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.

Putting It in Perspective

My literature class wrote such horrifying essays duringthis past unit that I felt compelled to create a checklist that they can glance at prior to handing in their next round of essays. Let me put it in perspective for you. You know things are bad when the following items are the first items on your checklist:

1. Have I spelled the author's name right?
2. Have I spelled the characters' names right?
3. Have I indented my paragraphs one tabbed space?

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.

Mid-Semester

I have been staring at this screen for ten minutes, and I still don't know what to write. I feel like I have a lot to say; I feel like I have very little to say.

I could tell you that I am, right now, listening to Wilson Pickett sing "I'm Not Tired" or that this fall has been a big deal for Abbey because we've introduced her to the wonders of laser pointers. I could tell you I want a pair of red boots.

I could tell you that this is the busiest semester I've ever had, that I feel now more than ever the weight of a 5-5 load, that there have been times I've cried because I've realized just how much I have to do and think there's no way it's ever going to get done.

I could tell you The Lady-Killer and I went apple-picking and I've made apple crisp, apple muffins, apple-cheddar-squash soup, apple-caramel cake, and two batches of applesauce, and I still have an entire bag of apples to use.

I could tell you that I really, really love living with a boy. I could tell you how I used to think I'd be rotten at it, but I actually think I'm pretty okay.

I could tell you that these days I am watching an awful lot of "Four Weddings" on TLC--and that this a show where four brides attend each other's weddings and then rate them, the winner getting a luxurious honeymoon prize package--and that I violently love and hate the show at the same time. I could tell you I'm still shaking my fist at Don Draper for what he did in the Mad Men season finale.

I could tell you there's a part of me that's looking forward to snow, but it's not a very big part.

I could tell you that today I climbed into my shower and bleached the walls above the tub and scrubbed them until they were bright white. I could tell you I washed a blanket Abbey threw up on, one I avoided and let sit for a few weeks.

I could tell you one of my favorite things about The Lady-Killer is the way he says ow.

I could tell you I wish my mother would come over and make me dinner. I could tell you I wish my brother would come sit on the couch with me and watch reality television with me, make me laugh, make my mother laugh, make TLK laugh, make everyone in the world laugh.

I could tell you that today while I was cleaning my office I found a tiny yellow Post-It note that says nothing good can come from working with deli meat. I could tell you in my drawer I have a slim stack of blue Post-It notes, that these are the first notes TLK wrote me, and that one of them has his number and the words you know you want to on it.

It is mid-semester, and I am tired but I am happy.

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

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...

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.

Ecstasy

This is what fell out of my mouth today at 3:28 PM, as I was slipping syllabi into a folder to take to my 3:30 class on this, the first day of school:

"FUCK! OH MY FUCKING GOD!"

Next to my name on the upper part of the syllabus there was an errant word. That word was ecstasy. Or sort of. Ecstasy was spelled incorrectly.

Yes, that's right. This is what my syllabus looked like:

ENG 101: Composition
2:00-3:30 PM Mondays and Wednesdays

Instructor: Jessica Miller* excstasy

"What is wrong with you?" my office-mate asked. He was way on the other side of the room--his side, the side that is decorated with prayer flags from Nepal and gold Buddha statues. I was on my side, underneath a collage of Ryan Miller photographs and a few Minnesota artifacts: a Maverick cowbell and a salt and pepper shaker set done up to look like Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.

"THE WORD ECSTASY IS ON MY SYLLABUS AFTER MY NAME!" I said. "And I have no idea why!"

My office-mate came over and peered at the syllabus. "And it's spelled wrong," he said. "Is that how you spell the version that means the drug?"

"Oh my God," I said. "I don't know. Oh my God. What the hell was I doing that I typed out the word ecstasy--and incorrectly--on my composition syllabus?"

I'd printed and copied that file last week, way in advance of the first-day-of-the-semester copier crush. I'd thought I was pretty organized and smart and ahead of the game. But at 3:28, two minutes before I needed to be in class glowing with my tough-but-charming first day aura, I was realizing I was not in the least smart, not the least bit ahead of the game.

I thought about dashing upstairs to the copier, about bribing whoever was on it--and there would be someone on it--to get the hell off it, but that would take valuable time. It would take time I didn't have. I would either have to go late on the first day, or I would have to walk down the hall, explain to the class that I didn't have their syllabi prepared (thus looking like a scatterbrain, a whack-o, a giant boob) and then tell them to wait while I went to print off a few copies.

"That's really funny," my office-mate said.

"I have class in two minutes!"

"Still funny," he said. "Make sure you show everyone else in the department."

"Oh my God," I wailed. "What am I going to do?"

"I think," my office-mate said, "that you should go in there and turn it into a joke. I think that you should go in there and tell them this is their first lesson--you know, that even when you think you've got everything, that you've edited every bad thing out, it's probable that you haven't."

I stuffed the papers into the folder and ignored the urge to thrust my head through the wall. "I hate myself," I said. "Just so we're clear, I really hate myself right now."

And then I walked into class and did a bit about the wacky professor who accidentally put the word ecstasy on her syllabus! After her name! Right up top, where everyone could see it!

And you know what one of my students said?

He said, "If you hadn't pointed it out, we probably would've just thought it was your last name."
~~~

* Anyone totally notice how I just granted myself my future husband's name there? I'm just trying it out.

I'm Stealing His Moves Too

Jesus help me, I love Prince. I love Prince so much I want to curl up in the sock drawer on his tour bus and live there until he finds me. And upon finding me, he'll (of course) ask me to hand him his guitar, and I will, and he'll start grooving and singing about a raspberry beret, which is only one of my favorite songs in the entire world.

I guess it reminds me of grad school, not because it was always blaring from someone's car and not because it was piped in through the halls of MSU or anything like that, but because I was listening to it a whole lot back then. And I was thinking about it today, mostly because tomorrow is the first day of the fall semester--the first day of my third year here (yeah, let THAT blow your mind a little bit)--and the beginning of a new semester calls for some very serious consideration of very serious matters.

Namely this: teacher theme songs.

Of course, this is something I've put a lot of thought into. It's not something I've just started thinking about now, after eight o'clock, as I watch the last hours of my summer vacation go skipping away into the dark. I've been thinking about it for years, and what I've thought is this: it seems only fair to me that teachers should have something--a device, if you will; something Pavlovian in nature--that will make their students sit up, snap to attention, and really listen. I think it's only fair that we get a song that announces our arrival in the classroom.

Lasers and smoke machines could be optional--maybe for tenured faculty only?--but everyone should get to select a song that signals to the class, "Listen, kids. It's time to shape up or ship out. The teacher is in the room."

Raspberry Beret could be my song. I'm convinced of it. Give it a listen.





Upbeat, peppy, sassy. It seems to be all the things I'd like to think my classes are. It would work.

I'd also accept "PYT," if only so I could work some of these moves into my entrance. Others that are possibilities? "Love, Sex, and Magic" by Ciara and Justin (although I'd change the words to be something like "Commas, Tone, and Magic"). "Independence" by The Blue Van (which, consequently, is the theme song for my favorite summer show: Royal Pains). "Circus" by Britney Spears. "Tell Me Something Good" by Chaka Khan. "100 Days, 100 Nights" by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)" by The White Stripes.

If you ask me, each of those would set a good tone, maybe even the right tone to start this whole new semester off with a bang.

I Might Not Have Won the Skull Trophy, But It Was Still a Good Day

I am exhausted.

I have no reason to be exhausted. I spent the day doing nothing strenuous at all, unless you count mini-golfing as a strenuous activity, and I'm betting you don't.

My whole day was low key, light, pretty not-exhaustion-inducing. It went something like this:

10:00 AM: I arrive at school. I check my e-mail.


10:15 AM: I think about dusting my desk. I decide against it.


10:17 AM: I watch as a plant with human legs walks through the door into the office. It is my office-mate and his plant. "This," he says, "is Quagmire." I'd agreed to water his plant while he is away on his post-semester vacation, and since he lives an hour and a half from where I live--yes, his is a monster commute--he brought the plant to me. "Don't kill it, okay?" he says. "We've bonded. We watch sports together."


10:25 AM: My office-mate tests the new camera he bought for his trip. He tries a video. He films me reading about Miss California's racy photos. When he downloads it to his computer, I complain. "Look at my back!" I say. "I am a hunchback! I have a hump! I look like I have scoliosis!"


10:27 AM: My office-mate tries for another video. "And there's Jess," he narrates as he tapes, "and her VERY STRAIGHT BACK."

"That's right!" I say. "This right here is a scoliosis-free zone!"


10:30 AM: It is time to do what we've all come to campus to do. We are off to the official Appreciation Brunch. The people in charge of dining had e-mailed us earlier to tell us what was on the menu for the morning. The list included things like french toast and ham and asparagus and chicken and omelets and hash browns and sausage and fruit and salad and scones and cheesecakes.

Because this food is free and because the faculty and staff is allowed to have as much of it as we want, there is a very, very long line to get to the food.


11:15 AM: We watch the president hand out the yearly awards. Someone is retiring, and that means that person is getting a lamp which is done up in the school's colors.

There is a running joke going on--the powers that be cancelled hand-shaking at graduation tomorrow because of the Swine Flu (sigh), so everyone is giving everyone else a hard time about it. The president gets fist bumps, hugs, high fives, salutes, and bows as he hands out the awards.


11:45 AM: It is determined that the weather, which looked spotty and sketchy earlier, is going to hold, thus making it possible for our department to wage the Second Annual Humanities Department Mini-Golf Smack-Down. We start gearing up for the two o'clock tee-time. This means I am off to change into my golf attire--my I Love Jordan Catalano T-shirt--and it also means I am off to buy a trophy.


12:30 PM: I am standing in the local dollar store. I am looking at ceramic cow statues, glass religious figures, packages of leis. I try to channel Diana Joseph. I think, If Diana was throwing a Baby in the Cupcake party, what would she get for prizes?

I walk out with a squishy gray skull whose eyes pulse out of its head, sloshing blood, goo, and worms when you squeeze it. I drop that into a plastic tiki stein left over from what seems to be the dollar store's Cinco de Mayo stockpile. I think DJ would be pretty proud.


2:00 PM: The Humanities Department Mini-Golf Smack-Down begins. We separate into two teams. It's the Humanities Gang vs. the Assorted Math and Science-y People Gang.


2:25 PM: On hole three, one of the members of the other group comes over and says, "Does this place serve beer?"

We say ha, fat chance, we wish.

"You mean you haven't been drinking?" she asks.

No, no, we haven't. This is just what we act like on a normal basis. Some of us are wearing sombreros. Some of us are insisting--loudly--that the ball is more likely to go into the hole if you dirty-talk it. Some of us are using our new cameras to videotape the whole thing and threatening to put it on YouTube.


3:25 PM: We are done and awaiting final scores. There is some confusion. The Math gang is saying things about averages and square roots and integers.

They win. Their average score beats our average score. In the individual scores, though, I am third. I am a mini-golf champ.


3:35 PM: We hand out the squishy skull and tiki goblet to the official winner. We are off to for martinis and food.


4:15 PM: We drink two-for-one martinis. We eat. I talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. My office-mate pours half of his second martini into my second martini glass, and I talk and talk and talk some more.

One of my former students is working at the place we love to haunt for our two-for-ones. At one point he sneaks up behind me and says, "Hey. That B- you gave me last year? It was my favorite grade of the whole semester. Everything else I didn't care about, but I worked hard for that B-."


6:30 PM: I go home. I lie down on the bed, on a pile of clothes I have been sorting out of my closet for Goodwill. I feel suddenly unable to move. I am exhausted. All I want to do is close my eyes and fall asleep while Scrubs plays in the background.

Katy calls. "Hey!" she says. "Great news! When I come to visit, you and I can now get married! Well, maybe. I know how Maine feels about gay marriage, but how does it feel about polygamy and gay marriage?"

"Oh, they don't need to know that you have a husband, too," I say. "We just won't tell them."


6:45 PM: The Wily Republican calls. "So, I've been watching Castle," he says.

"Yes?" I say. I, too, have been watching--and loving--Castle. In fact, I am the one who suggested he might like the show.

"And, okay, I'll give you this: it's kind of like our situation."

"Isn't it?!" I said. "You're the grumpy one going around telling me to stop being stupid, and I'm the one running after you and saying, 'Oooh! Ooh! Interesting! Let me see! I'm SO going to write about this!'"


7:00-rest of the night: I position myself on the couch and don't move through episodes of America's Next Top Model, Lost, and American Idol. At 10:30, I want to go to bed.

It's funny how everything suddenly just ticks to a stop after the semester ends. It's only then that the true weight of everything that happened over those fifteen weeks rolls over you. Everything you were thinking-feeling-hoping kind of just leaks out your ears, hisses out of those tight places in your shoulders and legs and toes. It's then that you realize Jesus, I am tired. And it's a serious kind of tired.

But luckily that serious kind of tired is about to remedied for three months. All that's standing between me and my summer is tomorrow's graduation, which is sure to be filled with fist-bumps aplenty. Now I'm just wondering if the post-graduation cookie and punch social is cancelled due to the Swine Flu, too...

And Now, a Love Letter

Last night at 6:45, after portfolios had been collected and evaluations had been done, I stood in front of my Wednesday night class--a group I called the Not Colleens because there was one girl who looked exactly like a girl I used to waitress with (Colleen) but was in fact not Colleen--and I unrolled my finest last-day pep-talk. It was all take these lessons with you! Use them in other classes! Use them in life! Let me be the voice in your head hissing, "Why are you putting that comma there?!"

And then I told them it was a great pleasure to have had their company for fifteen weeks. Sometimes--especially on the darkest nights of winter--the last thing you want to do is go teach a night class for three straight hours (which totally cuts into some of the best TV of the week), and you clunk into class feeling like it is the world's biggest chore. This class, though, with its fabulous mix of nontraditional students, high school seniors, and single dads, was about as good as they get, and they never felt like a chore.

I even baked them cookies. That's how good they were. Back when I first started teaching, I used to bake cookies for every class I had--and my last creative writing class at MSU even got a pizza party--but it just got to be too much. When I was teaching in Buffalo, I baked cookies for my engineering boys and decided that was it. I was done. I was finished. No more cookies.

But I rolled the cookies out for this bunch because they deserved it. I hadn't given a single A out in my other composition class all semester long--in fact, on their final papers, only two people were above a C--but my night class was a completely different story. It was A! A! A! A! It was pile after pile of essays that were consistently well thought-out, impeccably crafted, and painstakingly revised. It was clear that these were papers that were started more than twenty-four hours before they were due. Way more than twenty-four hours before they were due.

These students would come up to me and drop a paragraph on my desk and say things like: "I tried a little something new here. What do you think? Do you think the tone works? Do you think it's a good image to grab the audience's attention? Do you think the punctuation helps emphasize my point?"

Those questions are enough to make me fall over dead. The entire semester long, I was about three seconds away from grabbing these students and clutching them to my bosom and saying, "You are trying! You are thinking! You are WONDERFUL!"

I made sure they knew how much I appreciated them. After every batch of essays got graded, I'd walk into the room and announce that my giant teacher crush on them was as strong as ever because I'd spent the weekend marking high grades all over the place. One time, I even went so far as to draw a fat A wearing a bejeweled crown on one girl's essay because it was simply one of the best I'd ever read.

A teacher doesn't get lucky like that often. I mean, they were charming and funny and smart and thoughtful and helpful. They were everything you hope you get in a group of college students but often don't. I'm not foolish enough to think I'll have another group like that for a while. Which is sad. Which is very sad. Sometimes I come home after a day on campus and wonder if I'm even doing any good, if I've ever done any good, if I am teaching anyone anything at all. But I never once--not even for a second--felt that way or wondered those things as I left that class. I only ever felt wonderful, which is exactly what I was feeling last night after I finished my pep-talk and said my goodbyes and they all stood up and clapped for me. That right there? That's the best feeling in the world.

We're Getting There

Overnight, this state turned beautiful again.

Harpswell, ME, originally uploaded by thewoodenshoes (van Kampen).

As I write this, I have every window in the apartment open, and the peepers are singing. Abbey is sitting on the ledge, tormenting herself about the various birds and squirrels that are playing at the edge of the woods.

Suddenly everything smells good, feels good, looks good. Or is getting there. This place is greening. Trees are budding. People are out in their gardens.

Here at our complex, a pack of landscapers swarmed the tiny cluster of buildings set back in the trees and cleaned everything up. They closed the parking lot for an afternoon and swept the dirt and sand off the pavement. They mulched. They planted. The trimmed and clipped and tidied.

I've started wearing sandals. Strappy, sexy sandals.

This weekend at our writers' group meeting we sat out on a patio and sipped Lemon Drops until the sun went down and the owners came around to start the miniature fireplaces next to our circle of chairs.

Right now, right this very second, our department is hatching a plan to challenge everyone else on campus to a Miniature Golf-Off, where we will prove--once again--our superiority in athleticism and cunning.

I'm trying to decide what dress I'll wear under my robe at graduation.

I want a glass of lemonade.

Everything, everything, everything is getting good. Our end-of-the-semester paper chain countdown has us in the single digits, and tomorrow morning when I go in, my creative writing class and I are going to be making chapbooks to showcase the work we did over the semester. I am going to walk into the class and heap the following things on the front table: four different colors of glitter, puff paint, ribbon, construction paper, stamps, crayons, markers, paint, and paintbrushes. I am going to let them loose and see what they create, see how they represent their creative work.

Can you think of a better way to spend an afternoon?

Enter the Kid Wearing the Bird Head

There is one girl in my creative writing class who always rolls her eyes when we spend time writing in class. She complains that she has nothing to write about. "Oh my God!" she says. "I have nothing interesting to say!"

You know what she is? She's a big fat liar. Here's how I know that:

Two weeks ago, I opened class with a fairly simple prompt. "For five minutes," I told my class, "write about the strangest, weirdest, oddest person you've ever known. Don't censor yourself. Don't worry about grammar or mechanics. Just write."

So they did. Then I told them to tear those paragraphs out of their notebooks, fold them in half, and pass them down to me. They did. I shuffled. And then I handed the odd little paragraphs out at random so we all ended up with a character that wasn't our own.

I always write along with my students, so I'd filled a paragraph with details about a girl I went to high school with, a girl who went sort of crazy-crazy-nutso and kept this really weird journal with news clippings and drawings of martians and showed it off to a few people, and word eventually got to the principal, who then called everyone who'd seen it--including me and all my friends--into his office at separate times and asked us to describe in great detail everything we'd seen in there.

"Do you think she's dangerous?" he'd asked me.

I thought she was lonely. I thought she'd been picked on for most of our childhoods. I thought she was the daughter of a farmer and she smelled bad. I thought she tried too hard. I thought she had odd mannerisms and hair that needed washing. I thought all of this might have stemmed from those jeans she wore in fifth grade--they had little ducks embroidered on the back pockets, and fifth grade was way past the time anyone was wearing duckie-embroidered jeans.

I told our principal no, I didn't think she was dangerous. I thought she was strange. That was all.

Still, the administration feared the worst. All sorts of security measures were put into place for our graduation day. We heard there were undercover cops in the audience. We heard they were ready to spring into action at even the slightest unexpected rustle or move.

In the middle of the ceremony, after rain started pelting the roof of the auditorium, one of the seniors snuck off the bleachers on the stage and out the side door so he could shut his car windows he forget to put up before he came into school. When the auditorium door--heavy, steel--slammed shut behind him it sounded like a gun shot, and everyone jumped.

And that was the story I'd given away. I don't know who got it and I don't know if they were able to construct a story, an inner-life for that girl, but I hope so. I'm hopeful because from that prompt, I was able to do something good. Really good. And it's all because of the girl who rolls her eyes, the girl who complains she's got nothing to write about.

Her paragraph was about a boy she went to high school with. He smelled. He didn't shower. He wore clothes that didn't fit. And all of that was fine--sort of normal for high school boys, I suppose--but then the paragraph revealed the good stuff: one day he showed up to school wearing a bird head--something from a costume--over his own head. He refused to take it off, and he wore that thing to school every day.

I thought that was too good to be true. The first thing I saw in my head was a high school parking lot, that kid leaning against his car and taking a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He lit a cigarette and then reached up with his free hand to open his beak, so he could smoke the cigarette through the costume. So I wrote that. And then I wrote a paragraph in which a very pert, preppy girl named Alexis (said with an exclamation point after it--ALEXIS!--sort of like how they said it in the old Cheri Oteri/Will Ferrell cheerleader skits) comes into homeroom to announce that Jimmy Carbone was in the parking lot wearing a bird head and that she was pretty sure he had a gun and that he was going to kill every last one of them.

It was so fun and weird to write that I felt guilty for stealing my student's good character away from her, and I told her so.

"Are you kidding?" she said, surprised. "I would never write about him. He was just some weird kid from high school."

And I was thinking, My God, Girl, we're all just weird kids from high school. Is there anyone or anything better to write about?

I've Just About Had It with the Mystery Stains

Here's what I'm wondering after a weekend of essay grading:

Does my syllabus now need a clause in it about handing in an essay that is dotted with stains of an unidentifiable origin? Do I really need to nestle a paragraph regarding the cleanliness of a formal paper underneath my policies on attendance, student conduct, and plagiarism? Do I need to send out an e-mail now, mid-semester, that discusses with my students the importance of turning in a paper that is not disgusting?


Dear Students,

This weekend I read your essays. Some were good. Some were not. Some were filthy.

For future reference, please remember that you are not to hand in any essay that:

1. Has been in your dog's mouth
2. Has been bled upon
3. Has come into contact with any kind of fecal matter
4. Has been accosted by ketchup from your hamburger or sauce from your pizza
5. Has been stepped on
6. Has been used for booger-wiping
7. Has been dropped onto the tile of any bathroom--public or private

The stains associated with the above (or similar) items make for an unprofessional presentation, and no matter how brilliant your words are, they will not be able to overshadow that greasy scuff streaking across your conclusion. That's just not hygienic.

Thanks,

Your Teacher

If You Ask Me, Students Should Get Kicked out of School For Stuff Like This

We were supposed to have a snow day today. My office-mate--a man known as The Official Winter Weather Oracle, a man who monitors all the weather websites, all the forecasts, all the dopplers, all the bands and patterns--told me we'd have the day off today. "There is no way I will see you tomorrow," he said. "Just won't happen."

But this morning when Abbey bounced on me at 7:00 AM, I looked out the window and saw that the predicted six to twelve inches hadn't manifested. Instead, there was a pretty, wet coating that clung to the branches of the trees. I went back to bed knowing my office-mate was already on his way to school and that we would see each other, and we'd be pretty grumpy about it.

Turns out there were many other things to be grumpy about. By the end of the day, I would be sitting at a local sandwich shop across from one of the adjuncts and telling her that there were members of my class of auto boys that made me want to thrust a pencil straight into my eye socket.

I was saying this for a very good reason. Earlier, during class, this student had spent an entire hour and a half playing computer games when he was supposed to be working on his latest technical document. I was floating around the classroom helping the other students and when I saw the games I told him to stop it, told him to get working, but he didn't. And the next time I saw him playing games I said, "You know what? I don't care. Do what you want. It's your choice how to spend your time. If you want to play video games and ignore your work, that's your choice. We'll see how that goes for you."

And I didn't say anything else to him for a long time. He kept fooling around--playing games, looking at You Tube videos--and then, in the last hour of class he finally got around to writing five sentences.

"Hey," he said when he finished his sentences. "Look at this."

I was working with another student. Other hands were wagging across the room, waiting for me to make my way to them. "Okay," I said, "but I need to take care of the other students before I get to you. They were first." It was only fair. They'd been doing their work. They'd been waiting for me to get around to them.

And so I moved on to one. I sat down and started reading the student's paper, suggesting a few page design modifications, but then I heard the auto boy muttering. His muttering wasn't exactly sly, quiet, private. It was loud enough that I could hear him on the other side of the room.

"Is my skin black?" he said to his friends. "I mean, my skin must be black because she sure as hell doesn't ever spend any fucking time over here helping me."

The room froze. I suddenly became aware of every muscle in my body. Each one was coiled, ready to unfurl and spin me around to face him. I took a deep breath and turned around in my seat.

"Stop it!" I said. "Just stop it! I cannot believe you'd even talk like that in my classroom. I can't believe you'd ever say something like that!"

He just stared at me.

"You can leave," I said. "Get out. Right now."

"Yeah, okay," he said, slamming his books around.

I turned back to the student I'd been helping. He was looking down at the keyboard, embarrassed. And I understood that embarrassment. It is embarrassing to hear your college instructor yell at someone. It is embarrassing to watch a nineteen year old get reprimanded. And none of the students in that room had paid their money to enroll in a class where that kind of behavior is allowed.

Never once did I ever see someone get yelled at in college. Never once did one of my professors have to stop a lecture to throw a student out of class. Never once. That's high school bullshit. I was always horrified and embarrassed when one of our high school teachers had to stop and tell one of the mean boys or one of the dirty girls to stop, to get out, to go down to the principal's office. The student getting yelled at would always throw a mini-tantrum--toss a few books to the floor, kick the garbage can on the way out, pound a fist into the wall--and then the teacher would have to take a deep breath--count to ten as quickly as humanly possible--and then somehow go back to the lesson. And that, too, was awkward and embarrassing--after all, here we were, the students who knew not to act like idiots, and we had to pretend that we hadn't just witnessed some massive act of idiocy and that we hadn't seen our teacher's carefully-constructed exterior crack a little when he or she had to yell, scream, or bark out commands that shouldn't have to be given anyway.

And so my classroom simmered in that embarrassment for a minute or two while the angry student gathered his things and left the classroom. And when he was gone, I didn't have the luxury of taking a single second to calm myself. Time was winding down, and I still had a lot of students to visit, to check on before we left for the day. I just had to turn back around and pick up right where I left off with the serious student, the one who had done his work and waited patiently for my feedback. I had to hitch my voice back up to its normal level of pert and go on like nothing had happened, like we had not just witnessed something that has no business happening in a college classroom.