Show Me

I am generally a very patient person, but this month I have been working three jobs: two part time and one full time. I have to admit it has tried my patience. Not only has my workload grown exponentially, I’ve been reading reflective essays about what my students have learned this semester. These letters are often encouraging, but this semester, more than most, my students wrote repeatedly of how they came to this class expecting to learn nothing and, thank God, they were mistaken. The teacher (yeah, that’d be me) actually knew what she was talking about and things like revisions, workshops and active reading actually helped. Gasp.

Now, this is a compliment. For whatever reason – blame the inadequacies of our educational system or student’s lack of focus in the classroom – most of my students have woeful tales of past English classes and I am happy to change that perspective. But this constant barrage of blatant surprise does wear on a person.

It was in this mindset that I entered my afternoon class today. These are students at my new full time job and I’m enjoying the campus, but this specific class is sleepy and generally unresponsive to anything class related. So after 1 1/2 hours of tedious stop-and-go conversion, I sent them on a break to get refreshed. It worked, but then the questions were all about when class would be over. Now, on Tuesday, these students had asked me (yes, I swear they asked) to go over grammar before their essay was due, so that was the plan. I admit, it’s not exciting, but they requested it. But now, they hated it. They avoided eye contact, wouldn’t answer questions and kept asking if we were done. Then, something in me snapped. I couldn’t keep my yap shut any longer. I broke into a rant. “Why are you even in school if all you want to do is leave? Why pay all this money to bitch and stare at the clock?” On and on I went. After the shock wore off, this surprisingly opened up an interesting line of discussion. They talked about the frustration of working full time making only minimum wage and how school was so much better. I challenged them to show it. Show me. Show everyone.

I’d like to say that everything changed, but this is reality. We did, however, have an interesting discussion about the grammatical structure of a few sentences and that was enough for me. And I know that, when I see them again next Tuesday, they will be sleepy and sluggish, but I think we may have broken ground on something helpful and maybe, just maybe, we can revisit it and keep them focused on the means to their end. And maybe the next time I open my yap with them, it will be praise and excitement, not a searing rant about the value of their education. Maybe, just maybe.

Purpose

Recently, my husband and I have been talking about motivation. I have struggled with depression in the past and my husband, although never officially diagnosed, believes he probably has as well. If you have never suffered from depression, you can’t fully understand it. You may try, but you will never truly know why a depressed loved one simply can’t get out of bed. Why the motivation just isn’t there. You think, “snap yourself out of it. Just get up!” If only it were that simple. But the funny thing about depression is that it has a permanent affect on your life. I don’t mean that you constantly struggle with it (although some poor souls do). What I mean is that your life – your motivation – is constantly in question. You constantly ask yourself why you aren’t motivated to do something. Is it just a lazy day or is it more? The line gets fuzzier and fuzzier until you start blaming everything on depression, “It can’t be me. I must be slipping back into that darkness”, you tell yourself. But now I’m questioning that mindset.

Just last weekend, we hosted my dad and step-mom as they visited California. One morning over breakfast, my step-mom began speaking of her mother. How her health has gone downhill lately. How she believes her mom has lost her purpose. She told me, “once you lose your purpose, there’s not much to stick around for.”  This really hit me. What is my purpose? So often, I find myself stuck in a routine and even more often, I find myself wishing for time to pass faster so that I can obtain some goal that’s just out of reach. Some of this is because, up through April, I’ve been on a paycheck-to-paycheck mentality. (I have a new full time job coming up. Yup, something else to want that’s just up ahead.) But I truly believe there’s more to it than that. I allow myself to get overwhelmed with the day-to-day and I don’t spend time doing what makes me happy – really happy. Not that I’m-home-from-work-and-want-to-veg-don’t-bother-me kind of happy. The stuff that makes me feel like a better person – like I’m living the way I hoped adult me would live when I was a kid. So that is my goal. I can’t tell you exactly how this will manifest itself, but my plan is to do at least one thing every day that makes me happy. And you know what? Blogging – simply writing down my thoughts – is one of those things. This means there hopefully won’t be any more weeks or months of emptiness on my site. I also hope to be able to share more about my experiment with you as I pursue it, so please check back and feel free to ask questions. One of the many benefits to yapping about life is that some people need to hear what you have to say. I would be honored if any word that I write (past, present or future) helps any person with just one thing. Perhaps this will be it.

Until next time, here is me checking off my first happy thing! And you know what? It feels pretty good. 

Eloquent Evolution

Just finished walking 60 miles in 2008!

This blog is dedicated to the women (and men) who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, a cause that is close to my own heart.

It’s pretty common knowledge that women talk more than men. Whether this is somehow ingrained in our DNA or if it’s socially constructed, I don’t know, but there is enough research to prove that it is truth. I suppose that’s part of how my blog came to be. But I think there’s a deeper reason than we admit for this desire to talk.

I recently watched a documentary called Dogs Decoded: Nova. You may be wondering right now what dogs have to do with women. I’ll tell you. According to this incredible documentary, dogs have developed the amazing ability to read human’s facial expressions over their years of domestication. This is something that has not been found in any other animal – not even the chimp. This has allowed for dogs to truly become man’s (or women’s) best friend. In order to survive and belong in this new social order, dogs adapted. I think women have, too.

If you’re unfamiliar with gender roles in European societies (actually, many societies, but there are a few who are matriarchal) women have only recently been considered equals with men. (That is actually still quite arguable, but I digress.) In Victorian society, women were not even allowed outside of their homes without a chaperone. They were property. They, in essence, were nothing but the means to create children – ideally, sons. Gossip channels were very important then through the courts and I’m sure they were even more important if you go further back into history. But because women have generally played a submissive role to men, they needed a system in order to cope and make themselves present. Hence, women talk a lot.

This was brought to the forefront of my attention not long ago when I accompanied my mom for a test at a breast center. I was able to join her in a small waiting room where other women in unflattering gowns that make them feel self-conscious sat awaiting a test that may tell them they have breast cancer. In my family, the women talk even more when they are nervous. More specifically, they joke. This is precisely what my mom and I were doing until she was taken for her mammogram. While she was away, I sat typing responses to student essays on my laptop, trying to look occupied. One woman looked nervous and I smiled at her, but she remained deep in thought and moved carefully, I could see, to avoid her pain. But several other women joined and they were less than silent. One specifically felt the need to talk about her experience, and my mom’s experience, and anyone else’s experience we could share. At first, I’ll admit, I was a little annoyed. I had papers to read and really did want to be productive, but I saw how much this meant to this woman. She, unlike my mom, was alone and she had a history of breast cancer in her family. It was as if talking made the situation more bearable for her – made it more tangible, so she could hold it and control it herself. And so we chatted – something so many people would shrug off as idle and insignificant, but I realized at that moment that it was probably the most meaningful thing I was going to do that day, possibly even that week. So I closed my laptop and kept chatting with this woman and then the next, until I was alone in the little room.

It was then that I began writing this blog. I couldn’t go back to my work. I realized there was something here and, although I would probably never see these women again, I needed to continue their conversation in some way to acknowledge its importance. That, in some small way, my writing was helping us to adapt our own communication and survival. So here it is, my contribution to the evolution of eloquent gab, and yet another reason to never shut your yap.

Gingerbread House Competition: Vote 2010

Happy holidays and welcome to our second annual gingerbread house decorating competition! I'll post more interesting tales about our holiday festivities later, but now is the time to vote. Please watch the video and click on the link below to vote on your favorite house. All votes must be cast by 11:59 pm on Tuesday Dec. 28, 2010.

Please vote by clicking vote now.

This is our last day of the contest. Please vote, whether you know us or not. Vote, vote, vote!!

Thanks for voting! I hope that you had a fabulous holiday filled with friends, family and food!

Sheri

Metamorphasis

The random person who stumbles across my blog might think that I am a voracious and gregarious person – someone who loves to be the center of attention and will always speak her mind. But this is not the case. In fact, I hate speaking in front of people and I often choose the passive-aggressive route in lieu of direct confrontation. This is even more ironic when you learn that I am a college-level English instructor. But my passive-aggressive tendencies are starting to fade.

In my first few years of teaching, I was petrified of calling out a student. I don’t mean calling on a student, but addressing the problem behavior that inevitably arises in classrooms (especially those filled with college students who haven’t learned that they’re no longer in high school and led by a female in her mid-twenties). For example, in my third year of teaching, I had a student who received a grade that she felt was lower than she deserved. She must have been even more passive-aggressive than me because, instead of talking to me about the grade, she became increasingly hostile and adversarial in and outside of my class. She would make snide comments in our incredibly small class (we only had 10 students) and then began to outright defy me at every turn. She even went so far as to have her boyfriend patrol the building we were in. When I finally decided I could take no more, our confrontation was even more hostile. So hostile, in fact, that two of my students (who, by the way, loved me) refused to close the classroom door and stood guard to make sure I would be okay. You would think this would teach me a lesson, and it did… but not the right one.

What I learned was to fear giving low grades – to fear sharing with students in a more direct way that they were not passing my class. Instead of learning to nip problem behavior in the bud, I learned to keep it to myself. Now, in my defense, students in college are expected to take more responsibility for their work and in knowing where they stand; however, my students (as I’ve mentioned) don’t quite realize they’ve entered the brand new world of adulthood and they expect me to hold their hand much more than I’m willing to do.

But this semester, I’ve noticed a clear change in myself. I have not only begun giving more regular “status reports” to my students (and many of these were not what the students expected), but I have also lost much of the pity and fear I had previously harbored when giving such negative information. In fact, I currently sit in my classroom awaiting a student for his final conference. This student is doing well, but the previous one was not. I had to sit with him only two feet from me, look in his eyes and tell him he did not pass my class. Not only that, but I had to tell him that the growth he thought he made in the class and the effort he professed to exert was not near enough for college. In the past, I would have averted my eyes, apologized for the low score on his portfolio, or kowtowed to requests to turn in last minute work for that barely passing grade. But not this semester. Today, I looked him right in the eye and told him he could not pass my class. And you know what? The world didn’t end. He didn’t cry or even try to hit me. And as he walked out my door I realized that, without even trying, I have morphed into this confidently assertive teacher I never thought I’d be. Go figure.

Forbidden Fruit

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. First, I was sick. Then, the holidays and semester’s end took over and I became buried in essays. Hopefully this will make up for the loss.

I am pleased to say that this awkward moment came only in part by my own doing.

My sister came to stay with us a few weeks ago. One night, the three of us along with a friend were lounging around our living room trying to find something good to watch on Netflix Instant. We ran across this movie that I had seen listed a million times, but had never had the courage to watch: Teeth. I made the mistake of mentioning this fact. The brief synopsis of Teeth simply states that a young girl finds through an encounter of sexual abuse that her vagina has teeth. Now perhaps you understand my fascination and repulsion. Everyone was shocked. We giggled a little and my husband lingered a little longer than normal on the movie’s image. My sister, however, was jokingly insistent about watching it and my husband, ever ready to indulge a whim, decided to hit play.

Needless to say, the movie was horrible. It was one of those so-cheesy-you-can’t-believe-someone-actually-produced-it kinds of things. The girl is an unofficial spokeswoman for a faith-based high school abstinence campaign… and so is the boy. And yet, we continued to watch. Cheesy scene after cheesy scene, our eyes remained glued to the screen. Our friend even pulled up some pillows and created a little nest on the floor, surrounded by our two Corgis. We joked about turning it off, but something prevented it. We were all hoping for some sort of payoff. You can’t make a movie about a vagina with teeth without some sort of good payoff, right?

And so we watched on. In fact, it wasn’t until almost an hour of sappy, melodramatic teen wooing with Christian boundaries and bizarre stepfamily issues had passed until we got it. Major pay off! (I’ll warn you here. There is major spoilage coming up.) In a moment of passion in a secluded cavern under a waterfall (yup, I said cheesy) romance turns ugly when the heroine rejects her suitor. He turns rapist and knocks her unconscious. The romantic that he is, the boy figures he’ll enjoy her even when she’s out cold. But he’s in for a surprise.

At this point, we’re all making predictions. Will they actually do it? What will they show? Is this what we’ve been waiting for? Should we just turn it off? The anticipation is tangible.

Then, it happens. Just as little Casanova nestles in for some not-so-love-making, the girl wakes up… and so does her vagina… and they’re both pissed! Next thing you know, everyone is screaming and there’s a prosthetic penis lying beside him on the cavern floor and he is looking quite eunuch-esque. At this point, the guys in the room are looking a little piqued and my sister and I are rolling on the floor. After a few minutes of hysteria, gasps and snide comments, my husband turned off the TV.  

I can’t tell you how the story ends, but I do know that Eve Ensler is not going to be including this jewel in her next revision of The Vagina Monologues. And be careful who you share this story with because your yap might land you right in the middle of a Teeth screening of your own.

Little Pumpkin

This last weekend, I attended a friend’s wedding. It was outdoors on a beautiful fall day and they took advantage of the season by using a harvest/Nightmare Before Christmas theme. Needless to say, there were pumpkins everywhere. We chose a random table and, when a friend and groomsman joined us later, we began talking about this perfect little pumpkin that was our table’s décor. He told me that this particular little pumpkin was the bride’s favorite. In fact, she liked it so much that he was surprised it actually made its intended role as a harvest centerpiece. We then decided the best plan of action would be to steal it in order to present it to the bride upon her return. Then, the groomsman left.

I took up the mantle and snuck the pumpkin into my purse; but once I got home, this little gourd began to take on a life of her own. She began acting strangely… and this is the story I sent to the groomsmen.

Once upon a time, there was a pumpkin…

 When she arrived to her foster home, she met a handsome fellow gourd, Spotty.

 One night, I found Princess looking more lovely than usual. 

Lo and behold, a few days later...

 I think there's been some pumpkin bumpin' goin' on. Spotty was looking a little frisky on Sunday.

 Today, Princess heard of the upcoming holiday and thought she would get into the Halloween spirit.

 I applauded her efforts, but told her about her true purpose: to bring a smile to a newlywed couple. 

I think she may have gotten the wrong impression.

The newlyweds are still on their honeymoon, but the bride will, in fact, receive her little “Princess” upon her return. And they’ll live happily ever after.