The Hand-Off

Shortly after Prof. Karyn Smith discovered she was pregnant, Prof. Cynthia Wolfe Boynton agreed to take over the Publications class to cover the final few weeks of the semester.

In a previous post, I explained some of the topics Smith and I had proposed for Boynton to cover in that time. We left her with access to all the information we'd accumulated throughout the semester, and gave her several opportunities to consult with one or both of us before the hand-off.

Nevertheless, coming into a nearly-completed course with little prior experience must be daunting. There is a big difference between seeing the notes or assignments from previous classes and understanding students' personalities or individual skills.

Boynton spent her first day at the head of the class conducting a “postmortem” of the April issue. She appeared confident, and her long experience in journalism (she's written for numerous publications, including the New York Times) was on full display.

After class was over, though, she began asking me questions about the students and the class.

She said she was pretty much relying on me to know what needed to be done.

That reliance would become more apparent over the following days.

I told Boynton I would oversee what was left of the production process for the May issue of Horizons. Publishable drafts would be due that week anyway, and I had already done most of the back-and-forth communication between the various involved parties for the previous editions.

Other questions would come up, though. How should she design the final project? How does Google Drive's revision history viewer work? What version of a document does she need to grade – and when, exactly, should she do it?

Boynton had been one of my professors when I attended HCC. I've been friends with her since. Long ago, she was also a journalism student at the college, tutored under former program adviser Bob Isaacs.

I hold her talents and experience in high esteem. It was, at first, a little disorienting to have her ask for my expertise.

We worked well together, though, tackling questions old and new as they arose. The course would soon begin to wind down from the high-tension atmosphere that characterizes the portion of the semester during which production is paramount.

I was confident we'd sail around the shoals of disruptions, deadlines and questions and safely set into port.