Lunch in the car, you ask? Yes. I am tenured and share an office with another tenured faculty member in my department. Our twelve-by-twelve cell is located on the main floor of Bedlam Hall, a big and important central building here at LD3C that seems to be used mostly as a thoroughfare for loud students engaging in inappropriate activities en route from student parking to places far more important than actual classrooms, such as a giant student lounge and a place to purchase overpriced and unhealthy snacks. Any administrative offices in Bedlam Hall are separated from this noisy, slow-moving superhighway by thick glass doors and carpeted entryways.
The rest of us, however, suffer--hence the lunch in the car. I often grade in the car as well. I certainly can't do any work in my office.
Somewhere after midday--after a class, after a meeting, before office hours--I sank into my bucket seat, locked my door (seriously), and turned on the radio. I was just about to fish out my lunch, the usual PB&J with coffee I'd brought from home, when there was a sudden and rather startling rap on my driver's side window.
It was Abrupt Abby, a student in one of my several sections of Writing for Your Hamster Audience. She wanted help, then and there.
Apparently, my stunned glare wasn't fierce enough to scare her away. When I didn't make a move, she did. Rapping on the window again, she said, "Open the window, Mrs. Greta!"
"Why?" I asked.
"I need to ask you a question," she said.
I rolled down the window and she began. "On the final paper, I can't find any secondary sources and I don't know what you mean by--"
I cut her off. "Look, Abby. First of all, it's Ms. Greta. Second, this has to wait. Come to my office hours later, and we'll talk about it then."
"I can't," she said. "And besides, you're just sitting here."
Yes. Just sitting there. In my car. In a faculty parking lot. Attempting to eat lunch.
Earlier in the day, a colleague walked into my open office door and found me doing something not job-related on my computer. "See?" she joked. "You can't get work done here because you're distracted."
"This is a symptom," I replied, "not a cause."
As I walked into Bedlam Hall at the start of my work day, the first thing I heard were these unrelated and nearly simultaneously uttered snippets of what I am generously calling "conversation":
"Lookit here! I gonna grab me a piece o' that ass!"
"Oh, Lord! She drunk! She drunk! She drunk!"
"...don't know how I'm gonna pass this fucking test. I haven't been to class in weeks."
It was 9:17 a.m.
As I made my way to my shared office, I had to maneuver around flotillas of students moving at glacial speed while texting and talking to each other or on cell phones or nodding their heads to music that earbuds could barely contain, some of them loosely grouped together, some of them clearly caught in the semi-defined drift. One young man was bouncing a basketball. Two young men were nearly wrestling against a wall while an appreciative young woman looked on. Students lined the hallway on each side, sitting on the floor, sometimes blocking up to a third of the passageway. Every "excuse me" I uttered was met with...nothing.
My reward for arriving to my office with my person and temper intact was a student leaning against my door frame, waiting for me, an hour before class and many hours before office hours. It had been so long since I'd seen this student that it took me a moment to recall his name; he hadn't attended class since midterm, and he wanted to know how he could pass the class. He began his plea before I had begun to unlock my office door. Once inside, I waited for him to pause for breath before I said, "There is no way that you can pass this class."
I stopped him when he began to protest. "Carl, you can't pass. You've also missed the deadline to withdraw."
As he did a slow burn, I scribbled something on a Post-It note and handed it to him.
"What's this?" he said.
"My dean's office and number," I said.
As he exited he said, "Right or left?" I pointed, and off he went.
