...or something like that. this is a giant madagascar hissing roach -- yes, those same things people eat on fear factor -- who goes by the name of woogly. (he has only one antenna, for reasons unknown, and seems generally temperamental in an oversensitive kind of way, so he was named after the way I feel when my medicine is being less than friendly.) he lives in a plastic box with two other roaches. my boyfriend insists -- and yes I do think it's cute, so just smack me now -- on calling them "the kids." or, more often, "our kids."
recently I was reprimanded for failing to include myself in the posessive pronoun. "they're OUR kids," he said, laughing. "you didn't want to have kids for us so I went out and got some myself!" (he was too nice to point out that no kids that ever come out of me will be cool enough to have antennae. or exoskeletons, gregor samsa notwithstanding.)
after we put the kids to bed, tucked into their box with chunks of apples and melon ten times the size of their heads, I proceeded to dream that I was trapped in a house in which every room was filled with baby furniture. I ran around and around until I collapsed, cowering, in a grand ballroom with a chessboard marble floor and dangling pearl & crystal chandeliers, while perambulators and carriages and strollers, arranged in ranks of concentric navy rings, crept in towards me from all sides. every one of them was empty, spotless, gleaming, sterile.
I turned around to escape and a baby -- my baby? -- was handed to me. she was no bigger than an avocado, and nearly as wrinkled. (I can't even count, anymore, how many dreams I've had about abnormally tiny infants.) I said, this baby is going to die. she doesn't even have any legs but no one answered me.
so, in light of this psychological mess, an open letter to my biological clock: it DOES NOT MATTER that I am almost as old as my mother was when I was conceived. I do not need any human babies, mutated or otherwise. between the dog, the bird, and the giant cockroaches, don't I have enough kids already?
[ 27.2.05] · [ ]
got an email from the director of the alt-cert program at my graduate school, about our impending graduation. I know this makes me a total freak, but it is definitely the first time in my life that I have been looking forward to graduating from anything. of course, it's also the first time that the conferral of a degree is really just the precursor to the conferral of a $5k raise. money money money! what has become of me?
and then there's the added benefit that I won't have to read these emails anymore:
Graduation is at Radio City Music Hall on Wednesday, May 25th. All schools are required to allow you a half-day so that you can attend.
oh, are they? what about our students? are they "required" (by whom, exactly? the higher education fairy?) to allow us to skip class while they sit doing nothing three short weeks before the standardized test that determines whether anything they did all year will be deemed worthwhile?
I mean, really, why should we be expected to be in school? it's not like we're TEACHERS or anything. we're only graduating from the school of education. guh. here's a thought: have graduation AFTER SCHOOL. or on a weekend. like every other graduation in the world.
It’s not required that you join us, but it’s a lot of fun. Last year, the School of Ed was, by far, the rowdiest school - we need to keep up the good work!
well, I'm sure that all the graduates from the nursing school and the business school appreciated that the people with the least decorum were the ones who actually studied human behavioral development and classrooom management. guess that was all just babble.
on the other hand, I can't wait until the next time I see kids carousing in the hallway and I get to tell them to keep up the good work!
And, when’s the next time you’re going to be able to walk across the stage at Radio City?
damn. while they're making me a master of education (heh), can they make me a rockette, too?
Pre-Commencement is on Thursday, May 19th at 5:30 in the cafeteria
the cafeteria. CLASSY.
It’s a great time to join your colleagues and celebrate the last two years. Who deserves to do this more???
I don't know, people who can abide by the rule that you never, ever need more than two adjacent punctuation marks? on the other hand, why should we write like intelligent adults? after all, we're only TEACHERS.
We’ll also be handing out an Outstanding Achievement Award – This award is to recognize someone whose teaching exemplifies the School of Ed’s themes (social justice, creating caring classrooms, being a reflective practitioner and teaching so that all children can learn).
okay, up until now I've just been acting like a snarky little bitch, and I apologize. (slightly.) but this; this really bothers me. do you know what we learned over and over again in our classes about how to be caring and inclusive educators? that you DON'T make learning a competition, because it's unfairly subjective to begin with, plus it directly undermines whatever message you're trying to send or belief you're trying to uphold that education is about making it possible for everyone to do well. if you get to the end of the year and you can give the gold star to only one kid, you're a lousy teacher.
besides: I know far too many teachers who are deserving of that award to think that I could watch it being given to just one person without feeling like it was an unfair slight towards everyone else. I know you could say that the degree, and for some, the grades (I'm getting straight a's for the first time in eight years, but that's just because my professors are wimps), are a kind of recognition as well. those things aren't the reasons we're here, though. maybe a few people are here just for the subsidized master's degree or the benefits that come from being a member of an insanely powerful union. most of us are here, though, because we believe in the transformative power of teaching. I'll be honest with you and say that I think I am a kickass teacher, even without taking into account the fact that I've been at it for barely eighteen months. I'm a successful teacher too, which might be more of the point as far as the city is concerned. but I have friends who work with tougher kids, in tougher schools; friends who spend more time at work or who even run whole programs in their schools; friends who go to school every day even though for them teaching is ninety percent struggle and only ten percent joy. (for me, those numbers are reversed, or something like. I do love my job.) how do you decide which single one of those people is truly outstanding? as far as I'm concerned, you don't.
when I graduated from college, my department (physics & astronomy) had a party for all the seniors. I hated it, mostly because I was hating everything that reminded me I had to leave swarthmore, but also because it made me feel like an inferior, unworthy idiot all over again. I was neither smart nor driven in the way that the department elders thought all serious science students should be -- hell, I hadn't even applied to graduate school -- and I had never found the confidence in myself to believe that I belonged there anyway. no one exactly told me that I wasn't good enough, but it was no secret that silly, non-prodigy people like me were not the reason that they were in the business of teaching physics. (very important note: I am not in any way talking about the astronomers, who are incredible and taught me more about, well, the entire universe, including myself, than I thought I would know by the age of twenty-one.)
it was also no secret that my physics grades were hideous, the worst of any senior, so I was able to stand there in a state of near-total detachment while the department chair gave outstanding achievement awards to the boys who'd earned the highest physics gpa. but I watched the faces of my classmates, the ones who, unlike me, had obviously achieved something too. they'd worked hard, earned good grades, taken honors exams, written theses, gotten into phd programs. one of my friends mockingly pointed to herself in a sarcastically good-natured pantomime: this next award is going to me... no, for real, this time! I grinned conspiratorially at her across the semicircle of gathered graduates, but under my amusement I just felt angry. why the endless heirarchy?
I have to admit that I was the recipient of a fairly steady stream of academic awards throughout the course of my public school education. not just the honor roll kind of award that can be given to as many kids as a school likes, the kind that goes to only one person at the expense of innumerable others. in high school I won writing contests I had entered apparently by turning in my papers for english classes. because I was an ungrateful brat, I never even used the gift certificates that I got as a result. when I was in fifth grade, I got a trophy for no discernible reason at all other than being adored by my principal. I was mystified and embarassed and proud all at once. I wonder now if the parents of the other children at that ceremony hated me afterwards.
and I wonder, had I not been told so constantly when I was growing up that I was Extra Fucking Smart and Talented, if I would still be feeling so indignant at the prospect of watching dozens of deserving teachers go unrecognized (or at least less-recognized). what I'm doing now as a teacher feels like more of an accomplishment, and more like it matters, than anything else I've ever done in my life. even better, I know that I'm surrounded by -- that I'm graduating with -- a group of people who are working just as hard, doing just as much good, as I am. THAT'S the point. that's what education is for! not for picking out the best and the brightest, but making it possible for everyone to do the best they can, the best they wish for. leave the trophies and medals to sports contests and the nobel prize committee. please.
of course the way I will ultimately deal with this will be to skip both pre-graduation and graduation itself, unless I find out that I can wear a sequined leotard under my tailcoat to the ceremony. otherwise I'll be in my classroom with my kids, where I belong.
[ 23.2.05] · [ ]
taking close-up pictures of flowers is such a cliché, part 1:
honestly, I never meant for this to turn into a freaking photoblog. it's just so much easier, even with the uploading and cropping and resizing and uploading again, to post a photograph than it is to sit down and actually write something when not under the duress of some kind of deadline, either passed or impending. I just finished writing my first assignment for this week's online "discussion" for my special education class; like most assignments that ask us to relate some idealistic theory to our own teaching practice, it turned into a frustrated diatribe about how no one else in the universe seems to care about education, or something like that. so now my brain is all worn out and floppy. (and speaking of graduate school, let me say that online courses are the worst, most intellectually depressing form of education I've ever endured during my student career, and that includes the semester when I had an astronomy or physics seminar every other day and stayed up until four am every night doing problem sets with math I didn't understand.)
what? oh, right: it's easier to take pictures than it is to be coherent, much less eloquent, after a week of graduate schooling and trying to teach people who don't know what atoms are about the ways in which a mineral's internal crystalline structure imparts its particular physical properties. or maybe in general. I know that makes me not a writer, which should be apparent enough from this current stream of babble. I can live with that as long as it's temporary.
taking close-up pictures of flowers is such a cliché, part 2:
I've always been under the impression that if I am to be a proper feminist, anti-consumerist, socialist, or any of the other slightly-snobby-but-ultimately-well-meaning things I feel either impelled or obligated to be, I should subscribe to the theory that valentine's day is a schmaltzy, pointless, hallmark holiday. but I don't. I'm a sentimental freak who likes things that are pretty or sweet or romantic (or all of the above), whether I'm single or attached or somewhere in between.
and I always like having flowers in my house. some things are clichés for a reason.
[ 17.2.05] · [ ]
the gates unfurled:
there was a staggering amount of photography happening in the park today. I have 232 pictures, so far, some of which I will show you later, when I am finished taking them. (the gates are here until the end of february.)
when we were leaving the park, walking alongside the met, we passed by a mother with her two small children, each on a scooter. the kids were whining that they were ready to leave.
"okay," said their mom, "I'm fine with that. I just wanted to see them on the first day."
her daughter, looking out from under a slightly-askew pink bicycle helmet, countered: "and how would they be different on the second day?"
I'm not sure you can understand the transformative power of the gates if you aren't a new yorker, or if you haven't at least spent a lot of time in central park. for me it was like returning to the nest where I was hatched and finding all the twigs had turned into gold.
[ 12.2.05] · [ ]
because I am an idiot, I gave away my fleece jacket to a stranger on the sidewalk. it's turquoise with black sleeves, and I wear it all the time except when it's too cold. I mean, I wore it. I guess I won't be wearing it anymore.
I wasn't wearing it on saturday, either, because it was fifty degrees and sunny and it felt like spring. I had just emerged semi-triumphant from a sneaker-shopping mission -- triumphant because I finally have new shoes to replace the ones whose soles I wore through, and I didn't have to pay sales tax on them; semi because although they fit me perfectly and are leather-free, they make me guilty because they certainly came from a sweatshop -- and I was still sweating from my practice sprints through the aisles of the overheated store. I looped my scarf around my neck but left the jacket swinging from the straps of my shoulderbag.
it was hanging there, just barely clearing the dirty stairs as I trotted down into the subway station, when it snagged on the edge of a metal cart that was propped against the stairs. it stayed behind while I ran on, unfurling horizontally into the shadowy stairwell before collapsing at the feet of the cart's owner. she was sitting in the corner with one of those battered, smudgy cardboard signs beside her: PREGNANT. SOBER. HOMELESS.
she picked up my jacket and held it out to me. I thanked her, taking it by the sleeve, and when I did I saw that she wasn't just pregnant, she was PREGNANT like the way a mother sow gets pregnant. like there was nothing to her besides her fetus and her head. she was wearing sweatpants and an indeterminate number of t-shirts. she looked cold.
"want you keep it?" I said, losing my grasp on grammar as I let go of the black fleece. "I don't need it." and she took it. I hope she likes it. right now it probably won't zip over her belly.
I wasn't going to take the train home, actually. it was such a sparkly, beautiful day that I had decided to walk the twenty-something blocks back to my neighborhood. but when I was accosted by a guy in a dirty overcoat who told me he wanted to take me to florida, the subway seemed like my best escape.
my eyes do, in fact, look especially bright blue when they're framed by the sunlit midday sky. but I don't really believe that they are conspicuous enough to stop strangers in their tracks, at least not strangers who are also moderately sane. this guy was walking past me and he gave me a cheeky wave hello, but then after I waved back he whirled around and called after me: "hi!"
"hi," I said, giggling.
"god, you're pretty. what's your name?" I told him my name and shook his hand, and once he had it in his grip, he didn't quite let go fast enough.
he asked me, holding my fingers between both his palms, if I would give him my number: "I could take you with me! wow, your eyes are so beautiful! just like the color of the sky!"
"I have a boyfriend," I said apologetically. there's a certain thrill in saying that because it's true, not just for an excuse -- and it's not the thrill of ooh, I have a boy. it's something more along the lines of hallelujah, there is at least one person in this world who likes me and thinks I'm pretty and is NOT A PSYCHOFREAK!, and that right there is some screwy egotism for you.
"aw, I wish you didn't have to say that," he moaned. "I would love to take you with me. you could come with me to florida."
"that's a long drive," I said.
"twenty-four hours!" there was something strangely charming about him, and sweet, and I couldn't just walk away. I stayed while he told me that he had two little girls, he was divorced, he had caught his wife cheating, he worked for the government. he was making fox mulder look like a paragon of emotional stability by this point, so I'm pretty sure at least the government part wasn't true.
when I said goodbye he grabbed my hands again and kissed them, humming a little bit to himself -- or maybe to my fingers, like a farewell lullaby -- as he did so. I wished him a happy life and then ran off into the subway to keep him from inviting me on any more twenty-four hour outings.
later I told both stories to the boy who was my precious excuse, but as if they had happened on separate days or years or lifetimes. both times he kind of chuckled at me in tender disbelief, for which I don't blame him, because the absurd tiny dramas in my life must be at least a little bit my fault. so I suppose the two stories really do belong together, in the big book of chaos theory and coincidences and silly whims and love.
[ 7.2.05] · [ ]
he also tries to drink the olive oil out of the frying pan, but I don't let him get away with it.
[ 4.2.05] · [ ]
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