Q&A, I call it. I go into the online classes, and I create places for people to ask me questions. This is where I learn that I could not, for example, make my living at a help desk. I invite the questions, and though I apply as much patience as I can muster to the answering of them, still I think why?
Why are you asking? Didn’t you read my last response to the last student? Didn’t you read the class syllabus? Didn’t you see that I answered this before? That I have answered it a thousand times before?
How easy it is to forget that this person wasn’t present for the thousand other times I answered the same question or the hundred times I rewrote the class information to clarify. This person was only there for this one utterance of the question. This person hasn’t been down this road before, does not carry the ghost of thousands of previous students on his back, is not concerned with my own particular need for variety. This person just needs to know.
Answer the question, silly, and move on.
