#21: I could tell they didn't believe me.
Dear Readers:
You will receive an email from me each month containing one boredom, one horror, and one glory. This is the twenty-first one.
Boredom. Our semester doesn’t end until December, but it feels like it’s sputtering toward a stop already. I taught six different online classes this semester, including three regular classes, Intro to Creative Writing, College Writing II, Advanced Creative Nonfiction, and three classes that were each five weeks long, Business and Professional Writing, Writing and the Publishing Industry, and Writing for Social Change.
We’ve done some fun things in my classes this semester, but even those things seem muted, like I experienced them from behind a screen door. Oh, I guess mean I experienced them from behind a screen.
I should have had them to go outside and take a walk and make voice recordings about what they saw.
I should have had them reflect about using Zoom.
I should have had them make drawings by hand or write something by hand and upload it on the Discussion Board. We could have talked about how different it feels to write something that way.
In College Writing I should have had them analyze specific social media posts about the election. I tried to get them to do that but I wrote the assignment wrong or something; they talked about the election in general, not specific social media posts about the election.
I should have given them a week off every other week.
I should have made all of them meet with me individually.
I should have been organized.
I shouldn’t have gotten so concerned about certain students’ problems with certain parts of certain courses.
I should have had them write stories that take place on Zoom.
I shouldn’t have gotten so upset when they got angry at me.
I shouldn’t have gotten so happy when they said they loved me.
I should have had them write journals. Why didn’t I have them write journals?
I should have had them interview each other about using Zoom.
I should have had them to not use any Internet-connected device for 24 hours and report back on how it went.
I should have had them make erasures of newspaper articles.
I should have had them attend a reading or lecture or any of the countless Zoom events free and available all the time.
I should have made an introductory video. But they don’t watch the videos. They take so long to make and I feel so stupid making them and they don’t watch them!
Horror. One of the most depressing moments of this semester was when a student sent an email to all their professors, me included—in my ocean of emails like this one, I don’t remember which of my classes this student was in or who this student was—saying how they were sorry they were behind, they had been sick and depressed and they would catch up soon. One of the professors who received this email replied all, reaming the student out and describing an elaborate series of catch-up assignments they needed to do.
My students were constantly apologizing to me this semester, when they weren’t yelling at me. They were exhausted, sad, afraid, angry, disappointed. I told them a thousand times I would work with them no matter how far behind they were, that it wasn’t too late to do well in the class, it was never too late, that I knew they could do it, that I trusted them and believed in them and cared about them. I told them these things in serious weekly announcements and in big funny comic sans font on the front pages of the courses; I told them in one-on-one Zoom meetings and group Zoom meetings and in video recordings that they didn’t watch.
I could tell they didn’t believe me.
Glory. I wouldn’t say I did the best I could or tried the hardest I could. But I did try, and that’s going to have to be enough. If not for them, for me. Because there’s another semester coming.
When I was in middle school and high school, I loved acting in plays because you work so hard, with such intensity and focus, and then it’s over and you leave it behind completely and move on to the next thing. I knew I wanted a job like that when I grew up. And I have one.
Sincerely,
Lucy
I would love to mail you a holiday card from me, Brian, and Bea—if you’d like one, reply to this newsletter with your address.