I was watching my students take their first in-class writing exam in my English 101 class yesterday, and a few lines of doggerel came to me. Philip Larkin it’s not, but it did capture a bit of the vibe of the last few weeks of my life:

Back to school, Clark College,

Back to ethos, pathos, logos,

Back to bureaucracy’s lush garden.

Back to

students trying on roles

or leaving old roles, or trying to,

Back to forty factor authentication,

to kids shuffling in jammies exhausted to class,

Back to Aristotle, young again 2300 years on.

Back to questions, never old.

I’ve been doing this job a long time, and there’s something still sweet to me about meeting students trying to figure out their first college class. I’ve written about it before, and I may just repost that old essay–it captures my reasons for one of the most consequential decisions I ever made: becoming a community college teacher.