Wrong Assignment!

Last night I was polishing up an assignment and getting ready to turn it in online. It was a short assignment, but also much more personal than I am used to. This semester, one of my classes is all about students. I admit, I'm not that interested in students. And by students, I mean undergraduates. I am definitely interested in teaching, learning, how students learn, curriculum, access to higher ed, etc. But I correlate the word "students" with ooey-gooey student development, and somehow this really turns me off. So, our assignment was to write a This I Believe statement. If you are unfamiliar with this, it is from an  NPR program. Most of the weekend I contemplated this assignment. I wanted to put some care into it because it was so different than writing assignments I had been given in the past. I figured we had to do this to tap into our ooey-gooey student self. (I will also add that most people know when you work with students because of the overuse of the word "amazing") Another peculiar thing about this assignment is that we posted it to a thread online for our class. So, I finished it, 500-600 words, went to the site, and posted it. Then as I read through everyone else's posts, (because you can't read any of them until you yourself post) I thought, "Why is everyone talking about students in postsecondary education?!?" So I looked back at the syllabus. And then re-read it more closely, and the instructions were there:

Write a This I Believe statement... about students in postsecondary education.

I panicked. I had just posted something kind of personal, thinking everyone else did as well. And yes, some people did, but it was still about students. So I quickly figured out how to delete my post. Then after my panic, I grew extremely frustrated because I realized, I had to do this over again. I ended up burping something out and finally posting it. It's not my best work. But I didn't want my other thoughtful This I Believe document to go to waste. So I'm posting here.

I am not averse to being the last one to leave the dinner table. When everyone else has finished their meal, and I am still working through the sides or the main dish, it’s okay with me to be there alone. This is in part because as a child, I was such a slow eater that the rest of my family would be off in the living room already, watching Jeopardy, while I was left at the dinner table. My mom would have the entire kitchen cleaned after dinner, and then turn around and look at me, saying only with her eyes, “It’s time to finish up now.” So I’d bring my dish over to the sink, rinse it, and put it in the dishwasher for her. Then I’d wipe the table. I remember always loving this experience, of being not only the last to finish my dinner, but the only one still sitting at the dinner table. Yet however much I loved it, I wasn’t able to articulate why, because it seemed too simple. And I have learned that in fact, it is quite simple. I believe in eating slowly. I believe in the conversations that can happen over a lunch or dinner, and the community that comes from sharing a meal. And then, when everyone else has gone, and I am still eating, there is a quiet solitary meditation that can occur. This happened quite a bit while I was an undergrad. Having spent most of my life being such a slow eater, it was normal for me to be left at the table when everyone else had already finished. So as an undergrad, I remember my nightly dinners with my peers in the cafeteria very distinctly. We would go through the ritual of swiping our student cards, grabbing a tray, pretending not to like the food (even though I absolutely loved the eggplant parmesan) and then finding a big circular table to sit at. We would laugh, make fun of one another, gossip, complain, and sometimes even cry. And usually, quite suddenly, everyone would jump up and clear their trays because they were done. And I would still be there, making my way through my egg-parm. It became a kind of running joke, that I would be only half finished when everyone else was ready to move on. For a spell, I began to scarf down my dinner with the rest of them because I realized it might be bizarre to eat so slowly and be left behind in the eating commons. But I realized quickly that I actually wanted to be left at the table alone. Because when I was left, I got to experience the aftermath of the entire dinner service of thousands of undergrads. After the bustle of melamine dishes and trays and plastic 20oz cups and bent forks, I could literally digest the moments of my day. Alone. And this digestion, I have found, only really happens after the transition of sharing a meal with people, and then being alone. It is there that I can listen to the last tendrils of our conversation, the last moments of laughter, and the last coming together of community for the day. This moment is my vespers, and it only happens when I eat slowly.