the point was the journey, and the journey was pointless. Also, a rec.

[fictional]

So, I just had to make a quick [read 3 hours] dash to the New College Which Must Not Be Named. (I may need a new fandom-specific name for this one: thoughts? Prydonian Academy will not do, as I fear it will not be all happy, happy, joy, joy.) It was frantic because I'd not read the email closely, and I was just checking it to make sure I was getting certain notations right in my syllabus, and then I realized that we were *ahem* requested & required to make an appearance at a New Faculty Tea. At 3pm. It was 2:10pm when I was reading the email. SO I dashed out the door, armed with laptop (so I could work on the subway, always fun, and I ended up just writing more story instead, bad kali! no biscuit!) and ran like the hounds of hell were chasing me down to the college.

Only to discover that it was totally useless. It was in fact, just tea. (Literally tea. And lemon cake. and ice cream - none of which I ate.) Dunno what they made such a big deal about it for; it was completely insipid, and also not net-worky. Just to produce the illusion that we are all collegial colleagues, with spirit Feh. And if I have to hear once more: "Oh, you teach children's literature! You're so lucky!" I might throw something. I'm not lucky, okay? I've got balls and attack ovaries, and therefore enough guts to actually study things I like, rather than things which look respectable. Luck has got nothing to do with it! ANYWAY. I did get some writing done, which was okay, and on my way home, I stopped at the bookstore to see if my texts for the class had arrived, and didn't even have to go downstairs because I saw a bunch of college boys coming out with them all in their hands. One of them was cute too! He looked exactly like Lex Luthor from Smallville. Dunno what I'm gonna do with that.

In conclusion, a rec. This is a Doctor Who vid; it's called Handlebars, and I think it is incredible. The song choice is impeccable and fits the Doctor in all his breathtaking arrogance and fundamental glee so perfectly, but with all that, there's an underlying irony; the glee is undercut throughout by notes of anguish that just made me want to cry, even as my mouth hung open in awe. It's the kind of vid that is so very clean, you almost can't see all the work the vidders did to make it work. Spoilers through 4x13: Journey's End. Go check it out!

Comments

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, the "so cool". *facepalm* For me, also one of the problems was not being into the SAME pop. culture as my students, and they, being excessively ill-prepared for college, weren't always willing to bring examples from their interests to the table. Which made it sort of like trying to communicate across a giant abyss. But it's fun anyway.

I don't like teaching, really. I mean, there are the awesome days, when things go right, and you can see someone *get* it, and there's the moments, when a student comes forward and is like, wow, I never thought about ____, like this before, and thank you. And I could talk to a captive audience forever ;-) But I lack patience, and I teach in a university system that is so tragically messed up, and the students are coming out of NYC public schools, and literally cannot read sometimes - even if they can usually phonetically sound things out, they don't know what any of it MEANS, and it's just heart-breaking.

And their general knowledge:
I was once teaching american "minority" lit, and we were reading James Baldwin's Another Country, and talking about the 1950s in America, and the release of the Kinsey report, etc etc, and one guy says, completely without irony, "Well, yeah. Way back then everyone was gay and shit. Things be different now." When I asked him what he meant, he said, " I mean, think about George Washington. And all those fruits wearing powder wigs." At first I thought he was joking; but he wasn't. And it was pretty widespread: connecting the decade of the 1950s with a time period when their grandparents, if not their parents were alive, was just not something they'd ever done... And many of them are also homophobic, sexist, and evangelical Christians, which I find very hard to cope with.

[sanginmychains.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that would make me crazy. I had a better experience (in the whole 2 years I was teaching). I was at a college, which in Ontario is I think equivalent to a community college -- kids who did okay in high school, but whose career aspirations are more in the line of dental hygienist, administrator, construction technician, fashion designer, etc. I taught basic writing courses (essay and business writing, not creative) and the aforementioned marvelous pop culture class. Still, the students were coming out of the Canadian school system so they had decent basic skills to start with. I wouldn't know what to do with students who had been graduated without literacy skills.

I find it funny that they'd connect the 50s with greater social freedom -- the general reputation of that decade is such the opposite! The seeds of the social upheaval were there, to be sure, but ...? And was he connecting George Washington to the 50s, or was he assuming that everything before his parents' time was "back then" and therefore all the same? The mind boggles.

This does illustrate why I never, ever had the urge to teach high school. Even 19 year olds were a little young and unformed for my liking. I couldn't imagine teaching 14 year olds.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wish that was what community college meant here. I mean, they're going for the same type of jobs, but the preparation is completely lacking. To be fair, I don't think this is the case in all of America; New York City's public education system is in serious need of overhaul, because it's so overwhelmed by sheer mass, and of course, it's also a vast, unspoken, racist conspiracy to keep a racial & immigrant underclass going.

I think they divide all of history into "Olden Days," "Nowadays" and "The FUTURE." Actually, I'm not sure they ever think about the future. But I could be wrong on that one.

Then there was the bio major, who informed me that evolution couldn't be right because "Chairs exist, and chairs are made of wood, which comes from plants" and "evolutionists have no explanation for plants, whereas creationists do - i.e. God created them," and when I tried to explain that evolution does in fact provide an explanation for plants, since plants are you know, organisms that evolve, appeared to not know that plants were alive.

AND I HAVE TO START TEACHING AGAIN TOMORROW. *cries*

I really hope I get a job in Canada or the UK when I am done with grad school. I want to flee, oh yes, I do.