Never thought I'd say this...

...but thank God for a drop-in. Today almost turned into my first six-appointment day, and one of those was a drop-in--for which I was grateful, as otherwise I'd have been stuck with the Hostile Wall for even longer than I was. I confess that I had the schedule wrong in my head and thought she was early when she was not. I moved her appointment so she could have the entire 45 minutes she was owed, which I could do because I did not have someone immediately after her. But while I was working with her, a student showed up wanting to see me, so when she asked if I could keep working with her, it was with great relief that I could say "no, I have someone waiting."

As was the case last time I saw her, working with her was frustrating but not as horrific as the first time I tried. It was helpful that we were working only on mechanics, not the substance of her writing; Kristin had said she could get help with mechanics for her online midterm (and kindly granted her a day's extension to allow the session in the Center). But even that was a pretty maddening experience. She resists every single correction, at one point insisting that the word "selection" was the right word when I knew she meant "section"--because "selection" was what she had written in her notes. I gently suggested that perhaps what was in her notes was less authoritative than my understanding of the English language, which didn't go down very well. At the end of the session, she expressed anger and frustration: these sessions are not helpful because 45 minutes is not enough to fix her grammar issues. I agree: it isn't. But she needs to learn incrementally, and she's not willing to do that.

What bothers me most is that ... Oh, God, I think she likes me and will continue to ask for appointments with me, and I can't ask to have her assigned to someone else. If I'm available, I have to work with her. I try to remind myself that frustration is good for the soul, but she is trying in the worst sense of the word.

I started the day with two other returnees. One of my faithful readers has expressed specific enjoyment in my invention of monikers for students, so I'm going to try to come up with--and remember--names for the regulars. The first student I saw today I'll call Salad Maker. She has great ideas but clearly has a verbal processing problem, as what she writes truly is word salad. Even "quoting," she was inventing words/grammatical structures instead of carefully following the language of the original. I have to be careful with her; she's defensive, as most students are, but I can see genuine fear of failure and frustration with her disabilities under the defensiveness, so I need to be sure to point out what she does well.

Interestingly, I have one of the same struggles with her that I have with the Hostile Wall: trying to get them to understand that what I want them to adjust isn't the idea but the language in which it is expressed. I completely get the student's point, but the words being used do not convey it accurately and/or correctly. Actually, come to think of it, that's a common problem across the board: getting students to understand that the issue isn't the idea but the way it is written.

The other regular I think I'll call the Grammatician. He is an ESL student, and he also needs help with idea development and focus, but he's making rapid strides in both areas. Today, I made very few grammar corrections, and he had already thought through some of the focus concerns and come up with potential solutions. Nice. His writing is a bit basic, but that's appropriate, as he's in 001. But every session, he asks me at least one question that delves more deeply into grammatical structures. Last week it was when to use "that"--a question I was not entirely able to answer--and this week, it was about when to use "all" versus "whole," as in "all day" versus "the whole day." That was a bit challenging, but I think I came up with a reasonable answer. I'm less successful answering his questions about prepositions. Like many ESL students, he is frustrated by his difficulty with them, but I keep assuring him that they're almost impossible to master--and the "rules" are usually just what we intuitively know. We tried to come up with something in Spanish that would be analogous, and the best we could do were exceptions to the rule for determining the gender of the article ("el/la" or "los/las"). For example, it's "el mapa" when the "rule" says it should be "la mapa." Why is it masculine? I asked him and he said, "My answer is, I didn't create the Spanish language." Right you are.

The drop-in was also a returning student, actually. I can't quite come up with a moniker for him yet; this was only the second time I've worked with him. He's one of those students who has not yet begun to plumb his own depths; they're there, but he needs a lot of help getting to them. Lots of me asking questions, trying to lead him into more fully developed ideas--and he can get there, but it takes some effort on my part. His writing is pretty good; it's really the ideas he needs help with. But I rather like that; it's a nice change from correcting comma splices.

Right at the moment, it seems my last appointment may be a no-show, which would be lovely. If that's the case, I'll finish the day with a student who has very basic writing problems of both the ESL and the 001 variety--and yet she is in 101, once again giving rise to the "how did you pass to this level?" question. I looked at previous tutors' notes from their sessions with her, and I see that the things I was dealing with have been problems for her all along. Ah well.

But for now, since it seems my final student is truly not going to show up (hooray!), I will finally eat my lunch (at almost dinner time) and check email, which normally I'd have done about 40 times by now but which I haven't been able to do at all. And soon, today's stint will be complete. I'm guessing I'll have a full docket tomorrow. I already have three appointments, and there's a good chance that fourth slot will be filled either with another appointment or with a drop-in. As we approach end of semester, things heat up here in the Center. I think my days of having oodles of time to noodle may be gone. C'est la guerre.