Busy

What a day. Busy and wrenching.

A former student stopped in with some questions about his college class. He has the best professor out there and he’s worried about his first response paper. So I tried to calm his fears and offered to read his rough draft.

Then I had to write a letter of recommendation for a student. I had forgotten I’d said I would. But I got it done.

Later during my prep I read the focused free writes from my advanced writing class. They were to respond to my grade and comments on their essays. Boy was that interesting. Many were pissed. I bet 80% of the class have 4.0 GPAs. So when many got themes back with B and C grades, they were none too happy. It happened totally by accident, but I had stumbled upon a perfect way to teach, or at least illustrate, voice. Ironically, many of the essays scored lower because they were generic. There was no voice present. Or if there was one, it was artificial (you know, the “I’m going to write to impress the teacher” kind of voice that immediately turns all writing to horse shit). So when I handed the focused free writes back, on which I scrawled various comments, and I told them, “If you guys wrote with the same voice and passion in your essays that you did on this response, the whole lot of you would have earned As.” You should have seen their faces. It finally donned on them. One student, on whom I was particularly harsh, said, “Now I know how to make this essay better.” He had been stuck copy editing in hopes of improving his grade instead of truly revising. Lesson learned. For all of us.

Then for the rest of the block, I had short conferences with the writers. One girl was writing her newest essay on her grandfather’s death from cancer. This, of course, is something I know all too well. In her first draft she was doing too much telling. She was glossing over key details that would bring her essay to life. For example, she wrote about spending all of her free time with him in his final days. I told her to be more specific and show what they did. Then I talked a little bit about how I tried to do the same with Mom and now Dad. I looked over at her and the tears were rolling. I ignored them at first,but then after a few more instances I said, “If you keep that up, we’ll both be bawling. And then where would we be?”

After class a former student stopped in. I haven’t seen her in at least four years. She married another former student and they now have five kids. Her husband has written a novel and they want me to read it and respond. I told her that I don’t have enough time for that, but I’d read a couple chapters and give them some feedback.

Just got another email from a student wanting to interview me for a college essay. Wow. That’s a lot to be done. So why am I blogging? As one college said, “Your blog has got to be cathartic.” It is. And it keeps me sane.