First Advisement

I just had my first session advising a student. Smart young man, it seemed, wants to transfer to St. Johns, thought he was a lot closer to graduation here than he is. I felt a little confused and out of it at first, but eventually got sorted out--I hope without looking like too much of an idiot. The one thing I forgot (oops) was to get his signature on the little advisement form I filled out for him. Oh well. I'll get better at this as I do it more.

It does help the time to go more quickly here to see students--and that's what I like about being here anyway, the one-on-one with students. Eventually, it will be a constant stream of them, with mobs waiting to be seen. Right now, it's mostly empty empty empty.

Well.

The main event of today was that I did get a chance to sit down and talk with Mrs. Lost, the older woman in my short story class. She had another excuse for me, that she has her mini-paper written but can't figure out why it won't print (she's the one who said she doesn't know how to use e-mail). I could do an entire riff on that, but setting it aside, I told her I was very concerned about her chances of success in the class. She did, finally, manage to submit a reading journal in two columns (as my form mandates), but her responses were more of the obvious, ineffectual summary she's been doing, nothing even in the ballpark of the attempts toward analysis she needs to engage in. I could feel her anger and frustration, but she kept it in check: I doubt she's been confronted before, even though what I did was the gentlest possible confrontation. Bruce suggested I tell her she should, for her own purposes, take 001, even if she audits it, and retake 101 and 102 for better grades. However, she isn't at all sure whether she wants to continue her education: she just wants to get her associate's degree, and my class is one of two she needs to finish (so she says, anyway).

She did go to the Writing Center (OK, one good step). I suggested she take the reading journal instructions to the Writing Center and ask for help with that, too. I said that I don't know how else to explain to her what I'm looking for other than what I've already gone over in class, and that it seems the way I explain things doesn't work with how she understands things--that my teaching style and her learning style may not work together. At one point she said, "I may be slow, but I'm not stupid and I'm not crazy." And she's right: she's not. But she is woefully, desperately unprepared for the kind of work I demand as a bare minimum in my classes.

Ultimately, I said we'd re-evaluate after I see her next papers and a few more reading journals. This poor woman has terrible asthma (she was wheezing and coughing all through class today) and is diabetic to boot. I don't want her to drive herself into the ground trying to do work for a class that she simply cannot pass--but she is determined to keep trying for a while longer, and I don't want to deny her the chance to try. I am not sanguine about the chances for a miraculous turn-around here, but she deserves the opportunity. She said she was grateful I took the time to talk to her--and I think that was sincere. I know she was upset (who wouldn't be, in that situation), but she was gracious and dignified about the whole thing. I admire her determination and her desire to engage in this process, whatever the ultimate end may be.

From that encounter (which was less upsetting to me than I feared it might be), I went straight to my 102. The start of the class was a little heavy on lecture (how to format a paper, how to do a works cited page), but then I turned students loose to work on version two of their papers. I did find myself explaining at least five times (no exaggeration) what I will collect with their final versions on Monday. I finally asked them to help me explain it: sometimes they can put things into the kind of language their peers will understand much more quickly and easily than I can.

So, as they worked away, they were calling me over to ask questions--and now the panic is hitting. Several are desperate to see me tomorrow, or were, until I told them I would not read over their entire papers and give feedback. No, sorry, I said, but I will answer specific questions. I even trotted out the "I'm sitting in the kitchen" analogy--and heard, very quietly from the back of the room, a despairing "that sucks." (The comment truly was not offered with any sense of resentment from the student; more in sorrow than in anger. I almost laughed, but yeah, that's the sad truth. You have to do the work on your own.) One very lively young woman finally expressed her concern about her reading journal grades. It's a bit late to recognize that there is a problem, but I'm glad it's starting to hit, and I'm happy to help her figure out what's needed--but she has to come see me so we can talk it over.

It was good to have a classroom full of students who were working diligently away. A few are well behind the curve, not having submitted their first version, but they're still slogging away at it. (I suddenly thought, I need to see if I put together their second essay assignment, their poetry papers. I think I did, but I need to look it over and be sure it still makes sense. Funny how those "Oh, I need to remember" bits bounce into my brain, attached to some train of thought I can't trace back.) Their questions were generally very good. The same lively young woman first admitted that her writing skills had gotten rusty over the summer (yep, it happens) and then said, "Well, at least I'm going to know how to write a paper." Oh, hallelujah. Yes, dear, and thank you.

I did distribute my own personal "early warning" notices--to half the short story class, essentially, and to a small handful of the students in 102. (I don't know when the official notices from NCC will go "live.") One student who was going to get a warning withdrew today, to my infinite relief. He's the one who started to protest that he was going to be marked absent on the day he showed up without a version to work on--despite the fact that the syllabus clearly states that anyone who comes to class without one will be so marked. I've gotten whiffs of hostility and bitter resistance from him from the first day, so his early decision to withdraw is a nice little sequin stitched onto today's fabric.

I still have those last four papers for tomorrow's class to mark, but it was another night of not enough sleep (I did go to dance class, didn't get home until very late, and woke up well before the alarm for no reason I can determine). Tomorrow is another blissfully meeting-free day, so I have a chunk of time in the morning, before my office hour at 1, to get them tended to. Today, I'm letting myself off the hook. The fact that I'm even blogging now, here in Advisement instead of waiting until I get back to my office, is a way to get myself off campus and home, winding down, as early as humanly possible. When I finish my hours here (at 4:15), I will roll my wheelie-bag across campus back to my office, transfer stuff out of and into my bag, and flee.