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...