Writing Through Cancer

My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.

(“September, The First Day of School,” by Howard Nemerov, from : Trying Conclusions:  New and Selected Poems 1961-1991)

 

It’s back to school in my family.  My grandson, packing his new knapsack the night before his first day of kindergarten, included the items he felt most important for this new beginning, his favorite action figures, a toy car, a plastic dinosaur, and three pre-school notebooks.  His mother posted on Facebook, “Tomorrow, it begins.”  I remembered her first day of school so many years ago, the tug at my heart as I stood at the door and waved (and waved) as she crossed the street, accompanied by her sister and the school crossing guard, knowing we had entered a new chapter of childhood and learning.

Now it was my daughter’s turn, accompanying her son to the bus stop and waving good-bye as he boarded the bus with the other children for the short ride to the American school on Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa.  If he was nervous, it was masked by his early morning announcement that he was invested with magical powers, necessary, I assume, to ward off any unforeseen difficulties he might encounter in his new school.  But all was well: he returned later in the day, most excited about being able to check out a library book on his own.

My husband returned to school too, working on Labor Day to deal with the administrative duties as chair of a doctoral studies program, and predictably, working late into the evening to prepare for his first class on Tuesday afternoon.  Today, a Sunday, he’s returned to his office at the university to catch up on work he was unable to complete during the week.  While many of our friends might be traveling or enjoying a relaxed day at the beach or on the golf course, he and I remain ensconced in the world of school, teaching and, despite our many years of doing so, learning a few new things whether we want to or not!

I still teach just as my husband does, despite the fact we both have moved past the official retirement age.  I do it because I love it, because I like to think it keeps me “young,” and because I am constantly exposed to new people, new ideas.  At least, that’s what I tell myself.  But this week I had to go back to school to learn how to use a new online teaching platform for my UCLA classes.  A few days in advance, I emailed the technical folks.

Would the seven and a half years of courses and content I’ve developed on “Blackboard” be transferred to the new platform, or at the very least, saved for my reference? 

I didn’t like the reply.

Unfortunately, no.  You should download and save your courses (syllabi, lectures, readings and other documents) in the next few weeks.  Blackboard will no longer be available.

I drove to Staples and purchased another flash drive and began the downloads.  I’m still not finished.  Meanwhile, my new online training began, and I logged into the site to acquaint myself with the new platform.

Of course, I got confused.  I’m fairly technologically adept, but to learn the new platform, I had to “unlearn” the old.  Worse, there were assignments to be completed, and each by a certain date.  I grumbled and on Tuesday afternoon, began the training and working on the first assignment.  Four long hours later, I finished—or thought I had—the week’s required tasks:  creating course content for the first week of the class I start teaching October.  Blurry-eyed but satisfied, I logged out and went back to my current class on Blackboard, where I had ten student submissions waiting for my critique.

Two days later, amid writing critique, hosting a student conference call, and meeting with my dentist to discuss the impending dental surgery scheduled for this week, I received an email from the administrator of the new online platform, notifying me I had not completed Assignment #1, which was now three days overdue!

“What?”  I logged in.  All my work was there.  Completed.  I fired back a frustrated email—one that has yet to be answered—complaining that I had finished the assignment and on time.  I mean really, I have always been a diligent student.  I have a doctorate, for heaven’s sake.  How dare they tell me I had not completed the assignment and on schedule?   A half hour later, I was embarrassed to discover I had to “send in” my assignment to the technical people by pressing the “submit” button.  Whoops.

I was face to face with my own inconsistencies against the beliefs I hold dear: in lifelong learning, the importance of creating new neural connections, staying mentally agile…you know the rest.  I was just as irritable and frustrated by something I hadn’t mastered as I suspect many of my students are with my “reminders” about their late assignments.  It’s good, I admitted to myself, to go back to school and be a beginner again from time to time.  It keeps me humble.  Real.  And learning.

Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visible

Bow down before it…

It’s funny to think about, but now that Nathan is in school, I know it won’t be long before he will be teaching me about this technological world I inhabit, he’ll surely be able to figure out a new online program or platform in a matter of minutes, while I struggle through the directions two and three times in less than successful attempts to figure things out.  But even if I’m slower at catching on to new things than I once was, I hope that as long as I am alive, I will keep “going back to school” and continue to find wonder, excitement, and new discoveries every day of my life.

But I’ll be honest, I hope that most of that new learning will happen with my computer turned off.

This week, write about a time you had to learn something new, whether in a course, using new technology, or even about yourself.  What’s it like to be a beginner at something again?