Student Musings

I've only done the bare minimum on my blog recently, which usually means Dreaming of France, and sometimes Tuesday Intros, just because books are still available to distract us from things.
Of course, I'm still teaching college (university) and the students frequently either infuriate me or delight me.
Like the student last Friday who walked up to the desk to turn in his assignment.

Student: I just wrote down some ideas instead of a whole counter argument paragraph.
Me: That was the whole point to write the counterargument and the rebuttal.
Student: Oh, I wasn't really listening.
Me: (tearing my hair out)

We only had class on Monday this week because of Thanksgiving (Lucky me!).

This is a class selfie from a long ago class. My current classes
have 15 to 20 students in them, but it's the only class picture I have.

One of my students, Tyler, who has missed a lot of classes, stood in front of my desk with an essay in his hand. "I'm so sick. The only reason I'm here is because of you," he said. I could tell that he had a cold, runny nose, sneezing.
"Well thank you," I responded. Then I added the same thing I tell my children, "If you make sure you don't miss classes unless you're sick or an it's emergency then it isn't a big deal when you do miss because you have a cold."
As he started to walk back to his desk, I called out, "One of the students in my 8 o'clock class has chemotherapy every week and he's still in class every day, but thanks for coming while you have a cold."
Nothing like a little guilt to make students feel bad.

I don't want you to think that all of my students are slackers though. I was chatting with my class about how happy I was to spend Thanksgiving with only my husband and my three children. I said that after dinner, we'd have game night. Then I pondered how happy my 24-year-old, 23-year-old and 20-year-old would be to stay home and play games with their family.
"Wow! You have kids that old?" one young female student asked. "I thought you were like 30."
Her grade is now being adjusted upward.

The semester is nearly over now, three more weeks,
and aside from one student who emailed to complain that I shouldn't have talked to the class about the election, my students have pretty much been a delight this semester.
Hope it's the same in January when we start all over again.

Scattered

I've had four, very brief phone conversations with my 20-year-old son today, each one ending abruptly.
He's just a little frenetic. I don't think a lot of planning goes into his life. And I'm trying not to be a helicopter mom, but rather a safety-net mom, there to catch him before he leaps from a dangerous place.
They started a new semester at college yesterday and after his accounting class, he told me that the book is $300. That includes access to the online portion with quizzes, so we can't buy the used book.
I knew, but he didn't, that we had some credit with the school from financial aid. So this morning, I got online and ordered books for his class. It requires some back and forth between his schedule and the bookstore, but I finally managed to order books for three of his classes and the cost was $550. I clicked on financial aid for the payment then text messaged him at 8 a.m. before I left for work.
Around noon, I called him to see if he'd gotten my text message.
"No, what?" he asked.
I told him he could pick up the books at the bookstore.
"Okay, but I'm getting ready to go to lunch so I'll check after lunch."
And with that he was gone.

Here's Spence at his dorm after being sick all day,
but I was leaving him and wanted a picture

A little while later, he called and said the guy at the bookstore said Spencer needed to approve financial aid to pay for his books. I tried to talk to him about the meal plan too, but he said, "I gotta go, I'm gonna give blood right now."
"Donating blood, right?" I asked.
"What the f-- other kind of giving blood is there?" he asked.
"Language," I warned.
"Oh, sorry." I could hear his buddies around him laughing.
"Sometimes people sell their blood," I explained, remembering my college roommate who went every week to sell her plasma for the cigarette money.
"No, I'm just donating," he said.
"Okay, I'll call financial aid and make sure you can get the books," I told him as his voice faded from the phone.
I called the college and got everything straightened out.
It had been about 45 minutes since I talked to Spencer, so I thought he might be finished donating blood. I called him.
"Mom, I'm right in the middle of giving blood."
"Okay, I thought you might be finished. Call me back so I can tell you what you need to do."
In a little while, the phone rang.
"I've only got one percent left on my phone so make it quick," he said.
That's when I just became exhausted with these bursts of conversation followed by some sort of activity.
"Pick up the books tomorrow and call me when you can talk for more than five minutes," I said.
My head just reels from the various directions he is headed in, like a fly buzzing around the room, zipping here, zipping there.
Two and a half more years for him to get through college, hopefully. Maybe he'll be a little more focused by then.

My Hiatus With Grace

I haven't updated everyone on my daughter Grace. If you read my blog, you know that I'm crazy about my daughter. She just turned 21 and she's a junior in college. Last year she traveled to France for three months and made huge leaps in language and independence.
Grace started college in the fall of 2010 at St. Lawrence University, up by the St. Lawrence seaway in New York -- 10 hours from home. Some parts of St. Lawrence she loved; some parts were rough. Last fall, as she struggled, not with classes, but with little sleep, not eating correctly, sorority rush, and sorority house living, it became clear that she was not thriving in this environment.
She would call me in tears more days than not.
We began to struggle with the idea of having her transfer to a college closer to home, and when she came home for Christmas break, she stayed.

She's taking classes now at the college where I teach and planning where she'll finish college, someplace within an hour of home. She just finished acting in a community theater musical and she did the makeup for the college performance. She has a job at a French restaurant and still goes salsa dancing on Friday nights. She's dating a guy she met at salsa, and flirting with a guy from acting class. Other than her own place and her own car, she's living a pretty typical college life.
And I just want to say, even though this hiatus can't last forever, I'm loving it.
We've watched The Bachelor together and now we've started watching The Amazing Race. She comes to campus with me and hangs out between classes. We go to youtube and laugh at the songs which incorporate the screaming goats that sound like humans.
She rolls her eyes with me when my teenage son is surly or rude.
She's the one I want to tell first when something exciting happens with my book or the one I turn to when I want to complain about work.

I know Grace will go on to have her own, separate, exciting life, but I'm so glad for this brief reprieve that I get to share with her.

Joy

On my way onto campus yesterday, a young mother and her 6-year-old daughter walked past me. The mother had a scarf tied around her hair and knotted in the front as if she covered curlers. She wore sweat pants over her taut body and a t-shirt. She walked quickly in her flipflops, and her little girl, in a one-piece shorts outfit and pony tails, hurried to catch up. The girl carried a bag on her shoulder that slipped down until she pulled it back up.
"Now you need to be quiet while you're sitting in the hall," the mother informed the daughter as they scurried past me. The girl silently nodded her head.
"That means no singing and no dancing," the woman said. "And no talking loud to Nonni on the telephone. Just draw and write quietly."
That made me think differently about this pair. The woman, a 20-something, inner city mother, returning to school. Her daughter home during the long summer days rather than at school.
I wanted this little girl to be free to dance and sing. I pictured her, arms outflung, twirling through a grassy field, stopping only to make daisy chains. She only wanted to live, to not be stymied. In spite of  the hardships she was born into, she had managed to find joy in life -- joy that made her sing and dance at random moments, like a happy little girl does, like an improbable high school musical.
Some people might have judged this mother for taking her daughter along to college and parking her in the hallway. I might have judged her one not-so-long-ago day, but more and more, I see the lives of desperation many young mothers live, trying to claw their way out of poverty.
This mother needs to attend college to get ahead. She can't afford to hire a babysitter, and she isn't allowed to bring the girl into class. So she'll leave her in the hallway with a cell phone and a caution to be quiet, to act against her natural little girl instinct.
This morning, before I left campus, I stopped by an office. The chair of the English Department is temporarily acting as a dean until the school hires someone else.
"I have a big idea," I told her.
She stopped what she was doing and turned to listen to me.
"We need day care for school-aged children during the summer." I told her the story about the little girl who wanted to sing and dance. "Students should be able to leave kids there free of charge during their scheduled classes."
"I'll write it down," she said, searching through stacks of paper until she found what she called her "dean" notebook. "I think it's a liability problem though."
Maybe it won't happen. Maybe students will continue to park their children at computers and on couches and in hallways while they sit in the backs of classrooms and worry about their children entertaining themselves.
But maybe, our school, heavy with students returning to college, will set up a place that on a sunny summer day, children can sing and dance while their parents study and try to move their family up a step in the economic echelon.

Teaching College

This year, I'm teaching a lot of college courses. Seven courses January through March. Next week I start seven again.
Sometimes I love teaching college. Like at the end of the quarter when students come up and thank me. When they send me an email, like Donald did:

I wanted to thank you for your dedication and hard work in teaching English xxx. I have a much better grasp on how to write and develop a thesis throughout an essay, especially the topic sentences. English professors, from my experience, are under appreciated and I wanted you to know how much I appreciated learning research and composition in your class.

Ah. See. Now I feel like I'm making a difference. But that was last week. And while the public college I teach at is taking spring break, the for-profit college I teach at is carrying on.
During class on Tuesday, a student named Victor came in late and proceeded to set up his computer while we continued class. After an hour and a half of teaching, I released the students for a 10-minute break. We started class again and Victor waltzed in 10 minutes after we had started class again. Within five minutes, Victor, clutching his cell phone, walked back out to the hall. I was trying to break the students into groups of three. Would Victor be there for it or not? Should I give him the assignment too?
When the students were separated into groups, I stepped into the hallway where Victor was on the phone. I stood in front of him for a minute until he asked the person on the phone to hold on for a minute.
"I feel like we're really interrupting your day with this whole class thing," I said, trying to keep it light. Usually, this approach causes students to apologize for leaving or disrupting class. Instead, Victor came out with both barrels.
"Look, I run my own company. None of my other professors mind if I leave class to take phone calls."
I told Victor, "I don't mind if you leave class to take a phone call. Just take your things with you and don't come back into class."
"Do you want to go talk to the dean right now?" he asked.
"I'm happy to go with you after class," I told him and motioned toward the classroom, full of 25 students who hadn't taken phone calls.
After class, I stopped in to see the dean. Apparently Victor was upset that I had interrupted his phone call.
At the public college, my expectations are that the students will do the work and meet the criteria. I expect them to be respectful of me and the other students.
At the for-profit college, my expectations are to kowtow to the students. And I wonder if we aren't doing them a disservice. I accept late assignments. I don't say anything when they come into class late. How am I preparing them for the real world?
The dean doesn't actually support me. He says he'll carefully word an email message to Victor that let's him know his concerns have been heard. I want to roll my eyes.
I go out and buy a lottery ticket, and if I win, my first move is to turn in my resignation at the for-profit college.

Domino Effect

You know how one thing leads to another.
Nothing is ever simple. I'm learning that lesson all over again tonight.
Grace will be home tomorrow. (Yay!)
That means, I have to clean out her bedroom, a room that her younger brother claimed before her flight left Columbus.
In order to clean out her room, I have to move Tucker. He doesn't want to share a room with Spencer so he'll get the basement rec room futon. He has a dresser there, but no place to hang his hoodies and the button-up shirts he has started wearing.
So before I can move him, I have to figure out where to hang up his clothes.
Then it hit me. I have a coat tree in my room that holds purses, scarves, belts and my robe. I can clean that off and move it downstairs for Tucker's things.
I looked in my closet to figure out where to hang the robe and the scarves. Then I needed to clean the warm weather clothes out of my closet in order to make room for the things hanging on the coat tree, in order to move Tucker's things to the rec room, in order to begin cleaning Grace's room for her 40-day stay at home before she moves off to college and I'll reverse that order.
I have no hopes that her room will be as clean as it was here in June 2009 when I spent three days straightening it, but I know it will be a bit more organized than Grace left it when she went to France and Tucker is leaving it as he moves to the basement bedroom. I'm going to start in there by picking up the dirty socks and the wadded up tissues. Who knows if there's still a nice wood floor under all those discarded bath towels.

A 19-year-old's Adventures in France

I can't believe that Grace left for France a month ago.
The time has flown past for me, here in Ohio.
At first, I was afraid that this was going to be one of those experiences that Grace could look back on and appreciate, rather than enjoying it now. She was tired and frustrated with the language. She panicked when it came time for Earl to come home without her.
I got texts, I got Skype calls. Her eyes were wide and darting around as if searching for the exit.
I talked to my friend Michelle and was surprised to learn that her daughter had felt similar despair while in France the previous year. She suggested I go with the 10-day plan.
"Let's give it 10 days," I told Grace.

And after a few days, when she seemed about to sink into the mire again, unable to negotiate the big city in a foreign language, I read her the riot act.
"Get out of your room. Go get a Metro pass. Make a plan to do something."
And she did.
She's captured days like this where the sky was incredibly blue and no one could be sad or lonely.

Not every moment has been happy since then. She caught a cold and spent a weekend sniffling in bed. But she has embraced the idea of traveling and exploring.
Most everyday she ventures around the city and discovers some small joy.
Yesterday morning, as I was getting ready to leave for work, she messaged me on Skype:

oh my gosh!!! best day for the early part of today, cant wait to tell you about it

That made my heart soar.
Later I found out that she discovered a market and explored it. The little adventures are adding up.
I'm so glad that she can enjoy these moments and know that she'll be able to look back on them with pleasure too.

Studentwriting

Here it is, the beginning of another quarter at college.
I teach an online class, and everybody who forgot to register sends me an email asking if they can get in my online class. If there are openings, I let them join -- first come, first served.
Luckily, all the spots were gone when I got this email:

Good afternoot my name is jennifer mxxxx, iam interesten in taking your web class and iam asked for a signature from you please let me know what i need to do next.
thanks in advance

I emailed Jennifer back to tell her that I already had a class full of students, and suggested that some of the other teachers had openings. She should ask them.
Then I added a P.S. to her email.
"You may want to correct your spelling and punctuation before you ask another teacher."
Today I heard back from her, "thanks"
No punctuation. No capitalization.
I hope she gets in a class.

France Blog

Yay! Grace is blogging again. This time, about her trip to France.
Take a look to see France through the eyes of a brave, yet frightened, 19-year-old American.
Grace's Blog: Life Allons-y!

Paris Dress

Grace doesn't like this picture of her, but she loves the new dress.

We went shopping the other day in preparation for her autumn in Paris. We found this adorable dress that makes her feel like Audrey Hepburn.
Her Paris wardrobe also includes a couple of new pairs of jeans, a black knit dress with gray leggings, a black and white striped knit dress and two flouncy black skirts, which can all go with her variety of leggings.
Oh, and I can't forget the "red" sweatshirt. (I think it's really orange but she's going with red.) It's an off the shoulders kind of look, think 1980s.
Then she was thrilled to see Amy from Dr. Who wearing a similar sweatshirt, except Amy's is not off the shoulder.

I don't care for shopping, but Grace and I had a fun trip picking out her Paris wardrobe.
What would you have to buy if you were going to Paris for the fall?

Brilliant Idea or Crazy Scheme?

I'm an idea person. I come up with great plans like adding helium to running shoes or making cars out of rubber so they bounce off each other rather than crashing. I have little follow-through on my ideas though.
Sunday morning, Earl, Grace and I sauntered down to Caribou Coffee. As we sat at an outdoor table, we started talking about Grace's future. Would she go back to her college in upstate New York and major in languages? Would she go to college in Florida and major in marine science? Would she just stay home and go to the local community college until she figured out what she wanted to do?
We had ruled out the return to New York, and completing everything for Florida seemed unlikely at this point.
"You can just stay home this fall," I said. "You can already sign up for the classes that you want."
As we started to walk home, I reminded her she'd need to find a job other than lifeguarding since the pools will close.
I was already dreading Tucker's reaction. He takes Grace's room when she leaves for college.
But we hadn't even walked a block when I said, "Or you could go to France and Italy this fall to stay with our friends. Maybe you could even help Roby take care of her baby or work at cousin Cinzia's ski resort."
This idea seemed brilliant to all three of us!
So what do you think? Should I give this gawky 14-year-old a chance to have some more attractive photos taken in front the Arc de Triomphe?
When I went to France fresh out of college, I returned full of the urge to return to grad school, to get more education, to understand the world better.
Maybe a semester abroad would help Grace figure out what she wanted to do.
If she decides to major in languages then living in France and Italy will only help.
The cost to fly to Europe and stay with friends would be a quarter of the cost for a semester of college.
The more we thought about it, the more brilliant it became.
"Just go to college," Tucker proclaimed when we discussed the idea in front of him. "You're supposed to be in college. Just go and finish."
Well, he had a point. This could put her a semester behind, but she had taken some extra classes at the local community college, plus college credit for a biology trip to the Bahamas, so maybe it would even out. Plus, what is the point of going to college when she doesn't know what she wants to do.
The other worry is that Grace was homesick last year 10 hours away from home. She'll be an 8-hour flight away from home if she goes abroad and not able to make it back for a week-long visit.
She feels sure she won't be homesick, but when I went for three months, I was homesick. I wrote long elaborate letters and ran to the mailbox everyday. I wouldn't have traded that time for the world though.
So far, I've sent out emails to two friends in France who sent their kids over here to stay with us, including Marie's family. She spent five weeks with us the summer between Grace's junior and senior year.
One family has responded already. "Of course!"
They have two children studying in Paris and Grace can stay with them, plus holidays at the family home near Bourges, and any time with them in Nantes.
Earl hasn't contacted the cousins in Italy yet, but I thought I should take a moment and ask for some advice from my wise friends.
Is this a crazy scheme or a brilliant idea?
So, what do you think?

Teacher's Pet

The thing I've always loved about teaching college is that I don't have to put up with bad students. High school teachers are stuck with students no matter how uninterested they are in the class. I can tell college students to leave if they are rude or disruptive.
Once the quarter begins, which it did today, students need my permission to join our class. I have one opening in an English Comp class and today I received three emails asking for permission to join.
The fair-minded teacher would allow the first student who asks to join the class. I'm tempted to allow the student who has the best grammar and punctuation because that will make my job easier.
Keontey said: "I would like your permission to be added to your English class." He/she spelled English with a capital E and even included the course number at the end.
The next message from Robert said: "Hi my name is Robert, i am a student going for mechanical engineering and i would like to join your english class on wednesday 12-2:15 if thats ok with you. i really need this english. w/b or give me a call at xxxx. thanks"
Capitalizations and periods are apparently not very important to Robert and the odds of him getting into my class just plummeted.
Paul wrote next: "I wanted to ask if there was a way I could get into your engl 100 hybrid class that starts on wednesday. I tried to register for it and it says that I need your approval to take the course since the quarter has already started."
Now Paul capitalized "I" so he gets credit for that, and he used a period at the end of his sentences, but he didn't capitalize engl or wednesday.
Maybe Keontey is smart enough to write a very short message to avoid mistakes, but his/her message is the closest to being correct. Lucky for me it came first so I can give permission to Keontey to join my class.
What would you do? Would you look for the better students or feel like the poor students needed your help more?

The Good with The Bad

In less than two weeks, my daughter will be home from college for the summer. The end of an all male household, plus me, is in sight.
But I don't want to give the impression that having Grace away at college is all bad. I've found one silver lining to this gray cloud.

Since she left in August, I have used the exact same ponytail holder every time I needed a ponytail holder. For morning runs or P90X, that ponytail holder was waiting for me. Sometimes, I might have needed to move a brush out of the way to find it, but none of the males in my family took it.
It didn't disappear from my shelf to be lost in a swim bag or pulled from Grace's ponytail in a bedroom to be laid on a bedside table and later swept under a bed. It didn't find its way into a cupholder in a car. I wore it when I exercised, then I would take it out and put it back on the shelf where it remained until I needed it again.
Amazing. One ponytail holder for the entire school year.
Still, for the reward of having Grace back, I guess I'll buy another pack of ponytail holders and welcome her home. It seems a small price to pay.

23-Hour Drive

Grace's classes start on Monday, so we needed to get her back to school. The boys both had sporting events on Friday. I decided to drive Grace on Saturday and Sunday. Ten and a half hours each way. The dorms opened again on Saturday. As she texted friends and checked Facebook, she feared she would be the only one back on Saturday.
"Will you stay with me if no one else is back?" she asked.
"Sure," I said, already dreading a night in a dorm room.
We left about 7:30 on a bitterly cold morning. The temperature at home read zero; as we cruised north of Columbus, it dropped to -7 but the sun rose blindingly over the snow-covered fields.
Usually, Grace and I talk a lot in the car. She slept instead this time. She'd been home, mostly forming an indentation on the couch for five weeks. She got home on Dec. 17 and she came down with a cold on Dec. 18. She hardly left the couch.
Two trips to the doctor finally revealed that she had whooping cough, which probably explains why she wasn't able to shake the "cold" and why getting up to exercise or taking a walk around the block didn't help kick the cold.
So we had five weeks to talk. We went shopping on Thursday, avoiding the house while the water was turned off and sewer work completed.
Even though we didn't talk, I could reach over and touch her. We held hands for a lot of the way.
We arrived at the school at 5:30, and after a brief panic where Grace couldn't find her student id which gets her into the dorm, we carried about six loads of things into the dorm room. And there was her roommate Colleen limping around because she sprained an ankle. How? She likes to jump off her front porch into the snow. Her dad had dug up the yard and deposited rocks in the yard, which he hadn't told her before she jumped. Thus, the sprained ankle.
Everyone screamed to be reunited. Hugs. Late Christmas gifts. Nick has dreadlocks. Big Mike lifted girls off the ground in backbreaking bear hugs. All the exciting news. Kim had whooping cough too.
I helped Grace unpack some then sat and watched. I'd planned to take a nap in her dorm before heading back southwest to Columbus. I thought I'd drive and get a hotel some place in New York.
I started driving at 7:30 p.m., twelve hours after we had left that morning. The snow splattered the windshield and the nights seem especially black on the two-lane road in upstate New York. The snow and dark made it hard to see, and I felt really nervous when I passed an Amish carriage with a lantern swinging on the back. The lantern gave off faint light through the falling snow.
The snow made the trip slower. I travelled at 40 miles per hour on much of the highway. I stopped for coffee. Then more coffee as the hours ticked off. At one point, somewhere between Syracuse and Buffalo, I pulled into a thruway rest area and laid the seat down. I covered myself with a quilt and tried to sleep. Nope. I might as well get some coffee and keep going.
Whenever I got tired, I'd stop for coffee, the cold air kicking my eyes wide awake before I scrambled back to the car to drive some more.
I'd hoped to wait to fill up with gas again once I got to Ohio. Gas in New York hovered around $3.35 while in Ohio we were paying $3.08. With the snow pelting the roads and the snow plows lumbering along, I kept filling up whenever I stopped, in case I got caught in a snow traffic jam.
Earl texted me again around 2 a.m.
Still driving I told him, when I called.
At 4:50 a.m., I stopped at a rest stop in Ohio, about 70 miles north of Columbus and rested for 20 minutes. Then I drove the rest of the way home. I arrived at 6:30 a.m., 23 hours after I left. The car is coated with dirty snow and salt. The inside of the car is littered with blankets and sleeping bags and bottles of water.
I put on my plaid, flannel pjs and climbed into bed just as the sun began to rise, reflecting again off the bright snow.