The Joys of Teaching

So I don't really think I've written much--if anything--about my Master's program or my job as a Graduate Assistant teaching Freshman Composition at UC. It's the beginning of November, and things are going pretty well. My workload this semester isn't too intense. I'm not claiming to be some kind of genius...grad school is definitely a challenge. But two of my classes are sort of "introductory" and though my third class, English Renaissance Drama, is really interesting and challenging, the reading load is fairly light.

Despite this, I'm still busy most of the time. And it's all Teaching's fault.

Ah, teaching. It wearies my soul and gets me out of bed in the morning and makes me tear my hair out. Some days I really love it. I feel comfortable, they're engaged and learning. Last week I did a lesson on Genre and Audience using examples from the Harry Potter universe and they loved it. I do like my students. They're all remarkably hardworking and committed to the class, and their work is decent. They call me Professor Brown and they seem to respect me. I really like getting to know them individually. I want to invest in them, as much as I can, the way my professors invested in me in college.

But some days they drive me crazy. It can be difficult to get college students motivated about English at 8 in the morning. Sometimes their blank stares are so frustrating. Come on guys!, I enthuse, if you talk it'll be easier for all of us. And then we'll be done and you can leave. Don't you want to leave? It's like that scene in the classic 90s movie "Mrs. Doubtfire." Robin Williams tells the lady at the hiring agency that he "does voices." He then launches into a bunch of really funny impressions, but she never cracks a smile. She asks, "Mr. Hillard, do you consider yourself humorous?" And he calmly replies, "I used to. There was a time when I found myself funny. But today, you have proven me wrong."

My students.

Me.

Just kidding. It's never quite that bad. Most of the time when my students are quiet or turn in atrocious work, it just makes me laugh. They're so adorably clueless sometimes. There's one kid who's a great student. But whenever I ask the class if I need to explain an assignment further, he just gives the slowest, saddest, most world-weary shake of his head. hahaha...Please.

A friend in my Practicum class recently described our role when we grade papers as similar to an Emergency Room doctor's: we assess the injuries and try to patch up the most critical ones first. We look at their bloody papers and make instant judgement calls, we shout at the nurses to BRING MORE GAUZE!:

 White male, 18 years old. Okay: we gotta fix this organization or he'll bleed out on the table.  And we've got a gaping hole in the logic here caused by a single gun shot wound to the body paragraphs. Let's sew up the conclusion now or else it'll infect the rest of the essay from the bottom up. Get some transitions in here, stat! We can deal with the surface abrasions caused by faulty grammar when he's out of the woods.

But I've got this one student. If we extend the Emergency Room metaphor...he is DOA. He seems completely lost in college. Even in the first weeks, he didn't seem to grasp the concepts, or even the fact that his actions have consequences. He didn't turn things in, and what he did submit was absolutely unacceptable compared to his peers' work and the expectations for the Composition Program. When I talked to him personally, he always offered really off-the-wall excuses. But he seemed to be genuinely struggling, so I made a conscious effort to talk to him, to offer extensions, to give encouragement.

At UC, like many other colleges, undergraduate students have to pass English 1001 to graduate. If they earn below a C-, we give them an "NP," or "Not Proficient," and they have to take it again until they pass. And unfortunately, there's a point at which you  just can't recover from the poor work you've done. There's no way to get that C-. This student massively failed the first major paper, despite the suggestions I gave on the first draft. When I discussed it with the head of the Comp Program, she agreed with me--he can't recover. He should drop my course and register for the class below it, English 1000, in the spring. So then I was faced with a dilemma. How do I tell this student that he's failed already? It wasn't even October yet! Do you just say, YO, DROP MY CLASS? Maybe give him one of these?

NP for effort!

That week, I had planned to schedule individual meetings with my students. I knew it would be maybe my only opportunity to talk frankly with this student, to help him see the severity of the situation.

The conference day arrived, a Wednesday. As I walked to campus, I was still pondering how I should break the news gently to this student. This poor, fragile guy. And finally it came to me: an apt metaphor for what I'm doing is like when a doctor breaks bad news to a patient. I thought about my dad. He was fantastic with his patients--everyone always says he was an amazing listener. He really listened to their concerns, to how they were feeling. He never tried to rush people out of the office. He was kind and patient and understanding. He always explained everything and answered any questions. He invested in them.

So I'm walking up the hill and repeating to myself, good bedside manner, good bedside manner. Be kind, be kind, be gentle. When, a few minutes later, the student approached my table at Starbucks, I reminded myself to channel Dr. Brown. It...it went as well as I could have hoped. He was upset to hear he was failing so badly, but seemed to understand me. I apologized for having to give him such bad news. But I tried to balance the bad news with encouragement and advice: even if you drop now, you will be more prepared for next time. You just have to take advantage of the resources on campus. You have some nice ideas in your papers, but your writing just isn't quite there yet. (Okay, that one was sort of a lie.)

Maybe I did a better job being nice than convincing the student of the hopelessness of his grade, because he didn't drop. He stayed. He even raised his hand and answered a question last Thursday! He turned in a couple more assignments, but not the draft of the 8-page research paper. With anyone else, this would turn me into Red-Alert-Oh-Boy-You're-Screwed professor, but with this guy...it doesn't exactly matter. The last day to drop has passed, so he's officially getting an NP...no matter what.

I guess my job should be some combination of the kindly, helpful family practice doctor--who has the time and heart to explain things, to listen as they stumble towards a vaguely workable research topic--and an ER doctor, who's just trying to keep the patient alive, at all costs.

I don't know. Every time I'm harsh, I feel bad; every time I let something slide, I regret it. I'm still trying to work out the right mix of nice and tough. Ultimately, though, I'm just really hoping that this guy doesn't show up on my roster next semester! I'm not as good a person as my Dad was.

Last

October 16, 2011.

This is, I'm nearly certain, the last picture anyone took of my father. We ate our first dinner out on the new patio, and then we sat around the fire pit we got Dad for Father's Day. I told them to squeeze together so I could take a picture. 

Last picture, last conversation, last dinner, last laughter, last love.
How unprepared we always are.

How to Let Go

One of the most confusing aspects of grief is the sneaking conviction that you're doing it wrong.

You start thinking to yourself, "Surely, I should be okay by now, right?" Even though all the books and all your friends tell you there's no right way to grieve...You can't help but wonder whether it's okay to still be sad. A couple of weeks ago was the anniversary of my trip to Maine last year with my parents. Those days were some of my last, best memories with my Dad. I had been trying to get work done all day, but I was really struggling. So at one point I was laying on my bed bawling and I suddenly wondered what my Dad would say if he could see me. Moping around and crying, a year later, just because he died. I thought, would he be disappointed? Would he say, That's nice of you, honey, but enough is enough.

It's been nearly a year since he died. That's such a distinct and knowable amount of time. Eleven months doesn't sound that long, but a year...that has weight. It has meaning. As a student, your life is broken up into years. Each fall represents a chance to start over, to make new friends and new memories--a clear demarcation between then and now. But now the changing leaves, the brisk wind, the dreary, grey skies all remind me of last year, the days when the weather outside echoed my feelings inside.

I read somewhere that grief is a shapeshifter. It's true. You think you figure something out, then suddenly you're completely lost again. Wait, how do I live without my Dad? I find myself going through emotions I thought I'd dealt with. I find myself feeling resentment over something I thought I'd made peace with. I find myself worrying at night, when I'd been sleeping well for months and months.

I was reminded of an advice column I read after my Dad died. "Sugar" is the pen name of Cheryl Strayed, a writer who happened to lose her mother at 22. One letter she received was from a man who felt helpless in the face of his fiancee's grief over the loss of her own mother, ten years before.

She starts off her response with a story:

"Several months after my mother died I found a glass jar of stones tucked in the far reaches of her bedroom closet. I was moving her things out of the house I’d thought of as home, clearing way for the woman with whom my stepfather had suddenly fallen in love. It was a devastating process—more brutal in its ruthless clarity than anything I’ve ever experienced or hope to again—but when I had that jar of rocks in my hands I felt a kind of elation I cannot describe in any other way except to say that in the cold clunk of its weight I felt ever so fleetingly as if I were holding my mother.

That jar of stones wasn't just any jar of stones. They were rocks my brother and sister and I had given to our mom. Stones we’d found as kids on beaches and trails and the grassy patches on the edges of parking lots and pressed into her hands, our mother’s palms the receptacle for every last thing we thought worth saving.

I sat down on the bedroom floor and dumped them out, running my fingers over them as if they were the most sacred things on the earth. Most were smooth and black and smaller than a potato chip. Worry stones my mother had called them, the sort so pleasing against the palm she claimed they had the power to soothe the mind if you rubbed them right.

What do you do with the rocks you once gave to your dead mother? Where is their rightful place? To whom do they belong? To what are you obligated? Memory? Practicality? Reason? Faith? Do you put them back in the jar and take them with you across the wild and unkempt sorrow of your twenties or do you simply carry them outside and dump them in the yard?" 

---Cheryl Strayed, "The Black Arc of It" 

A year ago, I would have said, Of course--throw out the stupid rocks. They aren't your mother. But now, as I'm facing the long years without my father, I'm not so sure.

I worry about forgetting. I think about how we all eventually get relegated to stories, to a small box filled with inconsequential items--a pair of glasses, a watch, a book, a smooth stone. And I guess that is the natural order of things, that people fade from life and then fade from our memories. But I'm having a hard time accepting that truth right now. I just want him to stay. I just want him to always be present in my heart. I want to remember my Dad, the things he taught me, his smile. I want to honor his memory. I don't want the anniversaries to pass like any other day. I want to sit with the grief and know it as part of who I am. I want to give thanks for it.

How do you begin to let go?

Sugar ends her letter by encouraging the man to simply bear witness to his fiancee's grief: It'll never be okay, but that's okay. There isn't an expiration date on the sadness of losing a parent at a young age. I have to remind myself that I'm still very close to it all--I won't be able to see whether I've been "doing it right" for a very long time. I have to hold on to the hope, the faith, that someday it will be different:

"Next week it will be twenty years since my mother died. So long I squint every time the thought comes to me. So long that I've finally convinced myself there isn't a code to crack. The search is over. The stones I once gave my mother have scattered, replaced by the stones my children give to me. I keep the best ones in my pockets. Sometimes there is one so perfect I carry it around for weeks, my hand finding it and finding it, soothing itself along the black arc of it."

Am I holding on to my own worry stones? Have I wrapped my grief around my shoulders like a security blanket? Am I clutching my sadness to my breast, so that he doesn't fade away? But if I'm no longer actively grieving...am I actively forgetting my Dad? I just really don't know.

Maybe in another year I'll have a better perspective--or in ten, or twenty. For now, I just don't know.

Perhaps I'm so worried about this because we're approaching Year One. Or perhaps it's because so much is changing in my life right now. And while it's good and exciting and refreshing, I find myself grasping desperately onto things I know. To people I love. To my family and to my memories. To the smooth stones (and hopes and dreams and questions) I once entrusted to my Dad's strong hands, the safest place for them.

(Postsecret).

One more miracle

"But, please, there's just one more thing, one more thing, one more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don't be...dead. Would you do that just for me? Just stop it. Stop this."

--John Watson, Sherlock

sunrise on mt. cadillac

"No matter what happens now,

you shouldn't be afraid

because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen."

 --radiohead

a year ago, today.

the coast of Maine; six a.m. sunrise.

the land, the ocean, the wind---

transcendence.


Exactly one month later, Dad suffered the stroke that killed him. It's funny how we never know what's coming. If we only knew---how much tighter we'd hold on, how we'd say to ourselves: I will remember this.

How I'd have taken pictures with my heart, not just with my camera: faces uplifted to greet the sun. Blueberry pancakes, hikes through the woods, wildflowers. A sheltering arm against the wind. Harmless squabbles, dinner over wine and laughter. Admiring the brightness of the stars.

How much more I would have said, if I'd known how soon he'd join those stars.

On Becoming a Bearcat

Hey Dad,

You've been on my mind and my heart a lot lately.

It's not just that your birthday is next Wednesday, on the fifth. It's not just that looking at all these class schedules reminds me how soon October 18th is--I now know that it's a Thursday, when I have to teach and attend two graduate classes. It'll be a rough day.

But that's not why I've been thinking about you so often lately. I've been reminded of you continually because the University of Cincinnati is still so new and present for me. I still notice the buildings, the signs, the stadiums and the spirit wear. I'm working on reconciling my memory of the campus with my new needs: the fastest way between McMicken and the library, the best place to eat a quick lunch, the route home that involves the least uphill walking. Each day I pause, look around me and think, I like it here. I like the campus and the people. I like the energy and the history and the newness.

Each moment when I get a sense of rightness, a sense that I'm right where I should be, I think of you and the love you always had for your alma mater. I've always cherished the memories of when you'd take us to Bearcat basketball games. We'd park in Burnet Woods to save money, we'd walk down the hill and through campus to the Shoemaker Center. We'd sit up high and join in with the other fans singing the cheers, shouting "Go Home!" or "So What?" as the opposing team members were announced. You know I barely care about sports but I always had such a good time. I remember once we beat Marquette, or maybe it was Louisville, right at the buzzer and everybody stayed and cheered for nearly ten minutes afterwards. We just went crazy. Sometimes we'd leave right after it ended, but you always stayed long enough to sing along with the UC Alma Mater. I could never understand the words, (except Varsity, dear Varsity), but you knew them all. You'd take off your hat and sing along so proudly. Then we'd leave, listening in to the interview with Bob Huggins on 700 WLW on the drive home.

I think about you, here, in this place. I think about which buildings you probably took classes in as an undergrad, and which buildings are definitely after your time. I think about how you probably took a 1970s version of English Composition 1001, maybe from a graduate student instructor like me. I try to imagine Langsam Library in the 70s--no computers and...I don't know, wood paneling and shag carpet. I think of you reading biology textbooks and diligently taking notes. Maybe Dad looked out these exact windows, I thought today, as I sat at a table struggling to read Michel Foucault. (He's a French literary theorist. Yeah.)

A friend said to me the other day that our lives, yours and mine, are merging in the space/time continuum. (Ever seen Doctor Who?) That somehow, right now, I'm living a life parallel to yours during your undergraduate and med school years, despite how different our experiences are. Everything was ahead of you then, just like things are for me now. It's a pretty remarkable thing.

It's remarkable because I didn't exactly plan to attend "your" university. Before you died, I'm pretty sure I blatantly told you I wasn't considering UC because I absolutely would not stay in Cincinnati. I never thought you were disappointed in that, and I know you would have been excited for me no matter where I ended up. I didn't even decide to apply until after you died, because I realized I didn't want to be far away from our family. I wish I had made that decision without your death. I wish I could have shared with you my good news--acceptance and a full scholarship and a teaching job and a stipend--from UC, your dear Varsity.

I don't know if you would have said anything to me about being glad that I chose UC. I don't even know if you'd have mentioned it to Mom, or to a friend. But I like to think (and you're not around to contradict me), that you would have been secretly so happy.

I know you were (and are and will always be) proud of me. When I got accepted, Dad, aside from wanting to just share my news, I wanted to thank you. I know I said these things during my goodbyes, but seriously--thanks, Dad. Thanks for teaching me to read. Thanks for sharing with me your love of learning. Thanks for believing in me. Thanks for contradicting me when I made self-disparaging comments about how I'll never get into graduate school. Thanks for showing up at my concerts, my award ceremonies. Thanks for threatening to take away my violin if I didn't start practicing more. Thanks for reading my Honors project. I always dreamed that if I ever wrote a book, I'd dedicate it to you and Mom, and that's still true. Someday, if I ever finish my dissertation, you're going on the first page. You got me here, and you've made it special.

I wish I could share this experience with you, Dad. I wish you could have helped me move in. I imagine that you would have worn a Bearcats t-shirt, and a Bearcats baseball cap. I imagine you and Mom driving down for an evening. We'd go to a game or a CCM concert, then eat dinner at Ambar India and I'd walk back to my apartment. I imagine that we'd all walk around campus before the game, and you and Mom would tell stories about classes, about meeting each other, about your memories of being so young and full of promise.

I wish I could buy you a stupid, overpriced "Proud UC Dad" bumper sticker.