Thou reeky half-faced rudesby!

http://www.trevorstone.org/curse/
Trevor Stone's Elizabethan Curse Generator

Your source for instant Shakespearean fun! Just click the "Curse!" button, and the Elizabethan Curse Generator will curse you in random 16th-century English!

I had forgotten about this until someone at D2U reminded me the other day; Dr. Christy Desmet at the University of Georgia first introduced me to the ECG. It's a great way to call students bad things under your breath. They have no idea what the hell you're saying, and you can call them all sorts of nasty, terrible things.

An excellent pick-me-up for any crappy day.

Now, if I can just get *accepted* to Harvard...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12093303/
MSNBC.com: Harvard Waives Tuition for Low-Income Students

So now students whose families make less than $60K/year can go to Harvard for free. Woooo-hoooo! I sure as hell fall below that income line. My questions are...

1. Could I actually get into Harvard? and
2. Does the tuition break apply to graduate school?

I'm betting "no" on both of those, even with my damn good grades and inherent broke-as-hell-ness.

I still feel like shit, and I still hate grading papers.

Nothing has changed. I don't even know why on God's green earth I'm posting at all. I'm still sick, still up grading papers, and still ready for the semester to be done with. But I'm almost done. If I can get through today, still sick but handing back papers and other junk, I'm home free for the next ten days.

At least there's Regents' Exam grading tomfoolery all day Saturday. Idiotic sentences make my day every time. And getting paid a little extra dough to grade the infernal things, too. I'm even making a nice breakfast treat to go along with it.

Blogger should have some sort of "post difficulty" button for site authors to rate on a scale of 1 (extreme ease) to 10 (extreme difficulty) how tough it is to put together each posting. I've done this one feeling like I've been beaten with a flu stick, under a deadline, and with a purring cat between me and the keyboard licking my fingers. Difficulty: 7. (The Russian judge gave it a 6.5, of course.)

Bleh (for more than one reason)

I still feel like crap. I made a very-early-morning trip to D2U a short while ago to get three books I'll need for putting together essay topics; I was waylaid by cramps and nausea. But I'm home again to rest. I hope I can make tonight's AM4C class. I just feel like crap.

For your entertainment: here's a photo I took the other day while driving to work. It irritated the hell out of me, so I had to stop and snap a pic. I wish there'd been parishioners in the parking lot. I would've mooned them. Alas, it was 7:00 on a Monday morning.

I guess what irritates me about it is that someone who's evidently never experienced real trouble thought up this sign. What leaves you pitiful & helpless today may, in ten years, be what strengthens you and makes you a better person. My dad's murder in 1997 was the worst thing that has ever happened to me, and for several years I was a wreck. But in the long run, the ordeal has made me a much, much better person than I was nine years ago. I'm a lot stronger now than I might have been otherwise. I think Daddy would be proud to know that although his death was terrible, today I'm tougher, more resilient, more spiritual, more able to laugh at adversity, more likely to see difficulty as a temporary challenge and not as the end of the world.

You can also see the infamous "Ten Commandments" sign on the left, next to the church's official one. A lot of people and businesses here in the South put up these infernal things while Alabama Justice Roy Moore was in the press for putting up the Ten Commandments in the Justice Building over there. I swear, sometimes when I cross that state line to go over to SBCC, I can feel my IQ drop.

But the Ten Commandments sign serves a purpose for me. Whenever I see it in a business's window, I know the people in there would rather display "God's word" than actually try to live it, so I bypass them and take my hard-earned dollars elsewhere. Heh-heh.

Why isn't there an 11th Commandment? "Thou shalt live by the example of Christ, and thou shalt not idolatrize the Bible." Shhhh! Don't tell my students. There's a topic for misunderstanding and turning into a frothing-at-the-mouth Chreeeshtian essay.

I can't tell what's making me feel more ill: this bug I've got, or the damned sign.

Sick day

Whatever this is I've come down with, it's achy. I woke up feeling as if someone had beaten the hell out of me with a 2x4 (which I don't think actually happened last night, but...), and since I was feeling almost this achy Monday & Tuesday but managed to suffer through it, I figured there was going to be hell to pay if I tried to make myself stand up and teach for 5+ hours today. Something told me it would get worse. So I stayed home from D2U. I think I can make up the class time later. Students will have plenty to read. I still feel like crap, though, although better than I did at 6:30am.

I'll have some hot soup now.

My strange obsession with Bill Walton continues

I would much rather be posting pictures of Bill Walton in all his fabulous tall skinny glory than grading papers or making lesson plans. What better way to spend a gloomy, overcast Tuesday morning than listen to music and post links to the Big Redhead's home page? And what better way to make my sister barf than by putting a Walton posting on my site?

When I am Mrs. Bill Walton, I will no longer have to grade papers.

That is all for now.

Let's take a trip in the way-back machine

This little girl grew up to be an adjunct college English professor. And she had so much promise! Where did we go wrong?!?

Fall picture--3rd grade--1983.

I'll post a current one when I get some new glasses. I have changed eyeglass styles since 1983, by the way. No, really, I have.

Every teacher does it.

And no teacher wants to admit doing it.

Putting off paper-grading, that is.

I used to think that I was the only teacher on the planet who did this. It had to be my sorry work habits, my procrastinating nature, my inherent unfitness for the job. From small projects to weekly reader responses to essays, I always let them pile up, and I always wait until the very last minute to finally grade the damn things and get them out of my office. It runs me ragged just about every time, too, and I swear that "next time will be different" and that "I'll start way ahead of time next time an assignment comes up."

And it never happens. I never start way ahead of time or make the next time different.

But at least I'm not alone. Most of my fellow professors/instructors put off grading papers just as often (and for just as long) as I do. I wish there were a way to get around it. Fewer papers? Well, we're only doing three this semester, and it's still too damn many. Fewer reader responses? Well, maybe--but then how do I get students to read every damn day? Hmm. Maybe the thing to do is just to say, "No more extraneous assignments!" and just let the papers and research project take up 100% of the grade. If they read, then great; if they don't, to hell with 'em. We'll sit and stare uncomfortably at one another, professor and students, until someone says something halfway intelligent about last night's reading. Let's face it--I am drowning in paper every single semester, and I don't know how not to do things this way. I've got to find a better way. I thought that the intense peer-review thing was working, and it is, but I still have a helluva lot more paper in my office and briefcase and life than I can handle.

And look at me now--I'm blogging instead of grading! An excellent way to avoid what needs to get done yet again!

But I found something the other day that made me feel a little better. In the latest issue of Teaching English in the Two-Year College Shane Borrowman suggests using "staggered due dates" so that the number of papers hes has to grade are much, much smaller than usual. He talks about the "psychological problem" of grading, saying that it's "not the actual act of evaluation and assessment" that got to him, "but the simple act of reading and responding to so much writing at once." I couldn't agree more. So maybe this staggered due date idea will work for Fall Semester. I don't think I can make it work for Summer Term, which at D2U is eight weeks long, with classes meeting for 90 minutes Monday through Thursday.

So, I have a solution for fall. But what about now?

Guess I'll just have to do them all Monday night and Tuesday morning. It's way too late to begin now, at 8pm Sunday, and my sock drawer really needs rearranging. And the litter boxes sure are dirty. I need to vacuum before I can really get down to doing school stuff. That leftover pot roast could stand to go in another container so I can wash the Crock Pot liner. I'd better build a fire in the woodstove, too--can't be too cozy while grading!

You know the drill.

Cats + marshmallows = hilarity

No cats were harmed in the making of this post. However, four marshmallows gave their lives for the sake of human entertainment (and feline fun).

Poor Graya doesn't know what to think in this last one. "Mom? Clark's eating something...I don't think he's supposed to. Can I have one?" She then proceeded to bat it around in the semi-gross kitchen floor (which hasn't been mopped in a week) for five or six minutes, put a few teeth marks in it, and leave it dirty, sticky, and fuzz-covered for Mama to clean up.

Wouldn't it suck big-time if all I ever posted were education-related things?

Lately, the silliest things send me into fits of laughter. And just think: with six more weeks of heavy-duty grading and teaching to go, the goofiness will only increase. It tends to do that the last one-third of every term.

A sad day in country music

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12009917/
MSNBC.com: Buck Owens of 'Hee Haw' fame dies at 76

He was my favorite performer on Hee Haw when I was a kid, and along with Roy Clark helped introduce me to country music. Along with many other fans, I am very, very sad that he's gone.

God bless you, Buck, and thank you.

"I want to write an essay on what the Bible says about ______. Can I do that?"

I never know what to say when a student asks me this one. You'd think that living in and getting my graduate education in the Bible Belt would've prepared me to answer this in a professional, succinct way. Nope.

A particularly bright student from my 9am D2U class asked me this question the other day; he wanted to know if he could do his research paper on "why God has allowed evil to exist." I'm always interested in finding out different ways in which the church has explained evil over the years, but after a few minutes of talking to my student, I realized that he was looking at writing a paper "based on the Bible," which can quickly degenerate into a load of hooey. Not everybody accepts the Bible as fact,

I grade essays for a living, and I base my assessments on how well the essays are put together, whether the evidence is concrete, whether the points make logical sense and don't commit any fallacies, whether they establish a rapport with their readers. Entirely too often, a "Bible-based essay" insults its readers and beats them over the head with the writer's particular brand of Christianity.

I urged him to do some research into the explanations the church has come up with over the years. I don't know if this one is going to fly, though. If I can keep him on track with researching the history of the explanation that God allows evil to exist, then his paper might be all right. But I also told him that simply telling readers about "what God has in store for them" won't fly, because faith requires going beyond logical understanding, and we're not talking about faith in a research paper--we're concentrating on facts and argument and how well-presented they are.

Another student, one of my awesome ladies at AM4C, called this morning to ask whether she could write her Essay #1 "on the Biblical take on marriage and divorce." I counseled her that many people in her audience may not be Christians at all. And I counseled her that the Bible has been used over the years to justify a lot of things--wife-beating, polygamy, the African slave trade, Jim Crow laws, segregation, denying women an education, etc. I also let her know that way back when, people only lived to about 35, so it wasn't a very big problem to stay with one spouse "until death." Her argument might fall on completely deaf ears, or at least uncomprehending ones.

I don't know how this one will turn out; I counseled her that, if she really, really had her heart set on writing on this topic, that she needed to take her audience into careful consideration. They might not jump out with a leap of faith and see things as she does, especially if they're not religious and don't consider the Bible to be the final word on things, but perhaps she could "put a bug in their ears." I have no idea what else to do.

In my very first D2U comp class, one student wrote her entire final essay as a diatribe against gays and "gay marriage." It was full of Bible verses and fire and brimstone. No logic. No evidence save Bible verses. No thought. No planning. The essay was practically foaming at the mouth; the student had ignored the essay prompt and everything we'd learned about formulating a persuasive argument. Yet I couldn't fail it. Why? I knew the student would go to my supervisors--and to D2U admin--and claim she was being "persecuted" for her "Biblical beliefs" by a "godless secular liberal." And there would go my brand-new, adjunct, no-tenure, contract-only, hanging-on-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth job. I am ashamed to say I gave her a low B. I wrote counter-arguments all over the essay , though, in the brightest red ink I could find. This student, weirdly enough, was a 40-ish black woman who was used to prejudice and being treated badly by people who used the Bible to justify it. When I handed her paper back to her, I asked her whether she realized that the Bible had been used to justify keeping her ancestors in slavery. She had no answer, and simply gave me a stunned look.

With the conservative/religious upsurge of the last 25 years, English profs should have seen such situations coming. But since none of us did, we'd damn well better find ways to deal with it now. There has to be a way to talk to and deal with super-religious students in a way that 1) doesn't insult their faith, and 2) helps them realize that some arguments just don't fly in the classroom.

I suspect that many students don't want to have to think for themselves in a confusing, impersonal, technophilic, disconnected postmodern world, so holding on to exactly what the Bible says about [fill in the blank] makes life that much easier, that much simpler. Don't get me wrong--I'm glad these students have a solid faith that helps them live upright lives. But it's dangerous to proselytize in a college essay. Those who do are either preaching to the converted, or preaching to those who won't take the leap of faith required to accept the argument's premises. Either way, they miss the point entirely.

But how to get them around thumping the Bible at others in their essays? Failing them won't do the trick. Many will only be vindicated: "Mama and Daddy told me those evil liberal professors would fail me because I'm a Christian, and they were right!" No, honey, you failed the assignment because acceptance of your argument requires faith and not fact or reason, and this is an English Comp class...not Sunday School.

There's a journal article or book idea somewhere in here. Many of my fellow D2U professors think I'm nutty for even attempting to address the "problem," but I have to try. Because everyone deserves a college education. Even the people who drive us bonkers.

Just a good ol' office, never meanin' no harm

Phase I of Operation Redneck Office is now in effect! Yeeeeee-HAAAA!

For the most part, my students are wonderfully likeable, kind, and considerate people. If one sees something that relates to my Southern culture/country music fetish, he or she will sometimes bring the little piece of redneckdom to me (especially if it's cheap). Today, Lee* from my 12pm lit class showed up with a veritable Goodwill goldmine: two cheap brass candle-holders just like we used to have in our old house in Alabama (though I think most Southern households had these same candlesticks in the '70s)...and several old country-music LPs! "Do you know just how hard country records are to find?" he asked. "I found damn near 'bout everything except country music. Engelbert Humperdinck, Bread's Greatest Hits, The Chipmunks Sing Your Gospel Favorites...don't that beat all?" Thanks, Lee! You rock!

After I took the bottom photo I realized how weird (and accidental) the whole setup was. Of course you can tell there's a Kenny Rogers LP on the left and a Conway Twitty LP on the right. The printed-out paper between them is from my 10am comp class--George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language." This is probably the only place in the universe where you will see these three items in one photo.

I already had the Ford arrow tin sign, and Lee has promised to bring in some old, rusty scrap tin roofing to go around the outer surfaces of my desk. I have several old (1969-1970) Georgia and Alabama license plates at home, and I can put them up on the walls along with the records. Cans of Spam and Vienna sausages are also in order. Pabst Blue Ribbon cans are a necessity, but I don't like beer at all. Maybe a Pabst clock or neon sign will do, or maybe Tony and Steve and Ed can take one for the team and drink me some PBR. Country-music posters, of course, will need to be on the walls; I feel a trip to the fantastic Hatch Show Print coming on. The tackier, the better--Redneck Decor dictates that no square inch of wall go uncovered. And some cheap plastic flamingoes in a "spit bucket"...and old-fashioned C7- or C9-bulb Christmas lights to string around the bookshelf and leave up all year long. Maybe even a velvet Elvis painting. Or a triptych of Jesus, Elvis, and Robert E. Lee, which I saw in Charles Reagan Wilson's Judgment & Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis and which I know exists somewhere. Now that would be some true Redneck Chic.

Anybody know where I can find a Waylon Jennings figurine to go atop my computer?

Athletic absence abuse (and assonance)

While most everybody likes a little ass, everybody likes a little assonance. Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk.

When I was in elementary school, the University of Georgia football program was king. The Dawgs won the NCAA championship at the Sugar Bowl in 1980, and my grandparents--who had sent three of their five children to college at Georgia--bought all the grandkids Georgia Bulldogs sweatshirts to wear for School Picture Day. (Yes, I still have the third-grade picture with the Dawgs sweatshirt. And I will post it later, just for you.) Wherever we went around the whole state, "How 'bout them Dawgs!" was ubiquitous--on clothing, billboards, commemorative Coca-Cola bottles, bumper stickers, buttons, yard signs, graffiti in public restrooms. Life was good.

Not long after that, former English professor Jan Kemp came out of nowhere with allegations that she had been pressured to pass UGA football players when they in fact were either failing her remedial English classes, or had never attended class at all. It was ugly. Everyone, from my grandparents to newspaper columnists to preachers giving their Sunday sermons to school principals to the old farts playing checkers in front of the courthouse, cursed "damn ol' Jan Kemp" for coming forward to tell the truth about the UGA athletic program. Professor Kemp even got threats on her life for exposing the cheating and dishonesty that the Georgia athletic department (the hallowed Vince Dooley included) saw as perfectly all right. But it turned out to all be true: Georgia had had years of successful football seasons with football players who, technically, hadn't passed any of their English classes and had been academically ineligible. (Kemp came forward after she'd been fired from UGA for refusing to pass several players who were clearly unable--or unwilling--to do the work in her remedial reading classes. She received an enormous settlement from the university, and then disappeared into private life.) So even when I was a graduate student at Georgia in the late 1990s, memories of Jan Kemp were still fresh. We English TAs were instructed to give athletes (and especially football players) the grades they earned, even if that meant failing them. The chair of the Freshman English Program (may he rest in peace) also encouraged us to report to him any pressure we might get from coaches or Athletic Department people.

So I get very, very irritated when my current student-athletes try to abuse the privileges they're given. I have a basketball player in my 10am D2U comp class who has taken the absences he's been allowed and many more. D2U policy dictates that no student may miss more than 15% of total instructional hours in any class. In my class, which meets three days a week, that's 6.75 days. This guy has missed many more beyond what he's allowed to miss, even with D2U's men's hoops team going to the conference playoffs over in South Carolina. University policy does not allow anyone "free cuts," despite what some athletes seem to think. Of course, when I WF him out of the class, he's going to raise hell and say, "Well, you didn't tell me I had missed so many days" and all that mess. I'll probably have to get departmental backup on this one from Dr. Who and Dr. Pepper.

And another thing--this basketball player opened his big mouth in class yesterday and said, "Two of my teammates turned in the same paper to different English teachers last semester, and one got a B while the other got an F." I said, "Really? They did?"

Hmm. Open plagiarism in the men's basketball program. Smooth move there, Ex-Lax. I went and reviewed his essays; I'm not sure they're 100% his work. Don't know about you readers out there, but I feel the defecation approaching the oscillation. (Apologies for the poopy puns.)

[edit]

Dr. Who e-mailed a few minutes ago to say, "Just stay focused on the fact that he's getting WFed for excessive absences. The other stuff, at this point, is simply hearsay."

Multiple choice? Multiple guess!

NPR's Talk of the Nation program aired a segment today on whether high-school graduation tests really prove whether kids graduating from high school really know their stuff:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5294932
NPR: Grading the Use of Graduation Exams

Interesting that this should be on the air today, of all days--my 10am D2U composition class brought up the issue of high school exit exams this morning. Georgia instituted one of these exit exams a few years ago, and my students were saying today that the test is seriously dumbed down, and that it's written at an eighth-grade level. I laughed at that, but my students insisted they were serious. I wondered aloud whether I could pass the test, since it's been so long since my high-school years; Danny* said, "Prof. W, there's really no way to fail the Georgia Graduation Test. It's really, really easy. I bet people have passed it even when they're drunk." Shonda* piped up in the back of the room, "But you know, it's funny to see just who does fail it. My friend went to Peach County High [in South Georgia; very poor and rural county], and she told me that her class's valedictorian had to take the Graduation Test four times. And she was the valedictorian!" So that set us to talking about different standards between high schools, and how good grades at one school can translate into average or even poor grades at another. Two students--"Army brats" who moved around a lot--said that while their dads were stationed in Texas, they went to the public schools and really had to work to excel; when their dads were transferred to Georgia military bases, however, these same two students were near the top of their graduating classes in public schools. They found the Georgia work incredibly easy.

And people wonder why we rank 49th out of 50 states in quality of education. Whew.

Today's E&P non sequitur brought to you by General Motors

Photographed this one on Sunday (March 19, 2006) on the front of a full-sized GMC pickup in Roanoke, Alabama, in the Wal-Mart parking lot. The pickup, I might add, was a very expensive one: extended cab, luxury "chameleon" paint job, dual-wheel axle in back, full-size bed, lots of chrome and extra lights, etc. Sure would hate to see the payments on it.

Mom, Steve, and I were walking out of the store and back to the car when I saw this; I said aloud, "What the...?" and just stared. So Mom and Steve made fun of me for being a camera-phone nerd (and I am) while I stopped and took a picture of it. Come to think of it, I need to find a way to put my site's URL on it to keep others from ripping it off.

Something doesn't make sense here. If the vanity plate just said "GMC" or "Jesus Is Love" ("is" isn't supposed to be capitalized in titles unless it begins the title), it would've been a nice plate. But both? Together? And the GMC isn't even the official company logo, with its flattened red-and-silver rectangular letters. This looks like a font out of Microsoft Word, maybe stretched-out Arial Black.

What's this person trying to say? Maybe he's trying to get us to think about WWJD: What Would Jesus Drive. Guess the Son of God would drive a humongous gas-guzzling GMC pickup! Or maybe the implication is that Jesus' love for this guy--and I'm probably correct in assuming male ownership--is manifested in his having this very expensive GMC pickup.

So I sent the photo to my friend Rob, who's a Baptist deacon (and also a beer-drinkin', hell-raisin' crazy fool--but that's another post) to see what he thought...

ME: Just what are we supposed to make out of this?
ROB: Don't know. Reckon this guy wants us to know Jesus loves him sooooo much that He got the fella a pimped-out GMC truck.
ME: Yeah...
ROB: And I figure, if we go by just what this plate says, this is how Jesus shows His love: by giving His true believers a really nice GMC pickup.
ME: Hmmmm.
ROB: Wonder what it means that you and I are both driving 11-year-old Fords?
ME: [laughing] Dude! You are going to hell.
ROB: I'll save you a seat by the fire.

My sister's reply was even funnier...

Does Jesus' love manifest itself in our vehicles? Does he love hybrids? Doesn't the song go something like, "Jesus loves the little autos / All God's autos of the world / Red and yellow, black and white / All gas-efficient in his sight / Jesus loves the Hummers and Hyundais of the world." Or something like that.

I'd like to thank General Motors, the churches of Randolph County, Alabama, and an anonymous GMC owner in Roanoke for today's E&P non sequitur laugh break.

We say you a wanksta, and you need to stop frontin'

Don't you love it when a pain-in-the-butt student gets into hot enough water to know he/she has really screwed up? I do, too.

Fred* was in my composition class (English 1101) last fall. He's a pretty good student who always spoke up and contributed to the discussion. But he had a bad habit of talking during class discussions, too, and of coming in late, and falling asleep in class, and not turning in very good work. What he was contributing wasn't enough to cancel out his being a high-schoolish "popular guy." He thinks he's a lot badder and tougher than he really is. He wants his classmates to think he's a gangsta from the projects, when in reality he's an upper-middle-class black kid from Gwinnett County, Georgia. In other words, he has zero street cred.

Fred was on track to get a C in my comp class, which he'd earned. Sadly, I allowed too many extra points for participation, and he ended up with a B. Dammit! So I decided right then that I had to take the participation portion of the grade out like Shout. And I also decided that we'd see just how well Fred did if he signed up for my English 1102 Intro to Literature class. He's been much the same in my lit class this semester, sad to say: talky, doesn't pay much attention, absent a lot, walks in late regularly, and tries to impress his classmates with his anti-intellectualisn--especially the pretty girls. (I can't tell whether they're impressed just yet. Hard to read 19-year-old girls.)

In all my classes, I give students five "freebie" absences to use as they please. (I don't differentiate between "excused" and "unexcused" absences--it's just too high school-ish.) Students may miss up to five days without penalty in my class, but as soon as they miss that sixth day, I drop them from the class with a WF (withdrawn/failing), which looks pretty bad on a transcript. A month into the semeter (mid-February), Fred had already missed his five days. And then his uncle died unexpectedly. So he was absent a sixth day for the funeral, and came back to class begging me for another chance. Foolishly, I gave it to him and told him he had to attend class every single day until the end of the semester, and that he couldn't be late or absent at all, or I'd drop him. Fred did pretty well with this...until the middle of last week.

I got an urgent, frantic e-mail at 11am Wednesday. It read:

Dear Prof. W:
We, Fred and Tim, are currently in Atlanta and have run into a little trouble with the law. We have had to return to Clayton County this morning with our parents to get our records cleared. We will do our best to attend your 12pm class, even on no food or sleep and driving all night. Sincerely, Fred & Tim

Good God, I thought. Well, I'll see what 12pm brings.

Noon came and went--neither Fred nor Tim walked through the door. At the end of the 12pm class, I silently chuckled to myself. I could finally WF Fred out of the class. He'd had his chance and blown it. I walked on over to the Technology Building, where my 1pm class meets.

In the middle of an awesome discussion of Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," who should barge into the late class but Fred. He seated himself waaaaay in the back of the room; my 1pm students looked at one another as if to say, "Who the hell's this guy?" I ignored him until the end of class, and waited until all the other students had gone before speaking to him. He'd screwed up and knew it. He stammered and tried to explain what had happened--he and Tim had been picked up by Clayton County Police for underage drinking the night before at a birthday party. And I let him have it.

"What are you using for brains, Fred? You should have known not to be drinking at 19! Good Lord! And you want me to keep you in the class after I gave you a second chance--you want a third chance? Ha! What's your excuse gonna be next time? That you stubbed your toe and couldn't come to class? That you got picked up for smokin' weed? That you got kidnapped? Puh-leeze! You are NOT impressing me this semester. You're looking at a D right now, and you're going to be lucky if you make it out of my class. I don't know what to say. I'm not sure it's worth it for me to give you another chance, because I know you're going to blow it again before long."

And then it hit me--I could keep him in the class and make him squirm.

"You can stay in my class on one condition, Fred," I said.
"What's that? Anything! I'll do anything to stay in your class!"
"I'll let you stay in my class if you sit in the front row from now until the end of the semester."
Silence. A stunned look.
"In the front row?"
"Yep," I said. "Up front with Rick* and Dave* and Summer* and Brian*."
Fred gulped. "I didn't know college was going to be so hard."
I cackled and said, "Honey, if you think this is hard, you ain't seen nothin' yet. We're just getting started."

So Friday came, and he (and Tim, I might add) were up front, very red-faced and contrite. Here's what was amazing: they were both excellent in our discussion. I was calling on them and asking for their input on Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," and they were great! Thank God for that flash of seating-chart brilliance. (I've been chuckling all weekend, too.)

Only seven more weeks to go in the semester! Damn, I love my job.

"Can you say 'Alabama' and 'Shakespeare' in the same sentence?"

One of my students brought her 17-year-old son on last night's D2U lit class field trip. She shared with us that, when she told him we'd be traveling to Montgomery to see the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's production of Twelfth Night, he asked the question that begins this post. We had a good laugh at that. "Alabama Shakespeare Festival" does seem like an oxymoron.

What a great field trip! "Huzzah!" and a "hey-nonny-nonny!" for ASF! Four students from my lit class took the trip with us; I offered 30 extra points on top of their end-of-semester grade if they'd come along and then write a one-page "viewer's report" on the play. Three of the four were adult students (age 35+); only one was under 21. They were a great group, too--these four are among the better students and were in my composition classes last semester. And, amazingly, two of these four students had never been to a play. So they were excited yet unsure of what they were about to see.

This production was flawless! The actors were exceptionally well-cast, which was a real delight; I've been to a few Shakespeare productions (mostly in Atlanta) in which the casting was not particularly strong, and in which several actors seemed as if they'd been cast against type with disastrous results. (I also saw a disastrous production of Hamlet at Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern a few years ago; it was obvious that several people in the cast had been chosen not for their acting strength, but because they were friends of the director whom he wanted to get their Actors' Equity cards. Ugh. It was an atrocious show that probably made Wild Bill spin in his grave.) But this was not the case with this repertory group. One of my fellow faculty members remarked that usually the female actors at ASF weren't very strong, and that this show's females were fantastic--I agree! I think I recognized the middle-aged woman who played Mariah (Olivia's servant-woman); I think she's been in an Alliance Theatre (Atlanta) show or two. All the actors had great delivery and chops; they made Shakespeare's words, which can be hell to memorize, seem effortless and as much like real speech and conversation as possible.

The costumes were stellar, and the acting was phenomenal. I was amazed by how well they played this show in the round; that has to be a lot harder than just playing to an audience in a proscenium theatre. The octagonal set was incredible, anchored by a 30-foot-tall medieval villa backdrop/church/cuckoo clock (ASF doesn't allow photographs, so I didn't get a picture of it). Every time the action switched between what was going on with the nobility and what was going on with the commoners, a different eight-foot-tall figure popped out of the villa set piece. One figure was a prideful, red-faced male figure; the other was a frilly lady with a fan in her hand. I wish I could better describe how ASF made this work, but my words aren't flowing very well right now.

When the show was over and we got back on the bus, I asked my students, "Well? How'd you like it?" One, a man in his early 40s, said, "That was fantastic! When are we going again?" The others laughed and agreed with him. It was the best compliment the trip could've gotten. This same student suggested that we get together a Shakespeare Play Viewer's Club (led by me) that takes D2U students down to ASF once a semester to see a different Shakespeare show. Brilliant! It's an idea I'm seriously considering, even though my main area of interest is 19th- and 20th-century American lit. Guess it could only sharpen my mind to get refreshed on the Bard.

The picture in this post was taken as we were departing Montgomery; I whipped out the cell camera and told everyone to crowd around. The student on the right in the green shirt is also with my group, but he's not a big smile-for-photos type.

I am so glad I offered the students extra credit. I mentioned this show to all three lit classes, a total of about 70 students, but only four took me up on the offer. And it turned out for the best, too.

New book, new possibilities

Yesterday, a colleague at D2U gave me a sample copy of The Transition to College Writing by Keith Hjortshoj. It's a slim little volume--only 211 pages--but it may well be what my first-year writing students need. It's straightforward, concise, and helps student writers learn exactly what's expected of their writing when they get to college. So many of my students just come out and say, at the beginning of the semester, that they only do one draft and it always got them A's in high school. Why change now?, they want to know. Why change? Because your poor high school English teacher was too overworked and underpaid and burdened by No Child's Behind Left to have the time to teach you what good college writing really is!

I have to submit my Fall Semester book order by March 25. This is certainly going on the list.

Meanwhile, I'm still really tired. But it's occurring to me (albeit very slowly) that this is just the way my life's going to be most of the time. When you're an adjunct, you live in your car and are always on the go. Today's a lot like yesterday: several afternoon presentations at Tiny Tech (it's the end of Winter Quarter there, and my grades are due by 9am Monday), then home to prepare for this evening's AM4C class. That's going well. The students in there are all 27 and older; many have a little junior-college or tech-school experience and are coming back to school to get a four-year degree from a serious college. They all want to be in college, and so far it's making all the difference in the world.

Tomorrow is insanity: teaching all day at D2U, zoom back to Tiny Tech to see two more presentations, then back to D2U to travel with my students on the Campus Express to see Twelfth Night at ASF in Montgomery, Alabama. Speaking of my lit students: I have two who've made complete and total dumbasses out of themselves, and who are now paying the price, in my 12pm lit class. I'll fill in the hilarious and snarky details after I see how class goes tomorrow...heh-heh-heh. [Evil Teacher Laugh]

Ass vs. elbow

Finally--I know what it means to be so busy that I can't tell my ass from my elbow. I wish I did not know what this is like. But it's fun, for the most part, and that's nice.

I leave D2U promptly at 2pm today to head up to Tiny Tech and watch my online students give their in-person presentations until 7pm. (I'm teaching five classes here at D2U today.) Then I go home and grade a little, if I don't collapse first. Thursday is more presentations and teaching the late advanced-comp class at AM4C. Friday is teach five classes at D2U, then rush back to Tiny Tech to observe a few "straggler" online students do their (last-minute) presentations, then rush back down to D2U--that's an extra 80 miles--to get on the Campus Express with my lit students at 6:15pm and go to see Twelfth Night in Montgomery at Alabama Shakspeare Festival. I'll return home around 2am Saturday.

On a so-funny-you'll-wet-your-pants note: while cleaning my incredibly messy kitchen, Mom found my notepad of Georgia Regents' Exam bloopers that I misplaced a few months ago. Hip-hip-HOORAY! This means more snarky, real-life faux pas written by actual Georgia college students. (Quiet in the peanut gallery!) I know you'll love it. And thanks for cleaning my kitchen, Mom! It looks fabulous. It's a whole new room now that it's clean.

More later, when I'm not running like the proverbial headless chicken.

It's Mom's birthday, and we're flushed with pride

So today's my Mom's birthday, and when we asked her what she wanted for her gift, she told us she wanted a toilet seat.

Actually, she had asked us for one several months ago, as a Christmas present. But Val and I simply couldn't make ourselves get it for her. What kind of Christmas gift is a toilet seat, for crying out loud? It seemed uncouth. We got her something else, anything, just so we could avoid buying the Gothic pewter-and-gold-leaf-plastic "cross" shield toilet seat. She wouldn't let it rest.

Mom and I had at least six different conversations on the subject. Generally, they went as follows:

ME: Mom, you don't really want a toilet seat, do you?
MOM: Yes! That's what I want!
ME: Good God. That's something right out of a Jeff Foxworthy routine. [thick Southern accent] "If you give your mama a toilet seat for her birthday..." I cannot in good conscience get my mother a toilet seat as a gift.
MOM: Yes you can!
ME: How come you can't just go buy it for yourself?
MOM: Because it's $69.95!
ME: So what's your point?
MOM: Because I can't convince your stepfather that we need this toilet seat to match the bathroom! He'll never go for a 70-dollar "shitter lid." Plus I just want to put my bare ass cheeks on a cross.
ME: [putting fingers in ears] La-la-la-la-laaaaaa! I'm not listening!

As luck would have it, Seeds of Change had sold out their whole inventory of heirloom crabapple varieties. This was the only other thing she'd said she might want on her special day.

The crapper it is. Dammit.

Happy birthday, Mom.

Life in rural Georgia

I found this sticker on Bumperactive and am probably going to hell for putting it on here.

The little boy with whom I held hands on the playground in third grade is now serving time at Reidsville State Penitentiary in south Georgia for manufacture & distribution of methamphetamines while children are present. In Georgia, having kids in the same place where meth is produced gets people a much longer sentence.

Such is life here in Small Town Georgia, and in so many rural areas of the state. My dad (God rest his soul) used to say that "once you move here, you're never able to accumulate enough money to move somewhere else." Most of the high-paying textile and manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, and many people in recent years have turned to meth use and manufacture.

On a happier note: some places are getting help. The teensy little town of West Point, Georgia, will be getting Kia's first U.S. production plant, which means as many as 4,000 new jobs and (probably) supercharged enrollment at many area tech colleges. The first car is scheduled to roll off the production line in 2008 or 2009. Here is a link to an article from a local newspaper.

Hmmmm.

http://www.slate.com/id/2137537/?GT1=7932
From Slate.com: Desperate Feminist Wives: Why Wanting Equality Makes Women Unhappy

This author asks whether "reverting to traditional gender roles make women happier." And she seems to conclude that the answer is a big NO. So why might feminist women feel unhappier in marriage? Maybe because they're tuned in to how they're getting the short end of the stick? Ya think? I guess if you're living in Leave It to Beaver-land you don't notice how your life is a sham.

Yeah, I'm an angry feminist who's been married before. Bet you couldn't tell.

I'll reread this after a while. Perhaps it's something to present to my students next semester. They've already been warped by Judy Brady's "Why I Want a Wife."

Home at last!

I finally got home around 11pm Saturday and fell into bed not long after that. I was so dead-tired not just from a six-hour drive home, but because of how my trip began. I left Thursday night after my late AM4C class, which didn't get out until a quarter 'til ten. I arrived in Rock Hill at the hotel at 3:52am. Whew!

The trip was a great success; even though I was in the very last group of people presenting their projects, I got a lot of helpful comments. I'm really, really glad I went to the Philological Association of the Carolinas meeting (aka PAC). The whole thing is very well-run, the people are friendly and accessible, the papers are stellar, and Rock Hill is an awesome small upstate South Carolina town. (The archi-dork in me came out and made me take pictures of all the old, cutesy little houses around the Winthrop campus--"mill houses" from the early 20th century, Craftsman-inspired bungalows from late 1890s-early 1920s, etc. This is what happens when you're the only professor in a family of architects, carpenters, and irrigation engineers.)

The professor who was in charge of this year's event told me that the South Carolina and North Carolina PAC-affiliated schools trade off hosting it every year. It used to be that a S.C. college would host the conference, and then the next year a N.C. college would host, and then back to S.C. the following year; nowadays, a N.C. college hosts it one year, and the next they meet at Myrtle Beach, S.C. And that sounds like a stellar plan to me. My sister and I spent the equivalent of several years in Myrtle Beach when we were growing up. Our dad was an irrigation contractor and installed the systems in many of the nicer MBSC golf courses, so we always had a place to stay when we visited him. We usually ended up staying for three weeks or more, so it was mighty nice to get to know Myrtle Beach like our hometown, and I kind of feel like it is, even though I was just a long-term tourist there.

Sadly, I saw no kitties while in Rock Hill, though I did seriously hope for some. Cat withdrawal hit 14 hours into the trip. Had I found a stray/abandoned feline, I would have brought it home. Maybe I just wasn't hanging out in the right part of campus.

The stinkers here were very glad to see Mama again, naturally. Clark met me at the door, all 20 pounds of furry lard jiggling as if he were a kitty Santa Claus.

I'm trying to find a way to get all my pictures off of my cell phone and onto E&P. Gotta call my cell company and get some kind of package deal for e-mailing pictures so I don't have a $200+ bill next month. I used to think that people who had cell-phone cameras were idiots...until I found out what a pain it is to haul around a full-size camera when I'm on the lookout for misspelled signs. I'll get it figured out and then post the dorkalicious pix.

I also stopped in Atlanta on the way home to see Amy (my longtime friend from grad school), her husband Ken, and their adorable new baby Eva. What a sweet, cute little thing! I got to hold and talk to a somewhat-cranky, I-can't-sleep-Mama-'cause-I-might-miss-something wee one. Amy got a picture of me holding Eva...which I will also post as soon as I figure out how.

Back to the grind tomorrow--but I sure do feel refreshed, even though my trip was a work-related one. I gotta get out of town more often!

Insanity!

Whew! This junk about being busy isn't all it's cracked up to be. I've been running like mad getting things caught up for the big weekend coming up. On Thursday evening, I start teaching my first class at AM4C (Awesome Methodist Four-Year College--the story behind that's for another posting), and right after class, I get to drive up to South Carolina to present a conference paper. I've been working on this paper since late last summer, and it got pretty good comments at the last conference I attended back in September. I feel weird that I haven't done very much to my paper other than tweak it here and there since September...but there'll be much tweaking done between now and Thursday evening, when I hit the road. The paper's gotten positive comments from the people who've read it between September and now. It's certainly not in publication form, but it's all right for the conference, and for figuring out which direction my research is going to take.

I'm one of the last people to read at the conference; my turn comes early Saturday afternoon. Then I'm heading back this way, stopping in Atlanta to visit my longtime friend Amy, her husband Ken, and their new baby Eva.

More details later--geez, I'm tired. I'll provide an update sometime Sunday.

Tattoo update!

From Crystal, fellow D2U English prof:

How 'bout a pack of Ramen noodles in homage to the salary of teachers? Or a red grading pen? Or a pile of essays? How 'bout the parts of speech down one thigh? Or a quote by a famous author diagrammed as sentence along the forearm?

Awesome! See the comments from the previous post for jlutz's idea about a semicolon. Punctation marks may be the key to English prof tattoos. Talk about mysterious and magical little symbols that leave people mystified as to where they go!

Tattoo You

Last night, I was thinking about the body-modification craze of the last few years (piercing, scarification, tattooing, etc.), and a weird thought occurred to me: What kind of tattoo would an English professor get?

Think about it--a good many groups, organizations, hobbies, professions, etc. have symbols that their adherents get permanently inked onto their bodies. Soldiers and sailors have all kinds of tattoos, and so do martial-arts experts. I once knew a horse trainer who had a green-and-blue Celtic horse design tattooed around each wrist. Young (college-age) women get all kinds of tattoos. A former student had a big Confederate flag on his bicep. Another former student has a UPC barcode on his scalp; you can see it only when he shaves his head for his summer Mohawk. I've known ministers with crosses and Bibles and portraits of Jesus tattooed on them. More than one actor I've met has the comedy/tragedy masks somewhere on the ol' bod.

So what about English professors?

My sister and I started e-mailing back and forth about it this morning; we came up with some good ideas. A Shakespeare quote around an arm or ankle: "Foolery, sir, is like the sun: it shineth everywhere." (Put that one "where the sun don't shine!") Or perhaps "GRADE OR DIE" on a bicep. A quill pen on a shoulder? Or how about a good old red teacher's apple on a breast? Val suggested inking SCYLLA on one thigh and CHARYBDIS on the other, then asking guys, "How'd ya like to go on an odyssey?" Priceless! Or a rose...for Emily, on a breast. Faulkner would love that. I thought a big black raven with NEVERMORE beneath it in Gothic letters would be kewl. Or how about Grendel from Beowulf, looking all mean and fearsome and menacing, inked across someone's back? (If people get tats of anacondas and the Grim Reaper and Satan, then Grendel's fair game, too.) Speaking of scary/creepy things, how about "two trunkless legs" with "a shattered visage" near them, and the words "Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Val's last suggestion was best. Across one hand's knuckles: PASS. Other hand's knuckles: FAIL. On the first day of every new term, the prof holds up both fists and says to the class, "Which one y'all want this semester, punks?"

Best stepdad on Earth celebrates birthday--the story at 11!

HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO STEVE, the world's GREATEST stepdad! He's 48 today. Hip-hip-HOORAY!!!

Sincerest apologies to Van Halen

I'm thinking perhaps I should change the name of this blog: Hot for Teacher would be a lot more catchy than Educated and Poor, wouldn't it? It'd be a huge pain in the ass to migrate all my content over to a new blog. But it might be a catchy and funny new name, and more likely to get lots of web hits and readers. Wonder if I'd get sued by Van Halen? Wonder if there's already a HotForTeacher.com out there? There's a fetish website for everything, you know--anything from BDSM, Asian/white/black/green/polka-dotted girls & boys, hamsters up the ying-yang, clamps & vises on the ying-yang, pooping, peeing, piercings, tattoos, amputees...umm...college English professors...[ahem]. Umm, yeah. I bet there's probably a site out there with over-30 women like myself dressed up sexy yet looking stern as many people imagine college English professors to look.

Any suggestions? Votes as to blog-name change? And can anyone tell me how I can make a Spelling & Grammar Hall of Shame on here, or any type of photo gallery? Must I deal with Flickr? Wait, wait. Best not to get really excited and motived before I totally screw up the site.

Speaking of excited, I'm really excited about my new cell phone with the digital camera built in. I've been with my cell provider for four years now, so every time I upgrade I get a nicer phone. This one's a Nokia flip phone with 4x zoom camera, and it's soooo handy to have a camera with me when I see a badly-thought-out or misspelled sign!

While my phone's not a Motorola RAZR, it's pretty cool and does the job well--good reception, great digital pics, hilarious real-sound ringtones. Speaking of the newest, hottest mobile phone on the market, I find it hard to believe how many of my students have RAZRs. What are "broke" college students doing with a $200+ cell phone? Oh, wait, I forgot--Mommy and Daddy must've bought it for them. As for me, I like the RAZR simply because it's so small and unobtrusive. We'll see whether it turns out to be a quality product.

He'd gone 84 days now without taking a fish.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5245376
NPR: The Enduring Depths of The Old Man and the Sea

Great feature on Hemingway's classic short novel, and it even features readings by Charlton Heston. The actor who parted the Red Sea reads from The Old Man and the Sea...

If you haven't read his other works, especially novels such as The Sun Also Rises or A Farewell to Arms, you're cheating yourself of a beautiful literature experience. I'm picking up Old Man at the library on Monday. It's been years since I read it. It's not Hemingway's best work, but it's pretty darn good as Hemingway goes.

I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5244492
NPR: Letter Puts End to Persistent Mockingbird Rumor

Melissa Block interviews a retired history professor from Auburn University about the recent discovery of a letter from Truman Capote to his cousin--this letter proves that Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird was her own creation, and that Capote was not the "ghost writer" of the classic novel that made his childhood friend famous. Now we know without a doubt that Lee's work is her own. Hooray!

"As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash." --Harper Lee

Got it bad, got it bad, got it bad...

D2U Spring Break is upon us, thank God, and not a moment too soon. My brain has completely turned to mush--I can hardly perform simple tasks, such as feeding the cats or walking to the mailbox. And forget thinking. Ugh.

Have you ever been followed and followed and followed by a person who doesn't pick up on the usual human social signals? I have a student like this in my 12pm lit class. He was in my comp class in Spring '05, and he's signed up for a second class with me this term. Rick* is a nice enough guy and an average student--he makes some good comments on poetry--but he has a big crush on me, and it's a problem. He'll follow me back to my office after class, even though I have a class immediately after his, and has even walked into the next class's room with me, talking the whole way, until I say, "Umm, are you planning to stay for another helping of lit? 'Cause we're starting Faulkner's 'The Bear' today." Then he'll say goodbye and go on his way. Same thing happens a week or two later. Not every day does he follow me to my next class, or hang around a lot longer than any student in his/her right mind should...but more days than I'm comfortable with.

When I try to excuse myself in a polite way--"Well, I've got to run now, have a nice day"--Rick doesn't get the signal that the conversation's over. He continues talking as I walk off, as if he hasn't even heard what I said. He'll keep following me wherever I happen to go, whether it's into the department office, the mail room, or to another instructor's office. One time last year, he had walked back with me to my office, and we were chatting about something class-related, such as coming up with a good conclusion for his essay, and as we reached my office and he continued to stand in the doorway, I realized that I had to pee something awful. So I excused myself and said, "Well, it was nice talking to you, Rick. I'll see you next week," locked my office door, and took off for the ladies' room. I came back to my office about ten minutes later. He was still there in front of my closed and locked office door. I made like I had to go meet with the department chair, Dr. Pepper, and left to go hide out in her office. Thankfully, I didn't get followed, and Dr. P was happy to chat with me for a while.

Rick's not a dangerous guy; I don't think so, anyway. He's in his early 20s, a rotund and short (5'4", 220 lbs.) guy who may or may not have ever been out on a date, a middle-aged man in a young man's body--he's a member of his dad's Masonic Temple, participates in BBQ cooking competitions all around the South, an over-the-top Eagle Scout, a serious Revolutionary War & Civil War reenactor, a member of all the major Sons of the ________ [fill in historical battle here] heritage groups. A pretty nice guy, even if he's square. But I'm being seriously inconvenienced here, and I feel strange about being followed. The student-professor relationship is a weird one, to say the least. While encouraging students to interact with us and stay proactive in their educational experience, we walk a very thin, fine line between "Let me help you help yourself!" and "You're getting the grade you earn, dipstick, so don't kiss up." In no way do I wish to hurt Rick's feelings, and I'm glad to have students who are interested in the class, but I'm feeling strange about this. And I'm seriously inconvenienced, too.

On top of everything else, a couple other students have noticed Rick's behavior. One whispered to me after class one afternoon, "Ms. W, do you ever worry about students stalking you? 'Cause I bet that one [gestures in Rick's direction] would be a good bet to do it. " I sure as hell don't want other students thinking that he and I are an item. OK, so they probably don't and wouldn't in a million years, but I don't want to take any chances. And he's certainly not "teacher's pet," either, but I wonder whether students think that. Seldom will students tell an instructor the truth about their observations--they're too worried about their grades.

Suddenly, I have goosebumps all over, and not in a good way. Rick is probably lonely, and I'm nice and somewhat pretty and teach a somewhat fun class and am in a position of authority, and...bleh. Now I'm feeling all clammy and grossed-out. I don't think it's the flu, either.

How do you get loose from someone who doesn't know social or conversational signals? Rick practically followed me to my car today; I'm surprised he bundle me in, button my coat for me, and close the door. Good thing he didn't trail me to the tanning salon and try to keep talking to me as I lay in the booth. That would've been awkward. Running out of the classroom immediately after class is over is usually not an option, as I generally have five or six students hanging around after class needing to ask questions. Rick hangs around patiently until the other students have gone. Walking fast to my next class is an OK option, and it works sometimes, but other times Rick huffs and puffs and keeps up with me.

Any suggestions? I'm looking for firm, polite, respectful ways to handle this.

Pocket full of doo-doo

OK, I've had it. This is it. My 9am D2U composition class has gone and done it. They're idiots, pure and simple. We're finishing up peer review this week, and things did not go nearly as well as I had hoped, with students failing to help their classmates do any kind of helpful review on their papers, and just being slackers in general...and then I get this e-mail from a young lady who's a particularly good student:

I just had to [e-mail you to] get this off my chest. As I was reading my comments on my papers, I came across one that really hurt my feelings. This person said that I sounded like I was trying to sound perfect by saying that I never laughed at someone in a wheelchair. They went on & said that every child laughs at a person in a wheelchair, and that my paper was "BORING!!!" First, I wish I knew who said it so I could tell them that I was being honest, because I was raised not to laugh [at people who are in wheelchairs], but along with that, I [as a little kid] wanted to know why they were in a wheelchair. Second, [the commenter] may have laughed [at handicapped people], but that doesn't mean that every kid laughs at disabled people. They didn't have to be so mean about it. I know it's their opinion, but I think they went too far with it. I know there is nothing you or I can do about this. I just had to get this off my chest. Thanks.

OK, that's just cowardly--putting down mean stuff on other students' papers. I e-mailed this student back that I agreed that what the anonymous reviewer had written on her paper was mean-spirited and downright "chicken," and that I'd consider saying something to the class if I could find the correct way to word it. I think I know who did it. There are five or six people in that class who put on a facade of high-schoolish "in crowd" nonchalance, but who are actually very insecure on the inside. The funny thing is that they seem to think other people can't tell how insecure they are. Heh.

I guess the 9:00 group is full of idiots, and I still have my work cut out for me.

Another moment of peer-review numbskullery from the 9am class happened Monday, when it came time to review paper V3. The students began making rather helpful comments, such as, "I think V3 could take out the second sentence in the first paragraph, since it's redundant," when a voice shouted out:

"V3's paper is awesome! I think it's just fan-TAS-tic!"

I turned to look. It was the student in the middle of the room who's missed the most days so far--what was she doing making such weird comments? Then it started to sink in...

Me: So how come you think V3's paper is so good?
Student: Because I know V3, and she's a great person!
Me: Mm-hmmm...
[class begins laughing]

Way to blow your cover, Princess. And she kept on interjecting "This is so awesome!" and "V3's paper rocks!" during the rest of the peer review of her paper while other students were trying to say helpful things. What a doofus.

This 9am group is a loss so far, with the exception of six or seven hard workers. [sigh] Thank God that this is our last week before Spring Break. Bleh!