaching disorganized students

Ana Homayoun tutors disorganized teenagers:

She requires her clients to have a three-ring, loose-leaf binder for each academic subject, to divide each binder into five sections — notes, homework, handouts, tests and quizzes, and blank paper — and to use a hole puncher relentlessly, so that every sheet of school-related paper is put into its proper home.

Students must maintain a daily planner; they are required to number the order in which they want to do each day’s homework and draw a box next to each assignment, so it can be checked off when completed.

Homework must be done in a two-hour block in a quiet room, with absolutely no distractions: no instant messaging, no Internet, no music, no cellphone, no television.

While some girls need help getting organized, at least three-quarters of her students are boys.

Giving Disorganized Boys the Tools for Success (New York Times)

Having seen many a college student struggle (and fail) to find a needed piece of paper in a bulging folder, I applaud any effort to develop better organizing skills. But I'm puzzled: the parents of the high-schoolers described in this article can afford private tutoring ("high-priced," the Times says) but cannot teach these skills themselves?

Calendar downloads

Small calendars for the new year, well designed and free:

Compact calendar
Monitor-edge calendar
Thumb calendar
UNIX calendar command (handy for making a three- or four-month calendar to keep in a pocket notebook)

A poem for New Year's Eve

From John Clare (1793-1864):

               The Old Year

                        1
      The Old Year's gone away
      To nothingness and night
      We cannot find him all the day
      Nor hear him in the night
      He left no footstep mark or place
      In either shade or sun
Tho' last year he'd a neighbours face
In this he's known by none

                        2
      All nothing every where
      Mists we on mornings see
      They have more of substance when they're here
      And more of form than he
      He was a friend by every fire
      In every cot and hall
A guest to every hearts desire
And now he's nought at all

                        3
      Old papers thrown away
      Or garments cast aside
      E'en the talk of yesterday
      Are things identified
      But time once torn away
      No voices can recall
The eve of new years day
Left the old one lost to all

Goodbye, Old Year. May the New Year be a year of greater hope and greater peace for our world.

Related posts
A poem for New Year's Eve (by Ted Berrigan)
Happy New Year (from the film Marty)

Telephone exchange names on screen (no. 3)

[From Born Yesterday, dir. George Cukor, 1950.]

"Hello? CHestnut 7180. I'd like to speak to Thomas Jefferson please."

After visiting the Jefferson Memorial, Billie Dawn (Judy Holliday) dials.

Someone on the set didn't know how to spell DEcatur, which was, according to the Telephone EXchange Name Project, a Washington, D.C. exchange name. But there's no sign that CHestnut was in use in D.C. I like it that both the written number and the spoken number are missing a digit.

Related posts
Telephone exchange names
More telephone exchange name nostalgia
Telephone exchange names in classical music
Telephone exchange names in poetry
Telephone exchange names on screen
Telephone exchange names on screen (no. 2)

All "dowdy world" posts (via Pinboard)