I just wrote a whole post about pumpkin pie and autumn and how I ate a whole pie yesterday and blogger did something and it went away. So now, since I've been tutoring forms today, I will write pumpkin haikus instead.
Libby's canned pumpkin
Orange joy cold and chewy fresh
enough for two pies
Pumpkin Pie Blizzards
numbing my hands post rugby
a perfect cool-down
Oh! That yummy squash
Stuck to corners of my mouth
I love to indulge
Crispy leaves and co-
zy autumn clothing be damned
just give me pumpkin
Monday, October 16, 2006
Sunday, October 15, 2006
mmmmmmm fun weekend
I ate the most delicious food in the entire world on Friday night. Corey and Leeann and I went to Spice Island and pigged out. (Thank heaven I took some good food advice from Eastside Girl!) We had three courses and drank more wine than was appropriate. The best part is that we somehow ended up with all the leftovers. There is nothing wrong with eating satay and curry for breakfast! Especially when it comes from that place. Mmmmmm mmmmm. I can't decide if the evening was super fun because we got to see Leeann and then later Brian and Freya or because that restaurant has such nice ambiance and amazing food. Either way, we had an inexpensive and delicious time. I feel like I am somehow writing an advertisement for the restaurant, but it was seriously amazing. Plus our waitress was really fun and friendly. I wanted to offer her some of our wine since she was so quick with everything.
I love it when a meal is so good you have no choice afterward but to return to your apartment and lay on the futon with your pants unzippered, desperately trying to convince yourself that it is NOT a good idea to dig into the leftovers until you become less full.
Later in the weekend, I convinced Corey to come to the rugby bar and he joined the men's team for a game of flip cup. It was so funny to watch them all discover Corey. "Dude! This guy is ALL BUSINESS!!!!" they were screaming. Sometimes people aren't prepared for Corey, who can only focus on one thing at a time and thus does not engage in conversation or waste motions when playing games of skill. He sat on his stool until his turn, downed the beer in one sip and flipped the cup with one hand, one finger, one motion. Then he returned to his stool. I love it. Everyone loves it! In no time at all, KJ had everyone singing "He's a Core Man" to the Soul Man tune. He's a hit!
Weekends like this one are how weekends are supposed to be. I feel totally refreshed! I can forget for a small moment that I have to write a thesis and plan a wedding and tutor stressful students. God bless Asian cuisine and flip cup!
I love it when a meal is so good you have no choice afterward but to return to your apartment and lay on the futon with your pants unzippered, desperately trying to convince yourself that it is NOT a good idea to dig into the leftovers until you become less full.
Later in the weekend, I convinced Corey to come to the rugby bar and he joined the men's team for a game of flip cup. It was so funny to watch them all discover Corey. "Dude! This guy is ALL BUSINESS!!!!" they were screaming. Sometimes people aren't prepared for Corey, who can only focus on one thing at a time and thus does not engage in conversation or waste motions when playing games of skill. He sat on his stool until his turn, downed the beer in one sip and flipped the cup with one hand, one finger, one motion. Then he returned to his stool. I love it. Everyone loves it! In no time at all, KJ had everyone singing "He's a Core Man" to the Soul Man tune. He's a hit!
Weekends like this one are how weekends are supposed to be. I feel totally refreshed! I can forget for a small moment that I have to write a thesis and plan a wedding and tutor stressful students. God bless Asian cuisine and flip cup!
Friday, October 13, 2006
Woo Hoo?
The Pittsburgh Angels are league champions. We are 6-0 and one game away from a national championship tournament. So why does this victory feel so empty? The team in our way this weekend was supposed to be Rochester. We had one game left, one more chance to prove ourselves after all the freaking hard work we've done since August. But they forfeited. As they always do. As I suspected they would.
We were most likely going to obliterate them anyway if we played. Last time, we traveled there with only 12 of 15 players and beat them by nearly 100 points. It would probably have been a similar outcome this weekend. There is just something to be said for actually proving your strength. Are you really a good team if you win by default?
Obviously I understand that beating Detroit was the real championship, the real achievement for my team. But now we have a major competition in two weeks and no game to keep us limber, to keep our heads in battle mode. I hate winning by default more than I hate losing.
A few weeks ago at practice I showed up ready to work my ass off. I was so excited to be opposite my friend PH for 2v1s because I know she is damn near impossible to tackle. In the drill, I laid her out, smashed her out of bounds and everyone cheered. The intensity was turned on for the drill. Woo. Great. But she wasn't concentrating on running hard. She was focused on the pass and that's why I tackled her. I have not tackled PH for real, so I don't feel excited about it.
That is how I feel right now about our "win" this weekend. Until we do it for real, I can't get happy about it. I need to store up this frustration for a few more weeks until we go to Columbus. When we win there, I will feel as though we have earned it. Right now I'm disappointed.
We were most likely going to obliterate them anyway if we played. Last time, we traveled there with only 12 of 15 players and beat them by nearly 100 points. It would probably have been a similar outcome this weekend. There is just something to be said for actually proving your strength. Are you really a good team if you win by default?
Obviously I understand that beating Detroit was the real championship, the real achievement for my team. But now we have a major competition in two weeks and no game to keep us limber, to keep our heads in battle mode. I hate winning by default more than I hate losing.
A few weeks ago at practice I showed up ready to work my ass off. I was so excited to be opposite my friend PH for 2v1s because I know she is damn near impossible to tackle. In the drill, I laid her out, smashed her out of bounds and everyone cheered. The intensity was turned on for the drill. Woo. Great. But she wasn't concentrating on running hard. She was focused on the pass and that's why I tackled her. I have not tackled PH for real, so I don't feel excited about it.
That is how I feel right now about our "win" this weekend. Until we do it for real, I can't get happy about it. I need to store up this frustration for a few more weeks until we go to Columbus. When we win there, I will feel as though we have earned it. Right now I'm disappointed.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
More Problems All Around
I think a lot every day about what the proactive solution is to the problems I see in my job. I don't feel ready to go to the mattresses about it, mostly because it would put the facility where I work under scruntiny. And the academic counselors at the University are not the problem. In the academic support services, I think we try our best to solve these problems. The students show up here with attitudes and lack of preparedness. Whether they belong in college, whether they are prepared for college is irrelevant to us. They are here and we have to help them.
I spend 20 hours every week walking these students through assignments that take the typical freshman under 15 minutes. Extra credit worksheets, film reviews, free-verse poems...these all take my students multiple hours of intense concentration. The problem starts not with the NCAA but far earlier, when these folks are crammed into 35+ student classrooms where teachers replace education with behavior management.
I watched this season's THE WIRE in its entirety and it made me physically sick. The athletically gifted students I work with on a daily basis are fortunate in that they have individual tutoring to catch them up. For each one of my students, 1,000 students with the same lack of educational foundation lingers behind to follow a perpetual circle of poor education leading to crappy jobs leading to low-income poverty conditions which create home environments unproductive for their children's education. I don't even know what to do.
I wrote several papers about my work last year but have been reticent to submit them to journals or publications. After I read "The Ballad of Big Mike" in the New York Times two weeks ago, I was irate. The story of Mike is the story of each of my students. The New York Times dropped the tale when Mike arrives at Ole Miss, places him in the hands of tutors like me and leads the public to believe he is ok now because he is in college. Perhaps after graduation I will pick up the story of Big Mike and follow him around to math class and show how decidedly not ok he is once he hits the world of higher education.
I spend 20 hours every week walking these students through assignments that take the typical freshman under 15 minutes. Extra credit worksheets, film reviews, free-verse poems...these all take my students multiple hours of intense concentration. The problem starts not with the NCAA but far earlier, when these folks are crammed into 35+ student classrooms where teachers replace education with behavior management.
I watched this season's THE WIRE in its entirety and it made me physically sick. The athletically gifted students I work with on a daily basis are fortunate in that they have individual tutoring to catch them up. For each one of my students, 1,000 students with the same lack of educational foundation lingers behind to follow a perpetual circle of poor education leading to crappy jobs leading to low-income poverty conditions which create home environments unproductive for their children's education. I don't even know what to do.
I wrote several papers about my work last year but have been reticent to submit them to journals or publications. After I read "The Ballad of Big Mike" in the New York Times two weeks ago, I was irate. The story of Mike is the story of each of my students. The New York Times dropped the tale when Mike arrives at Ole Miss, places him in the hands of tutors like me and leads the public to believe he is ok now because he is in college. Perhaps after graduation I will pick up the story of Big Mike and follow him around to math class and show how decidedly not ok he is once he hits the world of higher education.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Problems All Around
I have said before that I think the system of education is in need of reform in this country. I have said before that I think it is wrong to transform scholastic athletes into idols and prevent them from learning or developing their minds. I was reminded last night how desperately criminal the situation has become.
Imagine a math class with 30 students. Eighteen of those students are prominent athletes on a very prominent sports team at the school. The 18 students continually disrupt class, preventing learning from occurring in any capacity. Are so disruptive in fact that the teacher nearly called the police to intervene. This is a college math class with adult students over the age of 18. Things in the class worsen every day until the coach of the team is berated at an academic function. He promises to speak to the team and does and things do not improve. A proctor is hired to sit in on the class, to babysit. Things do not improve. This teacher would ordinarily eject the students from class and fail them for the semester. But these particular students must carry 12 credits to remain eligible to play their sport. So, buckling under enormous pressure to keep her position with the university, the teacher must bravely face every day in an unteachable environment, controlled by the good old boys.
These same students then politely come to the center for help with papers. We sit. For three hours we struggle through a paper one sentence at a time, desperately pulling for any remembered tidbit from class, for new ways to phrase ideas for which the students lack a lexicon.
Functional literacy. Intellectual curiosity. Analytical skills. These three skills should be honed in middle or high school to allow for higher development in college. Unfortunately, because of the scholastic athletic machine that drives through our nation, certain students are gathered up to run the treadmill powering the machine. They are used and abused, denied an opportunity to learn, given a glimpse over the top of the hill and then ejected from the ride when we have no further use for their bodies. They have the arrogant attitudes we taught them, fit bodies, and no education to speak of. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong and it needs to be fixed.
Imagine a math class with 30 students. Eighteen of those students are prominent athletes on a very prominent sports team at the school. The 18 students continually disrupt class, preventing learning from occurring in any capacity. Are so disruptive in fact that the teacher nearly called the police to intervene. This is a college math class with adult students over the age of 18. Things in the class worsen every day until the coach of the team is berated at an academic function. He promises to speak to the team and does and things do not improve. A proctor is hired to sit in on the class, to babysit. Things do not improve. This teacher would ordinarily eject the students from class and fail them for the semester. But these particular students must carry 12 credits to remain eligible to play their sport. So, buckling under enormous pressure to keep her position with the university, the teacher must bravely face every day in an unteachable environment, controlled by the good old boys.
These same students then politely come to the center for help with papers. We sit. For three hours we struggle through a paper one sentence at a time, desperately pulling for any remembered tidbit from class, for new ways to phrase ideas for which the students lack a lexicon.
Functional literacy. Intellectual curiosity. Analytical skills. These three skills should be honed in middle or high school to allow for higher development in college. Unfortunately, because of the scholastic athletic machine that drives through our nation, certain students are gathered up to run the treadmill powering the machine. They are used and abused, denied an opportunity to learn, given a glimpse over the top of the hill and then ejected from the ride when we have no further use for their bodies. They have the arrogant attitudes we taught them, fit bodies, and no education to speak of. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong and it needs to be fixed.
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