This whole "writing" thing...

The part that seems to be missing from my decision to put more time and energy into my writing is ... putting more time and energy into my writing. I keep finding reasons not to spend the time at the computer--or even with a pen and paper in hand--until I can get to the part of the day when I say, "Well, it's too late to start doing anything now."

Sum total of today's writing: revising my annual holiday letter (which I flung together yesterday), answering an email, and a couple of FB posts.

I actually did intend to do some further personal writing, but instead I ended up shoveling snow (a.m.) and chipping ice out of the driveway (p.m.), in between which times I read, thinking I might maybe get a nap (nope).

And suddenly, it's time for me to start thinking about what to do for dinner and winding down for the evening.

So, again, I channel my inner Scarlett and say that, after all, tomorrow is another day--which is a good thing, all told, witness the movie Groundhog Day. I'm glad I don't have to live the same day over and over, even though sometimes it does look pretty much like that's what I'm doing.

I also have gotten a little freelance editing job which needs to be tended too soon, so I may put the writing on hold until I clear that off my docket. It does seem that there may be moments--more of them in 2020 than have been the case in 2019--when I have to put writing on hold in order to do things that will actually make some money. But that's a good thing in a lot of ways. It certainly alleviates one area of anxiety to earn a little income.

In any event, this blog post--relatively brief as it is--will be the only other writing I do today (other than, of course, possibly more FB posts and a text or two). We'll see what the morrow brings.

Just rattling it off

Didn't spend much time writing today, as the early part of the day was consumed with life maintenance. Tomorrow will probably also be a day with little writing done; instead I will receive two crowns--not, alas as Empress of the Universe and Queen of Commas but just as necessary dental work.

What writing I did was mostly on the fantasy thingy I've started playing with again. I made a few minor adjustments on what I wrote the other day and then let my fingers on the keyboard take me wherever they would. It's an interesting process to simply allow a story to happen, like taking a walk in a strange house: one walks through a room, noticing all that's there, then, having no idea what to expect opens another door and sees what's behind it. There is no sense of what is to come next, and the glimpses of the place that is being explored happen only a bit at a time and, as yet, don't come together in a shape that indicates what the whole will be. I open a door, and there's this scene. I explore it, looking around, describing what's there and what's happening, and then ... open another door.

I don't know if that's what other writers do, but for me, if I think I know too much about the size and shape and organization of the rooms before I get into them and walk around, the whole thing starts feeling stiff and stilted and dull. I have to walk into unknowns over and over again.

That's true even of the historical piece I've been noodling with for, oh, probably decades now. With that piece, I do have more sense of what some of the rooms will be and a vague idea of in what order they need to be encountered, but I still need to just open a door and see what's there. And invariably, things end up in there that I had no idea to expect.

I don't write the story, it feels like. The story uses me to get written. If I try to push it, the story will refuse to go forward--or will be so obviously misshapen that I have to back up and try again--and that means listening to the story and where it wants to go.

Very mystical and arcane, this process. But I do know that, if I don't have at least some sense of where I'm trying to go, I won't get very far. Short stories are obviously easier for that reason: I don't really have to have a "there" to get to. A character steps into my mind and says, "OK, let's talk about me," and I do. But I don't have to get the character from point A to point Q, just show this little nugget, this corner of the house.

Ach, I'm babbling. And I'm still playing at "being a writer." I have to remind myself, "Oh, yeah: I was going to stop frittering away my days and actually do something with words." But I'm no more forcing myself to "be a writer" than I am forcing my writing to go in this direction or that. It's all just experimentation, and play right now. And as for what this might all turn into, if anything, well, I'll trot out the phrase I used so often when I was still in the classroom: we'll see.

What's behind this door? We'll see. Is Prof P that thing called "a writer" or just a person who occasionally writes? We'll see.

More personal

Yesterday, I didn't write anything except maybe a few FB posts.

Today, again, I spent the day writing personal stuff. What I find interesting in my process of purely personal writing is that I have to apply many of the same skills that I use for any other form of writing--unless I'm writing in my journal, in which case there are no rules (not even necessarily sense, certainly not legibility). But if I'm writing something that I'm going to share with even one other person--often even a relatively insignificant email, but certainly anything of substance--then I want it to have a logical progression, and have a hell of a hard time not running away with the text (something that could be two pages turning into four).

Any reader of this blog knows that I tend to verbosity, to put it mildly. Put a keyboard under my fingers and watch the verbal avalanche. And perhaps the most difficult task I face as a writer of anything at all is trimming down my precious and wonderful words, saying more with less.

And it's important to do that because, although I love following every jot and tittle of my thinking, it can be overwhelming to others: there is the risk of my reader getting so bogged down that my actual point is lost in minutiae.

I also can blather just fine on a computer screen, but when I get down to the real dirty work of forcing myself into tighter focus and clarity, I absolutely must do at least some of that on paper. There have been studies done: when we read a long scroll of something, it's hard to remember what went where, and the same is true of what we write ourselves. Note to self: when tutoring (assuming I start getting clients at some point), if a student worries about being repetitious or wandering off topic, point out that neurological fact. I know it's a challenge to eschew (gesundheit) the ease of working on the screen, and even when I've edited something by hand, further changes invariably happen when I go back to the keyboard. But that stage of paper and pen (or pencil) is necessary.

I don't yet know what I'll do tomorrow. I hope I can get myself to focus on the website for a chunk of the day. That's not sustained writing, but it's a part of the writing process, as I have to think carefully about what to say, what goes where, and so on. All kinda fascinating. (And full confession: I tend to get lost in the weeds, looking for the perfect free image to download, size as needed, and add to each page I create.) But we'll see. The siren call of that personal communique may prove irresistible. I know it's best to let it simmer on the back burners for as long as I can stand; I just don't know how long I can stand.

I wish I felt that way about my creative writing. Perhaps that will come in time.

Purely personal

Yesterday was a complete loss in terms of getting any writing, or even much reading done. And today, I started trying to come up with stuff for the website that's being build for the tutoring business--but very little of that was writing. Instead, I'm mostly looking for images--and trying to wrap my head around what it means to market the business, which requires that I develop an entirely different way of looking at things and get rid of some of my instinctive resistance to ideas. For instance, having a Twitter account. I created an Instagram account, but the problem with that is--even though I've figured out how to post just text, not images--I have zero clue what to post, as long as I have no one to actually tutor. We have a Facebook page: same problem. Add a Twitter account? That's then three platforms on which I have no earthly clue what to say at this stage in the game.

It's the classic thing: I need clients in order to have the stuff I need to get clients.

But I'm now going to turn my attention to purely personal writing. My journal calls.

Beats revising...

Today did not turn out at all as planned. My date with my sister did not happen, which was just as well, as I was having a day of mysterious fatigue (which happen from time to time). I ended up lying around until mid-afternoon, and then wasn't sure I was going to write at all--but to my surprise, a whole new story thread started talking to me, so in the spirit of "what the hell; why not?" I embarked on it.

It actually isn't a new idea; it's one that's been kicking around in my head probably since I was in my 20s. I've started on it a few times, too, and never got very far--in part because I was trying to force it to go in a specific direction, one where it very obviously didn't want to go. This time, I thought I'd just start with the first two sentences and see what happened.

What happened was nine pages of a fantasy-type something-or-other, which may or may not turn into something of substance. In the past, I had it figured for a novel, but I honestly don't know whether I've got a novel in me anywhere (not even the historical novel I've chipped at periodically for eons). Maybe it will end up being a long short-story (oxymoronic as that is). Or maybe it will end up as many of my ideas do, begun and then abandoned in a fit of self-distaste.

I know the received wisdom, and I know that it is, in fact wise: one must simply keep writing, and damn the torpedoes. But sometimes I re-read something I've written and my gorge rises to the extent that I simply cannot go on with it. I'm starting to learn to approach from a different angle instead of abandoning the project entirely. I've done that at least five times with the historical novel--even to the extent of completely recasting one of the two main characters and creating a whole new back-story for her. And generally speaking, that works.

But the historical piece has an overall arc already in my head: I know the high points from beginning to end, and I know how it ends. How I get from one high point to the next is still a mystery to me, but it has had the general shape intact from first word on the page. This one, not so much--largely because its genesis is a dream I had when I was perhaps in my teens. The dream may be recorded in one of my journals somewhere (I have them going back to the summer when I was 18), but I won't dig through them to find it. I'll just work with the two images I have: a child's hand reaching into a bar of light in an otherwise dark cellar-like space, and a woman turning a fog into brilliant light. I know it's the same person in both images, and there's a little more to the image of the fog (armored warriors on horseback, trees and fen, a prince or king), but otherwise, I've got nothing to work with other than what my imagination turns up on the spot.

Which is kinda fun, of course. "Huh! Who knew that was going to happen next? And who's that person over there; turns out to be an important character. I had no idea."

And then there's the fun of naming. I did a whole chapter on naming in my dissertation, and its an idea Le Guin wrote about in several essays. The right names matter, as she fiercely states. If you get the name wrong, you get the character wrong, no two ways about it. And fantasy names are a challenge. They can't be too ridiculous (Lord Barf of Smorgola) and although sometimes a very common name being used in a fantastic setting is lovely, in the kind of story I'm working on, the names need to be just other enough without being off-putting. I love the challenge of it.

The other challenge, of course, is remembering the names once one has come up with them, but I struggle with that in my "realistic" novel as well. I'm crap at names, even of actual human beings I meet. (Who are you again?)

In any event, it was a fun few hours. Tomorrow, I have to take my car to the shop and may be there for some time. I may take the computer with me so I can write, though honestly, I'm more likely to sit and read or knit. And then the postponed coffee date with my sister. So again, there may not be a blog post tomorrow. I may not write anything tomorrow (other than the occasional FB post). But so far, I'm liking this whole "What do you do?" "I write" thing. (I won't like the inevitable follow-up question, "Have you published anything I'd have heard of?" but eventually I'll come up with a response that amuses me instead of making me feel somewhat defensive.)

And for now, I'm drawing a line under this and calling it good enough for today. Let the mindless noodling commence.

Writing: easy. Revising, on the other hand....

I'm calling a halt to the writing earlier than I planned today. I worked on two essays, and I got both to the place where I need to let them simmer unattended for a while before I go back to revise.

And revision is a bitch.

One of the things that's great about this blog is that I stopped revising my posts eons ago, so I can simply blather unchecked, fling the result up online, and saunter off into the night. Anything I intend to publish, however--even "self" publishing on Medium, which is my, ahem, medium of choice for my essays these days--needs more careful consideration and reworking.

Both the essays I'm working on are tending to wander off focus (one more than the other). I know what I want to say, but I'm not sure what I want to say about it, if that makes sense. In other words, I suppose, topic: clear; thesis: not.

The one that wanders off focus was prompted by the suggested readings in the digest I get from Medium each week. It's been a long while since I've found an article that I think is worth reading, in part because so many of the articles are profound insights and worldly wisdom proffered by kids in diapers, metaphorically speaking. I'm sorry, Toots, but if you're only 40, you still don't know enough for me to feel like you've got wisdom worth my time to read.

I grant (and I say in the draft of my essay) that some young people are inordinately wise, and some older people are noticeably lacking in anything that could be called "wisdom": age is not the clear defining attribute of a person capable of wisdom or insight. But when someone has been in a relationship for five years and writes about how to keep a relationship going for "the long term," or has been working as a counselor for ten years and professes to know all about the human condition, I snort in derision. Talk to me when you've been in your relationship for 40 years, or you've been a therapist for 30--and when you  yourself have a few more miles on your internal odometer.

It's a strange corollary to our youth-oriented culture. We simultaneously get offered pearls of wisdom from youngsters who just haven't been slapped around enough by the world to know much and we're told that "age is just a number"--which on the surface means "you don't have to stop doing awesome and amazing things just because of the number of years you've been on the planet" but which really means "Isn't it astonishing that old people still do things?"

And of course, the people who are lauded for doing things that prove that "age is just a number" are doing things that would be rather remarkable at almost any age--or who simply keep their bodies in good enough shape that they can perform like younger bodies.

What I really want to write about is the fact that just by existing and being alert and open to the world for more decades, we actually acquire something worth acquiring. It may not be wisdom, but it's a kind of perspective that has merit. I'd like those young whippersnappers to acknowledge that fact.

I suspect I was every bit as insufferable about things when I was younger, believing that I was the first person in the history of the species to discover love, or heartache, or humiliation, or what have you. But I remember watching a video of Jay Leno's "Fruitcake Lady" (a prickly woman of a certain age) being asked questions about sex, theoretically to hilarious results--because an old woman talking frankly about sex! How completely side-splittingly funny! And I was furious about her being held up as an object of fun. She's been through more than you young idiots laughing at her can imagine. And I bet you anything you like that sex isn't something from her dusty, ancient past but a present part of her life.

I also was furious with a friend who saw an older couple who clearly very much loved each other and referred to them as "cute." She said I wouldn't be angry if I knew what she meant by it, but the word "cute" has a specific meaning, dammit, and it is not respectful. It's entirely possible those two people were newly together, too: theirs may not have been a relationship that began in their youth. But either way--fiftieth anniversary or first--the fact that they love each other when they are old and grey and wrinkled is not "cute."

Growf, rowr, bazz-fazz.

But you see, I can riff and rant about it here because here I can just riff and rant: I don't have to make a point, or come to a conclusion, or even say anything clearly or persuasively. That blather above is not publishable as anything other than a blog rant. And turning the rant into a shaped, formed, focused, compelling essay is a whole different ball of wax.

Shifting gears.

I have also once again dipped my toes into the water of trying to get some of my stories published. My mother, god love her, shares with me all sorts of things that are more interesting to her than they are to me, but she inadvertently includes the occasional gem, and recently she let me know about a seasonal story contest held by The Masters Review, and in looking into that, I saw that they also have rolling, open submissions. (The contests have an entry fee; the rolling submissions do not.) They're based in Portland, Oregon, and are a self-described "platform for emerging writers"--which (despite my age) I am, as I've published so little. (That applies to my scholarship too, relatively speaking, but I'm talking specifically about my creative works: so far, one poem and one short story. Bring on the confetti canons.) I essentially threw a dart and sent one story to their fall contest, one to their open submissions, and now I get to wait until February or so to hear their decision.

But I also have a list of other literary journals (which I raided from one of my former colleagues), and one of my plans for the forthcoming days/weeks is to select another story or two, and a journal or two (randomly selected) to which I will submit them.

I've decided I won't predetermine what writing I'll do each day; I think it's sufficient that I'm going to do something each day (with the possible exception of the weekends, but who knows: when I was working on the student guide over my sabbatical, I often found myself working on the weekends as well as during the week--just because something would be on my mind and needed to be externalized in written language somewhere).

So, that's today's news. Tomorrow I have a late afternoon date with my sister, so I may not get a moment in which to post to the blog, but I'll do my dangdest. If I write nothing else, at least I can squeeze words out onto this platform.

A different kind of creative writing

I decided to sit down and write something today, though I wasn't sure exactly what that something might be. Turned out, it was text to go on the website that's being constructed for the tutoring business I'm trying to get going: Five Degrees Tutoring. We have a Facebook page, which is hard to find (not enough posts, so we're way down the listings of things that start with "Five"), and even an Instagram account (ditto: I really don't "get" Instagram much, but the young'uns will be more likely to use that than FB), and the website is or soon will be up and accessible: fivedegreestutoring.com. My dear William made snarky comments on the "five degrees" part--rather understandably, actually, as the reason for the name is not self-evident. But it's because--at least in theory--I am in business with my sister, and between us, we have five academic degrees (two bachelors, one M.S., one M.Phil., and one Ph.D.)

Constructing the site has been an interesting and periodically frustrating experience. I started with a "do-it-yourself" template and shelled out far more money than I needed to for the privilege. Fortunately, my sister's boyfriend is a professional at building websites and doing web marketing, and when she ran it past him, he showed me not only why the DIY template was kinda useless but also why I didn't need to shell out the bucks for it. The frustrating part was that the marketing mind works very, very differently from the language and literature mind. I could grasp the concepts as he explained them (god love him, he is tremendously patient about explaining things to people who are little lambs lost in the woods), but boiling what I have in my head down to what the website needed was challenging. It was also interesting trying to get him to understand what I know about how students approach writing. We had to do a sort of Vulcan mind-meld of approaches to come up with something workable, but I think we've got it. Or got it well enough to start with anyway. Tweaking can happen as we roll along.

Coming up with the appropriate text was an exercise in concision for me. Readers of this blog know that I am nothing if not verbose (some friends on FB complain about how much blather they need to wade through to find the kernels of information being conveyed). So it's good for me to have to work on simplicity: the fewer words the better.

So, that was writing for the revenue stream side of things. Heaven knows if the website will bear any fruit, but we'll give it a whirl. (And not only is the site as it now exists infinitely less expensive than what I did at first--for which, mercifully, I got a full refund--it is, nicely enough, a tax-deductible business expense.) And perhaps tomorrow I will embark on more creative endeavors. I've got a couple of essay ideas dinking around in my head, and a few story ideas. I might even--who knows--get back to that novel eventually.

More posts to come. Stay tuned!

Whew, long hiatus....

I may need to retitle this blog again and call it Prof. TLP's View from the Retirement Trenches. Since my last post, I have relocated to the Rocky Mountain West and am trying to figure out not just what to do with my time but in a sense who I am now. Working this past spring in the Writing Center allowed me to continue to hold on to my identity as Prof. P for a while beyond my technical retirement, but now I'm realizing how very much of my identity was tied up in my professorial persona, and it's an interesting and challenging process to allow "just me" to be enough of an identity. I have done a little writing--put a few more pieces up on Medium (which have garnered very little attention, but still, they're there) and noodled around with the novel once or twice--but I realize I've been hesitating to make writing my "job," the thing I do at a set time for a set number of days per week. That hesitation arises from two thoughts. One, often, if I "force" myself to write something, it's so unrelievedly awful that I can't bear to consider continuing. Two, if I "force" myself to write with the dedication one gives to a job, I am afraid I'll start to resist and resent it, and writing has always been a joy to me. (Witness the length of these blog posts.)

But today, I realize that I "need" to at least give it a try. I do hope to get some paying work soon--freelance editing and/or tutoring--but that's a whole different thing. Either can be a meaningful distraction for me: I get "lost" in the work and feel nicely mentally stretched after. But those are money gigs, and neither uses the deepest parts of me the way writing for my own purposes does.

I briefly toyed with the idea of even embarking on scholarship again, but I can't fool myself on that one; I don't have the drive to do the kind of reading I'd have to do without some external force "making" me do it. Writing creatively, however, is a different ball of wax. There are lots of directions I can go with that: more essays for Medium, revising works I've already done, writing new stories, continuing with the novel.

And I need to take to heart the advice given by every single writer who has had any kind of success. Across the board, they say, "Write anyway. Yes, some of it--even a lot of it--will be shit. Write it anyway. You can throw things out, or revise them, but only if you've written in the first place." It's like any skill: you have to use it, and do badly at it, over and over to come up with anything good. I love Margaret Atwood's little smirk when she says, "The wastebasket was created by God to be your friend." Amen sister. I have to just accept that I will write my fair share or more of utter dreck, and get on with writing it so the occasional nugget of something good will also appear.

And now, with all this new found determination, I'm going to embark on the process ... but maybe not today. This blog post may be my only foray into writing for now, but I hope it serves the purpose I intend for it. I doubt I have any readers anymore, after having been offline so very long, so this is for me: if I put it in writing, it becomes more real. So, writing that I intend to do more writing will, I confidently expect, in fact lead me to do more writing.

Meanwhile, adapting to the dark, grey and gloomy Northern Rockies winter will occupy a lot of my psychic energy, as will the ongoing struggle to get some income lined up--and the ongoing joy of being able to see my mother and sister frequently, without undue effort. I do wish the "boys" (my sisters adult sons) were closer, but they're also young men involved in their lives, so even if we lived closer, we'd probably not see each other all that often. Still, it's nice to know that visiting them is now a matter of a healthy drive, not a cross-country flight.

And I'll close by saying that the adjustment to retirement is harder than I anticipated--but when I hear about what's happening at NCC these days, I am overwhelmed with gratitude that I got the hell out when I did.

In the "Sure, why not?" department

First, let me welcome you, whoever you are, to the new incarnation of the blog--sorta. I'm still playing around with ideas here, and still trying to figure out this whole "retirement" gig, but I realized I actually do want to natter periodically about what happens with my writing. So, here's the first official "this is a blog about writing" post.

You may know that a while back I published a little personal essay to the online magazine The Medium. Calling it a "magazine" is probably inaccurate, though I'm not sure what else one would call it. It is an enormous, sprawling enterprise of writings on about a gazillion topics, by authors of all stripes, professional and not. Anyone can publish to it; getting an audience (beyond one's friends and family, of course) is a bit more problematic. So far, my readership is apparently almost exclusively friends, family, and colleagues--which is fine, as I'm not looking for fame, fortune, or anything else from this particular publishing venue.

But I do have a few followers, it seems, and my experience with the blog clearly demonstrates that the way to keep followers is to feed them regularly. So I'm using The Medium to publish stuff I probably wouldn't try to get published in any other venue.

I am also a subscriber, and I get a daily digest, suggesting articles I might find interesting. (I could just get a weekly digest, and used to, but I actually don't mind getting the digest every day, though I'm not entirely sure how the switch from weekly to daily happened.) Most days I don't see anything to read--or only one piece--but other days there are a slew of things I find interesting. And it's potentially one of those rabbit holes down which one can dive on the net and find one is surfacing hours later, wondering why one feels physically stiff and mentally silted up.

There are also specific areas that provide their own more tailored digests (though one selects areas of interest, and those are the focus of the selections on any digest). I get a few of those, too, including one called "Human Parts." And several days ago, "Human Parts" offered a "weekend writing prompt": "Give us a snapshot, a moment, an experience from a life you could’ve had. What are you up to out there in the multiverse? What would Multiverse You think of the life you have right now?"

So I figured, why not? I'd already been looking at some of my old essays, thinking about polishing them up to fling onto The Medium, but this gave me an opportunity to try something new. And I actually have thought about one particular alternative universe, one of many possible other lives I could have had, a life that would have given me some of the things that I deeply regret not having had in this life. So I gave it a whirl.

The first attempt was frankly god-awful. Dull, flat, treacle-covered tripe. But I realized it was also about three times longer than the word limit--a skimpy 200-500 words--so rather than trying to hack it down, I decided to start all over. The end result is ... OK. It's not one I'm deeply proud of, but it works well enough that I went ahead and published it today. Here's the link, if you're curious: https://medium.com/@tonialpayne/a-different-yes-1fb89fa0415f?fbclid=IwAR3F9VZzHgrw48K4BR2cB1gQd6lt62xMVsCZgauLZJXFB_IW5WVn2y2esr0

But here's what I noticed in the process.

1. I wrote much better when I had to write much less. I begin to wonder if this is the problem with the more extensive novel idea I've been chipping away at. Even though I write it one chapter at a time, the chapters are not self-sufficient: I know there will be more story in which to continue whatever thread I start there. In fact, with the novel, I'm realizing that I probably need to write even more than I am, fill in even more details. But with the novel, I keep hitting patches when my own writing nauseates me (treacle-covered tripe soaked in bilge). I don't often have that experience with short stories--and when I do, I can just toss it and do something else. With a chapter in the novel, I may be able to scrap any particular chapter, but the overall story still needs to be told, if I'm going to tell it at all.

2. I'm never finished when I first think I'm finished. Even after going through the little 500 word essay multiple times, every time I went back to it, I found another way to tweak it, teeny adjustments of a word there, a phrase over in this place. If there hadn't been a deadline, I'd have kept tinkering. I can get to the point with any of my writing--academic or creative--when I think, "That's good enough; send it off." But if it were to come back to me, I'd find more to fiddle around with. I've said it to my students, and of course they never believe me: the only thing that should keep a person from continuing to revise is that there's a deadline. It can be a self-imposed deadline, but one can always, always, make one's writing better.

3. When writing personal narratives, there's a very fine line to walk between revealing enough and revealing too much. Where that line exists varies from writer to writer, I know, so there are no rules for it, other than the cliched "gut check": I just have to feel certain that I don't mind if all the world and her sister know what I just revealed. (I know people for whom that would instantly make it impossible to publish personal narratives--at least without presenting them as fiction: their sense of privacy covers more territory and has less permeable barriers than mine.) But I also know, from reading and from my little dabblings in psychology, that what is most personal is most universal. However, that's not to say that we can expect other people to be as fascinated with our belly-button lint as we are: it's not the superficial parts of the experience that speak to others. If I tell just the events in my story of love lost, found, lost again or whatever, well, OK, thank you, but no one is moved much. However, if I tell what I felt, as deeply and with as much truth and honesty as I can, that might speak to someone.

It's the delving into the soul that matters. I'm thinking of Jung's metaphor of how consciousness is the islands sticking up above the level of the sea, but how under the surface of the waves, we are all connected. So to write personal narrative that resonates, one has to go into those depths, where the light is filtered and strange, and even breathing becomes something one has to pay careful attention to.

I'm sure it is no coincidence that I am getting this sudden burst of desire to write just when I'm about to be interrupted by things that will keep me from writing. I will have out-of-town company from this evening until next Tuesday, then a week in which maybe I'll write but which probably will mostly be spent grabbing some social time with friends before I head off to Portugal for two weeks, during which time any writing I do will be just recording my impressions in a special little journal I've only used for Portugal trips. So, unfortunately, this inaugural "This is now a blog about writing" post will also be the last for at least a week, possibly longer. But--nudge, nudge, wink, wink--if you become a follower, you can opt to have email announcements when I post something new....

It's summer--at least in this hemisphere. It's gorgeous--at least on the east coast of the U.S. Get out there and enjoy it.

So, about that Student Edition...

As I mentioned yesterday, I suddenly got the bug again to try to push to have my Student Edition of The Left Hand of Darkness published. The problems with that quest are labryinthine. Hold on to your piece of thread...

The thing really only works as a Student Edition of the novel, comprising the complete novel plus all the stuff I created. And way back when I was on sabbatical to work on the project, Le Guin's then agent contacted Penguin, which owns the paperback rights. I was frustrated in the extreme that she didn't fully convey my idea, so it got shot down: their response was they wouldn't sanction such an edition because it would jeopardize their sales--but the whole point was that I wanted them to publish it. I immediately contacted Le Guin and the agent, but got rather sniffy responses: it wasn't the agent's job to sell my project. Well, true, but god dammit, she got me walled out before I could even get going. I asked her whom I should contact at Penguin to try to get them to consider the project themselves, and she gave me the name of one of the high muckety-mucks--who, of course, never responded to my email, my follow-up letter, my follow-up follow-up post cards. I tried several other editors, also to no avail.

I've talked this over with a dear friend who knows more about the world of trade publishing than I, and her take is that no one responds not because the project strikes them as useless but because it does not fit into any already defined categories--and in the current high-stakes corporate world of publishing, editors are as risk averse as the people who green-light movies at Disney (who can only seem to approve live-action versions of animated movies that were hits decades ago, because, what if we generate new content and it isn't a hit??).

And there really isn't anything at all like what I'm proposing out there. Nothing. There are guides for teachers--some published by Random House, in fact (and Random House is the educational conjoined twin of Penguin). There are the Oxford critical editions, which include footnotes and other apparatus, but they're not as extensive (or as geared for undergrads) as what I'm proposing. There are the online cheater sites, which are very easy for students to find and use--and use to avoid having to actually read or think, and from which to plagiarize.

As a side note from that: I know it will be extremely important to emphasize the fact that the student edition can be "web enhanced"--because educational publishers now have gone wholesale into the "students know how to use digital sources and are comfortable with them and want them, so we must provide them," creating a Worm Oroborous of giving students what they want, not what they need, so they only know to want what they already know, and never find out what they really need, and around we go.

Returning to the part of the maze that is "finding an editor," there is the problem that neither Penguin nor Random House will accept any unsolicited submissions--which means one must have an agent--but generally speaking, agents don't deal with scholarly/educational materials. If I were trying to get a novel published, it would be almost impossible to find an agent--but something that agents don't even represent in the first place? Fuhgeddaboudit. That said, above-mentioned dear friend did find a lead to agents who might consider representing me/something like this. The text accompanying the link she sent reads, "Though most literary agents negotiate contracts with commercial publishing houses, some specialize in representing public intellectuals and negotiate with editors at university presses in addition to their counterparts in commercial presses."

Another branch of that part of the maze is this: say I decide to go ahead and send a letter of inquiry and my one-page proposal to editors at Penguin-RH in the spirit of "What the hell: you don't know if you don't ask." PRH does not publish a staff directory (perhaps understandably), so the only option is to try to find names of people through one of the many online networking sites. I did that, focusing only on people with a rank of full editor and higher--but I know that each one of them has a particular line or interest, and there is no information I can locate about who might be the most likely person to try.

OK, so the current thought is, why choose? I can send the same letter to everyone whose name I found--but then the question arises: since they're all in the same publishing house, should I let them know that I'm sending to a whole bunch of them at once? Multiple submissions are usually expected, so if I were sending the proposal to a bunch of different publishers, I wouldn't think twice, but this is a different scenario. Hmmm.

I've also rethought the tone of the letter of inquiry, for if/when I ever send it. I no longer have the "in" of "X agent from X agency suggested I contact you," so I need--heaven help me--a "hook," an "attention grabber." I mean, I completely understand the concept and how it works and have no problem with the need for it--if it weren't for the fact that I've just experienced decades of students starting their essays with the most random and generally idiotic stuff because they are looking for the magic bullets "hook" or "attention grabber."

Nevertheless, the letter in its current incarnation is a great deal more humorous, informal, and ... well, I guess in a way indirect, as I have to generate a little interest before I get to the project or the person reading will never get that far. Even if it's the first paragraph--"I have this specific thing I want you to consider"--the reaction is likely to be a swift and unconsidered "nope," unless I've managed to engage in a little, what, flirtation?

Oh, what a mess this is. But I felt impelled to try again to get some kind of traction on the materials for Left Hand largely because I think it would be wonderful fun to do the same work again on a different novel. In effect, I want Penguin to say yes not just to this one Student Edition but to an entire line of them, with me working as editor on the first few (specifically and other Le Guin they have in their backlist, but hey, I could do the work for just about anything, if need be)--and then the line expanding to other editors with expertise in whatever other books might be among the top sellers for students.

And I want to do that because I still am groping for a sense of something I can not just do but be in this whole new chapter of my life. Not Prof. P but Prof. P, editor of Student Editions for ....

Yes, I still want to tutor, and do the freelance editing. I am not looking at the Student Editions as a potential revenue stream, though of course if they bring in money, all the better. I'm looking at that kind of work to use a particular part of my brain--and it's a part that involves writing but isn't writing creative work (fiction, poetry). And speaking of that, I have again hit a moment in which I reread the fiction I'm trying to  churn out and simply hate the way I write. It's not even about having written myself into a corner--though there's that problem, too. No: I mean the actual words on the page. I reread and think, "Judas Priest, what treacle! What sappy, sodden bilge!" Not conducive to wanting to continue the process, though at some point I'll grid my lions and try again.

Now, however, I am going to switch to being a student again: time to get ready to head into the City for a fiddle lesson. And I may blog about that process, too. Because, well, talking about myself: a very favorite pastime. About which, may I recommend this article: https://theascent.pub/research-confirms-that-no-one-is-really-thinking-about-you-f6e7b09c458?fbclid=IwAR10dc6Ibd_kMT3ZtpsYwUtL5vzQR8WmtaIBEOPTgXhWIb-1PA7DISYACTA

Off I go. More soon.

Last day--and first full six-student day

My docket was utterly full today. Two of the appointments finished up early enough that I could quickly exchange some personal emails about a somewhat urgent matter, but otherwise, I was just burning all day. Student after student after student who has a paper due today (sometimes within an hour of our appointment time) and who is coming in now, for the first time, for help. In one case, I've actually seen the student at least once before about this particular paper--but his was the least complete/developed of the bunch (and he still didn't have a thesis that would answer the specific topic the professor required).

I might be feeling more separation anxiety about all this, but I was just so frantic, I can't. Also, typical of me, I already went through the separation blues early, on Friday. (I had my "I'm turning 40" trauma when I was 35, too: apparently, I prefer to suffer in advance.) But I may yet get all weepy about this. We'll see.

I've been thinking about what I might do with this blog, too, and right now, it may flip over to being a blog about my attempts to get my Le Guin project published. I've let it languish for a very long time, and now I'm ready to start pushing again. I'm not quite sure how, but ... somehow.

A moment ago, we were all startled by the very loud ringing of a chime, followed by an announcement that the Library is closing at 5:30 today. (It's now 5:08.) I immediately thought, "All those students who are downstairs frantically trying to pull their final essays out of their left ear (or somewhere less savory) are going to utterly freak out."

And that isn't my problem. None of this is my problem. I am taking a deep breath, packing up my bag, and heading out the door. I may however, post tomorrow, about the Le Guin project thing, and whatever else occurs to me as interesting to note.

Very strange, this departure. Very, very strange.

Almost the last...

I'm gradually saying goodbye to colleagues here in the Center. I can't say that I've gotten terribly close to the other tutors here, so the goodbyes haven't been emotionally taxing--and in one case, at least, a bit of a relief. I don't know why I found this particular colleague ever so slightly irritating, but I did, so it is rather nice to know I won't have to make nice any more.

And as for summer, I put in for the hours but didn't get any. There is, I suppose, a chance that someone who has currently been scheduled will change her mind (I think all the tutors for the summer are women), but I have to say, I was somewhat relieved when I got the news that the schedule was already full. More options for beach days!

Today, I only saw one student--well, to work with, at any rate. Silent Betty had an appointment, but she came in to ask if she could move it, as she had an exam the next period; I guess she wanted the time to study. We moved it--but then apparently she came in just before that later appointment and canceled. Originally I was also supposed to see Earning Honors today, but he also canceled.

I'm sure I've given a moniker to the student I did see, but I don't see her regularly enough to remember what I called her--but Word Salad would be appropriate. We managed to get part-way through her essay, and at a rough estimate, I'd say one in five sentences actually made enough sense that I could fix it with only minor adjustments. The rest were truly incomprehensible. I'd have to try to pick up on individual words that might contain the kernel of an idea and try to work from there. And it wasn't until the last few minutes of our appointment that I realized she was plagiarizing left, right, and center: not only presenting ideas without citations but also mixing in far too much language of the original source--and creating more word salad in the process. I persuaded her that she really has to come back in tomorrow for more help; her essay is due on Monday, so she actually can squeeze in another tutoring session--and if she doesn't, the paper won't pass. She very proudly showed me the two essays that I laboriously went over with her; one got a B-, the other a B. In retrospect, I wonder just how much of those grades rightfully belongs to me--though as I've said, she has great ideas. How she managed to get to Comp 1 is a mystery, though--unless she's relied incredibly heavily on help from the Center along the way.

I also found out today that part of the problem is that she works a graveyard shift, so she is chronically going without sleep. That's clearly adding to her already profound problems with language processing. I'm not sure if she is dyslexic, but that would be my hunch--and profoundly so. I don't know if she's getting any particular help from the Center for Students with Disabilities, but I'm guessing not. And that department is woefully understaffed for the number of students we have who present with disabilities of some sort or another.

Mercy me.

In any event, I didn't have an appointment after Word Salad--but I chased her out at the end of the 45 minutes anyway, because I was wearing out. What she really needs is to see a language tutor every day, someone who knows how to work specifically with whatever her particular processing problem is.

Nevertheless, she is no longer mine to worry about. I sincerely wish her well, but I don't think I'll spend the weekend--or even tonight--feeling concerned about helping her further. I hope she gets the help. I won't be the person to provide it.

At the moment, I have one appointment scheduled for Monday--and it's rather interesting to read the client report forms, as they have rather diametrically opposing views of the student's capabilities. If he indeed keeps the appointment, I'll be most interested to see what he brings to our session. But ... a session on the last day of class? If what he has isn't in damned good shape, he hasn't left himself much time to make changes.

But again, not my problem.

Thinking about the fact that in all likelihood, Monday will be my last day as an employee of this college, I realize yet again that I still haven't felt the full separation--and probably won't even then. As I've said before, I suspect it will be September before it fully soaks in that I'm officially severed from this institution ("severed": what a ferocious term for it!). How very, very, very odd. I just can't quite wrap my emotions around it. My brain gets it, but ... I still feel very attached to this place. Relieved as hell to no longer be suffering the tortures of the classroom, but still: I've been here 18 years, counting this semester. That's almost twice as long as I've ever worked anywhere else. Strange, strange.

But now, it's just the usual Thursday; I'm finished here for the week and will now head off to embark on my weekend. I'll be most interested to find out how Monday feels when it arrives.

Pretty easy--even with Annabelle

I was not looking forward to dealing with Annabelle again today, as we're getting down to the wire on her final research project, and indeed, I had a bit of a hard time, as usual, getting her to focus on one thing at a time--and on what's most important. Right now, the main thing is that she is just responding personally to her sources--"I found this interesting"--but has no argument with which to frame her use of the information she found. She was unaware that she didn't have a thesis, even though we've talked about it before, and even though we had hammered out what her thesis could be. She was mostly worried about whether she was using enough sources--and I have to say, pedagogically I have a problem with an assignment that requires a student at that level to use ten sources, as the problem is likely to be exactly what Annabelle is experiencing: overwhelmed with information, no clear sense of what to do with it other than regurgitate it. But ah well. Fortunately, Annabelle will be in tomorrow to work with another tutor--someone new to her this time, and someone with more infinite patience and gentleness than I can summon, though I've managed to summon more than I would have been able to even last semester, never mind in semesters before that.

I then met with a student who admitted up front that he has a contentious relationship with the professor of his class--and knowing who his professor is, I'm not surprised (P&B knowledge)--so he wanted me to read and evaluate his essay. It was generally good, but his argument needed to be brought to the surface and clarified, along with transitions. He also had some real train-wrecks of sentences, which were odd to encounter in what was otherwise very clear and controlled use of language. I read it over, made suggestions--and then he asked me what grade I'd give it. I said, "I refuse to answer that question." I told him that without the changes, any grade I'd give the essay would be significantly lower than the grade it would earn if he makes the changes--and that if he makes the changes, it would be a very strong paper. But I talked to him about what a student can do about the fact that grading writing is subjective. If the professor is willing to work with the student, then the student's job is to find out what criteria are important to that particular professor and comply with them to the best of his or her ability. In cases--such as this one--in which the professor is not willing to engage in that process, the option is "grit your teeth, do your best, take your grade, move on." And I reminded him he actually has learned something, even in this unpleasant circumstance: how to deal with this particular kind of difficulty in a professor, and a little more about writing, as well as about the topic of his essay.

The final student was a drop-in, an Honors student, who simply wanted help with an APA references page. He had the citations correctly on separate pieces of paper, but he hadn't saved them in any way that would allow him to copy and paste what he already had into his essay document--but he didn't want to re-do his research. I told him those were his only options: duplicate the research (and take advantage of the citation tools in the databases, which would give him the ability to cut and paste) or type things in. He managed to find four of his five sources and use the citation tools, but--as sometimes mysteriously happens--the fifth source would not reveal itself. But by that time, he was ready to type in that one last source. Along the way, he got more comfortable with how to do the formatting (and I learned a little more about using Google Docs, which sort of works but not as well or easily as Word). He was skipping the class for which he had written the essay in order to do the work--but as an Honors student, he probably had an absence to burn, and as long as he could submit the essay on time was no doubt making relatively intelligent use of his time (though coming in earlier would have been smarter).

And I had no fourth appointment today, so I've been noodling around with email and whatever else: nothing of significance. In a few minutes, when my stint is officially complete, I will head home. Paul and I were going to meet for dinner tonight, but we've managed to shift that to next week: a much better option for him, as he will be out from under the weight of final grading. Originally it seemed I wouldn't have any good opportunities next week, at least not before he has to head back up to Massachusetts, but at least one if not two of my appointments shifted to an earlier slot, thereby opening things up to a reasonable "dinner a deux" option.

So, home early today, and back here on Thursday for my second-to-last day, at least this semester. I was wrong in my post yesterday: Monday, which is the last day the Center is open this semester is also the last day of the semester. I kept getting confused about that--but, duh, even that's awfully late, as graduation is next Wednesday. The timing is pretty nuts: one day to turn grades around before commencement? But if any student fails a class required for his or her degree, I guess the Registrar's office simply will say, "Sorry: we know you went through the ceremony and everything, but in fact you don't have your degree yet; you still need to fulfill X requirement." I don't imagine there will be a lot of those cases, but seems like creating potential SNAFUs that could pretty easily be avoided. My hunch is that the ceremony was scheduled when it was around the availability of the Nassau Coliseum, not for any logical academic reason--and that's the way things go around here: technical expediencies trump intellectual logic. I could go on about that at length ... but why? I do my stint Monday, and Wednesday, I will be laughing at Eddie Izzard in the company of a very good friend while the ceremony goes on and on.

And none of that is now. Now, I go home. I'll post again--good lord willin' and all that--on Thursday.

Belated post, out of order: written 5/9/19: From six to three and a half

When I came in this morning, my docket was absolutely full, though the actual roster had changed a little. I still started the day with Silent Betty (on whom more in a moment), but Annabelle had canceled, much to my relief, and just about everyone else was new, at least to me. However, my second appointment was a no-show, and then my fourth appointment canceled. And as of this moment, it looks as if my final appointment for the day is also a no-show--which is a shame, as he was actually pretty good to work with, when I met him last week. I didn't assign him a moniker, I don't think, but he's one of those students with good ideas who just struggles to haul them into language and then onto the page. Last week, he was in a flat panic to work on a paper--for which he missed the deadline, as he was still working on the revisions I recommended. I don't know whether his professor took pity on him and gave him an extension, but he did say he'd learned his lesson and would start the final essay earlier. I assume that was why he made an appointment with me for today, so I'm not sure what it says about his plan, but, well, I don't have to fret about him, or his final grade. He's not my student. {{sigh of relief}}

I was dreading one of my appointments, given what I read in the previous comments from tutors. The student apparently has enormous processing problems, and I was anticipating a hell of a slog in our session. However, he only had one question: he didn't understand what the professor meant when she wrote in the schedule that something would happen during class. He asked if he needed to do it before class--so, yes, I had to explain what "during" means. He had done the work that needed to be complete before class, including a pretty good works cited page; it needed some minor corrections, but I walked him through those, and it's now in great shape: he can handle concrete instructions, such as "erase that" and "move this here." Still, I had to explain "during." And he's a native speaker of the language.

One of the students I met earlier is not a native speaker, and he also needed some help understanding the professor's questions on a final exam--and a hell of a hard one at that. Ten questions, all challenging, and the student told me that most people had to take it in class. I don't think I could do it in 75 minutes, quite honestly, and I write fast and know all about the subjects. This student was allowed to work on it over the weekend, and was extremely grateful for that. His questions were understandable, though I was a trifle annoyed when he said that something had been explained in an online lecture which he hadn't yet listened to. Um, that might be a good idea, before you try to answer the question. But I helped him with it anyway. It was about the meter of Dickenson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death"--and I am always aware that even native speakers these days don't fully understand about syllabic emphasis: it's like a form of music they can't hear, which baffles me--but I've worked through the scansion of a piece of poetry with students and experienced their complete bewilderment. I think he actually got it better than some of those native speakers have.


That was where I left off when I had to dash away from the desk, and I've now (Monday, 5/13) completely forgotten what else I might have wanted to say. I do recall working with a student who needed to revise his proposal for his final research paper for film and literature--and I spent a lot of the session explaining to him that 1. He actually needed to write about the films, not ideas tangentially related to them and 2. He actually needed to watch the films before he could know what he wanted to say about them. And he's a bright enough student: he's just a STEM guy, so this arty-farty stuff mystifies him. His professor and I have exchanged a few emailed face-palms over the guy, but at last report, he seems to have gotten at least part of the idea. We'll see if I see him again. But as for the other appointments of the day? I don't remember at all. Which is one of the lovely things about this gig: I can just drop things from my memory banks entirely (which is easy to do, as my memory strongly resembles Swiss cheese in having rather large holes).

Basta. More on the flip side.

Holy buckets

I am very grateful that it seems my last appointment of the day will be a no-show, as I've just done five appointments back to back, and none of them ran appreciably short. In fact, the last one ran over by 15 minutes, but because that final student wasn't here waiting, I could give the woman I was working with the extra time.

Can we tell final essays are coming due? Yes we can. In fact, I was busy enough on Thursday that I never finished my blog post for the day, I don't think. I'd completely forgotten about it until just this minute. The students are starting to arrive in droves, looking for those last-minute miracles.

The most discouraging appointment of the bunch was a student I helped last week. I think he came in pretty proud of what he had, but I immediately saw serious problems with it--most specifically the lack of a thesis, but also the lack of focus on an argument about the work of literature he was meant to address. As is far too often the case, he used the story as a sort of spring-board to fling himself into talking about a topic in very general terms (a focus his sources supported, but I didn't see anything from his professor saying he needed to find literary criticism in particular, so I didn't give the poor young man a hard time about that). He got very discouraged--especially because he had about five minutes before the essay was due, so there was no way in hell he could make the kind of systemic changes he'd need to make to have a reasonable essay. I said that at very least he needed to add the thesis (and underline it, which his professor requires), but the student fears his essay may not pass, and I fear he may be right.

I remind myself that frequently, these painful experiences are how we learn, but it just makes me sad to know that the young man put energy and effort into exactly the wrong stuff.

In one way or another, every appointment today reminded me how extremely difficult it is to teach this stuff so it sticks. What makes a thesis, what makes an argument, how to use evidence in support of an argument, how to identify specific points and organize them logically: all of it is essential and none of it is easy to explain or to learn how to do in any great hurry. I have no idea how or when I learned it; it almost feels like I just absorbed it by some kind of osmosis. I knew how to write an essay pretty well as an undergrad (though I didn't really learn what a thesis was until I was in grad school, I have to confess). No one ever taught me that I was aware of. I suspect it was just soaked all through every writing assignment I had from the time I first had to write about anything in particular (instead of the first "academic" writing I actually remember doing, in third grade, which was to write a story using all the words on our spelling list and which produced the timeless classic "The Dancing Dentist").

I will say that at least some of the students I saw today had given themselves some time to engage in writing as a process--and were aware that they didn't yet have introductions or conclusions. One student was revising an essay for a Communications class; fortunately, his professor provided a rubric that showed exactly where he would have lost points, so he and I addressed those specific areas. The challenge in that instance was getting across the language barrier: I had a hell of a time explaining that he needed to tell his readers not just the end result of a process but what things had been like before the process began, so we'd see the change.

Focus. Organization. Argument. Evidence. Points. Clarity. Documentation. And then we can get into grammar errors, and punctuation problems, and spelling and/or word choice problems. My head is spinning. It's all so innate to me. Trying to explain how to do it is like trying to explain how to see.

This morning before I left home, I looked at my schedule--but somehow I knew it wasn't going to be as light a day as the schedule reflected. I only had two appointments scheduled at that point. By the time I arrived here, the docket was full. So the fact that tomorrow and Thursday also look light is, I know, very likely to be highly misleading. The Center closes after next Monday, but the semester isn't over until Thursday--I keep forgetting that--so the madness is very likely to continue for my last days here.

I hadn't even thought about the possibility of doing this over the summer, too, but the acting supervisor asked me last week if I'd do it--and there's a possibility that the dates for the second summer session won't conflict with my travels. Picking up some extra income would be very nice. (I had a stress dream about that this morning: I was working at some kind of low-wage, mindless job, the kind for which one punches a time clock, and my boss informed me about a rather expensive medical bill for which I was suddenly responsible--and I burst into tears and put my head down on his desk, wailing, "I can't afford it!" Oh, my psyche: how easily it finds ways to panic itself.) I like the work too. And ... well, honestly, it's going to be harder than I want to admit to say the complete and final goodbye to this institution.

But that's not now. Now, my stint in the Center is all but complete, and I can go off to do my usual Monday evening routine--and be back here, blogging, tomorrow.

Four ain't bad...

I had a full docket today, but two of the appointments were quite short. The first was with a returning student to whom I have not yet given a moniker: I'm rather at a loss how to characterize him in brief. He is an ESL student, and like all of them at this stage in the semester, he's feeling more than a little anxious about whether he'll pass his exit exam. He's the one I first spoke to about that learning trajectory, explaining that of course he still makes the same mistakes--but he's doing all the right things to learn how to correct them. He came in today primarily to get some reassurance. His professor also didn't like his topic sentences, which he had created on the advice of a friend who is more advanced in his academic career. His professor said they were too long, which is true; they were also clunky and repetitive ("The first reason X is the case is because," "The second reason X is the case is because," and so on). And I give credit to the professor for urging him to consider a cleaner style (which also provides less opportunity for error), but I think the kid has much larger concerns. Once again, I talked to him about the need to check his work at the end of the exam period, but this time I talked to him about how to slow down enough that he can see what he actually wrote instead of what he thinks he wrote. The exam is Friday. I expect he'll come in next week to let me know how he did--and if he is my first appointment of the day, I will need to be in early: I arrived about three minutes late today, and he was leaving because he thought I wasn't coming. I can see a person having that assumption after ten minutes, though even that might be ungenerous, but three? It may be bad form for the professor to be late, but we are human and run into unexpected snags, just like anyone else. But of course, to most students, we are not actually human at all. We are some completely alien species. (This is why my students are so stunned when they happen to run into me away from campus--especially in the summer, when I'm wearing a tank-top and shorts and doing something mundane like my grocery shopping. Though I confess having a bit the same feeling about some of my teachers: it was just weird to see them out of context.)

The other brief appointment was with a student who just wanted help with APA documentation, both in-text citations and the references page. I continually tell students they need to own an actual, physical style manual, not rely on the web. This young man agreed, actually; he'd just never encountered such an animal before (which I find strange, but there you have it). But he was bright and got the point quickly, so that was easy.

The two long appointments were more challenging. Both students came in with quite lengthy essays, which of course I didn't have time to go over in detail, and both students had trouble with the structure of their essays. The first of those students also had systemic ESL errors in her work, but I didn't address those for the most part; I was more concerned that she get her ideas organized. I went through her essay and pointed out to her the various topics she addressed--and the way she would flip back and forth among them--and I created a flow-chart: paragraph 1 is about this; paragraph 2 is about this, and so on. Then I told her she needed to go through her essay sentence by sentence to determine which topic she was addressing and organize accordingly. She wanted me to do that with her, asking whether X sentence should go in Y paragraph, but I told her she needed to make those determinations on her own. I also had to explain that she could quote only part of a sentence from a source. The quotations were overly long and tended to swamp her ideas. But the funniest part of that meeting was when I asked her what her topic was. I'd swear she said "Bowling." I even asked her: "Bowling??" and she said yes. So when she said one part of her paper was "solutions," I said, "solutions? to bowling? What do you mean?" She said something about how schools and parents could get involved--and I'm thinking, "OK, she's making an argument for the development of more interest in the sport." Then I saw the first sentence of her essay. "Bullying is a serious problem today." I didn't laugh out loud, but I came close.

The second student was much more facile with the language and had stronger ideas, but he didn't connect his ideas to each other very well, skipping over rather large ravines from paragraph to paragraph with nary a verbal bridge to get the leader from one topic to the next. He also did what all too many students do, which is he wandered very, very far from the poem he was supposed to be analyzing, so I talked to him about how to make transitions and how to connect his ideas back to the poem itself. He was hard to get a read on: very low affect. But I think he got it. He plans to be back in the Center tomorrow morning to go over what he's done with another tutor; I hope he gets good help.

The slightly maddening thing about both of those appointments, however, is that both may have been wasted effort. The young woman said she had already revised three times, and she wasn't sure whether the professor would accept the essay again. The young man said nothing of the kind, but when I looked at the assignment sheet, I saw that the deadline was last week. Of course, his professor may have changed the deadline, or she may have returned the essay to him and recommended (or demanded) a revision, but I do hope she will accept the work at this date.

And that concludes the early part of this week. Right now, I have two students on my docket for Thursday: Silent Betty and Annabelle. Annabelle was in today, working with another tutor and clearly driving that tutor bonkers. I suspect that her "research" paper is a chaotic mess, as that tends to be this young woman's problem: that chasing down rabbit trails thing. So I will have to gather my patience in both hands to be ready to deal with her. I wish I could say, "You know what? You don't really want to accept  what I have to offer, so why don't you see someone else?" But I can't. As the head of the Center said about the Hostile Wall, we can't ban someone for being annoying. More's the pity.

For now, I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I'm in the office to go downstairs and engage in some bulk shredding. I'm cleaning out files at home, and my little home shredder has given up the ghost, apparently--but I have enough to shred that I might as well use the big one here. Very gratifying, that. And I'll be back here, blogging, on Thursday.

From one student to five...

When I left home this morning, only one student had signed up for an appointment with me, the Grammatician. One student dropped in--and then dropped in again, which technically is verboten, but I figured, as long as I had the appointment open and no one else was waiting, why not help him. One was another of those students who just needed me to review an essay and sign off on the fact that she'd been here; I was complaining about those as a waste of my time earlier, but now I realize I rather like them, as they're generally pretty brief appointments. Then my final appointment was a returnee; I'm at a loss for a moniker for her. She is very sweet but rather slow; today she said she has a learning disability, which I probably could have told without her saying so. But it was good to know she's aware of it; too many students clearly have processing problems and have no idea that there is anything wrong. The first time I met with her, I had to really struggle to get her to understand that it wasn't her job to simply write down the prompting questions I was asking her but to answer them. This time, she needed help making sure she understood what a professor was asking for in a very specific rubric. She'll also need help with organization and clarity; that goes without saying. But I don't know whether she's given herself enough time to get it.

The Grammatician didn't ask any challenging grammar questions today; he wanted me to help with an essay, and his English has gotten good enough that I can talk with him about ideas, not just grammar, idiom, etc. I've probably mentioned that before, but it's quite a relief to be able to talk about connections, organization, filling in ideas.

The student I saw twice may become a "regular," with what little is left of the semester. He was working on an essay for a Film and Literature class; his professor had already seen it and given some feedback on mechanics but not much on content--yet part of the problem was that his essay was under length, which means he needs to develop his ideas. I can rather understand the bind he was in: the professor has very rigid parameters for how long individual paragraphs can be as well as for the length of the essay overall. At first the student was a bit grumpy because, as he explained, he gets feedback from her, changes what she pointed out, and still gets a bad grade. I explained that he is expected to re-evaluate his ideas on his own, too, not just fix what's explicitly shown to him. He then admitted that he's a math/science guy and taking some very challenging courses in that arena, so he tends to give the English course short shrift. This is entirely typical: students see the title of the class and think it will be easy, just watching movies and eating popcorn, apparently. They're shocked when they realize there is actually academic rigor involved, and that they need to read, write, and think (heaven forfend). I will give this young man credit: he wasn't averse to the idea of doing those things as a general rule; he just was prioritizing and the Film and Lit didn't get the priority. However, as we worked through his essay, he started to realize how many problems were caused by the fact that he had rushed it--but he was rushing again, and in fact he missed the already extended deadline for submitting the essay. It was greatly improved from when I saw it earlier in the day, but I worked through it again with him, in the hope that his professor takes pity on him and allows him to submit it. However, I explained, sometimes the learning experience is what matters, not whether one gets a grade, and he saw that. But he also says he'll be in earlier to work on his next and final essay for that class. Good plan; we'll see if he follows through on it.

Looking forward, it is interesting to watch my schedule silt up as each new day approaches. Earlier, I had one appointment scheduled for tomorrow. Now, there are three. At the moment, I have only one appointment scheduled for Thursday. I will be curious to see how many more I pick up by the end of the day.

And we're careening toward the end here. This week, next week, one more Monday, and it's all over. I imagine it will take a little while before I start freaking out about not having the income, but I find that it is extremely easy for me to have day after day of bugger-all nothing to do. Retirement suits me. Now if I could just also be independently wealthy....

I'm sure there was something else I wanted to say, but heaven knows what. If I think of it--and if it's important enough, I'll add a postscript. Otherwise, my faithful readers, I'll see you tomorrow.

Very easy day

Annabelle was my first student of the day, and today's session was pretty easy as she hadn't actually done any work to speak of since the last time. I repeated a lot of what I'd said before, and in a departure from usual, she left before the 45-minutes were up. Not by much, but even so: that ten or fifteen minutes was nice to have. My second student was someone I'd seen once before; I can't come up with a specific moniker for him, as he's essentially a generic "not ready for college language immersion" student. In fact, today I wasn't entirely sure why he came in to see me: he didn't have any particular questions, and what he really needs is simply to use his awareness of the mistakes he most typically makes in order to go back through his essays and work to correct them. He was distressed because he had done some practice writing at home, a situation in which he had plenty of time, and he made more mistakes in that writing than he did in the practice exams he'd done in class under time pressure. I explained that he probably didn't apply the same concentrated focus to the work at home, ironically precisely because he had plenty of time. But I had no magic solution for him: he just needs to keep practicing. I explained the learning trajectory to him; I can't recall if I'd talked with him about it before, but I know I've said it to other ESL students--though it applies to all students who are struggling with grammar or punctuation rules. The first stage is, you don't know you're making the mistake. The second stage is that you know you make the mistake, but you keep on making it. The third is that you make the mistakes but catch and correct them. And if you're lucky, you get to the stage when you no longer make the mistakes at all. (Suddenly, I think of my experience learning to play fiddle: exact same trajectory, though I am not at all sure I will ever get to that fourth stage.) I think a lot of English Language Learners think that they shouldn't experience the second and third stages but should somehow pole-vault directly to stage four, so a lot of my job is to reassure them that the mistakes are normal and are part of a learning process--and that learning a new language takes a lot of time. That applies to native speakers of English who have never learned "standard" English--or, more narrowly, academic English. It's like an entirely new language for them, and it takes a while to master.

Getting back to Annabelle, however: I realize that she is a classic case of a specific kind of student with whom my colleagues and I are all too familiar. She can only see generalizations, not subtle but specific differences. Forests, not trees. More to the point, she (and students like her) can't even tell that a forest is made up of a lot of individual trees: it's just one big, solid entity to them, and when we say, "Yes, but look at the fact that this is a forest that has a lot of oak trees, whereas this one has more poplars" or whatever, they get very dismissive: "Whatever. Trees. Forest. All the same thing."

And I am thinking about that because it occurs to me to wonder why some people seem interested in and excited by finding out that there are all those differences and others simply do not want to go there, at all, ever--and sometimes just won't, no matter what their refusal does to their academic progress. I don't think it's a kind of fear; many forms of apparent resistance are fears of one sort or another, but this doesn't feel like a fear issue to me. What could be scary about seeing more and more and more details? So maybe this is a case when it comes down to sheer laziness. My colleagues often accuse students of being lazy when I think something more profound is going on, but it is true that it requires some mental effort to get into particulars and minutiae, and some people just don't want to exert the effort. That baffles me because I have an innate sense that delving into that kind of mental work can be intensely pleasurable, and it's hard for me to truly believe that other people don't find the pleasure in it at all. But I think that's the case. I can certainly think of parallels, things that require a kind of effort that I do not find pleasurable in the least but that other people find deeply gratifying (working up a sweat and getting the heart pounding doing any form of physical exercise other than swimming, for instance). Still, people who really, truly do not find any enjoyment in the exercise of their mental muscles probably don't belong in college: there are other ways they can find pleasure in exerting themselves that can still lead to gainful employment.

This I guess gets into the argument about the purpose and value of a college education. And all my readers know that I am a firm and unwavering advocate of the mental expansion that is the prime purpose and result of a liberal arts education. But I'll dismount that particular hobby horse for now: I can gallop around on it some other time.

As it happens, today ends my week in the Center: I won't be in on Thursday because I had to schedule a routine doctor's appointment but the only time that I could do was a Thursday in the middle of my usual work day. But this is what those days of sick leave are for, I reckon. At least, that's what I'm going to use it for; this will be the second of three possible days of sick leave that I got, so why not. So, my faithful readers, please don't go away simply because there will be a spell of no new posts. I'll be back posting on Monday--and I suppose there's the outside chance I'll end up doing some of my freelance tutoring later in the week (though that seems to have dried up for the time being), and if there is, well, maybe I'll post. But whatever transpires, good lord willin' and all that, I'll be back here posting away next week.

First six-appointment day

Even though there was a cancellation and a  no-show, drop-ins filled in the blanks, so I ended up actually seeing six students today. It still wasn't quite as breathless a day as it might have been, as two of the appointments were significantly under the 45 minutes allotted to them. And none of the appointments was difficult, either in terms of the level of help needed or the student's attitude.

Reading the reports prior to each meeting, I saw that one student had been flagged as a bit of a problem, being a student who has a very hard time grasping what's required, but she was in such an early stage of her assignment--and the assignment was so open-ended--I didn't have a problem with her. I am again surprised by a colleague's assignment: research anything you want, find one source, write a summary that includes two quotations...? I see this as staging toward a more structured assignment, but "anything you want" is so huge, and our students so unaware of what their interests actually are, what may seem like a wonderful invitation to explore instead equates to paralysis. That was the case with this student. I asked her what she was interested in, and at first she said, "Nothing." "Ah, c'mon. You're interested in something. Everyone is." A little poking and prodding turned up the fact that she is interested in becoming an occupational therapist--though she has zero clue what that entails--and she always liked history. So that session ended up being a tutorial on how to use research to generate a topic, and then how to use research to find out more about a topic once something has caught one's attention.

The only repeat student I had today was the Grammatician (and I had to scroll back through old posts to find the moniker I'd attached to him). His English is progressing rapidly, so we're getting to the point where I can begin to talk more about ideas with him, rather than focusing entirely on ESL concerns. One of the things I love about him is that he's willing to challenge himself: he wanted to try out a new transition word and selected "likewise"--which he used perfectly. He also tried out a phrase he wasn't sure would work: "lack of sleep." Perfect. He's really a pleasure to work with. Smart, focused, excellent work ethic.

I had another of those students from the "How to Be a College Student" class, who just needed me to review his essay and sign off on the fact that he'd attended--but he was actually happy to get some corrections to his work this time (mostly ESL stuff). The writing was very simplistic, but given his placement levels, he was well within the expected parameters.

One student--from an honors class--only needed about five minutes of my time, to understand how to cite a play, specifically one without line numbers. Slightly embarrassing confession: I had to look it up. But I could talk to her about how to quote dialog, which made me feel slightly less inept.

Another very bright student showed up with an essay that is an extra credit assignment for an Interpersonal Communications class. She has great ideas, but they didn't all make it on to the page, so there were places where connections were unclear. Once I asked her to riff on the point a little, though, she clearly knew what the connections were, so, well, there you go: put them in your essay. I talked to her about process, using my fish tank analogy--and possibly for the first time in my career, the analogy made sense to someone. (For those who may not have heard it before, the analogy goes like this: Your mind is like a huge tank filled with tropical fish swimming around. But they keep moving, so you can't keep track of them or get them organized. You need to reach in, grab any fish at all, and slap it down on the page. It will flop around for a while, but eventually it will hold still. And you do that until all the fish are out of the tank and on the page. Then you can step back and take a look at them all, because they'll hold still: you can decide which ones you don't need, which ones belong together, where maybe you need to go out and find a few more fish to fill in a blank. But until you get them onto paper where you can look at them without them moving around, you can't make those determinations.)

The only student I have yet to talk about was a drop in (he took the place of someone who should be banned from the Center for having been a no-show twice in one semester--in fact, counting today, three times in one semester). He was working on revising an essay about Susan Glaspell's Trifles. Good ideas, needed some development and clarification--but I mostly talked about his essay in the abstract, as he hadn't had a chance to actually do any of the revising yet. I hope he comes back tomorrow, even though my appointment times won't work for him, so someone can go over what he comes up with as he revises.

And that's the story for today. At the moment, my docket is filled with returnees tomorrow: Annabelle, plus two more for whom I don't think I've provided monikers yet. We'll see how that goes. But I have to say, I'm kinda sick of working with Annabelle and wish she'd go find another tutor. But ah well. The weeks are rapidly ticking toward the end of semester, and then none of these students will be on my radar at all any more. Weird to contemplate (and yes, I just had a little rush of anxiety at the thought of severing that last tie to this work, at least here at NCC). But we're not there yet.

Ah, the quickies and the no shows...

Looking at my schedule this morning was a bit daunting: all six of my appointment slots were booked. However, I remained undaunted, as I knew there was a good chance not all of the students would actually show up, and that was, in fact, what transpired. Further, the first two appointments were very quick: the students only used a fraction of their allotted time, so I got good down time between appointments. One student didn't show--but his was a sort of provisional appointment in any event: I'd worked with him earlier in the week, and he said he might come back in. He didn't. Fair enough.

The only slight collision was with my last two appointments: the second-to-last student was late to start with and then wanted to look at his document on my computer. Some of my colleagues here allow that, but I don't, so he had to go print what he had. He seemed very slow to process things, though I think he's actually pretty intelligent; the wheels just move slowly. But he was in my cubicle five minutes longer than he should have been. I was concerned about the next student, but fortunately that student didn't seem to care.

In fact, that final student sort of didn't seem to care about the whole process, though I think that was a cover for some real discouragement. His essay got a D, which was clearly a serious ouch to him--but it was chaotic and disorganized, and he had missed a refinement on the assignment that stated a focus he was missing, at least in his introduction.

With both of those students--and with the other who used her entire appointment time--my work was the same: I talked with them about how to clarify their ideas, how to use evidence, and how to revise. The one who seemed slowest actually seemed to have the best grasp of what he needed to do, once I explained, but in his case and in the case of the young woman I helped, I was surprised by their professors' comments. In his case, the professor didn't point out that he didn't really have a thesis, which I thought was odd. In the case of the young woman I helped, her professor didn't point out the fact that the student's essay was essentially a pastiche of huge generalizations--and didn't even clarify which of two poems was being discussed in each paragraph. The feedback on the final student's essay was more precise; in fact, she provided a check-list (things like, "topic is clearly stated: yes, no," "includes at least three quotations from different sources: yes, no")--and, unfortunately, a lot of the "no" categories were checked.

I like it when I spend most of an appointment talking about ideas instead of hacking through GSP (grammar, spelling, punctuation). And I like it when I can talk about process: how to approach the tasks involved in getting from point A to point B in writing or, especially, revising. I also am glad to see that so many students are either being allowed or required to revise: that's one of the department's stated goals, and in the past it was more frequently honored in the breach, as the saying goes. I used to tell my students that revision was probably the most important thing I could teach them--it being part of understanding writing as a process--and I'm glad to see so many students having to grapple with that particular monster. Revising is hard. It can also be delicious, but it is anything but easy.

In any event, that's it for me for this week. My logging of appointments has been done, and now I can toddle off into the weekend. Very strange to be so close to the finish line here. It will be interesting to see if the sudden up-tick in number of appointments continues to occur. My hunch is it will--but so will the number of cancellations and no-shows.

Ah, the drop in...

The day started with Annabelle, but today's frustration with her was different: she had latched on to a very superficial--and actually somewhat incorrect--understanding of one of the key readings for her "argument" essay; that "understanding" in turn led her to a very shallow (and consequently disorganized) wandering through what was at best a minor side point in one of the readings. I confess I hadn't read the article to which she was responding--though the author based his argument on Le Guin's parable "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," which of course I know extremely well--but today I realized I needed to skim through it at least, and ... oops. But prying her loose from that understanding, even though it was as shaky as it was, turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Of course, the harder part is that she now essentially has to reconsider her entire "argument," such as it was. I have to say, too, that I find the assignment extremely challenging: I'm not sure I'd know how to make an "argument" from the two readings, what there is to actually argue, unless one gets into some pretty profound philosophical territory, which I think is beyond 99.9% of our students (though from that remaining .1%, the results would be wonderful).

This is not the first time that I've encountered an assignment created by one of my colleagues that has brought me up a bit short, as I thought, "Shit: I'd have a hard time with this one; how am I supposed to help a student understand it?"

Well, whatever. I did what I could for Annabelle. Of course, at the end of the session, once again she was complaining about how "everything is piling up" and "there's so much work." Yep. Welcome to college.

One of my appointments canceled, so I only had one other student scheduled, and I was a bit at a loss again in how to help him. I don't know what the professor actually provided, but the student said that he had no prompt or instructions for the assignment, no guidance about the kind of research ... I'm not even entirely sure how he knew what the ostensible topic was for his essay. He had, at this point, zero--but being a relatively intelligent young man, he at least was in to get help more than two weeks before the assignment is due, so he has time to work on it. I suggested he do a little research to see what's out there--and I gave him the quickie tutorial on how to use the databases--but that he mostly just write out his ideas about the story and the character in question, no judgments about the value of ideas, no organization, just pour stuff out onto the page, and then figure out how to start his essay, where to use his research and so on.

He didn't want to spend long--I think I was with him for about 15 minutes, tops--so I thought I'd have the remainder of my time here to just noodle, but no: a drop in. And of course, that turned out to be the most challenging appointment of the day. He wanted help with an extra credit assignment for a history class, reporting on a museum visit, and he wanted me to provide him with specific rules about how to handle illustrations (I drew more on my Met experience than any MLA rules and regs for that) and where he should put the document proving that he actually had been to the museum, a situation for which there obviously are zero rules. I had to struggle with him even over how MLA documentation works, the fact that in-text citations need to match the first words of the corresponding entry on a works cited or bibliography page. At first, I didn't bother to tell him that he had centered the entries on his works cited; he was exercised enough about the need to provide information keying the photographs he'd taken to the text and to the "captions" he'd created. In his hyper state, he could only manage making one kind of change at a time.

He really wanted to sit with me at my computer to make the changes with me, but I said no to that idea. But he wanted to make the changes right that minute, and he asked me to look at it all again when he had the changes made. OK, no one else was claiming my time, so I was willing to do that--and then he proceeded to periodically pop out of the lab next door to ask me questions about formatting, organization, and so on. I helped him fix some of those things--but then he wanted me to look at his final essay "really quickly." I asked him exactly what he wanted me to look at, and first he said format--it took a while for me to make clear that just because the professor didn't want sources, only the student's "critical thinking," that didn't mean it wasn't MLA format. Then he said no, really what he wanted was help "crunching down" his ideas--and I had to explain that that would not be "quick": if he wants help with that, he needs to set up a full-length appointment with someone. He was disappointed that in the final 15 minutes of my day here I couldn't take care of that with him, but, uh, no. It will be interesting to see if he comes back.

Still, even that annoyance was pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. In fact, even the Hostile Wall--whom I have not seen in ages, I'm happy to say--is a pretty minor annoyance for me, in the grand scheme of things. (For poor Kristin, the Hostile Wall is a significant annoyance--to put it mildly--but I can empathize and then head off whistling, care free.) This really is for the most part a delightfully stress-free gig.

At the moment, my Thursday docket is pretty full: across the board, there are fewer blank spaces, a state that is somewhat overdue, in my estimation--but I think students are having the realization that 1. they might need to do something specific to improve their grades and 2. there isn't much time left in which to do that something. They still aren't thinking very far ahead--a day or two at most--but still: we're going to be more crunched than we've been yet in the next few weeks, even with cancellations and no-shows. That's fine by me.