Sprints

As some of you may know, I’m in the process of training for a century ride—100 miles on a bike—that will take place in 10 days. This is all happening a mere 13 months after I actually learned to ride a bike as an adult. In the next issue of Loomings, I’ll give you the rundown on how that actually goes, I expect. But for now, I’m thinking about sprints and surges. Repeated efforts and whatever it takes to recover from them. This isn’t simply because I’ve been following a training plan on Zwift1 where those repeated bursts are part of the process, even though the ride is likely to be slow and steady for its entirety. It isn’t because those short, sharp repetitions are actually working and I’m tracking my own improved times on the local-ish trail that’s provided most of my outdoor training.

It’s because I’ve been doing student paper conferences.

For a full week, I’ve devoted roughly a third of each work day to one-on-one conferences with my first-year students, reviewing thesis statements, outlines, and drafts; finding answers to questions that they’ve brought and that arise from conversation; reviewing our process deadlines and next steps; and getting to know the student beyond the classroom. Most of them had their first exams last week; most of them are realizing the usefulness of study pods, as well as the appeal of joining a club that has absolutely nothing to do with schoolwork or their major. For fifteen or twenty minutes at a time, we have an amiable chat, albeit one partially informed by MLA format. The next student arrives on the heels of the first, and we go again.

I was talking to a colleague and joking about my internalized script for these things, how, after so many conferences in a row, sometimes it’s hard to remember if I said X out loud, or if I’m only remembering the six iterations before. Or something happens to change the order of conversation and suddenly time and language fall over sideways. But one finds a way to recover, and quickly, and then it’s only a little like being in the shower and accidentally starting the washing process in a different order than usual and ending up with tinted conditioner on one’s elbow. At the end of the block, it’s time to drink the tea that’s gone cold, time to breathe more deeply than the sips of air between sentences allow, and wonder why I feel like I’ve been doing hill sprints.

Discussing student work is not what’s exhausting. For all the “let’s reconsider this” moments, there are many more small triumphs. The script—which is not so much a script as it is a litany, a rhythm that exists somewhere beyond memory—is not what’s exhausting. The script is also what makes it possible: remembering to check in on each component, to ask a careful question at this moment or that, means we don’t get complacent in the how’s it going // fine cycle of things that aren’t actually questions and aren’t actually answers. What is exhausting is spinning up the energy to make each fifteen minute increment its own moment, each time, because each student deserves a happy greeting, a welcome to the day and this meeting and the interesting alchemy that is bringing two texts into conversation with each other.

It’s not that my circumstances are novel or especially difficult, in perspective. The one-on-one paper conference is the way most people who teach writing were taught to teach writing and the way most people who teach writing want to teach writing: it really does make a difference to spend some time with this student on this particular issue. That’s all well-researched. I’m simply thinking about this process differently in this moment because I’m doing things differently in my life beyond my office. That always spurs some fresh thinking; new experiences provide new metaphorical windows into old practices.

What have you done recently that threw an old practice into new light?

What I’m making: If I’m being honest, this is a week of making do. I’m continuing to knit the Clockwork scarf, incrementally, but I’ve barely looked at my spinning wheels or spindles the last time we chatted. My loom is no longer speaking to me. I’ve had a volume of PB&J lunches that I don’t usually match until late November. That’s simply the way it is sometimes.

What I’m reading: The Actual Star by Monica ByrneI’m teaching this fascinating novel in fiction workshop ahead of Byrne’s visit to our campus, and the last book that struck me in this same expansive, intertwining way was Matt Bell’s Appleseed, which I loved immensely.

What I’m writing: Slowly but surely the novel revisions continue apace. There is some comfort in that. I spent three days on a single scene, mulling and considering and re-imagining, and while I chafe at the slowness, I also know it was the right choice to take that time. Next week, my new piece for Ploughshares blog will also land, one focused on Kristine Langley Mahler’s memoir-in-essays Curing Season: Artifacts. Essay-loving friends, especially those of you who take delight in a borrowed and various forms, you’ll want to pick up a copy of this one.