A new joke that has become popular in Russia: “After they die, Russians who behaved badly will be sent back to Russia for their sins.”

There is also the true story about a Russian guy whose corpse was brought back in a coffin from Ukraine. When his parents were asked why on Earth he’d chosen to go kill Ukrainians, they said he had credit cards that needed to be paid and this was the only way.

Today we bought a barbecue grill. The first thing we saw when we entered the store was a huge green object that looked like a spaceship. I almost ran away in terror but the N cautiously approached it and discovered it was the most expensive grill there, costing $900. That almost made N run away in terror.

Finally, we got a small charcoal barbecue for $39. I’ve been dying to eat some shashlik for years, I can even imagine its aroma. But there is none to be found in this area.

Now we will have a real American July 4, with shashlik, sangria, and World Cup on TV. We also bought a huge American flag to put above all this splendor.

I’m sorry if this traumatizes anyone but I just have to share. N. and I were at The Hedgehogs earlier today. We stopped to admire the view out of the living room window and saw a big hawk land on our deck. The hawk clawed off a huge chunk of the deck and then he grabbed a small bird flying nearby and carried it away.

Maybe it was a mistake for me to start living so close to all the real nature because now I have these images of hawks landing on my head.

My mother made some new friends who are very rich. (You can guess what kind of Russian-speaking immigrants is rich on your own.)

The rich friends took my mother to the most expensive store in Montreal. One of the new friends bought a pair of shoes for $450.

“Hah,” my mother said. “They look exactly like the shoes my Mom used to wear to feed the cows.”

Another interesting question I received was whether I see any differences in the way universities functioned several years ago and now. I started teaching at the college level in 2001 and working as “a real professor” in 2008, and I’m definitely seeing some changes.

The “old boys’ club” is losing power. Not everywhere, not entirely but the trend is there. There have been some important upsets to its power recently.

Students are getting better. This summer I’m teaching the same course I do every summer and I’m absolutely stunned with how articulate, intelligent and responsible the students are all of a sudden. I’m thinking I will have to revamp the course, making it harder, because it’s looking like I will have to give everybody very high grades because it’s too easy for them. Now that the job market has started recovering and many high schoolers go straight to the job market, we are getting only those students who are really prepared for college, and that’s making a difference.

The concept of a teaching institution is dying out. Everything is becoming about research, and this is creating tensions between various generations of academics.

Among the negative trends, I would list a silly and childish belief in the need to employ technology to deliver good quality instruction. This is a passing fad but it’s inflicting damage while it still hasn’t passed. Schools that are the most eager to embrace this bad strategy are the ones who cater to lower-income students. And these are precisely the students who are most likely to be hurt by this trend.

At the schools where I’ve worked, there has been no reduction in tenure lines (actually, I’ve seen the opposite) and no adjunctification. There is some growth in administrative personnel but we are a state school, so it hasn’t been outrageous.

There is a very unfortunate fixation on inter- and multidisciplinary projects which, in my experience, never produces anything of value. It’s a fad, and a pretty nasty one, at that. Funding is being diverted away from legitimate research to completely meaningless projects created only in order to satisfy the multidisciplinary requirement.

I will write more if I think of anything else. Thank you, twicerandomly, for these great questions.

So Eric Cantor is a Jew?? Why didn’t anybody tell me? Now everything has become crystal clear and all the talk about him losing because he sold out to big business has become easy to decode. Of course, a juicy fresh Evangelical fanatic was going to hammer him dead in the primaries. This isn’t year 2000, so this was to be expected.

If I’d known Cantor was Jewish, I would have predicted this months ago.

Reader twicerandomly always comes up with the best questions for me to answer so I will respond to them in separate posts.

The first question concerned difference between higher ed systems in Ukraine, Canada and the US.

The greatest difference, I believe is the purpose and the scope of education provided. The post-Soviet system produces people who acquire a spattering of everything but no profound knowledge of anything. There isn’t anything like the specialization (called a Major) in North America. Everybody at the Humanities department takes the same courses without having any choice in the matter. Graduates end up knowing a bit about everything but not prepared for any actual employment.

In Canada, the system is the exact opposite. Unless you make an effort, you can easily take only the courses in your area of specialization and end up extremely narrowly specialized and very ignorant about everything but your tiny little field.

I think that both systems are problematic and prefer the US system that makes all students do both a specialization in a single field and a wide variety of courses from all disciplines. Students end up more well-rounded and enriched not only as future professionals but as human beings as well.

“Have you considered putting your hair in dreads?” the hair stylist’s assistant asked. “Your hair is made for dreads.”

“If I walk into a classroom wearing dreads, students will think I’m mocking them,” I said.

“She’s a professional,” the stylist explained to the assistant. “She doesn’t have a dread-type job.”

P.S. Does anybody know why every single contact I have with the outside world is so hilarious? I’m not looking for comedy. It just happens around me.

So I went to a new hair salon today.

“Wow, this is some crazy hair you have!” the stylist excalimed.  “It’s huge! And frizzy! And impossible to comb! How did you come by this kind of hair?”

“It’s Jewish hair,” I explained.

“Oh my, is this a Jewfro? I’ve never seen one in real life. Cecilia, Taylor, come right over here, you’ve got to see this! It’s a Jewfro!”

Later I heard the stylist scold the receptionist.

“Why didn’t you tell me we had an ethnic client coming in? I left all of my ethnic-hair brushes at the other salon.”

“How was I supposed to know she’s ethnic?” the receptionist defended herself. “Does she look ethnic to you? We’ve had, like, people from Bulgaria and Romania and what not before, and they all have normal hair.”

Pen is a very talented, resourceful and courageous young woman. She has been a reader of my blog since the time she was still in high school. For a while, I though Pen was having me on about her age because she was too brilliant and accomplished to be so young. Since then, I learned that there are some pretty awesome kids out there and Pen was not misleading me about her age.

Pen is curious, intelligent, dedicated, loyal and amazing. She’s been going through some tough times  but she is strong and resourceful and I know she will come out as a winner in her struggle. Let’s give Pen some love either here or on her blog.

Pen, you are wonderful, you are great, and you matter. Remember that people love you and care about you. You are not alone.