What I Learned Today, Aug. 17, 2009

Today was the first day of school, so I started off on the right foot by... well... learning things. So please enjoy What I Learned Today.


1. The perfect costume for today can be confidence in textiles.


However... the picture of said textile confidence can be oh-so-disappointing when you realize that you haven't gotten to the "wash mirror" portion of the VA -> GA move. Ugh.

2. There is no accounting for taste.


This painting is the only thing in my office at the moment. It needs to come down yesterday. I mean... I really love it and the wall color. And the purple door trim. (0_o)

3. There are faculty perks.


Some universities (read: mine) have bathrooms designated for faculty. Those bathrooms are supplied with various creams and lotions. Drawback: You will run into a faculty member in the bathroom.

4. When the interwebs are against her, a girl has to keep herself busy.


I lugged my laptop to campus today because I was promised (by a giant banner that proclaims "WIRELESS INSIDE") wireless. How-ev-er, my computer was rejected because of missing Microsoft updates. Boo.

So... without interwebs again, I read. Turns out young adult lit was also the perfect costume for today.

5. In Georgia, fruits behave differently.


Apples, for instance, brown before you finish cutting them. I'm not even kidding. Blanche Devareaux once said that people mature faster in the South, and I now believe her.

6. Just because they are a must for this season's fashion, doesn't mean they'll be nice to your feet for an entire 8 hour and 20 minute day.


Yep. Nothing witty to say about that.

I also learned things that I didn't take pictures of. For example, even if one makes it through an entire day of teaching 5 classes without breaking a sweat, that same one will sweat it out in the 6 minute ride home in the preheated oven-hot car. You are happy I didn't photograph this.

Finally (for now), I learned that when one enters five classes with the same tattoos and piercings, 2 students in 2 different classes will point them out in an attempt at solidarity. Goodness gracious.

I'm curious. What did you learn today?!

Diana Hacker, meet Nigella Lawson.

Diana HackerNigella Lawson

I love it when the baking/cooking and teaching worlds collide.

Just now, as I was preparing a comma lesson for my students, I stumbled upon this example sentence in the Diana Hacker Rules for Writers manual:

Even though Pavel had studied Nigella Lawson's recipes for a week, he underestimated how long it would take to juice two hundred lemons.

Two hundred lemons?! Honestly, Diana?

Well... I guess Pavel could possibly be making lemon tarts for the mess hall. What do I know?

The important bit is that there is supposed be a comma after the word "week". JSYK.

Dunkin' & Deceivin': Done and Done

My day started very slowly.

I struggled quite mightily to actually start grading papers and reading
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.

However, when I did get going, I got 9 papers graded and about 50 pages read. Not too bad.

But here is the real accomplishment of today:


I found the perfect Starbucks mug, and I successfully drank Dunkin Donuts coffee while I graded student papers in Starbucks.

It was... blissful.

The next step in the Dunkin' & Deceivin' plan is to gather up all my chutzba and ask the Dunkin Donuts people to put the Dunkin Donuts coffee directly in the Starbucks mug.

I mean, it's the way Al Gore would want it done.

And, furthermore, my Dad thinks that they will do it, and I'll actually only get charged the refill price.

Result = My three Dunkin Donuts gift cards will last forever.

As always, I'll keep you posted.

The Class That Almost Wasn't

As you might have noticed, there is a massive winter happening... happening today.

I should have known to take the weatherman seriously when he told me to run my errands last night. Don't get me wrong, I prepare for the snowstorms, but I just didn't think that real Mainers did. So, I figured that he must be talking to the elderly or the overly cautious.

Anyway, I bought groceries on Tuesday, so I am set.


Nervous. But set.

Our campus kept us in suspense until about 2pm when they canceled classes after 5pm. My 101 class went off without a hitch earlier in the day, but my Canadian Lit night class will not be happening.

This night class is the same class that lasted only 30 minutes the first week and was canceled the second. Now the third week is knocked out too. It's beginning to feel like the class is a figment of my imagination. Here we are, 1/5 of the way done with the semester, and I haven't been to one real meeting of that class. So far, I have learned more about Canada from hockey games than from class.


Oh, Canada! I promise we'll get to your literature one of these days.

In the meantime, I'll stand on guard for you.

Alfalfa

Today, I caught sight of myself before I headed to class. I looked not too unlike this guy. And while Alfalfa can rock the alfalfa... I can't. But there it was. A chunk of hair standing straight up on the back of my head.

Oi vey. I mean, I got it down, I think. But it was just upsetting to think that I've actually become that teacher.

You know which one.

----> On the opposite side of the teaching spectrum, one of my former students stopped by my office today just to say hi.

My officemates were shocked and I was just giddy.

Haha... Students really have no idea how crazy their teachers are, do they?

What I Learned Today

At the end of each issue of O magazine, Oprah has a one page essay entitled "What I Know for Sure." In this short piece, Oprah usually makes a conclusion regarding the theme of the particular issue. This conclusion almost always ends up being something along the lines of love-yourself-and-live-your-best-life advice. While I'm not going to all Oprah on the blog, every once in a while, I just feel like summing up my lessons for the day. So... here is a list of my most recent learnings.

What I Learned Today, Jan. 16, 2009

1. There is power steering fluid and it can freeze.

2. Careful class planning can make a semester in the first week.

3. I cannot exercise for two hours and not feel it the next day.

4. Bank thermometers not only register negative temperatures, they also broadcast them at 12:48am.

5. I might be paranoid. Well... I guess I learned (am learning?) that I am paranoid.

6. Eddie Izzard is wicked funny.

7. I like hockey quite a bit, and I can actually answer some questions about the rules.

8. The capitol of Turkey is Ankara.

9. Sometimes staying in-state can lead to a flask on the floor of the backseat.

10. Sleeping with the door closed is not secure if there is no door knob.

Some Updates

1. I made lupper. It was quite good, but the apples were in the sauce too long. They gave up the ghost and left their skins behind. Next time I'll keep the apples out until the very end.

2. I wrote up the lesson plan and agenda for tomorrow's class. I am so far pleased with my ambitious start to the new semester. :)

3. Catherine Tate. Not impressed. She's back in the Netflix envelope.

Coming Soon!

I'm making a version of this for lupper tonight. It's a version because I don't do pork, chops, or bones. Anyway, I'm pretty stoked, so I want you to be too.

For now, I'm going to create an agenda for my class tomorrow and perhaps watch some Catherine Tate. I've been told she's funny. I'll be the judge of that.

Now I'm Pissed.

And here's why.

I think I am getting another cold. And I know exactly who to blame this time.

My last cold probably came from my coworker. Or maybe a friend. But there is no question about this cold. This cold came from my sniffing, hacking, 'can-I-meet-with-you-about-what-I-missed?' students.

Of course.

Ironically, my roommate alerted me to this Yahoo! posting early last week. Apparently Dr. Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the U. of Arizona, released what he believes to be the top 10 germiest professions.

Ringing in at number 1 is, you guessed it!, Teachers and DayCare providers. Yippee. Woohoo. Sniffle.

Turns out we encounter more germs than meatpackers, sanitary workers, janitors and animal control officers. However, we are barely past the germy folks behind our computers and cash registers. So, I guess the lesson to be gleaned from this most recent cold is twofold.

1. Students (and people in general) are massive carriers of disease.

2. I either need to change something or be prepared to lose a weekend every few weeks to couch sitting and bad tv watching with a box of tissues and much orange juice.

Remembering the Serenity Prayer and the necessity of accepting number 1 and dealing with number 2, I'll be taking advantage of some things that I had recently forgotten. Namely, the hand sanitizer on the end of my desk and the Airborne that I've neglected. After all, Airborne was formulated by a teacher tired of catching students' colds.

By the way, has anyone else ever doubted the veracity of that Airborne claim? How would a 2nd grade teacher know how to 'formulate' a homeopathic cold treatment? I guess she has an honest face. Anyway, I digress.

In a twist of fate, I'm also grading my students' final drafts of their final papers this weekend. So, while I'm sneezing and sniffling, I'll also be wielding the pen of eternal frustration and doom. Or, at least that's how my students see it these days.

Ah, well. Best of luck to them. I need to get some more orange juice and get down to business.

The Art of Slacking

No one needs to be taught how to slack. Slacking is easy. Effortless, even. However, making slacking into an art is an entirely different thing.

The most important bit of the art of slacking is the deceit. As I much as I dislike the term, Randy Pausch's 'headfake' makes a lot of sense here. The goal of the artful slacker is to never appear to be slacking. Even more to the point, the artful slacker is never caught slacking.

Last night I drifted off to sleep while awkwardly thinking about an almost lover from my past. Who knows why homegirl came back to me last night, but it was an interesting thought experiment to remember that most uncharacteristic of Mays. Anyway...when I woke up this morning at 8:40am, I laid in my bed - fully awake - for several minutes before I decided to make a move.

Today is that day of the semester when the one class of the day is canceled and there is no reason to go to campus.

Knowing I had a full day to myself, I determined that what I really needed to do was organize my bookshelf. As soon as I found out I passed the Comp Exam earlier this week, I have been dying to incorporate the comp list books into my other books. This seems like the last step in acknowledging that the Comp Exam is completely behind me. So...while still sitting on my bed, I rearranged my bookshelves. First by category, then alphabetically. I now have anthologies and writing about writing across the top. Non-fiction on the two top shelves. Fiction on the next four. I still have a bunch of books that won't fit on my Dollar Tree shelves, but one day I'll have a glorious library. These shelves will do for now.

I allowed myself to work with the bookshelf until 10am. 10am, of course, is when The Martha Stewart Show comes on in Orono, Maine. I scrambled downstairs and readied a bowl of cereal in front of the television set. Now my roommate might be the only one to understand why this upset me, but Martha was touring Mexico on her show today. Ugh. I did not watch. I disappointedly watched Hoda Kotbe and Kathy Lee on the Today Show. It was okay, but not what I wanted.

After the lack of Martha, I read a bit of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. We're going to be discussing the book in my YA lit class next Wednesday, so this reading cannot possibly be condemned as slacking. :) See how this works? Anyway, The Book Thief is a really gorgeous moving book and I'm only 100 pages in. It's a work of historical fiction about a girl in Nazi Germany as told by the Angel of Death. Like I said, gorgeous and moving.

Between chapters, I vacuumed the apartment. It didn't take long and it was oh-so-gratifying. Let's just say that it really needed to be done.

After finishing Part 2 of The Book Thief, I researched cupcakes. I wanted to find the perfect vanilla cupcake recipe for this coming week's National Vanilla Cupcake Day. I haven't decided if I will take the cupcakes to campus on the actual holiday or make the vanilla cupcakes for my YA lit workshop on Wednesday or Stuculty on Thursday. Either way, I've decided to try Amy Sedaris' Vanilla Cupcake recipe. Success.

When I realized that I had been messing around with vanilla cupcakes online for over an hour, I decided I should do something else light that would create the appearance of productivity. Dishes.

Dishes done, I showered. At noon. Ladies and gentlemen, when you can live half of your day before you take a shower, that is a clear sign that you are slacking.

If after slacking all morning and feeling quite relaxed and chill, you can then look forward to the rest of your day without having been caught slacking, then you, my friend, are an artful slacker.

Isn't it nice that I can now shamelessly use the John McCain "my friend" without any fear of having to listen to it for the next four years? :)

In conclusion, I am quite pleased with my slacker performance this morning. My roommate just returned home to evidence of vacuuming and dish washing. I'm clicking away at my laptop, a clear sign that I'm working diligently on something relentlessly academic.

Well...I guess I should actually make something happen with my afternoon. I need to grade about 7 student paper revisions and plan my 101 class for tomorrow. But for now...I'm making grilled cheese.

Mocha Spice and all things nice

Well...today was good and not-so-good. I don't want to say 'bad' because it really wasn't bad. Just not-so-good at parts. I did some grocery shopping. Good. I saw a few one-act plays, one of which featured one of my students. Good. It rained all day, and I was woken up this morning by the shaking of the apartment in the wind. Not-so-good. I tried a new cupcake recipe. Very good. I realized around 1pm that I had student papers to respond to by 10am tomorrow. Definitely not good.

So, you see, today was a mixed bag.

But, overall I think I can say that I am pleased with today. I'll feel better once I get the student papers taken care of.

In the meantime, a word about the cupcakes.

I tried the Mocha Spice cupcake recipe that I found here.
This was possibly the most complicated batter I've made so far, but that was only the case because of the incredible number of spices involved. There was such a great deal of measuring go on. However, all the measuring done, the cupcakes were a success.

The idea of spices including cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and (to me the most frightening) ginger in my chocolate cake was a bit unsettling. But, I think the fact that the cake was more mocha than straight chocolate made me feel a bit better. Who knows.

Anyway, the spice is quite appropriate for fall, or pre-winter as we are now having in Maine. And the basic chocolate icing I made for the top is nice and comforting in its Hershey-ness.

Here's the glamour shot of the cupcakes on the tower my mom sent me a couple weeks ago.


And here is the naked shot. This cupcake is fairly boring to look at, but the flavor more than makes up for that.



















And please notice the blue cup of milk slightly behind the cupcake. I had to drink milk as I iced the cupcakes just because the frosting looked so rich. I wasn't even tasting as I went, I might have gone into a sugar coma if I had.

I am a teacher.

Perhaps it's the ease with which I claimed the Border's educator discount this weekend, but I've been thinking about my style. And, I've come to the conclusion that I really am a teacher.


Not quite like this woman - and let's be honest, my students are also nowhere near this eager - but I find myself dressing in teacher-esque clothing. On and off the job. Allow me to lay it out for you.

Today I taught. So, my clothes were appropriately business casual. This is new for me this semester. My first year, I worked out the tortured humanities man chic. This meant a lot of oxford shirts, several ties, sweater vests and other layering pieces. A trusty sport coat. An ever-present pashmina scarf. And pants. Always pants. Every once in a while, I threw the ladies a teaser with a long strand of pearls on top of the otherwise man-ish clothing. I gained and maintained authority through my actions, not my clothes.

Back to this year - I rediscovered the glorious body shapes created by nice fitting women's clothes. And full on women's clothes, not just man-inspired women's pieces. So, this semester, I'm really dressing the part of a teacher.

Today I reached the high point, though, I think. I wore black dress pants (lined, even!), a colored wrap shirt with a delicate vertical stripe, a floral patterned sweater, and - get this - practical shoes. While it did contain two different patterns, the entire outfit was made up of black, white, and tan. Classy, but teachery as well. And about the practicality of the shoes... they are black flats and amazingly comfortable. They are perfectly teachery because I could probably wear them for several days (including brisk evening walks) and suffer no ill effects, however, their basic black flat-ness makes them acceptable for the lady interested in keeping up appearances.



And though I might still be a ways off from Doris Day's teacher look, I have found there are perks to dressing the part. For one, students hold doors open for me. Other teachers smile at me in the halls. That one really confused me for a while, I figured there must be someone behind me. Nope! Just me and the shared understanding of teaching these jokers.

In conclusion (You'll have to forgive me the phrase, I have 20 papers to grade tonight.), though my style is possibly becoming a bit staid in the classroom, there is an upside. My odd out of the classroom style is now just seen as an extension of my quirky teacher personality.

And, do you know what? I love being the quirky teacher.

Ah...and before I stop, one story from today's class.

I was teaching my students about Aristotelian argument, pathos to be specific. In order to illustrate the emotional appeal, I began explaining the oft referenced example of pandas on melting ice caps. I got a little bit annoyed at the student interrupting me AGAIN with his hand raised and his face skeptical.

Student: "Did you say 'pandas on melting ice caps'?"

Me: "Yes, the panda bear ice cap argument is one often used to elicit a reaction from people about global warming..."

"But..." he interrupts again, "don't you mean polar bears?"

"Yeah...what did I say?"

"You definitely said panda bears were on ice caps..."

"Ah...right, yes, we pity panda bears for their scarcity and their mating issues. Two bears with very different emotional responses."

We all had a good laugh over that one, but they won't forget pathos. :)

I also said, "We've all been under a president" and by an extreme exercise of will was able to not call myself out with "that's what she said" or another similar quip.

Ugh...so am I the most awkward quirky teacher or what?