Opinions, art, debate
A student comes up to me and says, “I’m sorry, I’m Greek, which means I need you to fill out a form saying how many absences I’ve had.”
“Oh my God,” I think. “This is horrible. I had no idea that Greek students were discriminated against on our campus!”
“Are you sure about this?” I ask the student, preparing to unleash my fury on the haters of Greece at our university.
“Yes,” he says and hands me a paper that bears the name of his fraternity.
One’s capacity to live without fear and expectation of fear has nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with individual psychology. This professor should refresh his knowledge of Freud.
Even a very dramatic improvement of the economy will do nothing to reduce his unhealthy anxiety.
. . . who gives me a link to the place where WordPress is promoting my blog. I see on my Statistics page that it’s been sending crowds of people to my blog since yesterday. I also got comments from spammers telling me WordPress has been promoting me.
So if you chance upon the place where I’m being promoted by WordPress or if you came here through that mysterious promotional mechanism, please let me know. I’m dying of curiosity here.
When I first saw a student squint at his crotch, touch it and mouth “What?” at it during the midterm exam, I was disturbed.
Then I realized, to my great relief, that his problem was not physiological but, rather, intellectual.
An older gentleman just gave me this book as a gift in front of the Student Center.
He called me “young lady”, so couldn’t resist accepting it. It was more the “lady” than “young” that did it for me.
And the funniest thing is that I opened it at random and immediately alighted on my most favorite passage that I often recite to myself. Especially on my way to work. It sounds a lot better in Russian, though.
My students made me very happy today. For one, they had quite a bit of knowledge about World War I, which was very refreshing.
And then, a student asked me if I could give a few names of Modernist writers who wrote in English. I love questions that allow me to go off on my favorite tangents.
During the entire lecture, students were staring at me with those huge eyes that were starved for knowledge. At least, most of them were. They were just imbibing everything I said with incredible eagerness to learn more. Believe me, after 21 years of teaching, I can really tell when they stare vacantly and when they stare with interest.
Of course, you have to be dead not to wake up when I lecture about Modernism. I’m seriously passionate about the subject. Next week, we will talk about the Mexican revolution, and I know I won’t be able to muster the same level of enthusiasm for it.
Oh, I love my students.
So I just read an update on the armed robber I talked about in the previous post.
First, I underestimated our students. The victim was carrying $200 in cash. This is kind of surprising to me because I don’t even remember when I last saw $200 in cash. And not because I don’t have money but simply because I have no idea what to do with all this cash. Especially on campus at night. Weird.
Another piece of news is that the criminal was apprehended by the police. Probably, he did stick around waiting for the bus.
This is a very strange little town we have here.
We had an armed robbery on our campus over the weekend. A man approached a student, pointed a gun at him, and robbed him. This must have been a pretty well-to-do criminal because he had to have driven a car to campus. Our campus is located in the middle of nowhere, and you have to walk for at least an hour and a half to get anywhere. The criminal couldn’t have taken the bus to campus because they don’t run so late and, besides, what kind of a robber is willing to stand on the bus-stop for an hour, waiting for a bus? Also, the criminal couldn’t have come from the student residences because they are also located very far.
Our students aren’t rich, so with the cash this criminal got from the student he robbed he probably hardly even broke even on the gas he wasted coming to campus.
There are some pretty stupid criminals out there.
A colleague once asked me to substitute him in his Intermediate Russian class. I don’t teach Russian, and the fact that it’s my first language doesn’t qualify me to teach it. The colleague really needed somebody to substitute for him, though, so I felt like I had to help him out. My colleague was not a native speaker of Russian, so he announced me to this class as “a real Russian person who will answer all of your questions about the Russian culture.”
“So what would you like me to talk to you about?” I asked the class.
“Do you eat bottles after drinking vodka?” a student asked eagerly.
“Yes, can you show us how you do that?” another student suggested.
“That’s like totally the best thing about the Russians!” the rest of the students chimed in.
“I’m sorry, guys, what are you even talking about?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“Well, isn’t it a tradition in your country that after you finish a bottle of vodka you eat the glass bottle? We saw a video here in class where people did that. It was way cool.”
“Yes! It was the best!” all of the students agreed enthusiastically.
“No, we don’t have any such tradition,” I tried to explain, making a mental note to kill my colleague. “The video was probably humorous.”
“Oh, you just say it because you don’t want to show us how you do it,” the students responded. “Of course, it’s what Russian people do all the time.”
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