Good stuff

I've lost a little bit of the glow I felt earlier: I was going to come back to the office immediately after my poetry class to blog, because I felt so great about what had been going on with the students, but, well, I don't even remember for sure what sidetracked me first--I think a student showed up unexpectedly, and we ended up having a more in-depth conversation about his proposal than either of us anticipated--but I ran out of time before I had to interview another adjunct (I'm done interviewing, mercifully, just have to write up quick recommendations or rejections), then Paul was here and we got talking, and ... whatever happened, I meant to have blogged and marked a bunch of proposals by now, but best laid plans and all that.

The reason I felt so great about the class is because I got to talk one-on-one talking with most of the students. (One was not in class Monday, didn't have a proposal today, and seemed not to understand that he cannot turn it in on Monday as it needs to be approved by then. I told him if I don't have it tomorrow, I won't be able to accept it. We'll see whether he can pull it together that quickly.) In any event, the conferences were pretty quick and very informal, right there in the class with the other students in a holding pattern waiting their turn. They kept themselves amused in one way or another (reading mostly) while I conferenced. I truly do think each student left feeling more secure about the project, more capable of taking on the work and getting something useful out of it. Everyone seemed at least somewhat charged up leaving the room, a number of them had that, "Really? I came up with something good so easily?" look on their faces. The ones that have a somewhat more daunting task at least have a sense of the incremental steps to take. That makes me think that even the proposal process may not be incremental enough. Maybe I need to find a way to back up the prep for final papers even further, start even earlier, so students can take smaller steps, bite off smaller chunks at a time, feel less daunted. I'm not sure I can do it myself--my organizational skills are pretty stretched to the limit as is--but it's worth considering.

I truly do like meeting with students one-on-one. They get something very different out of that kind of interaction than they do from the class dynamic. Both are important--and I like the class dynamic, too, when it works--but sometimes one can actually see the penny drop in an individual conference, even quickies like today.

And the last student to leave thanked me for being patient. I hardly needed the thanks: she is very earnest and hard-working, and it's easy to be patient with a student who cares. But they were nice to get anyway.

Had a little bit of the same conference-esque experience in today's 102. I got every single student to ask at least one question or make at least one comment about the novel--and a lot of them opened up more than they have in the past because they knew everyone was going to be called upon for a contribution of some sort. I let them go pretty early, but a long line of them wanted to talk to me, generally with pretty good questions or requests for clarification.

I anticipate an intermittent parade of students to the office over the next few days--and floods of e-mails. The only problem is--and it's a huge problem--that NCC e-mail addresses have been banned by other servers because of a successful phishing operation which is now generating massive amounts of spam under the guise of coming from NCC. This means that I try to reply to students and my messages get bounced back to me. I'm going to start using my G-mail account, but those messages may go to students' spam folders. The maddening thing is that this seems to happen frequently at this time of semester, right when it is most crucial to be in e-mail contact with students. Fuck.

But shifting gears back to the positive--I'd like to stay on the positive angle for a while tonight--one of Paul's students has just won an enormous scholarship, on top of about 50 others and being accepted to Cornell. She is the first student from Nassau to win this award--the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Award--and she was lured to the college president's office (in the guise of there being a problem with her application) for a celebration: a photographer from the campus newspaper was there, the president, several deans.... Very big deal, very exciting for this young woman. And she is delightful, a completely lovely person in every way. She is over the moon with happiness--which I know because both times she's come to tell Paul her good news (he helped her with all her application essays, wrote letters on her behalf), he hasn't been here but I have, and she's been so bursting at the seams with happiness that she had to share it with me. I've been here on many occasions when she and Paul have been working on something, and from time to time have tossed in my dime's worth, so she and I have had some contact, but I now feel almost like she's my student by proxy (my step-student?). It is wonderful when someone of her ability also has her drive and her work ethic, and can do the whole thing, present the whole package. This is the kind of student who comes along very rarely in a career, and we cherish them more than they know.

Ahhhh.

I'm staring at the stack of proposals for tomorrow's 102 that are on my desk, but I don't think I've got the chops to do anything productive with them tonight. I'll take them home to work on in the morning, when my car is in the shop; I'll hope to get a few more done in my office hour--and I'll hope we can wrap things up with 101 early, should I need that time to finish the proposals. I don't see why not: essentially, the 101 students need to get ready for their presentations next Tuesday. After their presentations are done, we'll talk about their final papers and their in-class final. I keep losing track of the fact that next week is essentially it: I'll be collecting papers the following week, and conducting the usual post-mortems, but the rest will be me cranking out grades. Remember when I was bitching about how slowly the semester was going? Now I'm in some weird time-warp, in which it still seems like two weeks is an insanely long time to get through before it's over, but then when I think about when/how to schedule things, I realize that there is no time left. Even figuring out when to go out with Paul and our colleague Llynne (who specifically requested another evening out for steak indulgence with Paul and me) presented a challenge: we have to do it damned soon or we won't be doing it until fall. (Next Wednesday is the plan. My carnivorous jones was well satisfied last week when Paul and I went out, and I don't really have the desire for either the meal or the expense, but what the hell. The company will be amusing.)

So, what for the rest of today? Life maintenance: pick up my glasses, which are ready; pick up my laundry, which is ready; go to the post office; home.... early to bed, one hopes.

And remembering to keep breathing. That really is the secret.