People!

For me, academic summers are stretches of time in which I can reliably get from the parking lot to my office with a maximum of two phatic social interactions (admin. assistant, custodian) and can then engage in spirited conversations with myself for 5 or 6 hours before heading kidwards and back into "communicate with others" mode.

Yesterday I started student advising at 10 (a group meeting) and then met one-on-one with new freshmen about their schedules between 11 and 3 and then led a discussion about the summer reading (Catfish and Mandala) and then went to dinner at the college president's house with the author of the summer reading (Andrew Pham), and then went to the public reading given by Pham.  It was all a bit much talking to other people. Conversing.  The Lost Art of.  The art I've lost of.

Pham was fascinating, and appealing to me because he reached a point in the Q&A after his evening performance at which he seemingly decided he didn't want to answer some of our more impertinent questions, and didn't care whether that irked us.  Frankly, that's also what makes his book so good: the narrator's admission of unlikeable features of himself . . . and the implication that he doesn't care how we respond to his revelation.  Like him?  Not like him?  Fine.  He's doing his work for himself, not for YOU.

Thinking about this makes clear the difference between summer work (for myself) and semester (for YOU . . . which, in this case is the students).  Draining.

YOU guys, you make me tired.

Between you, Winton (who missed me last night at bed time and so woke me up at 4 to pat me smile and incant happily "Muh-mmeeeee") and Clara (who peed through the leg of her pullup and was already awake at 4, waiting for someone else to wake up so she could complain about her wet bed) I very much want to stay here in my office, lights off, door closed and mutter incoherently.  This does not bode well for a return to teaching tomorrow.