Pandemic days

One of the (many) strange things about teaching a hybrid class during a pandemic is the ghost-town vibe on campus, with few students and even fewer professors, closed meeting rooms and shuttered offices, and plenty of parking.

 

Whittling down

This past week my Intro to College Writing students at Framingham State have been preparing brief presentations they’ll give after we return from Thanksgiving break. My students have worked on individual projects for over a month now, doing research and spending lots of time thinking about their topics in advance of writing a five- to seven-page position paper. But before they submit the final version of that assignment, I’m asking them to prepare a brief presentation where they share their conclusions and field questions.

Being able to summarize a complicated issue in a clear and concise manner is a valuable skill: imagine a world where everyone could boil things down to their essence. In class last week, I showed students how to summarize their project in a single paragraph using a basic template I provided. This week, we’ve practiced converting this paragraph into a sentence outline, and today we’re translating that sentence outline into a keyword outline.

I tell my students that being able to express an idea both briefly and at length is a valuable skill: if you know a topic inside and out, you can whittle it down to its essential points or you can elaborate in more depth and detail. Many of my students are accustomed to school assignments that require them to write more rather than less, so they are surprised to realize how hard it is to be both brief and clear.

When you whittle something down to its essentials, you necessarily have to prioritize your points: which ideas are essential, and which are expendable? Brevity isn’t merely the soul of wit; it is also the companion of comprehension.

 

Good luck-eyes

There is a horse-chestnut (aka buckeye) tree I pass every time I park in my usual spot at Framingham State, and this past semester, I fell into the habit of picking up a single buckeye every morning I came to campus to teach. Buckeyes remind me of Ohio, so it became a comforting ritual to pick up a buckeye, polish it in my hand as I walked to my office, and then place it on my desk as that day’s amulet: a good luck-eye.

Last week, I gathered all these buckeyes into a basket, each representing a day when I commuted to campus with the usual assortment of worries, obligations, and distractions. Whether it was rainy or sunny, I picked up a buckeye. Whether I was tired, discouraged, or feeling energized, I picked up a buckeye. Whether I was running late or had arrived early, I picked up a buckeye.

Whereas my students get something tangible at the end of each semester–a grade and whatever credits they’ve accrued–teaching can sometimes feel as futile as a dog chasing her tail. After so much energy poured into lectures, quizzes, and essay drafts, what (if anything) did I or anyone accomplish? At the end of yet another semester, it felt oddly satisfying to have accumulated a tangible thing: not something I made, for sure, but something I gradually gathered, a reminder of moments that might have otherwise slipped away without notice.

 

Tomorrow’s trees

Today I drove to Framingham State for the English department’s annual retreat for first-year writing instructors: the first time I’ve been on campus in months. Every summer, the first-year writing retreat feels like a dry-run for the start of the semester: a reminder of what it’s like to get up early, scramble to get ready, and then commute to campus for morning classes. Soon enough, my teaching-day routine will be a once-again familiar habit, but today I felt like I was fumbling through a forgotten dance.

I’ve taught at Framingham State long enough now that I recognize the grounds’ own seasonal cycle. There is a horse-chestnut tree I regularly pass on my way from the parking lot to my office, for example: in September when classes start, it will drop buckeyes, the culmination of the flowers that appeared as classes ended in May. On my office windowsill, I have a collection of dried horse-chestnuts I’ve gathered beneath this tree. During the early weeks of Fall semester, buckeyes emerge from their hulls round and shiny, but over the course of the term they shrivel into misshapen lumps and lose their sheen.

I suppose this is a metaphor for the school year itself. The start of Fall semester is a round and shiny time when one’s supplies are new and ample, one’s intentions are strong, and anything seems possible. In time, the sheen of a new school year will fade and enthusiasm will wane and wither. But seeds aren’t designed to live on a windowsill forever. Buckeyes are built to be buried, and only then do they open and emerge into the infinite promise of tomorrow’s trees.

 

Almost spring

We’re already three-quarters of the way through February and almost halfway through the semester: almost, but not quite. I’m in my office at Framingham State and can hear a colleague lecturing in her classroom; outside, the grounds crew lumbers by in an all-terrain cart.

It is warm outside, in the 60s; students stroll by in shirtsleeves, and one brave couple boldly spreads a blanket on the snowmelt-muddied quad. It’s a tentative foray into spring; winter has stepped off stage but has yet to leave the building.

I open my second-floor office window for a taste of almost-spring air, a fresh breeze trickling in like an elixir. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I spend my days inside a single building, walking from class to office then back to class again. The world outside might as well be a foreign country–a distant land–another planet entirely. What business do I have here in my brick-building perch with the fresh-aired world outside, with couples on their snowmelt-muddied blankets?

And yet, the gentle waft of spring breeze brings it back: memories of study sessions in the sun, the itch of grass blades on bare flesh, the kiss of cold earth. This morning I walked into our backyard and marveled to see the bare earth again–the same rusty mud as three days ago, before the intervening snow. Although I’ve seen it day after day, year after year, this morning I was stopped short by the inevitable earth, with ground the hue of dead-leaf dirt lightened by yellowed lawn and a tinge of thawed moss.

It’s too early for spring green–that won’t erupt for another month. But the earth today is different than it was last week much less last month. The earth is still sleeping deep in this almost-spring, but it’s felt the warmth of lengthening days strip away its snow coat, and it knows which way its axis lies.

 

What democracy looks like

Yesterday there was a student-led march to protest six racist incidents on campus last semester. This isn’t the first event students have organized to speak out against racism on campus, but it’s the first one that happened when I was on campus and not either teaching or tutoring.

I’m not by nature a march-goer. Although I attended the Unity Walk students organized after the 2016 election as well as the Women’s March on Boston Common in January, 2017, my dislike of crowds makes me a less-than-ideal rally-goer. My personal political proclivities are more introverted in nature: I’d rather stay inside and make a sign than go outside and wave one.

Yesterday, however, I ignored my personal proclivities. The whole point of a protest, after all, is to gather a crowd, and a crowd needs lots of bodies. “Silence is violence,” several signs reminded us: when bigots are spewing words of hate, doing nothing speaks volumes. Even if you don’t know how to fix a problem as big and complicated as white supremacy, the least you can do is show up to the fight.

 

October evenings

I teach in Framingham until 6:30 on Tuesday and Thursday nights, so this means I’ve seen firsthand how inevitably the days have shortened: a class that used to end in daylight now lets out after dark.

I teach my afternoon class in May Hall, where my office is also located. May Hall is perched atop a hill, and its stairwells have west-facing windows that offer lovely views of distant hills and afternoon sunsets. October is a busy month for professors, so I haven’t had much time to go leaf-peeping. On late October afternoons, however, you needn’t go far to enjoy the seasonal scenery.

 

Six words

This past Friday was the National Day on Writing, and for the first time, Framingham State hosted an event sponsored by the English Department and the Center for Academic Success and Achievement (CASA). Among the day’s activities was a six-word memoir wall where students, faculty, and staff posted colorful sticky-notes telling the (brief) stories of their lives.

Capturing your life in six words sounds difficult, but it’s fun and even addictive once you try it. (You can read some examples here.) On the first day of my American Short Story class each semester, I tell students the apocryphal legend of Ernest Hemingway’s shortest story: “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” We debate the larger story behind these words: who placed the ad, why were the shoes never worn, and is the baby who should have worn them alive, dead, or never born?

It turns out you can say a lot in only a few words, and every semester my students and I try our hands at writing our own six-word memoirs. If you had only six words to share your life story with strangers, which six words would you choose? A six-word version of my story I often share with students is “Went to college, never came home,” but other six-word accounts of my life are equally accurate, like “Still writing after all these years.”

At Friday’s event, we also asked students, faculty, and anyone passing by to pose with one of our #WhyIWrite whiteboards. Just as everyone has a life story to tell, everyone has their own reasons for writing. (You can see some of them here.) Some of us write to understand our lives, some of us write to escape them, and some of us write to share our experience. Some of us struggle to explain exactly why we write; we just know it will take far more than six words to say.

 

Debrief

The week after spring semester grades are due is devoted to faculty meetings, retreats, and professional development workshops: a chance to sit and talk with colleagues you’ve seen only in passing the rest of the semester. Although I’m no fan of meetings, I appreciate the chance to debrief after the end of a busy semester: what worked? What didn’t? What do we want to do moving forward?

If nothing else, a week of meetings gives faculty a chance to enjoy campus when it is at its lush and leafy best, without any students around to appreciate it. Having pushed so hard to finish the semester and its great gush of final grading, I find it soothing to be around the simple surety of leafing trees and greening grass.

 

Miles in May

I teach early until late on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester, with my first class starting at 8:30 am and my last class ending at 6:30 pm. This means I have a big chunk of time between my morning and afternoon classes, and I typically spend that time in my office grading papers, prepping classes, and meeting with students. On any given Tuesday or Thursday, I spend the entire day in May Hall, all my classes and office being located there.

My Fitbit has an activity reminder that buzzes near the end of any daytime hour I haven’t logged 250 steps. When I’m teaching, there’s no need for reminders, as I pace and gesticulate, walking around the classroom and trying to keep my students awake. But during that big chunk of time between my morning and afternoon classes, when I’m in my office tending to sedentary tasks, I appreciate an occasional nudge (or buzz) to get moving.

There’s no telling how many miles I’ve walked in May Hall this semester. My office is on the second floor, and I’ve learned I can log 250 steps by going upstairs, walking through the History department on the third floor, walking through the Art department on the fourth floor, and then retracing my steps through History and back to English. If I get tired of that route, I can walk downstairs and past the first floor classrooms, through the basement with its ceramic studios and kilns, and back, taking quick peeks into the rooms I pass.

When the weather’s nicer, I’ll probably venture outside to walk around campus, but in winter time, walking laps through May Hall does the trick: it pulls me away from my desk and gets my blood moving, and it gives me an excuse to check out the art exhibits on display in the hallways and in quiet corners.

This week I heard a radio story about a former inmate who ran his first marathon in prison, logging 26.2 miles on a treadmill last April 18: Marathon Monday. This year, he’s out of prison and is running the actual Boston Marathon: same mileage, but a far more interesting route. I’ve never run a marathon, but if you can do it on a treadmill, I suppose there’s nothing stopping me from racking up 26.2 miles (eventually) in May Hall.