Ah, the drop in...

The day started with Annabelle, but today's frustration with her was different: she had latched on to a very superficial--and actually somewhat incorrect--understanding of one of the key readings for her "argument" essay; that "understanding" in turn led her to a very shallow (and consequently disorganized) wandering through what was at best a minor side point in one of the readings. I confess I hadn't read the article to which she was responding--though the author based his argument on Le Guin's parable "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," which of course I know extremely well--but today I realized I needed to skim through it at least, and ... oops. But prying her loose from that understanding, even though it was as shaky as it was, turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Of course, the harder part is that she now essentially has to reconsider her entire "argument," such as it was. I have to say, too, that I find the assignment extremely challenging: I'm not sure I'd know how to make an "argument" from the two readings, what there is to actually argue, unless one gets into some pretty profound philosophical territory, which I think is beyond 99.9% of our students (though from that remaining .1%, the results would be wonderful).

This is not the first time that I've encountered an assignment created by one of my colleagues that has brought me up a bit short, as I thought, "Shit: I'd have a hard time with this one; how am I supposed to help a student understand it?"

Well, whatever. I did what I could for Annabelle. Of course, at the end of the session, once again she was complaining about how "everything is piling up" and "there's so much work." Yep. Welcome to college.

One of my appointments canceled, so I only had one other student scheduled, and I was a bit at a loss again in how to help him. I don't know what the professor actually provided, but the student said that he had no prompt or instructions for the assignment, no guidance about the kind of research ... I'm not even entirely sure how he knew what the ostensible topic was for his essay. He had, at this point, zero--but being a relatively intelligent young man, he at least was in to get help more than two weeks before the assignment is due, so he has time to work on it. I suggested he do a little research to see what's out there--and I gave him the quickie tutorial on how to use the databases--but that he mostly just write out his ideas about the story and the character in question, no judgments about the value of ideas, no organization, just pour stuff out onto the page, and then figure out how to start his essay, where to use his research and so on.

He didn't want to spend long--I think I was with him for about 15 minutes, tops--so I thought I'd have the remainder of my time here to just noodle, but no: a drop in. And of course, that turned out to be the most challenging appointment of the day. He wanted help with an extra credit assignment for a history class, reporting on a museum visit, and he wanted me to provide him with specific rules about how to handle illustrations (I drew more on my Met experience than any MLA rules and regs for that) and where he should put the document proving that he actually had been to the museum, a situation for which there obviously are zero rules. I had to struggle with him even over how MLA documentation works, the fact that in-text citations need to match the first words of the corresponding entry on a works cited or bibliography page. At first, I didn't bother to tell him that he had centered the entries on his works cited; he was exercised enough about the need to provide information keying the photographs he'd taken to the text and to the "captions" he'd created. In his hyper state, he could only manage making one kind of change at a time.

He really wanted to sit with me at my computer to make the changes with me, but I said no to that idea. But he wanted to make the changes right that minute, and he asked me to look at it all again when he had the changes made. OK, no one else was claiming my time, so I was willing to do that--and then he proceeded to periodically pop out of the lab next door to ask me questions about formatting, organization, and so on. I helped him fix some of those things--but then he wanted me to look at his final essay "really quickly." I asked him exactly what he wanted me to look at, and first he said format--it took a while for me to make clear that just because the professor didn't want sources, only the student's "critical thinking," that didn't mean it wasn't MLA format. Then he said no, really what he wanted was help "crunching down" his ideas--and I had to explain that that would not be "quick": if he wants help with that, he needs to set up a full-length appointment with someone. He was disappointed that in the final 15 minutes of my day here I couldn't take care of that with him, but, uh, no. It will be interesting to see if he comes back.

Still, even that annoyance was pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. In fact, even the Hostile Wall--whom I have not seen in ages, I'm happy to say--is a pretty minor annoyance for me, in the grand scheme of things. (For poor Kristin, the Hostile Wall is a significant annoyance--to put it mildly--but I can empathize and then head off whistling, care free.) This really is for the most part a delightfully stress-free gig.

At the moment, my Thursday docket is pretty full: across the board, there are fewer blank spaces, a state that is somewhat overdue, in my estimation--but I think students are having the realization that 1. they might need to do something specific to improve their grades and 2. there isn't much time left in which to do that something. They still aren't thinking very far ahead--a day or two at most--but still: we're going to be more crunched than we've been yet in the next few weeks, even with cancellations and no-shows. That's fine by me.