The fight with the self

This is all about that huge pile of virtually antique homework that is sitting on my desk and that, come hell or high water, I MUST return to students tomorrow. (Why must I? Well, some of it I've had since the first week of classes, which is getting ridiculous. And I now also have their papers to grade--which is serious. And I assigned the stuff, and they want to know how they did, and they're right to want to know the outcome of their work, for heaven's sake.) I did get all the assignments back to the students in today's 101. But I have two more classes' worth, and I'm in a battle with myself about how to get through it all.

Rather ironic that I was talking with my 101 today about dealing with frustration. Here I am, case in point.

Paul's advice: just check it, no comments. They did write self-evaluations, which I want to respond to at least a teeny bit, but the rest, OK, no comments. That will help--though it's hard for me not to comment (I really, really want to give them feedback about every teensy thing). But I still have to read through it all.

Granted, some of it is pretty awful--but those are the ones it's easy not to comment on. If a student who turns in completely insufficient, lousy work is truly lost, he or she needs to let me know that. (I emphasize that point, repeatedly. I don't know you need help unless you let me know you have a problem--and tell me what the problem is.) If--as I suspect is often the case--the student simply doesn't believe he or she needs to exert any particular effort, I reciprocate: I won't either.

But some of the assignments are actually OK, a few are even good. So why the phenomenal resistance?

Because I do want to comment. I want to help. I want to reach every single student on some level--and I know I can't, but sometimes I lose my hold on that knowledge.

Today's 101 was a weird class. It was more lecturey than I like, very "chalk and talk," though I did ask for responses (and had to endure some pretty powerful silence before responses started coming). We were talking about revision, editing, and proofreading--in that order--and what students will need to do for their revised papers. But once I'd pretty much finished with that, I realized that the other things I had planned to talk about would decidedly put the students to sleep. So I changed plans midstream, as I am wont to do. That's when I talked with them about working through frustration. I talked to them about how reading difficult, boring, challenging material changes how we think, about how being an adult in the world requires complex thinking. About how one's way of dealing with frustrations make a huge difference in one's life--and that frustrations are part of being a grown-up. I did not address the fear factor, though that has been on my mind a lot (their fear of failure; their bigger fear of success). I let them go early. I'm not sure how I feel about the way that all went. Good idea? Bad idea? Did they get anything at all out of it? I don't know. I don't suppose I ever will know.

And that may be the hardest thing about this particular job. I've mentioned it before; Paul and I talk about it frequently. We don't often get to see the fruits of our labors. It takes a long while for the seeds of change that we plant to sprout, to grow into maturity, to fully blossom in the students' writing--or reading. What we do with them now, when they are freshmen, will probably not be fully apparent until they are at least sophomores, if not juniors, or seniors. And for some, the seeds fall on fallow ground. But the faith that the work will, in fact, pay off, is tenuous at times. My faith is. I speak only for myself.

Absent that faith, it's hard to face the mounds of homework. "Oh, God, why did I assign all that? What was the point? Did they get anything at all out of it? Are they spinning their wheels; am I spinning mine?"

So, Pollyanna, let's refocus a bit here. Let's look at the good that I've seen this week. I didn't blog yesterday (blasted off campus to go to the last in that dance class series in Manhattan--what joy that was, but what a good thing it's now over). But yesterday two students from the short-story class came to see me about their mini-papers, both with great ideas, both ready to completely shift gears in terms of their writing for the class. It was a genuine pleasure to talk with these bright young men, to see their ideas clicking away, to make a suggestion and see it caught up, carried forward. This, I felt, is what teaching college should be like.

In fact, that short-story class is a delight generally. Most of the students are still hanging on, hanging in there. The discussions are interesting; I am sometimes pleasantly surprised by something they see in the readings that I didn't see. I still have faith that most of them will improve their papers over time. (I did move their next few assignments a little later in the semester, as I realized I'd be sitting on what I collected today for some time: no reason to make them rush to write more when I know I won't be grading it for a while.) I enjoy working with them; I feel they've got a good rapport with each other. The groups today seemed to work particularly well: I'll check in with them how they feel about sort of solidifying the groups (with the caveat that missing group members will require some shuffling around so the groups stay the right size). It's a good class, going well.

And just a quick glance at today's homework from 101 showed that at least some of the students did a terrific job on the assignment. The directions may not have been completely clear for some of them, but the ones who did what I asked (looking at a particular paragraph in their own papers to evaluate whether it was unified and coherent) did it very nicely. I'm hoping it gives them a sense of how to get some objective distance on their writing....

Sigh. Cleansing breath.

OK, I've almost talked myself to a point where I can tackle the work I need to do tonight without too much psychic malaise. I know I usually work better at the office, but tonight I think I'll carry it all home with me, give myself a little longer a break before I return once more unto the breach. Not precisely like a greyhound in the slips, straining upon the start--more like a mongrel pulling against the leash, trying to run away--but back to the breach regardless.