Today's teaching session is for students, and it lands on the one week nobody schedules: orientation.

Registration gave them class times. It did not give them a week. That gap, between having four class times in an email and knowing what Monday morning actually looks like, is where the first month of college quietly goes.

The session names one thing and asks them to protect it. The wreck hour. One hour, placed on purpose, that carries the reading for the class that meets when they are worst. Protect it and it carries them. Leave it unassigned and it is the hour that comes apart around week six.

The free working session is live: Your Wreck Hour, A First Week Map. Twenty minutes, done by hand, and they finish holding a written week they can follow Monday morning.

Faculty, this one is worth forwarding. It is not a study skills lecture. It is twenty minutes of your students doing the thing you wish they had done in August.

One question, and I want a specific answer. Open your schedule, or think about the schedules your students carry. Find the gap, the space between two classes that are not back to back. What is your biggest one, and what usually happens to it? One sentence. I read every reply.