First six-appointment day

Even though there was a cancellation and a  no-show, drop-ins filled in the blanks, so I ended up actually seeing six students today. It still wasn't quite as breathless a day as it might have been, as two of the appointments were significantly under the 45 minutes allotted to them. And none of the appointments was difficult, either in terms of the level of help needed or the student's attitude.

Reading the reports prior to each meeting, I saw that one student had been flagged as a bit of a problem, being a student who has a very hard time grasping what's required, but she was in such an early stage of her assignment--and the assignment was so open-ended--I didn't have a problem with her. I am again surprised by a colleague's assignment: research anything you want, find one source, write a summary that includes two quotations...? I see this as staging toward a more structured assignment, but "anything you want" is so huge, and our students so unaware of what their interests actually are, what may seem like a wonderful invitation to explore instead equates to paralysis. That was the case with this student. I asked her what she was interested in, and at first she said, "Nothing." "Ah, c'mon. You're interested in something. Everyone is." A little poking and prodding turned up the fact that she is interested in becoming an occupational therapist--though she has zero clue what that entails--and she always liked history. So that session ended up being a tutorial on how to use research to generate a topic, and then how to use research to find out more about a topic once something has caught one's attention.

The only repeat student I had today was the Grammatician (and I had to scroll back through old posts to find the moniker I'd attached to him). His English is progressing rapidly, so we're getting to the point where I can begin to talk more about ideas with him, rather than focusing entirely on ESL concerns. One of the things I love about him is that he's willing to challenge himself: he wanted to try out a new transition word and selected "likewise"--which he used perfectly. He also tried out a phrase he wasn't sure would work: "lack of sleep." Perfect. He's really a pleasure to work with. Smart, focused, excellent work ethic.

I had another of those students from the "How to Be a College Student" class, who just needed me to review his essay and sign off on the fact that he'd attended--but he was actually happy to get some corrections to his work this time (mostly ESL stuff). The writing was very simplistic, but given his placement levels, he was well within the expected parameters.

One student--from an honors class--only needed about five minutes of my time, to understand how to cite a play, specifically one without line numbers. Slightly embarrassing confession: I had to look it up. But I could talk to her about how to quote dialog, which made me feel slightly less inept.

Another very bright student showed up with an essay that is an extra credit assignment for an Interpersonal Communications class. She has great ideas, but they didn't all make it on to the page, so there were places where connections were unclear. Once I asked her to riff on the point a little, though, she clearly knew what the connections were, so, well, there you go: put them in your essay. I talked to her about process, using my fish tank analogy--and possibly for the first time in my career, the analogy made sense to someone. (For those who may not have heard it before, the analogy goes like this: Your mind is like a huge tank filled with tropical fish swimming around. But they keep moving, so you can't keep track of them or get them organized. You need to reach in, grab any fish at all, and slap it down on the page. It will flop around for a while, but eventually it will hold still. And you do that until all the fish are out of the tank and on the page. Then you can step back and take a look at them all, because they'll hold still: you can decide which ones you don't need, which ones belong together, where maybe you need to go out and find a few more fish to fill in a blank. But until you get them onto paper where you can look at them without them moving around, you can't make those determinations.)

The only student I have yet to talk about was a drop in (he took the place of someone who should be banned from the Center for having been a no-show twice in one semester--in fact, counting today, three times in one semester). He was working on revising an essay about Susan Glaspell's Trifles. Good ideas, needed some development and clarification--but I mostly talked about his essay in the abstract, as he hadn't had a chance to actually do any of the revising yet. I hope he comes back tomorrow, even though my appointment times won't work for him, so someone can go over what he comes up with as he revises.

And that's the story for today. At the moment, my docket is filled with returnees tomorrow: Annabelle, plus two more for whom I don't think I've provided monikers yet. We'll see how that goes. But I have to say, I'm kinda sick of working with Annabelle and wish she'd go find another tutor. But ah well. The weeks are rapidly ticking toward the end of semester, and then none of these students will be on my radar at all any more. Weird to contemplate (and yes, I just had a little rush of anxiety at the thought of severing that last tie to this work, at least here at NCC). But we're not there yet.