Trite old sayings really chap my ass. (Part 2)

I'm working on it. Stay tuned.

Trite old sayings really chap my ass. (Part 1)

But maybe there's a little truth—even just a teeny bit—to "Everything happens for a reason." It's extremely hard to figure out where to begin, since so much has happened lately. But here goes.

July 13 was pretty devastating for someone like me, who takes school and being smart so seriously. But after about 24 hours, I began to feel as if maybe I hadn't done so badly on the midterm after all. Dr. Kim*, our professor, mentioned in class the next day that she'd put nearly 30 points' worth of extra questions on the test, just in case we were to mess up one section or another. So I got to thinking that perhaps I'd squeaked by with a C. That wouldn't be so bad. I'd at least pass. On the 14th, I gave a great presentation to the class on a linguistics article—Dr. Kim* stopped me after class to say, "That was a great presentation! You really set the bar high for the other students!" It was so good to hear that, after having felt like a flunky for three-and-a-half weeks of class.

The next day, I received my midterm exam. I didn't even look at it when Dr. Kim* handed it out in class. Instead, I waited until I'd been at home for several hours to unfold it and look at my score.

86 / 126 = 68.2

I had scored a D on an exam worth 30% of my grade. Coupled with having made a 55 on the last quiz, things were not looking good. There were NO more quizzes or tests all semester long; my chances to do well on something, anything, had passed. That was the way Dr. Kim* had structured the class, and it had worked to my severe disadvantage.

My downward spiral turned into a nosedive within seconds. I was screaming uncontrollably, throwing myself into walls and counters, hitting myself with whatever blunt objects I could find. "Stupid! Stupid!" I kept shouting. I knew what I was doing was unreasonable, but I couldn't stop.

Just as quickly as it had started, it stopped—whatever "it" was. My face was red and swollen from crying, and I hurt all over from bonking into (and bonking myself with) objects. I suddenly decided if I was going to fail, I was going to fail. Maybe it had been a sign when I'd had such a great deal of difficulty getting D2U just to accept me as a TESOL certificate student and not a full degree-seeking student.

Pixie and the Colonel tried their best to cheer me up, but to no avail. "Did you go ask the prof for extra credit?" Pixie asked me over IM.

"No," I replied. "Only slack-ass millenials ask for extra credit." The long-ingrained voices in my psyche were whispering to me what I couldn't say to Pixie: You're an idiot. You don't deserve extra chances to do well, and you never did. Just accept being a failure. That's what you are.

"Look, it's not like it's a hundred percent of your grade," the Colonel said to me over lunch the next day. "You know Dr. Kim*, you work with her. I just don't think she'd let you flounder and not say anything to you. She told you she thought you were going to pass. So you're going to pass, even with a C." I just grunted. The voices of every hypercritical babysitter, every hateful aunt, cousin, and grandparent, still whispered to me what I didn't dare tell the Colonel: You've skated by all this time, and now everyone knows the truth. You're a fraud. About time they figured that out. You're just stupid.

Over e-mail, I asked Dr. Pepper, "Will it look bad if I don't continue in the TESOL certificate program?"

"No," she wrote back. "Since you and I are the only ones who know you're taking the linguistics class, it won't look bad at all." So I began considering the possibility of just not going after the TESOL certificate, even though having that training would really, really help me with the international students in my classes. Maybe it just wasn't meant to be. Maybe I simply wasn't as smart as I'd thought I was—maybe my 3.75 GPA in graduate school was just a fluke. I'd long had a sneaking suspicion that the UGA English Department had just let me slide with my M.A., and perhaps my gut feeling had been right all along. And maybe it was just meant to be that I really wasn't cut out for graduate school any more, and that I needed to accept just having that dishonestly-earned M.A., and not having the extra rhetoric/composition know-how that my students needed. I began contemplating what I would have to do to get a new job. "Wonder if Laura* is still house mom at the Jaguar Lounge?" I thought.

I walked around campus and through my daily routine like a zombie. I was numb to almost everything: tasty food, cold drinks, sleep and rest, daytime and nighttime, Pixie's IM'ed pep talks, Mom's e-mails updating me on the fun she was having in Denver, the Colonel's sweet messages on my voicemail. It didn't matter. I was a ghost in this strange new world of shattered dreams, wrong assumptions, and unmet expectations.

Leaving campus at the end of the week, I met my friend Sammy*, another D2U English instructor. "Hi, Kitty! How's it going!" We stood beside the faculty parking and chatted.

"Oh, okay," I lied. "How are you?"

"All right, thanks." He looked at the ground, a little uncomfortably, I thought. "Listen, Kitty—I'd like to ask you a personal question. If it's none of my business, just tell me so, okay?"

"Okay."

I thought I had problems before talking to Sammy*—but I hadn't seen nothin' yet.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Mexican Breakfast—Helpfully Explained

This video made me laugh my ass off at a time when I desperately needed it. Bob Fosse would probably approve.

First of all: I'm okay.

But the last ten days have been a blur of emotions. I feel like a gift-shop snow globe—everyone who walks by me has to stop and shake me up, then set me back down to regain my composure. It's a matter of minutes before the next tourist walks past to shake me up again.

Your encouraging messages have given me so much hope; I can't thank you enough for your kindness, even though I've never met most of you. Thank you for believing in me and my abilities.

I'm working on a series of posts that will explain it all, and will have them up starting sometime Friday. It's really hard to know where to start, but I'm giving it my best.

I love you all.

—Miss Kitty

Ask Mom™ at WAD

Until I can manage to cobble together a post that actually makes sense, please visit my sister's blog, Why Architects Drink. Mom is visiting her this week and answers some interesting questions.

Thanks, everyone, for all your good wishes.

E&P is on temporary hold

More major things have happened since my last post. Will update you when I'm coherent.

[pffft] Just like that.

I come to you today heartbroken, devastated—I feel as if I'm watching my dreams go up in smoke.

This year I won two teaching awards. I was recognized by my colleagues for my interesting teaching methods and research areas; at my yearly review, our chair said to me, "Kitty, you are universally loved in this department."

In May, I was passed over for a permanent, full-time Lectureship position for one reason, and one reason only: I have only two letters after my name, not three. Dr. Pepper appointed me to a Temporary Full-Time Instructor's position, though, and told me, "We like you and want to keep you. Even if you work at a Ph.D. part-time, one class at a time, you'll have much more solid ground to stand on when another Lectureship position comes up."

By the way: I was up against newly-minted Ph.D.s from Brown, Emory, and Duke, among other fine institutions. There was no way that my state-university M.A. would hold up in Human Resources to that, even with my two teaching awards and extraordinary service to both the university and my students. I wasn't hurt or surprised that someone with a Ph.D. got the permanent job offer—it was only fair, since that person had more education. But it did open my eyes to the fact that without the terminal degree, I wouldn't be eligible for long-term employment no matter how awesome a job I did.

So I decided, with much trepidation, that I would begin the application process for the Ph.D.—even though I'd much rather take a sharp stick in the eye than go back to the endless discussions of pointless material and intellectual pissing contests between my classmates. (D2U is, thankfully, mostly devoid of weird academic personalities; 99% of our English faculty love teaching and make it just as important as their research.) Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad thing, I thought. I could use the extra knowledge, and maybe taking a year off from teaching for my first year's coursework would be nice.

D2U has just started offering a TESOL certificate program, and I decided that this would be a great way to ease myself back into graduate education. I have a fair number of English-learner students, and I could finally answer their questions, with some TESOL training. Maybe some of my TESOL coursework would transfer over to my Ph.D. program. I could do the D2U certificate now, I thought, and then start my doctoral work in Fall 2010. So I got Dr. Pepper's blessing—and the State of Georgia's funding—to take the six-course certificate track. I signed up for Intro to Linguistics and was really excited (and nervous!) about returning to classes.

And then the semester began.

On the first quiz, I scored a 70.3—okay, that's barely passing, but I'd been out of school for 11 years, and I knew I could study more and do better on the next quiz.

The second quiz: 61.5. When I returned home, I saw that I'd missed silly things that I thought I knew from my quiz prep. I cried all afternoon.

The third quiz: 81.5. So there was a glimmer of hope.

I was feeling optimistic about the fourth quiz—until today's midterm, that is.

I studied much of this past weekend and thought I was doing pretty well; I was able to explain to an imaginary audience the different concepts we'd covered, and could do the exercises in the book. I got to the midterm........

........and blanked out on the last one-third of the exam. It was as if I hadn't even studied that material. What was fresh in my head 30 minutes before simply disappeared from my mind in a split second.

I could barely keep my composure as I finished the exam and handed it in. Here I was, a graduate student in a class full of undergrads, struggling like hell to study, to keep up, to pass—who was I to have thought I could still do well in graduate school? I bemoaned not having dropped the class after that second stinky quiz. So much for my plan to go back to school. If I couldn't even pass a linguistics course—which is challenging, sure, but not impossible—while teaching, who was I to think I'd be able to pass the courses for my doctoral work?

So I sit here this afternoon completely dejected, with the rug having been pulled out from under me.

Maybe that long-ago professor was right: I just don't have the intellectual capacity for Ph.D. work, and the best I'll ever do is junior-college teaching, or maybe teaching at a good private high school. Maybe I've been wasting my time here at Division II University these last few years—I've busted my butt for nothing. Whatever "it" is that makes one cut out for school, I no longer have.

I do not and will not have a Ph.D., not because I don't want one, but because I am simply lacking the brainpower to do it anymore. I will not ever be eligible for permanent employment (even though I do an excellent job), and the only job I've ever had that I've truly liked is not one I'm going to be able to stay in. I don't have the capability to go for the terminal degree.

I don't have three letters after my name. And never will.

UPDATED TO ADD: Thank you for your many kind posts and heartfelt advice. I'll post again when my emotional state's a little more stable.

Okay, this is just crazy.

Having another crappy day?

I know this will help!

Student Essay Insanity #62!

Picture from Engrish Funny

The semester is half over, and my Regents' Exam essay prep class is at an end. The students, bless their hearts, take their exams on July 13 and 14. I've been working like mad trying to get them prepared; I think I've graded 300 practice essays over the last two weeks. If 75% pass, I'll be a happy camper.

These lively samples, naturally, are from my Regents' Essay Prep students. The prompt is in bold type, while the blooper is in plain type. You know the rest: they're from real essays, written by real students, and they're real(ly) bad. I shit you not!

On with the countdown.

**********

Discuss a current problem or controversy that is troublesome to you.
Reality TV is the worst thing to happen to our society since McDonald's "supersized" its combos.

How are you and your best friend alike or different? Explain.
Birds of a feather flop together.

Should sex education be taught in public schools? Explain why or why not.
Instead of having sex, some teens practice absence.

What characteristics do you look for when choosing a friend? Discuss.
Friends come in many different ways, but they are hard to find.

Always be grateful to everyone.

That's an old Buddhist saying—and just as important today as it was 2,600 years ago. Everyone (and everything) has something to teach us.

Today, I am grateful for...

• my loving family and friends
  
• my wonderful pets—feline, canine, and avian
• rain
• coffee
• students
  
• books
• all the random people I encounter every day
  
• yoga
• our crazy, broken, beautiful world
  

How about you?

Pupdate: Is this the same dog?!?

Can it be? Can it really be? That this little puppeh...




...this sweet little puppeh...




...this absolutely adorable, happy-out-of-his-tiny-skull, frisky little puppeh...


...so full of life and energy...

was once this little puppeh?





It's amazing what a little veterinary care—and a lot of love—can do for our four-legged friends.

Chicken Monday: 7/6/09

So what's going on in the new chicken pen here at the Happy Kitten Cottage?


Not a whole lot of anything. But wait—what's that on the chicken coop's roof?


It's Waylon.

Kitteh, what are you doing on top of the chicken coop? Hmm?




He's not sure, either.


"Umm, Mom? Moooom? I can't get down! There's a great big meanie chikin down there!" ["lost meow" follows]


Say what you want about Big Chicken, but somebody's got to keep the kittehs in line.

My future?

For the record: I had 18 cats total (indoors and out) at last count. And six chickens. And one puppeh.

From this trailer, the film seems like it's been made with kindness and sensitivity toward some very big-hearted folks.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY 2009!

HAPPY JULY 4TH, EVERYONE! Hope you're all having a fun and safe holiday celebrating America's birthday. Mom and Lucky are certainly in a big-summer-holiday mood!

I'm heading out to the Happy Kitten Farm, aka Mom & Steve's house, this afternoon. We're going to grill out pork chops or steaks (depending on what Steve thinks looks better in the display at the butcher shop) and, umm...err, well...drink. Have you tried IBC's old-fashioned cream soda with butterscotch schnapps? It's awesome.

And, of course, my little Lucky-puppeh, who's growing like a weed, will be along for the holiday. He loves going to Grandmommy's house to chase kitties and eat the little morsels of pork chop that his Paw-Paw sneaks him under the picnic table.

Student Essay Insanity #61!

Picture from Engrish Funny

Not that there's going to be anyone around to read this post—I bet most readers have already left for their July 4th destinations—but I couldn't stand the thought of not sharing more of this awfulness with you.

These gems are from the D2U Freshman Writing Improvement Project. The prompt asked students to describe an assignment where they learned a lot; many of the essays we rated came from biology, botany, geography, environmental science, and chemistry courses. And as always, these bloopers are from real essays, written by real students, and are real(ly) awful. I neither could nor would shit you about that.

• With this in mind I found that I was having a great deal of those oh huh moments.
• There are try a lot of thing that we as organisms take for granted a magnetic field, weather, and an atmosphere, just to name a few.
• The trees were donated because they were still being detained in pots.
• Another county that gave me a hard time was Mauritius it is very tiny and located between Africa and India, but I confused it with Mauritania.
  
• Not only are they [trees] beautiful, but they also provide us with shade and act as windbreakers as well.

Okay, I take back that other post. Now I have seen it all.

I just, umm—I mean, errrr...well...

The other post, for what's essentially a bedtime titty separator, is here.