I'm writing ... really I am.

I had one appointment this morning--which took all of 15 minutes (helping a student who is in basic remedial English for ESL students)--and then, well, what to do.

Given my experience on Thursday, I didn't think I'd be able to really focus on any of my own work, so I brought some mending with me, and a few other little domestic projects of that sort, which I could quietly do at the desk but which allow my brain to roam freely.

And where it was roaming was in the novel I started years ago, wrote my way into a corner with, and haven't touched in ages. For some unknown reason, I thought it made sense to write historical fiction, even though I know very little about history, and to make one of the main characters Hungarian, even though I know less about Hungary (mostly what I learned from my mother reading Kate Seredy's books to my sister and me when we were kids--and then reading the books on my own repeatedly). I've been using a very dear friend--who actually started as one of my students, back when I taught at La Guardia--as my Hungarian specialist, as she is, in fact, from Hungary, but I also found myself doing a teeny bit of research, trying to find enough factual information that I can create a plausible scenario for some of the main events. When I first thought the story through--and I know the big frame of the story, start to finish--I sort of didn't realize all the bits and pieces I was going to have to fill in to create that verisimilitude I used to talk with my students about: the fully realized time and place in which the story exists. I wish I had a colleague whose brain I could pick for some of the historical knowledge I lack, but even among my colleagues in the History department, I don't think there's anyone who would know much about the kind of situation I'm writing about. Hmmm.

Well, in any event, I had a very pleasant time keeping my hands occupied with needlework and allowing my brain to meander where it would. My eyes don't quite know how to focus on the computer screen now, however, since I've been working at a closer focal distance.

But returning to the ostensible purpose of this blog, let me make brief note about the student I saw. Her essay was simplistic--as befits someone who is in a remedial class--but it had some important things in place: coherence from beginning to end, paragraphing, and apart from some ESL errors, generally very good sentence structures. I'm a little baffled that she did not pass the class before; she said this is her second time taking it. I've had students in my 101s who can't write as well as she can. Maybe she can't develop her ideas beyond three paragraphs yet, or maybe the essay readers came down hard on the ESL problems--but part of what I had to do was tell her what she's doing right, and tell her that her grammar is not, in fact, "terrible." It needs work, yes, but she's doing very well. When I told her that, she lit up. It's so easy for us to forget how hard many students are on themselves, and how much they benefit from some encouragement.

Not to the extent  that one of our adjuncts went through last semester, however: she absolutely could not conceive of allowing anyone to fail the class, so she was going to keep them all working through the rest of this semester, too. Poor Cathy had to fight that battle for a month, but the adjunct is now no longer with us, and the students have been given grades for the semester. And man, am I glad all that happened when I was no longer evening supervisor.

My time here in the Center is just about finished for today. At the moment, I have no appointments scheduled for the rest of this week, but that could change at any time. I did briefly have an appointment for yesterday (and indeed briefly had a second one today), but one got reassigned to another tutor--I don't know why--and the other was canceled. A little confusion over a disjunction between the confirmation emails I was getting and what appeared on my schedule, but I think, unfortunately, the office manager believed that I didn't want the confirmation emails any more and turned them off. Ah well. I can still check the schedule; I don't really need to know in advance.

And tomorrow, you know, is another day. I don't know if I'll be a little domestic worker again tomorrow or whether I'll try to do some actual writing, not just thinking about what I want to write (though all writers know that staring off into space is, actually, writing). For now, I'll go back to the office and do some clean-up until it's time to go to my weekly appointment, which I have moved from Wednesdays (when I do not have to be on campus) to Mondays (when I do). And onward we go.