The Sound of One Hand Typing

I was in writing lab the other day, trying to answer my students' questions about their graded papers, which I'd just handed back. These questions were fairly typical: "What should I do in my introduction?" "What do you mean by 'more details'?" "What's this word you wrote here?"

Eventually, they hunched over their keyboards and got to work on their revisions. While they wrote, I tuned in to the sounds of the room. Shuffling papers. Mumbled conversation. The drone of the air conditioning. A sta...