FSF–Halloween House

At long last.  After the holiday.  In time for next year:

Binding on and stitched down.  Label is coming. . . later. . .as are most things in my life right now.  We’re in crunch time at school and if you think witches in doorways and skeletons all dressed up going to a party are scary, you haven’t seen midterms and research papers for some time now.  Yesterday the students all dragged in after having taken the fiction exam last week.  They looked, in a word, bedraggled and like that scene in Roger Rabbit where the character is run over by a steamroller.  Only these young adults hadn’t popped back up yet, cartoony-like.  I opened with a few jokes, but really folks, we had more work to do.  My wry comments were followed quickly by a more thorough reading of the Research Paper packet and ideas for drafting.  There’s no way to avoid it–it’s work work work until the end of the semester.

We shifted gears and discussed the play that was assigned to them, as well as the difference between fiction and drama.  I gave them a pop quiz and wrote a condensed version of our final few classes in a modified calendar up on the board.  A few squares, like the quilt above, filled with goblins (essays), research papers (witches), exams and presentations (other scary things).  Finally, one young man spoke up, his voice weary: “It’s nice to know we have a light at the end of this tunnel.”  The ice was broken, everyone laughed, and their spirits rose a bit in order to finish the group projects, get their exams returned (they had all studied hard and did well) and move on out into the crisp California afternoon.

Halloween’s over.  The work continues.  Reading and writing for them, grading for me.  And maybe an hour or few stolen for another quilt project.  Just to keep the goblins at bay.