Taking a Deep Breath

Looking forward to the fall semester, some of my students are wound very tightly, terrified about what’s coming. (Will I fail instantly? Will everyone hate me? How will I ever find my way around campus? Maybe I should just give up now!) Others are extremely laid-back and probably won’t even begin to think about college until August 24.

Message to the uptight

Relax! If you made it through high school, you can probably make it through college. Thousands of students on thousands of campuses have done what you are about to do—and my whole agenda as a teacher is to help you pass. Ashland University has a lot of resources to help you get through this place, and you don’t have to pay extra for them.

If you are still full of anxiety, make a list of things you need to do (Get computer ready; buy a book bag.) and as you accomplish them over the next month, check them off. Then you can look at your list and say, “There! Nailed that one! I’m closer to my goal!” Visit the campus and walk around so the geography isn’t as scary (and so you know where to go on the first day). Talk to some of the folks who are here over the summer and find out that Ashland University isn’t nearly as intimidating as you feared.

Message to the laid-back

I’m glad you don’t feel overwhelmed, but you you do need to take this transition seriously. Over the next month, this blog will list specific things you need to be doing to get ready—and it would be a good idea to actually do them.

I always have a few students who are just too casual about the whole educational process. They are the ones who cannot be bothered to figure out how to do things like sending email or finding our course in Blackboard. They are the ones who stroll into a 50-minute class twenty minutes late. They can’t be bothered to submit papers on time, and they think I’m making a joke when I talk about course requirements. Perhaps—who knows why?—their high school teachers just let them slide through, but college is different. You have to treat college like a job you want to keep. Otherwise you won’t be here in a year.

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Getting Your Computer Ready for School

Back when I was a student, everyone packed up their portable typewriter for the move to campus. Lots of people got a new typewriter as a graduation gift, but I didn’t. I ended up using one we bought when I was in high school. The story is probably the same for you, except that it’s a computer, not a mechanical typewriter. Whether you just bought a new one or kept your old faithful companion with all of its stickers, you need to do a few things to get the machine ready for college. Getting Old Faithful ready for college Is Old Faithful sick? If the machine crashes a lot, has trouble (and takes a long time) doing things, or pops up weird ads to play poker or look at porn, you probably have a virus. (You just had to download that fancy screensaver, didn’t you?) Take a deep breath—bite the bullet—pay the computer repair shop to clean it up for you. Now that Old Faithful is feeling better … Back up the really important stuff. (Your only

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I will get this question several times during the semester. “I have to be absent on Friday. What’s the Zoom link for that class session?” There isn’t any. During the pandemic quarantines, we got used to the idea that “going to class” meant turning on the computer and logging in (and often it meant turning off the camera and microphone and leaving the room). It was pretty rare for those sessions to be very productive or educational, and every teacher I know agrees that those Zoom students really didn’t do too well. Setting up a Zoom session so I can do a “talking head” presentation from home is pretty simple, but doing a classroom session is much more complicated. (When I taught at the University of Akron, I did two semesters of similar teaching, and the university supplied a technical assistant to simply manage the equipment and software for the whole class session.) So the answer to the question is that we don’t have a Zoom session for every class

English 100 at Ashland

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