Clarissa's Blog

Whatever else is wrong with Walmart, it has the most courteous, professional salespeople ever. They should be unionized.

I’m like a broken record, saying that everybody should be unionized but what can I do? I’m a bit obsessed.

Folks, I need your help. I’ll tell you a story and you’ll let me know if I’m completely deranged and need to get over myself, OK? I’ll be very happy to do so if there’s a popular consensus.

I’m on a committee that audits the work of one of the University’s academic departments. We talk to students and faculty, conduct surveys, visit the facilities, and in the end rank the department’s performance. If we rank it as unsatisfactory, it has to cease operations immediately because that means it’s not doing its job. This is called academic self-governance. The administration doesn’t do this. Only faculty revise each other’s work in complete anonymity. I happen to think it’s a very important principle, and I take this work very seriously.

Usually, we get together as a committee, decide the ranking, create a list of recommendations for the department and the administration, and write a report explaining our recommendations. That’s how it usually works. 

This time, though, everybody decided (without me) that we will write the report first, and then the recommendations will somehow come out of that. We will all be writing separate sections in Dropbox without meeting in person and agreeing on what we want to recommend and why. There was never any discussion of anything. 

So now I’m completely stumped. I don’t want to be difficult and complicate anybody’s life but I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to be writing about the recommendations nobody has outlined. This is all supposed to be done over the weekend, so I have no chance to talk to anybody. This is the fifth time I’m doing this committee, and I never had a problem before. I simply fail to understand this method of collective writing in complete isolation.

Am I being rigid? Am I a contrarian bitch? Should I just write any vague bullshit and agree to sign my name to the recommendations I never approved?

Sorry for a long post.

In North America, catastrophic thinking and extreme anxiety have soared in the past 20 years. This doesn’t correspond to any actual changes in the outside world, yet it’s a veritable sea change in terms of individual psychology. 

My pedicurist shared with me a sob story about tragically oppressed Catalonians that she got from social media. She is in no way related to the region or normally interested in it. 

For some incomprehensible reason, the story people who are not knowledgeable about the region are getting is completely pro-independentist. Does anybody understand this?

From a chirpy fool cheering Catalonia’s “independence”: 

“We’re finally free,” a woman next to me said, as she began to cry. “We are oppressed here. We’re fighting for our freedom.”

God, it must be so pleasant to think ‘freedom’ can be purchased like a discounted toaster. 

Freedom and choice, the favorite slogans of the neoliberal revolution.

We have a teaching track in our language program where students graduate with a BA and a teaching certificate. It works great for us, for the students, and for the local schools.

However, the School of Education has informed us that it’s canceling this teaching track. Instead, they will force students to do a Master’s degree on top of the BA to get the teaching certification.

To say that I hate this motherfucking assholery is to say too little. My hatred for it is comparable to my hatred of Rauner. This is not justified by ANY pedagogical or intellectual concerns. Do you know how many of our students pass edTPA and get certified on the first try? All of them. 100%. Because our program works. 

Forcing people to pay for an entirely needless Master’s degree is a scam. That’s all it is. Of course, we are fighting this, and the Dean seems to be on our side. But the School of Education is throwing a fit because they can’t attract students on their own merits, so they have come up with this brilliant idea. 

The owner of my super successful famous salon retired two months ago and gave the salon to her employees as collective ownership. And it is dying already. I arrived for my appointment today and nobody is here, nobody knows where anyone is, the place is a bloody mess. Everything looks like it’s aged decades. The workers are almost Soviet-like in terms of grumpiness. I feel like a regular Rip Van Winkle. The same decor, the same people, the same services, but it’s like it dropped off a cliff in matter of weeks. It’s clear the place will close down completely before the year is out. 

I’ve been using this place for 8 years, and it has existed for 27. It’s a local institution. Nothing but collective ownership could have run it into the ground this fast. 

My parents were here for the last two weeks and they left this morning. They couldn’t help me with Klara because she won’t stay with people she doesn’t know well even for a minute. But it was good to have them trailing after me wherever I went with Klara. Taking care of a small child is very isolating. 

I don’t use my phone when I’m around Klara (she’s a very active toddler, I need to have her in my field of vision all the time at this age), so I don’t get any adult conversation for hours. I now started trying to strike conversations with people on the playground for my sake and not for Klara’s, because even for a deeply unsociable person like me it gets too isolating. I have this new colleague who always comes to my office to chat. Before, I wouldn’t have liked it but now I’m extremely grateful for his existence because I now like small talk. 

So it was nice to have grandparents around to talk to. 

What I wonder is if N was the primary caretaker, would that make him need people to interact with? Right now, he doesn’t understand the point of interacting with any adult but me. I’d really love to see whether his sociability would be awakened. 

Tomorrow will be 26 degrees colder than today. Right before people will go trick or treating. Darn. 

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