Shannon Costello

“What do you want in the folder?”  I asked in Spanish.  

“The bibliography, other work you’ve done this semester, a check…”  replied my professor.  I put my head down on the table.  

“I’m joking, Shannon,” she reminded me.  

Of course I knew perfectly well that she was joking, and yet my reaction had an element of honest despair in it.  I had arrived at class frustrated because I had prepared for class with a super-fast skim job on about a hundred pages of text- enough to get the general idea but not enough to have any meaningful contributions.  And I wanted to contribute.  I had handed in a paper earlier which I felt certain was woefully inadequate.  On top of all that, I knew we were supposed to watch a couple of movies this week to prepare for next class, and I faced the thought of figuring out the lab only with great fear and trepidation.  And I did not want to make an extra trip down to College Park (I ended up staying after class, much against my will.  I was there until 9 that night).  My initial thought about the folder was that I was going to have to re-work my entire annotated bibliography and I couldn’t imagine finding the time or ambition to take on such a task this late in the semester.  

For all those reasons I put my head down.  All those reasons packed into one person.  My poor professor.  And poor me.  How can one teacher possibly teach well and navigate the treacherous waters of their students’ sanity?