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October 4, 2007
Meet Miss Ann Thrope...
When I was an undergraduate (and then a post-baccalaureate), I attended massive universities, and had classes all over. I had favorite and not-so-favorite parts of campus. I had places that I thought of as "my" spots.
When I started grad school, that all changed. Suddenly I wasn't on North Campus for a chem class, and then racing to West Campus for Italian. I was in Mills Hall for every freaking seminar. At Pitt I was firmly ensconsed within the Cathedral of Learning. At one point, one of the grad students a year or so ahead of me calculated the number of hours he had spent in the main seminar room. It brought tears to his eyes when he saw how high the number was.
Teaching sometimes allowed me to see other buildings. I was lucky enough to get to teach in a state-of-the-art computer lab in the Gardner Steel Conference Center while in my last year at Pitt. But for the most part, I lived, taught, and studied in one building.
The same goes for UVM. The English Department has long taught in the building in which our offices are located, Old Mill, and the connected Old Mill Annex building and Lafayette Hall.
I know there are other parts of the campus, but I don't get to see them. Well, that was the case until just recently. My irrational demands for computer classrooms (imagine an English teacher needing computers! Scoff! Sputter! Incredulity!), and the campus-wide space crunch caused by ever-increasing enrollments mean that I am (and all of my colleagues are, as well) now being sent all over campus to teach.
And while I see a steady stream of humanity passing outside my office window, there really is a difference between watching the students who walk past the Old Mill, and watching the ones who walk between the Business College and the science buildings. At least, the students seem different. But it may be just that the attitude is decidedly not what I'm used to seeing and hearing around Old Mill.
I'm reminded, every Tuesday and Thursday as I walk across campus to my graduate seminar (which is held in the Business college!), that while I really like my students (grad and undergrad), I don't really like... people.
I'd make a terrible Walt Whitman.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers
-from "Song of Myself," Section 5.
See? That's Walt. Me? Not so much.
Posted by reparent at October 4, 2007 4:39 PM
Comments
"... and the women my sisters and lovers."
Wasn't Walt kinda, you know, gay?
Is this tragic, stupid, or merely a lie?
Posted by: coeurlion at October 4, 2007 7:21 PM