Malaise

Let’s call it a deep malaise.

As it is right now, I only teach one class a day.  ONE!  My other 3 classes are busy working on group projects.  (And by busy I mean spending a majority of time on youtube and online games, while sometimes going back to work on the project.)  This leads to me sitting around quite a bit.  Like today, I have two classes working on their projects and one working on a lab.  I know I shouldn’t complain, but seriously I get bored.  Yesterday I helped four students one-on-one and felt accomplished for the first time in a while.

Maybe it stretches back to my college days.  Remember that stretch of time between Thanksgiving and finals?  The time you thought was going to be so very short, but then the weeks dragged on forever.  That’s how school feels right now.  We’re so very close to a big break, but not quite there yet.  And so nobody really wants to do anything.  Because, you know, it’s almost Christmas.  But not quite.

And the funny thing is that I’ve taken it upon myself to give advice to the new teachers on how to deal with this feeling.  So I’m being a cheerleader, but yet I feel the same way myself.

Soon I’ll be refreshed, only to feel this way again in March.  And then again in May.  I think I need a nap.

Quicky

“Is it true that space is vacuum-packed?”

TMI and Other Inappropriateness

I figured I could lump all these little happenings into one bigger post.

Last week some of my (sophomore) students were discussing their IDs.  One said his looked like a mug shot and he wanted to show me.  So he hands me his little ID wallet, then grabs it back really quickly and turns red.  He takes something out and then tries to smooth the leather a bit before handing it back to me.  The result?  A nice big indentation from a condom.

Today a few students were working on their warm-ups and talking about famous actors they thought were hot.  This one girl says, “I have a facebook page with a list of guys I think are hot.  And Marilyn Monroe.  I’d go lesbian for her.  You know, if she came back from the dead or something.”

My few other students were calling me a “fun-sucker” because I won’t let them do some stupid project in class.  The activity is completely pointless and void of any educational value, but I apparently suck the fun out of class.  You know how, when trying not to be vulgar, people will switch the letters and change the words to futher mucker or something like that?  Well this girl, trying to be LESS vulgar, said to me, Mr. ______ , you are a sun fucker!”  Then she realized what she said, dropped her jaw, then ran out of the room.  (I wasn’t sure if it’d be sun or son…)

I had two girls today who wanted to go to the bathroom.  The first said, “I’m having female problems.”  The second said, “My female problems are worse than hers!”

And finally, a quote straight off of a turned-in lab.  “I hate my boyfriend.  dick fuckin head.  He should go die.  fuckin boyfriends.  i hate them”  To which I wrote underneath (me too).

Praise

Warning: This post has no real value other than to make myself feel better and get me through the day.

Ever notice how the week after a holiday is the longest week ever?  Thanksgiving break was nice, but this week is only half-way done and I’ve been tired every single moment of it.  Today, after school, my big plan is to go home and sleep.

Anyway, things I’ve heard in the past two days:

“This is, by far, the best class I’ve ever had.”

“Mr. _____, you should get the MVP award for teaching this year.” (Said, inadvertently, right in front of my Dept. Chair)

“Mr. _____, you look really tired today.”

“My friend wants to switch out of his class and move into yours.”

“Did you hear we’re all going to die in 2012?  Why should I do my work?”

Ok, two of those aren’t praise, but they did happen.

Karma Police

…arrest this man.

 

I’m pretty sure I pissed off some god or another.  Not sure which one (a student answered Jesus to the question: What exerts the force of gravity) but it seems like everything I go near breaks.  In September it was my car.  In October it was one of my friend’s dishes.  Last week it was my computer.   The other day I spilled an entire glass of wine on that same friend’s book.  I had my hard drive backed up, but not well enough apparently because I’m missing half of my iTunes library.  I’ve pulled my back out twice in two months (once not as bad as the other).

 

I think I need a karmic redemption, because I’m not a clutz and I don’t have a bad back.  I was thinking about starting a meditation club at school to introduce students to basic mediation technique.  I don’t know about you, but I think it’d be fun to relax at the end of the day and do some guided meditation with a group of people without having to pay for it.  I doubt I’ll actually do it unless a student asked me.  But, hey, maybe it’ll get the good karma flowing again.

Actual Responsibility

This was going to be about something totally different…I’ll probably get to that in a second.  But first, I have to mention that I was just asked to walk into the boy’s bathroom and bust a possible drug deal.  I’m like, WHAT?!.  Me?  But since I was the closest male teacher, I had to walk in all tough and check things out.  I admit, I didn’t know what I would’ve said if I walked in and two students were making a drug deal.  This was what’s going through my mind as I walk in.  What if it’s true?  What do I say?  “Hey you!  Get over here now.”?  Does that work?  Am I sufficiently scary enough for the kid not to bolt?  Turns out that whatever kid was there had left by the time we got there.  And I was relieved.  AND I got to act all manly in front of the female teachers.

 

In other news, I’ve had a substitute working with me in my co-taught classes the past three days.  This woman can talk.  She basically didn’t stop talking to either me or my students the entire day.  About anything and everything.  She was very helpful, but half and hour into the class my students were giving me looks.  You know, the she-won’t-leave-me-alone-to-do-my-work-and-I-hate-doing-work looks (that’s a guiness book record for longest hyphenated word…look it up!)

My co-teacher and I do the good cop/bad cop deal, but not on purpose.  I’m just really laid back most of the time and he’s got a short fuse.  I worried that, without him here, the students would be a real problem.  He’s definitely more of an enforcer than I am.  However, miraculously, the students behaved better the past couple of days.  When I was talking to my students about the great amount of work they were accomplishing, they told me that Mr. _________ gets on them too much and makes them not want to work.  I do like the fact that they’ll do work for me.  Makes me feel like I’m doing something right.

 

And last…conversation with a student yesterday:

“Mr. _________, I read somewhere that teenage boys think about sex every 6 seconds.  Is that true?”

“I’ve heard that too.”

“But I don’t.  Look, 1,2,3,4,5,6! I didn’t think about sex that whole time.”

Best Quote Ever?

On our agenda today, because I was feeling weird, I wrote “Extra credit because I love you all”.  This was after a quiz that they are dreading.  When they told me that I was creepy because of it, I erased it and told them that there would be no extra credit if they were going to be mean about it.  This exchange continued for a minute until one of my male students said…

 

Wait for it…

“But I love my creepy male teachers!”

You know the phrase rotflmao?  I literally did that.  I fell to the floor laughing.

Dreaming is Work

First, good news everybody!  The LHC is operational again!  That article is actually way more specific than I thought it would be.  It focuses on the purpose and hopeful outcomes of the experiments to be performed.  It’s worth a read-though.  And if you are interested, may I suggest The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene?  Some of that stuff will blow your mind.  And a lot of the book focuses on possible experimental outcomes of the LHC.  See how it all ties together?

 

Last night reminded me of a good joke from my favorite comic of all time, Mitch Hedberg.

“I hate dreaming because when you want to sleep, you want to sleep.  Dreaming is work.  I’m all comfortable in my bed  and next thing you know, I have to build a go-cart with my ex-landlord.  I wanna have a dream of me watching myself dream.”

 

Last night I had a dream that I was working in a warehouse.  It was tiring.  Then I woke up and was really tired.  And it was 5:15 in the morning, so I had to get up soon.  That was really disappointing.  So now I’m extremely tired, all because of a stupid dream.

LHC, Birds of Destiny, and Higgs Bosons From The Future!

Ok, this is getting ridiculous.  I’ll give you the run-down.  The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a super-huge particle accelerator that cost about $10 billion to make.  It’s the biggest accelerator ever built and scientists hope that, once operational, it will allow them to recreate conditions immediately after the big bang.  They are also hoping to discover the ever elusive Higgs Boson.  This is a massive, theorized, elementary particle that could explain why objects have mass.  The reason it hasn’t been found yet?  E=mc².  Since the particle is so (relatively) massive, it takes a ton of energy to create.  The LHC may be able to obtain those energies and give us more clues to the very nature of the universe.

It hasn’t worked so far.

There have been a series of problems since September of last year.  This prompted an article in the NY Times.

A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

This is an actual theory.  The article goes on to claim that God hates the Higgs Boson, so he is avoiding its discovery.  The LHC is sending particles back in time to destroy itself!  Or,  maybe not.  Maybe it’s sending birds!  Last week, a bird dropped a piece of baguette onto the LCH, causing a short circuit.  Apparently the bird was French, hence the baguette.  Best thing to come out of this?  References to Star Wars and Monty Python.  And this comment:

“This was the higgs boson particle coming back in time disguised as a bird in order to prevent its own creation. Expect more of the incidents.”

The Grading Post

I hate to admit it, but my passive-aggressive method of trying to get my co-teacher to grade something failed.  Miserably.  You see people, he’s way more experienced as a teacher and when he said that we would split the grading, I believed him.  He’s been doing this for years.  At some point at the end of September, I stopped grading our stuff, noticing that he had yet to grade more than 1 assignment for 1 of our 3 classes.

 

We let the papers pile up on his desk.  This is mostly because he doesn’t use it and I use my desk.

They piled up.

And up.

One day there was an avalanche.

Then there were nice neat stacks.  And stacks.  And stacks.

Fast-forward six weeks to when we have to get our grades in.  At this point, the stuff needs to get done.  I started grading.  He said he’d take care of a bunch of it during his off period.  He didn’t.  Had to take care of some other stuff.  He’ll do it tomorrow.

He didn’t.

So I took care of it.  When it was all finished, I graded 75 class sets of assignments in two days.  He graded 3.  !!@$)*@&!@!(*(&

 

As my students would say:  FAIL

 

Music: “Home” by Jack Johnson on A Brokedown Melody Soundtrack

My Pandora radio loves Jack Johnson way more than I do.