An Explanation

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Clarissa

December 2, 2013

A student comes by my office and delivers the following monologue:

“I just wanted to tell you that I always mean to come to class but there is always something more important that comes up. Like today, I really wanted to come because I know we will be practicing for the oral exam and I wanted to be there but then a friend asked if I could drive her to the airport. I mean, she could take the shuttle but since we don’t have anything important, like anything graded in class today, I thought I should drive her.”

This is the same student who can’t say, “My name is. . .” in Spanish at the end of Spanish Intermediate course. Her version of this ultra-complex statement is “Mi llama es. . .”

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12 responses to “An Explanation”

ladyleahjane

December 2, 2013

So she wasted her tuition money and used excess gas in her car? Oh dear. Double loss.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  December 2, 2013
  
  And drew my attention to her absence which I wouldn’t have concentrated on without this useful explanation. 🙂
  
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titfortat

December 2, 2013

Well, Im glad to know my hard earned tax dollars are helping my daughter. Even her socialist education knew that Spanish wasn’t too good. 🙂

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  December 2, 2013
  
  Yes, let’s blame Spanish for everything. 🙂
  
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cliff arroyo

December 3, 2013

“Mi llama es. . .”

You laugh now, but in the future when she’s a camelid rancher in Colombia this will come in very handy, very handy indeed.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  December 3, 2013
  
  “Mi llama” and “la significa de esta palabra” are my personal favorites. 🙂
  
  I think I need to create an activity about llamas for future ranchers. 🙂
  
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djiril

December 3, 2013

Why not just drop the class if she has more important things to do?

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  December 3, 2013
  
  Because – and this is the best part – she is majoring in Spanish. 🙂
  
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musteryou

December 3, 2013

Unrelated, perhaps: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/12/millennial_narcissism_helicopter_parents_are_college_students_bigger_problem.html

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  December 3, 2013
  
  “The big problem is not that they think too highly of themselves. ”
  
  – I work with people between 18-25 all the time and I am yet to meet a single one who wasn’t plagued by self-hatred, self-doubt, feelings of inferiority, etc. Thinking too highly of themselves is SO not their problem.
  
  “The Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal have reported that millennials are now bringing their parents to job interviews”
  
  – My sister who is a job recruiter has had that experience with job seekers.
  
  “A generation ago, my college peers and I would buy a pint of ice cream and down a shot of peach schnapps (or two) to process a breakup. Now some college students feel suicidal after the breakup of a four-month relationship.”
  
  – Oh, come on. Is her generation exempt from normal hormonal transformations? Teenagers suffer, always have and always will, because of a hormonal storm they experience.
  
  “When we lack frustration tolerance, moderate sadness may lead to suicidality in the self-soothingly challenged.”
  
  – And this is the level of American psychologists. How sad.
  
  ” After a few months of therapy and medication to stabilize her depression”
  
  – Here is what the real problem is. These kids are medicated into a zombified state since childhood. This is the real tragedy.
  
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  1. musteryou
    
    December 3, 2013
    
    Well this sentence seems explanatory, but is actually mostly tautological instead:
    
    ““When we lack frustration tolerance, moderate sadness may lead to suicidality in the self-soothingly challenged.””
    
    It like “when we lack something, we are lacking, and this leads to suicidality.”
    
    It’s a shame about people being zombified to be controlled. But there are whole traditional paradigms out that that hold that emotion is the epiphenomena of a bodily machine that isn’t functioning smoothly.
    
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  2. musteryou
    
    December 3, 2013
    
    Here’s some more idiocy from quelque chose:
    
    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/03/brain-imaging-shows-stark-difference-in-neural-wiring-of-men-and-women/
    
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