Opinions, art, debate
The feelings meeting was bad. People cried. One person had a breakdown and had to be removed. Screaming, accusations, elevated blood pressure, evidenced in very red faces of not-so-young people.
I don’t think we’ll be asked how we feel about things in a long time. And that’s just as well.
A student asked me to fill out a questionnaire for a course about the experiences of professors from other countries. Here is question #1 on the questionnaire:
I don’t know what happened that it’s suddenly normal for young male students to question older female professors about their sex lives, especially in a context where one’s sexuality is utterly irrelevant. I wouldn’t have agreed to participate if I knew that sexuality was going to be brought up. Also, my age? Why not my salary and weight, for good measure?
Obviously, I didn’t answer.
I did wonder why this student decided to send in the questions by email instead of coming over in person. After seeing the questions, I figured it out.
We should really consider not talking about our sexuality at work. That would be a very positive change.
One of the things I appreciate about my kid’s school is that there’s no multiple choice. They are expected to answer in writing, in complete sentences or solve math problems and explain their reasoning.
Last week, for example, they had a social studies test with questions such as, “What role do businesses play in the community?” or “Are firefighters and police businesses or governmental services? Explain your answer.” And the kids had to write out sentences in response.
Also, they do rote memorization, which I applaud. Today, they’ll be tested on reciting the names of the 39 books of the Old Testament in the correct order (it’s a Protestant school.) They are memorizing the multiplication table, as well.
Either all these kids are orphans living in the jungle among wolves, or I have no idea what schools even have to do with it. The focus, the patience, the inner calm and the coherent sense of self needed to read a novel are formed way before anybody goes to school.
The article specifies that it’s talking about students from wealthy families. These aren’t parents who couldn’t finish high school and are working 3 jobs to make ends meet. This isn’t an academic issue. It’s a psychological one. No school can overwrite what’s created at home. People who read novels have a certain psychological make-up. It’s simply a fact.
People, I promise this is not a joke. This is literal truth. Prepare yourselves.
My Dean called a meeting tomorrow to discuss how we feel about what we discussed in the previous meeting.
Which took place on Friday.
The gap between meetings and the meetings to talk about the feelings evoked by other meetings is growing ever smaller. I have no idea why we let a whole weekend pass without a meeting. We should have had a meeting 30 minutes after the Friday meeting to catch those feelings early.
After a protracted struggle, I managed to open a course called “Deaf Culture” at my department. It will be taught next spring. I’m going to audit because I know absolutely nothing about deaf culture and since I’m the first person at the university to ram the course through and make it happen, I should benefit from the fruits of my labor.
The professor is deaf, so we’ll have an interpreter.
I’ll share what I learn here. I’m so excited, I’m practically floating. None of it was there before I assumed command, and now we have many sections of ASL on different levels. I’m trying to make a whole program in Deaf Studies happen but the bureaucracy is daunting. I’ll wrestle it eventually but while the fight continues, it’s good to celebrate victories along the way.
Am I the only person who can’t move on and accept the new prices on everything? Just a couple of years ago, it cost between $15 and $20 to get lunch around here. Now it’s $30-35.
A shawarma place opened this weekend. I’ve been pining for a shawarma place for years. And I’m glad it’s here but a plate of chicken shawarma with a juice and a tip cost me $36 today. It’s an OK shawarma but why am I the only person who thinks it’s crazy to pay this much for lunch?
Again, not being ungrateful for the existence of shawarma. God knows, I’m a loyal fan. But it’s like this at every place.
I was at the HOA meeting yesterday. It was held outside. The weather was beautiful. Some people brought kids. Four little boys, aged between 6 and 10 or thereabouts, spent the entire 1,5-hour meeting sitting on the ground and staring at their phones. Not playing, not riding bikes, not running around, not even looking at each other. I had no idea boys even had the capacity to be so silent and immobile while awake.
These aren’t the children of the dregs of society who don’t know any better. These are people who can afford a house in our subdivision. Nice, orderly people who mow their lawns and get to work on time.
It’s always boys, too. I’ve never even seen a girl under the age of 12 glued to a device in a public space. Even within the same family, the female sibling is likely to have a normal childhood while her brother is hooked to a device. It’s a behavior management tool. Boys are active, rambunctious and loud, so they bear the brunt of over-medication and anaesthetization with technology.
Until yesterday I kept wondering how come our neighborhood only produces girls because I haven’t seen a boy on a bike for several years. Girls on bikes criss-cross the neighborhood constantly. I literally didn’t know these boys existed, you know?
My next-door neighbors have boys who grew up right in front of me. They are now in their late teens but as they were growing up, we heard them a lot, running, trawling the little river in the backyard, digging for treasure, skateboarding, yelping, making noises. Gave me such joy to hear the sounds of normal boyhood. And only a couple of years later, boyhood looksb and sounds very different.
These aren’t schools or politicians or any outside forces doing this. These are parents who make this choice out of convenience.
In our hunger for all things true, we make the facts irrelevant.
David Shields, Reality Hunger (2010)
It’s kind of really funny that all of these articles, books, conferences, public appearances, editing scholarly journals, serving on dissertation committees, etc have zero effect on my salary. I’m only doing it as a personal whim. If I stopped today, did nothing except teach beginner Spanish, and had no life of the mind at all, nothing would change for me in terms of salary. Nobody at work would notice. Except the students, obviously.
Clarissa's Blog 