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.