Mostly my own time

Yesterday, I suddenly thought, "Oh, shit! I have to work tomorrow!" The snow day on Tuesday, followed by my regular mid-week hiatus had lulled me into the false sense that I was finished with my campus duties for a while. Au contraire.

And it's been an interesting, soft of in-flux day here. I arrived a teeny bit late--and although one of my appointments had canceled, there was a drop-in for me to take the minute I got in. Then another drop in. I was supposed to have two appointments after a brief break, but both canceled. Then I got a drop-in for the final appointment of the day. I was going to start my appointment with him a little early, but he needed to print out the essay we were going to work on together. I think we need to tell the student aides up front who log in the appointments that they need to make sure the students have printouts of their work. I've worked on electronic documents when a student brings in a laptop, but I think I'm going to insist on hard copy from now on--and the last student of the day had his phone but really wanted to use "my" computer. I grant you, he's taking an online class, so it would make sense that the document would be online, but ... well, I don't know how to get students (or even some colleagues) to understand that working on hard copy is a very different animal, and crucial to really being able to see what is there.

In any event, I think I was helpful, which is the whole point, and I was fortunate that all the students had the right kind of attitude. I overheard one of my colleagues working with a student who clearly is somewhere on the autism spectrum and who therefore had a very hard time taking in the comments, latching on to less important ideas, missing the bigger picture--and, bless his heart, taking it all very personally. I heard my colleague say, at one point, "It's OK: don't cry. That's why we're working on this, so we can fix it."

What we deal with goes so far beyond simply the academics. We're called on to do so much emotional support, so much assisting psychological development, it's sort of amazing that we have time to actually address the academic stuff.

We need tutors who focus just on ESL. We need more psych support services. But I am so very glad I don't have to try to deal with this in students whose success or failure will be part of my classroom experience. As I hoped, knew, would be the case, I can help them and send them on their way. That even goes for the students I see more than once--and my first drop-in today was one of those. It was simply luck of the draw that we ended up working together again, but I suspect he'll try to make appointments in advance in the future, specifically so he can work with me.

Meanwhile, since I ended up with a fair amount of time with which to do whatever I wanted, I spent some more time on my creative endeavors and the attendant research. I found an amazingly delicious source through the Library of Congress website: historical maps that include fascinating details (and cover pretty much exactly the time span I'm working with). And I am finding out surprising little details about towns in North Dakota that sprang up with the arrival of the railroad. (If the thing ever gets published, I'll probably need to be sure to issue a disclaimer about one of the towns, as the current residents may feel their history is being maligned when I place a brothel in their downtown. I have no idea if there ever was one, but ... well, it was first an army settlement, then a railroad settlement, so I'd be surprised if the Sisters of Mercy didn't have a presence as well.)

(Cue Leonard Cohen and McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Maybe I need to watch that movie again.)

My stint here is just about finished--I'm actually able to post this while still at the WC--so I'll wrap this up. I'll swing past the office long enough to water the plants, but then I will say so long to campus until Feb. 25. We have all of  next week off for Presidents' Week, which I probably have mentioned before. Disappointing not to get paid for a week; lovely to have the time in which to have all sorts of appointments and other activities going on. But it's pretty certain I won't be posting next week, so please tune back in on the 25th for more exciting developments.