More Advice to My Undergrads...

1) If you were not in class to hear the paper assignment, you should ask me or a classmate to tell you the assignment. Better yet, show up to class next time and catch the next assignment! You only have to do five, remember! Writing a paper on a random topic of your own choosing usually won't suffice, unless you are amazingly intuitive and happen to pick the real assignment. Please don't be surprised when I tell you that, although your paper on serial killers is lovely, I can't grade it.

2) If, for whatever reason, you need to furnish me with an excuse, pick one and only one. Here's an example. Good excuse: "I missed class last week because my grandmother died." Bad excuse: "I'm so sorry that I missed class last week. My grandmother died, I put my cat to sleep, I was in a car accident, had a strange and dangerous reaction to shellfish, got mugged, and my car wouldn't start." When you furnish me with 6 or 7 excuses, you decrease the statistical probablity that what you are telling me is true. I'm just saying...

3) While we're on the topic of excuses....I really don't care why you weren't in class yesterday. My policy allows you to miss several classes without it impacting your grade. I make the policy that way precisely so that I don't have to sort through all of your excuses. If you're telling me because you don't want me to think you're blowing off my class, cool. If you're telling me so that I'll give you points for something you didn't do, not cool.

4) If you skipped exam 1 AND exam 2, you are definitely failing my class. I assure you that, despite the horror involved in coming to my office hours, making a brief appearance for me to sign your drop slip before the due date is in your best interest. Seriously. I won't hurt you.

5) Don't pretend that you e-mailed me when you didn't. I get e-mail from everyone but you. It's not my account. It's you.

Ahh, that feels better. Poor students....I love some of them, but some of them drive me insane.

I can't believe that I'm taking the time to write in this. I have to see a client, then babysit until roughly 1am, then I have to be back here and professional at 8am, then leave right after teaching for a conference.

For the record....
Writing final papers + Writing final exams + Grading final exams + 2 conferences = ACK!!!!!

Teaching Diversity

I'm teaching the Cultural Diversity course next semester. I was -- and still am -- really excited about it. But it's also starting to sink in how frigging terrified I am.
I took this course as an undergrad, and it was really awful. I had no idea that my classmates were that racist, sexist, classist.... It scared me and made me sad. Classmates raised their hands, then when called upon by our black South African professor said things like "Well, it's clear that black people are just innately less intelligent than white people." What scared me the most was that, at that point in the semester, they weren't even trying to be inflammatory. They just believed it.
As the semester went on, they became increasingly angry with the professor for exposing them to the concept of privilege. I remember one day when the professor left the room while we were watching a video. After an African American man spoke on the video, a classmate jeered: "What white man taught him that word?"
I remember going, seething, to the professor and him telling me not to go numb to it. He has since told me that, after each class, he would lock himself in his office and cry.
When I took the course as a grad student (same prof), I was hoping for some sort of corrective experience. The undergrad got me so fired up...but I had been so disheartened in there as well. I was excited about having a class where I would be challenged. I believe that we're all sexist, racist, and classist. It's seeped into our pores after so much time living in this culture. I want to work on it.
That class sucked. A classmate was in the middle of having a psychotic break, and she commandeered the class. Along the way, some strange association seemed to have been made between the cultural diversity stuff and psychosis. Great. I was surprised in that class, too. A classmate told me that I "shouldn't feel the way that I do." I still want to fucking flip out about it. I shouldn't feel the way I feel? FUCK you. What the fuck gives you the right to tell me how to feel?
So...I decided that I want to teach the course. One last shot, or something. I know that this will be the hardest one...so far, I have ten students registered for the course. It's not a lot, I know. But holding the empathy with ten people while trying to push them further. Ugh.
I did some body-positive stuff with my Intro class recently. I have a stack of papers. The women are writing about hating themselves, wishing that they could spend less time thinking about their weight, listening to their parents call them fat.... and then one male student hands me this paper about how "Saying that there is sexism is as absurd as saying racism still exists."
Umm....yeah....by the way, did you check out the KKK rally as it went by? How do you explain that?
After class, several of my classmates were ranting about a professor who just "can't get over the race thing." He has asked where race fits into certain philosopher's work. He explained that, in some instances, he does not feel represented by the work. So, people get frustrated and whine about him being stuck on the race issue. Ironically, we've just been discussing Derrida and erasure. Umm...whiteness under erasure anyone? But no, let's get angry with the person who makes us see it. If we kill the messenger, it will go away, right?
Last night I went to dinner with my college roommate and a hallmate of ours. She explained that she wouldn't get angry with the teacher of a cultural diversity course. That's because: "I'm racist, and I know I'm right. So you wouldn't threaten me." She went on to tell me that stereotyping "saves time," so there's nothing wrong with it. All I said was "Except that it hurts people."
This week, I'm irritable about all of this stuff. I was talking to the group cofacilitator at my practicum about this stuff, and she was reminding me that they're all white, Catholic, upper middle class kids. They're scared of this stuff. Sometimes I can hold that, but at other times, it pisses me off. It's a cop out. I'm white. I was raised Catholic and was middle class. And I know that I have problematic beliefs. It's not like I was raised in some ultra-progressive family or anything. God. My second cousin has turned purple while screaming at me for daring to suggest that rape is bad. (I'm dead serious. She was talking about the Kobe Bryant case. I said: "If he raped her, that's awful." That, my friends, was controversial.) Her husband tells me that he's not racist because he doesn't hate all black people, just niggers.
So, sometimes I'm just not that sympathetic. I bubble over with rage, I can't catch my breath, my head pounds. My husband and I go on walks around the neighborhood as I rant and flail. I wonder if it's some of the bullshit that I've encountered as a woman that has felt soul-crushing but that I've been dismissed and ridiculed for. I know that some of my attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, actions, etc. have made people feel That Way.... and I really don't want to do that to other people. And more than anything, I don't want to be a part of something that tells people that they don't feel That Way when they know, somewhere in their soul, that they do. Because I know how annihilating that can feel. And somehow it feels like an ethical obligation. It's because of my privilege that I can choose whether or not to think about this stuff. The class hasn't been taught to undergrads since the class I was in. I figure that someone should teach it.
But teaching this class is so scary. I've decided to blog about it after each class...to document it (paper, perhaps?) and also to make sure I have as many structures in place as I can to not completely implode.
Yup.

Burning out...

I'm too that "slightly manic but still sort of with it" stage. Unfortunately, there are three weeks left in the semester, so I expect to lose the coherence with at least a week of classes left. I'm already slacking like nothing I've ever seen!

Take Friday:
I woke up with cramps and an asthma attack. By the time I left for my 8am session, I had used my (stimulant) inhaler, and taken 4 advil. On the way, I stopped to buy coffee. In my general stupor, I pumped hot coffee onto my hand, rather than into the coffee cup. Ouch. I completely rambled during my class. I was doing my spiel on body image and feminism. It's a topic that excites me, and I don't think I stopped for air once. Around noon I heard that my afternoon client cancelled. I decided to skip class, and went to lunch with my husband. I thought I'd work during the afternoon, but instead I sat in an MSG fog.

Random comment: If you have to start the sentence, "I'm not racist or anything..." you should be aware that you are about to say something racist. Stop.

And another note to my students: Do not copy Wikipedia and hand it in as a paper. Thanks much.

Frigging laptop

My laptop died over the weekend. AGAIN!

I was literally walking to get my thumb drive when -- oops, there goes the laptop! And, of course, OOPS, there goes your paper!

Sigh.

The last time it crashed (last MONTH!) I had everything already backed up. I had a spreadsheet up with my students' grades, backed up on my thumb drive. The file got corrupted when the laptop crashed.

This resulted in the fun-fun announcement in my Intro class that students will get a bonus point if they hand in exam 1 again!

I hate that I'm so frigging reliant on this piece of shit machine! We bought a new one on Saturday. We've put so much money into this thing that's less than three years old. So, we spent the equivalent of a month of rent that I have NO IDEA how we'll pay at the end of the summer.

It was the least costly way to go. If we didn't get the laptop, there was a good chance that I would not be able to finish my classes this semester. That would have led to me having to buy a semester out of pocket, not to mention retaking some very painful classes. That way of handling it would have cost about $25,000.

God. I can't wait until I graduate.