Here's what I did this week!

I started Summer Session B this week - trying to cram in my required courses so that there's not too much to think about when I start my student teaching in September. I am taking Youth Cultures, which sounded fun, and Education and the Aesthetic Experience, which sounded...impenetrable. Apparently, the title also confuses my professor - a crazy Italian phd student: we spent nearly the entire two-hour class period last night discussing the definitions of the words "education" and "experience." If we ever get through "and" and "aesthetic," I'll let you know what the class is about.

Youth Cultures might get fun once we slog through all the Piaget and other old-timey theorists of adolescence (of yore). Or it might remain boring. Even though we have, so far, had the great pleasure of watching both a Katy Perry music video and a clip of High School Musical in class, this class mostly blows it vast potential for awesomeness by serving as a forum for our mumbly old British professor's proofs that he is cool. He namechecks people like Joanna Newsom and talks a lot about Twilight (like, a lot. He even made us read a chapter for homework - much more painful than the theory reading.).

Like I said, I have faith this class will improve: our midterm is to write a one-page paper analyzing a tween show. For now, though, the most fun I've had was writing a "reaction" to our first set of assigned readings. We had about 200 pages to do for the first class (hello, dude - Summer Session!), including an article called "Nation of Wimps," which basically whined and moaned about how Boomer parents are all like this, except, you know, with children and not weimaraners. I have excerpted below because I think what I wrote is kind of funny and I'm really lazy:

And then we get to today’s youth: mollycoddled, weak, depressed, unable to grow up because parents won’t let them. Where is the dashing, roguish youth of our past? Where are there witticisms and their wild schemes? Why do we have to worry more about depression now than masturbation? And why do we keep teaching them in much the same way, even when parenting and childhood are “evolving” at alarming rates?

I put “evolving” in quotations because writer of “Nation of Wimps” seemed under the impression that these changes were RENDING THE FABRIC OF SOCIETY (dun dun dunnnnn). And, sure, I am as annoyed by those “but I’m a hip parent”-parents, or, worse, “but I’m still a kid”-parents, as anyone. And, yes, I do think kids have a much more skewed vision (and version) of reality than I did growing up. They do need to fail and fall down and feel sad every once in a while, but I think most will figure out how to do that eventually, no matter how much hothouse parenting they are subjected to.

It may take longer - stretching into that horrible thing called “extended adolescence,” which is really just “30 year-olds wearing cargo shorts and binge drinking instead of GETTING IT TOGETHER ALREADY BECAUSE OMG YOU ARE 30 AND MY PARENTS HAD 2 KIDS AND REAL JOBS BY THE TIME THEY WERE YOUR AGE.” (Like, does anyone else just flip out every time they see that Verizon commercial that starts out, “Today you went from dude to dad,” because I always yell at my TV that you should probably stop being a “dude” and start being a “responsible man” way before an actual, living, breathing thing pops out of your lover’s womb.) Anywayyyy, most kids, as I think the article pointed out, are aware of being over-parented and don’t like it, so we have to have faith that they will, sooner or later, rebel - i.e., figure out how to fail and grow on their own.

And if kids and childhood are forever changed - if they don’t entirely bounce back - well, maybe that’s okay too. Our society doesn’t attribute the same values to the same life skills as it once did. We still want to see assertiveness and leadership, but we are also in a decade of cooperation, groupthink and mash-up. When the article complains that children are more “herd-minded,” I think, well, why can’t we call it “hive-minded”? The ability to go with the flow and work as a team isn’t a weakness.

And then I go on and on about how it's probably okay that we're not raising, like, Warrior-Kings of Blood Vengeance because that's not really how the world works anymore. And my whole class probably thinks I'm a crazypants annoying person because I bashed out 3 pages on readings that none of the cool kids even did. I really wanted to write a disclaimer at the top to let them know I have a really long commute and forgot to bring anything else to do, but I thought that would probably make me sound even crazier.

The upside to cultivating a persona as "class crazyperson" is that I can yell at the professor about his lameness and probably also talk a lot about Adventure Time - because there is nothing crazier than that show. I'm thinking about writing my midterm about it, so you'll probably see my analysis up here when I once more get too lazy to post original writings.

Already terrible!

I made a resolution about 4 days ago to write in either this blog or my other (or, gasp, possibly both?!) every day for at least a week. The idea was that setting a strict schedule would build into some kind of routine and I would continue to write regularly even after the week had passed. Three days in, I failed.

The terrible part is that I don't even have a good reason - like school or work or hangovers - for why I didn't write yesterday. I am on my week-long break from school (between Summer A and Summer B), I don't have any freelance things due for another week and a half, and I'm pretty much just sleeping and reading the newspaper all the time. For the first few days of this, I was like, "Look, world, this is my vacation week. I have had a stressful summer, and I deserve not to worry about things for three freakin' days." But seriously, self, it's been long enough.

The above stress-inducers/time-suckers have made it really hard to write, well, kind of all year (with the exception of hangovers. I am now so boring and workyworky that I rarely drink more than one beer). My old, "real" job may have sucked, and I don't regret leaving it for school AT ALL, but man, it sure made weekends easier. I could just leave stuff on my desk and not think about it, or care, for days. Now, there is ALWAYS something looming over me: Freelance stuff has been coming in steadily (which is awesome - I didn't think I would get any work, really), I am working part-time in an actual office-y building, and, except for this week, I have homework to think about (even though it's summer, and we all know, deep in our hearts, that summer class is - or is supposed to be - a joke). Oh, and there's also the little matter of planning an entire semester's worth of English classes for the 9th graders that I'm getting this September.

Wahwahwah - right? I've gotta stop making excuses. I mean, I love writing - why do I not do it more? Why can't I make time for it, when I make plenty of time for pfutzing around on the Internet and talking to my dog? I've had an idea for a novel bouncing around my skull for at least a year, but aside from the general plot points, all I've scratched out is a character sketch for a dad with an ill-conceived and nefarious-looking mustache. Surely, I can do better.

Hey!

Hey! Know what's a mostly bad decision? Starting a blog and then NEVER writing in it! Like, EVER! I mean, look at that last entry: a field trip? Man, I ain't been on no stinking field trips in months!

But don't worry, I'm still doing stupid things - like moving out of my beloved Park Slope. Nay, not just Park Slope, but all of Brooklyn. In fact, I moved out of the entire state of NY - the Empire State! I fear for my head when the Emperor (Jay-Z the Beneficent) finds out.

Yes, I am now an official resident of New Jersey, if you count postal addresses as official residencies. I don’t know, I “officially” change my address at least once a year through usps.gov, and aside from charging me a dollar for “verification” costs (aka, "the USPS is broke, please give us money" costs), I don’t think they really do anything to check how official I am. So if I didn’t mind my Shape magazine subscriptions going to complete strangers, I could probably be a "verified" resident of anywhere. 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.? Done - I just hope the presidential daughters don't walk off with my mail-ordered camping sandals. (They're probably too cool for that.)

So, yeah - moving has apparently turned me into the kind of major, major nerd who wears Tevas in public - not like, base camp public, but suburban half-price sushi restaurant public. And I eat at suburban half-price sushi places located in NJ strip malls. AND I LIKE IT.

How did this happen?

Well, the half-price sushi happened because it's awesome and delicious. That's all you need to know there. The Tevas and granola-making and showing up to class as the smelly kid with a bike seat hanging out of her backpack? I think it's a semi-subconscious anti-NJ rebellion.

Don't get me wrong: there is nothing inherently bad about NJ. It smells much better than you might think, flora and fauna abound, and there is a real-live Target Superstore. Heaven, no?

But, you see, I am not of NJ. I did not grow up in a subdivision. I do not quite understand how the Turnpike works. I like walking places. Rude people stress me out. Thus, living in a big house in a neighborhood with a lot of other big houses that all look the same, where people are terrible drivers who honk at you for STOPPING AT RED LIGHTS! JEEZ! sometimes makes me want to hide in a damp cave until summer is over.

Damp caves, however, are bad for the skin and worse for relationships (coming in at a close second to NY Bar Review), and so I do the next best thing. I slowly convert to hippie-dom. I do yoga and stand around outside and buy giant tubs of organic yogurt (BaNilla flavored! So good! So funny!). Maybe if I drape enough daisy chains over my head, I can pretend I am in Vermont. Or Park Slope.