September is off to a bit of a weird start. I'm still feeling out the classes, getting used to teaching one day in a giant computer lab where my desk is literally seven feet from the white board and the next day in a room so tiny that I just pace like a caged bear.
I'm still arriving too early to every class--ten minutes early. I spend a lot of those ten minutes hanging out in the nearest bathroom, trying to look as if it's no big deal, I always just want to wash my hands right before I head into the classroom and use them to erase white board marker and then maybe rub them on my pants.
Today I accidentally used the word shit in my upper-level class and they laughed for the first time.
I spend a lot of time sitting in my office, listening to music and watching the kids outside the window walking from building to building. I'm anxious for a new routine to become routine. I want things to hurry up and just feel perfectly normal already. No, this is really not the best use of my time. But I am looking forward to the thick middle of the semester: portfolio conferences and striped sweaters, lunch dates and dinner parties. To book release parties and birthdays in Madison and yellow leaves.
I'm glad, however, that there was an angry vegan running around Michigan with me this weekend. The food took my mind off things: we ate chili and cake; pancakes and chickpeas; cornbread and brusketta (that spelling is for just for Liz, so she can see that I'm really stressing that Italian pronunciation there). We walked around and played What House Would You Buy?, a game where I usually cheat by only choosing homes with well-maintained roofs and brick foundations, and we picked our own blueberries on a pretty-much-blind man's farm, and we found the dog beach up in Muskegon and introduced Truman to the concept of running into waves, and maybe we cut up some Saturday Evening Posts from 1962 and made a card or two. And, as is always the case when we bum around together, we were mistaken for lesbians no fewer than three times.
It's nice that even when everything around me feels new, some things don't change. Also, since she made me blueberry pancakes yesterday morning before I headed off to school, and I yelled Bye, honey, have a great day! on my way out, we probably deserved it.
Possible contexts in which saying "shit" endeared X to her students:
ReplyDelete1. "Seriously, guys, you don't have to do shit for this class."
2. "I kind of didn't feel like grading shit last night, so you all get full credit on your first assignment."
3. "So I don't really have a lesson planned for today... you guys can just go early. I'd say Friday's class is definitely optional too. Oh, and, uh, shit."
The food looks (and sounds) glorious!
ReplyDeleteI'm still feeling my way through this semester too. The department is so large and everyone seems so mature and so married--not that mature & married are synonymous. I'm just looking for the goofball sector. There needs to be a balance of the serious and the goofy. Intentional goofiness, you know? Because the unintentional goofballs? Why, they're just weirdoes.
HANDS OFF BEVIN SHE'S MINE.
ReplyDeleteClose enough, AV.
ReplyDeleteI believe I said, in mock dialogue and reference to people who constantly send e-mail forwards, "'Hey, thanks for yet another piece o' shit e-mail, Aunt Marnie. Glad to see you discovered the Internet!'"
It's heartening to see that - even after far too long at a friendly neighborhood restaurant - you are making your way back to the land of actually saying words how they're pronounced. Also, can I come back to GR to live in your basement? I mean visit?
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