Getting an itch...

I have been working with one of our history professors who also teaches sociology (everybody around here has at least two jobs, I am telling you...) on a pilot service learning course. The hope is that it might gain some momentum among other faculty and students, increase our positive presence in the larger community, and expose our students to a very hands on approach to learning. I've known about service learning for nearly 20 years, I suppose... Campus Outreach Opportunity League, Into The Streets, and MUVN and various and sundry other good stuff. I've read about it, considered it, but I've never seen it in action. And I'm excited. I know a handful of the students in the course (which doesn't surprise me) and I feel like I am cultivating a friendship with the professor. It's all good.

I sat in on the class today -- the folks from the mentoring program in the public schools came to give their pitch. The class is held in a classroom in the library. Walking through the main doors, it hit me... a kind of musty smell, kind of old -- I suppose perhaps it is even the smell of paper and ink and years and years of relative silence. I might add, at this point, that I could go into great detail about each and every library in each and every school, college, or university I have ever attended. At Lincoln, we had large pieces of cardboard with colors matching our tote bags -- the cardboard went on the shelf so we knew where to return a book if we decided not to check it out. At Garfield, I was a part of a small group which got to eat lunch in the library... very cool. East Junior and Harding -- nothing to write home about. Mount Union, Purdue, Bucknell, U of Chicago... each had a different character to be sure, but as I said I knew that character inside and out. I had my preferred carrels, favorite tables. I knew the stacks like the back of my hand. Well, maybe not at Purdue. The stacks weren't always the safest places to be and one was wise to let one know you were headed in that direction so a search party could be assembled if need be.

I climbed the steep stairs to get to the classroom and settled into a chair. My friend took attendance (it's the first week of the semester, after all) and launched into a 20 minute lecture about Sociology 101. And the proverbial itching began. I took Soc in college -- liked it well enough. That wasn't it. It was being in a room with fourteen other people who, ostensibly, were working toward a common purpose. It was the sound of pens scratching on paper -- not too many of our students opt for the lap top route for note taking. It was the probing questions and the tentative answers, becoming slightly more sure as the sentences drew on. It's been nearly twelve years since I've been in a classroom. And I miss it.

Visions of a doctorate dance in my head, quite often actually. Then I am rudely interrupted by reality, which says I have bills to pay... and all of the sudden, I am quite weary. To be continued, sooner or later, I am sure...