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.