Feedback kindly requested

Summer school. I'm tired. Most people work 5 days a week? How do they live??

Right now I'm teaching Travel Literature, which is probably my dream topic to teach, when I forget that I've never really made a specific, "academic" study of travel literature. So this class is getting thrown together a bit ad hoc, but that means I'm really engaged on a daily basis because I'm not working with a common syllabus or completely sure about the learning outcomes. In short, I'm learning! It's so cool. So tiring too.

The readings I've broken down into 3 units for the 3 week course: Travel as Memoir, Travel as Fiction/Poetry, Travel as Essay. We're digging into memoir territory with Orhan Pamuk, Michael Ondaatje, Isak Dinesen and Alexandra Fuller right now and they're working on their own short pieces and so far so good. Right before class though, I came upon the six-word memoir project from SMITH magazine and thought it might be fun to do as an exercise. For those unfamiliar, it was born out of a challenge given to Ernest Hemingway, to write a story in six words. Here was his response:
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

So SMITH magazine turned this into a autobiographical request and collected enough to make a book. Kind of like the silly haiku craze, these are short and sometimes awesome, sometimes really cheesy, sometimes funny. But I think they help students think about making meaning without putting it all throughout their essay, and so I gave it to them. Here were some of their 6-word memoirs:
Hopefully, landscaping my life to success!
Held together what life broke apart.
Graduating, have not learned anything yet.
He tickles me, I punch him.
As soon as you finish, more comes.
Will take chances, only after thinking. (this is my lame one!)
19 years wasting time with education.
Life sucks, you suck, we suck!
Two spins, I spin and change.
Bad food, perverted men, rusty elevators.

As you can see, we descended into chaos at some point. Now I guess I have to teach them so they don't waste a 20th year on education! ( guess they start young here??)

But here's what I want feedback on. I have a bunch of Gulf-area essays on the line up for the last week of the semester and some of them are a little, candid, shall we say. Something I haven't touched much upon in this blog are the strains living in this region puts on your social conscience, though it's something I think about all the time, especially with regards to my responsibilities as a teacher. Andrew told me about this George Saunders' essay on Dubai called "The New Mecca" (click to link) when I moved here, and I might share it with them, because more than any other essay, it seems to encapsulate the conflicting emotions one experiences when traveling to this region and dealing with the social, financial, and geographical extremes. But since my students are from here, they may take it personally. If you have time, you should read it, not just because it's a great essay, but because George Saunders' is wonderful, kind, funny and humanistic, and I once sat next to him at dinner at Edo's Squid (he was a guest reader at VCU) and have been a #1 fan ever since. He didn't talk about writing at all through the whole meal!

And if you do read it, tell me if I should give it to my students. They are mostly conservative Qataris and there's talk of prostitutes and blowing wads, etc, in the essay. Myself, I especially like the part where he says he wishes he could invite everyone he's ever met and loved in life to share his giant, private hotel pool with him. I feel like this all the time.

In other news, still no news about next year.

Take it, Tom...