Ups and downs, again (and again)

Today's P&B meeting included more dire and awful possibilities as reported to us by our fearless chair, idiotic and ill-considered maneuvers by the administration being rammed down our throats while we are expected to smile and nod. Even though today was a day when my mood was relatively fragile, I didn't come close to crying this time. Either I'm getting inured to this shit or my psyche said, "Nah, I've got bigger fish to put in the skillet."

I missed today's department meeting (the "active shooter" information session--but Paul and I are in agreement: we'll shove heavy furniture in front of the door and hide, while William cheerfully said he'd put a target on his chest). I didn't actually mind at all missing the meeting, and I was able to get the promotion folders read, the letter for my mentee fixed, and at least one essay graded.

But my first student meeting was pretty painful; one of the students who came straight out of BEP. (Turns out another P&B member also seems to have a 101 with an inordinate number of students who've been hurled over the gap and weren't quite able to securely land on the 101 rim.) Cathy did say that the people who work in that program now acknowledge that essentially they're simply trying to get students to be able to write anything: words in a sequence that makes some kind of sense. Many of our colleagues in that department are excellent teachers who are highly qualified, but some do what Cathy calls "la-la balloons and put it on the refrigerator" work. In any event, Paul was there as I tried to get this poor young woman to think, work, consider--and not just say she feels like she isn't doing very well (she isn't, but it's the first essay in a long semester, and she can do better) and that she's frustrated. I told her that it's fine that she acknowledges the frustration, but that doesn't mean I'm going to tell her she should quit--or that I'll make the work any easier. She just has to work through the frustration.

Mr. Over Eager but Can't Follow the Rules didn't make his appointment today. Why was I not surprised?

And the student with whom I ended the day--and whose appointment I completely spaced until I finally meandered upstairs and saw her waiting for me--was very good indeed. Her essay was a bit of a mess, but her lead-off comment was that she was surprised how different it looked when she reread it. Teachable moment. She's one of those students who was a happy surprise: I didn't have much of a read on her at all before our meeting today, but she's actually highly intelligent and has the chops to be a fine writer. Very different affect face to face than in class.

And of the two essays I graded after I met with that student, one was jaw-droppingly excellent. Truly. Excellent. Of course there were things she could fix, but ... wow. Her homework has been good, but she's very shy and retiring in class, and I had no idea she had that mental and verbal power. That's a good, deep breath of very fresh air.

The SF students were, as usual, great--though I did have that confrontation with my former student who plagiarized. She swore to me she hadn't found the information on line--and I was pretty pissed off about it; I told her I was deeply disappointed and I refused to engage with her about it. I finally said it didn't matter where or how she got it; what mattered was that it wasn't hers. She asked if she could do it over. No. She asked if she could do make-up work. No. But when I was packed up and heading back to the office, she was in the hall and called me over: she told me she'd "looked up the definition" and that she did that all the time and it wasn't a problem. The "definition" she'd looked up was an explanation of Mercerism in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I told her that wasn't just looking up a word; that was looking up a concept from the novel--but as she continued to explain, I realized that she has been so confused she didn't know that it was a term made up for the book: she thought it was a real thing in the world. In any event, I told her from now on, she needs to cite even when she looks something up--and she needs to ask more questions in her notes and try to answer them. My usual spiel about how that struggle--trying to make sense of something--is learning. I said, "Having the answer isn't learning; it's how you get the answer that's learning."

Ooooo. Deep.

But I also remembered to give the whole class the "panic earlier" spiel--and they not only listened (and laughed in the right places); they told me it could be a TED talk. Hmmm. Maybe I'll propose myself for a TED talk on keys to student success (panic earlier, work through frustration, read-be detail oriented-read-be detail oriented-read, and allow college to change you: I think those are all my big set pieces).

In any event, I'm amazed I'm anything like compos mentis at this point. it's decidedly time to fold my intellectual tents and steal off into the night.