I held extended office hours on Thursday, because my students had a paper due the next day and I hadn't been able during the two-day walkout. About a dozen or so came by with questions about their papers; one came to tell me he's being deployed to Iraq. He's leaving this Sunday or Monday and won't be able to finish the semester. When he gets back from his 12-18 month tour he'll have a few weeks to get his incompletes completed.

This is one of those kids who joined up not out of nationalistic fervor but out of financial necessity. Remember how everybody "Oh, you poor thing"-ed Jessica Lynch because she used the military to escape a relatively hopeless upbringing? It's like that, except he's not a telegenic, 19-year-old girl. He's been one of the most vocal students in any of my classes. Surprisingly, one of the consistent problems with his work is that he's let his anti-Bush fervor sometimes overwhelm his analysis of, for instance, the PR effort leading up to the war. He struck me as somebody who was anti-Bush to begin with, but just totally redlined when President Shithead wound up putting him in the face of personal harm.

He's feeling the pull of journalism and his ability to put abstract pieces together has already improved during the semester. I think he'll be applying to the j-school when he gets back and I hope he does as much as he can to document the situation while he's there. He may not be John Kerry, but somebody's eventually going to have to stand up and talk openly and honestly about what's going on.