Back in saddle...

It's time to gear up for a new semester.

I admit it, I always like fall semester and feel like it's a new start. If I ran the circus, the New Year would start on Sept. 1 rather than on Jan. 1. After the (relative) idleness of the summer, it's nice to come back and have stuff start moving again.

As I've said before, I have happy memories of the back-to-school supply-acquisition we used to do when I was a kid: new pencils, new crayons, everything seemed hopeful because it was new and not messed up yet and it held promise. There was the minor league craft project of covering my textbooks (using paper grocery-store bags; I wonder if kids still do that - heck, I wonder how common the brown paper bags are any more).

I also like the fact that it feels like fall is coming. As I've said too many times, I don't like summer much. It's too hot, it's too unstructured. I also think it makes me sad because "summer is when you're supposed to have fun" and I never got into the typical stuff lots of people did (going to amusement parks, going to the beach, shooting off fireworks) - my "fun" is different, quieter and more sedate and often something that's better done indoors (knitting or sewing) or it's something that's really more amenable in the fall (hiking or leaf-peeping) or even winter (I did enjoy things like sledding and snowball fights when I was a kid).

The last couple days I was up at my parents, I could FEEL that fall was coming - it was cooler and dryer, the light had that particular angle to it and that particular shade of yellow that made you think of fall rather than summer. (Down here, the light is still its bright metallicky-white color that it is in the summer). I thought of things like it being cool enough for going out antiquing to be fun again (in the summer, walking from store to store gets exhausting). Or cooking proper food like soups and bread. Or even just getting into bed on a rainy Friday night and being happy because you are warm and snug and protected from the rain.

I'm writing my last two syllabi today. (This is for the 'common section' class that many people teach, so it has to be fairly consistent). I'm struck by how many things we now add to our syllabi:

- a Disability Concerns statement, explaining how students can get accommodations (e.g., longer testing time if it's someone who has a hard time writing or certain learning disabilities) and that we can ONLY grant accommodations if the guy in charge says we should. (To prevent abuse of the policy....)

- a Title IX and in-general non-discrimination pledge. It makes me a little sad that we have to make that pledge, that it can't automatically be assumed we won't discriminate against people on the basis of stuff like gender or ethnic background, but life is imperfect.

- a statement of where to go to get counseling or emergency mental health services. I hope that last is never needed, but I guess it's good to have it in the syllabi.

All this also makes me think again of how "on my own" I was as a college student: none of that was provided on the syllabus and if, for example, I had thought I was depressed, I'd have to first seek out where the counselor's office was and what its hours were, and then go over there and make my own arrangements. (I have known people here who have walked students over to the office when the student was in a very bad way. I wonder if my profs would have done that?). I did seek it out once, when I was having insomnia problems related to issues surrounding the fact that I'd been asked to leave my first graduate program and then I was working my tail off on my last big paper project because DANGIT, I wanted to make one of the profs who made that decision regret having asked me to leave....and it wound up in a big circle of suck (sorry) and I didn't sleep more than an hour or two at night for over a week. The guy was sympathetic but didn't have too many suggestions of stuff I hadn't tried, and eventually the problem resolved anyway....

(And in the long run? Being asked to leave that program was probably a good thing; I wound up in a smaller program with a better advisor and I had more opportunities to do things like be a teaching-assistant for higher-level classes, and I got better teaching-assitant training at my second school.....and I actually wound up winning an award for my teaching* and ultimately getting the gig I have now, and I've also been co-author on a number of papers with my advisor).

(*Now I think about it, I wonder if part of that was the doing of one of the guys I taught for, because I was instrumental in busting a plagiarism ring in his class.... I mean, I was also no slouch as a teacher but I did do things that went a little beyond and I was unwilling to "look the other way" like my UTA that semester was....)

I wonder: when I was a student, were things different because more of us lived in dorms (at least our first year) and the vast majority of us at my undergrad school were "traditional" students (18-20, single, no kids, working part time AT MOST) and it was assumed your dorm-mates or the Resident Assistant in the dorm would pick up on health or emotional problems someone was having and refer them....or was there a culture at a bigger school of the profs/TAs being more "hands off" and expecting the students to sink or swim on their own? Or was it less-recognized that a goodly proportion of basically "functional" people are going to have problems with depression or OCD or something like that?

I don't know. I think there are two extremes, and somewhere inbetween (which is probably where I teach now is closer to) is better: one extreme is like what I experienced, where we were expected to know when we needed help and also where to go find it. The other extreme being where there are essentially on-campus "minders" for the students who look after them and shepherd them. OCCASIONALLY some of the things we are asked to do approach this. (We are expected, for example, to submit grades and numbers of days missed every month on many of the students - the athletes, the people on scholarship, the people with some disability concern, the non-traditional students. It gets, I admit, a little burdensome because the system is not ideal....it's very clunky and the online interface is extremely slow, to the point where it can take 10 minutes for the information on a large class to upload). I also post running totals of grades on the secure student website so my students are welcome to look up their grades whenever they wish.....and I tend to feel like it should be the students' responsibility to monitor their grades (though I understand about coaches needing to know, for eligibility reasons)

I also think of office hours: when I was a student, profs held MAYBE 2 hours a week, and woe unto you if you needed to speak with them outside those office hours. (Some profs were happy to make appointments, others did not). I am expected to hold 10 hours per week, and those within certain proscribed limits (at least 1 hour per workday*, none before 8 am**, I think none after 5 pm***

* which is a headache when you are someone who does field research and have one day a week maybe when you don't teach: do you put the office hour first thing and then get out to the field late, or do you do it at the end of the day and maybe have to come back in, crawling with ticks and no time to shower first?

** This irks me and I continue to hold "unofficial" or "extra" 7 to 8 am hours, because a goodly number of my students with busy schedules specifically used that time because they could come in then. I prefer to hold hours when students can actually come and get help.

*** Actually, I'm glad of this. I'd hate having to be up here late, late in the day. There was a suggestion made last fall that "You know, 20 years ago, some of the science faculty held 7 to 9 pm review sessions a couple times a week" and there was considerable grumbling over the hint that maybe we should, too....then, a little research showed it was maybe ONE person, and that person didn't hold other conventional office hours.


I don't know. I LIKE helping students; it's very satisfying when someone comes in and says, "I don't understand this particular thing" and you explain it a slightly different way, or have them work through an example with your help, and the light suddenly goes on in their eyes. But I also admit when you have a busy schedule (like last fall's overload), juggling in the office hours gets annoying. (I also don't like to hold Friday afternoon office hours; no one comes in and also, sometimes it's nice to run errands Friday afternoon and then come in and grade or whatever on Saturday morning).