a glimmer

The calvary has arrived in the form of a girl born during my first quarter of college. Impossibly, this means she is a fully degreed grad student nearly as old as the newlywed me, and not, say, a sixth grader who wandered down the wrong hall. She is yet another English major taken hold by the late realization that after all she wants to teach; it is the circle of work life complete in its best interview clothes.

Given that hers must be the most temporary and ill-paying of part-time jobs in a school, she is wondrously qualified-- meaning, she wants it. She is motivated in that twenty-two year-old way, full of fragile confidence. So my job-- assisted is far more labor intensive than do-it-myself-- is to help her help me. Then, theoretically, we both win. It might, I daresay, work.

At the end of day 1.5 I felt nearly accomplished. Kids got taught, lessons got planned, papers got graded and entered, paperwork got dispatched instead of shuffled and piled. Kids were engaged just a little bit more. I suppose that, minimally, that is my job description; these activities are not unusual. But for the first time in a while I left without any mental accounting of who got gypped or ignored or put off. We may have actually done all we needed to do.

What's different? It doesn't hurt to have a witness, but it's more a chance to breathe and focus, to dump the I-don't-have-time-for-this and do my job-- every other day until December.