Days All the Rest: LOTSA Letters

Okay, so clearly I'm not up to the challenge of posting every day, even only for a week. I just can't get around to it. HOWEVER, you'll be proud to know this doesn't mean I didn't keep up with my self-imposed "Change Your Reality" challenge. I have sent a gripload of letters over the last few days, I promise, but I'm not going to post them here, because they are all variations of the same letter and you'd be bored. They all had to do with one thing: saving the Writing Center on our campus. I've been a tutor there for more than three years, and its been around for twenty...but now, it's one of the cuts scheduled for the end of this academic year. It's just one of the many answers to the state's mad, insane plan to cut more than 30million dollars (over 14%) from UNR's current budget. (Someone in the TA office altered a bumper sticker "Nevada: We grow things here" by adding "EXCEPT BRAINS." Looking at this state's financial situation, one tends to agree.)

This has been keeping me up at night. As you can imagine, I DON'T have time to be an activist. But somehow, I can't help it. Our Writing Center keeps 7,000 tutoring appointments a year...on a campus of 16,000. The numbers speak for themselves! And as a Writing teacher, I just can't let it go down without a fight. Partly because I worry about the students that will fail without this extra help; but more, because its a resource for the kind of success I wish for my students. In their first scared semester, I can say to my uncertain freshmen, "Look, don't be scared about your writing. If you don't believe in yourself, I'm going to try to build your confidence. And then, for the rest of your time in college, whenever you have doubts about your writing, or you just want to shoot for a high grade in a class or feel great about your personal statement for a scholarship or grad school, then here...there's this resource. Go there. There, someone will REALLY read your writing. They will spend 30 or 60 minutes with you (something few of your teachers will ever do) and they will do everything they can to help."

So, over the last few days I've written:
--The undergraduate student body president
--The Development Director for the Liberal Arts college
--The Provost of the University
--The President of the University
--The Dean of Liberal Arts
--The Associate Dean of Liberal Arts AND
--The Director of Core Curriculum

Now that all of those letters, sent via email, are out in the world, trying their little letter hearts out to change reality, I have to admit...I feel kind of queasy. I know no one can hold it against me for trying to defend something I believe in professionally. But still, for some reason, I kinda feel like it's my (naked, none-too-shapely) ass on the line. Putting yourself out there is central to trying to change the world, I guess. I just hope I don't get spanked.

I guess I could declare next week "When life gives you lemons, just say fuck it and bail" Week (thank you, Forgetting Sarah Marshall)...But somehow, I don't think that's going to happen.