That's more like it

First, a P.S. from yesterday. After the Mystery class, I was outside the building, starting to walk toward the office, when one of my students suddenly ran up to me, wanting to ask a question. Sure, go ahead. "Is Payne a married name, or have you always been a pain?" She was so delighted with her joke, her sense of humor--and I suspect delighted that she felt she could tease me in that way--that I happily played along. "I've always been a Payne. Born a Payne and I'll die a Payne." She said, "I really wanted to ask that in class, but the right moment never offered itself." It was truly charming, and says nice things about that class's chemistry.

Fiction Writing was more bouncy today. I think they're getting the feel for it--and they're starting to interact directly with each other, which I love. I have to be careful about that, in fact: I interrupted one such interaction today, in advertantly, and I wish I'd let it roll. Ah well. Next time I will. I also notice that because the (student type) desk I sit in has an opening on the left (designed for righties, which I am), I tend to turn my body to the left--so I miss the seeing indications of a desire to speak from the students sitting to my right. I'm fortunate that the students to my left are lovely about pointing out a classmate who wants to say something whom I am overlooking, but that's another reminder to myself. I need to scan the whole circle more frequently. The ones to my right also tend to be the more quiet, less secure students, so they rather fade into the woodwork anyway: all the more reason for me to be sure I turn toward them and include them more often.

The new student was there today, and she was ready to jump in with a comment or two--even though she'd read the story in haste just before class. Of course, the materials have been sitting on my office door since Monday, and even though she asked yesterday where my office is and said she'd pick up the materials then, she didn't. (I'm pretty sure I told her my office location in the e-mail in which I told her the materials would be on the office door, but I could have forgotten, so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt on that one.) I'm not sure what that says--other than perhaps that her life has been busier than she expected. Of course, I'm all too ready to see suspicious signs of irresponsibility and lack of motivation in my students, and I have no indication that either are characteristics of this particular student, so I reserve judgment. So far, mixed reviews, but we'll see how things develop.

One young woman, who is a pretty cheerleader type with a refreshing self-confidence and boldness (reminds me a little of Adrianne Palicki, who played Tyra Collette on Friday Night Lights), interrupted the conversation about today's reading pretty early on: she had the floor anyway, so took advantage of the moment to ask if we could go over the assignment for the story due next week. Sure, I said, just help me keep track of the time, because I also want to give you some comments about your notes. I was happy that the conversation wound down just about the time I'd have had to call a halt to it anyway, with about 15 minutes left of the period, and I answered their questions about the story assignment--and told them that my comments on their notes were not intended as scolding but as a way to help them get more out of the assignments. I'll be curious to see if the content of the notes changes as a consequence. And of course I'm very curious to see how the stories turn out.

I was better today at reminding them to look at authorial choices--repeatedly asking about why and how, why and how--so when I talked to them about the notes, I was able to remind them that the main purpose of the notes is to move us out of what we are used to doing (summarizing or interpreting) and into an observation of the craft. I also took Paul's advice, had them write down on their notes the things they want to remember to take away from the story they just read (Barbara Kingsolver's "Rose-Johnny"). I also asked if anyone wanted to volunteer what they had written down--and encouraged the others to add someone else's idea to their own notes: "Oh, yeah, that too." They did--and they did. Nice.

The morning leading up to class was not quite what I'd hoped for, but not bad: there were more students in Advisement than I expected (dammit), so I didn't get a lot of uninterrupted time to work--but I got the attendance stuff sorted out (which had been left in a disorganized mess Monday and yesterday), got the reading notes for today's class marked, and re-read today's story, as well as finishing my re-read of "The Purloined Letter," which we'll be discussing tomorrow in Mystery.

I am a little worried about getting everything ready for tomorrow's classes in the morning--we see what's been happening to my assurances that "tomorrow morning I'll have oodles of time" assumption--but I'm trying to be hopeful and optimistic. As it happens, I have to be here at 9 a.m.--or earlier--in order to do the second attendance run of adjunct classes (Bruce is doing the first). I'll have to another run at 10:30, and there's a department meeting at 11:30. But in-between those things, and during my office hour, Ipray fervently that I'll have time to mark logs and notes for tomorrow's classes. It's very important that they get these first assignments back in a hurry, so they have guidance for the next ones.

But all I can do is all I can do. Tonight, I am completely exhausted (hard to make that shift to the new sleep pattern--and no matter how worn out I am, I'm never good at getting to bed before 11, which I need to do if I'm going to be happy getting up at 6). So tonight, I'm not doing the things I'd planned to do after work: I'm going home to start my interminable wind-down. I need to be alert tomorrow to get all that work done without feeling like my brains have turned to sludge, a condition that affected me relatively severely this afternoon.

At least I know the classes are lively. That's nice to look forward to.