"I want to break free. I want to break freeee"

I'm just beside myself with joy. Spring Break finally made it! Or, rather, I finally made it to Spring Break without losing my entire mind. It was a close call, though. Yesterday I nearly went fisticuffs (that's a gross exaggeration) with a guy in my Teaching Freshman Comp class about--are y'all ready for this?--teaching literary analysis in English 101. I'm a proponent of no literary analysis is a first-year writing class, especially when the purpose of the class is to teach comp, not lit. But my classmate--who, I should tell you, is the nicest guy, probably one of my favorite people in the world-- raised his voice and ruffled my feathers a little bit when he aggressively argued that since Comp I is listed as an English class, literary analysis should be taught. I see his point, but I also don't see how assignments involving interpreting a literary text AND scholarly criticism on the text--like an example assignment we were reviewing in class--empowers 18-year-old non-English majors as writers. What's wrong with starting out with the personal essay?

Do you see what my life has come to? It's ridiculous, really, the arguments grad students sometimes have.

But none of that for a week. I want to break free, so I am. Heading home, heading to Conway, heading to Oxford--A true Mississippi man, I'm going visiting in my leisure time. If you're lucky (or tell me your office hours), I might just come see you.

I also plan on taking a walking photo tour of my hometowns (yes, plural) and concocting some kind of photo blogging post wherein I represent the places that have made me Timothy J. Sisk, at your service. It'd also be nice to capture to rural scenery of North Mississippi before it's all plowed under and paved over by developers.

But before I can do any of that, I've got to sling my laundry and my books in the car, get some gas, and make the 6.5 hour trek southwest of here to that little piece of nowhere where I was reared destined for greatness, Horn Lake, Mississippi.