Very quickly

Pretty easy day (gotta love those "no-shows"), and the students I had were generally earnest and wanted to learn. That's a lovely thing.

I'm interested to notice the bits of information in what professors say both in class and on assignment sheets that completely slip past students--such as what not to write about, or that documentation is needed, or how to approach a topic.

Also sort of fun to eavesdrop on one of my colleagues and realize she was helping a student with an essay for one of Paul's classes. I recognize the discussion of the poem--and I'm pretty sure Paul is the only person in our department who teaches that particular poem. I took a quick glance at the student as she was leaving, and I think I happened to be in the office when Paul was conferencing with her, too, though I can't be as sure about that.

I actually have a little time to fritter away, even though my stint here is complete: I'm meeting a colleague for a movie/dinner date (she's one of the few people I know who shares my taste for big action films), so there's no reason to leave immediately--but I also got here way early today. I came in directly after a doctor's appointment, so I frittered and noodled for about half an hour before I was officially on the clock. The upshot is that I am completely ready to be ... just about anywhere else. I may even go to the mall, which is a measure of desperation. The movie theater is located in the mall, but actually being in the mall is usually a form of torture that I avoid like a root canal without anesthesia. Nevertheless, that's where the Apple store is, and I'm in the market for a new iPod, so ... maybe. Or I may find a cozy place to sit and stare into space for a while until it's movie time.

In any event, I'm calling that a week. I will be back blogging on Monday, I assume. I know you all await further developments with baited breath.

Full docket

All the appointments today went swimmingly. Annabelle was more focused than usual--though she had a minor (and understandable) freak out when she realized that she has to split her attention between two essay assignments in her comp class: she's been given the parameters for the final research paper (more on that in a moment), but before it's due, there will be another essay, which will develop from the in-class midterm that the students just wrote. I helped her understand the progress of the research assignment--that she will need to gather information from her research first and maybe begin creating loose categories of what she finds before she begins drafting it--but I also helped her understand the back and forth between the two assignments.

Next up was a young woman, not a returnee, who mostly wanted help with MLA format (including her works cited page)--and I have to say, after helping a number of students with APA, it was a relief to be back on familiar ground. I then read through her essay very quickly and found sentence-level errors to correct. I mostly just handed her the corrections, which I don't usually do, as time was of the essence. And for the umpteenth time, I said, "So, one of the things you've learned is not to write your essay at the last minute." Heavy sigh.

I then helped a student with the scholarship application he's been working on for about two weeks, and it's finally taking good shape. Along the way, he's learning about eliminating wordiness and about keeping things simple in order to be clear. He is among the thronging hordes who have been taught in high school that paraphraxis is a good thing. Heavy sigh.

He and I finished a teeny bit before the official end of his session, and the next student was a teeny bit late, so I started to provide commentary on a piece of freelance writing for my friend's daughter. I'm impressed that the girl is writing for publication--and real publication, not just student journals--and it's a pleasure to help her. Interesting to shift from that to helping a student with the outline for a reflection paper he's working on. He and I did a lot of brainstorming last week, and he did a good job of turning that into a couple of rough paragraphs. He still needs a thesis statement (not a question), but he's doing well with what he has. Unfortunately, the essay is due early Thursday, so he hasn't given himself much time to write it up and have someone check it over--but he'll try for a drop-in appointment tomorrow and see if he can get some feedback.

Now, I'm in the office waiting for a visit from the Young Zen Master. He wants to talk about transfer to four-year programs in English, which is a shift from where he was last semester, when he was pretty sure he wanted to major in creative writing. But last semester I found out that he hadn't actually done any creative writing or taken any classes in it, so I suggested he do that. He's working with one of our legitimate rock stars, a fiction writer and cartoonist--and I suspect the Zen Master now realizes that there is some hard work involved in creative writing, so he's changed his mind. Or perhaps he just realizes it isn't floating his boat; I may be doing him a disservice. In any event, talking with him about next steps will be a pleasure--assuming he shows up.

And I'm assuming Paul will also arrive eventually, whenever P&B finally wraps up. I always look forward to talking with him, as everyone who knows me knows full well.

And that's kinda the day. I will try to find the oomph to finish up the commentary on my tutee's essay, so I can cross that off my slate for now (until it boomerangs back, which it will very rapidly, this girl being the over-achiever that she is; interestingly enough, it's an article about teen burnout, from which she suffers). Depending on when or whether the Zen Master and/or Paul shows up, I may engage in some office clear-out behaviors (next up: file drawer full of grad school stuff), but I may also opt to simply noodle and fritter. It's all good.

Five in a row

I think this has been my busiest day so far. I had a teeny break after my fourth student, but then there was a walk-in, and I was the only tutor available so I ended up with the appointment.

Interestingly enough, I ended up with the Hostile Wall student. She met earlier with one of my colleagues here, and he did very well with her. I was able to overhear some of what he was saying and he was making some important distinctions that she hadn't grasped before (like between topics and thesis). And I did get her to focus slightly better today than I have in the past, but it was still a struggle. I had to say things over and over again, but she started to understand some of it--for now. I'm sure she'll lose everything I said again before next week.

She also was responsible for a little flurry of tense interchange over the weekend; she'd tried to sign up for a second scheduled appointment, which the Center's director canceled. The Wall argued that she hadn't gotten a full session with me and so deserved another appointment. The director emailed me--twice--asking whether the student's appointment really had been significantly truncated, but I didn't get the emails until the appointment ship had sailed. However, I did confirm that in fact the student was only 10 minutes late, which is hardly enough to warrant an additional 45-minute appointment. And in another interesting twist, today, the student had no boot or cast or anything on her "broken foot" or "broken leg" (the story varies according to her need at the time). I still find her systemically annoying, but I was better able to work with her today without driving either one of us to barking.

In fact, I don't know from whence I have gotten the reserves of patience that I've been able to tap into today. I very nearly called in sick, but managed to suck it up and get in despite feeling less than stellar. I was sure I'd be scattered and impatient, but the contrary has been the case. Witness the fact that the student I had immediately after the Hostile Wall was another who could drive a person round the twist, and yet I was calm with him. He's not remotely hostile; in fact he's quite sweet. But he needs to have things repeated ad infinitum before he begins to grasp them. I'm not sure how much of that was that he really didn't want to believe that he essentially had to do his essay over, in order to meet the parameters of the assignment, or how much was truly that he couldn't hold on to what I ws saying. Yes, you need to analyze the political cartoon you're writing about. No, you don't need all that history; it's not germane to your points about the cartoon. Yes, you need to analyze the cartoon. No, you don't need those three paragraphs of general history. Yes, you need to analyze the cartoon....

Sigh. But ah well.

There is, I suppose, a slight chance that I may get one last student for a partial appointment, as about 40 minutes remain in my scheduled stint, but I doubt it. In any event, the fact that I was able to get through five back-to-back appointments even on a day when my energy levels are low suggests that six-appointment days will be a challenge but not insupportable. That's nice to know.

When my stint here is complete, I will toddle over to the office. I hope Paul will be there, so he and I can chat a bit, but I also need to use the department's fax machine (for personal purposes) and there is always noodling to be done. I have some time to expend prior to my regular Monday appointment, and I'm happy to spend it doing whatever I do in the office. Three of my four appointments tomorrow are scheduled with repeat students, all of whom are perfectly pleasant to work with (though one is scattered and therefore somewhat frustrating; she's the one I think I was calling Annabelle last week, as in the person who runs after all the various rabbit trails and can't easily be called back on track). But that's tomorrow. I'm going to consider this a sufficiently finished day to sign off on this post. Until we meet again...

Loving those "no-shows"

One of my colleagues here in the Center had a six-appointment day, not his first. My day had four appointments scheduled, but I ended up seeing two, which suited me just fine. Neither was taxing; both were about early development of essays.

I keep thinking about that borderline hostile, recalcitrant student of Kristin's. I checked her records; she has two more appointments set up, each with a different tutor, both tutors people she has not yet seen. I have a feeling that, eventually, she will exhaust the possibilities, having seen every tutor here and deciding that, of course, the fact that she can't get on top of her work is our fault. It was pretty fascinating to hear Kristin hold forth about her over drinks on Tuesday. I think the student's photograph is next to the urban dictionary definition of "piece of work," because she certainly is.

And I'd like to go on record with some gratitude that students of that ilk are rare here. Most of the students who come are grateful for the help--and able to focus on what we have to say. Both students I had today were in that camp: paying careful attention, taking notes, asking intelligent questions.

I don't have a lot else to report, actually. My own writing seems to be on hiatus for a bit; I wrote myself into a knot again and am trying to figure out how to unknot it--or where else to go with the story in order to keep writing. The impulse is to do more research, of course, because I can feel I'm being productive without having to actually produce anything--and also, in all honesty, because it does help me to feel I have a more precise understanding of how things would have worked in the time and place about which I'm writing.

But all that's for another day or time. Right now, I can close out this blog entry, noodle for about another 3 minutes, then put on my coat and take off. Hooray!

well, weird

I'm sort of obsessing about when I would have seen that student from yesterday. I absolutely know that I saw her--I remember it vividly, and I even now remember commenting about the student to Kristin (and getting a similar response, about how the student is driving K bats by sending gazillions of emails--literally 18 in one day)--but I can find zero record of it anywhere. Not that it matters, really; it's just strange and mysterious that I am so certain I saw the student in an earlier appointment and have no factual evidence to support that assertion.

Well, whatever.

Today I saw all repeat customers. One was a student who also presents a challenge in terms of focus; even when she starts explaining why she chose to include something in her essay, she can end up talking about ... just about anything. Keeping her on topic in her essay is a similar challenge, for obvious reasons: that's just how her brain works, and she doesn't have enough experience yet to recognize when she is running down a rabbit trail and to haul herself back on track. I'm suddenly reminded of the wonderful hound my nephew owns. Annabelle, the hound, is a sweet and charming creature, but if she gets on a scent, she's off--and she has disappeared often enough that they now have equipped her with a GPS collar. I feel like this student is mentally very like that: she gets on a side trail and disappears over the ridge. I've managed to call her back, but the tutoring sessions are not very efficient, as a lot of the time is spent with me listening to her digress about something or other and then trying to haul her back on piste. But she's sweet and well-intentioned and clearly wants to do well in her classes.

Student number 2 was the young woman, non-native speaker of English, who cannot seem to speak audibly to save her life. She first appeared working with another colleague--I'm sure I reported this before--and he spend almost the entire session telling her he couldn't hear her. Then I met with her and had the same experience. She was a little better today, but I just would love to know what constellation of factors, personality-wise, familial, and cultural, have led her to so effectively silence herself. She wanted help making sure she had made the proper corrections to an essay, and for the most part she had.

Third student of the day was a young man who is in the Honors program but clearly based on his facility in business and accounting, not his writing ability. He tends to the periphrastic (to put it mildly), but he's starting to see where excess verbiage can be truncated with a little prodding from me. He's applying for several scholarships; he sent off one essay that I really wish he'd run past a tutor one more time, as there were a lot of glitches with it (which I hope don't affect his chances at the scholarship). Today we reworked that one so he could use it for a different scholarship, then we discussed how he can approach the required application essay for yet another. I've now helped him with scholarship essays twice and with an essay about Oedipus Rex, and he's a pleasure to work with. I hope he can maintain his current 4.0 GPA, but I think his English classes may present a bit of a stumbling block, depending on his luck with professors.

In a nice little moment, I also ran into one of my students from last semester's good 101 class--one of the more memorable students from that class, and one of the ones who was responsible for the bubbling chemistry. He's doing extremely well--and he's now thinking he may not transfer out as quickly as he originally intended. He realizes that he's getting a lot more support and an equally good education here. I wish every student with that experience would shout it from the rooftops (or, more important, send letters to the Board of Trustees and to Newsday, the local newspaper which in general has an animus against the school).

I'm posting this now in what would be my last appointment of the day, but mercifully, no one was scheduled and another tutor got the latest drop-in, so I have this bit of time in which to pull my head together as it were. I am not going back to the office after my stint here--foregoing another opportunity to engage in office clean-out--because I'll be getting an early train from home to the City to meet Paul, William, and Kristin for drinks (though I may skip the booze part) and dinner. I'm very much looking forward to hanging out with them--and Kristin and I will have a blast talking about that student who drove me so bats yesterday. I truly hope I don't see the student again, but if I do, I certainly will have to come up with a moniker for her: she's memorable, I'll say that.

But at that, I'm going to wrap things up. I still have about 15 minutes to fritter away before I can officially put on my coat and take off, but I will indeed fritter. I have nothing else of substance to do or report.

on the fly...

I have to take off in about ten minutes but wanted to post quickly about today. Most of the students I saw were perfectly fine--though I had a real challenge trying to explain to an ESL student the reasons why we use "that" (when, where, and how), which is something I know intuitively and probably not always correctly. I ended up looking it up online. Don't know if it helped.

However, one student was the type to drive a person barking mad. Oddly, I know I met with her early in the semester, though there is no record of the appointment. But I read other tutors' reports on her and across the board they expressed frustration with her: she cannot stay focused and, as I came to remember, doesn't seem to understand even a very simple explanation (such as the fact that introducing the topic will give information that may be repeated in the thesis statement--such as the authors and/or titles of the works being discussed). She kept saying "But I have that here," and I kept saying, "But you need to introduce the whole concept before you provide the thesis." She got very annoyed at the end as I was trying to get her to stop wasting time trying to find the exact way she wanted to write something on her phone and instead simply write it on a piece of paper--and then because I had to end the session, since I had another student waiting. "I feel very important right now," she said, as she left. She had a million excuses for things but ... oh argh, anyway. She's one of Kristin's students, in an online class. I made sure my report was sent to Kristin, but as I write this, it occurs to me to dig back through my blog posts to see if I wrote anything after seeing the student the first time.

Only one tutor was able to work with her productively--largely because the tutor had a cancellation and could see this student for two consecutive sessions. And even then, I ended up going over pretty much exactly the same territory with the student.

Describing her processing problems, it sounds like she might be dull and disconnected, but in fact she has excellent ideas. She admits to having a vision problem, but it seems that the processing problem is a larger, though possibly undiagnosed, concern. It's like trying to talk to a borderline belligerent wall.

Too bad we can't ban someone from the WC for being just impossible to work with. Or too bad we can't give a student like that huge, long, extended work sessions. With unlimited time, one might be able to get somewhere with her. In 40 minutes? Barking mad, I tell you.

We'll see what tomorrow brings. When I left the house this morning, I had one appointment scheduled. I ended up seeing students in five of my six appointments. First time my day has been that full, but I will say it made things go quickly. And most of the students were fine to work with. My hunch, too, is that the Hostile Wall will ask not to work with me again, which suits me just fine. May she find someone with more patience who is better able to help her.

Pretty full docket tomorrow, as things now stand (three of four slots booked). We'll see if they all show--and if I get someone else in that last slot too. Things are heating up as the semester progresses, and as students start seeing their grades....

And at that, I'm off.

Well, it was a day

This was a morning when, if I were still in the classroom, I'd probably have opted to stay home. I had just enough of a headache and was just sufficiently sleep-deprived that my impulse was "fuck this, I'll stay home." But then I thought, "Four and a half hours? Probably not constant work; probably down time in there? Oh, I can do that, no problem. And I finish at 4."

So, here I am. And in fact I did have a fair amount of down time--enough that, for a switch, I started playing around with ideas for a clear, student friendly guide to GSP (grammar, spelling, punctuation), working from absolute basics and presented in a way that students would, I hope, find more engaging and understandable than any style manual I've ever seen. But in the process, I realized that one of my colleagues is absolutely brilliant at clear explanations of grammar points; in fact, he produced an illustrated guide to tense structures that I've been using with great gratitude in working with some of the ESL students who come in for help. So I asked him if he might want to collaborate on something. My dream would be for whatever Matt and I put together to be packaged as a companion to Paul's book that addresses the deeper, more theoretical/intellectual aspects of college writing. But in talking with Matt about it, I realized that what I was doing would be absolutely the wrong thing: too many words. (Sort of like Mozart and "too many notes." https://youtu.be/H6_eqxh-Qok?t=26) Matt is right: it needs to be highly visual--and the information needs to be presented as students would learn it in a classroom. So, for example, comma splices wouldn't be discussed in a section on commas but in their own section. Actually, the style guide I've used addresses them in a section on grammar, along with run-ons and fragments, which is slightly better, but even that's too unwieldy. There needs to be a section just on sentence boundaries, then another on building complex sentences, and so on.

Hell, I'm retired: I have nothing but time to do this kind of thing. But really, I think Matt would do a much better job at it than I would. The only thing I have that he doesn't is time to screw around with it.

Otherwise, I have very little to report. I came; I saw students; I noodled. Now I can take off. So I will do precisely that. I realize I truly do not feel that I am in the trenches anymore. I'm not sure what the war analogy would be; maybe I'm in some kind of negotiations. But this work doesn't feel like a battle, which is quite lovely.

Grateful for the cancellation--and the unprepared

When I arrived this morning, my docket was booked solid, students back to back to back. "OK," I thought, "Now it begins." And I did, in fact, see two students back to back--both young women, both in developmental stages of writing (but, mercifully, not ESL). And then my third appointment showed up. This was the young man who came last week with whatever fell out of his left ear, not having read the article to which he was supposed to respond. I had to step out of the office for a moment and passed him, waiting; I said I'd be with him in just a moment--and he said, "I'm working on it now." I glanced at his laptop. He had the heading and one sentence.

When I came back to the office, he had the heading and three sentences. I gave him a little feedback on the first sentence; no, I explained, you don't need to "cite" anything, as you haven't used any specific information from the article yet--but you do need to be more specific in your first sentence than "This article." Give the author and title. He wasn't sure how to do that. Just replace "This article" with the title and author. He started writing "This article, which is entitled..." and I stopped him. Nope. Just "The article 'Whatever the title is' by whoever the author is...." and then continue with the sentence. So he wrote in the article title, then opened the article on his laptop to find out the author and, oh, oops: he'd sort of approximated the title. I said, No, the title has to be word for word exactly what you see in front of you. Once he did that, I said, "OK, at least now you're doing what the assignment requires, which is to begin with a summary--but I really can't help you until you've actually completed the assignment. Make another appointment, with me or someone else [subtext: someone else, please!!], and bring in a printout of the completed essay, so you have something to work with." He agreed that might make sense--then offered me an unopened can of Coke. So, diagnosis: very sweet and well-intentioned, but missing some cognitive connection that's pretty essential. Can't tell whether he can come up with strategies to compensate, but at the moment, he sure doesn't have them.

In any event, I had time before my next appointment and began to noodle (or fritter)--and then saw the schedule update and my last appointment had canceled. Oh happy day.

Here's the thing. The actual work I do here is completely fine, even enjoyable in many cases. I work here a grand, whopping total of 12 hours a week, and the rest of the week is entirely mine to do with as I please. And all I can think when I'm here is that I don't actually want to see any students, and would rather noodle, fritter--or even be marginally productive and write or research--at home. Clearly, I was more ready for this whole retirement thing than I knew.

I am flattered, though, that I have repeat students--including, now, one of the young women I saw earlier today. She is a bit hard to work with as she is so desperate to do well that she justifies and explains to the point that it's hard to get through to her what she needs to do, but I hope that with some encouragement--and practice--she'll get confident enough to stop deflecting and listen. I seem to be working with a number of students from one particular colleague's classes--and I have a hunch that some of my colleagues are specifically telling their students to look for me when they come to the WC, which is also flattering.

Nevertheless, I am actually looking forward to spring break--which is ridiculous, as I am the furthest possible thing from stressed with work, but that siren call of the noodles and fritters in my own home is pretty powerful.

Now, I am about to clock out here and head over to the office. If I didn't have a "date" with Paul, I might not, even though I truly, desperately need a lot of time in the office so I can continue that cleaning out process. But I do have an agreement to meet Paul there, after P&B adjourns, and in the interstice, I'll return to shoveling out files. Or maybe I'll embark on one of the bookcases. Hmmm. In any event, something to clear away the accumulated detritus of 17 years (plus grad school and whatever was in my office at the Met that I carried over with me). My pack rat tendencies are manifest. Time to pick a new "spirit animal." What's an animal that throws things away with abandon?

Three students, a no-show, and some frittering ... or noodling

I have a repeat student, it seems, a very sweet young woman who is in a pre-non-credit English immersion class. She's doing pretty well with a lot of things, making improvements, but she was asking about prepositions today, and that's one of those things that, as I understand it, non-native speakers just are never going to get. One of my dearest friends, a woman from Hungary, speaks beautiful English (albeit with an accent), but she gets prepositions wrong all the time--for whatever that anecdotal evidence is worth. I assured the student that she shouldn't worry if she can't remember and makes mistakes; the rest of her work is doing fine.

There as another ESL student, of course, and he wanted help with tenses, which I completely suck at explaining. I copied relevant pages out of the style guide I've used (which I carry around with me), but I was very aware that a colleague (who essentially runs this branch of the WC) was sitting on the other side of the partial wall dividing cubicles here and that he has an absolutely brilliant explanation of the various tenses, with diagrams denoting time relative to the present. I finally broke down and asked him if he had a copy of it I could share with the student--and he printed out his PowerPoint slides for me. I gave one copy to the student and kept another for my own future reference; it now lives in the "Writing Center" bag that I tote around with me (in which I carry a pair of glasses, writing utensils, various clips and "office supplies," cough drops, scrap paper...)

...I was interrupted at that point--15 minutes before the end of my shift--to take a drop-in student. He kept insisting "I'm a good writer," but what he produced certainly didn't reveal that he's a good thinker, which is more to the point. Interestingly enough, he's one of Kristin's students; it was great to see her assignment, her rubric, and her feedback on his attempt at a proposal. She is fierce! I told the student that he will be challenged (and how), but if he does everything in his power to meet her expectations and fulfill her assignments to her satisfaction, he'll learn a lot. And he will.

In any event, prior to that, and in between my other appointments, I kept myself amused with nothing in particular. I'm not sure whether what I was doing qualifies as frittering or noodling (note, please, the food metaphors), but either way, I was sufficiently engaged, albeit in nothing of substance, that the time passed without tedium.

And there was a fire drill, in which I encountered my former salon student now occasional cat sitter. You would think she was my long-lost daughter: she always gives me the most enormous hug hello and goodbye. And she told me that she is sad to think I'm not teaching any more--even though she'll be graduating at the end of this semester and transferring to Old Westbury to study philosophy and religion, so I wouldn't be teaching her again in any event. But apparently she is in a class with another student from the SF class, and they both talk about me and that experience. It really was quite wonderful, one to remember.

Normally at this point, I'd head to the office to talk to Paul and do whatever further frittering/noodling until my usual Monday appointment, but my usual Monday appointment is canceled this week and Paul has probably already flown the coop, being (as is all too often the case) exhausted. He and I will surely see each other tomorrow, after he is finished with P&B. I'll be in the office engaging in further purging of files. I have an unbelievable amount of clearing out still to do, and the semester is whipping past. It would probably be good if I were to come to campus on spring break to do more clearing out of things, but ... well, it's unlikely.

For now, however, I am finished for the day. I will pack up my various totes and head off into the ... well, not the sunset, since we're in Daylight Savings Time now, but into the rest of my evening. I confess, it will be rather nice to be home earlier than usual of a Monday.

And there will be another blog post tomorrow, good lord willin' and all that.

Not a snow day, but could have been

My stint isn't officially over, but I just said goodbye to the one and only student I saw today. I had a bunch of other appointments, but the rest were either cancellations or no-shows, which suited me just fine. (I imagine a lot of students decided to take today as a snow day even though only the first half of the day's activities and classes was canceled.) I don't have a whole lot of brain going on today--not just because I'm in my pre-procedure fast but because my sleep was somewhat disrupted this morning, so I'm not as fully rested and with it as I might prefer. I did spend a little time writing, but I found negative judgments were starting to leap to the foreground; it's hard to keep writing when a very loud voice in your head is saying, "Jeezus, this is completely stilted, sappy crap. Nauseating. Who would want to read this bilge? I don't even like writing it." I don't know whether it's trying to write something more sustained than a short story or poem--which feels almost like taking dictation; I don't have to actually think but just let the words channel through me--or whether I just have days when I loathe the way I write, but I realize that the challenge will be for me to keep going, keep writing, even when I am absolutely certain it is bilge.

And the story has taken me in a direction I didn't expect--and one that may prove problematic in terms of the overall arc. I'll just plow forward, in the confident expectation that--if I ever finish this damned thing--finishing it will be just the first step. Then will come the joy of endless revisions. Ah well.

One little weirdness today: I was thinking about the Young Zen Master from last spring's SF class. He asked me for a letter of recommendation, and I've not done it yet, as I don't know whether he's actually submitted his application yet (and sending a letter that's not associated with an application seems a recipe for a lost document to me). But I was curious to see what he's up to this semester, so I took a look at his degree evaluation--and to my shock and horror, I see that his grade for the SF class is listed as an F, which is clearly an error. I think I gave him an A, or intended to. (And I can't believe he never brought it to my attention.) I have sent myself a reminder, but when I'm back on campus on Thursday, I definitely need to go to the office and look through my records--and fix the error ASAP. I know the kid isn't very worried about graduation requirements; he's mostly just getting educated for the sake of getting educated (and how cool is that?), but he still deserves the grade for his GPA.

As for the student I just saw, he's applying for scholarships--and the applications are due Wednesday. He wanted advice about what to say, so we discussed that, but he also wanted to know what the MLA format for scholarship essays is, and there isn't one. So I just looked it up on Google, which I believe he had also done, so I simply assured him that what he had found out was right: pretty simple. This young man is in the Honors Program--but even so, he doesn't get that writing takes time. Fortunately, I don't have to struggle with classrooms full of students who resolutely refuse to believe that truth, but still, it drives me ever so slightly bats. Writing takes time. (See "finish the damned thing in the certainty of endless revision to come" thing, above.)

And with that, my friends and faithful followers (all two of you), it is officially 5:00 p.m., and I am off the clock. I now am heading home. Don't know if I'll post to the blog tomorrow, since the only tutoring I might maybe do would be for my friend's daughter, but I'll be back here nattering on Thursday, good lord willing and all that.