It's like looking back in time

To bring you up to speed, I work at Xavier University's Library.  This is relevant because, for at least 24 years, my high school alma mater, Mariemont, has been bringing their senior level English students to the library to help finding research materials.  I was here 21 years ago, acting like finding books about John Hersey's The Wall was way more important to me than not having to be in class that morning.  I don't really remember much of that trip other than thinking it was kind of cool to be walking around a real, live college campus with real, live college chicks.

Older chicks.  Chicks who had something to teach me.

Naturally, I only walked out of the library that day with some photocopied chapters from Something About the Author, maybe one or two other books and the crushing disappointment that I didn't bang someone in the bathroom.  That crushing disappointment was nothing compared to the spirit crushing hopelessness I experienced when I got my final grade.  OK, I passed, but barely and only after I had to convince my teacher that my lack of coherent citations weren't acts of plagiarism but a poor understanding of how to properly compose MLA citations.

Helpful hint: when using Something About the Author as a resource, typing "Something pg. 126" is not the way to go.

Which brings me to the present and helping those Mariemont students find the research they were looking for.  When things slowed down and I was standing by the stacks waiting to help the next student, I watched them milling around, their demeanor, body language and how engaged they were.  I watched how they interacted with the teachers and vice versa.  One teacher spent ten or so minutes with one student, urging her on and giving her ideas.  The same teacher ambled up to one listless student, expressed a half hearted interest in his progress and walked away seconds later with a tap on his shoulder.

Later the same student stood on the other side of a glass wall making fish faces while his teacher's back was turned to him.

In those kids, I couldn't help but remember my classmates.  The over-achievers, the stoner/slackers, the defeated, the ones struggling but trying and the completely disinterested.  Each kid was a kid that's now an adult in their late 30's.  And, while I watched the scene unfold, it brought back small and forgotten memories of their counterparts, the guys and gals in my class.  Brief snippets of conversations or the shirts they would wear, the cars they drove.  The girls I lusted after, but never stood a chance.

There is something very comforting about that.

In many ways, I feel blessed to be working with young adults.  It helps me maintain a perspective that all the noise about how the younger generations just don't care and are hopeless different than we were just aren't true.  The styles and technology change, but the attitudes and behavior is, more or less, quite similar.  And in those faces, I saw JS, LW, JG, BB, LB, NS, TH, SW, TH.

My class didn't have their 20th reunion this year and, although it is scheduled to happen sometime this summer, I have my doubts that will even happen.  But, yesterday and today were a weird sort of reunion; one of memories and creatively assigned roles.