Kill Me Now

I'm reporting live from the umpteenth hour of grading insanity. I'm so worn out and sad and demoralized that it's difficult to move. Why? Take, for example, this little nugget of loveliness from a student in my literature class. I asked the students to underline their thesis statements--because I've been trying to get them to improve when writing thesis statements, but even so it's difficult to see sometimes what the main point is, so it's helpful to know what THEY think their main point is--and this was her "thesis":

Framed life a capture draws me in.

Ugh. I have so much more to go.

(It's Almost) The End of the Semester: Notes #1 and #2

(1.)

Yesterday I was called one of the top five hardest graders on campus.

The person who called me that was one of The Lady-Killer's best friends. He's never had me for a teacher.

"Oh give me a break," I said. "I'm tough, yes, but I'm fair. I don't suffer fools!"

"No," he said. "You're just hard. You're impossible."

I asked him why. Just why was I impossible?

"Because," he said, "you make them read a lot of stuff. And you make them write a lot of stuff too."

He was basing this information off two things: (1.) He has a friend who's in my literature class this semester and (2.) He has the habit of popping into my office before I go teach that literature class, and he's always paging through the stuff I'm about to hand out for homework.

"They read two stories per class," I said. "Two SHORT STORIES. They write only three essays over the course of the semester. In what world is that a lot?"

"I don't know," he said, "but it just is."

And then I told him--and everyone--needed to suck it the hell up.

(2.)

At the end of last week, I took a student aside after class. I've had this student for three consecutive semesters, and I am very familiar, very intimate with her (very bad) writing. If I'd had her for composition, I could've whipped her into shape, but as it is, I've had her for a few creative writing and literature courses, where there's very little time to wage full-scale interventions on a person's inability to use a comma correctly. I've tried as best I can, but there's only so much I can do.

So when I opened up her latest essay, my jaw immediately hit the floor. There wasn't a single mistake in it. Not a single mistake. This, of course, meant it was plagiarized. It meant the essay was FLAGRANTLY plagiarized.

When confronted about this, she just shrugged. "It's my work," she said.

"It can't be," I said. "This paper uses rhetorical techniques and sophisticated punctuation that I have never seen from you."

"Oh," she said, "well, there's a really good reason for that. I wrote my paper and then had my friend read it over. He said it was really bad and that it needed, like, a lot of help. So I said he could help me, and he came over and read each of my sentences, rewrote them, and then told me what to write. Then I typed it. So, it's mine."

I blinked.

"It's mine," she insisted.

"No," I said, "that's not yours. Typing something that another person writes does not make it your own."

"He did it based off my original sentences, though!" she said. "He just rewrote them and told me what to write to make them sound better! I TYPED IT!"

I closed my eyes, gave myself a big, yogic breath, and then continued to discuss with her how this work was not her own. I told her there was just no getting around it: she was going to fail the assignment. She finally accepted it without much drama, and we went our separate ways.

The next morning, I arrived at school and saw three e-mails from this student. She'd fired them off in rapid succession, which I knew wasn't a good thing. I opened them up and--sure enough!--they were awful. They were littered with phrases like this is fuckin ridcluou! and im sick of collage telling me im not writting good enugh papers.

It was big of a Oh, Honey, No moment as I'd ever seen. And it kicked off my last week of the semester. There is about to be a whole bunch of liquor coming my way.

Phony Balogna

It's another marathon grading weekend here at the small apartment in the woods. This means I've got a cat nesting on the desk next to me...


... and a freshly-baked loaf of chocolate chip banana bread at my disposal for when I lose all faith in my ability to teach writing, and thus stress eat to drown my sorrows.

It also means I've got the inevitable plagiarism to deal with. I always get a little angry when I catch my students plagiarizing--I take things too, too seriously, I know--but this time made me extra angry.

So, there I was sitting in front of the computer and grading my fifteenth essay of the day. I read the title. I read the first sentence. My brain went, Wait a second. I read the second sentence. My brain went, NO, SERIOUSLY. Then I finished up the whole first paragraph and my brain said, OH NO SHE DIDN'T.

What I was reading I had read before. I was sure of it. Not only was the topic old--it was an argument essay about the No on One campaign that had been defeated last fall--but the language and voice of the essay was sassy, specific, and something not easy to forget.

I was reading a paper one of my former students had turned in last fall. I knew it. I knew it.

So I started thinking about this student who'd just turned it in as her own. I wondered who she and I had in common. Who did she know that had taken one of my composition courses? Then I remembered her talking about her best friend, how they were going on vacation soon, how they were both super excited and positively ga-ga at the idea of getting out there on their own. And her best friend? She'd been my student last fall.

I closed my eyes and took a breath. Then I went back to the archive of last fall's Blackboard course--where all my students submit electronic copies of their essays--and simply looked up the best friend's paper.

It was the same paper. Exact same paper. EXACT. SAME. PAPER.

The only thing that was changed was the secondary essay, a mini self-reflection I require all students to write about the conscious choices they made as they wrote and what effect they hoped they would have. I ask them to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the piece. I ask them to give me an honest opinion about their progress.

This student wrote her self-reflection as if she had actually written her paper. She made up all the things she hoped she'd done as she wrote the paper. She gave herself a fake little assessment.

It made me want to cry for one of two reasons. Either this student thought I was stupid enough not to catch the dishonesty or else it didn't even occur to her that I'd find them out. Whatever the reason, it was enough to make me want to give up for the night.

But then I remembered the chocolate chip banana bread and felt a little better, and then Abbey raised her head and yawned like she was bored, just oh-so-bored with all of this, and I said I felt her pain, and I gave that student a big fat F and moved on to the next essay.

There are 41 days until the semester is done.

You Know It's Fancy When It's Got Paragraphs

My creative writing classes are currently engaged in nonfiction workshop. This means the students bring in essays to share for whole class discussion. They also prepare a letter they hand back to the authors, and this letter is supposed to discuss the craft of the essays and what elements of that craft they found intriguing and strong.

This is one of the letters handed in tonight:

Dear Tim,

This is a really good story. I like how you told it in paragraphs.

Sincerely,

Beth

And Then We All Stared At Her

A conversation in my creative writing classroom:

Me: Okay, so we have several workshop pieces for today's class. Are we ready?

Girl: Wait. Wait a second. SEVERAL? We have SEVERAL?

Me: Yes. Several.

Girl: SEVERAL?

Me: Yesssss... why?

Girl: When did we get that many?

Me: They were on the schedule.

Boy: What's wrong with you, Girl?

Me: Wait just a second. What's your definition of several?

Girl: Several is seven.

Everyone: --Blank stares--

Girl: Several doesn't mean seven?

Boy: NO!

Me: No.

Other Girl: Several is like three or four.

Girl: Really? It's not seven?

Bread!

A conversation in my short story lit class:

Me: Here's a fun fact: Ann Beattie was married to the lead singer of Bread!

Class: --Blink, blink--

Me: Do you guys know who Bread is?

The One Woman Over 25: Yes!

Everyone Else: No.

Boy in the Front Row: But with a name like Bread, I am guessing they're gonna be GREAT!

The First Week of School: A Review

DAY ONE:

I stock my snack drawer with Parmesan Goldfish, Kashi crackers, chocolate, and aspirin. I dust my picture frames. I eat celebratory back-to-school pizza. I put the magnet of Bucky the Badger I got on my trip to UW Madison this summer on the fridge. I point it out to my office-mate.

"Listen," I say, "Bucky doesn't take any shit. Look at him. When one of our students acts up, we can just point to Bucky and say, 'DON'T UPSET THE BADGER."

"Because that'll work," he says.

"Right," I say.

DAY TWO:

LOVELY!!!!!

DAY THREE:

The chair of our department bursts into my office.

"Did you hear what those girls were saying out there?" she asks.

"What girls?" I ask.

"The girls in the hall," she says.

I haven't heard anything. I've been in full-on nerd mode. I've been organizing the folders and sub-folders on my class's Blackboard site. I've been admiring the neat little nested list and how easy it is to find everything. My brain, otherwise engaged in this, its own version of porn, has blocked everything else out--especially the conversations happening feet outside my door.

"Oh, it's really good!" she says. "One of the girls asked the other girl who she had for English 101, and the second girl said, 'I've got The Girl.'"

"The Girl?" I ask.

"The Girl!" she says.

"Oh! Me?" I say. "The Girl is me? I'm The Girl?"

"Yes!"

I shrug. "You know what? I'm turning twenty-nine in two weeks. I'll take it," I say.

DAY FOUR:

The chair comes into my office. "I just got a weird phone call," she says.

This is never good news.

"All right," I say. "Let me hear."

Turns out, two students in my creative writing class were so appalled, horrified, and repulsed at one of the essays I had assigned for the first night of homework they decided not to come to me and discuss their concerns--which would, you know, be a reasonable reaction--but instead went straight to their adviser and demanded to know what's what.

The students swore I was making them read porn! Smut! Revolting trash that had no business being considered literature. It was crass! It was filthy! It was disgusting! They wouldn't read it! They wouldn't! And they wanted someone to tell them they didn't have to!

The adviser asked them to furnish a copy of the essay, and when they did he read it and agreed with them. So he called up the chair. He said it was crass! It was filthy! It was disgusting! It wasn't literature! Why was this trash being taught in a creative writing classroom?

"Oh Jesus," I say.

The chair rolls her eyes. I roll my eyes.

I go into class a few minutes later and--surprise, surprise--everyone who's present loves the essay. They love it so much we get carried away discussing it and before we know it, we've got to leave for the day because there's another class coming in and they're waiting in the hall.

Two people had been suspiciously absent from class, and--sure enough--when I check my e-mail there are two e-mails from them. They tell me how appalled and disgusted they are. They tell me they can't believe I'd post such trash. They tell me they're shocked at what this college is teaching. They don't believe such work is necessary in a creative writing classroom. They tell me they are dropping my class. This isn't a slam against you as a person, one of the e-mails says. Just so you know.

I roll my eyes some more. I roll my eyes a lot. But then I decide to leave it be because I don't teach on Fridays (which means I'm free for the weekend!) and I've got four days off coming up (hello, Labor Day!) and tomorrow afternoon I am sitting on the back porch with Emily and a pitcher of these babies, and that's all that really matters right now.

Lovely. LOVELY. LOVELY! LOVELY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just as the first meeting of one of my creative writing classes was breaking up today, one of my male students approached me. He clutched a notebook in his hands.

"Uhm, hey," he said.

"Hi," I said.

"You like the word lovely," he said.

I examined him. He was skinny in strange places. He looked like a bird. He looked like he was about to peck my eyes out. "It's a nice word," I said.

"You said it a lot today," he said.

It was true. I had. I really, really, really like the word lovely, and sometimes--especially on first days--you just get into this zone and words sit in your teacher voice and get real comfortable in there, and they hang around and show off a little more than they normally would. In addition to lovely, I also used the word scoot and peek more than I wanted to. I think it has something to do with not using Teacher Voice for four months, and during the first week back Teacher Voice gets coupled with the part of my brain that is completely pleased to have eighteen people who are forced to sit in a room and listen to what I have to say about things. This is intoxicating after having four months of silence where I taught nothing and no one, unless you count The Lady-Killer and how to use the Downey ball.

So I nodded at the kid. "Yes," I said. "I love that word."

"Well, I hate it," he said.

I stared at him. "All right."

"I mean, I really hate it. Every time you said it I flinched."

I looked around. I wanted to see if anyone else was listening to this. I wanted to make desperate help me! eyes at someone I trusted. I tried to will one of my students from last semester, who had made the decision to go another round with me, to turn and look at me and give me a look like, "Oh sister, that one is completely bat-shit crazy. I'm so sorry."

But no one would turn around.

"That's pretty rough," I told him.

Then he turned his notebook toward me. He jabbed at it with his too-skinny finger.

The words at the top of the page said TIMES SAID LOVELY. Beneath it, there were three little ticks of the pen.

"Oh," I said.

"I'm going to keep track of this," he said. He was very serious. He nodded. "I'm going to keep track ALL SEMESTER LONG. And then I'm going to tell you how many times you said LOVELY."

Oh, I wished someone was listening! I wanted one of my former students to follow me back to my office and giggle in the corner with me. Maybe what I was really wishing for was Christine, who, last year, always followed me back to my office, and spent the next two hours giggling in the corner with me.

But no one was listening, and Christine was all moved on and preparing to go off to her fancy $40,000 a year college, so I had to go it alone. So I tried to squelch the laugh I felt brimming at the back of my throat. I made my face very serious.

"Well," I said, "I guess I'm going to have mind my Ps and Qs with you then."

And then he nodded and disappeared out the door and into the hallway, where he was swept away by a tide of students who were rushing for the door, ready to escape the semester that was less than forty-eight hours old.

On Break from My Mojito Binge

Hello, world. Remember me? Well, guess what. The semester is over! Grades are in! We've brunched, we've mini-golfed, we've done commencement. Things are as over as they're going to get.

Usually at this point, at the end of spring semester, when I'm staring ahead at three months of time off, I feel pretty giddy. I get a little lightheaded at the thought of so much time to read and write, so much time to live on Popham Beach.

But this time, at the end of spring semester 2010, I'm here to report something a little different. I was sad to see the semester end. I don't think I was exactly ready for it to be over as quickly as it was. One minute it was February and the Olympics were starting, and then there were two weeks left to the semester, and the entire world cracked open and students started going crazy in the ways they usually do at the end of the semester--So, Jess, I had a little bit of a meltdown this semester because I just realized I'm bisexual--my dad made me that way, I swear--and I know I haven't done any of the work, but can I still pass? ETC.--but the craziness barely phased me because I was all like, "WAIT JUST A SECOND. WHERE DID ALL THOSE MONTHS GO?!"

I wanted to cling to the last weeks and drag my heels in the dirt to make time slow down for just a second. Just one second!

This was, after all, a serendipitous little semester. I feel like this one's going to sit with me for a long time, that it's going to be one of those semesters I look back on and realize, hey, I learned a whole bunch over those fifteen weeks.

And it was an important semester because several of my most beloved students are graduating and never coming back. Some are transferring. Some are done with English classes, and I'll never get to have them in class again. People are starting to move on--and not just here. My best boys, my class of engineers from my post-grad school year in Buffalo, graduated today. I can't tell you how nostalgic this makes me feel. I loved those boys, and I had them when they were eighteen years-old, when they were babies, when they were mouthy and funny and ready to find any possible way to introduce me to Ryan Miller. But today they graduated. They graduated. I'm still not sure how that's possible, since I'm certain it was just yesterday that I walked into that classroom and one of them handed me a peanut butter pie and said, "I thought you'd like this."

And here in Maine I feel like I could've used a few more weeks to get used to the idea of not seeing some of my students again. This was, after all, the semester where one of my composition classrooms was stocked with sweet mothers--one whose (very funny) memoir essay was about our first day of class and how when I walked into class she wanted to laugh in my face because I didn't look old enough to teach--and they were my favorite composition class, the one I always looked forward to seeing. And even though I never called in this particular favor, I knew that if ever I really, really needed mothering, I could get it from those women. I knew I could come into class, put my head down on my desk, and ask one of them to get me a ginger-ale with a bendy straw, and they would, and they'd pet my head and ask me what was wrong, was I okay, was I feeling poorly, would a bowl of pudding make me feel better? And it would've. A bowl of pudding and a ginger-ale with a bendy straw will always make me feel better.

What I'm trying to say is this: I'll miss them. And I'll miss Hockey Dad, who was always willing to talk about Ryan Miller and Ryan Miller's general brilliance. I'll also miss Boy with the Pretty Name and The Lobsterman. I'll miss my entire creative writing classes, even Boy Dripping with Sarcasm and Girl Who Routinely Left for a Cigarette in the Middle of Class and Sometimes Never Came Back.

Most of all, though, I'll miss my Monday-Wednesday Therapy Sessions, the like-clockwork-spaces of time when my office ceased being an office and, probably much to the chagrin of my office-mate, became a dorm room filled with giggling, gossiping students. And I'm really, really, really not sure what I'll do next semester when I no longer have a reason to stay at school after my last class, when there will no longer be someone sitting next to me suggesting we listen to this or that song on YouTube, suggesting we look up her classmates' birthdays so we could understand why they are they way they are based on their astrological makeup, suggesting we Facebook-stalk cute boys we'd loved before. (Oh, Christine! Who's going to listen to me talk about Teacher Jail now? Who's going to suggest we ditch the office and go for Thai food? Whose boyfriend is going to bring me coffee or iced tea?!)

I think it's clear that my fall wasn't the greatest and the start of the spring semester--in terms of relationships--wasn't much better. In all honesty, it was my students who got me through all of that. They gave me something else to care about, and that is what made this semester the best I've had in a while. And I know I haven't done an accurate job explaining the loveliness of the last fifteen weeks--I don't know if I ever could--but trust me when I tell you it was a joy to teach this semester. I've been using the word serendipity in every other sentence for the last month or so, and that just about sums it up: This semester and everything that happened in it? Serendipity, plain and simple.

A List of Items Brought to Me in the Last Few Days of the Semester

1. A cinnamon roll from one of the best places in town

2. Donuts

3. An origami penguin

4. A glittery handmade card



Pretty cute, huh? It's almost enough to make me sad that I've only got one more day left with my students...

Which Reminds Me

Today in one of my classes, a student went off on a short tangent about how she acts when she gets drunk. She doesn't get goofy or giggly or loud or angry. Instead, she gets very formal. Instead of saying, "Hey! I'm drunk!" she will say, "Why, hello. It seems you've caught me in a moment of unexpected intoxication. My apologies!"

I like that she recognizes this. I like that she's conscious of her drunk self because not many people really are. (Generally, it seems, it's the angry ones who are the least aware. Once, in grad school, one of my best friends, who'd been drinking beer for hours, pointed his finger at me and shouted, "I AM SICK OF YOU FUCKING IDIOTS!" This wouldn't have been so bad--I was, after all, aware that he was sick of me taking up with idiots--but it's just that one of those idiots was standing next to me at that very moment.)

As for me, I'm not exactly sure how I am. I've heard conflicting stories. Katy tells me she can't ever tell when I'm drunk. "You act like your normal self when you're drunk," she says, "maybe just a little gigglier."

No one, of course, has trouble identifying when Katy's drunk. After a couple tall glasses of Michelob Light, which she gets with olives--"It's a free snack at the end!" she says--Katy gets loud. She likes to engage the boys by saying inappropriate things, by talking about poop or boobs. When Katy gets really drunk, she likes to bring boys over to me and say, "Hey! Look! Here's this boy! You should kiss him! If you don't kiss him, I'm not going to leave you alone! I'm going to stand here and watch you until you kiss him! Kiss him! Kiss him! KISS HIM!"

And then she likes to puke in alleys or cars.

Of course, Katy might not be the only one who acts up. I just learned recently that I'm "the loud one" in the group--information Diana floated my way as we walked to my car in a Boston parking ramp the day after her reading in town.

I was shocked. I told her I didn't think I was the loud one in any group. In my group back home, back in New York, my best friend was the loud one, and in Minnesota I'd always figured Katy was the loud one, or maybe one of the boys, who were always mixing drinks and shouting poetry--theirs or others'--at the top of their lungs while Diana and I sat on the couch and giggled.

"No, no," Diana said. "It's definitely you. You're definitely the loud one. But that's why we love you."

Probably this shouldn't surprise me. Maybe I should've always known. And today as my student was going on about her own tipsy behavior, it made me--it couldn't be helped!--think of one of my more glorious moments: The first time I met my father's fiancee.

It was the night of my childhood friend's wedding. I was a bridesmaid who was wearing a pretty black dress and high heels, and I was flirting with one of the groomsmen--tall, slim, tan.

Maybe I was a bit bolder than I'd normally be, but there's a good reason for that. As a cost saving measure, the bride and groom bought their liquor from a local bar and then positioned a few of their relatives behind a makeshift one at the reception. What this meant was I could walk up to the bar and say, "May I please have a giant vat of vodka this very instant?" and they would say, "Why, yes, Bridesmaid Girl, you may."

Add to that the fact that the groom's father had made his own wine for the occasion, and several bottles of that wine were on the wedding party's table, and I drank an awful lot from several of those bottles, which may or may not have led to the incident on the dance floor after the cute groomsman caught the garter and I caught the bouquet, which meant we had to engage in this tradition where everyone gathered around and watched as he inched the garter up my leg--each inch another year of good luck for the newlyweds--and this spiraled into a really interesting incident in the kitchen of the reception hall, which then spiraled into a really, really interesting incident in the backyard of the reception hall--and trust me when I tell you it's best that no one but God saw that.

It's important to know these facts. It's important to know that both the incident in the kitchen and the incident in the backyard took a decent amount of time--mainly because they involved a whole bunch of kissing--and that they started in the approximate middle of the wedding party. By the time the incidents were done and we wandered back inside, the only people left were the bride's parents.

Talk about embarrassing.

Worse? The cute groomsman and I were both too drunk to drive, so we had to catch a ride with the bride's parents, who had their car stuffed so full of gifts and decorations that there was barely room for us, and I had to sit on the groomsman's lap the whole ride home.

Oh, but wait. It gets worse.

And then when I arrived home, I realized my father was still up and that he had a visitor--his new girlfriend, the one I had yet to meet. So as I stepped out of the car and turned to thank the bride's parents for driving me home, and to tell the groomsman it was nice meeting him, I knew I was going to have to put on a good show in approximately thirty seconds.

I walked down the driveway and up onto the front step. I took a deep breath. I tried to make my my whole body feel less like it was spinning. I tried to quiet the side of my brain that was saying, EVERYTHING YOU SAY SHOULD BE SAID IN SHOUT-VOLUME. And because I knew my father would ask how the party was, I made a quick list of things that should not be brought up: making out with a groomsman, dancing with one of my father's friends and announcing to said friend that I thought his children were ridiculously attractive, being photographed with a boy's hands--and a garter--three quarters of the way up my thigh.

I steadied myself. I steeled my insides. I took another deep breath and prepared to pull off a serious caper, to pull the wool over my father's eyes, to convince his girlfriend I was nothing but a classy and poised twenty-something.

I pushed open the door.

"Hello!" my father said.

"Hello!" I said.

"Hello!" the girlfriend said.

"This is Kathy!" my father said.

"It's really nice to meet you!" I said. "I AM REALLY DRUNK! SORRY!"

And then, because I'd already revealed too much, and because I was afraid my first revelation would be followed with something else inappropriate--for example: "I pushed a groomsman against a fridge in the reception hall kitchen and had my way with him!"--I decided to run down the hallway to my room and go to bed before I made things worse.

I am, if nothing else, extremely, extremely smooth.

TMI

Sometimes I get too tied up in my students' lives. I become invested. I secretly wish a select few would come over for roast chicken and conduct their strange little lives at my kitchen table so I could watch all the drama like it was my own private television show.

This wish has intensified this semester. I blame this partly on the disappointment I suffered at the hand of yet another guy and how I've sublimated a good chunk of that disappointment and decided to float something else up to the surface to cover it, and that something is an interest in things that are going on at school.

This has been easy. The student body at school is small and incestuous. My students know each other in the most surprising ways. Students who should have no business knowing each other just do. Just yesterday, in fact, I was sitting in front of the cafeteria and handing out free books to anyone who wanted them, and one of my auto boys (who was holding a Honda magazine and showing me pictures of all the things he wants to do to his car) started chatting up one of my favorite creative writing students (who had, moments before, finished writing a sestina he couldn't wait to show me).

"Wait a minute," I said. "You two know each other?"

"Yeah," my creative writing student said. "We party together."

I stared at them. I was trying to imagine what they would ever talk about while they were siphoning beer and smoking cigarettes. "How is that even remotely possible?" I asked, but they just shrugged it off like it was no big thing. It shouldn't have surprised me. That's just how this school is.

So, there's that--the incestuous nature of my surroundings--that contributes to my piqued interest, and then there's also Facebook. That, of course, is where I recently found out that one of my favorite former students just started dating another one of my former students. And while I've always been a fan of being a sort of professorial matchmaker (when I was a TA, I once noticed how much one of my students loved another one of my students, and I was fond of them both, which made me think, hey, why not try to get those two together, which led to me always sorting them into the same circles during group work), and while I have been known to just accidentally happen into intimate knowledge about some of my students, I have never actually sealed the deal. And with these two that got together, I would've never even considered sealing the deal.

I cannot count all the ways in which I adore the boy student. I do not love him in a dirty way, in a nasty way, in a way that would get me in trouble. My love for this boy is pure. What I think about him is this: If I were ever to have a son, I want my son to be exactly like this boy. He's tall and a little lumbering, sweet, charming. He's got a great laugh. You can tell this is a boy who loves his mother, who probably goes home and kisses her on the cheek and says, "Hey, Ma, whatever you've got cooking smells great." I bet he takes the garbage out before he's told to. I bet he babysat the neighborhood children. I bet he has cute T-ball pictures that show him smiling a great big missing-tooth smile. He is going to make some girl a very, very good husband someday.

But this girl? I didn't see it coming. And when I saw the news on Facebook I stared at it and--protectively, an instant reaction--thought, I could've made a better match for him. It's not that I didn't like this girl when she was in my class--she was peppy, a talker, always ready to contribute--but it is that I have developed a certain level of mania, and I feel like I am better equipped than this boy to make romantic choices for him. Which is, you know, pretty sane.

But I'm not always less-than-thrilled with my students' romantic choices. This semester I have the pleasure of having one of my favorite-students-of-all-time's girlfriend in my composition class, and she is stellar. I knew I was getting her way before the semester started because her boyfriend informed me of this, and I wasn't sure how to feel about that fact. I wondered if that would be a bad thing, if I would like her, if I would be disappointed by his choice, if I would wonder why she wasn't nearly as entertaining and darling as her boyfriend and his twin brother. But the first time she opened her mouth she said something badass and hilarious, and I thought, Holy shit. This is the world's best match. I better get invited to the wedding.

So, as you can see, this all is a slippery slope. I'm involved. I'm spending time I used to spend wondering why all men in the world besides my father are programmed with the desire to be assholes, and why I am programmed to let those men into my life in one way or the other, wondering what kinds of weird things are going on in my students' lives. And who can blame me? They let the strangest things slip out--I'm bisexual, and my father made me that way! or Do you want to see my abs because they are awesome!--and those things can stop me in my tracks, make me stare at all these bright faces that are staring back at me, and think, Dude, you guys are almost better than Dancing with the Stars. ALMOST.

Nooner

A conversation with a student:


Student: Oh my God! I know I was supposed to have my assignment uploaded today, but I didn't get it done.

Me: Why not?

Student: It says "Have uploaded by noon" on the assignment sheet, but I didn't know you mean 12:00.

Best Rumor EVER

So I have an upper-level creative writing class this semester, and here's the thing: I am in love with that class. It's a particularly deep and soulful love, and I spend a lot of time thinking how I'd like to fly that class to Vegas, get it drunk, and then marry it.

Today I was headed to this class, and I passed the chair of the department in the hall. She'd been teaching in the room where I'd be teaching in a few minutes.

She grinned at me. "There is a pretty big rumor about you being spread around," she said.

"What?" I said. I was trying to figure out what was so rumor-worthy about me. Earlier, I'd caught a few minutes of Scrubs while I was eating my breakfast, and on that episode Carla was spreading a rumor that the hot new Latina nurse used to be a dude. I hoped no one was trying that with me.

"Just wait until you get into class!" the chair said, and then she was gone and I was left to face my students.

"WHAT?" I demanded as I crossed the threshold. "WHAT IS GOING ON?"

(I did not add, "DOES ANYONE IN THIS ROOM THINK I USED TO BE A DUDE?")

"YOU!" one of the girls shouted. She pointed accusingly at me. "YOU ARE ENGAGED!"

I almost fell over. "What?" I asked.

"People are saying you got engaged!" she said. "To some hockey player! A guy who plays for the Sabres!"

"RYAN MILLER!" I said.

"YES!" she said. "The goalie!"

And then I shrieked. And jumped up and down. A lot. "THAT IS THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER HEARD!" I said. Of course, what made it good, what made it really fucking good, was that people--multiple people--apparently believed it.

So, to celebrate my engagement, here's a picture of my fiance with some random animals dressed in hockey jerseys:



God, that boy can wear a suit. Mercy.

And Now, a Surprise

Jesus, I'm happy.

This is good, of course, but it scares the shit out of me. Last night I wrote this in an e-mail to Katy: I want to talk about how happy I am, how I feel like I've been reborn, how it's so different from last semester, but there are things I can't exactly talk about, and I also don't want to tempt fate. I think I am more superstitious than I realize.

The last time I was happy was August, when I was beginning that ended-as-soon-as-it-began ridiculousness with the boy with the great name. You remember him. He was the one who sang to me, kissed me warmly, and waved as I was leaving his house, and then I never heard from him ever again. Like, ever. And then, after I realized I'd been abandoned, that I'd been found lacking, that I'd been fooled, I opened my eyes and realized something else: I was in the middle of the semester from hell. Near the end of it I couldn't quite catch my breath. I was finding it hard to make it through the day. I was waking up and thinking, I can't. I can't do it. Don't make me do it.

And then came the point in the semester where one of my students called me a fucking bitch. This was when everything unraveled for me, when I realized there was no saving the semester. It was ruined.

This was after I'd been giving some notes on apostrophes. I'd had my back to them--I was writing on the board--and one of the boys in the class screamed. I mean screamed. I whirled around, and the boy who screamed was rubbing his arm.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Glenn punched me!" the boy said. He pointed to the kid next to him.

And Glenn looked at me from under the hat he'd pulled low over his forehead. He crossed his arms over his Carhartt. He raised his eyebrows. He dared me to say something.

So I said, "Get out. I don't care why you did what you did. Just get out of my classroom."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" he asked.

"NO," I said. "GET OUT."

And so he grabbed his books, his jacket, and then he stormed toward the door. He whipped the door open. "FUCKING BITCH!" he said, and then he left the classroom. He barreled down the hallway and out into the parking lot, where we could see him get into his truck and tear away from school. He squealed his tires tore around the bend toward the road back to town.

It was the most dramatic exit I'd ever seen in my life. And it made an impact on more than just those of us in class. An hour later, when I was with my creative writing class, one of my students came up to me. She frowned at me--a gesture of pity, really--and nodded. "We heard," she said.

"You heard?"

"We heard that kid leave class. We heard him yelling all the way down the hall. He said some not great stuff about you."

And the whole building got to hear it.

It was a treat. A real treat.

So I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that I couldn't wait to get out of Maine and back to Buffalo for Christmas break. All I wanted to do was sit in a dark bar and drink a whole lot of vodka with all the people I love best, and I wanted to do it repeatedly.

A lot of good things happened over Christmas, and I woke up one morning feeling renewed. Over night, things inside me had slid back into place, and I remembered who I was. In fact, I felt a lot like I did in grad school. I felt young, I felt fun, I felt like I was someone worth spending time with. I didn't feel rotten or awful or miserable. I didn't feel like I was a bad teacher, a boring idiot, a killjoy. I stayed up really, really late and did some inappropriate things and let every nasty thing from the previous semester melt off me.

And now that I'm back in Maine, and now that the spring semester has started, things are looking good. By this time last semester I already knew my classes were going to be bad, that they were filled with some really awful, really mean students, and that it was going to be a struggle to make it through.

But here's what I know about my classes now, after two and a half weeks: They're good. In fact, they're pretty great. I am especially in love with my intermediate creative writing class; it's filled with former students of mine, sweet devoted students who have really amazing things to say, and it's blowing my mind. Things are looking up.

I can't stop dancing. I can't stop singing. (Last Friday, as I was on my way to Portland to have lunch with Emily the radio first played Rosalita and then Cecilia, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.)

A former student of mine--one who knew about my woes last semester--stopped me in the hall last week and said, "Holy shit. Look at you! You're so happy!"

And now that I've said it, now that I've written it out loud, now that I've confessed it, I'm terrified. I am superstitious. I don't want the universe to think I'm bragging, I'm boasting, I'm showing off. I don't want it to think, Whoa now. Let's not get carried away.

I don't want any take-backs. I just want to be quiet and happy. I'm not saying I deserve it, but I am saying I'm thankful for it. Dear God, am I ever.

The End of the Semester: Notes

(1.)

I go to school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and then I am done, done, done.


(2.)

I call my father. I need gift ideas for his fiancee.

I say, "What does Kathy want for Christmas?"

He says, "She never tells me."

I say, "How about toilet paper? Do you think she'd like some toilet paper?"

I recently bought what I'll quantify as a WHOLE FUCKING LOT of toilet paper because, well, it was a good price. (I felt very thrifty, very Midwestern at the exact moment I was cradling the giant package of toilet paper in my arms and hiking it back to the registers. Really, I was channeling my inner Katy.)

When I arrived home with my whole fucking lot of toilet paper, I realized I didn't have enough room for it. I am in toilet paper surplus. I have more triple-roll spools than I know what to do with. Right now, they are in my closet, stuffed behind garment bags full of dresses.

"Toilet paper, huh?" my father says. "Well, sure. Now there's a gift. Who wouldn't love getting that?"


(3.)

I call my father again, later.

"What are you doing?" I ask. "Are you Christmas shopping?"

"I am doing the dishes," he says. "Hey. Guess what. We went to a wedding last night."

"Whose?"

"No one you know. A friend of Kathy's. Anyway, I skipped the wedding itself, but Kathy went. When we met up before we went to the reception, and she told me she had a surprise for me. Someone we had in common was going to be there, and we'd get to sit with them during dinner."

"Who was it?"

"Your brother."

"My brother?"

"Yeah. And you should've seen him." My father laughs. "That kid was a dancer last night. I've never seen him like that before. He was spastic. He danced with everyone... even the groom. I think he might've had one too many pops, if you know what I mean."


(4.)

So, there's this student. This student is a male, around my age, an auto guy. I think it's safe to say he has a crush on me. I make this assumption because of the following items: a.) Last weekend I received an e-mail from him that referred to me as "Doll" ; b.) he routinely asks if I'd like to hang out with him on the weekends, even after I've scolded him and told him to stop asking that because I'm his teacher, and he's my student, and NO ; c.) if I come over to help him, he likes to tell me I smell good ; d.) he's said, "So, I bet you have trouble with your guy students all the time, because, you know, you're hot and all." And then he waggled his eyebrows at me.

So, the other day in class, after one of my other students informed me she'd gotten me a Christmas present while she was down in New York visiting her boyfriend--"A boyfriend in New York," I said dreamily. "Swoon!"--the student with the crush said, "Well, I'm giving you your Christmas present next week."

"You got me a Christmas present?" I said. "There's really no need, you know."

"Oh, I didn't get it," he said. "I'm making it."

I think this is something I'm going to have to brace myself for.


(5.)

My grandmother sent a Christmas card the other day, and after I opened it and read it, I sat down to send a card in reply. When I was done, I realized what a poor job I'd done. I had written about how sad my students had made me this semester--what says Merry Christmas! more than an in-depth discussion of the decaying behavior and skill set of college-level students?!--and then I'd tried to change subjects by discussing the fun I was going to have next week when my friend Emily and I go Christmas shopping in Portland on the night they have free wine in all the stores.

When I was finished rereading it I knew I'd have to throw it out and start a new one. The end of the card--what with its shift in tone from downtrodden to upbeat, just when I'd started discussing Emily and all the good, glittering times we were going to have shopping--was just more evidence that I am a giant, hulking lesbian. And I figure grandma doesn't need to worry herself about that at Christmastime.

Edward 4-Eva

Yesterday in my creative writing class we were discussing character development, so we closed class with a prompt where students selected scraps of paper from an envelope. Written on those scraps of paper were various random (sometimes odd-ball) items (a set of moldy dentures, a blow-up doll, red stilettos, a sticker that says HELLO! MY NAME IS: AWESOME!, etc.) and the students were then asked to brainstorm for several minutes about the type of person who might be likely to own each of those items before expanding those ideas into a full-on character.

"Who the hell owns a milk jug in the shape of a breast?" one of my students asked, flapping her scraps of paper in the air.

"My brother," I said.

On the other side of the room one of my other students was bent over his notebook and muttering to himself. Whatever he'd gotten on his scraps of paper was causing him a considerable amount of stress. Finally he just gave up and threw his arms in the air. "You know who would own this?" he asked. "TWILIGHT NERDS, that's who. TWILIGHT NERDS!"

Simultaneously, three girls in the room--and, yeah, I was one of them--whipped around and said, "HEY! WATCH IT!"

And then we all smiled and nodded at each other, pleased with our synchronized chorus and the fact that we were going to be having a very, very, very good weekend.

A Conversation with One of My Favorite Creative Writing Students

Me: Keep going. It's good to challenge yourself in this way. Writing poetry in form is a whole new experience for you, but it's a good one.

Student: Ohhhhhhh.

Me: Ohhhhh what?

Student: I can already feel this sestina making me a better person.

Me: Damn right you can.

What Kind of Semester It's Been

(1.)

I caught five plagiarizers in the last batch of essays I read. Five. One of the students, I guess somehow thinking I wouldn't notice that overnight his writing turned from what I would loosely describe as "bad" into something of witty, charming, and publishable quality, copied (WORD FOR WORD) several sections of a book into a blank Word document, slapped his name on it, and turned it in.

"I'm bad at acknowledging sources I've used," the student said. "I'm a bad paraphraser."

I narrowed my eyes. "Rule one," I said. "Don't copy and paste an entire book and hand it in with your name on top."


(2.)

You know it's bad when I call the Wily Republican and say, "Can I ask you a question?"

You know it's bad when that question is, "Did I ever teach you anything? Like, anything at all? Did I teach you anything about writing that will remain with you for the rest of your life? Did I in any small way help you?"

You know it's bad when he says, "Yes! Yes, of course!" and I say, "Okay. Fine. Thanks. That's all. I just needed to remind myself it's possible. Goodnight."


(3.)

This semester I've been utilizing electronic discussion boards an awful lot. And my students? They've been abusing them. Here's a sentence that represents the content they'll slap online:

i think my farther is won of the greatest people ever,,, i want to write a profilee on hym. im going to concentreat on dyfficultes he.

That makes my eyes want to bleed. That makes my brain turn to liquid and quiver near the edge of my skull, poised and ready to leak out my nose and ears.

Still, still, still I started the semester giving my students polite reminders about the professionalism of their prose--even the prose they are creating for online discussion boards.

"Treat this as seriously as you treat the essays," I said. (Of course, this motivational speech was flawed on my part; see also: #1.) When that didn't work, I sent out a stern e-mail reminding them that their grades--which were poor to say the least--were reflecting the level of attention they gave to the discussion board posts. And when that didn't work, I sat them down and had a Come to Jesus talk with them. And yet the two discussion boards I read this weekend showed absolutely no capitalization (which we learn in elementary school), no apostrophes (which we learn in middle school; which I re-taught in college), and no end punctuation (which we learn in elementary school).

I decided to try one more (one last) technique to get them to take this seriously. I enacted the "Automatic F Policy," which states that if a student's post features even one sentence without a capital letter at its beginning, one sentence that doesn't have end punctuation, one sentence that has a lowercase "I," that discussion board post is going to fail--no matter how good its ideas might be.

"Holy shit," one of my students said. "You're mean."

"You're right," I said. "I am mean. I am the meanest girl who ever lived."


(4.)

I want to save these kids.

I can't save these kids.

I can't even come close.


(5.)

Today in class I was talking about how to bring source material into an essay in an elegant and smooth manner. We were discussing quotation and summary and paraphrase, and I was reminding students that changing one or two words in an original source and passing it off as a paraphrase is actually plagiarism.

"Yeah, but how would you ever know that we'd done that?" one of my students asked.

"Because," I said, "I know what you guys are capable of. I know your styles. I know you how punctuate and structure sentences. When your style and structure and punctuation is suddenly completely different--and generally perfect--what do you think my first thought is?"

"And what's the penalty for plagiarizing in a paper?" this same student asked. Maybe he was weighing his options. Maybe he was wondering if he should take the chance, give it a go, see if I could really suss the plagiarism out, and if I did, well, then so be it, and he'd take the penalty, but only if it was something reasonable. And he wanted to check on it.

"You tell me," I said. "It's on your syllabus."

"YOU FAIL," another of the students (bright, sweet, kind) said. Her tone suggested that she was as tired of this line of discussion as I was.

"I fail the course?!" the first student asked, horrified.

"THE PAPER," the second student said. "YOU FAIL THE PAPER. WHICH, YOU KNOW, IS STILL BAD."

"Right," I said, "but if it were up to me, any student would fail the class if he turned something in that wasn't his own."

"That's totally harsh," the first student said.

"That's how it was when I was in school," I said. "I was in an English class with a kid who plagiarized, and he got hauled in front of a committee, then he got tossed out of school."

"And where did you go to school?" my student asked. "A community college?"

"No."

"Yeah, well, there you go," my student said. "Students at community college shouldn't be kicked out for plagiarism. I mean, it's only community college."

"NO!" I said. "COLLEGE IS COLLEGE. You shouldn't be able to plagiarize just because you're in community college!"

"Should too," he said.

"Oh my God," I said. "I think I am going to have a stroke."

Goldfish

Each semester I meet about eighty students, and of those eighty students I will like maybe forty. Ten will be lumps. Five will be evil or scary or creepy. Some--maybe another fifteen or sixteen or seventeen--will just be... there. They will be normal and steady and generally unrecognizable to me after the semester is over. The rest--generally less than ten--I will love. I mean love. I mean love-love-love-love-love.

Some of these students I will love for no rhyme or reason. They might be bad students. They might talk or act up when I'm at the board. They might be lazy. They might be instigators. They might challenge everything--and I mean everything--I say. They might never crack a book or think English is worth their time, but I will love them, and I will spend the next fifteen weeks trying to change their minds.

I will adore these students faithfully. I will always listen to what they say. I will be light with my reprimands. I will giggle when they crack foul jokes. I'll say, "Boys! Boys! Now, boys!" or "Girls! Girls! Now, girls!" when I'm scolding them so that they know I'm mostly charmed by whatever they are talking about now.

It's simply inevitable.

Today one of these favorites came in. This is the third time since the start of the semester (and if you're keeping track, that was only seven days ago) he's been in my office. He has a few minutes between classes, and he chooses to spend that time wandering into my office and making comments about things ranging from basketball practice to burritos. He chooses to spend that time with me instead of going to the lounge like other students, who spend their time before class checking Facebook.

I think it's just about the sweetest thing. And when he walked in today I had just finished having the best afternoon snack ever (half a bag of Parmesan Goldfish crackers). I'd put them back in my snack drawer (which is already running low and boasting only a fiber bar) when he was suddenly standing beside me, towering over me--the kid is tall--and looking like he needed a snack.

"Do you want some Goldfish?" I asked.

"Ohhhh," he said. "Goldfish. Yes!"

So I handed him my bag of Goldfish. This was a fairly sizable gesture of goodwill. After all, he is a boy who could probably consume ten of those bags of crackers for dinner, and I was letting him have free reign over my bag, my one bag, my sole bag, the bag that's supposed to hold me through the week--which it will certainly not. There are not many things I love in this world more than Parmesan Goldfish crackers (which reminds me of this, and let's just have a moment here, okay?) and my giving them up to this student was a pretty giant declaration of my love. That was me saying, I'd probably do anything for you, kid.

And I would.