WriterProf: Eager to Read

It isn't always the case that I am eager to read the essays my students write.  Sometimes the process is as much a drudgery for me as it is for them.  However, this semester I am delighted to say that I can't wait to see the essays my composition students are researching/drafting right now.  They have chosen a wonderfully diverse range of topics, and they seem to have a genuine enthusiasm for the subjects they've selected for investigation. Writing is always hard work.  In fact, the more skilled we become, the better our command of the language, the more difficult the process becomes, primarily because we require more from ourselves.  We are less easily satisfied.

I do love the work I do here at Anderson University.  And I am grateful for this one, of many, ways that I get to enter students' lives every semester.  Their essays are a tiny window into their individual worlds.  And I am blessed that they lift the blind a few times each semester and let me peek inside.

Loving life in Indiana

Though I often grumble about the humidity and the predictable landscape and the prominence of Walmart superstores, I really do love life in Indiana.  I love the way the sky changes as each day recedes.  I love way leaves catch fire in the fall, burning the last bits of life in a gorgeous array of painterly colors: yellow ochre, and crimson red against the cerulean blue backdrop.  I love the gentle swell and pool of the fields I drive past when visiting my family back home and the family-run orchards and pumpkin farms that entertain school children every October.  And I love September, even on a day like today when it is cold and wet, because I know September doesn't last forever.  It will be gone quick enough, no matter how glorious or wretched its days.