I'm a stranger here myself

Last week a student e-mailed me to ask for a letter of recommendation for a campus position. She was in my freshman composition class last semester and I clearly recalled where she sat in class, what topics she wrote about, how she interacted with other students, even her final grade--but no matter how hard I tried, I could not recall what she looked like. Then today I saw her on campus and I was suddenly able to put the name to the face, but earlier, her image had utterly eluded my memory.

I've noticed that much of last semester has become a blur in my memory. This semester I learned all my students' names by the end of the second week, but last semester there were some students whose names I never learned. People ask me about classes I taught and events I know I attended, and sometimes I just come up blank. A few high points stick with me, but much of my experience last semester seems to have fallen victim to a memory-purge.

Not that that's entirely a bad thing. Frankly, I'm happy to forget parts of last semester, like the times when I felt so weak I had trouble holding my head up to follow class discussions and the late-night sessions of compulsive obsessing over whether radiation was rescuing or killing me. I'm delighted to forget the horrible way everything tasted after chemotherapy and the annoying need to know at every moment the quickest route to the nearest rest room.

But my students? Last semester I saved all my best energy for my students--planning, teaching, meeting, making their learning experience the best it could possibly be under the circumstances. My students were the center of my universe last semester, but now they're slipping right into the black hole that seems to be swallowing last semester bit by bit.

I could blame the drugs or I could blame the trauma of treatment, but what matters is the fact is that the horrors of last semester are fading from view, but they're taking the joys of last semester with them. Good thing I wrote so much of it down. One of these days the only place those memories will exist will be on this blog, and at that point I'll approach them as if they belonged to a stranger.