Can We PLEASE Talk About Grendel Now?

September 17, 2009

Today was quite the day. Frankly, by the end of it, I needed a beer.

I had surprising success in my American Folklore and Myth class today. We read a Native American creation myth and discussed it. Well, I guess I can’t really say that we discussed it, but I had a lot of success with getting the students to apply the grammatical structures from the text into everyday, conversational English. Getting most of them to talk is like pulling teeth, but I felt proud that by the end, at least everyone could use the preposition “beside” more or less correctly.

Mariana, one of the girls who attended the conversational club meeting I had yesterday, showed up for the class and sat in on the whole lesson! I took it as a big compliment that she actually wanted to take a class she wasn’t signed up for.

The second class, British Literature, was much more draining. This is one of the classes I have with the Turkish students. We were talking about Beowulf and reading parts of the text (in translation from Old English, of course). The texts were rather hard for the class, and even the best student exclaimed that Beowulf was making her feel stupid. To boot, we kept getting derailed by Turkish nationalism.

The two best English speakers in the class were in a very heated argument (in Turkish) and so I asked them to at least argue in English. So, they were discussing whether Turkey was the best country in the world. Inevitably, I got asked to weigh in. This was awkward. One student was arguing, “Every country thinks they are the best, so you can’t simply say that mine is the best, end of story.” The other student’s perspective was basically, “Well, they can all think that, but Turkey is still the best.”

Thanks a lot, Ataturk. You’re ruining my class.

I tried to be diplomatic, siding with the student who (most rationally) argued that the whole question was relative. This response did not go over well with Ataturk Jr. Sigh. And then the genocide got brought up. AWESOME. That’s what I want to do during my British Literature class...talk about the Armenian genocide.

I restrained myself from making any comment, although I couldn’t stop myself from raising a skeptical eyebrow when he made the claim that no American had been an eyewitness to the events in 1915. Yeah, no. The American ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, was alerted to the events in eastern Anatolia when he received several American missionaries who broke down in tears in his office trying to explain what had happened. He wrote a BOOK (Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story) about it, for crying out loud. So, yeah. My eyebrow went up.

At any rate, I realized my facial expressions were throwing gasoline on the fire and brought things back to Beowulf rather ungracefully. And the rest of the class went fine, although I’m going to have to figure out a better way to present difficult material to the class. I’m just trying to teach without alienating any of the students. Sigh. I am only slightly comforted by the fact that there are certainly many American students who would have a hard time accepting the fact that not everyone in the world loves their country as much as they do. Actually, Ataturk Jr. told me later that I should join the Turkish students sometime at the disco here (after Ramadan). So perhaps things will be okay. Although this better not be some sort of effort to bait me into another Armenian genocide discussion!

After that stressful class, we had a departmental meeting, much of which went over my head. There was all this heated debate going on about student attendance, much of which I couldn’t quite catch. Then came time for class hours and paycheck amounts to become official, which resulted in more than a few raised voices. More stress!!! Ah! I really would have appreciated some alcoholic refreshment, but I felt drinking alone was too depressing. Actually, I went home and watched a local program about chess and ate some soup, which was pretty soothing.

I got in touch with one of the Peace Corps volunteers this evening, which was nice. Hopefully, we will be able to meet and share experiences soon. In the meantime, I am relaxing by listening to new Regina Spektor and some Armenian Navy Band...