Images

I was thinking tonight (after receiving the envelope from the college) about COCC's change from the masculine postage stamp (rectangular) to the feminine moon as its representative symbol. The college paid a firm of grown up advertising and marketing folks to research and implement this change so (therefore, Q.E.D.) it must be based on valid assumptions about effectiveness in our target market.

But what are those assumptions?

Papers

Ack! As Bill the Cat might say. I have 43 tests and 43 student papers from the Philosophy of Love and Sex class to assess today and tomorrow. Fortunately, my spouse is willing to help with the grading of the test (it's objective) (mostly) (I should learn to use scantron but never think that far ahead). I will combine grading with poodle grooming (a five to six hour job).

On the plus side, we went to the opening of the A.R.T.C.A.T. show at the Pence gallery last night. That was great. Wonderful work by the best art students and teachers of Central Oregon.

Differences in Classes

My two Small Group Communication classes took the midterm last week and in one section, four out of five teams got As and in the other section only one team received an A. I'm trying to think of what I've done differently in those classes.

I could use fallacious post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning and say that one of the classes had to change their classroom and that made a difference. But who knows?

3Days Off

It was great having the college website shut down for two days. And I slept all Friday afternoon. So, basically, I haven't worked for three days except for grading my TR Small group midterms. Tomorrow I'll write the midterm for the love class.

Love Sometimes Stinks

This ain't about love. It's about my Philosophy of Love and Sex class. This week they proved to me that most of them are not reading the assigned material. Sigh.

I could give them a pop quiz every Wednesday night. But what would be the point? This is class they don't have to take. I don't want to turn them off the material by making them actually read it, for goodness sake. Now, I wasn't all that surprised when I found out that only seven out of 43 admitted that they'd read the online chapters of La Vita Nuova by Dante. But when most of them had not read On Love by Andreas Capellanus (selections of which are in our textbook, The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love) well, that made me kinda sad. I want them to be interested so don't want to punish them. Nevertheless, it's hard to talk about the material or play with it if they haven't read it.

Last week we had a terrific time comparing sections of the New Testament, especially Mark 10 and Matthew 19, about Jesus' comments on divorce. We also looked at a few different translations of 1 Corinthians 7, from the King James to The Message. In that class we also looked at love and gameplaying, checking out bits of Ovid's Art of Love. I also read about Roman Empire marriage customs from Diane Ackerman's book, A Natural History of Love.

Well, next week is the midterm. Gotta write that today.