Communicating, & Hospitals

I am distressed, but as of yet I have no response that I will be given help on how to incorporate the required texts into my syllabus. Blah.

I graded my first set of student assignments last night. They weren't able as a whole to achieve what I wanted, and it's entirely my fault. I used to have a boss who never knew what he wanted until he saw what he didn't want. That's me in this case. I think they did their best to give me what I asked for, but I didn't ask for what I wanted. Instead, I asked for a disconnected and random piece of writing. But had they been able to give me a connected and meaningful piece of writing, they would have done outstanding work. Their ideas were beyond what I could have imagined in this project. What to do, what to do... I haven't decided how to grade these. They have the option to revise... I don't know.

I was in the emergency room Tuesday night with food poisoning. Hospitals fascinate me. They run on writing. They communicate by writing, not just in charts, but on walls, doors, beds, machines... There are so many rules, so many things that must be done a certain way. There are no Geordi LeForges altering the equipment to make it perform in certain circumstances. My current fascinations are leaning towards medicine, bodies, technologies & writing. The physical is so affected by the writing, and the writing is so much more physical than it is in many professions. When I worked for lawyers, we rarely were allowed to do things like write on the walls.