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Bartleby explained....
One of the things I’ve been doing recently—one of the many things I’ve been doing—as this semester winds down, and my time at Texas A&M winds down, is saying goodbye to the classrooms I’ve taught in over the years.

All these rooms have ghosts, right? Memories. These were rooms full of good students and rotten students, nice students and rude ones. Sometimes I did some good teaching. Many times education happened!

Some pictures….


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Blocker 110
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Blocker 121
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Blocker 106
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Blocker 105
The first classroom I ever taught a class in was Blocker 105, and I’ve written elsewhere about that first day—how I stood there, going over the syllabus for my composition class, and I looked up and out at the back of the classroom, and there was this—stain—on the wall. Stains. Big damn grease stains from where the heads of bored, sleepy students had been bumping and staining the wall—for years. A feeling of futility filled me right there and then! All those generations of bored students! But as I thought about it, I decided to be a teacher whose students weren’t all bored and falling asleep. And I sort of think I have been….

At any rate, the Blocker 105 was remodeled a couple of years ago, and the grease stains were painted over—and now, I guess, the grease stains are ghosts, too.


 
 
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This semester I’ve been assigned to teach in an ancient building called “Animal Industries.”  The name sounds creepy, and the building is in fact very creepy, and several students have told me it’s haunted.  (No doubt we’ll be doing some creative writing ghost hunting here before long).  But, you know, despite (or maybe because of) its creepiness, this building is also really, really cool.  We’re in the second week of classes now, and I’m very happy with our location.

Look!  My classroom has windows—and a clock!

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Interesting, creepy, and mysterious detailing in the hallways….
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Across the way, the new Liberal Arts building is under construction....
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And of course you know the new building will be terribly sterile and bland, part of the ongoing devolution of the American Soul….Give me Animal Industries any day!