All about students

First, it seems that it's likely I will get these late-start, online classes in future semesters, as long as I remember to submit my availability. Which, despite the problems with the classes, is a good thing. It's a reliable revenue stream, while the semester lasts, and I can sure use that.

But I will have to check a lot of my philosophical frustrations with online teaching in general at the door. I really am a much, much better teacher of 101 when I can do it face to face--largely because of the psycho-social needs of many of the students. That said, the students who last to the end of the semester in an online class are most likely going to be only the best and brightest, which isn't a bad thing. As of right now, there are three who never attended--and I'm not counting the little boopsies who did just enough to be considered "present" but have otherwise done no work (or, in the case of one little boopsie, one quiz and nothing else). I'm pretty sure that those two plus three others are gone for sure. One student who needed a disabilities accommodation only got extended time with tests--which, as I explained to the student and to the counselor in the Center for Students with Disabilities, won't do the student any good in my class as there are no timed exams. I got an email with the student's stated intention to withdraw. One student shouldn't be in my class in the first place, so I'm hoping she withdraws. And another three were AWOL the week before the break and haven't shown up since, though they'd been doing OK up to that point. That leaves me with thirteen students who are hanging in there so far.

Paul and I talked about the process of leaving comments on their discussion board posts, and he said he thought it was a useless endeavor. I wondered, so at the end of my comments for each student on one forum, I said I'd give two points extra credit if the student responded by email and said something about my comments. One always checks--and follows up--so she got the two points automatically. Three others responded. I'm on the fence now. I can either not provide comments to anyone except those four, or I can (after their essays) send out an announcement explaining that I'm not going to waste my time commenting for students who aren't paying attention and see if that jolts anyone into starting to read my comments. (Doubtful, but one never knows.)

And meanwhile, I got an email from a student asking what he was supposed to do for the forthcoming essay. At first I thought, "Well, start by reading the assignment handout." Then I thought, "Oh, shit: did I maybe forget to post the assignment handout?" So I went searching for it and at first I didn't see it; I was all set to send out a huge apology--but then, no: there it was, first thing in a folder a few weeks ago. I posted it there thinking it would help students keep the essay in mind as they did their reading. So, back to first response for that student. "Read the assignment handout. Here's where to find it. After you read it, let me know if you have questions." Then I sent out an announcement: "OK, some of you apparently missed the assignment handout, so here's where to find it."

This experience, of course, identifies one of the problems with online teaching: I am not sure where to put things so students will actually see and pay attention to them. With that in mind, I have posted handouts about the elements of their revisions in two places. My hope is that the people who are the "let me do this now" type will find it in the first location and that the people who are the "I need to clear my head of this other stuff first" type will find it in the second--but that everyone will find it somewhere.

And I've graded everything from the week before the break, so now I can turn my attention elsewhere and wait for a new bolus of work to be ready for me on Sunday (really, Monday morning, as I won't be checking late Sunday night for the last-second submissions of work). I am on tenterhooks about their essays. Please, please, please let them at least have understood the assignment.

Students ... and freelancing

I only had about eight more discussion board threads to read, and I. Just. Couldn't. I've been wading through them for hours, and I got to the point where I simply couldn't see what they were saying any more. They all turned into meaningless noise--which isn't necessarily incorrect even when my brain is sharp and I can fully focus on their content, but in this instance, I could tell the problem was at least partially mine.

But here are today's causes for dismay.

1. Somewhere in the second week of class, a student tried to attend my online office hour--her first attempt at anything in the class--and I'm sure she thought that she was trying to attend the class. (I have since changed the name of that link from "online meetings"--what was I thinking??--to "online office hours: request required.") I emailed her. Nothing. I would have called her, but she has no phone number in her contact information. And since I had to do the first attendance census, I sent up a flare to Cathy, asking whether that counted as having attended the class. It did--though several of us agree that it shouldn't--and I was feeling terrible about that, because, poor infant, she did try, and clearly she just has no idea what to do for an online class. But I was grading quizzes today, and lo and behold, she did a quiz. She has, however, done absolutely nothing else. She did a great job on the quiz, but still: clearly she hasn't read any of the instructional materials--I bet she hasn't looked at the assignment schedule--and if she has been scrolling through the week's tasks to see what she needs to do, apparently she just skipped over the stuff she didn't understand and did the one thing she did understand: [Student, scrolling, thinks to herself]: "Some article thing, something about a discussion board forum, I don't get it so ... oh! a quiz! I know what those are. I'll do that." This despite the fact that the links to actually create a thread for each discussion board forum include detailed information about what students need to do.

I no longer feel sorry for her or bad that she's going to fail the class.

2. So, there I am, reading these posts about articles that discuss various topics under the general heading "college education," and I'm reading responses to an article that discusses remediation, why it exists, why it's a problem, what might be done about it. One student uses her personal experience to say that remedial classes are really helpful, and she explains that, last semester, she was in a section of 001, but she also attended 101... and I realize, she's talking about the Accelerated Learning Program, in which students register simultaneously for 001 and 101, and they are put in a cohort that also includes students who tested straight into 101. They get the remedial class, but they also attend the credit-bearing class and have to do that work, and do it to the standard required of all students. I quickly hustled to her degree evaluation and, yep, she already passed 101. Which, of course, begs the question what she's doing in my class. I thought, "Maybe she wants to retake the class for a higher grade?" Well, if she does, she'd be better off not taking it from me, because her grade last semester was a B, and she sure wouldn't earn anything better than that from me. I sent her an email telling her she needs to A. get herself to Academic Advisement toot sweet and find out what she needs for her degree and what she doesn't. (Half her course load this semester isn't progressing her toward graduation.) While she's there, she also needs to find out whether she can drop my class now without screwing up her tuition/financial aid, or whether she has to wait a while (as dropping my class would drop her below full-time status). And B. As soon as she can without it being a financial problem, she needs to withdraw from my course--and as long as she absolutely remembers to withdraw, she can stop doing any work for me.

My hunch is that she didn't fully realize that she got credit for 101 (though I'm sure Cathy explained that about a zillion times), and that--of course--she didn't go to Advisement before making her schedule but just signed up for what she thought she needed.

I feel a little sorry for her. But not very.

Meanwhile, I've stuck a fork in reading student stuff today, despite the fact that I just got a sizable job from the Met today and should turn my full attention to it tomorrow. It's going to be a bit of a challenge for me, because it's really too much to print (well over 100 pages, though there isn't much text on any single page and a lot of the pages are images, which I don't need to print), and I do not edit well on the screen. I could print everything at Staples--that wouldn't break the bank (and would be a tax-deductible business expense) but I think it makes more sense to just print the pages with text, even from my sloooooow printer, and work from there.

And yes, I need a new printer. That's an expense I keep kicking further down the road.

Further on the "things that frustrate me" front, I am once again clueless about the status of the job for the NYPL. I sent an email this morning asking whether I'm likely to see more materials or should submit my invoice and I have heard nada, zip, zilch. I know the little assistant person I've been dealing with is deep in a tangle of getting the exhibition up, but really, what does it take to answer an email? "Yep, you're done" or "Oh, yeah, you'll see the labels. Don't know when. Soon." Either would be fine; it just would be nice to get a fucking reply.

Writing for myself? Not happening. That will probably be sidelined entirely until the semester is over--and maybe further, if I keep getting freelance gigs, which would be a small disappointment but more a relief, as any revenue stream is helpful in what feels like a financial desert. Reading anything of substance--like the Antonio Damassio book I was so proud to have picked up again? Uh, not likely. I need enough brain to really think for that--in fact, to stay on top of what he's saying, I have to not only annotate but take notes--and I just don't have the brain to spare when I'm juggling the freelancing and thrashing through the weeds of student syntax.

But it's all good. Life is good. I wouldn't trade it for the alternative, that's for sure.

Freelancing ... and students

I am about to throttle the young woman who has been my point of contact with the NYPL in the freelance editing job I've been doing for them. She keeps telling me that X is the date when everything has to go to press, but then she sends me stuff to read, so I have to ask, "Is there time for me to read this and for any changes to be made?" And she says yes ... and then we do the whole round again. She defensively said that they pad schedules for the curators (granted) and hope the curators follow the schedule (of course) and can't predict what might happen when the curators don't (understood), but she doesn't seem to realize I'm not a curator. I need to know the real, true, actual, drop-dead deadlines, so I know what's expected of me. Can we add a comma? Do a whole-scale recasting of an awkward sentence?

And because they've been telling me that everything was due yesterday, I've been working too fast, so I'm still finding mistakes I should have found in the first round, and probably would have, if I hadn't felt like they were telling me the building was on fire.

Well, oh well. They'll either hire me again or they won't.

Meanwhile, materials that were supposed to come in from the Met yesterday still haven't arrived, and I'm looking at that clock tick down to when everything needs to be complete--and I know my friend there gives me real dates, dates I have to take seriously, so that ticking clock actually means something.

And instead of twiddling my thumbs (which I would prefer to do, really--or the mental equivalent thereof), I've been reading through student responses to readings. Generally, although the writing is at times atrocious, after the one reading that they all fell apart over (which I believe I ranted about the other day), they're getting the ideas and generally they have something to say about the ideas, which is rather the points. They're starting to understand the idea of "discussion," though I just realized my analogy may be meaningless to then. I told them to think of it as sitting around a table with cups of coffee (or whatever), talking about the reading--but I bet they've never done that, even as part of a study group. Kids these days.

Anyway, we'll see what lands in my email inbox tomorrow: more from the NYPL? Something from the Met? Neither? And whatever lands, I'll work on it for a while, then shift gears to reading/responding to more student work, then back again. And I am trying very hard not to get too wound up about the essays that are going to arrive--if they arrive at all--on the 29th. I kinda wish I'd forced them to work over the break, but who am I kidding. They wouldn't have. They'd still have put everything off until the last minute. Well, what can I do. I can't make them do anything; I can just see what they do and provide feedback--including grades that will surely shock the shit out of them, but that's part of my job, too.

I think I'm toast for the night. It's about time to shift gears into dinner mode--and I'm going out with mother, sister, and sister's boyfriend, so that will be nice. It's not a bad life, all in all.

About students this time

We're three weeks into the semester, and they're already falling away or falling apart. And I am dreading, truly dreading, what the first versions of their first essays are going to look like. I am confidently sure that the ones who will have the hardest time with every part of the assignment are the ones who also will wait until next Sunday to even start--and then they'll completely freak out and either just quit entirely or turn in something so utterly unbaked it will be painful to contemplate.

Then again, as I've said all along, if I only have a handful of students, I only have that many essays to grade, and that isn't a bad thing.

But there's one student, I'll call him Working Dad, who is going to be more than a bit of a pain. I don't know whether he legitimately is not very quick off the mark or if he's the kind of person who worries himself into problems he doesn't really have, but he seems to find very simple things quite surprisingly difficult. He's getting help, though, which is great--he is going to the Writing Center and he has a faculty mentor--but still. For one thing, I really don't want to hear for the fourteenth time that he is a working father so he has to get a good grade in the class because he's paying for it out of pocket. (I finally had to say to him that he's not the only student who is in that kind of situation. Almost all our students have very difficult lives, and most have to work, in addition to everything else.) But after whining about that--again--he also said he was disappointed in his score on the first quiz, and that he had tried not to use the language of the book; could I give him an example of where he went wrong?

I told him 1. the quiz is a "low stakes" assignment (20 points out of a possible 2,000), so he shouldn't sweat about it too much. 2. Sometimes one has to use a specific term, but it's a good idea to put the term in quotation marks--and then, the most important thing, to explain what it means. 3. Here's an example--and his answer was exactly, word for word, the language of the book. It wasn't even one of those cases where the attempt at paraphrase is too close for comfort: it was exactly, word for word, the language of the book.

Oh, and in reading about research and what to look for to evaluate sources, the book mentioned currency--and explains the importance of having things that are up to date--but apparently he just read the word "currency" and thought it meant "money."

{{Professor quietly slams forehead into computer several times, takes a deep breath, tries to explain to the student the error.}}

But another thing--and this is a shift of gears--but I've seen, and am seeing again, that over the past decade or so, the number of students who struggle with anxiety, as well as depression and other psychological difficulties, is rising exponentially. They're not pulling a pity card, either: more of them are genuinely psychologically troubled than was the case when I started teaching. I've been reading about it, too: for all the parental attempts to keep their children safe from every bump and bruise and to make their paths entirely smooth and easy, students are more fragile, frightened, and lacking in internal resources than ever before, and the world expects more of them in some regards--like, know your career trajectory and that it will earn you a good income when you're 18 years old....

Actually, let me restate that. The students' fragility, fears, and lack of internal resources exist because their parents try to protect them and smooth their way. I listened to what I think is the first TED talk given by Brene Brown (back in 2010, I think it was), and in it she says that parents should look at their children as beings who are "hardwired for struggle." And yet so many of my students encounter my class as the first place they have ever had to struggle in their lives, and they absolutely know they cannot do it.

It breaks my heart.

It doesn't make me want to make my class easier.

But it does make me wish I could do more to help them: be their psychologist and coach and tutor and support system, to help them learn that they can struggle, that they're good at struggle, that they get stronger when they struggle. But that, I'm afraid, is a lesson I really cannot teach them. They have to learn it on their own.

Oh, blech

I've been trying to write a little. For reasons that remain mysterious, I have been riddled with anxieties yesterday and today, and as is often the case for me, anxiety and feeling down/depressed often go together. And I do feel down. I hoped that trying to write would bring me out of it, as being productive in one way or another often does. I also tried a little grading of student assignments until I realized that--since everything for this week is due tomorrow--it's rather pointless to embark on that enterprise until more students have done the work.

I shoveled the driveway.

I'd have cleaned the house, but that's what I did yesterday to try to combat the anxiety/blues.

And I should have known better about trying to write in this state of mind: I'm forcing it, and consequently, I absolutely loathe and despise what I've written, even as I'm writing it.

This is why I don't think I'm a writer, only a person who occasionally writes. When I write well enough that I like the result, it happens because the story, the words, come to me and won't shut up. My dear friend the playwright Jane Shepard said of one of her plays that it woke her up in the night and wouldn't let her sleep. It kept saying, "Write this down. You have to get up and write this down"--and that the process was, she said, like taking dictation. And I've had stories like that. The one that's been published, "Birds in the Head," was like that. All the stories in that story suite were like that, in fact. And parts of the historical novel have been, too--and as soon as I start trying to make a scene happen that I know needs to happen to get the plot across the arc I know it needs to take, the result is, to me, nauseating.

Yes, yes, yes. As I've said: I know the received wisdom, that our task is to just write anyway and know that the shit can be dealt with--revised, reworked, or even thrown out wholesale--but must be gone through in order to get to the stuff that sings. I know I am too hard on myself, and that I'd be a lot more productive it I could turn the volume down on the judgmental voice inside me that sneers in disdain at my own work.

I also know I don't have to write on any specific thing: if this project isn't "speaking" to me, then I can try that one instead--and generally speaking, my essays don't require the same kind of "channeling the muse" feeling that my fiction or poems need. But a while back I wrote a post that I wasn't "feeling" it, and that is the case in spades today.

But it's too early to go to bed, in hope that tomorrow might turn out to be a better day. This whole "being retired" gig is a hell of a challenge for those of us who are not terribly driven to do much of anything but who also don't want to simply allow the devolution into killing time until it kills us.

Ach, I annoy myself. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself, but something other than wallow in my own uselessness, which is apparently what I'm doing here.

I'll just watch it snow....

My plans to do something writerly and productive today have once again gone for naught. So far, I have shoveled the driveway and cleaned off my car, solved an online jigsaw puzzle, played a game on my phone, checked personal and work email about four times, and checked Facebook twice. I did write in my journal a little, mostly recording a dream I had this morning, but I don't think that quite counts.

My brain is simply making murrrr-eeee murrr-eeee noises but nothing is coming out except a vague and formless anxiety (mostly about the fact that so much of the "work" I do is in no way monetized--and the brain-rot activities definitely are not monetized).

The fact that it is snowing again is just situation normal: it's Montana. It's winter. I'm actually lucky it hasn't done a whole hell of a lot more of this. And I don't know why that seems reason enough to do more bugger-all nothing, but, well, it does.

A little of this, a little of that, and a whole lot of nothing

Since the pressure is (briefly) off in terms of monetized work, I've had a hell of a time trying to dedicate myself to anything much today. I did dutifully hold my office hour (why, why did I set that up??); a student was even going to be a test subject for me, but in the event, he couldn't make it. I did a little writing on the maybe-too-personal essay I've been working on, or rather, that I haven't worked on in a while but haven't yet gotten to the point where I feel like I want to make it public. I recorded a little video about research and documentation for my students. It's still early enough I could easily do something else, but ... nah.

As for that student. He's one of those maddening cases of a student who says he really wants to succeed and wants help--but then he doesn't actually get the help, or do what he needs to do in order to succeed. He's an adult, too--student, works, single parent--but he seems to want an awful lot of hand-holding. I'm glad that he has an appointment with one of my colleagues who does mentoring specifically for distance ed students, and I hope she can help him; more, I hope he actually shows up for his appointment with her. He said he was going to go to the Writing Center, too, but somehow I don't think that's going to happen.

One of the things that's going to be interesting for me is that, even when I have the impulse to do a lot of hand-holding and shepherding of students, I kinda can't, since I'm not physically able to meet with them. I'm oddly frustrated by that, but I'm also going to use it as practice in letting the students develop their skills as responsible adults (even the adults) without my doing so much to herd them along.

As for the essay, well, hmmmm. The more I work on it, the more I begin to think it may be one that's just for me: a chance for me to work through my own thinking about something but not anything I necessarily want to share, or at least not share publicly. (A select friend or two may get to see it.) I have several other essays that are in various states of development--mostly of the "not very" variety--but none of them are calling to me much at the moment.

But we'll see what the morrow brings. I am keeping myself from doing any more grading until a lot more students have gotten on the ball with their submissions, but who knows when either of those freelance jobs might boomerang back to me. If there is no work of that variety to be done tomorrow, I hope I can make myself do something that has to do with my own writing, no matter how paltry or scattered that "something" may be.

For now, I'm going to just noodle away until it's time to call a halt to all things having to do with the computer and figure out what to do for dinner.

Oh, that's right: I have a blog

I kinda keep forgetting I even have this blog. I got out of the habit of writing (and out of the habit of teaching), and now--like the vast majority of my readers--I tend to forget that this thing even exists.

I will say, also, that I truly was under quite the deluge there. I think I said that I managed to get the class up and running by last Monday (though that was quite the sprint), and I believe I mentioned that I also had some freelance editing work landing in my lap at the same time. That wasn't much, just enough to make me feel those pearls dropping and clattering around the floor. And on top of that, I volunteered to do what I thought would be a very simple job for my mother--a job that actually ended up being a snorting pain in the ass that devoured two and a half days of my time. I mean, I was really nailed to the computer, could barely allow myself time to get up to take care of necessary bodily functions (ahem). William kept reminding me that I mustn't take time to sneeze. ("Achoo! Dammit, I don't have time for this!!")

But there's now a lull. I'll be getting more on the larger of the freelance gigs soon--we hope by end of this week, but that's quite the "yeeks!" deadline, as the whole boiling has to go to press at the end of next week. I see another frantic weekend in my future. Of course, I could say to the NYPL, "Sorry: a crisis on your part doesn't necessitate panic on my part. I cannot do this in the time allotted; you'll have to figure out something else." But this is my first job for them, and I do want more jobs from them, so I figure it behooves me to just be superlatively fast and efficient and wait until I'm deeply entrenched there before I start dropping the football, as it were.

I also have evaluated the first batch of assignments from my class, and of course many seem to be adhering to the philosophy of "let me see what the minimum is that I can manage to do." I was about to take them all to task for that, but then I thought, no: let me see if they actually read my comments (and the handouts that explain my expectations) and at least try to improve next week. If not, then perhaps I will get fierce with them. Of course, as I told Paul, whether I send a course announcement or an email, any screed of mine will reach the students who don't need it and not the ones who do.

At present, seven of twenty-four are utterly AWOL. One who registered on Saturday asked for an extension, which I granted; she said she'd have the work to me by 4 p.m. today--and even Rocky Mountain Time, it's after 4, with nary a peep from the student. Another student was disenrolled for financial reasons. I said he could certainly re-enroll, as far as I was concerned, and at that time there were seats available--but Cathy said she'd take care of it today, and in the interim, the class filled to the brim again. She has two options: overload my class (a precedent she has driven herself nuts not to set: the department policy has been a firm "no" on overloads and "we" want to keep it that way) or see if someone else will take him into another section, though there he'll be two weeks behind the curve. (I don't think there are any seats in the other "late start" section or sections.) Well, that's her mess to clean up, not mine. If I could have taken care of it without her getting involved, I would have, but she needed to sign off on the reinstatement of the student and ... well, there we are. I'll be curious to see what she decides.

Today I realized I've been slipping into a pattern I do not want to foster, of holing up inside the house and, when not being prodded down the chute of work, doing things that are utterly mindless. I tried to do some reading of substance during my "office hour" (which I'm regretting even setting up, as it nails me to the computer for those hours each week when chances of anyone taking advantage of the time are vanishingly slim). But I realized I was A) perpetually checking to see whether a student was lingering in the hall, figuratively speaking and B) worrying about how it actually works when a student does want to participate. I mean, do I get some kind of little "ding" or "beep" from the computer, or is the student just suddenly, silently there? I'm going to ask for test subjects: anyone who wants to visit me online during an office hour just so I can see how it works. I thought briefly about offering a few extra points for that, but no: they get enough extra credit as is. I'll just offer the Brownie points. (Maybe I should offer a badge...? I used to love getting those when I was a Brownie and a Girl Scout.)

As for my own writing, qu'est que c'est? Maybe one of these years I'll get back to playing around with that whole notion. Actually, maybe the combination of a recent sense that work is done on the computer with a lull in the monetized work will get me sitting here at the keyboard but doing something more productive than playing online jigsaw puzzles. (Really. I love them. A total brain-rot activity, but oh, let's rot that brain.)

And let us all now intone: "we'll see."