Category: Uncategorized

The Funniest Headline

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

This is the funniest headline today:

You don’t need a translation. Look at the last names.

Different Teaching

~ Clarissa ~ 10 Comments

If my career in higher education is curtailed, I’ll apply to teach Spanish at this school. Teaching languages to African American students is the easiest, most enjoyable thing ever. The students are very lively and participate in roleplaying and language experimentation eagerly and happily. Every one came up to me, introduced themselves and engaged me in conversation. These are high-schoolers, by the way. Normally, one doesn’t expect from them great feats of sociability with middle-aged strangers.

I’ve observed our student-teachers in an all-white school, and the silence was deafening. Everybody had the largest broom up their anal cavity. Students ignored my existence completely because nobody told them to acknowledge it.

Both ways of being have positive and negative consequences. But it’s definitely an experience to teach a more boisterous group. Out of the 10 students in the classroom today, one had to be removed by security. Three more had to be coaxed extensively to participate in group activities. Two of them were on something that made them sluggish and unresponsive. But I love working with students with behavioral issues. I’m bizarrely good at it.

Observation

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

Everybody at the school where I’m doing student-teacher observation is black. I haven’t experienced being the only white person in a crowd since my trip to Cuba in 1999.

Speaking of Cuba, any news? Will we finally see the collapse of the Cuban Revolution? Which is not an event but the name of the regime.

I Voted

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

I voted in the Republican primary today. I’m hoping against hope that we will be able to get rid of the unelectable moron Darren Bailey as the R candidate for governor. This is also an opportunity to support some great R people on the local level. One of them saved us all during COVID and then got displaced by a former colleague of mine. It’s all my fault, actually, because I couldn’t get her a contract amidst budget cuts. She had nothing to do and went into politics, displacing this firebrand Republican guy who also happens to be the husband of a friend of mine. Small towns are like that.

I’m having a crazy day today, having to drive to St Louis for a student-teacher observation in French, of all things, and then back for two DEI trainings one right after another. But at least I voted Republican in the morning. That compensates me somewhat.

Far Away Lands

~ Clarissa ~ 39 Comments

Actually, Tel Aviv is about a thousand miles farther away from Washington DC than Kyiv. I don’t remember the distance between DC and Tehran but it’s definitely farther away than even Tel Aviv.

This isn’t about knowledge of geography. Obviously, it’s fine not to know the mileage. But Kyiv lies farther away than Tel Aviv in Trump’s imagination. He perceives Middle Eastern problems as something close and European ones as being far away. You can’t successfully put an end to mass migration from a world that you inhabit imaginatively. We don’t have leadership that perceives America as Western and originating in Europe.

Sniveling Liberals

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

My contempt for these pseudo-rebellious, sniveling pieces of ridiculous liberal trash is so deep that it will probably land me in hell. But I can’t help it. I truly despise them.

I haven’t watched this vomit-inducing documentary and I’m not planning to do it at any point.

All Over the Place

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

Except for the affect, this is 100% me in the workplace. I’ve never seen myself so accurately represented:

Unlike this woman, I thrive on this shit. Moreover, I can’t work any other way.

I’m not saying any of this as a recommendation. Neural pathways are what they are. But I am definitely happy nobody is filming me as I work because they’d have vertigo within minutes.

This way of being is neither good not bad if it works for you (which for the woman in the video it clearly doesn’t).

Formerly Gifted

~ Clarissa ~ 9 Comments

We have a program for our most gifted students. It’s funded by a billionaire and provides a full-ride scholarship to the crème de la crème of our students, the tiny minority of our best and brightest.

The program had existed for a long time before the billionaire got involved. And it was going great. But once the billionaire started funding it, we have to do things his way. And he’s very woke. Meaning that he wants us to admit more black students into the program.

The director of the gifted program is desperate. He put in paperwork to drop the grade requirements for the gifted program below the non-gifted programs. I’m weeping over the sheer hilarity of this.

OK, it’s not really funny. But what can you do if not laugh?

A Form of Austerity

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

An adult illegal migrant is enrolled in a Virginia high school. He’s been sexually assaulting schoolgirls there, some as young as 13 years of age. The public school system is refusing to do anything about it. The prosecutor doesn’t want him jailed. The county sheriff is refusing to honor ICE’s order of deportation against the rapey illegal. He is currently in jail thanks solely to Judge Dipti Pidikiti-Smith who refused the prosecutor’s request to release the criminal on bail. Once he is released, the public school system is promising to let him back in, even though he is an adult.

More details here.

The result of all this is that everybody who has any other option at all with remove their children from public schools. Which is the whole point. People who care about their children will have to take a financial hit. It will be harder for them to join or remain in the middle class.

A Necessary Break

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

Taking a week completely off work really helped. I’m mega energized and see my way forward clearly. I volunteered to teach outside my program after my sabbatical, which has been a long-standing dream. I hope to go into International Studies or something related to Political Science. They have courses on the books that I can adapt completely to my needs without going through the ridiculously lengthy and onerous process of opening a new course.

I also volunteered as a reviewer for two new journals and found an edited volume I want to contribute to.

All of this happened since this morning. Breaks are good.