Saturday, March 07, 2009

Living Through a Computer Mishap



Yesterday I "cracked" my laptop display, as the photo above illustrates. Finally having plugged the laptop into an old Dell monitor I had lying around, I am now able to do my usual, somewhat awkwardly and sans mobility. I think I also jangled the computer's guts because today has been a long struggle to print out the student's stories that I was supposed to have graded yesterday and today but will instead grade tomorrow and Sunday.

Why is it I do not just allow but actually enjoy allowing the students to turn in their stories by email, usually with a midnight deadline. I suppose there's a faux journalism quality that I am trying to replicate, arranging a schedule so that students naturally end up pushing against the clock.

Or perhaps it's all a kind of covert sadism, just another bit of passive-aggressive pedagogy.

This time it blew up on me. The computer and its false efficiencies! It's a kind of religion, isn't it, this belief that the machine is answering our prayers rather than throwing snares at our feet?

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