Let Commencement Commence

Tomorrow is Graduation Day at my university, and I have been thinking about how many of these I have attended. I have been a student in a few and a faculty member in a bunch. Through the years, I have noticed similarities in all of them.

Some students have their caps decorated while others are just trying to keep them on their heads.

A lot of pictures are taken.

Politicians show up because there is a crowd.

A graduate does something funny as they walk across the stage.

Dignitaries make speeches.

The list goes on and on. Everyone who has been to a commencement knows what I am talking about. In general, it is a time for celebration. Students have accomplished something that a too-small percentage of Americans have. They graduated from college. They may even be the first people in their families to do that.

However, there is more to celebrate than obtaining a degree. Families can celebrate the end of tuition payments. Students can celebrate the end of research papers, tests and all sorts of horrible things. They celebrate, and I find myself celebrating with them. but, I also find myself a little sad. Graduation is a milestone in life, and, like all milestones, it brings change. That change is a beginning, but it is also an end.

Graduation is the last time that the group will be together. Students who have spent four years with each other will drift apart, and many will never see each other again. They have been through a lot together. Good times. Bad times. Classes. Parties. They have been a community, and that community is coming to a close.

Every year, students who graduated the year before come back to visit. It’s good to see them, but I believe they sense what I did when I graduated. Once you are out, you are no longer a member of the community. It’s a weird feeling of being an outsider in a familiar setting. What’s the line? You can’t go home again.

The faculty feels it, too. Students that we have seen grow from kids to adults are going out into the world. We have seen them everyday for four, five, six years. After graduation, we will never see most of them again. We are glad that they have reached their goals, but we are also sad to see them go. New students will take their places, but, as I said earlier, this group will never be together again.

Tomorrow is Graduation Day at my university. The morning will be filled with anticipation and excitement. The ceremony will begin, and people will immediately start to wonder when it will be over. Don’t wish for it to be over. It will be over quicker than you realize. You will celebrate with your families. A few days later, you will realize that it’s over, and something new will begin.

Grading the Day

I just finished grading a big stack of assignments, and my eyes are a bit blurry. I can’t figure out why we teachers give assignments at the end of the semester. It just means that we put a lot of work on ourselves. At some point, I will realize that assigning something at the beginning of the semester is fine.

Most of the papers are graded, but my brain hasn’t fully recovered. I’m not even sure why I am typing. It just feels like something that I should be doing. Does that mean I am a blogoholic?

I guess so because I am typing up a post without really knowing what the post is supposed to be about. Words are just appearing on the screen. I wonder what’s going to appear next.

I woke up this morning after hitting the snooze button a couple of times. My iPhone is my alarm, and it is set on “De Guello“, a song from the movie Rio Bravo that stars John Wayne, Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson.

I got ready for work and headed that direction. I am not a morning person, but I insist on having classes a 8 o’clock. I have no idea why. This morning I talked about Herbert Hoover and how his administration got steamrolled by the Great Depression.

A lot of people blamed him, but it happened a few months after he took office. That’s not enough time to cause all of that.

I had some office hours before getting a hot dog for lunch. I let my afternoon class go after a few minutes of discussion. The semester is coming to an end, but my lectures are coming to an end quicker. After more office hours, I picked up Necole’s daughter from school because she had an appointment with a doctor.

Eventually, I made it home to get ready for an awards ceremony back on campus. I got the award for Most Outstanding Faculty Member. It is an honor to receive this award because it is voted on by the students. One of the other history professors also got a service award, so that was great, too. Basically, history holds a monopoly over the faculty awards this year.

Once the ceremony was over, I visited my parents to show them my plaque. I also talked to Necole and found out that they had to get antibiotics.

After all of that, I started grading but did it a little differently. Usually, I grade in silence. This time, I graded with the television on. Throughout the grading process, I listened to a PBS documentary about the Dust Bowl. Not surprisingly, the narrator talked about how it was Herbert Hoover’s fault. I also listened to a 30 for 30 about the 1983 NFL draft.

Now, I am blogging about all of it. Interesting isn’t it?

Take the Test of Rock

A few posts ago, I wrote about a class that I am teaching called United States History: 1941 to the Present and how I am spending some time on the history of Rock n’ Roll. We talked about the beginnings of the genre when we covered the 1950s, but the students received most of their information from Rock: Music, Culture and Business, a book that I thought would be interesting.

I wrote about the test that I was going to give them, and Dying Note, who you guys should check out, wanted to take the test, as well. So, here it is. Take the test, and see how well you know the history of Rock. However, I should explain something on the front end. All of the questions came from the book, which was divided into twelve chapters. Simply, I asked two questions from each chapter and added one other to make twenty-five. After all, twenty-five question is easier to calculate than twenty-four.

With that being said, feel free to take the Test of Rock.

1. What was Napster?

2. Kurt Cobain was lead singer for what group?

A. Green Day

B. Hootie & the Blowfish

C. Nirvana

D. Pearl Jam

3. What band, led by Ozzy Osbourne, is generally considered to be the first real metal group?

A. Black Sabbath

B. Juda Priest

C. Led Zeppelin

D. Metallica

4. Debuting in 1981, how did MTV change the way the music industry operated?

5. Reggae was:

A. associated with the Rastafarian movement, which was inspired by the work of Marcus Garvey.

B. named from a slang term meaning “everyday stuff”.

C. the first musical style in the Rock era to originate in the Third World.

D. All of the Above

6. Which did novelist Thomas Wolfe call “the Me Decade”?

A. 1960s

B. 1970s

C. 1980s

D. 1990s

7. Who was known as the “Godfather of Soul”?

A. James Brown

B. Marvin Gaye

C. Isaac Hayes

D. Otis Redding

8. Name two bands that were part of the “British Invasion”.

9. What made Motown different from other production companies?

A. It was headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, far from Los Angeles, center of the 1960s music scene.

B. It was owned by white entrepreneurs and produced music for African-American audiences.

C. It was under African-American control and produced music not directed primarily at African-American audiences.

D. Both A and C

10. What did the Boogie-Woogie piano style spring from?

11. What is a cover version?

12. What was payola?

13. Which of the following had a pre-Rock n’ Roll hit with “Love and Marriage”?

A. Nat “King” Cole

B. Perry Como

C. Frank Sinatra

D. Hank Williams

14. Alan Freed:

A. first used the term “Rock n’ Roll” for commercial purposes.

B. promoted concert tours featuring African-American artists who played for racially mixed audiences.

C. was arrested for anarchy and incitement to riot when a fight broke out at one of his concerts.

D. All of the Above

15. Which early Rock n’ Roll piano player was known as “The Killer”?

A. Fats Domino

B. Buddy Holly

C. Jerry Lee Lewis

D. Little Richard

16. What band personified the “California Sound” with songs about surfing and became the best-selling American group of the 1960s?

17. In a few sentences, what is the importance of Bob Dylan in the history of American music?

18. What was the counterculture of the 1960s?

19. Name two bands that fit in the “Southern Rock” genre.

20. The term “Disco” is derived from:

A. “compact disc”, which replaced 8-Track tapes in the 1970s.

B. “discotheque”, which was a European term for a dance club.

C. “record disc”, which could hold lengthy songs that intricate dance moves could be coordinated to.

D. None of the Above

21. Who recorded Thriller, the top-selling album in history?

22. What Hip-Hop group popularized the term “rapper” with the song Rapper’s Delight?

A. Beastie Boys

B. Public Enemy

C. Run-D.M.C.

D. Sugarhill Gang

23. What is digital sampling?

24. What is MP3?

25. At this time, who is your favorite artist?

The Test of Rock

This semester, I am teaching United States: 1941 to the Present, and we cover the stuff that you would probably expect – presidents, the Cold War, the hot wars, Civil Rights, space. Heck, you name it, and we talk about it. However, I decided to mix in something else this semester as a prelude to something that I would like to do in the future. Amidst all of the topics of the 20th Century, we are interweaving Rock n’ Roll.

That’s right. I am the Jack Black of our university. I think that’s pretty good for someone who can only play the radio.

As we made our way through the 1950s, we went over the beginnings of Rock n’ Roll and some of the people who got it started. We haven’t talked much about it since, but the students have been reading a book, Rock: Music, Culture and Business, that covers the genre through seven decades. Tomorrow, they get to take a test. The Test of Rock.

Joan Jett – The Crush of my High School Existence

It has been tougher to make out than I thought it would be. There’s just too much stuff that I want to put in the test. Each time I turn a page I find something else that would make a great question. In case the students are reading this, I won’t write about the questions I came up with. Just know that it could have been the biggest test that I have ever made.

Part of this inspiration comes from this past Friday night when I saw Eric Clapton in concert.

Slow Hand

I have seen him before and written about that in “Listeria – Guitar Gods Edition“. This show was better than that show. Wait, this performance was better than that performance. The last show was better because I was on the 20th row. This time I had to watch the screens to get a good view.

Anyway, Clapton was at the top of his game. He played songs that everyone wanted to hear along with Blues numbers. He also played a pre-Rock song called “Good Night, Irene” that is covered in the book that the class is reading. The bad part about the concert? He didn’t play “Layla“, which disappointed everyone, and he didn’t play “Badge” which disappointed me.

So, it seems that I have surrounded myself with Rock music, and there is nothing wrong with that. I wonder if there will be a question about Eric Clapton on the test.

Tennessee in 1923

When you teach history, people tend to give you old stuff. It’s cool. I like old stuff. It’s just something that I have noticed. A few months ago, a friend gifted me with the 1923 version of The University of Tennessee Record, the catalog for the 1923-1924 academic year. It was a fitting gift. It’s historic. It’s academic. It’s from the university whose teams I have supported since I was a kid.

Looking through old books is always interesting. It’s fun to see how different things used to be. Recently, I wrote about a compilation of United States history from the 1870s and the strange subjects that were found within it. This book also provides some interesting tidbits.

The calendar looks similar to the calendar that my university uses. It shows when classes begin and end. Commencement, the goal for everyone, is held in the morning. It’s on Wednesday morning, which seems like a weird day to have it. However, there is one major difference between the calendar then and the calendar now. They had the day off on George Washington’s Birthday! I don’t know why they would do that. After all, he was only the Father of the Nation.

Remember me?

A few pages later, it lists the different colleges and schools within the university. I found the College of Liberal Arts interesting because that is the one that I teach in. They have all of the usual suspects – College of Engineering, College of Agriculture, School of Education, School of Home Economics. Wait, what? The School of Home Economics? Yep, that really existed. Somewhere in the book, there is a paragraph talking about how the University of Tennessee welcomes female students. I guess this is where they planned on sticking them.

To get a degree in Home Economics, a student had to take some general electives and 16 Home Economics classes. It doesn’t specify what those classes are about, but I can imagine.

I don’t know the year, but this is a canning class at UT.

Today, the university has an agriculture extension program that places an agricultural agent in each Tennessee county to assist the farmers in that area. The university also did that in 1923, but it also sent out a home demonstration agent. In my county, the agriculture agent was E.F. Arnold, and the home demonstration agent was Miss M.S. Henderson.

The section titled “General Information” is, as would be expected, full of information. It turns out that students were required to attend chapel and were expected to go to church. That would really go over well at a public university these days. The next paragraph, call “Christian Activities”, covers the importance of Christian groups on campus. That’s alright. There are Christian groups on campus right now. However, there are also other groups for the religious and non-religious.

As a fan of the University of Tennessee athletics programs, I wanted to know what was happening in 1923. Today, the athletic department, to the chagrin of many academic types, is the most famous part of the university. It generates publicity and millions of dollars. Back then, it generated two paragraphs in the Record.

The first paragraph begins as follows, “Athletics are encouraged in so far as they do not conflict seriously with the academic work.” That is quaint. It goes on to say that the university is a member of the Southern Intercollegiate Conference.

S-I-C!!! S-I-C!!!

The second paragraph thanks W.S. Shields and others for purchasing land for a new physical education field. It would be named Shields-Watkins field. It looked like this.

Now, it looks like this.

I’m in there somewhere.

As written earlier, I was interested in the College of Liberal Arts, but I was specifically interested in the History Department. Within it, I found three faculty members – James D. Hoskins, who also served as the Dean of the University; Phillip May Hamer; and, Marguerite Bartlett Hamer. I assume that they were married. Three faculty members. That’s how many we have at my small, private university.

There are other interesting aspects of The University of Tennessee Record, but it’s getting late. Like other books from the past, it provides an insight to what the world was like in 1923 and how different (and how similar) it is to our time.

And It Begins Again

Tomorrow is the first day of the Spring semester as the cycle of higher academics begins again. The students have been moving into the residence halls over the weekend and will show up for classes in varying ways. Most of the new students will dress their best to make a good impression while most of the old timers will dress for comfort.

Thankfully, I’ve never seen a student wear one of these.

Some students will arrive to class early to get a good seat and make sure they don’t miss anything. Some will arrive a few minutes before class with a drink bottle in their hand. Others will come in a few minutes late. Either the new schedule got to them, or they didn’t time their drive correctly.

Bumper to Bumber, Baby

No matter how they get to class or how they are dressed, the students will be introduced to what the faculty members have been working on. Tomorrow is an important day. It is Syllabus Day and should be celebrated throughout the land. This is the document that lays out the semester and what is going to happen within the class.

The syllabus has all kinds of information. Required reading. Attendance policy. Class rules. However, the students are always ready to skip over to the assignment page. I can almost hear the wheels turning as they look at the page length of papers and the number of tests they will have to take. There are a lot of percentages on there that tell the students how important each item is. Here’s a hint. THEY ARE ALL IMPORTANT!!!

I’m not kidding.

Between classes is also an exciting time. New students are looking for rooms, and old students are hanging out with old friends. Some of them drop by the offices of their teachers to talk about anything other than academics. The time between classes is always. It’s amazing how quiet the hallways get when classes are in session.

The beginning of the semester is an exciting time. Everything is new, and the day-to-day grind hasn’t hit yet. Students are going to hear things that they have never heard before, and teachers are preparing to go over information that they know by heart. Good teachers introduce new scholarship into their classes, but the basics usually remain the same.

This week, I will talk about the post-Civil War period, the Renaissance and the United States of the 1940s. Along the way, I will do what I always do – teach History.

A Plumber, a Presentation and Willie Nelson’s Book

I was going to write a post about the movies I saw this weekend. Three in three days. However, I don’t feel like putting a lot of thought into a cinematic analysis. Instead, this post is about today’s activities.

It started with the usual waking up process. It takes a while for me to get out of bed, but, when I do, I hit the floor running. There is no drinking of coffee or watching of the Today Show.

It’s always weird to hear an announcer say, “Tomorrow on Today!”

It goes from bathroom activities to getting dressed to hitting the door. Getting up to flake around the house is not for me. It wastes good sleeping time.

I made it to campus in time for today’s in-service session. Several of the teachers who received summer grants talked about how they used to money. We learned about Chemistry, Biology, History, Economics and working with deaf athletes. Unfortunately, I had to go before the last presenter took the microphone.

They didn’t use this kind of microphone, but it would have been cool if they did.

After a quick lunch, I returned to my office and worked on a few of the assignments for the upcoming semester. I have some new ideas that I hope will work out well. I also had to mess around with my iTunes. This new version got downloaded, and I am trying to figure out why songs that I deleted popped back up.

There was also an enlightening conversation with one of my History mates. We members of college faculties can have some interesting talks. I know the students would be surprised by that.

Once the conversation was over, I headed to the house to take care of some domestic issues. This included calling a plumber to work on a running toilet. It has already been looked at twice. You would think it would be tired of running by now. It also included calling someone to look at the gas logs. I need a little ambience around here.

On to the treadmill where I spent 45 minutes getting my heart rate up and reading Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die by Willie Nelson.

Appropriate title.

It’s not a scholarly work by any means, but it’s a good treadmill read. Yes, we members of college faculties like easy reads, too.

Let’s see. Treadmill. Willie. Then, the second shower of the day before a dinner of salad, chopped steak and a baked potato. Now, I am blogging and watching the Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team beat the crap out of the Missouri Tigers. The Lady Vols are pretty good this year, but it isn’t the same without Pat Summitt prowling the sidelines.

She is Tennessee basketball.

After the game, I may watch the original Ocean’s 11 with the Rat Pack.

Some real cool cats.

Or, I may read some blogs. Or, I may think of a better blog post for next time.

Finally, It’s Finals Week

Exams started today, and there is always a different feeling during finals week. Part of it is due to the change in schedule. Everyone, both teachers and students, have been operating under one schedule for a few months, and, suddenly, it has been altered. If a class met at 8, then the final is at 9. If a class met at 12:30, then the final is a 1. Sometimes, I think it would be better if the schedule stayed the same. People get into a routine, and a change in that routine can affect how they function.

I notice the schedule change as soon as I pull into the parking lot. When I arrive in the morning, it is empty. When I return from lunch, it is full. During exam week, it is half full. It may sound crazy, but a lot can be learned about a school by studying the cars in the parking lot.

This is the coolest parking lot picture I could find.

Maybe, I will write a post about that one day.

The different feel can also be felt while walking into the building. During finals week, Student Life provides donuts for the students. It doesn’t take long for the table in the lobby to be filled with empty boxes rather than boxes full of donuts.

This looks about right.

However, the schedule, parking lot and donuts are only part of the change on campus. The real change can’t be found in a physical form. It is in the air. It is in the mannerisms of the students and the teachers. It is a sense of finality and pressure.

I was going to use a picture of Queen and David Bowie but was afraid some people might not understand it.

Throughout the semester, students know that there is always another chance. Make a bad grade on the first test, and it can be made up on other tests. Mess up on an assignment, and other assignment grades can pull it up. Bomb the exam, and there is nothing else that can be done.

It’s like a field goal at the end of a football game. Make the winning kick, and everyone talks about how clutch it was. Miss the winning kick, and everyone talks about choking. No one notices all of the plays that brought the game to that point.

This is the coolest picture of a field goal that I could find.

When people see that final test grade, they automatically think that the exam was make or break. In reality, all of those other grades contributed to the final tally. Sometimes, I think if people realized that, then the pressure of the final would not be as powerful.

The students are not the only ones who feel the pressure. Teachers have to grade the tests; turn in completed grades to the registrar; and, prepare for the emails from students wondering why they got a C when they knew that they were going to get an A.

Today, I gave one test and spent a long while getting it graded. I haven’t turned the grades in to the registrar because a student was confused by the schedule and missed the test. He will take it tomorrow while I am giving another exam. When he takes the exam, I will turn the grades in for that class. Once those are sent, I will start grading the exam that I am giving tomorrow. When I am finished, I will check my email inbox to explain to people why they made the grade that they did.

During this explanation, I will help them understand that I did not give them that grade. Simply, I calculated the grades that they earned.

Yes, final exams week is different.

The Lives and Times of a History Lecturer

When I embarked on a journey into graduate school, a wise member of academia provided a simple definition of what I was about to do. He said that getting a graduate degree in History was “learning more and more about less and less.” I thought it was weird at the time, but it is true. As students move up through the ranks, their research becomes more focused until they are experts on a certain subject. Then, that subject is added to the great story of history that is being worked on by others.

My research has been focused on prostitution in mining camps in the American West. I have written a few posts about that subject, and I will talk about it anytime that I am asked. However, it’s not a subject that comes up often in class. The university where I work is small, and there are only three members of the history department. That means that we teach a wide range of subjects. Off the top of my head, I have taught:

United States History Survey

World Civilization Survey

Jacksonian Democracy

The Old South

Expansion of the United States

Emergence of Modern America

World War II

United States History, 1914-1941

United States History, 1941-Present

Emergence of Modern Europe

Latin American History

African History

History of China and Japan

History of the Middle East

I may have missed a few, but I believe that is about it. I didn’t list those to brag or to complain. I listed them because teaching them has helped me have a broad base of historical knowledge. That base has made me a better teacher in my professional life, and it has made me a better trivia player in my personal life. It also helps me answer a question that I am often asked:

If you could live at any point in history,then  when would it be?

My real answer is that it would be a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. However, I have been giving that question more thought. If I could live at any point in history, then this is who and where I would want to be.

A Senator in Ancient Rome - These guys had it made. They had wealth, power and everything that does with that. The lower classes of Rome had it rough, but the Senators were riding high.

Toga! Toga! Toga!

A Hippie in the late 1960s - This was a lifestyle of freedom in almost all facets of life. The clothes and the music were cool. I would just have a hard time choosing between going to Monterey or Woodstock.

Peace, Love and a Magic Bus

A Pimp in the 1970s- Talk about cool clothes. Man, these guys had it. Shoes. Hats. Suits. Jewelry. Only pimps could get away with dressing like that. The music was awesome, too. Oh yeah, there was also a bunch of women around.

A pimp is only as good as his product.

A Gambler in the Old West- A lot of people would choose gunfighter of cowboy. Those are hard professions. Gunfighters invariably run into someone better than them. Cowboys have to push cattle all of the time. I would rather hang around the fancy gambling houses and play games of chance.

Bucking the Tiger

That is the short list of the lives and times I would pick from history. What you choose?

The Blue Chair Revolution

Several months ago, I wrote a post about the blue chairs outside of my office, and their popularity as a hangout spot. Last week, I returned to work to find the blue chairs missing, and I thought, “Uh oh, this is not good.” I discussed the issue with one of my history faculty cohorts, and he expressed the fear that I was imagining – the history students are going to revolt.

BRING BACK THE CHAIRS! BRING BACK THE CHAIRS!

The blue chairs were the foundation of the history department. This is where students studied. This is where students slept. This is where students formulated plans to get through their classes.

We knew that the students would be upset by the redecoration of their area, and it did not take long for them to voice their opposition. On the first day of school, I was bombarded with:

“Where are the chairs?”

“What happened to the chairs?”

“I hate these new chairs. You can’t sleep in them.”

“What’s up with this table? Do they expect us to put books on it?”

I am not certain, but I believe planning has begun to get the chairs back. They have been discovered in their new location, and I expect to see them in their rightful place any morning. No person pretending to be an interior decorator can mess with students of history.

VIVA LA BLUE CHAIRS!!!