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.

First Field Trip

First, the good news: there hasn't been any more crying. I think the boys mostly like me now. They still don't listen to me, but they like me - it's a start.

The bad news: I had my first field trip on Friday - the Friday that happened to be the last day of school before spring break.

Really, it wasn't SO terrible. The kids were terrible, but the experience was kind of fun, once I figured out what we were doing.

I've been struggling quite a bit this semester with the fact that no one at my school ever tells me anything. Really, ANYTHING. That's just how it is. I didn't know we were going on a field trip until the principal mentioned it yesterday at assembly (oh, and that assembly? I only knew about it because last semester's student teacher - who does not work at this school anymore - told me about it). I didn't know what time we were leaving for said trip - and nearly pulled my hair out when train traffic added 40 extra minutes to my commute this morning (don't worry - we didn't leave until 10:30). I didn't even know where we were going today until we got there.

But whatever, we made it, right?

In fact, our trek from school to the subway to the Hayden Planetarium (woo! shout-out to Neil DeGrasse Tyson - coolest astrophysicist ever!) was so incredibly efficient, even with 100 or so screaming, last-day-of-school-before-spring-break, losing-their-minds-over-finally-getting-to-be-coed 8th graders, that we made it there about an hour before our official entrance time. Do not ask me how taking 100 people on a subway anywhere can be efficient; coming from my six-train commute this morning, I was flabbergasted.

The early arrival worked out, though! No worries! because we had not technically scheduled in a lunchtime for the students! So while we stood around in the beautiful 40 degree spring weather, waiting to be let in, we got to eat lunch. YAY.

I want to take a moment here to point out that many of my students purchased their "lunches" from bodegas and refreshment stands that we passed on our voyage. These lunches consisted largely of chips and candy, and they all seemed perfectly satisfied by these things. I am so glad that we usually force them to eat cafeteria lunch.

After lunch, we managed to wheedle our way inside a little early. The students were supposed to be doing a worksheet that the science teacher had given them. It was full of questions about the exhibit and the universe and whatnot and seemed, really, like an excellent way to help them pass the time without getting into too much trouble.

I think the first question threw them off, though: "What does the sphere in the middle of the room represent?"

Here's the thing about planetariums (planetaria?): There are a lot of spheres hanging around in there. And here's the thing about the super-awesome Hayden Planetarium: It's not really a "room," as in, an obviously enclosed space with four walls and a ceiling and floor and an easily-recognized "center." It is a wide open atrium-type space with a big spiraling ramp that takes you through a few levels of space knowledge. So finding the sphere in the center, and then finding the helpful sign that tells you what it's supposed to represent, takes a little more legwork than 8th graders on a field trip are willing to put in.

I wasn't too hung-up on this issue, though, because I had a much bigger problem on my hands: three of my boys, who had been whining and complaining about the field trip (?!?! ingrates!) since we started, had decided that wandering around the frozen tundra of the upper west side would be more enjoyable than seeing a sweet, sweet planetarium movie about stars. In other words, we had wannabe fugitives.

I spent the entire lunch period trying to convince these three to stand within a 20 foot radius of their group - much harder than it sounds, especially when you're me and your students are six-foot-tall teenage boys who are having grouchy days.

Once we got inside, and the entire planetarium was open to exploration, such wrangling became quite a bit harder. So then, in frustration and at a loss (did I mention that my supervising teacher had disappeared halfway between the school and the museum? She got off the train with two of our boys at 86th St. and met back up with us much later) and maybe kind of attempting to seem cool, I made a mistake. A pretty big one: I pulled them aside, and I explained to them that, while I HUGELY PREFERRED that they stay with their group, if they did manage to get themselves lost, they should know that we were leaving at 1:00, and they needed to be back on the train with us.

STUPID.

Of course, they took this as license to not only try to run as far away as possible, but to do it while acting as foolish as possible (i.e., running right past our group, yelling and laughing, while the rest of us waited to go into the star movie). Never try to get an 8th grader to be sneaky. I should have known this - they are always trying to be sneaky in class, with a success rate of about .017%. Some of the other teachers managed to rope them in, after which they immediately snitched on me. Serves me right, and all the other teachers were so flustered there was no lasting harm done (I hope. I guess we'll see when I get back from spring break).

Meanwhile, the star movie happened. Our kids screamed and laughed and ate their poor forgotten lunches throughout. We left right after.

We were supposed to have stayed at the museum for an extra hour or so after the movie, but when the classes of second graders at the movie behaved better than our kids (they really did), the teachers in charge decided enough was enough.

A lot of the kids - mostly girls - were upset about the early departure. They were worried about not finishing their worksheets. One even pointed out to me that no one had told them they couldn't eat in the movie. True enough. We forget sometimes that kids (and six feet tall or not, these students are kids) don't know things that we take for granted. If there was no announcement before the movie that specifically said, "Do not eat your chip-lunch during the show," they probably would have saved it, but without that warning, why not multitask?

I think if a smaller group had behaved exactly the same, they could have stayed. Having 25 misbehaving kids wandering around is a lot more manageable than 100. Even with a high teacher : student ratio (we had 7 or 8 adults, if you count me), somewhere around 60 or 70 students, you start exceeding some magical cosmic number, and control goes out the window. I only put myself in charge of three students (three highly deviant runaways, but only three), and with so many of their classmates running around, looking lost, asking for help and causing trouble, I had a heck of a time just keeping track of the trio. Other teachers had as many as 10 or 15 to watch at once.

Craziness aside, like I said, it was fun. I like the planetarium, no matter how much my kids complain, and it was nice to see them outside of class for a day, without my co-op being scary and hovering over us. I also learned some valuable lessons about the eating habits of eighth graders, average land speed of the New York 14-year-old, and why we don't put normally-separated, single-gender classes of eighth graders together in a dark room. Now I know.

Oh, so THIS is when the crying starts

In my first official student teaching class (aka "talk about your feelings in the evening when you leave student teaching" class), our professor spent a lot of time describing just how much of our personal time this semester would be spent weeping. She did this very cheerily, splicing in a lot of giggles and many instances of the phrase "hot mess," so I didn't give much credit to what she said.

I am not a crier. At least, not for good reasons, like "he was mean to me." I cry at slow motion sports montages and the end of What Not to Wear and occasionally at weddings. I do not just come home at the end of a long day and "have a good cry." I have a beer. And that's that - until today.

Today, I feel like I might go home and cry. The boys were not just bad - they were EVIL. It started in math class. I foolishly - SO FOOLISHLY - decided to go observe them away from the iron grip of my cooperating teacher. I'd heard they were particularly bad in this class, and my coop had absolutely nothing nice to say about the math teach's classroom management capabilities. So I took my little observation notebook, sat down, and watched them LOSE THEIR DAMN MINDS.

Boys were yelling across the classroom, drumming, screaming, walking around, shooting hoops with the recycling, leaving class, smacking each other...a very different show from what they put on in my coop's class. Eventually, it got so bad, I felt the need to jump in - my second misstep. I could control one at a time, but no more, and I don't think that approach really earned me any respect from the 15 other kids who continued to run around screaming while I had serious chats with their classmate.

I asked one of the little devils straight up, "What is the deal with this class? Why are you being SO BAD?" He said, "She's not strict enough. We don't respect her." Well. Okay. Now I know what the problem is, but how do I fix it? Respect isn't something that I automatically command. I am young and inexperienced and small and today when I was shoving boys around, yeah, I bossed them, but I was shaking while I did it.

I guess I carried some of the sheen of utter failure from that class back to my coop's room. The same class was in there - totally well-behaved and silent for her, but every time she stepped out of the room or turned her back, it was back to the old tricks. I am proud to say that it did not get as crazy as the math room - meaning I fall somewhere between awesome and horrible on the classroom management scale, but there were three that brought it to the brink.

Somehow, these three (particular troublemakers in a class full of them) got it into their heads that I was tattling on them. Because I have nothing better to do with my time than write down everything little crappy thing they do and show it to my coop, the enforcer. They think my student teaching notebook is my ledger of offenses. I have no idea how this happened. None of them got in trouble when we came back to the class of reason and silence. Even when my coop pressed me for the gossip of the other room, I didn't name names (except to tell her the 3 that had been good, and the one that had gone missing). So now I am "the snitch" - not the most respectful thing to call your student teacher.

Every time I had to tell someone to stop talking or get to work, the three troubles would say, "You'd better do it, before she tattles on you!" And I let it get to me. I mean, what do you do in that situation? Ignore it? Maybe if you're their classmate, but a teacher can't let them call her those things, right? Right? It really hurt my feelings. I've been with them for 2.5 weeks, and I've been pretty cool with them, I thought. I'm not weak, I try not to be too tough with them or yell at them for no reason, I help them when they ask. It was a terrible shock to realize that those things - in the moment at least - did not matter to them. I felt transported back to my own terrible middle school - just feeling so terribly awkward and judged and unliked for no reason that I could really pinpoint. They made me feel ugly and small and dumb even when I thought I was so over that. And I felt like crying.

If anyone reads this, I know what they'll say - it takes time to build respect, you can't win them all over, 8th graders are demented, you can't let them get to you, blahblahblah. I know, and I'm trying to shake it off. It's hard, though, to have a first day of failure at the hands of people you've invested yourself in. I know there are more to come, and I hope I'll get a little hardened.

Mostly AWESOME

It took 2 doctor's visits (TB test), 2 trips to the office of teacher education (a bad bad place) and a little jaunt to the real, live NYC Department of Education building, but I finally managed to sneak myself into a real live classroom. Woo!

Week three of student teaching starts tomorrow, which means I've spent many of my waking hours the past two weeks sitting in a room full of 8th grade boys. That's right - all boys. Two classes' worth of them, with 14 more being added (transfers from the formerly-coed class) some time in the next few weeks. A lot of farting happens, but, other than that, it's been surprisingly fun.

So far, I've been stuck in observation mode, only really interacting with the boys when they have individual work to do - floating around to help them out on essays and encourage them to actually read their books, etc. My cooperating teacher is incredible, but I think she may be just a little bit of a control freak. That's great for keeping the class in line, not so much for me getting to teach.

Of course, I'm sure she knows exactly what she's doing - she's had student teachers in her classroom every semester for at least 2 years running. And judging by the way the students ABSOLUTELY LOSE THEIR MINDS every time she steps out of the classroom, I probably need to spend a little more time watching her methods and gaining their respect before I'm truly left alone with them.

Right now, her foot crossing the classroom threshold is like an on/off switch. Even if she's still visible through the doorway, if she's outside the room it turns into crazy town in there. Kids talk right through me when I'm standing in front of them saying "look at me, hey hey HEY." There's dancing, singing, foul language, and, for whatever reason, a lot of head-slapping. That's their thing - always touching each others' heads.

There are some that listen to me. And I already have my favorites, which I know is wrong, but a couple of these kids are so adorable, I can't help having a little soft spot for them, trouble-makers or not.

I'm still learning names. The troublemakers are easy, because they're always getting yelled at, but the good ones, the ones I should know so I can thank them for not being insane, they're a little harder. I write their names (spelled phonetically because they don't seem to have an attendance sheet here? wha?) and some descriptions in my little notebook whenever I learn a new one, and am kind of living in fear that someone will pick up the notebook and read things like "[redacted] - manface, evil eyebrows." It would be like Harriet the Spy only SO MUCH WORSE.

We wrap up our current unit next week, then there's mid-winter break (school is awesome! break woo!), then we start Shakespeare, and, I hope, I start teaching. Wish me luck.

Autobiography part a million

A little secret about teacher school: you spend A LOT of time talking and thinking and writing and talking more about YOURSELF. Not about school or students or teaching - just you.

I have a "teaching autobiography" due tomorrow. I'm not entirely sure what that is. I read two articles that were about the importance of writing teaching autobiographies, but neither really bothered to go into the mechanics of one. From what I can gather, you pretty much just spill your guts about EVERYTHING that might affect how you teach - your background, beliefs, political leanings, earliest learning and teaching experiences, inspirations, anti-inspirations, ETC.

Because my poor computer is full to the point of lethargy these days, I have decided to write said autobiography here and allow the internets to worry about saving it. I think I am going to present it as a mobile, so if it looks a little piecey, just imagine it swirling around with lots of string and pretty paper. oooooh! right?

Where I'm coming from:
A Mainer who grew up in the South.
White, middle-class family that seriously values education.
Public school until high school. I loved school until 7th grade.
Middle school sucked. More on that later.
Then there was high school. I went to Brookstone School: A College Preparatory School for Boys and Girls. It was ridiculous - populated by the landed gentry of the south - but an incredible educational experience. It was small and challenging and the teachers there cared whether you learned something and whether you were happy doing it. My freshman year of college was EASY compared to my senior year of high school. We had no classroom management. No discipline - it just didn't seem necessary (until my junior year there was Brookstone Hunt Club that asked kids to bring their guns to school). We were given a lot of freedom and frequently were treated like responsible adults - kind of college-lite. Going there was probably the best thing, life-course-changing-wise, that has ever happened to me.
I'm a Liberal and a sociology major. I'm sure that sort of thing will affect my classroom approach.
I'm impatient but working on it.
Thanks to the Brookstone experience (and my parents), I grew up very sheltered. I realize this. The types of things that some of my kids will be going through will probably blow my little mind. We'll see.

Why am I here?
This one is messy.

Nieto writes that many excellent teachers are also activists. I have felt, for much of my life, like an activist without a cause. I wanted to do good, to impact the world for the better, but have never really found what felt like the right channel for me to do so. I've been a tutor, a Habitat for Humanity builder, a 4H member, a visitor to various old folks' homes, a camp counselor - and I liked all those things and thought that they were the right thing to do at the time, but they didn't feel like my LIFE. A once-a-week meeting, no matter how anticipated or successful, is not a CAUSE. It is just a step.
A step to what? Why did I do those things? I guess the greater impetus, and this is going to sound dumb, was to just BE GOOD - to make life a little bit better or easier or happier for those who could use the help. A lot of what I did happened to be (and happens to be) education-focused because that's what I'm good at - that's what I have to offer.

There are other reasons why I'm here. I cried every day on the way to middle school because I hated it and felt so alone and bored and just weird because that's how middle school makes you feel. Middle school should not be a purgatory - it's hard enough being thirteen. Kids that age need teachers - note baby-sitters - who care about them and push them and realize that they are in a weird life place. I think I can do that.

I love school. There is no place I'd rather be, and I want others to feel that way.

I want to be a TC in particular because it seems very aware of and invested in its community. I wanted - needed - to go somewhere that would adequately train me to teach where good teachers are most needed.

What I want to be
I have spent a ridiculous number of hours trying to plot my "Teacher Persona" for the classroom. Will I be tough? Kind? Funny? Scary? Crazy? Will I be able to control it at all? I don't know. But I do have some models.
My mom is a first grade teacher. She is kind and patient and very good at keeping a sense of humor.
I want to make myself as warm and inviting as Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz. She made those of us in her writing class last semester feel like we were her favorite, smartest, most special class ever. It was incredible and so encouraging.
I want to be sharp and well-traveled and a little bit kooky like Mrs. Khazaeli, my 9th grade English teacher. She told me to be a writer, and she had us all convinced that she could do witchcraft.
I want to have the energy of Mr. Davis, my history teacher, and Mr. East, another English teacher. It was impossible not to be excited in their classes.
I want to be as lovable and terrifying a the same time as Mrs. Livengood, my European history teacher. I think it would help to be 6 feet tall and built like a linebacker with flaming red hair. And be a genius. And have incredibly high expectations. And be like a mom (a gossipy one) to everyone.
And even before I knew I wanted to be a teacher, I knew I wanted to be like Kate Slevin, my college adviser. She was smart and funny and dry and no-nonsense, and she could have been so intimidating, but instead, she was the only college professor whose class I ever willfully spoke in. She had a way of drawing me out. I still don't know how she did it, but she helped me shine. I need to learn that trick.

I had a whole other section planned out for what I don't want to be, but I decided not to dwell on the negative because I certainly don't want to be that.

Moving forward
I start student teaching tomorrow. My billion questions are sure to multiple as soon as I get int o the classroom. For now, I'm just going to do my best, take lots of notes, listen to anyone who will take the time to talk to me (including students), and try to build a little bit more of myself as a teacher every day.

A whole new year in which to make bad decisions! Yay!

I definitely finished out the old year and jumped right into the new in the true spirit of this blog: I went to my parents' house and did not write a thing for close to a month.

A month! I don't even know if I know how to write anymore. What is this thing I am banging on with my fingers? A keyboard? What IS that?

Instead of writing, I ate. And ate and ate and ate meat and bread and banana pudding and candy and chicken salad and cheese, all topped off with beer, wine and eggnog. Bad decisions, to be sure. I think I gave myself gout. I definitely gave myself a stomachache, and, like a truly crazy person, refused to learn from my gourmet mistakes, instead making new ones every day.

Even on the ride home - a bad decision all on its own, for reasons I will describe shortly - I could not tame the eating beast that I had cultivated throughout my ill-deserved vacation. We ate at Sonic (bacon cheeseburger AND chocolate cream pie shake), then we ate at Wendy's, then we ate beef jerky and sour patch kids and Pepsi. And we didn't move for 20 hours.

Yes, twenty. Being the incredibly wise and forward-thinking people that we are, we (Gerard, the dog and I) decided about half-way through our trip that we were not going to stop in DC, as planned, but, instead, would drive all the way to New Jersey in one crazy road adventure.

This was stupid on two, maybe three, counts:
1) Not stopping in DC meant we would not get to see the lovely Alejandro, who I had just called the day before to drop the last-minute bomb that we would be invading his house. I had to call him back and even-more-last-minute cancel, probably ruining his plans for the evening and being an all-around terrible friend.

2) Twenty hours is long and exhausting for even the most well-rested and alert of drivers. We were not well-rested and alert. We had gone to a wine-tasting/ridiculous-fest with my family the night before and were driving on 6.5 hours of sleep and the slowly dissipating remnants of 6 glasses of wine in our bellies.

3) Snow happened. AGAIN. "The blizzard of '09" struck the night before I was supposed to ship out of New Jersey to get home, and even after having to shovel myself out of a driveway and make my first attempt at snow-driving alone, I did not learn to plan my travel around the weather. Just after passing DC (where we could have stopped!) on the drive home, the snow showers started up. We had to make he rest of the trip puttering along below the speed limit, unable to see more than a few feet in front of us.

We made it home (well, to NJ) at 3:45 AM.

We are now back in Brooklyn, where our new year will really get up and running. School starts back in a few days (Monday for Gerard, the next week for me), I go back to the admissions office tomorrow, I have faith that one day I will actually get assigned to teach a Kaplan class, and the great "stop Lauren from eating so much" experiment will begin. I feel that this year will give me much to write about, especially once I begin my student teaching in February. Stay tuned.

The day I ruined Steeplechase

Steeplechase is like my family's Thanksgiving - I fly home to Georgia for it at the beginning of November and don't see any Bells again until Christmas. And, like Thanksgiving, Steeplechase revolves around food - glorious, delicious, obscene amounts of food (and wine, of course).

Until this year.

This year, I spent most of Steeplechase NOT eating. In fact, I was doing just the opposite, thanks to a bizarre-o and meritless hangover that plagued me the entire day.

Why do I share with you my unpleasant stomach situations? Because they were brought on by mostly bad decisions: I arrived home the evening before Steeplechase, sleep-deprived and highly stressed from a week spent trying to write an 18 page research paper on social media marketing. I had been up until about 1:30 the night before our flight and then woke up around 7 to take the dog to the park before we left. After much dehydrating travel, I made it to the homestead and immediately began drinking wine. Then we went to dinner, where a pomegranitini was forced upon me, followed by plate upon plate of rich food and, yes, a bit more wine.

At 5:00 AM I woke up with a mind-breaking headache and a distinct urge to empty the contents of my stomach. Not only was I upset over being sick (is there any worse feeling?), I was also upset over what had gotten me there. Four or 5 glasses of wine over the course of 4 or 5 hours? That's enough to make me sick for an entire day? Not only was it a giant fun-suck on Steeplechase day, it was downright embarrassing.

Being sick on a day devoted to the pleasures of consumption is almost certainly one of the circles of hell described in The Inferno. It probably means I'm being punished for something - like, maybe, equating an all-day drinking- and gambling-fest with a proper holiday. Powers-that-be don't seem to like it when you celebrate the wrong things like that.

To make it up to the higher powers of punishment, I have taken it seriously easy this Thanksgiving - no going out drinking the night before, getting to bed early, even doing some yoga. All good decisions, only, on a day devoted to gluttony, it feels almost wrong to be responsible and moderate.

Mostly Bad Decisions, part a million

I skipped my first class last night.

Don't worry, Mom and Dad -- I feel really guilty about it! AND I have excellent and manifold excuses: It was Teaching of Reading, and I hadn't done the reading, and I didn't think I could look at one of my professor's crazy muumuu-and-leggings get-ups with a straight face, and I was super tired from driving to Virginia, having a homecoming throwdown (which mostly involved me yelling at undergrads for not knowing how to play drinking games) and driving back within a 40-hourish span. Oh, also, I'd been so busy homecoming-ing, I hadn't exactly finished my midterm paper.

How did I become this person? I never just DON'T DO something. In fact, I've been doing too many things all semester. I have been diligently attending class - sharing my feelings upon request, taking incomprehensible notes on reading theory, riding the 1, 2 AND F trains to school and back again. I'm going to work study in the admissions office (as cheerfully bizarre an experience as I had hoped). I DO things - that's what I do, especially when I'm paying $568 per second to do said things.

But Monday, class time happened, and, after being at work in the admissions office all day I still had 2 pages to go on the paper. I ended up hanging out with Miz Deb in admissions 40 minutes past the start of class to finish it. By the time we printed the darn thing, I had decided that my wisest course of action would be to just run it up to the professor's office, slide it under her door, and sneak away pretending that it had been on time (For those of you concerned about my grades, please remember - my professor is the type of person who wears muumuus and leggings. Deadlines are more like...guidelines for her. I hope.).

I don't like living like this! The sneaking! The fibbing! The hanging out in the admissions office after even my peppy boss leaves! The few extra hours of free time on Monday night are just not worth it.

The dog ate my homework.

True Story.

And I let her because 1) I am a horrible dog-spoiler and 2) I am an AWESOME procrastinator. I know of no on else who could possibly take as long to write a one page paper as I have (4 hours and counting.) I've probably spent about 8 minutes actually writing - and filled at last a page, but I've spent a billion interspersed minutes reading blogs and taking pictures of the dog. Sig. School is hard.

Well, that'll learn me

The day after posting the previous entry, about the inexplicable irony of how I am too stupid to do anything but go to grad school, I actually landed a job.

I'm doing some work study in the office of admissions and I am (weirdly?) very excited. It's a lot of shredding paper and filing things and yadda yadda yadda shouldn't I feel like I'm above this even though I can't get a job doing anything more complicated blahblahblah. But, you know what, it's a job, so wheeee!

Also, the office of admissions people, from what I've seen of them, are like, crazy-jolly. I don't know what kinds of meds they are on, but I want a bucket. Every morning. When I went in for my interview, it was like visiting Santa's workshop: everything was bright and clean, and everyone was working very diligently, but as soon as they paused their important work to talk to me, they became insane giggle machines who were just super-pleased about EVERYTHING. I love that.

Working in the admissions office would be cool anyway, because of all the secrets they keep, but with the awesome happy people in there too, it will be like a cool job AND and anthropology study. I hope to soon be passing on to you the secrets of leading a happy life. I think it has something to do with shredding documents.

Good thing I'm in school

It's been, wow, three weeks since I quit my job. I wouldn't necessarily say that I regret quitting, but this whole "making money without a job" thing is proving harder than I thought it would be.

I have yet to find part-time employment. Plenty of positions have opened up -- in the bakery around the corner from my house, at a local bar, various work-study jobs at school -- and I have applied, diligently, with a personal, individualized cover letter, to each. No one wants me to work for them.

Most of the school jobs, in their very kind rejection letters, blame my schedule for their anti-me stance: "Well, we would love to have you, but we're concerned that your schedule wouldn't allow you to devote as much time to the job as we would like." I almost understand this logic, except for the fact that these are work study jobs. They are designed for students. In fact, you have to be a student, attending school at least half-time to even be considered for the job; it is the first qualification. I'm not a full-time student, and, unlike most of my classmates, I am not student teaching this semester. All I have is time. If I cannot devote enough time to the job, who at this school possibly can?

The non-school jobs -- the bartending and the bakery staff -- don't even call me back or write kindly rejection e-mails. I acknowledge that I have no experience in these particular areas, but, you know, I'm a smart person; I can learn! Most of the kids working at the bakery are just that -- children. What makes them more qualified than me? Is it just because they're malleable and cheery? Well, yes, probably, but I LOVE baked goods. Does that count for nothing?

The bartending rejections I'm less upset about. I probably wouldn't be a good bartender. I don't like loud places, and I'm not particularly well-known for being good-natured around the drunk and obnoxious. Also, I worry I'm not sexy enough.

Female bartenders always seem to be tousled and pretty and a little hard-assy, like dominatrixes who went into early retirement, before getting too hard looking. For one bartending job that I applied for on craigslist, I had to send in a picture, so I put on some chapstick (that's how I get tarted up) and did my best sassy bartender face for a quick pic on my computer. Just before sending, I felt like I had to add a post-script to my application e-mail, just to let them know, that, "oh, sorry, I took this at my kitchen table at 9 in the morning, and I'm happy to take some aesthetic pointers or make my look more of a 'type' or something." I never heard back from those people. Bars don't like nervous ramblers. Nor do they like girls with short hair who do not know how to apply eyeliner.

I've always had trouble finding jobs. I started at my horrible job after college because it was the only place that I could even score an interview. I eventually decided to go back to school because two years of searching for different jobs turned up nothing. I have no idea what the problem is, really. I blame my cover letters, which I hate writing because they're so awkward and self-promotional and always end up sounding the same even when you take the time to write a new one for each job.

It's weird to me how difficult it is to convince a bakery I am an intelligent, trainable person when Columbia University had absolutely no trouble believing such a thing, even when I applied late and had to call and beg them to look at my hastily-written essays. I suspect I am not qualified for anything except attending school, which, unfortunately, is even less profitable than working part-time with a bunch of high-schoolers.

Stupid poetry for morning

7:30 AM
A hole is punched in the dark envelope of the room
And NPR pours in

You would think that would be soothing

The dog hears us, muttering ,rumbling, shifting under blankets
She cries
We both pretend to be asleep, hoping the other will take her out

First class

My first class starts in about 2.5 hours (not that I'm nervously counting down or anything). It's a big, mean, double-whammy of a class -- 4 hours long and really two classes combined -- "Teaching of Writing" and "Writing Non-fiction."

Teaching of writing I'm cool with. I need to know how to do that. Writing non-fiction I am less cool with. From what I can tell, it's a lot of writing about yourself and your feelings and attempting to make some sort of "breakthrough" as a writer. I'm not saying I don't need the help; if you are reading this you know very well that I could use about a billion classes on improving my writing.

The thing is, I don't really like feelings. I don't like to talk about mine, and I definitely don't like having to react and respond to other people's. I think I'm an empathetic person -- friends can come to me with their problems and feel pretty safe that I will try to see things their way -- but, between you and I, it's hard! I usually have no idea why people feel the way they do or act the way they act; they baffle me. A two hour feelings assault masquerading as a class sounds terrifying.

The worst part: even if I make it out of there without having offended anyone and having learned something, I am 98% sure that, when I start teaching, I still will not understand why middle schoolers act the way they do.

Getting oriented

Today, I had to go up to school at 8 in the morning for orientation. Of course, they didn't call it "orientation" - how boring! how bland! - what I attended this morning was THE NEW STUDENT EXPERIENCE, conveniently referred to only by its initials on every TC Web site. It took me about a month to figure out what NSE was and why I should probably care about it.

And boy, am I glad I took the time to decipher TC's evil online code. I totally experienced everything I could possibly need to experience as a new student today. There were talks and important people and lunch and the awkwardness of attending lunch without knowing anyone. Wheeee!

I had been dreading orientation for a while, and not just for its early start time. I had figured (rightly) that orientation here would not be like my undergraduate NEW STUDENT EXPERIENCE. Unlike undergraduate orientation, which consisted mostly of standing in circles on the grass and saying each others' names over and over, TC orientation was all business: sign in, get a dorky bag with the school's name on it and some branded literature inside, watch a keynote/welcome from the president, and then break out into concurrent sessions, with a break for lonely lunch. I've had this EXPERIENCE before, only last time it was called "DMA '08" or "MeritDirect List Expo" or some other business conference from my previous life.

It wasn't all bad. I managed to sit next to someone who, in spite of my generally unpleasant demeanor and horrific coffee breath, could not stop talking to me. Instafriend. The talk given specifically to Teaching of English students (of which, holy crap, there are a lot) was helpful, and it was nice to have all the professors in the department introduce themselves, although it had the nasty effect of making me fall in love with pretty much all of them, meaning, sorry Mom and Dad, but I might just try to stay there forever.

The main thing I learned during all these special sessions is that I am more anal retentive and control-freakish than about 42% of my TC classmates. We were all told, upon acceptance, that everything -- registration, student teaching, getting an adviser, figuring out our lives -- would be taken care of at orientation. When I heard this foolishness, I immediately began calling and e-mailing everyone in my department, the admissions office and the financial aid office, demanding that someone help me take care of these essentials AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

My first class is Thursday. I have reading due. If I had waited until today to get everything together, well, I certainly would not be sitting at home eating jelly beans and writing in this blog right now. I would be having a conniption fit over how I'm supposed to get everything done on time (although being unemployed would probably help in this situation). I was shocked by how many people 1) had not taken it upon themselves to get registered before everyone else. Isn't Columbia supposed to be a school for over-achievers? and 2) Did not have a conniption fit when told that, because they followed instructions, they were pretty much screwed as far as registration goes.

While I appreciate their calm, and see how it will one day help them become great teachers, I have to wonder about these people. Our sassy little admissions director specifically said the school was looking for thought leaders and game changers. What kind of thought leader gets into school and then doesn't even try to figure out which classes they ought to be taking before the week that classes actually start? I did all my work ahead of time, and I was so stressed about everyone else that I had to skip the afternoon sessions.

(What I'm sure will be) The Ongoing Sasga of Financial Aid

My financial aid forms were finally processed and put through yesterday. I don't know how or why this very important work was done on a Saturday. My guess is for shock value.

I filed my FAFSA as soon as I heard that I was accepted to school -- back in May or so. Within a few weeks, I had received my financial aid "award package." They call it this to make it sound like something fun and exciting, when, in my case at least, the "award package" actually turns out to be a soul-crushing denial of what you may think you're worth to a school. It's like they know only a crazy person would turn down Columbia, and everyone else will surely find some way to cough up the cash.

Not that coughing up cash is a big deal to most of the people I've seen around TC so far. In my 35-person summer class, I was one of only two people holding down a job. That means there were at least 33 people spending $3000 or so dollars on a class and $xbajillion living in Manhattan on...their inheritances? Money saved from their previous lives as abstemious bankers? Highly mysterious; I must learn their secrets.

I have no money. Columbia chose not to believe this when doling out my "award," and I proved that they were right in doing so by agreeing to attend, and pay, anyway. Sometimes I wonder if this was some kind of test -- "Are you really stupid enough to go thousands of dollars into debt for this? Then ACCEPTANCE RESCINDED. We don't need fools tarnishing our good name." So far I have not been kicked out, mostly thanks to my dad taking the hit for Summer tuition (though I did pay for my book, which, despite being an electronic [i.e. almost totally free to produce] version, cost around $90. how do you explain that?).

So yes, anyway, my Fall/Spring/Summer financial aid has come through, leaving me with living expenses -- but, hey, not tuition! -- to worry about. Yay! It only took months and months and months, through which I fretted constantly over whether everything was going through correctly. I think I called or visited the financial aid offices at least half a dozen times since getting accepted, always with a different way of phrasing the question, "So how can I get some money from you people?" I was put on academic probation for about a week -- they said because of a computer glitch, but I think it was just to get me to ask them something different.

I'm not sure if this means I should always trust financial aid to come through in the end, or if it means I should never ever trust financial aid to do things without half a dozen desperate calls. Those people thrive on drama.

The last hurrah

We went on a week-long camping trip last week -- my last paid vacation time before unemployment and permanent, unpaid loafing commences.

It started out well -- equipped with a GPS system, fully-stocked iPod and 5 pound bag of Sourpatch Kids riding shotgun, Gerard, the dog and I cruised up to Maine in just over the time estimated by the good folks at Garmin International. We were staying at my aunt's, in neighborhood a cross between the middle of nowhere and luxury golf community -- the type of place where people never lock their mansion doors.

The idyllic atmosphere did not keep a local villain from robbing us the night before we left. The Garmin and fully-stocked iPod were no longer ours, although the thief had kindly left the complementing plugs, our stereo, my purse and everything else we owned.

Bummed out, but not deterred, we set out for Acadia with borrowed maps and some Google directions, which kept us in line during that quick, two-hour trip. A few days later, when we left on an estimated 6 hour drive for Vermont, things did not go so smoothly.

The robbery really did us in on this leg of the trip. The missing iPod was bad enough, as it forced us to choose between 8 country music stations (in Maine? Yes.) and Rush Limbaugh for most of the trip. The missing Garmin was simply disastrous. Thanks to horrible Google directions, we started off going about an hour in the wrong direction. Google had, you see, mistaken route 1 for route 1A. And once we actually did get into Vermont, Google pretty much gave up on us. The instructions to the campsite were along the lines of, "Go over a mountain, or something, and, uh, you should see it."

If Google has enough satellite power to practically peer into my windows, how can it possibly not know where Vermont is in relation to the Maine coast? Why, when we have done our due diligence and printed out Google directions before embarking, should we have to rely on our wits, AAA maps and the vague instructions of a convenience store owner?

It is a main peeve of mine when things do not accomplish the one objective for which they are designed. Google's failure to get us where we needed to be was akin to the Mets' utter inability to win baseball games or Comedy Central's strong aversion to comedy. Shoot, I can get you lost or strike out or make bad jokes for half of what these frequent offenders are making. Especially if you pay me in Garmins.

Today, I quit my job

Actually, I'm not sure if that was a totally bad decision, considering that my job occasionally made me feel like faking a horrible accident that would get me out of work for multiple weeks, and my impending poverty is surely going to be slightly more fun (and more legal) than that.

But isn't "Today, I quit my job" an intriguing kick-off to a blog entitled "mostly bad decisions?" Also a bad decision: ending that previous sentence with ? and "". I never can remember the rule for which goes where.

So, yes, welcome to my blog, wherein you will see what happens when I quit my job to go back to school and quickly fall $35,000 into debt. No, I do not have any other jobs lined up. Yes, I am extremely concerned about that.

I've actually already made multiple bad decisions related to what I am going to chronicle in this blog, but I made the horrible decision to not write them down in a timely manner. In fact, I'm cheating just a little: I started school 5 weeks ago and made the decision to quit my job long before that.

Today, though, is the real start. The resignation is in, I just received my syllabus for my first real class (summer session doesn't REALLY count, does it?), and I am pretty much crapping my pants with terror over how I am going to feed myself.

And did I mention that I am taking a puppy on a multi-hour road trip to some remote campgrounds in about a week? Mostly bad decisions. I make those.