Defining moments

As opposed to Pweshus Moments.

[vomit]

No, really—I'm fine.

Ms. Kitty tagged me about ten days ago to play along with "8 Random Facts." Now, I'm having hard time coming up with eight, so bear with me and see if I can at least get to five.

Just to comply with the rules Ms. K has passed along...

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

So there.

I too chose Ms. K's version of the meme in that I'm listing defining moments in my life—moments at which my life changed dramatically. Some of these, I really had to squeeze my brain to remember.

--January 16, 1997—At 7:12 a.m., my father is shot and killed by his brother in a murder-suicide in South Carolina.

At 7:35 p.m., I find out.

Everyone else in Booger County, Georgia, has known all day long that my father is dead. Why am I among the last to know? No one can explain.

My dad's oldest sister and her husband, along with my paternal grandmother, force my sister, stepmother, and me into a double funeral. Uncle Joe* "didn't mean to do it," my aunts and grandmother insist. I ask them, "How the hell can you shoot someone twice in the back of the head at point-blank range and not 'mean to do it?'" They have no answer, only pseudo-Christian buffoonery and some platitude about "think about your grandmother, who raised you and Pixie."

Stunned and in shock, we are powerless to keep my grandmother and aunts from having the double funeral the day before MLK Day.

At the funeral home, I suggest aloud that we throw Uncle Joe* out in the middle of the pasture beside the church, where the vultures can pick his bones, and make sure we do it on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In addition to being a career drunk and fratricidal maniac, Uncle Joe was a virulent racist, so I thought the MLK Day tribute would be a last, very fitting "fuck you" from us to him. Instead, the killer and the killed are wheeled side by side into a small, freezing-cold country Methodist church in rural Georgia, an American flag draping the casket of the only one who deserved a decent burial.

Over the next ten years, my father's family continues to deny my uncle's culpability in the murder, despite there having been seven witnesses on the scene, all of sound mind and body, who gave their statements to the sheriff's deputies and coroner.

I realize that "the truth" varies, depending on who you are.

The family also tries to take all of the insurance money that my father left us; they are laughed out of District Court in the spring, with the judge saying that my and my sister's names are on the policies, and therefore no one but the two of us has claim to them. My uncle's wife also tries to say that she has inherited all of the property Daddy left to Uncle Joe* in his will, and that Daddy was not in fact half-owner of the construction business he ran with his older brother...that he missed 21 years of band concerts, ball games, and spelling bees out of the goodness of his heart, and not because he was half-owner of a successful construction company and had to travel 800 miles away from home to make a decent living for his kids.

In District Court, my uncle's wife is again laughed out of the courtroom by the judge, who cites Georgia's "murder by beneficiary" law and raps the gavel on his bench, shutting an ugly, ugly chapter in the family history.

As the dust settles and each side of the family disowns the other, I realize that people show their true colors in only two places: funerals and divorce court. And I also realize that blood relatives can cause a person more harm than even the worst enemies.

--Late April 1997—Having drinks and dinner with my then-fiance at Gus Garcia's Tavern & Grill, Athens, Georgia. I've made the mistake of drinking four very strong amaretto sours on top of the Wellbutrin my doctor has prescribed for the depression that's crippling me after my dad's unseemly end. Suddenly, the alcohol and anti-depressant combine, and I feel more deeply suicidal than ever. I put my head down on the table as my dipshit fiance continues to yammer away, drunk and unaware. Suddenly, this tiny, clear voice cuts through the fog in my brain—I don't know whose it is, or where it's coming from from—and tells me, "No matter how much you drink tonight, Daddy will still be dead tomorrow. But you are going to be okay."

And that's it. Never again do I drink in an attempt to forget my problems.

--Early June 1999—My marriage to my dipshit husband (formerly my dipshit fiance) is in shambles after barely two years. In my deep desire to be a "good wife," I have put my inheritance money toward his education, bankrolling his third bachelor's degree at Awesome Methodist College and allowing him to quit his decent-paying daytime sales job. Now that he is no longer required to be sober during the day, D----- spends his days holed up in our apartment's spare bedroom, studying for Computer Science tests, watching "golden showers" internet porn flicks, and drinking a case (I shit you not) of Coors Light at a time. His 33-year-old penis, deadened by years of alcohol abuse, is about 93 and has finally given up the ghost, but he blames this dysfunction on me: "You need to get that virgin operation." When I audition for a local production of Grease, D-----'s only reaction is, "Don't fuck up and embarrass anyone."

My stepfather, Steve, stops by the apartment one afternoon when I'm not home. D----- comes to the door.

"Hey, D-----! Is Kitty home? I brought her these pants her mama fixed for her."

D----- stares blankly at him, and slams the door in his face.

My mother calls me later to tell me of this offense to the man who is my "other dad." Steve blows it off as nothing, but I am incensed. I come home from teaching my night class at Tiny Technical College rip-roaring furious, and I stop D----- just as he's about to pop open another bottle of the very expensive 1994 Kendall-Jackson Merlot that I have bought him with what is essentially blood money.

"Do something about your drinking, or I'm leaving you."

He stares at me as if I have two heads. "I'm not giving up alcohol," he says matter-of-factly.

Just like that, I know my marriage is over.

A week later, I move out, taking our six cats with me.

--Mid-January 2002—Divorced for almost three years, I am nearing bankruptcy and recall D-----'s copious promises to repay the $20,000 he borrowed from me to finance his education. I call D-----, who has since graduated from Awesome Methodist College and has a $85,000-a-year job at an Atlanta telecom firm, and ask him to come through on his promise.

"I don't owe you anything," he says flatly. "You divorced me."

Any pity I had for D----- evaporates in an instant. I am simultaneously enraged and happy that I got rid of his no-good ass while I still could. It was an expensive lesson, but one I will never forget.

--February 14, 2002—The post-9/11 recession is in full swing, and even the most piddling of jobs are nowhere to be had. Foolishly, I have quit my teaching job at Tiny Tech and have neglected to secure a "day job" while auditioning for stage-acting work; I am on the edge of homelessness, fighting to get my Happy Kitten Cottage out of foreclosure. Yet I am turned down for employment at Wal-Mart, UPS, Starbucks, McDonald's, the local Waffle House...everywhere.

Then, on Valentine's Day, someone does hire me.

At the age of 28, I make $56 in my first shift at the Jaguar Lounge* as an exotic dancer. It's only 1/200th of the money that I need to survive, but I'm thrilled to be doing something that few other women have the guts to do. Most of all, I'm thrilled to be making my own money to pay my own bills with. I barely avoid bankruptcy, but continue to plug away at the mountain of debt hanging over my head.

The next three years are filled with heartache and difficulty, but I keep a small place in my heart for the Jaguar Lounge* (and still do today). It is where I finally learned to fend for myself...where I finally became an independent person.

--Mid-August 2004—On the advice of a fellow part-timer at Small 'Bama Community College, I make the long drive to Division II University. Dr. Pepper* (department chair) and Dr. Who* (supervisor for part-time instructors) welcome me warmly and marvel at my transcript, which has just arrived in the mail from UGA. "How come you haven't gone back to graduate school for your Ph.D.?" Dr. Pepper asks. "You'd be a shoo-in anywhere, with grades like these," Dr. Who adds. "What have you been doing the last few years?"

I decide to leave out the part about taking my clothes off for strangers, and instead tell them of my four years of training as a stage actress, my bartending experience, and my teaching at SBCC and Tiny Tech.

Half an hour later, I am hired, and begin work in mid-October at what is a great place to teach.

--February 11, 2005—the day my last City of Atlanta Exotic Dancer Permit expires. I realize that if I ever step into a strip club again, it will be because I want to, not because I have to.

--March 1, 2007—I get word that an article I wrote will be published in a small journal. As I do the Happy Publishing Dance behind the closed door of my D2U office, I realize that I'm making my dream happen when I'd begun to wonder if it would ever be possible. It's only when I stop paying attention, stop demanding recognition, and start throwing myself into my work that a little success knocks at my door.

--Mid-July 2007—It hits me from out of nowhere that my dreams of being an independent person and successful writer will never come true if I continue to allow a man to drag me down. My journey toward wholeness will have to be a solo one.

Okay, so that's nine. Who's next?

--Greg at Kinda Kitschy
--Mile High Pixie at Why Architects Drink
--ADW at Hooters and Other Tales of Woe
--CrankyProf at Cranky Epistles
--Baxter-Dawg (and Suzi) at BaxterWatch

And the wheel goes 'round and 'round

Summer Term is over, and I'm in my D2U office today getting more familiar with the new textbook I'll be using in the fall. Making Literature Matter looks promising. I'm using it in conjunction with Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor. These two texts might be the ticket to revitalizing my Comp II classes to make them just as timely and thought-provoking as my Comp I. I'm enjoying them immensely so far and will write up a review soon.

My friend Helen*, a Spanish instructor whose office is down the hall from mine, has just announced she's leaving D2U to go back to nursing school. Sadly, she's doing this at a bad time. She's leaving D2U in the lurch for eight sections of Spanish I; Fall Semester starts on August 16. However carefully she's weighed all her options, she has still royally pissed off the Foreign Language department. Hope she doesn't want a nursing school letter of reference from Dr. Piazza,* who's now stuck with finding someone else to teach Helen's classes.

Helen* has an M.A. in Spanish and was considering a Ph.D., but weighed all her options recently and decided against it. "Only 40% of Ph.D.s get a job offer when they get out," I overheard her saying to a colleague. (I've read some similar stats, myself.) "If I get my R.N., I'll be making twice what a Ph.D. teaching Spanish makes. And I'll have a helluva lot of job security as a nurse—which is not what I'd have here." Helen only has two years of college teaching under her belt, and that's why she feels more free to make a bold move. Her new husband of four weeks is also in nursing school, and he'll be finished next year, hopefully certified as a cardiac nurse. Bobby* will be in big demand and will make great money, and then Helen can go for her R.N.

Yeah. [sigh] Those are some of the reasons I don't just run back to graduate school again. An acquaintance of mine, after he got his Ph.D. from South Carolina, did the teach-at-four-colleges thing for ten years before finding a permanent position.

At Kuwait University. Seven thousand miles from his friends and family in Charleston, S.C.

[sigh]

I, too, don't think I want to invest five years getting my Ph.D. just so I can keep busting my ass like I've been doing all this time. I'd probably return to the chrome pole before I'd do that. At almost 34 years old, I'm not in prime exotic-dancing shape, but I could still manage for a while and make decent money until my options improved. (More on this later.)

About six weeks ago, everyone in both the English and Foreign Language departments got an e-mail from Dr. Pepper* (my supervisor and chair of both departments). Dr. Pepper warned us that D2U is officially on "part-time/overload emergency status," which means that all departments have to cut as much out of their adjunct budgets as possible. Evidently, finances are not being managed as they should at D2U, and while there's plenty of money for a new campus-wide landscape irrigation system to be installed—hello! Bullshit on a stick!—there's not enough money to pay part-time instructors to teach badly-needed core classes that had already filled up. Last week, I got four e-mails from students whose Comp II classes had been cancelled; could I pleeeease let them into my already-stuffed-to-the-gills Comp II sections?

There really is a point to this post. No, really—there are actually a few.

1. As much as I might love my job, I am "a tiny little cog in the wheel around here," as Helen put it. When my full-time contract runs out next spring, I may not even be able to count on any part-time work at D2U. I should work like hell this year getting my ducks in a row to work at other places. I'm going to (once again) send my vita and letter to Big Wannabe University near Atlanta; I hear they pay part-timers pretty well. Cow-Tipping University is also a possibility.
2. The advice Dr. Rhettencomp gave me about getting a book proposal together was good advice. If I can manage to get some kind of advance by this time next year, I might be able to avoid the D2U budget crunch that I feel is about to hit us full-force.
3. The only people who really know and care about higher education are those of us who are doing it. Politicians, administrators, the Board of Regents...they know jack-squat about what it really takes to teach, and to learn.

Thanks for your responses!

After a hellacious week, I'm finally getting caught up on blogging. I've just now posted a reply to some of the longer comments on A Framework for Understanding Poverty. But I was concerned that many readers might not click on "Comments" and read my reply, so I'm going to post my last comment here. Perhaps it'll get another good discussion going.

Responding to Myth: I was hoping to find solutions in the book, but I think the only real one it offers is how educators and counselors must teach these secrets of middle-class existence to the poor. As to your comment about today's middle-class students--I think the sense of entitlement comes not from a poverty mentality seeping into middle-class culture, but two or more generations of what I call "helicopter parents" who, in a misguided effort to make their kids' lives "better than what [they] had," give them everything and spoil them to the point where the students never consider that some things may NOT be possible for them, and that they may actually have to WORK at some things. And I sometimes have the same experience with people from poverty--I try to explain to them how they're shooting themselves in the foot, but they get offended. I think my mistake is in insulting their pride. Poor people don't have much to go on except their pride, and when that's taken away or demeaned, they get angry and defensive b/c that truly is the one thing they had all to themselves.

Responding to Amy: I feel ya, sister. A student of mine wrote a journal entry in response to Robert Reich's essay "Why the Rich Keep Getting Richer, and the Poor Poorer" and gave the same tired conservative explanation: get a job, bring yourself up by your bootstraps. I write next to his comments the title of Payne's book and asked him to check it out for himself. Will he? I doubt it. It'd be too much effort for him to try to reconsider whether his opinions are not only truthful, but accurate and ethical. [sigh]

Responding to Ladyjane: I'm of a similar background to yours, and the book brought me the very same "ah-ha!" experience. Now I think I can see things in a new light. Is it too late for my poor students? Maybe, maybe not.

Thanks to everyone else for your comments...I replied to the longest ones, in the interest of time and new posts.

You readers are the best. Thank you, as always, for your time and thoughtfulness.

So many post topics, so little time.

Let's see, now...just how many things have I been planning to post about this week?

• The ongoing story of the sweet, scruffy stray kitties at D2U (in at least two installments)
• Interviews for my nonfiction book—maybe things are finally about to get rolling on that project
• The "Random Facts" meme for which Ms. Kitty tagged me
• My personal crises of late
• My students and their myriad problems

And those are only the first five that came to mind. I'm working on them, a little at a time.

But yesterday afternoon, I got incredibly sidetracked by a book—the most wonderful sidetracking of all. I love when a book sweeps me off my feet, never to return me to my former mode of seeing the world.

After I wrote last week about Skeeter*, my struggling D2U student who's from a very poor background, both the aformentioned Ms. Kitty and my sister suggested that I read A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby K. Payne. I went online and requested the book via Interlibrary Loan, since D2U doesn't have its own copy in the stacks. The book arrived yesterday morning, and when I finally got my hands on it, I opened it up, hoping for a little insight into what makes Skeeter self-destruct in what is probably his very last chance at a college education. (I checked into his academic record, and he is very close to failing out of school for good.)

I was mesmerized by what I read, and I proceeded to read the entire 200-page book during my four-hour office time. It was that worthwhile.

In the pages of the book, and the many case studies it offers, I saw Skeeter and so many of my other students from poor backgrounds who have seemed to have the intelligence for college work, but who shoot themselves in the foot when they don't turn in work, act inappropriately in the college classroom setting, or simply stop coming to class. Finally, it made sense. These students, whose behavior had struck me as incredibly bone-headed and counterproductive, suddenly appeared in a new light. They were simply repeating the patterns they learned growing up in poverty.

For example, Suzanne* was in my class a couple of years ago. She grew up in a run-down, crime-ridden neighborhood in D2U City, but was fortunate enough to attend a well-known historically black college for a year before she "had to come home" (she never said why this was—my guesses were either that her family ran out of money, or she couldn't keep up her studies, or she had to return home to help support the family). Suzanne enrolled at D2U many years after her initial venture into higher education, but had incredible difficulty fulfilling all the requirements college made of her. She would miss paper due dates, come to class unprepared, and regarded the work required of her (and her fellow students) as highly suspect. "Don't see how this is supposed to help me get a job," she would often say when asked for her opinion of the previous night's assigned short story or poetry.

One day, I was checking my students' work on peer-reviewing their classmates' essay rough drafts, and I noted that Suzanne* had written only a short paragraph at the end of one person's essay, which was on his difficulty coming from a white, middle-class background (where his parents paid for everything) to the college environment (where he was trying to pay all his bills on his own without his family's help, working 40+ hours a week and carrying a full courseload). Peer reviews are supposed to be constructive, non-judgmental, and as anonymous as possible. Yet Suzanne* had written at the end of this person's essay:

You ain't never known what it's like to struggle so quit your bitchin. Your mama & daddy paid for everything and now you can learn how too. You ain't goin thru nothin different than what nobody else been through.

I took Suzanne* aside after that class and asked her to refrain from making comments such as that on other students' papers; she was supposed to make comments on content and understanding, not write up personal attacks. She gave me a sour look (or so I thought) and replied, "I like you, Professor Kitty, so I won't do that no more. Sorry." I thought, What the hell does liking me have to do with how you behave toward your classmates?

But Payne's book made that clear to me. Students who grow up poor have a mistrust of education. They seldom have the internal self-talk (a hallmark of middle-class culture) necessary to complete independent assignments such as reading, essays, and projects. Having had to fight both physically and emotionally just to survive, they may lack sympathy for other people's situations, especially people from higher socioeconomic classes. And they may base whether they cooperate with authority figures on whether they like that person in authority—hence, Suzanne's telling me that because she liked me, she'd do what I asked her to do.

A Framework for Understanding Poverty is directed at teachers and administrators in the K-12 range, but there is plenty in here for college educators and anyone else who deals with (or has dealt with) people from poverty. I just wish I had found it earlier.

Still scrambling to post—sorry, folks.

I apologize for the lack of posts this week. I've been in a whirlwind of end-of-Summer-Term activity, plus a sort of personal meltdown that's left me emotionally drained. I'm also busy making plans for my very first interview for my nonfiction book, so that's got me prepping and hurrying about in what little time I have. So bear with me. The craziness should be under control very soon, and this weekend will bring some good posts.

Service Learning Project: An unmitigated success

On Saturday, July 21, my Small Military College class—"Contemporary Ethics"—met for the last time. As I've mentioned several times over the last few weeks, we had a Service Learning Project to complete during the morning of that last class meeting. Most of the class went to the local Humane Society shelter, while those who were allergic to cats and dogs (or just afraid of them) volunteered at Christ's Blessings Thrift Store*, whose proceeds go to benefit local homeless programs. The thrift store positions were, believe it or not, the only volunteer openings that Christ's Blessings had open for Saturday. (They have a pretty big volunteer staff, thankfully.)

The students who volunteered at Christ's Blessings, sadly, didn't get to interact with any homeless people. They mostly stacked boxes, washed funky-smelling donated clothing in big industrial washing machines, and put clothing on hangers. However, all four of them said they'd do it again in a heartbeat. "What we did is going to help those [homeless] people," Jamitra* said when we reconvened. "Every single one-dollar shirt we washed will either clothe them, or its sale is gonna help them have a safe place to sleep at night."

The Humane Society outing, on which I accompanied the majority of the class, was the best thing I've seen a class do in a looooong time. Although my heart was wrenched a few times, especially with those animals who were obviously loving but with handicaps such as FIV, mangled legs, or scarring from mistreatment, it was well worth the heartache.

We walked in as a group, all nine of us, and filled out the paperwork and waiver forms. Yes, we knew if we got scratched, bitten, or peed on, it wasn't the Humane Society's fault. We signed our forms and walked into the Cat Room to ask where they needed us most. A college-age white man who looked vaguely familiar was the one who'd tell us where we needed to help.

"Okay, you two like dogs, and you can go in there to help Sasha* clean out cages. You three, dogs need walking—just go outside through that door. And you—wait, you're Kitty B. Goode!"

For a brief moment, I felt like a rock star. Then it hit me where I'd seen this fellow, and I was damn happy to see him. "Oh my God! Timothy!* I was thinking about you just the other day!" Timothy* shook my hand heartily and told my SMC students, "She was one awesome English professor over at Division II University."

One SMC student replied, "She's an awesome English professor over at SMC for us, too."

That made me feel really, really good. But then we got down to work. No time for puffing up with pride when there are cats to feed and dogs to walk.

I took a ton of pictures; these are only a few of them. Since I do better with cats, I volunteered to work in the cat section, though I did visit the dogs and petted a few. (Most of my students split their time between cats and dogs.)

Foxtrot demanded that I love on her as soon as I walked into the room. She's a sweet girl, and very meowy.

Lula is a bitey-pants! Very pesky—I think she's going to need a family with a lot of energy, and a small dog or two who won't mind rough-housing.

The "socialization room" looks suspiciously like my Happy Kitten Cottage. Hmmmm.

White Cat: Please pet me, Miss Kitty. I forgot to put my tongue back in.

Gray Cat: Your head is thiiiiis big!

Thomas acts all nonchalant, but he's a love-hog. He spent ten minutes in my lap, purring nonstop.

Orange and charcoal gray: two of my favorite kitty colors.

EXTRA TOEZ!!!!!

MORE EXTRA TOEZ!!!!!

Who says cats don't have opposable thumbs?

Lacy, another charcoal-gray kitty, also demanded my attention. She was a real sweetie.

Sadie has one gray ear, and one white ear. She looks mean, but is very loving.

[sigh]

[sniffle]

Buster, a 22-pound gray tabby, had to be euthanized just a few minutes before the class arrived. His gastrointestinal problems led the vet on staff that morning to believe he had contratced feline infectious peritonitis, for which there's no cure.

Happily, the other empty cages were that way because a few cats had been taken over to the local crafts fair for an adoption feature.

Another cage was empty because my student Jimmy*, never really a cat person, found himself in love with a pair of pesky black-and-white-tuxedo kittens. He was late for our reconvening back on campus at 2pm becasue, as he told me from his cell phone, "I just pulled up to PetsMart to get a box and some litter—I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Take your time, Jimmy!" I laughed. "I think adopting a pair of kitties is a great reason to be late for class."

We all had a big laugh later when Beth*, a fiercely devoted Christian in her mid-50s (and one of my favorite students), told us about the tiny solid-black kitten she adopted from a woman who came in to surrender the poor little thing. The Humane Society has over 100 cats and simply couldn't take any more, so the supervisor on staff let the lady know they were full. "But I'll have to take it to the County Pound!" she wailed, knowning full well that the folks there, also overburdened and lacking a no-kill policy, would immediately euthanize the tiny creature. "I'll take it," Beth said before she even knew the words were coming out of her mouth. So during our break, she took her new kitty home to terrorize her mini-Dachshund mix and three adult cats.

Shannon*, a young black woman who had remained quiet for much of our three class meetings, spoke up suddenly. "I think I got more out of working the front desk than I did helping with the animals," she said. I remembered that she had walked dogs for about an hour before heading up front to help the staff.

"How so?" I asked.

She sighed. "Well, I was helping the supervisor with paperwork, and I heard a woman come in and ask if she could surrender a mama dog and 11 puppies." She paused. "But—the supervisor said that they were completely full, they had 60 dogs already. And then she told the woman about her options: she could go down the road to the County Pound, and she told the woman that the Pound would probably euthanize the mama and puppies immediately." Shannon paused and took a deep breath, trying not to cry. "And the woman started crying, and I started crying, and the supervisor started crying. And there wasn't a thing any of us could do. The lady had lost her job, and was trying to make it on just Unemployment pay, and she was really trying to do the right thing by the dogs, because they were so skinny. And right there, I saw what was so hard about the whole thing."

The class nodded. That summed it up better than anything else any of us could have said.


We talked about the whole Michael Vick dogfighting case, and how and why it's cruel, and what exactly is unethical about it. Harris*, a young black man with multiple tattoos and piercings who is the class's most staunch defender of the less fortunate, said, "Now, I'm not really a pet person. But what they do to those dogs who lose—you know, electrocution, all that stuff—it reminds me of the stories my great-granddaddy used to tell about lynchings. And black American men, of all people, doing that to creatures who are defenseless, beat up, almost dead...do they have any idea what that makes them?"

The class nodded again. Harris had spoken an ugly truth.

Although I'm not a philosophy major by any stretch of the imagination—my M.A. is in American Literature—I'm very glad that Small Military College asked me to teach this class. I have learned so much from my students, who are all of different ethnic backgrounds, ages, faiths, and socioeconomic classes. I told them all that I'd miss them terribly...and that, if D2U didn't renew my contract for Fall 2008, with any luck I'd see them back over at SMC again.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I do what I do.

Coming up: A shitload of posts

I am WAY behind on posting, and there's a lot of news to tell you, dear readers. So check back later this evening, around 11pm Eastern Time...I'll most likely have TWO long posts for your reading and commenting pleasure.

For real!

"APATHY: No. 1 killer of freedom"

This was spray-painted on a wall in an abandoned lot near Cow-Tipping University. I've been looking at it all summer, and finally stopped to snap a photo of it this afternoon.

He done it to hisself!

This post's title is taken from a line in Ferrol Sams' Run with the Horsemen, which should be required reading in all Southern Lit classes. My sister and I frequently quote lines from the book.

First of all, let me apologize in advance for this confusing-ass post. I've tried my best to make it comprehensible, but I do believe I've failed. Please bear with me.

As a professor, nothing astounds me more than the student who fails a class not because he/she couldn't comprehend the material, but because he/she simply didn't turn in the work. This happens to at least one student of mine every semester; at the end of Spring Semester, I had a grand total of four students earn what I call the "slacker F."

And I'm about to have one more. Alas, the student in question is more strange and more difficult than the usual "slacker F" student, and this makes the situation sad for a change.

Skeeter* is unusual in a couple of ways. He's an adult student—in his early 30s, he is the first in his family to go to college. He's from the rural area around D2U City—very few people in these areas get past high school, and that makes his attending college even more remarkable. He still lives at home with his family, and they're very poor. All the adults in the household work more than full-time. Dad is on disability, and Mom works two jobs; Skeeter himself works nights at a local factory, sometimes 60 hours a week.

He's a very large man—average height, around 450 pounds—in a skinny-obsessed society. I'm guessing this is a lot of what makes him as weird a person as he is. Overweight people tend not to get a fair shake in American society. So because of his size (which he says he's been for many years), people won't hang around him so he can learn the social cues that make human interaction easier. Skeeter will talk to anyone, regardless of whether that person wants to have a conversation with him, and he doesn't see or hear the cues that indicate that a person's not interested, or is busy, or needs to leave. He went to Booger County Comprehensive High School (my alma mater) for two years, so he thinks we have a bond beyond the normal student-professor one.

Skeeter also smells bad. Like old Parmesan cheese.

(I love my students dearly, but I feel badly when I find them hard to be around. Whenever Skeeter leaves my office, I spray the room with air freshener. It's that or be nauseous.)

And Skeeter's biggest obstacle is that he has terrible time management skills. They're affecting his grades in the worst way.

He has two classes every day—mine at 10:00am, and an evening class at 7:00pm. The nine hours he has between classes are not spent studying, reading, or working on assignments. Instead, Skeeter spends this time sitting in the shade outside the Student Center, talking to anyone who walks by. He does not step into the computer lab to work, nor does he head over to the library. He sits and wastes the 36 free hours he has every week.

Mr. Greenjeans (whose knee is doing marvelously, thanks for asking) stopped me the other day as I was walking over to the Admin Building. "The great big fella who sits outside the Student Center—is he in your class?"

"Ummm, yeah," I replied. "How come?"

"Well, I never see him go to class, and I just wondered if he was even a student. He just sits there all afternoon. He's out there when I get here at 8:00, and he's still there when I leave at 5:00."

[sigh]

"Look, Kitty—it's his business how he spends his time," I can hear you saying. You're completely right. It is up to Skeeter as to how he spends his time. What frustrates me is that he has never turned in an assignment on time—most assignments he doesn't turn in at all "because [he] just didn't have time to do them"—and he comes to me asking for extra time at every due date.

I warned him at midterm that his chances of passing my class were slim to none, since he'd not turned in anything for Essay #1 and had done one weekly journal assignment. (The journals alone are 10% of the final grade.) But he stayed with the class, against my advice.

Rough drafts are an important part of the writing process, and I make them worth 10% of a student's final grade. This is a completion grade, and it's pretty easy to earn; all a student has to do is produce a respectable first draft of a paper and hand it in. Three-and-a-half double-spaced pages aren't too much to ask. Yet Skeeter has yet to turn in a rough draft. He also failed to turn in Essay #1. Essay #2 was a day late, which counts ten points off before I even begin grading. (We'll simply have to see what he does for the final assignments of the class.)

But let me tell you what happened when he turned in Essay #2.

I was all set to head home at 1:30 that afternoon, but I ended up taking care of a few last-minute details. When I looked at my watch, it was 1:55pm, and Skeeter still had not come by to turn in his essay. (He had mentioned he'd be coming by around 1:15.) "Oh well," I said to myself. "Guess he's really shot himself in the foot this time."

Then I heard it: the belabored breathing from the main English Building doorway, 75 feet away, that always tells me Skeeter's coming down the hall. It sounded as if he were moving as fast as was physically possible for him. Then he was in my doorway.

"Hi, Skeeter. How can I help you?"

No reply. He stood there for an uncomfortable 60 seconds, just staring at me. I asked again, "Are you okay? Something I can help you with? Come on in."

He walked in and sat down. "I have a problem."

No shit, I thought.

"I didn't work at all on the paper over the weekend," he panted.

"Well, that's a big problem," I replied.

"I know I need to turn it in," he began. "But—"

"Well, as you know, it's ten points off per day that it's late," I said. "You remember that from the syllabus."

"Well...that's the problem—"

Whenever someone else offers a solution for one of Skeeter's myriad problems, that's his standard reply: Well, that's the problem...

I'd had enough. "Skeeter, you know my policy. You need to get it done. The clock is ticking, so go put the pedal to the metal and get it done."

So Skeeter left, presumably to go to the library. I got back to work, myself.

Thirty minutes later, he was back. "I've got three paragraphs!" he announced brightly.

I was unamused. "Good. Go finish it."

Twenty minutes later, he returned. "I have four paragraphs now!"

"Good. I'm leaving at 3:00." He left yet again. I was getting the feeling that he was passive-aggressively asking for a "freebie" extension, which I was not about to give him.

I was getting my things together at 3:02pm when I heard the belabored breathing again down the hall. Skeeter rolled into my office and announced brightly, "Thank goodness for people being late!"

"What do you mean?"

"Because if you'd'a left when you said you were, this paper'd be TWO days late!"

I looked at him blankly. Was this an attempt to make his lateness look like my fault? To deflect the blame for his quickly-plummeting average in my class? Hmmm.

"You're aware that we have two more essays—pretty substantial ones—to turn in before the end of the term," I warned him. "You can't afford to drag like this for these projects."

Skeeter agreed and lumbered back down the hall. As he walked away, I heard him mutter something like, "You're tired of talkin' to me" under his breath.

Which I was. But that was mighty passive-aggressive. And I hate passive-aggressive.

I'll be incredibly glad when this semester is over and Skeeter is out of my class. I just hope he sells his books back and takes someone else for his repeat of Comp I.

What do teachers make?

Watch this all the way through—it's a little over three minutes long. You'll be glad you did.

Taylor Mali, your wife is a very lucky woman.

Good question!

MSNBC.com: Why Don't We Use Commas Anymore?

Ummm...because we're a nation of illiterates?

Seriously, people (usually English/writing teachers) have wondered this for years. I'm wondering, too.

Cat magnet

You knew they would find me wherever I went. And they did!


The other day, I was taking a late-afternoon walk on the D2U campus. It's a different place altogether once most of the students and staff have gone home, and I enjoy the peace and quiet at the end of my day.


Well, what should I find over by the Student Fitness Center but this little sweet-pea? She reminds me of my Martha Ann (aka Squirrel, or The Disappointed One) at home, all tortie, semi-longhaired, and scruffy...

I talked kitty/baby talk to her for a few minutes—"Hi, purrty girl! You wanna talka me? Hmm? Miss Kitty not hurt det bebeh, no her nyot"—before going back to the truck and checking for my usual spare cans of cat food. I always carry some in my vehicles just in case I find a hungry stray in my travels.

Damn. Fresh out.

So I went back and told the mama cat, "Miss Kitty hes to go get you some cat fuel. You stay right here!" She meowed a scratchy meow and went back into the bushes.

I returned 15 minutes later from the corner store with a few cans of Fancy Feast, which you can see her devouring above.

This morning, a huge pack of incoming freshmen on their overnight orientation tour was gathered over by the Student Fitness Center, their guide chatting away about all the great services the SFC and D2U have to offer. I saw them and simply stood off to the side, pretending I was lost. I knew they'd scare off the mama cat, if she were still over there.


The students and their guide moved on, and I tiptoed over to the small garden where I saw the mama cat last week. Someone else has had the same idea I've had—there was a white styrofoam cooler overturned to act as a table, and two plastic bowls atop the cooler. One was filled with water, and another had a few morsels of dry cat food left in it.


And there was the Mama Cat...and two small, scruffy, half-grown babies, too!

You may not be able to see them very well, but Mama and one baby are eating 9 Lives Chicken & Tuna Dinner from the black plastic plate, while another baby is licking the remnants out of the 9 Lives can. They're happy that Miss Kitty went and restocked her Traveling Kitty Smorgasbord.

I'm already asking around to see who the other stray-kitty feeder is. Maybe we can get a trap-neuter-release fund going here at D2U.

Chickens is creepy.

Myrtle Mae giving a half-ripe tomato hell. That's a soaker hose she's stepping over/around.

While talking to Mom this evening on the phone, I thought I heard a strange buzzing sound—the "overgrown bumblebee" noise that a cell phone on "vibrate" will make when it rings on a tabletop. It wasn't my phone, as my tiny Motorola was off and hooked up to the charger, and I was calling Mom on my land line.

I searched all around the kitchen, but found nothing. The neighbors weren't out in their yard, so it didn't seem as if someone else had left a cell phone outdoors to vibrate the night away on the picnic table. Nothing was wrong with the house, as far as I could tell.

What the hell was that insane buzzing? It was somewhat regular, but not regular enough to remind me of anything.

I stood in the backyard for the better part of 15 mnutes, following the noise whenever I heard it. It led me right back to the house—to the back porch, where Myrtle Mae was perched on the railing, half-asleep. Myrtle clucked softly at me. "It's okay, big girl," I reassured her. "Mama's just trying to find that damn noise."

"Brkbrkbrkbrrrrrrk," she replied. Brrrrrrrt! went the noise again.

I stood completely still and watched Myrtle's beady little evil-dinosaur eyes close yet again. Brrrrrrrrt!

My chicken was snoring. Avian snoring, people.

No doubt in my mind now: chickens is creepy.

Success!

Just a few minutes ago, I walked onto the front porch to find Kamakura and four of her six babies. The three more timid kittens ran back across the street, but the large black-and-white female stayed behind with her Mama.

And I managed to hold and pet the little black-and-white "ringleader" cat!

She did NOT like it AT ALL, and hissed and spit a little. But I petted her for about ten minutes while her mom enjoyed some breakfast.

Kitty Break: It's Ernest!

It's been a while, hasn't it?

Here's my squirmy boy in Mama's arms—"Stop that typing crap, Mom, and pet me instead."

"Oooh! What's DeeDee doing? I have to wiggle-worm away and find out!"

Ernest has grown to about 300% of his foundling size; he probably weighs about three-and-a-half pounds now, and is almost a foot long from noze to tip of tail.

I'm so glad he wandered into my yard.

Service learning dilemma

The Saturday ethics class at Small Military College went really well. The students are asking hard and thoughtful questions, and many of us who had thought our core values were set in stone are among those doing the asking. I am so proud of these students.

We have one more class meeting to go, which will be all day on Saturday, July 21. This is the date for our Service Learning Project. Many of you posted great comments when I asked for your input on where we should go for the project, and I'm grateful for your help.

I took Crummy Joel's suggestion and asked my students to decide on their service learning project. After some consideration and debate, the consensus was that they'd overhwlemingly like to go to the Humane Society for the project. When I asked why, several answered, "Because I like animals more than I do people." I chuckled at this, and pressed them for further answers. A few of those in favor of the animal shelter trip said that they thought animals often get left out of ethical conversations; one person spoke up and said that the shelter would need us to actually do things, such as wash out cages, clean litter boxes, feed, take dogs on walks, brush animals, and so forth. "It'd be more than just talking to someone, or just being physically present," the student said. And I had to agree with the students on these points.

Three students had objections to the idea of the Humane Society trip. One student is highly allergic to both cats and dogs, and would be breaking out in hives after about half an hour. So a shelter trip would be a bad idea for her. Another is deathly afraid of cats. (You'd be surprised how often I hear this. It seems to be more prevalent in the Deep South; must be the remnants of a superstition or old wives' tale from centuries past.) And the last said she thought that going to a homeless shelter or soup kitchen would really connect us with the less fortunate in ways we might not get to otherwise.

This group is a thinking one, no doubt. That's why I'm going to miss them so much in the fall.

I told the students I'd mill over their points and let them know mid-week what we're going to do on the 21st. Faithful readers: what would YOU do here?

Morning cuteness

Kamakura brought one of her larger kittens—the one I call the "ringleader" of the litter—with her to eat this morning. This kitten is female, as far as I can tell, and she almost let me pet her this morning. Almost! The other kittens were waiting patiently across the street for their opportunity to come get some breakfast.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

Happy 231st birthday to America!

Kitty Kamakura celebrated by eating a can of Salmon Delight on the porch of the Happy Kitten Cottage. (She's been bringing the babies to the HKC in the evenings; it's so cute to see each of the six kittens very carefully tip-toe across the street to my front porch.)

The other outdoor cats, already fat and happy, were jealous.

Maybe next time...

This afternoon, I got an e-mail from Dr. Zora* at Awesome Methodist College. She was writing to ask whether I'd still be able to teach the class that I'd proposed for AMC's Interim (January) Term 2008. The class, which I dubbed "Country-Western Music and Southern Culture," was very quickly approved back in March by the full-timers on the Faculty Course Committee, and the dean was more than happy to put his signature on the Course Approval sheet. "Watch out," Dean Marcus* warned me with a grin. "This class will be full before you know it—I bet the students will be fighting each other to get in." I was delighted that the tenured faculty thought so highly of my proposal, and of my ability to teach the course.

But I was a little sad to tell Dr. Zora that, as she had heard from Dr. McCool* (my AMC Evening Program supervisor), I had been offered a full-time position at Division II University (albeit for just a year). I told her that even though I was happy about a full-time job, D2U considers AMC a conflict of interest. "However," I wrote to her, "I may well be available to teach at AMC part-time again when the 2008-2009 academic year rolls around. I hope that AMC would like to have me back to teach the class then."

Dr. Zora e-mailed back a short while later:
I am sure that we would love to have you teach the course whenever you can. The good thing is that it has already been approved by the Faculty Course Committee. If your schedule is such that you can teach it in January 2009, please let me know some time next year. Best of luck with your new responsibilities! I know you will do a superb job.

It's certainly nice to hear things like that from the higher-ups. I sure will miss AMC, and I hope (even if my full-time gig with D2U keeps on) that I have a chance to teach there again someday.

Service learning as an opportunity for growth

I'm preparing for the next meeting of my Small Military College "Contemporary Ethics" class, and wondering what the next class will bring. Only one of my 12 students has bothered to contact me in the nine days since our last class; I hope this is just because they're procrastinating about getting their assignments done, and not because they fooled me into thinking they were good students when they're really slackers.

Next Saturday's class will be interesting. I've divided the class into four groups, and each group will debate one side of an issue. Two groups are researching their positions on the abortion issue, while the other two are considering the issue of animal rights. I made sure to tell the class that they'd need to put aside their own feelings on each issue so they could better research and understand how each side thought, and how each side had carefully considered their issues. The best way to make your own thinking more clear, I told them in the assignment, is to learn an issue and argue it from a different viewpoint. I warned them to steer clear of sentimentality, too, in preparing these debates.

One of the biggest components of the class is the "service learning project," which will take place on the final day of class (July 21). This feature was a part of the master syllabus for the class, and I thought it held enough potential for student intellectual growth to keep it on the syllabus. When I asked Jane*, my SMC supervisor, what past instructors have done for the project, she replied, "Oh, a few have taken their classes to the local homeless shelter to volunteer for the day, or a local soup kitchen. Since this is the last time the class is going to be taught like this, you can decide on your own what the field trip will be. It's just got to be related to ethics and the class material as a whole."

This got me thinking. Perhaps the homeless issue is one that's too easily dismissed by students. I know quite a few of my D2U students have very narrow minds when it comes to homelessness; they assume the people don't have anywhere to go because they consciously made a decision to be homeless. But my SMC students are a different lot—they're what I call "aware through experience." Some of them have actually been homeless before, and they know how terrifying that experience can be. Would it be a learning experience for them? Or old hat?

Then I thought about a field trip of volunteering at the local animal shelter, or Humane Society. That would certainly be different. I know from past experience that volunteering to help animals is both heart-warming and heart-wrenching for me—and that sounds like a perfect service learning opportunity for my students. perhaps as we cleaned out cages and litter boxes and played with animals, we could talk with staffers about what makes their jobs rewarding and sad. We could ask them about ethical dilemmas they face at their jobs. Hmmm, there may well be plenty of room to grow on this one.

What do you think, readers? I'm looking forward to hearing your comments on how I could make a three-hour service learning field trip into an experience that all the students will remember.