Negative anticipation

I know that, in general, I have a tendency to see the future through grey-colored glasses: when I anticipate something, often the feeling is far from happy. I tend to imagine lots of worst-case scenarios, or at least to imagine that whatever is coming will be difficult and in some way unpleasant. However, for most of my career, I did not feel that way about the onset of a new semester. Instead, I had a Pollyanna-ish sense that this semester, everything would be different, better, wonderful. I looked forward to walking into the classroom the first day, seeing all the new faces, starting with a clean slate as it were.

No longer. "Dread" is too strong a word for what I'm feeling, but what I see on the horizon is far from rosy. And I don't like that feeling at all. I want to recover the sense that the new semester is a bright thing, filled with possibility and promise. I'm not quite sure what kind of reframing I need to do in order to recapture--and hold onto--that feeling, but it's highly important that I figure something out, and soon, so I can walk into the classroom on the first day with a positive and open mind.

I've been sharing this difficulty far and wide (on Facebook, in conversation, wherever I think I have a receptive audience)--and that does help air it out some, get rid of some of the worst of the stink. And I do realize that last year, especially the spring semester, left me a lot more snake-bit than I was fully aware. I felt so utterly, completely discouraged by the students, their work, class discussions, all of it, that I face the new term with a lot of that muck still clinging to my mind.

Of course, I know the standard ways to reframe: focus on the students who actually are prepared to do the work, or the ones who are willing to learn even though they may feel that the challenge is more than they can face. Focus on giving voice to their fears and resistance, and offering support at every possible turn. Focus on the moments of breakthrough. Generally, focus on what works and is good, not what feels unpleasant.

I know that--but somehow it doesn't feel very effective these days. I have brief spells of feeling the uplift that comes from positive thinking, and then I feel myself starting to sink back into the mire.

But the other thing I know for certain is, once I'm in the traces again, I'll just be doing what needs to be done, like the old horse in harness that follows the road even if no one is actually driving the wagon. I've been doing this long enough that I can just recite my lines, hit my marks, and turn in a good enough performance, even if it lacks the fire and dazzle that I'm capable of when things are doing well. It really is a lot like acting--the professorial persona--in a show with a decades-long run. Sometimes the audience will be utterly flat and unresponsive, and the worst thing one can do is amp up one's performance to try to get them to react. The only thing to do is go on with the show as it always is but know that there won't be any need to hold for the laughs. And sometimes, the actor is on automatic pilot but suddenly will realize that the audience--or a few specific members--are lit up. Then one plays to the few who are responding, and sometimes the energy spreads. Even if it doesn't, there's enough satisfaction to playing to the four people in the back who are right there, breathing with the scene.

I also feel some modicum of pleasant anticipation knowing I'll be teaching 101s this term: I'll get them before they've developed the worst habits or mindsets (including the mindset that something is wrong if they actually have to work and try new things--step outside their "comfort zone," a phrase I'm beginning to loathe as it's used far too often by students and has become trite and facile). With 101 students--even the ones who've been through a semester (or more) of remediation before they get to my class--I have a better shot of persuading them that what I'm offering is actually what college is about. It's harder when they have a bunch of semesters of Professor Easy-Peasy's teaching setting their expectations.

So, today I did a little more work on bits and orts around the edges of this semester's classes--though I'm still resisting working on the final essay assignment for the SF class. I may yet do that when I finish this blog post, before I go off to meet the Timid Intellectual for coffee. She heads back up to Amherst next week, and we've been meaning to get together all summer, so at last we'll have a chance to get caught up.

Oh, and speaking of former students: there's a student from a number of semesters ago signed up in the SF class. I'll have to look back at posts from that year, the moniker I gave her then. I remember her vividly: she often would see me privately (often out in the hall before or after class) and cry about how hard things were for her and how she didn't want to drop the class but X, Y, and Z were keeping her from doing the work.... I was very empathetic at first, but eventually I started to feel she was pulling a number, trotting out a "pitiful me" act that had worked for her in the past, and I got increasingly impatient with her. I'm somewhat surprised she's still at NCC; I'd have thought she'd have graduated or otherwise moved on by now. (I just looked at her transcript: she's been going part time since she was in my class--which was in 2013. She's also withdrawn or stopped going to a few of the classes she registered for since then.) Hmmm. Well, it will be interesting. I hope she is ready to actually do well in school now, by which I mean I hope she's ready to actually work hard. I'm very willing to give her every possible benefit of the doubt and believe that the tears and upsets of the previous semester were genuine, not an act. But I'm not going to give her as much rope as I did before. We'll see.

It's a day straight out of autumn today, in terms of weather: grey, rainy, cool--almost chilly. It's been good to sort of huddle up inside and chip away at work without feeling either pressured or useless. And I find that simply doing some productive work--even just creating the index cards I use to record attendance and grades and that sort of thing--is helping my mood, as did my airing out of the worries. I expect to work on the online Nature in Lit tomorrow; Thursday, I'll go to campus to make photocopies for the SF class, as the enrollment numbers should be relatively close to where they'll be on the first day. And then, I'll enjoy the last few days of "summer off" before I'm all the way back in the trenches.

For now, that final essay is calling to me: it will feel good to get it done. So, off I go.