First, let me welcome you, whoever you are, to the new incarnation of the blog--sorta. I'm still playing around with ideas here, and still trying to figure out this whole "retirement" gig, but I realized I actually do want to natter periodically about what happens with my writing. So, here's the first official "this is a blog about writing" post.
You may know that a while back I published a little personal essay to the online magazine The Medium. Calling it a "magazine" is probably inaccurate, though I'm not sure what else one would call it. It is an enormous, sprawling enterprise of writings on about a gazillion topics, by authors of all stripes, professional and not. Anyone can publish to it; getting an audience (beyond one's friends and family, of course) is a bit more problematic. So far, my readership is apparently almost exclusively friends, family, and colleagues--which is fine, as I'm not looking for fame, fortune, or anything else from this particular publishing venue.
But I do have a few followers, it seems, and my experience with the blog clearly demonstrates that the way to keep followers is to feed them regularly. So I'm using The Medium to publish stuff I probably wouldn't try to get published in any other venue.
I am also a subscriber, and I get a daily digest, suggesting articles I might find interesting. (I could just get a weekly digest, and used to, but I actually don't mind getting the digest every day, though I'm not entirely sure how the switch from weekly to daily happened.) Most days I don't see anything to read--or only one piece--but other days there are a slew of things I find interesting. And it's potentially one of those rabbit holes down which one can dive on the net and find one is surfacing hours later, wondering why one feels physically stiff and mentally silted up.
There are also specific areas that provide their own more tailored digests (though one selects areas of interest, and those are the focus of the selections on any digest). I get a few of those, too, including one called "Human Parts." And several days ago, "Human Parts" offered a "weekend writing prompt": "Give us a snapshot, a moment, an experience from a life you could’ve had. What are you up to out there in the multiverse? What would Multiverse You think of the life you have right now?"
So I figured, why not? I'd already been looking at some of my old essays, thinking about polishing them up to fling onto The Medium, but this gave me an opportunity to try something new. And I actually have thought about one particular alternative universe, one of many possible other lives I could have had, a life that would have given me some of the things that I deeply regret not having had in this life. So I gave it a whirl.
The first attempt was frankly god-awful. Dull, flat, treacle-covered tripe. But I realized it was also about three times longer than the word limit--a skimpy 200-500 words--so rather than trying to hack it down, I decided to start all over. The end result is ... OK. It's not one I'm deeply proud of, but it works well enough that I went ahead and published it today. Here's the link, if you're curious: https://medium.com/@tonialpayne/a-different-yes-1fb89fa0415f?fbclid=IwAR3F9VZzHgrw48K4BR2cB1gQd6lt62xMVsCZgauLZJXFB_IW5WVn2y2esr0
But here's what I noticed in the process.
1. I wrote much better when I had to write much less. I begin to wonder if this is the problem with the more extensive novel idea I've been chipping away at. Even though I write it one chapter at a time, the chapters are not self-sufficient: I know there will be more story in which to continue whatever thread I start there. In fact, with the novel, I'm realizing that I probably need to write even more than I am, fill in even more details. But with the novel, I keep hitting patches when my own writing nauseates me (treacle-covered tripe soaked in bilge). I don't often have that experience with short stories--and when I do, I can just toss it and do something else. With a chapter in the novel, I may be able to scrap any particular chapter, but the overall story still needs to be told, if I'm going to tell it at all.
2. I'm never finished when I first think I'm finished. Even after going through the little 500 word essay multiple times, every time I went back to it, I found another way to tweak it, teeny adjustments of a word there, a phrase over in this place. If there hadn't been a deadline, I'd have kept tinkering. I can get to the point with any of my writing--academic or creative--when I think, "That's good enough; send it off." But if it were to come back to me, I'd find more to fiddle around with. I've said it to my students, and of course they never believe me: the only thing that should keep a person from continuing to revise is that there's a deadline. It can be a self-imposed deadline, but one can always, always, make one's writing better.
3. When writing personal narratives, there's a very fine line to walk between revealing enough and revealing too much. Where that line exists varies from writer to writer, I know, so there are no rules for it, other than the cliched "gut check": I just have to feel certain that I don't mind if all the world and her sister know what I just revealed. (I know people for whom that would instantly make it impossible to publish personal narratives--at least without presenting them as fiction: their sense of privacy covers more territory and has less permeable barriers than mine.) But I also know, from reading and from my little dabblings in psychology, that what is most personal is most universal. However, that's not to say that we can expect other people to be as fascinated with our belly-button lint as we are: it's not the superficial parts of the experience that speak to others. If I tell just the events in my story of love lost, found, lost again or whatever, well, OK, thank you, but no one is moved much. However, if I tell what I felt, as deeply and with as much truth and honesty as I can, that might speak to someone.
It's the delving into the soul that matters. I'm thinking of Jung's metaphor of how consciousness is the islands sticking up above the level of the sea, but how under the surface of the waves, we are all connected. So to write personal narrative that resonates, one has to go into those depths, where the light is filtered and strange, and even breathing becomes something one has to pay careful attention to.
I'm sure it is no coincidence that I am getting this sudden burst of desire to write just when I'm about to be interrupted by things that will keep me from writing. I will have out-of-town company from this evening until next Tuesday, then a week in which maybe I'll write but which probably will mostly be spent grabbing some social time with friends before I head off to Portugal for two weeks, during which time any writing I do will be just recording my impressions in a special little journal I've only used for Portugal trips. So, unfortunately, this inaugural "This is now a blog about writing" post will also be the last for at least a week, possibly longer. But--nudge, nudge, wink, wink--if you become a follower, you can opt to have email announcements when I post something new....
It's summer--at least in this hemisphere. It's gorgeous--at least on the east coast of the U.S. Get out there and enjoy it.
Monday, May 27, 2019
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
So, about that Student Edition...
As I mentioned yesterday, I suddenly got the bug again to try to push to have my Student Edition of The Left Hand of Darkness published. The problems with that quest are labryinthine. Hold on to your piece of thread...
The thing really only works as a Student Edition of the novel, comprising the complete novel plus all the stuff I created. And way back when I was on sabbatical to work on the project, Le Guin's then agent contacted Penguin, which owns the paperback rights. I was frustrated in the extreme that she didn't fully convey my idea, so it got shot down: their response was they wouldn't sanction such an edition because it would jeopardize their sales--but the whole point was that I wanted them to publish it. I immediately contacted Le Guin and the agent, but got rather sniffy responses: it wasn't the agent's job to sell my project. Well, true, but god dammit, she got me walled out before I could even get going. I asked her whom I should contact at Penguin to try to get them to consider the project themselves, and she gave me the name of one of the high muckety-mucks--who, of course, never responded to my email, my follow-up letter, my follow-up follow-up post cards. I tried several other editors, also to no avail.
I've talked this over with a dear friend who knows more about the world of trade publishing than I, and her take is that no one responds not because the project strikes them as useless but because it does not fit into any already defined categories--and in the current high-stakes corporate world of publishing, editors are as risk averse as the people who green-light movies at Disney (who can only seem to approve live-action versions of animated movies that were hits decades ago, because, what if we generate new content and it isn't a hit??).
And there really isn't anything at all like what I'm proposing out there. Nothing. There are guides for teachers--some published by Random House, in fact (and Random House is the educational conjoined twin of Penguin). There are the Oxford critical editions, which include footnotes and other apparatus, but they're not as extensive (or as geared for undergrads) as what I'm proposing. There are the online cheater sites, which are very easy for students to find and use--and use to avoid having to actually read or think, and from which to plagiarize.
As a side note from that: I know it will be extremely important to emphasize the fact that the student edition can be "web enhanced"--because educational publishers now have gone wholesale into the "students know how to use digital sources and are comfortable with them and want them, so we must provide them," creating a Worm Oroborous of giving students what they want, not what they need, so they only know to want what they already know, and never find out what they really need, and around we go.
Returning to the part of the maze that is "finding an editor," there is the problem that neither Penguin nor Random House will accept any unsolicited submissions--which means one must have an agent--but generally speaking, agents don't deal with scholarly/educational materials. If I were trying to get a novel published, it would be almost impossible to find an agent--but something that agents don't even represent in the first place? Fuhgeddaboudit. That said, above-mentioned dear friend did find a lead to agents who might consider representing me/something like this. The text accompanying the link she sent reads, "Though most literary agents negotiate contracts with commercial publishing houses, some specialize in representing public intellectuals and negotiate with editors at university presses in addition to their counterparts in commercial presses."
Another branch of that part of the maze is this: say I decide to go ahead and send a letter of inquiry and my one-page proposal to editors at Penguin-RH in the spirit of "What the hell: you don't know if you don't ask." PRH does not publish a staff directory (perhaps understandably), so the only option is to try to find names of people through one of the many online networking sites. I did that, focusing only on people with a rank of full editor and higher--but I know that each one of them has a particular line or interest, and there is no information I can locate about who might be the most likely person to try.
OK, so the current thought is, why choose? I can send the same letter to everyone whose name I found--but then the question arises: since they're all in the same publishing house, should I let them know that I'm sending to a whole bunch of them at once? Multiple submissions are usually expected, so if I were sending the proposal to a bunch of different publishers, I wouldn't think twice, but this is a different scenario. Hmmm.
I've also rethought the tone of the letter of inquiry, for if/when I ever send it. I no longer have the "in" of "X agent from X agency suggested I contact you," so I need--heaven help me--a "hook," an "attention grabber." I mean, I completely understand the concept and how it works and have no problem with the need for it--if it weren't for the fact that I've just experienced decades of students starting their essays with the most random and generally idiotic stuff because they are looking for the magic bullets "hook" or "attention grabber."
Nevertheless, the letter in its current incarnation is a great deal more humorous, informal, and ... well, I guess in a way indirect, as I have to generate a little interest before I get to the project or the person reading will never get that far. Even if it's the first paragraph--"I have this specific thing I want you to consider"--the reaction is likely to be a swift and unconsidered "nope," unless I've managed to engage in a little, what, flirtation?
Oh, what a mess this is. But I felt impelled to try again to get some kind of traction on the materials for Left Hand largely because I think it would be wonderful fun to do the same work again on a different novel. In effect, I want Penguin to say yes not just to this one Student Edition but to an entire line of them, with me working as editor on the first few (specifically and other Le Guin they have in their backlist, but hey, I could do the work for just about anything, if need be)--and then the line expanding to other editors with expertise in whatever other books might be among the top sellers for students.
And I want to do that because I still am groping for a sense of something I can not just do but be in this whole new chapter of my life. Not Prof. P but Prof. P, editor of Student Editions for ....
Yes, I still want to tutor, and do the freelance editing. I am not looking at the Student Editions as a potential revenue stream, though of course if they bring in money, all the better. I'm looking at that kind of work to use a particular part of my brain--and it's a part that involves writing but isn't writing creative work (fiction, poetry). And speaking of that, I have again hit a moment in which I reread the fiction I'm trying to churn out and simply hate the way I write. It's not even about having written myself into a corner--though there's that problem, too. No: I mean the actual words on the page. I reread and think, "Judas Priest, what treacle! What sappy, sodden bilge!" Not conducive to wanting to continue the process, though at some point I'll grid my lions and try again.
Now, however, I am going to switch to being a student again: time to get ready to head into the City for a fiddle lesson. And I may blog about that process, too. Because, well, talking about myself: a very favorite pastime. About which, may I recommend this article: https://theascent.pub/research-confirms-that-no-one-is-really-thinking-about-you-f6e7b09c458?fbclid=IwAR10dc6Ibd_kMT3ZtpsYwUtL5vzQR8WmtaIBEOPTgXhWIb-1PA7DISYACTA
Off I go. More soon.
The thing really only works as a Student Edition of the novel, comprising the complete novel plus all the stuff I created. And way back when I was on sabbatical to work on the project, Le Guin's then agent contacted Penguin, which owns the paperback rights. I was frustrated in the extreme that she didn't fully convey my idea, so it got shot down: their response was they wouldn't sanction such an edition because it would jeopardize their sales--but the whole point was that I wanted them to publish it. I immediately contacted Le Guin and the agent, but got rather sniffy responses: it wasn't the agent's job to sell my project. Well, true, but god dammit, she got me walled out before I could even get going. I asked her whom I should contact at Penguin to try to get them to consider the project themselves, and she gave me the name of one of the high muckety-mucks--who, of course, never responded to my email, my follow-up letter, my follow-up follow-up post cards. I tried several other editors, also to no avail.
I've talked this over with a dear friend who knows more about the world of trade publishing than I, and her take is that no one responds not because the project strikes them as useless but because it does not fit into any already defined categories--and in the current high-stakes corporate world of publishing, editors are as risk averse as the people who green-light movies at Disney (who can only seem to approve live-action versions of animated movies that were hits decades ago, because, what if we generate new content and it isn't a hit??).
And there really isn't anything at all like what I'm proposing out there. Nothing. There are guides for teachers--some published by Random House, in fact (and Random House is the educational conjoined twin of Penguin). There are the Oxford critical editions, which include footnotes and other apparatus, but they're not as extensive (or as geared for undergrads) as what I'm proposing. There are the online cheater sites, which are very easy for students to find and use--and use to avoid having to actually read or think, and from which to plagiarize.
As a side note from that: I know it will be extremely important to emphasize the fact that the student edition can be "web enhanced"--because educational publishers now have gone wholesale into the "students know how to use digital sources and are comfortable with them and want them, so we must provide them," creating a Worm Oroborous of giving students what they want, not what they need, so they only know to want what they already know, and never find out what they really need, and around we go.
Returning to the part of the maze that is "finding an editor," there is the problem that neither Penguin nor Random House will accept any unsolicited submissions--which means one must have an agent--but generally speaking, agents don't deal with scholarly/educational materials. If I were trying to get a novel published, it would be almost impossible to find an agent--but something that agents don't even represent in the first place? Fuhgeddaboudit. That said, above-mentioned dear friend did find a lead to agents who might consider representing me/something like this. The text accompanying the link she sent reads, "Though most literary agents negotiate contracts with commercial publishing houses, some specialize in representing public intellectuals and negotiate with editors at university presses in addition to their counterparts in commercial presses."
Another branch of that part of the maze is this: say I decide to go ahead and send a letter of inquiry and my one-page proposal to editors at Penguin-RH in the spirit of "What the hell: you don't know if you don't ask." PRH does not publish a staff directory (perhaps understandably), so the only option is to try to find names of people through one of the many online networking sites. I did that, focusing only on people with a rank of full editor and higher--but I know that each one of them has a particular line or interest, and there is no information I can locate about who might be the most likely person to try.
OK, so the current thought is, why choose? I can send the same letter to everyone whose name I found--but then the question arises: since they're all in the same publishing house, should I let them know that I'm sending to a whole bunch of them at once? Multiple submissions are usually expected, so if I were sending the proposal to a bunch of different publishers, I wouldn't think twice, but this is a different scenario. Hmmm.
I've also rethought the tone of the letter of inquiry, for if/when I ever send it. I no longer have the "in" of "X agent from X agency suggested I contact you," so I need--heaven help me--a "hook," an "attention grabber." I mean, I completely understand the concept and how it works and have no problem with the need for it--if it weren't for the fact that I've just experienced decades of students starting their essays with the most random and generally idiotic stuff because they are looking for the magic bullets "hook" or "attention grabber."
Nevertheless, the letter in its current incarnation is a great deal more humorous, informal, and ... well, I guess in a way indirect, as I have to generate a little interest before I get to the project or the person reading will never get that far. Even if it's the first paragraph--"I have this specific thing I want you to consider"--the reaction is likely to be a swift and unconsidered "nope," unless I've managed to engage in a little, what, flirtation?
Oh, what a mess this is. But I felt impelled to try again to get some kind of traction on the materials for Left Hand largely because I think it would be wonderful fun to do the same work again on a different novel. In effect, I want Penguin to say yes not just to this one Student Edition but to an entire line of them, with me working as editor on the first few (specifically and other Le Guin they have in their backlist, but hey, I could do the work for just about anything, if need be)--and then the line expanding to other editors with expertise in whatever other books might be among the top sellers for students.
And I want to do that because I still am groping for a sense of something I can not just do but be in this whole new chapter of my life. Not Prof. P but Prof. P, editor of Student Editions for ....
Yes, I still want to tutor, and do the freelance editing. I am not looking at the Student Editions as a potential revenue stream, though of course if they bring in money, all the better. I'm looking at that kind of work to use a particular part of my brain--and it's a part that involves writing but isn't writing creative work (fiction, poetry). And speaking of that, I have again hit a moment in which I reread the fiction I'm trying to churn out and simply hate the way I write. It's not even about having written myself into a corner--though there's that problem, too. No: I mean the actual words on the page. I reread and think, "Judas Priest, what treacle! What sappy, sodden bilge!" Not conducive to wanting to continue the process, though at some point I'll grid my lions and try again.
Now, however, I am going to switch to being a student again: time to get ready to head into the City for a fiddle lesson. And I may blog about that process, too. Because, well, talking about myself: a very favorite pastime. About which, may I recommend this article: https://theascent.pub/research-confirms-that-no-one-is-really-thinking-about-you-f6e7b09c458?fbclid=IwAR10dc6Ibd_kMT3ZtpsYwUtL5vzQR8WmtaIBEOPTgXhWIb-1PA7DISYACTA
Off I go. More soon.
Monday, May 20, 2019
Last day--and first full six-student day
My docket was utterly full today. Two of the appointments finished up early enough that I could quickly exchange some personal emails about a somewhat urgent matter, but otherwise, I was just burning all day. Student after student after student who has a paper due today (sometimes within an hour of our appointment time) and who is coming in now, for the first time, for help. In one case, I've actually seen the student at least once before about this particular paper--but his was the least complete/developed of the bunch (and he still didn't have a thesis that would answer the specific topic the professor required).
I might be feeling more separation anxiety about all this, but I was just so frantic, I can't. Also, typical of me, I already went through the separation blues early, on Friday. (I had my "I'm turning 40" trauma when I was 35, too: apparently, I prefer to suffer in advance.) But I may yet get all weepy about this. We'll see.
I've been thinking about what I might do with this blog, too, and right now, it may flip over to being a blog about my attempts to get my Le Guin project published. I've let it languish for a very long time, and now I'm ready to start pushing again. I'm not quite sure how, but ... somehow.
A moment ago, we were all startled by the very loud ringing of a chime, followed by an announcement that the Library is closing at 5:30 today. (It's now 5:08.) I immediately thought, "All those students who are downstairs frantically trying to pull their final essays out of their left ear (or somewhere less savory) are going to utterly freak out."
And that isn't my problem. None of this is my problem. I am taking a deep breath, packing up my bag, and heading out the door. I may however, post tomorrow, about the Le Guin project thing, and whatever else occurs to me as interesting to note.
Very strange, this departure. Very, very strange.
I might be feeling more separation anxiety about all this, but I was just so frantic, I can't. Also, typical of me, I already went through the separation blues early, on Friday. (I had my "I'm turning 40" trauma when I was 35, too: apparently, I prefer to suffer in advance.) But I may yet get all weepy about this. We'll see.
I've been thinking about what I might do with this blog, too, and right now, it may flip over to being a blog about my attempts to get my Le Guin project published. I've let it languish for a very long time, and now I'm ready to start pushing again. I'm not quite sure how, but ... somehow.
A moment ago, we were all startled by the very loud ringing of a chime, followed by an announcement that the Library is closing at 5:30 today. (It's now 5:08.) I immediately thought, "All those students who are downstairs frantically trying to pull their final essays out of their left ear (or somewhere less savory) are going to utterly freak out."
And that isn't my problem. None of this is my problem. I am taking a deep breath, packing up my bag, and heading out the door. I may however, post tomorrow, about the Le Guin project thing, and whatever else occurs to me as interesting to note.
Very strange, this departure. Very, very strange.
Thursday, May 16, 2019
Almost the last...
I'm gradually saying goodbye to colleagues here in the Center. I can't say that I've gotten terribly close to the other tutors here, so the goodbyes haven't been emotionally taxing--and in one case, at least, a bit of a relief. I don't know why I found this particular colleague ever so slightly irritating, but I did, so it is rather nice to know I won't have to make nice any more.
And as for summer, I put in for the hours but didn't get any. There is, I suppose, a chance that someone who has currently been scheduled will change her mind (I think all the tutors for the summer are women), but I have to say, I was somewhat relieved when I got the news that the schedule was already full. More options for beach days!
Today, I only saw one student--well, to work with, at any rate. Silent Betty had an appointment, but she came in to ask if she could move it, as she had an exam the next period; I guess she wanted the time to study. We moved it--but then apparently she came in just before that later appointment and canceled. Originally I was also supposed to see Earning Honors today, but he also canceled.
I'm sure I've given a moniker to the student I did see, but I don't see her regularly enough to remember what I called her--but Word Salad would be appropriate. We managed to get part-way through her essay, and at a rough estimate, I'd say one in five sentences actually made enough sense that I could fix it with only minor adjustments. The rest were truly incomprehensible. I'd have to try to pick up on individual words that might contain the kernel of an idea and try to work from there. And it wasn't until the last few minutes of our appointment that I realized she was plagiarizing left, right, and center: not only presenting ideas without citations but also mixing in far too much language of the original source--and creating more word salad in the process. I persuaded her that she really has to come back in tomorrow for more help; her essay is due on Monday, so she actually can squeeze in another tutoring session--and if she doesn't, the paper won't pass. She very proudly showed me the two essays that I laboriously went over with her; one got a B-, the other a B. In retrospect, I wonder just how much of those grades rightfully belongs to me--though as I've said, she has great ideas. How she managed to get to Comp 1 is a mystery, though--unless she's relied incredibly heavily on help from the Center along the way.
I also found out today that part of the problem is that she works a graveyard shift, so she is chronically going without sleep. That's clearly adding to her already profound problems with language processing. I'm not sure if she is dyslexic, but that would be my hunch--and profoundly so. I don't know if she's getting any particular help from the Center for Students with Disabilities, but I'm guessing not. And that department is woefully understaffed for the number of students we have who present with disabilities of some sort or another.
Mercy me.
In any event, I didn't have an appointment after Word Salad--but I chased her out at the end of the 45 minutes anyway, because I was wearing out. What she really needs is to see a language tutor every day, someone who knows how to work specifically with whatever her particular processing problem is.
Nevertheless, she is no longer mine to worry about. I sincerely wish her well, but I don't think I'll spend the weekend--or even tonight--feeling concerned about helping her further. I hope she gets the help. I won't be the person to provide it.
At the moment, I have one appointment scheduled for Monday--and it's rather interesting to read the client report forms, as they have rather diametrically opposing views of the student's capabilities. If he indeed keeps the appointment, I'll be most interested to see what he brings to our session. But ... a session on the last day of class? If what he has isn't in damned good shape, he hasn't left himself much time to make changes.
But again, not my problem.
Thinking about the fact that in all likelihood, Monday will be my last day as an employee of this college, I realize yet again that I still haven't felt the full separation--and probably won't even then. As I've said before, I suspect it will be September before it fully soaks in that I'm officially severed from this institution ("severed": what a ferocious term for it!). How very, very, very odd. I just can't quite wrap my emotions around it. My brain gets it, but ... I still feel very attached to this place. Relieved as hell to no longer be suffering the tortures of the classroom, but still: I've been here 18 years, counting this semester. That's almost twice as long as I've ever worked anywhere else. Strange, strange.
But now, it's just the usual Thursday; I'm finished here for the week and will now head off to embark on my weekend. I'll be most interested to find out how Monday feels when it arrives.
And as for summer, I put in for the hours but didn't get any. There is, I suppose, a chance that someone who has currently been scheduled will change her mind (I think all the tutors for the summer are women), but I have to say, I was somewhat relieved when I got the news that the schedule was already full. More options for beach days!
Today, I only saw one student--well, to work with, at any rate. Silent Betty had an appointment, but she came in to ask if she could move it, as she had an exam the next period; I guess she wanted the time to study. We moved it--but then apparently she came in just before that later appointment and canceled. Originally I was also supposed to see Earning Honors today, but he also canceled.
I'm sure I've given a moniker to the student I did see, but I don't see her regularly enough to remember what I called her--but Word Salad would be appropriate. We managed to get part-way through her essay, and at a rough estimate, I'd say one in five sentences actually made enough sense that I could fix it with only minor adjustments. The rest were truly incomprehensible. I'd have to try to pick up on individual words that might contain the kernel of an idea and try to work from there. And it wasn't until the last few minutes of our appointment that I realized she was plagiarizing left, right, and center: not only presenting ideas without citations but also mixing in far too much language of the original source--and creating more word salad in the process. I persuaded her that she really has to come back in tomorrow for more help; her essay is due on Monday, so she actually can squeeze in another tutoring session--and if she doesn't, the paper won't pass. She very proudly showed me the two essays that I laboriously went over with her; one got a B-, the other a B. In retrospect, I wonder just how much of those grades rightfully belongs to me--though as I've said, she has great ideas. How she managed to get to Comp 1 is a mystery, though--unless she's relied incredibly heavily on help from the Center along the way.
I also found out today that part of the problem is that she works a graveyard shift, so she is chronically going without sleep. That's clearly adding to her already profound problems with language processing. I'm not sure if she is dyslexic, but that would be my hunch--and profoundly so. I don't know if she's getting any particular help from the Center for Students with Disabilities, but I'm guessing not. And that department is woefully understaffed for the number of students we have who present with disabilities of some sort or another.
Mercy me.
In any event, I didn't have an appointment after Word Salad--but I chased her out at the end of the 45 minutes anyway, because I was wearing out. What she really needs is to see a language tutor every day, someone who knows how to work specifically with whatever her particular processing problem is.
Nevertheless, she is no longer mine to worry about. I sincerely wish her well, but I don't think I'll spend the weekend--or even tonight--feeling concerned about helping her further. I hope she gets the help. I won't be the person to provide it.
At the moment, I have one appointment scheduled for Monday--and it's rather interesting to read the client report forms, as they have rather diametrically opposing views of the student's capabilities. If he indeed keeps the appointment, I'll be most interested to see what he brings to our session. But ... a session on the last day of class? If what he has isn't in damned good shape, he hasn't left himself much time to make changes.
But again, not my problem.
Thinking about the fact that in all likelihood, Monday will be my last day as an employee of this college, I realize yet again that I still haven't felt the full separation--and probably won't even then. As I've said before, I suspect it will be September before it fully soaks in that I'm officially severed from this institution ("severed": what a ferocious term for it!). How very, very, very odd. I just can't quite wrap my emotions around it. My brain gets it, but ... I still feel very attached to this place. Relieved as hell to no longer be suffering the tortures of the classroom, but still: I've been here 18 years, counting this semester. That's almost twice as long as I've ever worked anywhere else. Strange, strange.
But now, it's just the usual Thursday; I'm finished here for the week and will now head off to embark on my weekend. I'll be most interested to find out how Monday feels when it arrives.
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Pretty easy--even with Annabelle
I was not looking forward to dealing with Annabelle again today, as we're getting down to the wire on her final research project, and indeed, I had a bit of a hard time, as usual, getting her to focus on one thing at a time--and on what's most important. Right now, the main thing is that she is just responding personally to her sources--"I found this interesting"--but has no argument with which to frame her use of the information she found. She was unaware that she didn't have a thesis, even though we've talked about it before, and even though we had hammered out what her thesis could be. She was mostly worried about whether she was using enough sources--and I have to say, pedagogically I have a problem with an assignment that requires a student at that level to use ten sources, as the problem is likely to be exactly what Annabelle is experiencing: overwhelmed with information, no clear sense of what to do with it other than regurgitate it. But ah well. Fortunately, Annabelle will be in tomorrow to work with another tutor--someone new to her this time, and someone with more infinite patience and gentleness than I can summon, though I've managed to summon more than I would have been able to even last semester, never mind in semesters before that.
I then met with a student who admitted up front that he has a contentious relationship with the professor of his class--and knowing who his professor is, I'm not surprised (P&B knowledge)--so he wanted me to read and evaluate his essay. It was generally good, but his argument needed to be brought to the surface and clarified, along with transitions. He also had some real train-wrecks of sentences, which were odd to encounter in what was otherwise very clear and controlled use of language. I read it over, made suggestions--and then he asked me what grade I'd give it. I said, "I refuse to answer that question." I told him that without the changes, any grade I'd give the essay would be significantly lower than the grade it would earn if he makes the changes--and that if he makes the changes, it would be a very strong paper. But I talked to him about what a student can do about the fact that grading writing is subjective. If the professor is willing to work with the student, then the student's job is to find out what criteria are important to that particular professor and comply with them to the best of his or her ability. In cases--such as this one--in which the professor is not willing to engage in that process, the option is "grit your teeth, do your best, take your grade, move on." And I reminded him he actually has learned something, even in this unpleasant circumstance: how to deal with this particular kind of difficulty in a professor, and a little more about writing, as well as about the topic of his essay.
The final student was a drop-in, an Honors student, who simply wanted help with an APA references page. He had the citations correctly on separate pieces of paper, but he hadn't saved them in any way that would allow him to copy and paste what he already had into his essay document--but he didn't want to re-do his research. I told him those were his only options: duplicate the research (and take advantage of the citation tools in the databases, which would give him the ability to cut and paste) or type things in. He managed to find four of his five sources and use the citation tools, but--as sometimes mysteriously happens--the fifth source would not reveal itself. But by that time, he was ready to type in that one last source. Along the way, he got more comfortable with how to do the formatting (and I learned a little more about using Google Docs, which sort of works but not as well or easily as Word). He was skipping the class for which he had written the essay in order to do the work--but as an Honors student, he probably had an absence to burn, and as long as he could submit the essay on time was no doubt making relatively intelligent use of his time (though coming in earlier would have been smarter).
And I had no fourth appointment today, so I've been noodling around with email and whatever else: nothing of significance. In a few minutes, when my stint is officially complete, I will head home. Paul and I were going to meet for dinner tonight, but we've managed to shift that to next week: a much better option for him, as he will be out from under the weight of final grading. Originally it seemed I wouldn't have any good opportunities next week, at least not before he has to head back up to Massachusetts, but at least one if not two of my appointments shifted to an earlier slot, thereby opening things up to a reasonable "dinner a deux" option.
So, home early today, and back here on Thursday for my second-to-last day, at least this semester. I was wrong in my post yesterday: Monday, which is the last day the Center is open this semester is also the last day of the semester. I kept getting confused about that--but, duh, even that's awfully late, as graduation is next Wednesday. The timing is pretty nuts: one day to turn grades around before commencement? But if any student fails a class required for his or her degree, I guess the Registrar's office simply will say, "Sorry: we know you went through the ceremony and everything, but in fact you don't have your degree yet; you still need to fulfill X requirement." I don't imagine there will be a lot of those cases, but seems like creating potential SNAFUs that could pretty easily be avoided. My hunch is that the ceremony was scheduled when it was around the availability of the Nassau Coliseum, not for any logical academic reason--and that's the way things go around here: technical expediencies trump intellectual logic. I could go on about that at length ... but why? I do my stint Monday, and Wednesday, I will be laughing at Eddie Izzard in the company of a very good friend while the ceremony goes on and on.
And none of that is now. Now, I go home. I'll post again--good lord willin' and all that--on Thursday.
I then met with a student who admitted up front that he has a contentious relationship with the professor of his class--and knowing who his professor is, I'm not surprised (P&B knowledge)--so he wanted me to read and evaluate his essay. It was generally good, but his argument needed to be brought to the surface and clarified, along with transitions. He also had some real train-wrecks of sentences, which were odd to encounter in what was otherwise very clear and controlled use of language. I read it over, made suggestions--and then he asked me what grade I'd give it. I said, "I refuse to answer that question." I told him that without the changes, any grade I'd give the essay would be significantly lower than the grade it would earn if he makes the changes--and that if he makes the changes, it would be a very strong paper. But I talked to him about what a student can do about the fact that grading writing is subjective. If the professor is willing to work with the student, then the student's job is to find out what criteria are important to that particular professor and comply with them to the best of his or her ability. In cases--such as this one--in which the professor is not willing to engage in that process, the option is "grit your teeth, do your best, take your grade, move on." And I reminded him he actually has learned something, even in this unpleasant circumstance: how to deal with this particular kind of difficulty in a professor, and a little more about writing, as well as about the topic of his essay.
The final student was a drop-in, an Honors student, who simply wanted help with an APA references page. He had the citations correctly on separate pieces of paper, but he hadn't saved them in any way that would allow him to copy and paste what he already had into his essay document--but he didn't want to re-do his research. I told him those were his only options: duplicate the research (and take advantage of the citation tools in the databases, which would give him the ability to cut and paste) or type things in. He managed to find four of his five sources and use the citation tools, but--as sometimes mysteriously happens--the fifth source would not reveal itself. But by that time, he was ready to type in that one last source. Along the way, he got more comfortable with how to do the formatting (and I learned a little more about using Google Docs, which sort of works but not as well or easily as Word). He was skipping the class for which he had written the essay in order to do the work--but as an Honors student, he probably had an absence to burn, and as long as he could submit the essay on time was no doubt making relatively intelligent use of his time (though coming in earlier would have been smarter).
And I had no fourth appointment today, so I've been noodling around with email and whatever else: nothing of significance. In a few minutes, when my stint is officially complete, I will head home. Paul and I were going to meet for dinner tonight, but we've managed to shift that to next week: a much better option for him, as he will be out from under the weight of final grading. Originally it seemed I wouldn't have any good opportunities next week, at least not before he has to head back up to Massachusetts, but at least one if not two of my appointments shifted to an earlier slot, thereby opening things up to a reasonable "dinner a deux" option.
So, home early today, and back here on Thursday for my second-to-last day, at least this semester. I was wrong in my post yesterday: Monday, which is the last day the Center is open this semester is also the last day of the semester. I kept getting confused about that--but, duh, even that's awfully late, as graduation is next Wednesday. The timing is pretty nuts: one day to turn grades around before commencement? But if any student fails a class required for his or her degree, I guess the Registrar's office simply will say, "Sorry: we know you went through the ceremony and everything, but in fact you don't have your degree yet; you still need to fulfill X requirement." I don't imagine there will be a lot of those cases, but seems like creating potential SNAFUs that could pretty easily be avoided. My hunch is that the ceremony was scheduled when it was around the availability of the Nassau Coliseum, not for any logical academic reason--and that's the way things go around here: technical expediencies trump intellectual logic. I could go on about that at length ... but why? I do my stint Monday, and Wednesday, I will be laughing at Eddie Izzard in the company of a very good friend while the ceremony goes on and on.
And none of that is now. Now, I go home. I'll post again--good lord willin' and all that--on Thursday.
Monday, May 13, 2019
Belated post, out of order: written 5/9/19: From six to three and a half
When I came in this morning, my docket was absolutely full, though the actual roster had changed a little. I still started the day with Silent Betty (on whom more in a moment), but Annabelle had canceled, much to my relief, and just about everyone else was new, at least to me. However, my second appointment was a no-show, and then my fourth appointment canceled. And as of this moment, it looks as if my final appointment for the day is also a no-show--which is a shame, as he was actually pretty good to work with, when I met him last week. I didn't assign him a moniker, I don't think, but he's one of those students with good ideas who just struggles to haul them into language and then onto the page. Last week, he was in a flat panic to work on a paper--for which he missed the deadline, as he was still working on the revisions I recommended. I don't know whether his professor took pity on him and gave him an extension, but he did say he'd learned his lesson and would start the final essay earlier. I assume that was why he made an appointment with me for today, so I'm not sure what it says about his plan, but, well, I don't have to fret about him, or his final grade. He's not my student. {{sigh of relief}}
I was dreading one of my appointments, given what I read in the previous comments from tutors. The student apparently has enormous processing problems, and I was anticipating a hell of a slog in our session. However, he only had one question: he didn't understand what the professor meant when she wrote in the schedule that something would happen during class. He asked if he needed to do it before class--so, yes, I had to explain what "during" means. He had done the work that needed to be complete before class, including a pretty good works cited page; it needed some minor corrections, but I walked him through those, and it's now in great shape: he can handle concrete instructions, such as "erase that" and "move this here." Still, I had to explain "during." And he's a native speaker of the language.
One of the students I met earlier is not a native speaker, and he also needed some help understanding the professor's questions on a final exam--and a hell of a hard one at that. Ten questions, all challenging, and the student told me that most people had to take it in class. I don't think I could do it in 75 minutes, quite honestly, and I write fast and know all about the subjects. This student was allowed to work on it over the weekend, and was extremely grateful for that. His questions were understandable, though I was a trifle annoyed when he said that something had been explained in an online lecture which he hadn't yet listened to. Um, that might be a good idea, before you try to answer the question. But I helped him with it anyway. It was about the meter of Dickenson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death"--and I am always aware that even native speakers these days don't fully understand about syllabic emphasis: it's like a form of music they can't hear, which baffles me--but I've worked through the scansion of a piece of poetry with students and experienced their complete bewilderment. I think he actually got it better than some of those native speakers have.
That was where I left off when I had to dash away from the desk, and I've now (Monday, 5/13) completely forgotten what else I might have wanted to say. I do recall working with a student who needed to revise his proposal for his final research paper for film and literature--and I spent a lot of the session explaining to him that 1. He actually needed to write about the films, not ideas tangentially related to them and 2. He actually needed to watch the films before he could know what he wanted to say about them. And he's a bright enough student: he's just a STEM guy, so this arty-farty stuff mystifies him. His professor and I have exchanged a few emailed face-palms over the guy, but at last report, he seems to have gotten at least part of the idea. We'll see if I see him again. But as for the other appointments of the day? I don't remember at all. Which is one of the lovely things about this gig: I can just drop things from my memory banks entirely (which is easy to do, as my memory strongly resembles Swiss cheese in having rather large holes).
Basta. More on the flip side.
I was dreading one of my appointments, given what I read in the previous comments from tutors. The student apparently has enormous processing problems, and I was anticipating a hell of a slog in our session. However, he only had one question: he didn't understand what the professor meant when she wrote in the schedule that something would happen during class. He asked if he needed to do it before class--so, yes, I had to explain what "during" means. He had done the work that needed to be complete before class, including a pretty good works cited page; it needed some minor corrections, but I walked him through those, and it's now in great shape: he can handle concrete instructions, such as "erase that" and "move this here." Still, I had to explain "during." And he's a native speaker of the language.
One of the students I met earlier is not a native speaker, and he also needed some help understanding the professor's questions on a final exam--and a hell of a hard one at that. Ten questions, all challenging, and the student told me that most people had to take it in class. I don't think I could do it in 75 minutes, quite honestly, and I write fast and know all about the subjects. This student was allowed to work on it over the weekend, and was extremely grateful for that. His questions were understandable, though I was a trifle annoyed when he said that something had been explained in an online lecture which he hadn't yet listened to. Um, that might be a good idea, before you try to answer the question. But I helped him with it anyway. It was about the meter of Dickenson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death"--and I am always aware that even native speakers these days don't fully understand about syllabic emphasis: it's like a form of music they can't hear, which baffles me--but I've worked through the scansion of a piece of poetry with students and experienced their complete bewilderment. I think he actually got it better than some of those native speakers have.
That was where I left off when I had to dash away from the desk, and I've now (Monday, 5/13) completely forgotten what else I might have wanted to say. I do recall working with a student who needed to revise his proposal for his final research paper for film and literature--and I spent a lot of the session explaining to him that 1. He actually needed to write about the films, not ideas tangentially related to them and 2. He actually needed to watch the films before he could know what he wanted to say about them. And he's a bright enough student: he's just a STEM guy, so this arty-farty stuff mystifies him. His professor and I have exchanged a few emailed face-palms over the guy, but at last report, he seems to have gotten at least part of the idea. We'll see if I see him again. But as for the other appointments of the day? I don't remember at all. Which is one of the lovely things about this gig: I can just drop things from my memory banks entirely (which is easy to do, as my memory strongly resembles Swiss cheese in having rather large holes).
Basta. More on the flip side.
Holy buckets
I am very grateful that it seems my last appointment of the day will be a no-show, as I've just done five appointments back to back, and none of them ran appreciably short. In fact, the last one ran over by 15 minutes, but because that final student wasn't here waiting, I could give the woman I was working with the extra time.
Can we tell final essays are coming due? Yes we can. In fact, I was busy enough on Thursday that I never finished my blog post for the day, I don't think. I'd completely forgotten about it until just this minute. The students are starting to arrive in droves, looking for those last-minute miracles.
The most discouraging appointment of the bunch was a student I helped last week. I think he came in pretty proud of what he had, but I immediately saw serious problems with it--most specifically the lack of a thesis, but also the lack of focus on an argument about the work of literature he was meant to address. As is far too often the case, he used the story as a sort of spring-board to fling himself into talking about a topic in very general terms (a focus his sources supported, but I didn't see anything from his professor saying he needed to find literary criticism in particular, so I didn't give the poor young man a hard time about that). He got very discouraged--especially because he had about five minutes before the essay was due, so there was no way in hell he could make the kind of systemic changes he'd need to make to have a reasonable essay. I said that at very least he needed to add the thesis (and underline it, which his professor requires), but the student fears his essay may not pass, and I fear he may be right.
I remind myself that frequently, these painful experiences are how we learn, but it just makes me sad to know that the young man put energy and effort into exactly the wrong stuff.
In one way or another, every appointment today reminded me how extremely difficult it is to teach this stuff so it sticks. What makes a thesis, what makes an argument, how to use evidence in support of an argument, how to identify specific points and organize them logically: all of it is essential and none of it is easy to explain or to learn how to do in any great hurry. I have no idea how or when I learned it; it almost feels like I just absorbed it by some kind of osmosis. I knew how to write an essay pretty well as an undergrad (though I didn't really learn what a thesis was until I was in grad school, I have to confess). No one ever taught me that I was aware of. I suspect it was just soaked all through every writing assignment I had from the time I first had to write about anything in particular (instead of the first "academic" writing I actually remember doing, in third grade, which was to write a story using all the words on our spelling list and which produced the timeless classic "The Dancing Dentist").
I will say that at least some of the students I saw today had given themselves some time to engage in writing as a process--and were aware that they didn't yet have introductions or conclusions. One student was revising an essay for a Communications class; fortunately, his professor provided a rubric that showed exactly where he would have lost points, so he and I addressed those specific areas. The challenge in that instance was getting across the language barrier: I had a hell of a time explaining that he needed to tell his readers not just the end result of a process but what things had been like before the process began, so we'd see the change.
Focus. Organization. Argument. Evidence. Points. Clarity. Documentation. And then we can get into grammar errors, and punctuation problems, and spelling and/or word choice problems. My head is spinning. It's all so innate to me. Trying to explain how to do it is like trying to explain how to see.
This morning before I left home, I looked at my schedule--but somehow I knew it wasn't going to be as light a day as the schedule reflected. I only had two appointments scheduled at that point. By the time I arrived here, the docket was full. So the fact that tomorrow and Thursday also look light is, I know, very likely to be highly misleading. The Center closes after next Monday, but the semester isn't over until Thursday--I keep forgetting that--so the madness is very likely to continue for my last days here.
I hadn't even thought about the possibility of doing this over the summer, too, but the acting supervisor asked me last week if I'd do it--and there's a possibility that the dates for the second summer session won't conflict with my travels. Picking up some extra income would be very nice. (I had a stress dream about that this morning: I was working at some kind of low-wage, mindless job, the kind for which one punches a time clock, and my boss informed me about a rather expensive medical bill for which I was suddenly responsible--and I burst into tears and put my head down on his desk, wailing, "I can't afford it!" Oh, my psyche: how easily it finds ways to panic itself.) I like the work too. And ... well, honestly, it's going to be harder than I want to admit to say the complete and final goodbye to this institution.
But that's not now. Now, my stint in the Center is all but complete, and I can go off to do my usual Monday evening routine--and be back here, blogging, tomorrow.
Can we tell final essays are coming due? Yes we can. In fact, I was busy enough on Thursday that I never finished my blog post for the day, I don't think. I'd completely forgotten about it until just this minute. The students are starting to arrive in droves, looking for those last-minute miracles.
The most discouraging appointment of the bunch was a student I helped last week. I think he came in pretty proud of what he had, but I immediately saw serious problems with it--most specifically the lack of a thesis, but also the lack of focus on an argument about the work of literature he was meant to address. As is far too often the case, he used the story as a sort of spring-board to fling himself into talking about a topic in very general terms (a focus his sources supported, but I didn't see anything from his professor saying he needed to find literary criticism in particular, so I didn't give the poor young man a hard time about that). He got very discouraged--especially because he had about five minutes before the essay was due, so there was no way in hell he could make the kind of systemic changes he'd need to make to have a reasonable essay. I said that at very least he needed to add the thesis (and underline it, which his professor requires), but the student fears his essay may not pass, and I fear he may be right.
I remind myself that frequently, these painful experiences are how we learn, but it just makes me sad to know that the young man put energy and effort into exactly the wrong stuff.
In one way or another, every appointment today reminded me how extremely difficult it is to teach this stuff so it sticks. What makes a thesis, what makes an argument, how to use evidence in support of an argument, how to identify specific points and organize them logically: all of it is essential and none of it is easy to explain or to learn how to do in any great hurry. I have no idea how or when I learned it; it almost feels like I just absorbed it by some kind of osmosis. I knew how to write an essay pretty well as an undergrad (though I didn't really learn what a thesis was until I was in grad school, I have to confess). No one ever taught me that I was aware of. I suspect it was just soaked all through every writing assignment I had from the time I first had to write about anything in particular (instead of the first "academic" writing I actually remember doing, in third grade, which was to write a story using all the words on our spelling list and which produced the timeless classic "The Dancing Dentist").
I will say that at least some of the students I saw today had given themselves some time to engage in writing as a process--and were aware that they didn't yet have introductions or conclusions. One student was revising an essay for a Communications class; fortunately, his professor provided a rubric that showed exactly where he would have lost points, so he and I addressed those specific areas. The challenge in that instance was getting across the language barrier: I had a hell of a time explaining that he needed to tell his readers not just the end result of a process but what things had been like before the process began, so we'd see the change.
Focus. Organization. Argument. Evidence. Points. Clarity. Documentation. And then we can get into grammar errors, and punctuation problems, and spelling and/or word choice problems. My head is spinning. It's all so innate to me. Trying to explain how to do it is like trying to explain how to see.
This morning before I left home, I looked at my schedule--but somehow I knew it wasn't going to be as light a day as the schedule reflected. I only had two appointments scheduled at that point. By the time I arrived here, the docket was full. So the fact that tomorrow and Thursday also look light is, I know, very likely to be highly misleading. The Center closes after next Monday, but the semester isn't over until Thursday--I keep forgetting that--so the madness is very likely to continue for my last days here.
I hadn't even thought about the possibility of doing this over the summer, too, but the acting supervisor asked me last week if I'd do it--and there's a possibility that the dates for the second summer session won't conflict with my travels. Picking up some extra income would be very nice. (I had a stress dream about that this morning: I was working at some kind of low-wage, mindless job, the kind for which one punches a time clock, and my boss informed me about a rather expensive medical bill for which I was suddenly responsible--and I burst into tears and put my head down on his desk, wailing, "I can't afford it!" Oh, my psyche: how easily it finds ways to panic itself.) I like the work too. And ... well, honestly, it's going to be harder than I want to admit to say the complete and final goodbye to this institution.
But that's not now. Now, my stint in the Center is all but complete, and I can go off to do my usual Monday evening routine--and be back here, blogging, tomorrow.
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Four ain't bad...
I had a full docket today, but two of the appointments were quite short. The first was with a returning student to whom I have not yet given a moniker: I'm rather at a loss how to characterize him in brief. He is an ESL student, and like all of them at this stage in the semester, he's feeling more than a little anxious about whether he'll pass his exit exam. He's the one I first spoke to about that learning trajectory, explaining that of course he still makes the same mistakes--but he's doing all the right things to learn how to correct them. He came in today primarily to get some reassurance. His professor also didn't like his topic sentences, which he had created on the advice of a friend who is more advanced in his academic career. His professor said they were too long, which is true; they were also clunky and repetitive ("The first reason X is the case is because," "The second reason X is the case is because," and so on). And I give credit to the professor for urging him to consider a cleaner style (which also provides less opportunity for error), but I think the kid has much larger concerns. Once again, I talked to him about the need to check his work at the end of the exam period, but this time I talked to him about how to slow down enough that he can see what he actually wrote instead of what he thinks he wrote. The exam is Friday. I expect he'll come in next week to let me know how he did--and if he is my first appointment of the day, I will need to be in early: I arrived about three minutes late today, and he was leaving because he thought I wasn't coming. I can see a person having that assumption after ten minutes, though even that might be ungenerous, but three? It may be bad form for the professor to be late, but we are human and run into unexpected snags, just like anyone else. But of course, to most students, we are not actually human at all. We are some completely alien species. (This is why my students are so stunned when they happen to run into me away from campus--especially in the summer, when I'm wearing a tank-top and shorts and doing something mundane like my grocery shopping. Though I confess having a bit the same feeling about some of my teachers: it was just weird to see them out of context.)
The other brief appointment was with a student who just wanted help with APA documentation, both in-text citations and the references page. I continually tell students they need to own an actual, physical style manual, not rely on the web. This young man agreed, actually; he'd just never encountered such an animal before (which I find strange, but there you have it). But he was bright and got the point quickly, so that was easy.
The two long appointments were more challenging. Both students came in with quite lengthy essays, which of course I didn't have time to go over in detail, and both students had trouble with the structure of their essays. The first of those students also had systemic ESL errors in her work, but I didn't address those for the most part; I was more concerned that she get her ideas organized. I went through her essay and pointed out to her the various topics she addressed--and the way she would flip back and forth among them--and I created a flow-chart: paragraph 1 is about this; paragraph 2 is about this, and so on. Then I told her she needed to go through her essay sentence by sentence to determine which topic she was addressing and organize accordingly. She wanted me to do that with her, asking whether X sentence should go in Y paragraph, but I told her she needed to make those determinations on her own. I also had to explain that she could quote only part of a sentence from a source. The quotations were overly long and tended to swamp her ideas. But the funniest part of that meeting was when I asked her what her topic was. I'd swear she said "Bowling." I even asked her: "Bowling??" and she said yes. So when she said one part of her paper was "solutions," I said, "solutions? to bowling? What do you mean?" She said something about how schools and parents could get involved--and I'm thinking, "OK, she's making an argument for the development of more interest in the sport." Then I saw the first sentence of her essay. "Bullying is a serious problem today." I didn't laugh out loud, but I came close.
The second student was much more facile with the language and had stronger ideas, but he didn't connect his ideas to each other very well, skipping over rather large ravines from paragraph to paragraph with nary a verbal bridge to get the leader from one topic to the next. He also did what all too many students do, which is he wandered very, very far from the poem he was supposed to be analyzing, so I talked to him about how to make transitions and how to connect his ideas back to the poem itself. He was hard to get a read on: very low affect. But I think he got it. He plans to be back in the Center tomorrow morning to go over what he's done with another tutor; I hope he gets good help.
The slightly maddening thing about both of those appointments, however, is that both may have been wasted effort. The young woman said she had already revised three times, and she wasn't sure whether the professor would accept the essay again. The young man said nothing of the kind, but when I looked at the assignment sheet, I saw that the deadline was last week. Of course, his professor may have changed the deadline, or she may have returned the essay to him and recommended (or demanded) a revision, but I do hope she will accept the work at this date.
And that concludes the early part of this week. Right now, I have two students on my docket for Thursday: Silent Betty and Annabelle. Annabelle was in today, working with another tutor and clearly driving that tutor bonkers. I suspect that her "research" paper is a chaotic mess, as that tends to be this young woman's problem: that chasing down rabbit trails thing. So I will have to gather my patience in both hands to be ready to deal with her. I wish I could say, "You know what? You don't really want to accept what I have to offer, so why don't you see someone else?" But I can't. As the head of the Center said about the Hostile Wall, we can't ban someone for being annoying. More's the pity.
For now, I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I'm in the office to go downstairs and engage in some bulk shredding. I'm cleaning out files at home, and my little home shredder has given up the ghost, apparently--but I have enough to shred that I might as well use the big one here. Very gratifying, that. And I'll be back here, blogging, on Thursday.
The other brief appointment was with a student who just wanted help with APA documentation, both in-text citations and the references page. I continually tell students they need to own an actual, physical style manual, not rely on the web. This young man agreed, actually; he'd just never encountered such an animal before (which I find strange, but there you have it). But he was bright and got the point quickly, so that was easy.
The two long appointments were more challenging. Both students came in with quite lengthy essays, which of course I didn't have time to go over in detail, and both students had trouble with the structure of their essays. The first of those students also had systemic ESL errors in her work, but I didn't address those for the most part; I was more concerned that she get her ideas organized. I went through her essay and pointed out to her the various topics she addressed--and the way she would flip back and forth among them--and I created a flow-chart: paragraph 1 is about this; paragraph 2 is about this, and so on. Then I told her she needed to go through her essay sentence by sentence to determine which topic she was addressing and organize accordingly. She wanted me to do that with her, asking whether X sentence should go in Y paragraph, but I told her she needed to make those determinations on her own. I also had to explain that she could quote only part of a sentence from a source. The quotations were overly long and tended to swamp her ideas. But the funniest part of that meeting was when I asked her what her topic was. I'd swear she said "Bowling." I even asked her: "Bowling??" and she said yes. So when she said one part of her paper was "solutions," I said, "solutions? to bowling? What do you mean?" She said something about how schools and parents could get involved--and I'm thinking, "OK, she's making an argument for the development of more interest in the sport." Then I saw the first sentence of her essay. "Bullying is a serious problem today." I didn't laugh out loud, but I came close.
The second student was much more facile with the language and had stronger ideas, but he didn't connect his ideas to each other very well, skipping over rather large ravines from paragraph to paragraph with nary a verbal bridge to get the leader from one topic to the next. He also did what all too many students do, which is he wandered very, very far from the poem he was supposed to be analyzing, so I talked to him about how to make transitions and how to connect his ideas back to the poem itself. He was hard to get a read on: very low affect. But I think he got it. He plans to be back in the Center tomorrow morning to go over what he's done with another tutor; I hope he gets good help.
The slightly maddening thing about both of those appointments, however, is that both may have been wasted effort. The young woman said she had already revised three times, and she wasn't sure whether the professor would accept the essay again. The young man said nothing of the kind, but when I looked at the assignment sheet, I saw that the deadline was last week. Of course, his professor may have changed the deadline, or she may have returned the essay to him and recommended (or demanded) a revision, but I do hope she will accept the work at this date.
And that concludes the early part of this week. Right now, I have two students on my docket for Thursday: Silent Betty and Annabelle. Annabelle was in today, working with another tutor and clearly driving that tutor bonkers. I suspect that her "research" paper is a chaotic mess, as that tends to be this young woman's problem: that chasing down rabbit trails thing. So I will have to gather my patience in both hands to be ready to deal with her. I wish I could say, "You know what? You don't really want to accept what I have to offer, so why don't you see someone else?" But I can't. As the head of the Center said about the Hostile Wall, we can't ban someone for being annoying. More's the pity.
For now, I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I'm in the office to go downstairs and engage in some bulk shredding. I'm cleaning out files at home, and my little home shredder has given up the ghost, apparently--but I have enough to shred that I might as well use the big one here. Very gratifying, that. And I'll be back here, blogging, on Thursday.
Monday, May 6, 2019
From one student to five...
When I left home this morning, only one student had signed up for an appointment with me, the Grammatician. One student dropped in--and then dropped in again, which technically is verboten, but I figured, as long as I had the appointment open and no one else was waiting, why not help him. One was another of those students who just needed me to review an essay and sign off on the fact that she'd been here; I was complaining about those as a waste of my time earlier, but now I realize I rather like them, as they're generally pretty brief appointments. Then my final appointment was a returnee; I'm at a loss for a moniker for her. She is very sweet but rather slow; today she said she has a learning disability, which I probably could have told without her saying so. But it was good to know she's aware of it; too many students clearly have processing problems and have no idea that there is anything wrong. The first time I met with her, I had to really struggle to get her to understand that it wasn't her job to simply write down the prompting questions I was asking her but to answer them. This time, she needed help making sure she understood what a professor was asking for in a very specific rubric. She'll also need help with organization and clarity; that goes without saying. But I don't know whether she's given herself enough time to get it.
The Grammatician didn't ask any challenging grammar questions today; he wanted me to help with an essay, and his English has gotten good enough that I can talk with him about ideas, not just grammar, idiom, etc. I've probably mentioned that before, but it's quite a relief to be able to talk about connections, organization, filling in ideas.
The student I saw twice may become a "regular," with what little is left of the semester. He was working on an essay for a Film and Literature class; his professor had already seen it and given some feedback on mechanics but not much on content--yet part of the problem was that his essay was under length, which means he needs to develop his ideas. I can rather understand the bind he was in: the professor has very rigid parameters for how long individual paragraphs can be as well as for the length of the essay overall. At first the student was a bit grumpy because, as he explained, he gets feedback from her, changes what she pointed out, and still gets a bad grade. I explained that he is expected to re-evaluate his ideas on his own, too, not just fix what's explicitly shown to him. He then admitted that he's a math/science guy and taking some very challenging courses in that arena, so he tends to give the English course short shrift. This is entirely typical: students see the title of the class and think it will be easy, just watching movies and eating popcorn, apparently. They're shocked when they realize there is actually academic rigor involved, and that they need to read, write, and think (heaven forfend). I will give this young man credit: he wasn't averse to the idea of doing those things as a general rule; he just was prioritizing and the Film and Lit didn't get the priority. However, as we worked through his essay, he started to realize how many problems were caused by the fact that he had rushed it--but he was rushing again, and in fact he missed the already extended deadline for submitting the essay. It was greatly improved from when I saw it earlier in the day, but I worked through it again with him, in the hope that his professor takes pity on him and allows him to submit it. However, I explained, sometimes the learning experience is what matters, not whether one gets a grade, and he saw that. But he also says he'll be in earlier to work on his next and final essay for that class. Good plan; we'll see if he follows through on it.
Looking forward, it is interesting to watch my schedule silt up as each new day approaches. Earlier, I had one appointment scheduled for tomorrow. Now, there are three. At the moment, I have only one appointment scheduled for Thursday. I will be curious to see how many more I pick up by the end of the day.
And we're careening toward the end here. This week, next week, one more Monday, and it's all over. I imagine it will take a little while before I start freaking out about not having the income, but I find that it is extremely easy for me to have day after day of bugger-all nothing to do. Retirement suits me. Now if I could just also be independently wealthy....
I'm sure there was something else I wanted to say, but heaven knows what. If I think of it--and if it's important enough, I'll add a postscript. Otherwise, my faithful readers, I'll see you tomorrow.
The Grammatician didn't ask any challenging grammar questions today; he wanted me to help with an essay, and his English has gotten good enough that I can talk with him about ideas, not just grammar, idiom, etc. I've probably mentioned that before, but it's quite a relief to be able to talk about connections, organization, filling in ideas.
The student I saw twice may become a "regular," with what little is left of the semester. He was working on an essay for a Film and Literature class; his professor had already seen it and given some feedback on mechanics but not much on content--yet part of the problem was that his essay was under length, which means he needs to develop his ideas. I can rather understand the bind he was in: the professor has very rigid parameters for how long individual paragraphs can be as well as for the length of the essay overall. At first the student was a bit grumpy because, as he explained, he gets feedback from her, changes what she pointed out, and still gets a bad grade. I explained that he is expected to re-evaluate his ideas on his own, too, not just fix what's explicitly shown to him. He then admitted that he's a math/science guy and taking some very challenging courses in that arena, so he tends to give the English course short shrift. This is entirely typical: students see the title of the class and think it will be easy, just watching movies and eating popcorn, apparently. They're shocked when they realize there is actually academic rigor involved, and that they need to read, write, and think (heaven forfend). I will give this young man credit: he wasn't averse to the idea of doing those things as a general rule; he just was prioritizing and the Film and Lit didn't get the priority. However, as we worked through his essay, he started to realize how many problems were caused by the fact that he had rushed it--but he was rushing again, and in fact he missed the already extended deadline for submitting the essay. It was greatly improved from when I saw it earlier in the day, but I worked through it again with him, in the hope that his professor takes pity on him and allows him to submit it. However, I explained, sometimes the learning experience is what matters, not whether one gets a grade, and he saw that. But he also says he'll be in earlier to work on his next and final essay for that class. Good plan; we'll see if he follows through on it.
Looking forward, it is interesting to watch my schedule silt up as each new day approaches. Earlier, I had one appointment scheduled for tomorrow. Now, there are three. At the moment, I have only one appointment scheduled for Thursday. I will be curious to see how many more I pick up by the end of the day.
And we're careening toward the end here. This week, next week, one more Monday, and it's all over. I imagine it will take a little while before I start freaking out about not having the income, but I find that it is extremely easy for me to have day after day of bugger-all nothing to do. Retirement suits me. Now if I could just also be independently wealthy....
I'm sure there was something else I wanted to say, but heaven knows what. If I think of it--and if it's important enough, I'll add a postscript. Otherwise, my faithful readers, I'll see you tomorrow.
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