A room with a view.

Amidst my complaining about student preparedness and motivation, I tend to forget that I have a nice office with a great view: a dogwood in full bloom, and the courtyard between this building and the fine arts building. It's taken me years to land an office with a close-able door, let alone one with a window, let alone one which boasts a view such as this.

I haven't yet cracked the research essays I wrote about last time; I fear for my sanity. But I did grade two small sets of in-class essays this weekend, essays for my two learning support classes. Funny, but I didn't fume and rage as I normally would, maybe because this was their first in-class essay and I didn't--well, I was going to write "didn't expect much." But I expected, to some degree, a lack of control and an abundance of errors, more so with these than with the out-of-class writings they've done previously. And I was rewarded, amply. :)

I dunno. We college instructors have a tough task when we're forced into this "catch-up" role. Take a public high school student who has been academically challenged all his life--never had much interest in school, nor it in him, but it's instilled in him that he has to go to college and get a degree to have much of a fighting chance in this world. Our institution is pretty much open admission--as long as you have at least a GED, have the right paperwork, and can either pay or qualify for financial aid, we'll take you.

But open-admissions policies reap exactly what they sow: we teach students with a whole host of reasons for being here, and with a dizzyingly wide range of skills and abilities. Too many of them don't really have a goal, other than to survive. As I told it to someone last week, college is just another bumper in their pinball-machine lives. And if I had their insane schedules, I too would have everything on my mind except college.

This fall, I'm teaching for the first time a college "success" course: how to study, take notes, make friends, choose a major, determine needed coursework, find the campus offices you need, et al. I've never done it before; I hope it's kinda fun.