Fun and frolic...

I'm actually only partly kidding. Today was a good day, despite one hiccup.

The hiccup was that the bookstore ordered the right style manual for my 101s but with the wrong thing shrink-wrapped to accompany it. Several students diligently paid full price for the book at our bookstore, only to find they got at least partly the wrong thing (and could have gotten a used copy for significantly less). The back story to this is that the Administration, for reasons that remain mysterious, abruptly decided to switch bookstore vendors from Barnes and Noble--the staff of whom had been here on campus for probably 20 years and who were summarily let go with little notice--to another vendor. That vendor has put a lot of time and energy into glamorizing the building and adding cash registers--but doesn't have our books available for the students, or has made the wrong orders, or made other really annoying blunders that show either incompetence or lack of caring. Cathy's new assistant chair, Sabrina, went to the bookstore to explain the importance of having the books clearly stocked and arranged before the first day. She got some snotty attitude from the bookstore manager, so she briskly pointed out that our students prefer to buy through Amazon anyway, so if the bookstore doesn't make it super easy for them to get their books, the store will lose sales left, right and center.

Which is indeed what will happen in the case of my students. I just sent group emails to both classes saying they don't need to buy through the bookstore: as long as they get the right edition, they can get it from anywhere. And yes, I cc'd the bookstore on that.

My colleagues have also been rightly furious that in this incredible, sweltering heat, one of the buildings has multiple classrooms with broken air conditioners, moldy ceilings, missing and/or broken desks, nonfunctional lights... That is the building where my 102 class will meet starting next Tuesday, so all I can say is, I'm grateful the heat-wave will be over. The rooms may still be uncomfortable, but they won't be unbearable, as they were today. (By the way, when the first faculty member said that not only was the AC in one classroom not cooling anything down, it was making a loud noise that disrupted class, one of the guys who is in charge of fixing that sort of thing wrote to Cathy and said he'd stood out in the hall and the AC wasn't making any noise. This guy is the same asshole who responded to the lack of desks in my classroom a few semesters ago saying there were enough--after he had piled five desks on top of each other in one corner of the room. Well, true: there were 28 desks, but the fact that five of my 28 students couldn't actually sit in one didn't seem to be an issue.)

(And oh, yeah: things like this make me feel like my dad did when he retired: he said, "I always thought it made sense for rats to leave a sinking ship.")

But, far more to the point, the day had some lovely surprises. One came from a student I met in Advisement--and demonstrated to me that my first impressions can, in fact, be wildly wrong. The young man seemed to be a little dim and disengaged, but no: as I talked to him, it turned out he's incredibly intelligent, very focused, knows what he wants to pursue, has high ambitions ... and he was a delight to talk to. I suggested he find me for mentoring; as we talked, when he realized I was encouraging his ambitions, he started to sparkle. Lovely.

And I was pleasantly surprised by the 102 today. Of course, we haven't started talking about the literature yet, but I like the way I set it up. I gave them an article to read--from the New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/books-smell-like-old-people-the-decline-of-teen-reading), and it made a lovely segue into our talking about how they need to approach the reading for the class. They recognized that they will need to focus--and we talked about what it takes to find that focus. One of the two adult students in the class also said that there needs to be a desire to do the reading--even if one isn't interested--which made a lovely segue into the "Statement of Self-Defined Goal" that I'm having them write as a sort of self-evaluation. Nice.

And today's 101 went well, too. A couple of students who seemed a bit on the mousy side were very willing to raise their hands and talk, and there were some great ideas going around the room. Again, they haven't had to engage with any in-depth material yet, but the signs are looking good.

If this holds for the rest of the semester and doesn't flip, as so often is the case, I'll be very happy, even if the other 101 is a dud--because at least I'll finish my work week on a good note. Which is where I am right now. There is more I could do in the way of photocopying and organizing, but I have the right things in the folders for Tuesday's classes, Monday being a holiday, so I can roll in to campus on Tuesday, do my Advisement stint, and get to my classes relatively unruffled--assuming no unforeseen ruffling occurs. Tomorrow, I see the financial adviser; Monday, date with Kristin in the City. Life is good, y'all. Life is good.