Summer '09

My plans to teach this summer have been thwarted. I was prepped and ready to go on an English 100 class at the nearby community college, and I showed up on my first day of class to find an empty classroom. Moments later, the Dean walked in and apologized profusely that there were no students enrolled, therefore the class was canceled.

This was to be a "run off" class that would have been filled with students from Eng. 101 who needed more developmental writing work. However, those students were not required to take 100, only recommended to, and as it so happens none of them wanted to.

Firstly, as for my inconvenience, the Dean was very gracious and offered me half-pay for my time and trouble. I appreciate him and genuinely like him, so no hard feelings.

But, as for the students, I think the college is doing them a great disservice by not requiring them to take Eng. 100 per their instructors' assessment. Those students are non-native speakers of English, as it so happens, and so this is an even more troubling prospective for them. If they fail Eng. 101, they will have to go back to take Eng. 100 and then re-take 101 anyway. They are wasting a class worth of time and money this way.

Okay, off that soapbox. What this means for me: I am spending my summer writing and editing my documentary. I don't like living on a shoestring, but perhaps this is the silver lining. I get to write every day and don't have to go to work. Well, for now. I may need some temp work to help with August, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

So, this summer's writing projects are, in order of priority:

1. Final polish of the sci fi script.
2. Generate log lines for my manager friend in L.A., develop one of them and write a complete draft by end of summer.
3. Revise BEAUTY IS... with the notes I received from my writing group in April.

And of course edit my film. All this amounts to a full time job, so it's not at all accurate to say I'm not working this summer. I'm just not getting paid for my work. Yet!