In addition to tracking down recalcitrant plagiarists and watching bad television over the past few weeks, I’ve also been teaching what is known at my university as the “minimester” — a horrific bastardization of mini-semester. Here at State U., the minimester is two weeks long — an entire semester in two weeks. Needless to say, it’s a joke. But, I teach it because I need the money but I also need to publish — which is why I try not to teach during the actual summer semesters. I strive to keep my summers free for writing but the price I pay is my complicity with this academic scam.

I know going into it that the students have signed up for the class because they’re trying to get away with doing less work for the same course credit as a normal semester class. This makes me bitter but I also recognize that I’m guilty of the same cutting of corners (getting the same pay for teaching fewer weeks) so I can’t really pass judgement. Of course, they’re also taking this class because they hate literature or have contempt for it as a discipline (100% of the students are non-English majors, and most are science, math, or engineering majors).

I see my work during this crazy class to be 1) teach them something and 2) get them to read. Not particularly lofty goals. I have to suspend any other pedagogical priorities: teaching them to write, conduct research, revise, think critically, read extensively … Nope. Not gonna happen.

Strangely enough, my experience with these kinds of classes has been pretty positive. Because we’re together for many hours every day, a camaraderie develops amongst the students. They offer each other a great deal of support and view themselves as survivors of some terrible “boot camp” that I’ve put them through. If I wasn’t so completely exhausted and burnt out, I could almost come to enjoy the class.

I’ve developed a couple of strategies to cope with the marathon structure of the minimester (which I offer as an addendum to the fine set of advice KFluff has already crafted):

1) Break up the class by the hour so that every hour you move to a new and different activity. This helps remedy the monotony of the class but also reminds the students that each hour represents one class period from the normal semester.

2) Have one long break in the middle of class but also several short breaks throughout (as you transition between activities).

3) Clearly spell out reading assignments so that students know exactly how much reading they need to be doing every night and so that they can be reading far ahead of what’s actually discussed in class. This is the only way I’m able to require them to read novels — I have them start a novel immediately but we don’t talk about it until several days in.

4) Show movies. Thank god for movies!

5) Have an absolutely unforgiving attendance policy. I fail any student who misses an entire class day (or equivalent number of class hours) — even those students who show up on day 2 and act like they’re amazed that something happened the previous day. My thinking is that, while I can’t require them to complete the same amount of reading or writing as students from a normal semester, I can require them to have their asses in their seats for the designated number of hours. Plus, if they’re actually in class, I might be able to teach them that little bit of something that passes for course credit.